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BIRDS AND BEASTS WERE MANY: THE ECOLOGY AND CLIMATE OF THE GUANZHONG BASIN IN THE PRE-IMPERIAL PERIOD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

Brian Lander
Brian Lander*
Affiliation:
Brian Lander 蘭德, Brown University, brian_lander@brown.edu
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Abstract

This paper reviews current knowledge on the geography, climate, flora, and fauna of Shaanxi's Guanzhong 關中 Basin, a region that has been particularly well studied because it was a capital region of the Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties. Humans have so thoroughly transformed the region that it is hard to imagine that it was ever full of wild plants and animals. And since much of the English-language scholarship on the Zhou period focuses on the texts and ideas of urban elites, it is easy to forget that most people were rural farmers living in environments full of wild plants and animals, and that many places had no humans at all. Scholars in various fields have produced abundant new information on the environments of ancient China, making it possible to reconstruct climate and ecology far more accurately than was possible before. This research shows that, contra older claims that ancient North China had a subtropical climate, the climate of the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods was only slightly warmer and wetter than the present. The most important factor in the transformation of the region's ecosystems has been humans, not climate. We will focus on the pre-imperial period because various lines of evidence suggest that the first millennium b.c.e. was a period of population growth in which agricultural societies wiped out many of the natural ecosystems of lowland North China. Only by reconstructing what North China looked like thousands of years ago will we be able to understand how humans came to be the dominant force in the region's ecology.

提要

本文總結了我們至今對陝西關中盆地（周、秦、漢及唐朝的首都地區）的地形、氣候、動植物的知識。人類已經如此徹底地改變了華北地區，以致於很難想像此處以前曾經充滿了野生動植物。許多關於商周時期的英文研究成果關注都市地區上層貴族的文本和思想，這使人們很容易忘記那時候大多數人是農民，生活在滿是野生動植物的環境中，而且許多地方根本沒有人類。各個學科的研究者已經獲得了大量有關中國古代環境的新信息，使得比以往更準確地重建氣候和生態成為可能。過去很多學者認為古代華北地區是亞熱帶氣候，但本研究表明，新石器和青銅器時代中國的氣候僅比現在略温暖和濕潤。另外，對該地區的自然植物群，尤其是動物群，我們有比以前更好的認識。種種證據表明，公元前第一個千年期是人口快速增長的時期，在此期間，農業社會不同程度地摧毁了華北低窪地區的自然生態系統。只有弄清楚人類將其轉變為農田之前華北地區環境的面貌，我們才能重構這一時期發生的顯著環境變化。

Keywords

Environmentclimatewildlifethe Guanzhong Basin環境氣候野生動植物關中盆地
Type
Articles
Information
Early China , Volume 43 , September 2020 , pp. 207 - 245
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Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Study of Early China and Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

I would like to thank my teachers Li Feng, Robin Yates, Rowan Flad, Gail Chmura, Wally Broecker and Dorothy Peteet, as well as my colleagues at Kluane National Park, for their help in the long process of learning about these subjects, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This research benefitted enormously from two years in China funded by the China-Canada Scholar's Exchange Program and another funded by Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Travel Fellowship.

References

1. Variants of this passage are found in both the Han Feizi and the Zhuangzi. Xianqian, Wang 王先謙, Han Feizi jijie 韓非子集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1998), 49.442Google Scholar; Qingfan, Guo 郭慶藩, Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1961), 29.994Google Scholar. Cited in Liu, Li and Chen, Xingcan, The Archaeology of China: From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Nianhai, Shi 史念海, “Gudai de guanzhong” 古代的關中, in Heshan ji 河山集 (Beijing: Sanlian, 1963), 26–66Google Scholar.

3. David R. Knechtges, Wen Xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, Vol. 1: Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 101; Gao Buying 高步瀛, Wen xuan Li zhu yishu 文選李注義疏 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1985), 35–36; This is Knechtges’ translation except for mao 毛, which I translate “shoots” based on Zheng Sinong’s gloss of the Zhouli: Jia Gongyan 賈公彥, Zhouli zhushu 周禮注疏 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2010), 475 (地官•載師).

4. Emil Bretschneider, “Botanicon Sinicum: Notes on Chinese Botany from Native and Western Sources: Part 2,” Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 25 (1893), 1–468; Guo Fu 郭郛, Li Yuese 李約瑟 (Joseph Needham), and Cheng Qingtai 成慶泰, Zhongguo gudai dongwuxue shi 中國古代動物學史 (Beijing: Kexue, 1999), 109–18; Magnus Fiskesjö, “Rising From Blood-Stained Fields: Royal Hunting and State Formation in Shang China,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 73 (2001), 48–192; David N. Keightley, The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China, ca. 1200–1045 B.C. (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, 2000), 107–13.

5. E.g., Wang Xianqian 王先謙, Xunzi jijie 荀子集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1988), 10.184–85; John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), vol. 2, 127–28.

6. See John S. Major, “Animals and Animal Metaphors in the Huainanzi,” Asia Major 21.1 (2008), 133–51; David R. Knechtges, Wen Xuan or Selections of Refined Literature, Vol. 2: Rhapsodies on Sacrifices, Hunting, Travel, Sightseeing, Palaces and Halls, Rivers and Seas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

7. Hans Bielenstein, “The Census in China During the Period 2–742 AD,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 26 (1947), 125–163. I have cropped Bielenstein’s map to exclude the region south of the Yangzi, which was sparsely populated apart from the Red River delta, and I have modified the coastlines to reflect their general location at the time.

