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With a time-honored history, Shandong dates back to over 400,000 years when Yiyuan man, the earliest Shandong human known by far, existed. From around 8,500 to 4,000 years ago, civilizations developed one after another, with the Houli Culture, Beixin Culture, Dawenkou Culture, Longshan Culture and Yueshi Culture of the Neolithic Age.

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Historical sites spread all over Shandong, including four world culture heritage sites of Mount Tai, the Temple and Cemetery of Confucius and the Kong Family Mansion, the Great Wall of Qi and the Great Canal. 

In Shandong, there are 196 national key cultural heritage sites and 1,711 provincial key cultural heritage sites. Additionally, unmovable cultural relics amount to over 50,000 and movable cultural relics add up to more than 5.58 million, ranking Shandong at the forefront of China for such things.

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UNESCO has inscribed Shandong's eight historic treasures on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and 173 relics have been graded as national intangible cultural heritage and 751 as provincial intangible cultural heritage. Moreover, romantic stories like the Butterfly Lovers, Meng Jiangnu's Bitter Weeping, and Tian Xian Pei (A Goddess' Marriage), have been recognized as national nonmaterial cultural heritage, spreading far and wide in China.