Before the Shang Dynasty (1,500 B.C.E.), the Neolithic cultures of China depicted a great variety of arthropods in their jade carvings. The Chinese had made insightful observations of arthropods as early as 7,000 years ago. Jade is 6.5 to 7 on Moh’s Hardness Scale. The artisans had to be creative in their attempts to detail appendages on their figures on such hard stone. Insect larval and pupal figures show that these people observed the life stages long before their descendants wrote detailed accounts of insects. The depiction of metamorphic transformation is shown in extremes through merging of insect form with human, or both real and mythological beasts. While the exact significance of the taxa they chose to represent is lost, the diversity and accuracy of those representations are still impressive.
Keywords: insect archeology
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