8. I use “natural” to refer to environments not created by humans, understood in terms of a spectrum from ecosystems without humans to totally anthropogenic ones. On this term, see Raymond Williams, “Ideas of Nature,” in Culture and Materialism (London: Verso, 2005), 67–85.

9. This article remains relevant after a quarter-century: Lothar von Falkenhausen, “On the Historiographical Orientation of Chinese Archaeology,” Antiquity 67, no. 257 (1993), 839–49.

10. Hsuan Keng, “Economic Plants of Ancient North China as Mentioned in Shih Ching (Book of Poetry),” Economic Botany 28.4 (1974), 391–410.

11. E.g., Lu Ji 陸璣 et al., Shijing dong zhi wu tujian congshu 詩經動植物圖鑑叢書 (Taibei: Dahua shuju, 1977).

12. See, for example, Guo, Li, and Cheng, Zhongguo gudai dongwuxue shi; Pan Fujun 潘富俊 and Lü Shengyou 呂勝由, Shijing zhiwu tujian 詩經植物圖鑒 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2003).

13. Chu Ko-chen (Zhu Kezhen 竺可楨) employed most of the relevant information on climate in pre-Han texts in his groundbreaking article “A Preliminary Study on the Climatic Fluctuations during the Last 5000 Years in China,” Scientia Sinica 中國科學A輯-英文版 16.2 (1973), 226–56. The original Chinese article was published in Kaogu xuebao 1972.1, 15–38.

14. The most common trees in the Guanzhong plain are paulownia (Paulownia tomentosa), catalpa (Catalpa bungei), pagoda tree (Sophora japonica, syn. Styphnolobium japonicum), white elm (Ulmus pumila), tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), willows (Salix sp.), Chinese arborvitae (Platycladus orientalis), juniper (Juniperus chinensis), red pine (Pinus tabuliformis), and the following poplars: Populus cathayana 青楊, P. nigra 箭桿楊, P. simonii 小葉楊 and P. tomentosa 毛白楊. Shaanxi sheng, Shaanxi sheng zhibei zhi 陝西省植被志 (Xi’an: Xi’an ditu, 2011), 538.

15. For example, the white-bellied rat (Niniventer confucianus), striped field mouse (Apodemus agrarius), and greater long-tailed hamster (Tscherskia triton). Early texts used the term shu 鼠 to refer to all of these.

16. There are at least two species, the common serotine (Eptesicus serotinus) and Japanese pipistrelle (Pipistrellus abramus).

17. Simon L. Lewis and Mark Maslin, The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).

18. Jennifer J. Crees and Samuel T. Turvey, “What Constitutes a ‘Native’ Species? Insights from the Quaternary Faunal Record,” Biological Conservation 186 (2015), 143–48.

19. Robert B. Marks, China: An Environmental History, 2nd ed. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).

20. Historical geographers in China have long understood this, e.g. Wen Huanran 文煥然, ed., Zhongguo lishi shiqi zhiwu yu dongwu bianqian yanjiu 中國歷史時期植物與動物變遷研究 (Chongqing: Chongqing, 1995).

21. For a more detailed discussion of the geography of the region, see Li Feng, Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou, 1045–771 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 30–58.

22. Guo Zhaoyuan 郭兆元, ed., Shaanxi turang 陝西土壤 (Beijing: Kexue, 1992), 18–19.

23. For detailed maps of the region’s rivers and a reconstruction of their description in the Commentary on the Classic of Rivers, see Li Xiaojie 李曉傑, Shuijingzhu jiaojian tushi: Weishui liuyu zhu pian 水經注校箋圖釋: 渭水流域諸篇 (Shanghai: Fudan daxue, 2017).

24. The Wei River averages 26.8 pounds of silt per cubic meter just before the Jing River enters; the Jing River averages a phenomenal 196 pounds. Zhongguo kexueyuan, Weihe xiayou heliu dimao 渭河下游河流地貌 (Beijing: Kexue, 1983), 5.

25. Wang Juan 王娟 et al., “Weihe xiaoyou quanxinshi gu hongshui zhiliu chenjiwu yanjiu” 渭河下游全新世古洪水滞流沉積物研究, Shuitu baochi tongbao 水土保持通報 31.5 (2011), 32–37. The annual flow of the Wei River between 1956 and 2000 was 1x1010 m3; the lowest year (1995) having 4.3x109 m3, the highest (1964) having 2.18x1010 m3, over five times higher than the lowest year. Between 1956 and 2000 the flow rate averaged 205.8m3 per second, with flows of several thousand cubic meters per second during several historic floods.

26. Wang Yuanlin 王元林, Jing-Luo liuyu ziran huanjing bianqian yanjiu 涇洛流域自然環境變遷研究 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2005), 73–82. This Luo River is often referred to as the North Luo (Bei Luo 北洛) to avoid confusion with the South Luo (Nan Luo 南洛) River which originates nearby on the south side of Mt. Hua 華 and flows to Luoyang in Henan.

27. Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 24. Incidentally, the word huang 黃, which we translate as “yellow” actually refers to a range of beige-yellow colors that includes the color of loess.

