Helanshan Rock Art (Chinese: 賀蘭山岩畫) are images carved into the rocks of Helan Mountains (賀蘭山), Ningxia (寧夏), north west of China. As of 2020, tens of thousands of petroglyphs have been discovered.
Helanshan Rock Art is representative of rock paintings in northern China, with rich and concentrated subject matter.
Tangut script was a logographic writing system, used for writing the extinct language of Western Xia. The characters are similar in appearance to Chinese characters, but the methods of forming characters are significantly different.
Besides human faces and Tangut scripts, you can also see the images of animals, which depict the hunting scenes in ancient times.
Helanshan Rock Art was first discovered by Li Daoyuan (酈道元), a geographer of the Northern Wei (北魏) Dynasty (5th century AD) in a book named Commentary on the Water Classic (水經注).
‘Sun God’ is the most famous picture amongst Helanshan Rock Art, and is also used as the icon to represent Helanshan Rock Art.
The creation periods of Helanshan Rock Art can be roughly divided into three stages, the first stage is the Neolithic, the second stage is from the Qin (秦) Dynasty to the Northern and Southern dynasties, and the third stage is from the Sui (隨) Dynasty to the Western Xia (西夏). However, the exact date of the creation is still unknown.
