The Neolithic in China corresponds, within the territory of present-day China, to an economic revolution during which populations learned to produce their food resources through the domestication of plants and animals. Around 9700 BCE, climate warming led to the development of wild food resources and a reduction in nomadism. Hunter-gatherers moved less; they began to store supplies, often stocks of acorns. Neolithization, which marks the transition to the Neolithic period, mainly occurred between 7000 and 5000 BCE. The appearance of pottery (c. 16000–12000 BCE) is separate from this process, as it occurred earlier, among populations of the Late Paleolithic. The Neolithic period began during a generally warm climatic phase called the Holocene. Among plant-based foods, wild rice appeared and was gradually domesticated in the Lower Yangtze region around 6000–5000 BCE; the same occurred in the Yellow River basin (Henan) with millet. Millet and rice, initially gathered and consumed in their wild forms, were progressively domesticated around 6000–5000 BCE. At first, they only made a minor contribution to the diet, competing with other wild plants and hunting resources. Underground silos were often used to store certain plant-based foods. Then, from around 5000 BCE, agriculture became a much more significant part of the diet of Chinese populations, with millet in the North and rice in the South.
Chinese prehistoric cultures thus reveal a rich material culture. Pottery appeared particularly early and achieved a high level of refinement during this period. Jades followed, as did the first lacquered objects (Hemudu culture), which also appeared here. Neolithic artisans adopted glass technology through trade with the West, but this production remained very marginal. Few wooden objects have survived, but they generally indicate everyday use. In addition to these wooden objects, others made from natural fibers, basketry materials, and horns have survived locally. Many prestige objects show hybrid forms, and their creators produced a wide variety. This abundant production offers evidence of symbolic activity that would accompany the economic development of the Bronze Age in China.
Toward the Neolithic
Climate warming While around 14000 BCE, China was a cold and dry environment, and the sea level was more than 100 meters below today's level, around 9700 BCE the Holocene began, marked by the warming of continental air masses and the influence of a stronger monsoon. During the Holocene climatic optimum, temperatures were 1 to 3 °C warmer than today, the monsoon was stronger, and lake levels were significantly higher. Northern and northwestern regions experienced heavy monsoon rains by around 7000 BCE, whereas today they are arid or semi-arid regions. These northward monsoon advances facilitated the first Neolithic settlements along the Liao River (Xinglongwa culture), the middle Yellow River (Peiligang and Cishan, Laoguantai / Baijia-Dadiwan I), and its lower course (Houli culture).
Cold and dry periods This southeast monsoon push later receded south of the Yangtze between 4000 and 1000 BCE, bringing about a cooler and drier period in the north and wetter conditions in the south. This forced some populations to abandon settlements, population density declined, and some cultures disappeared, such as the Hongshan culture, which collapsed around 3000 BCE, replaced by a form of extensive pastoralism, or the peaceful Yangshao culture, which gave way to the Longshan culture, marked by the gradual emergence of social hierarchies and the construction of defensive ditches.
Elsewhere, walls and ditches were built to control flooding, as excavations have revealed in the Daxi, Qujialing, Shijiahe, and Liangzhu cultures. In southeastern China and Taiwan, the same phenomenon is observed: the sea level reached approximately its current level around 5500 BCE, then reached a maximum between 4000 and 2500 BCE.
In the 2000s, several studies provided more precise information on these periods on a global scale: around 6200, 3200, and 2200 BCE. Each episode lasted several hundred years. In China, these fluctuations were detected, but their dating varies significantly from one author to another, which could result from a strong interaction between the specific effects of climate change on a global scale and the geographical and regional characteristics specific to China in its distinctly different regions. The aforementioned studies seem to demonstrate that these fluctuations were at the origin of millet cultivation and that elsewhere, the social response consisted in a strengthening of community cohesion and the collective appropriation of certain territories by these communities. These cold and dry periods alternated with others that were warmer and more humid.
The first postglacial shock, around 6400–6000 BCE, produced an arid and cold period in the North Atlantic, North America, Africa, and Asia. In China, a similar fluctuation, around 5300 BCE, a period of drought, could explain why only a few sites dating back to before 6000 BCE have been discovered, located in well-watered valleys: Xinglonggou in the Liao River Valley, as well as the earliest sites of Peiligang in the Huang Huai Valley,The Huang River is a tributary of the Huai River, in Henan, which flows into Huangchuang. and a few sites of Pengtoushan in the Yangzi River Valley. After these cold and dry episodes, the return of rains and the monsoon corresponds to the development of Neolithic cultures and their spread from north to south.