28. The Ba 灞, Chan 滻, Feng 灃, Hao 滈, Yu 潏 and Lao 澇 Rivers all flow through the Xi’an area. Shi Nianhai 史念海, “Lun Xi’an zhouwei zhuhe liuliang de bianhua” 論西安周圍諸河流量的變化, in Heshan ji 河山集 7 (Xi’an: Shaanxi shifan daxue, 1999), 51–76; Michael Nylan, “Supplying the Capital with Water and Food,” in Chang’an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China, ed. Michael Nylan and Griet Vankeerberghen (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 99–130.

29. Sang Guangshu 桑廣書 and Chen Xiong 陳雄, “Ba he zhongxiayou hedao lishi bianqian jiqi huanjing yingxiang” 灞河中下游河道歷史變遷及其環境影響, Zhongguo lishi dili luncong, no. 2 (2007), 24–29.

30. Mingguo Zhai, ed., Precambrian Geology of China (Berlin: Springer, 2015), 13–46.

31. The remnants of the first two are known respectively as the Qinling Island-Arc Terrane and the South Qinling Belt; see Yunpeng Dong et al., “Tectonic Evolution of the Qinling Orogen, China: Review and Synthesis,” Journal of Asian Earth Sciences 41 (2011), 232.

32. Leigh H. Royden, B. Clark Burchfiel, and Robert D. van der Hilst, “The Geological Evolution of the Tibetan Plateau,” Science 321, no. 5892 (2008), 1054–58; Susanne S. Renner, “Available Data Point to a 4-Km-High Tibetan Plateau by 40 Ma,” Journal of Biogeography 43.8 (2016), 1479–87.

33. Jianjun Du et al., “Late Quaternary Activity of the Huashan Piedmont Fault and Associated Hazards in the Southeastern Weihe Graben, Central China,” Acta Geologica Sinica–English Edition 91.1 (2017), 76–92.

34. The geological structure that underlies the Guanzhong Basin is called the Weihe graben. Pan Wang et al., “Crustal Structure beneath the Weihe Graben in Central China: Evidence for the Tectonic Regime Transformation in the Cenozoic,” Journal of Asian Earth Sciences 81 (2014), 105–14.

35. Aiming Lin et al., “How and When Did the Yellow River Develop Its Square Bend?,” Geology 29 (2001), 951–54.

36. Fuchu Jiang et al., “Formation of the Yellow River, Inferred from Loess–Palaeosol Sequence in Mangshan and Lacustrine Sediments in Sanmen Gorge, China,” Quaternary International 175.1 (2007), 62–70; Ping Kong, Jun Jia, and Yong Zheng, “Time Constraints for the Yellow River Traversing the Sanmen Gorge,” Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 15.2 (2014), 395–407.

37. Jie Fei et al., “Evolution of Saline Lakes in the Guanzhong Basin During the Past 2000 Years: Inferred from Historical Records,” in Socio-Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road, ed. Liang Emlyn Yang et al. (Cham: Springer, 2019), 25–44.

38. Wang Zijin 王子今, “Qin-Han shiqi Guanzhong de hubo” 秦漢時期關中的湖泊, in Qin Han shiqi shengtai huanjing yanjiu 秦漢時期生態環境研究 (Beijing: Beijing daxue, 2007), 93–111.

39. Neil Roberts, The Holocene: An Environmental History, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2014), 88.

40. Image downloaded from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg in April 2013. Modified. It is based on data from J. R. Petit et al., “Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past 420,000 Years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica,” Nature 399, no. 6735 (1999), 429–36.

41. Clay grains can of course stick to, and be transported along with, larger grains. Tung-sheng Liu, Loess in China (Berlin: Springer, 1985), 80–85.

42. Liu, Loess in China, 124; Chun Chang Huang et al., “High-Resolution Studies of the Oldest Cultivated Soils in the Southern Loess Plateau of China,” Catena 47 (2002), 29–42.

43. Thanks to Yijie Zhuang for permission to use this image from his dissertation: Yijie Zhuang, “Geoarchaeological Investigation of Pre-Yangshao Agriculture, Ecological Diversity and Landscape Change in North China” (PhD diss., Cambridge University, 2012), 257. Modified.

44. Liu, Loess in China, 165; Ping-ti Ho, “The Loess and the Origin of Chinese Agriculture,” The American Historical Review 75.1 (1969), 1–36.

45. Liu, Loess in China, 182–84.

46. Xiubin He et al., “Paleopedological Investigation of Three Agricultural Loess Soils on the Loess Plateau of China,” Soil Science 167.7 (2002), 478–91; Huang et al., “High-Resolution Studies of the Oldest Cultivated Soils”; Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China 6.1: Botany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 70–75.

47. Zhuang, “Geoarchaeological Investigation,” 256.

48. Shaanxi sheng nongye kancha shejiyuan, Shaanxi nongye turang 陝西農業土壤 (Xi’an: Shaanxi kexue jishu, 1982), 119–34.

49. Chun Chang Huang et al., “Development of Gully Systems under the Combined Impact of Monsoonal Climatic Shift and Neo-Tectonic Uplift over the Chinese Loess Plateau,” Quaternary International 263 (2012), 46–54; Liu, Loess in China, 198–99.

