As early as the Neolithic period, a primitive belief in the "immortality of the soul" was already prevalent; indeed, burial artifacts have been unearthed at archaeological sites associated with cultures such as the Hemudu and Dawenkou. The people of that era would place pottery and jade objects within the graves of the deceased, in the hope that the departed would be able to continue their daily lives and routines in the afterlife just as they had in this world.
By the time of the Zhou Dynasty, the custom of utilizing jade as ritual vessels for sacrificial rites had become widespread. This practice extended beyond major ceremonial occasions-such as ancestor worship and the veneration of Heaven-to encompass a comprehensive and detailed system governing the use of jade in funerary rites.
Jade burial objects served not merely as tokens of ritual protocol or social status; more fundamentally, they embodied the heartfelt aspirations of the living-a collective wish for the deceased to enjoy a blessed existence in the world beyond. It is for this profound reason that the custom of interring the dead with jade artifacts has endured to the present day.