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Dongyi People and Their Dawenkou Culture

The rather unfamiliar Neolithic people by the name of Dongyi primarily lived in today's Shandong Province (山東省) between 4,300 BCE and 2,600 BCE. Because the temperature at Shandong Province was two to three degrees higher at the time, the area used to be a habitat for animals like the Yangtze crocodile, elephants, and Père David's deer (Elaphurus davidianus), which are now witnessed to the south of the Yangtze.

The Dongyi people, beset with warm temperature, a bountiful supply of water, and rich soil, gave birth to an illustrious agrarian culture called Dawenkou. Since around 3,500 BCE, the Dawenkou culture began to outshine the Yangshao culture (仰韶文化) in some areas, particularly in terms of pottery manufacturing techniques. Considered to have been the most advanced of its kind at the time in China, the Dawenkou culture not only used spinning wheels, but also used horse shoe-shaped kilns to bake pottery. Skillful techniques were employed to produce pottery in unique shapes. Tripod ewers (三足鬹) in the shape of birds are representative of the Dawenkou culture. Eggshell cups (蛋殼杯) thinner than eggshells appeared near the end of the Dawenkou culture, which is said to be impossible to simulate with contemporary technology. The people of Dawenkou tended to bury lots of pottery with the dead in their graves, many of which were drinking cups. The Erlitou site discovered at Yanshi (偃師) of Luoyang City (洛陽市) in China's Henan Province indicates that the Erlitou culture (二里頭文化) from between 1,900 BCE and 1,500 BCE had been influenced by Dawenkou pottery. Furthermore, Dawenkou pottery is considered to have had a huge impact on bronze ware production during the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

The Dawenkou culture also left behind a variety of artifacts manufactured out of jade. One of the well-known discoveries of them were made at the Lingjiatan (凌家灘) ruins in Anhui Province (安徽省). The jade pendant featured in figure no. 2 hints at the Dawenkou culture's imaginative brilliance at work. The shape of an eagle with a pig's head on each side of its wings seems ready to fly up into the sky at any moment.

Despite its remarkable creations, the people of Dawenkou attracted more attention for a different reason. That reason had to do with their customs of head flattening, tooth ablation, and holding beads in the mouth (口含球習俗). Head flattening involves applying artificial force to deform the shape of the head, while tooth ablation refers to purposefully removing healthy teeth, and the teeth and gums would be filed from holding hard beads in one's mouth over the course of a lifetime. What could have caused the people of Dawenkou to employ such unusual methods of body modification? Let us now take a closer look at the mysterious customs that were kept by the people of Dawenkou.

Flattening the Back of the Head

There are three different ways to flatten the back of the head. One method is to flatten with loops (環形), which involves tying a string made out of plant and loop the string around the forehead, temple, and the rear of the skull. This sort of head flattening turns the head into a long, narrow shape that can sometimes be discovered among people in northeastern China, Peru, North Africa, and the North American Indians.

Another method is to flatten with boards (板形), which involves placing a hard board to the front and back of the head and securing them together with a string. This elongates the head while making both the front and back of the skull flat and seems to have been a popular practice in northeastern China during the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods.

Yet another method is to flatten with pillows, which involves placing a hard board against the back of an infant's head or lay the baby down on a hard floor for extended periods of time. This method does not hugely alter the skull except for flattening its back, forming the skull into an almost square-like shape.

Head flattening was a popular practice all over the world throughout the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. Flattening with loops or boards seems to have been the trend in northeastern China, whereas flattening with pillows seems to have been the way to go in the Dawenkou culture. It has been estimated that up to seventy or eighty percent of the Dawenkou people practiced head flattening and traces of the custom has been witnessed on all remains of the Dawenkou people uncovered so far.

Figure 1 Tripod ewer (三足鬹) from the Dawenkou culture

Figure 2 Eagle with pig-shaped wings from the Lingjiatan ruins

Figure 3 Flattening with loops

Figure 4 Flattening with pillows

Figure 5 Flattening with boards

Figure 6 Flat skull of a Dawenkou person

Figure 7 Jaw without two maxillary lateral incisors

Figure 8 Stone bead inside the mouth

Figure 9 Gums run down from prolonged use of beads

Figure 10 Shaohao zhi

Figure 11 Xihe zhi

Shaohao was a great god of the Dawenkou and the solar deity Xihe is said to have given birth to ten suns. In the above images, Shaohao and Xihe are portrayed in the form of sun birds. The images have been created by referring to relics of the Dawenkou culture and the physical features of its people who practiced head flattening, tooth ablation, and holding beads in the mouth.