50. Shi Nianhai 史念海, “Zhouyuan de bianqian” 周原的變遷, in He shan ji 河山集 2 (Beijing: Sanlian, 1981), 226.

51. Roberts, The Holocene, 68–126.

52. On climate in human history, see for example Dagomar Degroot, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560–1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019); Timothy Brook, “Nine Sloughs: Profiling the Climate History of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, 1260–1644,” Journal of Chinese History 1.1 (2017), 27–58; Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017); Raphael Neukom et al., “No Evidence for Globally Coherent Warm and Cold Periods over the Preindustrial Common Era,” Nature 571, no. 7766 (2019), 550–54.

53. Dominic Hosner et al., “Spatiotemporal Distribution Patterns of Archaeological Sites in China during the Neolithic and Bronze Age: An Overview,” The Holocene 26.10 (2016), 1576–93.

54. Such studies are common in the scientific literature, e.g., Pingzhong Zhang et al., “A Test of Climate, Sun, and Culture Relationships from an 1810-Year Chinese Cave Record,” Science 322, no. 5903 (2008), 940–42.

55. The climate data is taken from the following website: “Zhongguo qixiang kexue shuju gongxiang fuwuwang” 中國氣象科學數據共享服務網, cdc.cma.gov.cn, accessed on April 11, 2013. The climate data for the Guanzhong as a whole was calculated by various scholars from the geography department at Shaanxi Normal University for their own research, and I am grateful to them for sharing it.

56. The Guanzhong’s annual potential evaporation rate is around 1470 mm. Potential evaporation rate is the evaporation rate of open water, not actual evaporation. Jingwu Fang, Zhiheng Wang, and Zhiyao Tang, Atlas of Woody Plants in China: Distribution and Climate (Heidelberg: Springer, 2011), xxxv.

57. www.nmc.gov.cn/img/jswd/57036.jpg, accessed on October 22, 2014.

58. Roberts, The Holocene, 68–126.

59. Xiangjun Sun et al., “Vegetation History of the Loess Plateau of China during the Last 100,000 Years Based on Pollen Data,” Quaternary International 37 (1997), 25–36; Hou-Yuan Lu et al., “Phytoliths as Quantitative Indicators for the Reconstruction of Past Environmental Conditions in China II: Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction in the Loess Plateau,” Quaternary Science Reviews 26.5–6 (2007), 759–72; Sun Jianzhong 孫建中 and Zhao Jingbo 趙景波, Huangtu gaoyuan disiji 黃土高原第四紀 (Beijing: Kexue, 1991), 158–63.

60. Xunlin Yang et al., “Early-Holocene Monsoon Instability and Climatic Optimum Recorded by Chinese Stalagmites,” The Holocene 29.6 (2019), 1059–67.

61. For a useful image of several different Holocene climate reconstructions, see figure 3 in Jianbao Liu et al., “Holocene East Asian Summer Monsoon Records in Northern China and Their Inconsistency with Chinese Stalagmite Δ18O Records,” Earth-Science Reviews 148 (2015), 194–208.

62. Lu et al., “Phytoliths as Quantitative Indicators”; Qinghai Xu et al., “Vegetation Succession and East Asian Summer Monsoon Changes since the Last Deglaciation Inferred from High-Resolution Pollen Record in Gonghai Lake, Shanxi Province, China,” The Holocene 27.6 (2017), 835–46. Chun Chang Huang told me in April, 2013, that he and his colleagues generally estimate that the temperature was about 1.5 degrees warmer and precipitation about 200 mm higher in this mid-Holocene, but that this is based on a variety of factors (soil, vegetation, etc.) that cannot be easily quantified.

63. Carolyn A. Dykoski et al., “A High-Resolution, Absolute-Dated Holocene and Deglacial Asian Monsoon Record from Dongge Cave, China,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 233.1–2 (2005), 71–86; Jinguo Dong et al., “A High-Resolution Stalagmite Record of the Holocene East Asian Monsoon from Mt Shennongjia, Central China,” The Holocene 20 (2010), 257–64; Yanjun Cai et al., “The Variation of Summer Monsoon Precipitation in Central China since the Last Deglaciation,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 291.1–4 (2010), 21–31; Ian J. Orland et al., “Direct Measurements of Deglacial Monsoon Strength in a Chinese Stalagmite,” Geology 43.6 (2015), 555–58; Yonaton Goldsmith et al., “Northward Extent of East Asian Monsoon Covaries with Intensity on Orbital and Millennial Timescales,” PNAS 114.8 (2017), 1817–21.

64. Cai et al., “The Variation of Summer Monsoon.”

65. Barbara A. Maher, “Magnetic Properties of Modern Soils and Quaternary Loessic Paleosols: Paleoclimatic Implications,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 137.1–2 (1998), 48–51.

66. Jiangli Pang and Chun Chang Huang, “Mid-Holocene Soil Formation and the Impact of Dust Input in the Middle Reaches of the Yellow River, Northern China,” Soil Science 171.7 (2006), 554; Chun Chang Huang, Jiangli Pang, and Pinghua Li, “Abruptly Increased Climatic Aridity and Its Social Impact on the Loess Plateau of China at 3100 B.P.,” Journal of Arid Environments 52.1 (2002), 91; Chun Chang Huang et al., “Holocene Colluviation and Its Implications for Tracing Human-Induced Soil Erosion and Redeposition on the Piedmont Loess Lands of the Qinling Mountains, Northern China,” Geoderma 136.3–4 (2006), 841.

