The study of spine biomechanics is an important foundation for understanding spine function, spine pathogenesis as well as selection of spinal therapeutic approaches. This review summarizes the basic research progress and results of spine biomechanics from five aspects, including the individual components of spine (such as spinal vertebrae), intervertebral discs, ligaments and functional spinal units and the whole spine. All these studies include the in vitro and in vivo experiments on human spinal specimens and animal spinal specimens, and the results of different research methods such as the mathematical model. This review also summarizes some of the poorly understood biomechanical data, which would become an important research direction in the future.