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About 7,000 years ago or earlier, the ancestors of the Southeast began to transition from a gathering economy to a food-producing economy. In the Ningzhen Plain, the Ningshao Plain and the Taihu Lake Basin, some fixed settlements appeared almost simultaneously, and primitive agriculture also developed from swamps and open areas between forests. The southeastern ancestors who lived in primitive villages such as Hemudu, Luojiajiao, Majiabang and Caoshoe Mountain made great strides into the settled farming tribal society.
The ancestors of the Hemudu culture and the Majiabang culture were mainly engaged in primitive agriculture based on the rice economy, using bone and stone shovels to rectify water and soil, planting rice, firing pottery, and raising pigs, dogs and buffaloes on the banks of rivers and lakes or swamps. The Hemudu settlement, located at the junction of lakes and moors in the Ningshao Plain, is a typical example of an agricultural village in this period, when the climate of Hemudu was warm and humid, with abundant rainfall, low-lying terrain and high water level. In order to prevent moisture and moisture, the ancestors of Hemudu built dry-column buildings here. Archaeologists have confirmed that there were three dry-column houses here based on the arrangement of more than 1,000 wooden buildings found in the site, one of which was more than 23 meters long and about 7 meters deep, facing the northeast side, and there was a front corridor about 1.3 meters wide. Anthropologist Wang Ningsheng based on the structure of this house.
The food accumulation layer under the house and the scale of the pottery stove and clay kettle excavated from the site, combined with ethnographic data, speculate that this is a public house, but the small families living in the large house are not the same wealth, but should be their own cooking, and a large number of rice, husk rice stalks, and rice leaf remains found in the Hemudu site. According to archaeologists, the storage of rice in that year was more than 120,000 kilograms; combined with the analysis of agricultural production tools such as a large number of bone, stone axe, stone hammer, stone chisel and other agricultural production tools excavated at the same time, rice farming has undoubtedly become the main economic sector of Hemudu culture and society.
In addition to growing rice, the ancestors were also engaged in fishing and hunting, relying on wooden spears, stone pills, pottery balls, wooden oars and other fishing and hunting tools. Shooting swimming fish, catching birds, hunting deer, macaques, otters, Asian elephants, rhinos, four elephants, bears, tigers and other wild beasts; at the same time, collecting acorns, diamond horns, sour dates, peaches, barley rice and other grass and wood fruits, it can be seen that although rice farming has developed considerably, it is still indispensable to collect fishing and hunting.
In the agrarian tribal society of the southeast region, the basic social unit is probably composed of many small groups that intersect with it by means of clans, peer organizations, totem beliefs, etc., so the size of the social unit in the tribal era is obviously larger than that of the "wandering group". Within the tribe, there was already a certain division of labor economically, with male adults mainly engaged in heavy physical labor such as agriculture, fishing and hunting, while women weaved pottery, cooked food, and raised children, which can be proved by the combination of funerary items of the foundation burial at that time. For example, textile tools such as the Majiabang cultural cemetery and spinning wheel are often excavated in female tombs, while agricultural and hunting tools such as stone hammers, bone hammers, stone axes, stone chisels, and antlers are generally found in male tombs.
Judging from the burial items in the tomb, there was no class distinction in society at that time, and people were still quite equal politically and economically. Such as Hemudu, Majiabang, Caoshoe Mountain and other places of clan cemetery generally larger scale, the tomb arrangement is dense, mainly single burial, there is a certain number of same-sex joint burial. Burial goods are generally few and not much different, except for daily pottery, there are few burial production tools, and some even do not have any burial objects. From this point of view, it is clear that private property has not emerged, and the members of society are still economically equal. Thus, the leaders of the tribes during this period, although already existing, seem to have been only nominal. They have neither economic privileges nor even more limited political privileges, and appear to be exercising only managerial functions in accordance with the will of the tribe as a whole or the traditions of society.