67. Chun Chang Huang et al., “A Regional Aridity Phase and Its Possible Cultural Impact during the Holocene Megathermal in the Guanzhong Basin, China.,” Holocene 10.1 (2000), 135–42; Chun Chang Huang, Jiangli Pang, and Jingpo Zhao, “Chinese Loess and the Evolution of the East Asian Monsoon,” Progress in Physical Geography 24.1 (2000), 75–96; Huang et al., “High-Resolution Studies of the Oldest Cultivated Soils”; Huang, Pang, and Li, “Abruptly Increased Climatic Aridity”; Chun Chang Huang, Jiangli Pang, and Ping Huang, “An Early Holocene Erosion Phase on the Loess Tablelands in the Southern Loess Plateau of China,” Geomorphology 43.3–4 (2002), 209–18; Chun Chang Huang et al., “Climatic Aridity and the Relocations of the Zhou Culture in the Southern Loess Plateau of China,” Climate Change 61 (2003), 361–78; Chun Chang Huang et al., “Charcoal Records of Fire History in the Holocene Loess–Soil Sequences over the Southern Loess Plateau of China,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 239.1–2 (2006), 34.

68. E.g., Yongjin Wang et al., “The Holocene Asian Monsoon: Links to Solar Changes and North Atlantic Climate,” Science 308, no. 854 (2005), 854–57.

69. Cai et al., “The Variation of Summer Monsoon,” 26, 29.

70. H. N. Wu et al., “A High Resolution Record of Vegetation and Environmental Variation through the Last 25,000 Years in the Western Part of the Chinese Loess Plateau,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 273.1–2 (2009), 197.

71. Z.-D. Feng et al., “Holocene Vegetation Variations and the Associated Environmental Changes in the Western Part of the Chinese Loess Plateau,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 241.3–4 (2006), 452.

72. Chengbang An, Zhao-Dong Cheng, and Loukas Barton, “Dry or Humid? Mid-Holocene Humidity Changes in Arid and Semi-Arid China,” Quaternary Science Reviews 25 (2006), 351–61.

73. Chun Chang Huang et al., “Holocene Palaeoflood Events Recorded by Slackwater Deposits along the Lower Jinghe River Valley, Middle Yellow River Basin, China,” Journal of Quaternary Science 27.5 (2012), 485–93; Chun Chang Huang et al., “Extraordinary Floods of 4100−4000a BP Recorded at the Late Neolithic Ruins in the Jinghe River Gorges, Middle Reach of the Yellow River, China,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 289 (2010), 1–9; Chun Chang Huang et al., “Extraordinary Floods Related to the Climatic Event at 4200 a BP on the Qishuihe River, Middle Reaches of the Yellow River, China,” Quaternary Science Reviews 30 (2011), 460–68.

74. Mark Edward Lewis, The Flood Myths of Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), and Yuzhu Zhang et al., “Formation and Evolution of the Holocene Massive Landslide-Dammed Lakes in the Jishixia Gorges along the Upper Yellow River: No Relation to China’s Great Flood and the Xia Dynasty,” Quaternary Science Reviews 218 (2019), 267–80.

75. Peter Clift and R. Alan Plumb, The Asian Monsoon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 203–10; Roberts, The Holocene, 220–21.

76. Wenxiang Wu and Tung-sheng Liu, “Possible Role of the ‘Holocene Event 3’ on the Collapse of Neolithic Cultures around the Central Plain of China,” Quaternary International 117 (2004), 153–66; Fenggui Liu et al., “The Impacts of Climate Change on the Neolithic Cultures of Gansu-Qinghai Region during the Late Holocene Megathermal,” Journal of Geographical Sciences 20.3 (2010), 417–30.

77. Hosner et al., “Spatiotemporal Distribution Patterns of Archaeological Sites in China during the Neolithic and Bronze Age”; Pauline Sebillaud, “La distribution spatiale de l’habitat en Chine dans la plaine Centrale à la transition entre le Néolithique et l’âge du Bronze (env. 2500–1050 av. n. è.)” (PhD diss., Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 2014).

78. Nicolás Rascovan et al., “Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline,” Cell 176.1 (2019), 295–305; Maria A. Spyrou et al., “Analysis of 3800-Year-Old Yersinia pestis Genomes Suggests Bronze Age Origin for Bubonic Plague,” Nature Communications 9.1 (2018), 1–10.

79. Huang, Pang, and Li, “Abruptly Increased Climatic Aridity”; Huang et al., “Climatic Aridity”; Huang et al., “Charcoal Records of Fire History,” 31; Huang et al., “Extraordinary Floods of 4100−4000a BP,” 6.

80. J. Neumann and S. Parpola, “Climatic Change and the Eleventh-Tenth-Century Eclipse of Assyria and Babylonia,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 46.3 (1987), 161–82; Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, “Drought and the Fall of Assyria: Quite Another Story,” Climatic Change 136.3–4 (2016), 392.

81. Chun Chang Huang et al., “Holocene Dust Accumulation and the Formation of Polycyclic Cinnamon Soils (Luvisols) in the Chinese Loess Plateau,” Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 28.12 (2003), 1262.

82. Hui Zhao et al., “A Record of Holocene Climate Change in the Guanzhong Basin, China, Based on Optical Dating of a Loess-Palaeosol Sequence,” The Holocene 17.7 (2007), 1015–22.