Ablation of Healthy Teeth

The people of Dawenkou practiced ablation from the ages of twelve or thirteen when permanent teeth emerge and up until the age of twenty-one. The period overlaps with when puberty rites are held, which is why some view the practice as a deviant form of them. Puberty rites are typically held when the transition from young adulthood to adulthood takes place. Korean puberty rites involve adorning hats for males and hairpins for females.

Dawenkou people would remove the two maxillary lateral incisors. Healthy teeth would be removed by using an instrument resembling a chisel to knock them out from a horizontal direction. The difference between natural and artificial extraction of teeth can easily be detected with the naked eye because unlike artificial extraction, which leaves the tooth root stuck in the gums, the tooth root gets removed with natural extraction. Traces of artificial extraction are even more apparent through X-ray images that clearly reveal remaining roots. According to a statistical estimation, it has been suggested that more than seventy percent of Dawenkou people had their teeth removed.

The Dawenkou culture is known to be the first to practice the custom of tooth ablation in China. The custom later spread to the southwest regions of China and the Gelao people (仡佬族) in Guizhou Province have been practicing it until fairly recently. Scholars consider extracted teeth discovered in the southern parts of Korea or in Japan to have resulted from having been indirectly influenced by the Dawenkou and Longshan cultures. However, this topic requires further research because there appears to be differences in terms of which tooth was typically extracted and when the custom was widely practiced.

A Lifetime of Holding Stone Beads in the Mouth

The remains of some Dawenkou people were uncovered with beads held in their mouths. Such beads are made of either stone or ceramic and this custom has not been witnessed anywhere else so far. The size of the beads is between 1.5 to 2 centimeters like the ones children normally play with and one or sometimes two of them are usually found in the mouths of remains.

Holding beads in the mouth would begin from a young age and tended to be practiced more among females. Holding a stone bead between the molars and the cheek like candy for extended periods of time wears the gums down from abrasion. Traces of abrasion have been found on both sides of the jaw, which indicates that filing was done by moving the stone bead around on both sides. Light cases of filing would leave a gloss on the crown of teeth and heavier cases would lead to the exposure of the crown or root of teeth. In the case of M2343, the skeletal remains excavated from the Wangyin (王因) site, most of the lower molars had already been lost and stitched up and the upper molars were still in place, but without any gums.

Unsolved Mysteries

The people of Dawenkou flattened their heads, extracted their teeth, and filed their teeth and gums. Head flattening was mainly done with pillows, which must have been relatively less painful than other head flattening methods. Tooth ablation and filing, on the other hand, caused more physical damage accompanied by considerable degrees of pain. Why, then, did they put up with such pain to follow such primitive customs?

Some argue that head flattening must have been a means of beautification, but based on a generalized criterion of beauty in all ages, shaping the back of the head to resemble a square block does not seem convincingly attractive. Tooth ablation has widely been regarded as a puberty rite, but a definitive answer as to why healthy teeth had to be extracted is yet to be found. And the purpose of holding beads in the mouth is still a mystery as well. Professor Han Kangxin (韓康信), who has done substantial research on the remains of Dawenkou people, remarked that "curing periodontal disease was once considered as a possible reason for holding beads in the mouth, but studies have reached an opposite conclusion after finding that the practice actually caused dental damage." So, the reason why the people of Dawenkou endured brutal pain from holding stone beads in their mouths and rolling them against their gums remains a mystery.

Up until now, head flattening, tooth ablation, and holding beads in the mouth have each been researched individually. However, it seems necessary to take note of the fact that such customs were simultaneously practiced by a single person. Of course, the percentage of practice differs for each custom, so it cannot be concluded that all Dawenkou people practiced all three customs. Seventy to eighty percent of the people seem to have practiced head flattening and tooth ablation, but since damaged remains make it difficult to exactly identify the practice of such customs, the percentage of practice may have actually been higher. For holding beads in the mouth, less traces of abrasion tend to be left in cases where beads were held for relatively shorter periods of time, which makes it tricky to quantify how many actually practiced the custom.

The practice of all three customs would have resulted in a square-shaped head with a pointy chin and a protruding mouth. One guess that can be made from visualizing such an image is that the Dongyi people could have been trying to transform themselves to look like the sun bird they worshiped. The aforementioned tripod ewer was shaped after a bird, while the Dawenkou god Shaohao zhi was considered the leader of birds and appears in the form of a bird in stone reliefs dating back to the Han dynasty. In any case, without further means to draw closer to some answers, the underlying mysteries of the above customs will remain unsolved for the time being.