"In the last fifty years, archaeological discoveries have altered traditional beliefs on the formation and development of the civilization of ancient China. This book and the exhibition that it accompanies cover the period from 5000 BCE to the 10th-century C.E. presenting more than 170 masterpieces in jade, stone, ivory bone, pottery, bronze, lacquer, bamboo, gold, and silver. Together these astonishing objects demonstrate that highly advanced artistic cultures originated in and flowered throughout a vast area. Earlier generations of scholars believed that a much smaller area, the Yellow River Valley, was the principal source and locus of Chinese civilization."--Jacket.