83. Hao Long et al., “Holocene Climate Variations from Zhuyeze Terminal Lake Records in East Asian Monsoon Margin in Arid Northern China,” Quaternary Research 74 (2010), 46–56.

84. Chun Chang Huang et al., “Sedimentary Records of Extraordinary Floods at the Ending of the Mid-Holocene Climatic Optimum along the Upper Weihe River, China,” The Holocene 22.6 (2012), 675–86; Huang et al., “Holocene Palaeoflood Events.”

85. Xiaogang Li and Chun Chang Huang, “Holocene Palaeoflood Events Recorded by Slackwater Deposits along the Jin-Shan Gorges of the Middle Yellow River, China,” Quaternary International 453 (2017), 85–95.

86. Huang, Pang, and Li, “Abruptly Increased Climatic Aridity.”

87. Katherine J. Willis and Jennifer McElwain, The Evolution of Plants, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 225–64, 315; Steven R. Manchester et al., “Eastern Asian Endemic Seed Plant Genera and Their Paleogeographic History throughout the Northern Hemisphere,” Journal of Systematics and Evolution 47.1 (2009), 1–42; Yong-Sheng Chen et al., “Is the East Asian Flora Ancient or Not?,” National Science Review 5.6 (2018), 920–32. The polar forests of 60 million years ago included broadleaf genera like alder, birch, oak, walnut, poplar, and maple as well as deciduous conifers like ginkgo, larches (Larix and Pseudolarix), and dawn redwood (Metasequoia).

88. Christopher Gardner and Basak Gardner, Flora of the Silk Road: An Illustrated Guide (London: Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2019).

89. Given the huge area in which both farming and pastoralism are possible, the divide between steppe and sown should be considered as much the result of the formation of rival agrarian and pastoralist political systems as an ecological divide. See Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

90. The scientific name of Manchu rose is Rosa xanthine. Tung-sheng Liu et al., “Prehistoric Vegetation on the Loess Plateau: Steppe or Forest?,” Journal of Southeast Asian Earth Sciences 13.3–5 (1996), 341–46; Liu, Loess in China, 198; Zhuang, “Geoarchaeological Investigation,” 20.

91. The most common trees overall were probably several species of oak, but these forests also included multiple species of pine, willow, elm, hackberry and poplar and at least one species of juniper, arbor vitae, ash, catalpa, zelkova, walnut, hickory, beech, hornbeam, birch, mulberry, paper mulberry, pear, honeysuckle, maple, Chinese honey locust (Gleditsia sinensis), wingnut (Pterocarya sp.), “raisin tree” (Hovenia dulcis), and date-plum (Diospyros lotus). Chi-Wu Wang, The Forests of China. (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1961), 79–86; Xianyong Cao et al., “Holocene Climate Change and Human Impacts Implied from the Pollen Records in Anyang, Central China,” Quaternary International 227.1 (2010), 3–9; Junna Zhang et al., “Early–Middle Holocene Ecological Change and Its Influence on Human Subsistence Strategies in the Luoyang Basin, North-Central China,” Quaternary Research 89.2 (2018), 446–58.

92. The most common oaks are Quercus variabilis, Q. aliena and Q. dentata. These forests also have hemlock, birch, elm, juniper, linden, wild walnut, alder, hazel, chestnut, and many other trees. Common smaller woody plants include junipers, plum yew (Cephalotaxus sp.), various maples, smoke tree (Cotinus coggygria), wild cherry (Prunus tomentosa), Smilax stans, Grewia biloba, and various species of Lespedeza, Euonymus, and honeysuckle (Lonicera sp.). Shaanxi sheng, Shaanxi sheng zhibei zhi, 488.

93. Armand David, Journal de mon troisième voyage d’exploration dans l’empire Chinois (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1875), 148; Chen Xiaojie 陳曉捷, Guanzhong yi zhi jizhu 關中佚志輯注 (Xi’an: San Qin, 2006), 14; Wang Xianqian 王先謙, Han shu buzhu 漢書補注 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2012), 28.2822.

94. Fang, Wang, and Tang, Atlas of Woody Plants.

95. Fang, Wang, and Tang, Atlas of Woody Plants, xxix.

96. I. Colin Prentice et al., “A Global Biome Model Based on Plant Physiology and Dominance, Soil Properties and Climate,” Journal of Biogeography 19.2 (1992), 117–34.

97. Songbing Zou et al., “Holocene Natural Rhythms of Vegetation and Present Potential Ecology in the Western Chinese Loess Plateau,” Quaternary International 194.1–2 (2009), 55–67.

98. Feng et al., “Holocene Vegetation Variations.”

99. This paragraph summarizes Brian Lander, “Environmental Change and the Rise of the Qin Empire: A Political Ecology of Ancient North China” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2015), 53–59.

100. Fossil pollen records include trees and shrubs like pine, fir, spruce, larch, hemlock (Tsuga), juniper, oak, birch, hornbeam, walnut, elm, tree of heaven, hazel, hackberry, hickory, Platycarya, willow, alder, holly, linden, and sweetgum (Liquidambar)

101. Furong Li et al., “Relative Pollen Productivity Estimates for Major Plant Taxa of Cultural Landscapes in Central Eastern China,” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 26.6 (2017), 587–605.

