Chinese History - Neolithic cultures ()

Prehistory and Xia Dynasty 夏代		Chinese mythology next period (Shang)
Prehistory intro		Map and Geography
	The major cultures of the Stone Age were the Dawenkou Culture 大汶口文化 in Shandong, the Yangshao Culture 仰韶文化 along the Yellow river, and the Majiabang Culture 馬家濱文化 culture in Zhejiang. Very famous are the findings of the neolithic village of Banpo 半坡 near Xi'an. Until the 60s, scholars thought that in later China, two different cultures existed. In the Yellow river central plain, they said, lived the proper "Chinese", the Xia 夏, and in the Lower Yangtse valley the Yi 夷, a terminus, that later generally referred to non-Chinese "barbarians" in the south. Because the first modern Europeans arrived the South, they were called yi too. Modern methods brought to light that there was neither a single culture cradle for all following cultures in the Yellow River basin nor a bi-centered world in old China. Today, we must assume that there have been many sites all over today China that each developed its own culture. Trade and interrelationship created a mixture of findigs in the whole area with the misleading result that one could easily assume that there existed one all-dominating culture center. Longshan 龍山 and Liangzhu 良渚 Cultures Two of the outstanding cultural centers of late prehistoric China were the Longshan Culture 龍山文化 in Shandong and the Liangzhu Culture 良渚文化 in Zhejiang. In these two cultures we first find tombs for the political heads of the community with a great amount of precious tomb offerings. The person was laid in a painted wooden coffin and was given pottery, shamanic symbols of jade like cong 琮 tubes and bi 璧 disks, ivory, musical instruments and weapons like the yue 鉞 axe and the ge 戈 dagger. The political leaders of this cultures who at the same time were also the religious leader, lived in walled cities. All this symptoms show that these "ten thousand cities" wanguo 萬國 were the direct forerunners of Shang 商 Culture. The findings at Erlitou 二里頭 near Luoyang are probably relics of the mythical Xia Dynasty for it was a cultural center of enormous prominence. Go back to the Prehistory introduction page...

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Chinese History - Neolithic cultures

Prehistory and Xia Dynasty 夏代