In the Neolithic Age, Qinghai Province had the skill of making painted pottery, and it was developing continuously. Although it no longer exists today, we can see the prosperity at that time from the exquisite painted pottery that has been unearthed. The craft, decoration and modeling of painted pottery provide us with an important way to study ancient Qinghai culture.

Qinghai is the kingdom of painted pottery, and Liuwan is the hometown of painted pottery. Liuwan Cemetery is the oldest preserved prehistoric cultural relic in Huangshui River Basin. Tens of thousands of exquisite pottery have appeared, showing unparalleled painted pottery technology. Painted pottery cultural relics unearthed in Liuwan are numerous, unique in shape, complex in ornamentation and exquisite in design, which are indispensable and important materials for studying the origin and inheritance, connotation and characteristics of prehistoric civilization and primitive culture in the west, and the production, life and beliefs of ancestors.

Painted pottery reveals strong prehistoric cultural information, rich artistic connotation and broad extension. Among them, starting with painted pottery, the most common raw material, the existence and significance of life are explained. Legend has it that God created human beings out of clay, and human beings can't live without clay from now on. They work on it and get the necessities for survival from it. Life comes from the soil, and it also exists because of the soil. In this sense, both human beings and painted pottery come from soil.

This combination of human origin and soil is directly related to the making of painted pottery and its important role in prehistoric human life. After the appearance of painted pottery, pottery not only enriched the contents of production and living utensils used by human beings, but also enhanced the stability of human life. People use pottery to collect water, store water, store grain and cook food, which is of great significance to expand the ability and scope of human life and production, improve the living conditions of ancestors and enhance human physique.

Moreover, painted pottery shows the creative spirit of our ancestors and embodies their religious feelings and aesthetic consciousness. Some pottery with animal and plant patterns or human images are totem worship of our ancestors, while others are regarded as ritual vessels for religious sacrifices. In the eyes of primitive humans, pottery is alive and aura. Therefore, it is unnatural to associate the origin of human beings with clay used to make pottery.

Primitive humans compared human life to making pottery, which led to association and gave an extraordinary explanation of the origin of life, which was in line with the original thinking concept. Anthropological survey data show that in the group marriage system of primitive society, every woman in the same tribe can be the mother of the child and bear the obligation to raise the child.

In the pottery workshop, a child asked his mother, mom, whose child am I and who gave birth to me? While firing pottery, her mother replied: You are made of clay, and a god named Nu Wa Niangniang is made of clay. This is a mother's answer to her child, and it is also a myth about the origin of mankind.

In the past, our explanation of myth only emphasized the naivety and naivety of primitive human thinking, but ignored the real living state of myth. From the production of painted pottery and the cultural level it contains, the myth of human origin is not only strange and romantic, but also has its real life foundation.

The explanation of myth transcends the general physiological phenomenon, and connects the origin of human life with painted pottery, the great creative spirit of human beings and the goddess of creation, Nu Wa, worshipped by ancestors. Therefore, the appearance and existence of life is endowed with unusual meaning and symbol.