102. Qinghai Xu et al., “Studies of Modern Pollen Assemblages for Pollen Dispersal- Deposition- Preservation Process Understanding and for Pollen-Based Reconstructions of Past Vegetation, Climate, and Human Impact: A Review Based on Case Studies in China,” Quaternary Science Reviews 149 (2016), 151–66.

103. Nannan Li et al., “Holocene Artemisia-Chenopodiaceae-Dominated Grassland in North China: Real or Imaginary?,” The Holocene 28.5 (2018), 834–41.

104. On edible chenopods, see Shiu-Ying Hu, Food Plants of China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005), 377.

105. The scientific names of these genera are buttercups (Ranunculus sp.), meadow-rue (Thalictrum sp.), lilies (Lilium sp.), knotweeds (Polygonum sp.), hops (Humulus sp.), and the aster and mustard families (Asteraceae and Brassicaceae).

106. Richard Pearson, “Pollen Counts in North China,” Antiquity 48 (1974), 226–28.

107. Fang, Wang, and Tang, Atlas of Woody Plants, xxviii–xxxv. Note especially the difference between the Guanzhong and surrounding areas in terms of annual biotemperature, moisture index, and vegetation net primary production.

108. Kjell Danell, ed., Large Herbivore Ecology, Ecosystem Dynamics and Conservation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Frans Vera, Grazing Ecology and Forest History (Wallingford: CABI, 2000); C. N. Johnson, “Ecological Consequences of Late Quaternary Extinctions of Megafauna,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 276, no. 1667 (2009), 2509–19; R. Norman Owen-Smith, Megaherbivores: The Influence of Very Large Body Size on Ecology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 226–47.

109. Common grasses in the region at present include Bromus japonicus, Imperata cylindrica, Roegnaria sp., Themeda triandra, Leymus secalinus, and, along waterways, Phragmites communis. Shaanxi sheng, Shaanxi sheng zhibei zhi, 538.

110. Andrew T. Smith and Yan Xie, eds., A Guide to the Mammals of China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); John MacKinnon and Karen Phillipps, A Field Guide to the Birds of China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Ermi Zhao and Kraig Adler, Herpetology of China (Oxford, OH: Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, 1993); Ji Daming 季大明 and Wen Shisheng 溫世生, Zhongguo paxing dongwu tujian 中國爬行動物圖鑒 (Zhengzhou: Henan kexue jishu, 2001).

111. Brian Lander and Katherine Brunson, “Wild Mammals of Ancient North China,” The Journal of Chinese History 2.2 (2018), 291–312; Samuel T. Turvey et al., “Long-Term Archives Reveal Shifting Extinction Selectivity in China’s Postglacial Mammal Fauna,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 284, no. 1867 (2017), 20171979; Shuqing N. Teng et al., “Long-Term Effects of Cultural Filtering on Megafauna Species Distributions across China,” PNAS 117.1 (2020), 486–93.

112. Yong-Xiang Li, Yun-Xiang Zhang, and Xiang-Xu Xue, “The Composition of Three Mammal Faunas and Environmental Evolution in the Last Glacial Maximum, Guanzhong Area, Shaanxi Province, China,” Quaternary International 248 (2012), 86–91; Qiaomei Fu et al., “DNA Analysis of an Early Modern Human from Tianyuan Cave, China,” PNAS 110.6 (2013), 2223–27; Qi Guoqin 祁國琴, “Zhongguo beifang disiji buru dongwuqun jianlun yuanshi renlei shenghuo huanjing” 中國北方第四紀哺乳動物群兼論原始人類生活環境, in Zhongguo yuangu renlei 中國遠古人類, ed. Wu Rukang 吳汝康, Wu Xinzhi 吳新智, and Zhang Senshui 張森水 (Beijing: Kexue, 1989), 333–34; Haowen Tong, “Occurrences of Warm-Adapted Mammals in North China over the Quaternary Period and Their Paleoenvironmental Significance,” Science in China Series D: Earth Sciences 50.9 (2007), 1327–40. The scientific names of the species that disappeared from the region before the Holocene are giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus), mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon sp.), Merck’s rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis), woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis), hyena (Crocuta sp.), kulan (Equus hemionus), and Przewalski’s gazelle (Procapra przewalskii).

113. Samuel T. Turvey et al., “Holocene Survival of Late Pleistocene Megafauna in China: A Critical Review of the Evidence,” Quaternary Science Reviews 76 (2013), 156–66; Anthony John Stuart, “Late Quaternary Megafaunal Extinctions on the Continents: A Short Review,” Geological Journal 50.3 (2015), 338–63.

114. Brian Lander and Katherine Brunson, “The Sumatran Rhinoceros Was Extirpated from Mainland East Asia by Hunting and Habitat Loss,” Current Biology 28.6 (2018), R252–53.

115. Liu Li 劉莉, Yang Dongya 楊東亞, and Chen Xingcan 陳星燦, “Zhongguo jiayang shuiniu qiyuan chutan 中國家養水牛起源初探,” Kaogu xuebao 2 (2006), 141–76.

116. Charleen Gaunitz et al., “Ancient Genomes Revisit the Ancestry of Domestic and Przewalski’s Horses,” Science 360, no. 6384 (2018), 111–14.

117. On pigs, see Brian Lander, Mindi Schneider, and Katherine Brunson, “A History of Pigs in China: From Curious Omnivores to Industrial Pork,” Journal of Asian Studies, 2020, doi:10.1017/S0021911820000054.