Variations To give a revealing example of the effects of climate, the vast lands located north of the lower part of the Wei River were, it seems, covered by vegetation and deep lakes, and a large part of this region was likely uninhabited. At the same time, small areas increasingly populated began to multiply here and there, with all the practices typical of the Neolithic: a production-based economy, followed by rivalries over possession of the most fertile areas.
While the transition toward certain aspects of the Neolithic occurred slowly in some places, and without local continuity, in many other regions the practices of hunter-gatherers (as at Zengpiyan) from the Epipaleolithic tradition continued well into the Holocene, among populations that had already entered the Neolithic (cultivation and animal husbandry).Brian Hayden (Simon Fraser University) [in ] indicates that the presence of storage pits (which could be signs of property) and the fact that certain individuals are distinguished by their burials and ornaments [as can be observed in China at least by this period, if not earlier] may be indications of social or cultural differences, or of certain forms of complexity within these hunter-gatherer cultures, since the Upper Paleolithic.
Neolithization At the beginning of the Holocene (9700–7000 BCE), in a context of abundant and stable resources, groups of hunter-gatherers reduced their mobility and adopted more diversified strategies to exploit these various local resources. Gradually, and depending on the location, new practices emerged, from foraging and gathering—becoming more selective (as in South China)—sometimes involving partial sedentarization, to new types of production such as pottery.On this topic: Note 31. This pottery appeared alongside rare polished stone tools, within subsistence strategies that still belonged to the Late Paleolithic.
Neolithization is a complex process. In a landscape whose vegetation cover had changed, humans employed diverse strategies depending on local and temporal conditions. This neolithization is marked by the progressive sedentarization of human groups and the establishment of food reserves during the Early Neolithic (7000–5000 BCE).
Neolithization, a slow and uneven process, is difficult to grasp when it comes to small groups whose strategies vary depending on the areas they encounter (as mobile hunter-gatherers) and local climatic variations. The difficulty also lies in trying to connect population movements (human migrations in Southeast Asia and connections with East Asia and the Pacific), linguistic histories (such as the expansion of Austronesian languages), technological changes indicating new economic or social adaptations (pottery, basic technologies, sedentarization), and evidence of domestication of animals and plants. This effort has created the illusion of a unified "neolithization" process, rather than acknowledging the complex histories of mosaics of peoples practicing eclectic strategies that cannot be easily classified as either hunter-gatherers or farmers.
Polished stones seem to be associated with agriculture, in the case of grinding stones used to crush grains, but plants were already being crushed before that. However, flaked stone tools continued to be used for a long time, depending on the intended purpose. The intellectual processes involved are therefore complex, and it seems that some individuals distinguished themselves from their peers and entered into rivalry during this period. Furthermore, these societies came into contact with hunter-gatherers, and such exchanges were beneficial to both sides, transforming them reciprocally.
Domestication of certain animals, cultivation of cereals and other plants, new tools—the essential traits of Neolithic culture—developed independently of one another, both in time and space, and exchanges with even the most distant cultures played a role in this slow and dispersed neolithization. Neolithic cultures, from 7000 to 1500 BCE, within which these practices continued to evolve, formed locally and sometimes disappeared, often witnessing—more or less gradually—the emergence of social differences and violent conflicts.
In the South The Zengpiyan and Miaoyan caves (Guilin, Guangxi) (10000–6000 BCE) provide a clearer view of these populations in this region during that period: they were seasonal camps, but the production and use of pottery, in the early stages of this technology, suggest that occupation periods were relatively long, and with a well-organized logistical supply system, these populations were not forced to make long migrations. The appearance of pottery (10000–8000 BCE), hand-molded, occurred within these non-sedentary hunter-gatherer populations. The Zengpiyan site was used up to the neolithization period: at the end of the cave's occupation period, pottery made with the coil technique, decorated, appeared, and polished stones emerged—although the people involved were still hunter-gatherers.
In the North Publications dating from 2013 report the domestication of livestock near Harbin, around 8000 BCE.
Table of Neolithic cultures
In this chronological table of Neolithic cultures, innovations have been indicated. China has been divided into nine regions:
Northeast China: Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning.
Northwest China (Upper Yellow River): Gansu, Qinghai, and western Shaanxi.
North-Central China (Middle Yellow River): Shanxi, Hebei, western Henan, and eastern Shaanxi, corresponding to the Central Plain.
Eastern China (Lower Yellow River): Shandong, Anhui, northern Jiangsu, and eastern Henan.
Southeastern China (Lower Yangtze): Zhejiang and Jiangsu.
South-Central China (Middle Yangtze): Hubei and the northern part of Hunan.
Sichuan and Upper Yangtze region.
Southeastern China: Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Guangxi, and the southern part of Hunan, the lower Xi River up to northern Vietnam, and the island of Taiwan.
Southwestern China: Yunnan and Guizhou.