By the middle and late period of the Songze culture (3900-3300 BC), there were some meaningful changes in the social structure of the southeast cultural circle, and due to the exchange, dissemination and integration of cultures between different tribes, primitive agriculture had made great progress, and primitive handicrafts had also developed. The cultural connotation of Songze cultural sites in Shanghai Qingpu Songze, Fuquan Mountain, Shouqian Village, Zhejiang Wuxing Qiucheng, Jiaxing Shuangqiao, Jiangsu Wujin Temple Dun, Changzhou Weidun, Wuxian Caoshoe Mountain, Zhangling Mountain, Suzhou Yuecheng, Hai'an Qingdun and other places shows that in terms of production technology, stone axes, stone hammers and stone chisels and other stone production tools are commonly used, and the earliest known stone ploughs have been found in Qiucheng, Tangmiao and other sites; stone tools are finely made, not only straight contours, smooth surfaces, but also widely used pipe drilling and piercing technology; at the same time, The gradual decline in the production of bone tools and the rarity of hunting tools indicate that agriculture has become dominant in the socio-economic sector and that hunting has taken a back seat.
In the pottery industry, the slow wheel trimming technology is widely used, the utensils are diverse in shape, and the style is more active than in the early stage. Experts pointed out that the pottery of Songze culture is gray and black, which is the result of the use of original flame roasting, reflecting the reform of the pottery kiln structure and the progress of the process level. In some sites, wells from the Songze culture period have also been found, indicating that the sinking technique invented in the Hemudu era has been popularized.
From the perspective of social structure, the tribal community in the Songze period was also expanded compared with the Hemudu culture and the Majiabang culture period, and 97 foundation burials were cleared out of the Songze cemetery, which were roughly distributed in five burial areas, and each cemetery had tombs belonging to different periods. Tombs from the same period are not stacked on top of each other, and there are ground signs between the tomb areas, indicating that the site may have been inhabited by five different clans to form a tribal community. The grass shoe mountain site belongs to the 89 tombs of the Songze culture period, and is also roughly distributed in the north and south cemeteries, with a limit of 8 to 12 meters between the two districts, which can be seen that this should also be the cemetery of two clans. Excavations in the cemetery show that members of each clan, male, female, old and young, are buried in the same cemetery after death.
Entering the Liangzhu culture period, the development momentum of the southeast coastal area was more rapid than in the previous period, the primitive agriculture and handicraft industry developed in an all-round way, the population continued to increase, the settlements were lined up everywhere, and the small tribes that originally existed eventually converged and developed into a larger and more advanced social organization - the chiefdom.
Rice farming culture in the southeast cultural circle since the birth, after thousands of years of long development, to Liangzhu culture and a major turning point, its character is the bone shovel stone hoe farming system to the ploughing system transition, in the Liangzhu culture, triangular stone plough, field tool, double hole stone knife, stone sickle with wooden handle and other new agricultural tools have been invented and used, stone hammer, stone sickle, section of stone shape has also been greatly improved. Among them, large stone ploughs have single-edged stone plows, double-edged stone plows and other varieties, single-edged stone plows are unequal-sided triangles, up to forty centimeters long, the edge is at the bottom, the hypotenuse has a short handle at the top, when used, a wooden handle is installed on the short handle, one person supports the wooden handle in the back, and one or more people drag in front of the front to turn the ground.
Double-edged stone plows are isosceles triangles. The middle of the stone plough is often drilled with one to three holes, the blade is on both sides, should be the plough; when used, the stone plough is installed on the wooden plough bed, the stone plough is wrapped in the middle of the wooden plough bed, exposing the blade, avoiding the weakness of the stone plough brittle and fragile, when turning the soil, as long as one person supports the wooden handle of the plough in the back, several people can pull the rope in front.
As for the half-moon shaped double-hole stone knife and the stone inlay with an additional wooden handle, the basic shape of this harvesting tool is still preserved in the modern rural iron farming tools. In the Liangzhu culture, they have been widely used, and the common use of tools such as stone ploughs, stone tools, double-hole stone knives, and stone sickles with wooden handles has greatly improved agricultural productivity and provided conditions for large-scale rice cultivation.
Previous researchers have tended to prioritize the impact of metal tools on agriculture, while ignoring the importance of highly developed stone tool production tools for improving labor productivity.