118. This section on deer is primarily based on Valerius Geist, Deer of the World: Their Evolution, Behaviour, and Ecology (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 1998); Michael Hutchins et al., eds., Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia, Vol. 15: Mammals IV, 2nd ed. (Farmington Hills: Gale Group, 2003), 335–98.

119. Smith and Xie, Guide to the Mammals of China; Noriyuki Ohtaishi and Yaoting Gao, “A Review of the Distribution of All Species of Deer (Tragulidae, Moschidae and Cervidae) in China,” Mammalian Review 20.2/3 (1990), 125–44.

120. Jean-Denis Vigne et al., “Earliest ‘Domestic’ Cats in China Identified as Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis),” PLOS ONE 11.1 (2016), e0147295.

121. Apparently there are still leopards in Shaanxi: Andrew P. Jacobson et al., “Leopard (Panthera pardus) Status, Distribution, and the Research Efforts across its Range,” PeerJ 4 (2016), e1974.

122. Smith and Xie, Guide to the Mammals of China, 402.

123. Edward H. Schafer, “Brief Note: The Chinese Dhole,” Asia Major 4.1 (1991), 1–6.

124. More specifically, species of the region include Asiatic toad (Bufo gargarizans), Japanese tree frog (Dryophytes japonicus), Peking gecko (Gekko swinhonis), Szechwan japalure (Diploderma flaviceps), China grass lizard (Takydromus septentrionalis), skink (Plestiodon sp.), racerunner (Eremias sp.), red-banded snake (Lycodon rufozonatus), slender racer (Orientocoluber spinalis), rat snakes (Elaphe sp.), and pit viper (Gloydius sp.).

125. Yu Shaoping于曉平 and Li Jinggang 李金鋼, Qinling niaolei yewai shixi shouce 秦嶺鳥類野外實習手冊 (Beijing: Kexue, 2015).

126. Shen-kan has useful information on birds since Sowerby grew up in Shanxi and knew the birds well. Robert Sterling Clark and Arthur de Carle Sowerby, Through Shen-Kan: The Account of the Clark Expedition in North China 1908–9 (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912), 96–108 and pl. 23.

127. Birds that he listed as common include rooks, jackdaws and other crows, black kites, golden eagles, great bustards, black storks, and common cranes. He also saw white-tailed eagles, spotted eagles, Saker falcons, and little owls. David, Journal de mon troisième voyage, 110–18, 141–52.

128. David, Journal de mon troisième voyage, 110–18, 141–52.

129. Shaanxi sheng kaogu yanjiusuo and Qin Shihuang bingmayong bowuguan, Qin Shihuangdi lingyuan kaogu baogao 秦始皇帝陵園考古報告 (2001–2003) (Beijing: Wenwu, 2007), 161–73. Based on painted colors that are not clear in the published images, the report identifies the cranes as red-crowned cranes (Grus japonensis) and the geese as swan geese (Anser cygnoides).

130. Chinese soft-shelled turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis) and Reeves’ turtle (Mauremys reevesii). Li Liu, The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 67; Li Zhipeng 李志鵬, “Yinxu dongwu yicun yanjiu” 殷墟動物遺存研究 (PhD diss., Graduate School, CASS, 2009), 12; Zhongguo shehuikexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo, Zhangjiapo Xi Zhou mudi 張家坡西周墓地 (Beijing: Dabaike quanshu, 1999), 450; Clifford H. Pope, The Reptiles of China: Turtles, Crocodilians, Snakes, Lizards (New York: The American Museum of Natural History, 1935), 47.

131. Species include Chinese brown frog (Rana chensinensis), dark-spotted frog (Pelophylax nigromaculatus), ornate chorus frog (Microhyla fissipes), and boreal digging frog (Kaloula borealis). Zhao and Adler, Herpetology of China.

132. Samuel T. Turvey et al., “Imminent Extinction in the Wild of the World’s Largest Amphibian,” Current Biology 28.10 (2018), R592–94.

133. E.g., Odes 170 “Yu li” 魚麗, 226 “Cai lu” 采綠 and 281 “Qian” 潛. Karlgren, Bernhard, The Book of Odes (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950), 114Google Scholar, 179, 246.

134. Mattos, Gilbert L., The Stone Drums of Ch’in (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1988), 167–97Google Scholar. It is impossible to know what kinds of fish are referred to here.

135. Some of the more common of these are wall lizards (Eremias sp.), Amur rat snake (Elaphe anomala), toadhead agama (Phrynocephalus sp.), Mongolian toad (Pseudepidalea raddei), Daurian pika (Ochotona dauurica), beech marten (Martes foina), marbled polecat (Vormela peregusna), and wildcat (Felis silvestris).

136. Their scientific names are Budorcas bedfordi, Capricornis milneedwardsii and Naemorhedus griseus; Castelle, Jose R., Bovids of the World: Antelopes, Gazelles, Cattle, Goats, Sheep, and Relatives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

137. Li, Hui-lin, “Domestication of Plants in China: Ecogeographical Considerations,” in The Origins of Chinese Civilization, ed. Keightley, David N. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 21–63Google Scholar; For a clear explanation of why the flora and fauna of certain regions of Eurasia were more suitable for domestication than those elsewhere, see Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999)Google Scholar.