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Chapter 5 - Neolithization: Sedentism and food production in the early Neolithic (7000–5000 BC)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Li Liu
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Xingcan Chen
Affiliation:
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
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Summary

On the death of Baoxi, there arose Shennong (in his place). He fashioned wood to form the hoe, and bent or straightened wood to make the hoe-handle. The advantages of tilling and weeding were then taught to all under heaven.

Chapter, “The Great Treatise II,” in Book of Changes (ca. the ninth century BC), translated by James Legge (1879), modified

“包牺氏没, 神农氏作, 斫木为耜, 揉木为耒, 耒耨之利, 以教天下,…” 《周易 · 系辞下》

The development of Neolithic cultures in China coincided with the arrival of the Mid-Holocene Climatic Optimum. The warm and wet climatic conditions enabled the flourishing of small villages in major river valleys, from the northeast to south China. These settlements’ archaeological remains are characterized by dwellings, storage pits, burials, and, sometimes, by ditched or walled enclosures. Domestication of plants and animals is clearly evident, and ritual activities are reflected in burials and on artifacts. Pottery vessels are prevalent. Polished stone tools increase in proportion, but chipped stones and microliths continue to be found. Grinding stones (slabs, handstones, mortars, and pestles) are common in toolkits. The mopan slabs and mobang elongate handstones, often occurring together in the archaeological context, now became a diagnostic tool complex in the toolkits, particularly in North and Northeast China.

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Chapter
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The Archaeology of China
From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age
, pp. 123 - 168
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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