Guo Dashun, honorary director of Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, led the team that discovered the Niuheliang site in the 1980s. Speaking at the event, he said that the site's altar, temple and tombs, which were used for worship and sacrifice, are scattered over a wide area but are well-structured and form an organic complex with rigorous layouts and a central axis.

The use of jade at funerals in Niuheliang and its layout of a south-north central axis is a major topic of research in the study of the origin of China's traditional rituals.

He noted that scholars from home and abroad have shared the view that as the Hongshan Culture lay at the intersection of the ancient painted potteries cultural belt that spanned the Eurasian continent and the jade cultures that flourished along the Pacific coast, the development of the culture should be studied from a global perspective.