In fact, as far as the natural geographical environment of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and Qiantang River is concerned, the production of exquisite stone agricultural tools is no less than the role of copper and iron tools in agricultural production, under the soil conditions of Ningzhen, Hangjia Lake and Ningshao Plain, exquisite stone tools also make large-scale farmland cultivation and large-scale development of vast forest swamp areas possible, rice cultivation in the Liangzhu culture period is common, broad beans, melons, gourds, watermelons and peanuts and other crops are also cultivated. This is undoubtedly a direct result of the promotion and use of new tools and the improvement of farming techniques.
The development of agriculture laid the foundation for the development of primitive handicrafts. During the Liangzhu culture period, the division of labor among various industries within the primitive handicraft industry was relatively clear, and in addition to the further development of the original pottery industry and stone tool processing, new industries such as spinning and weaving, jade manufacturing and bamboo weaving also appeared.
In the jade production industry, from the Hemudu culture and the Majiabang culture period developed jade production technology, to this period has become the main department of handicraft industry, jade varieties in addition to Huang, Jue, pipe, beads, bracelets, rings, jade belt hooks, jade daggers and other ornaments, as well as jade, yugui, jade bi, jade, jade crown, jade trident ornaments, cone ornaments and other noble ceremonial utensils, especially chun, wall, gui, crown, trident ornament, carved particularly exquisite, jade carving use of yin line carving, bas-relief carving, Semi-circular carving, through carving and other techniques, patterns or ornaments symmetrical and harmonious, rigorous structure; some of the yin line engraving is more delicate than the hair, must be in the magnifying glass to see the pattern, its elegant and exquisite breathtaking, these jade to be through the jade, cut jade blank, drilling, polishing, carving, polishing and other complex processes carved, from which it is not difficult to see that the equipment manufacturing industry has become an independent specialized production department.
During the Liangzhu culture period, with the improvement of production technology and the development of rice agriculture, the living standards of human beings were continuously improved, and the population in agricultural villages in various places also increased significantly.
In archaeology, the large population growth is characterized by a significant increase in the number of Liangzhu cultural settlement sites compared with the Songze culture period. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 50 Majiabang cultures found in the Taihu Lake Basin area, only more than 50 Songze cultural sites, and more than 300 Liangzhu cultural sites, which proves that the space for human survival and activities at that time has been greatly expanded. Judging from the distribution law of settlements, a significant feature of the Liangzhu period is the distribution of sites in clusters and extremely dense.
The multi-level and differential characteristics of the form and scale of Liangzhu cultural settlements are the most typical in terms of current archaeological data. At the center of the site group is a large high-rise site with a length of 620 meters from east to west, 450 meters from north to south, and a total area of about 300,000 square meters. After trial excavation, this high-altitude site is an artificial camp, and in the test excavation exploration party, a large area of red-boiled soil remains with a thick accumulation was found, and some places were artificially filled with soil that were more than 10 meters deep. Archaeologists speculate that this was the political, cultural, and religious center of the time. Around this central site, there are dozens of small and medium-sized ruins.
Small sites such as Hengxuli, Mao'anqian, Checkerboard Pattern, Xiaoshanqian, Hengcuntang and Dadui Township near Liangzhu Town, the settlements are adjacent to each other, the area is not large, and each settlement is generally only a few hundred square meters, indicating that the residents of the settlement site are mostly families living in the cluster, and although the large settlements of the Liangzhu culture or the city have not been excavated, according to the scale of the Liangzhu cultural foundations such as Antishan, Yaoshan and Huiguanshan, there is no doubt that there were already large-scale cities at that time.
The privileges enjoyed by chieftains during the Liangzhu culture were quite astonishing. Judging from the archaeological data, they not only had great wealth before their deaths, but also drove the people to build mausoleums for themselves, and the tombs of chieftains in the Liangzhu culture period excavated in recent years are generally built on the mounds called "earthen pyramids" by archaeologists, such as the Fuquan Mountain Cemetery, which is 90 meters long from east to west and 76 meters wide from north to south. The thickness of the accumulation is about 8.6 meters; the anti-mountain cemetery is 90 meters long from east to west, 30 meters wide from north to south, and the thickness of the accumulation is about 7 meters; the high earth platform of the grass shoe mountain base is 120 meters long from east to west, 100 meters wide from north to south, and about 10.5 meters above the ground. Archaeologists have confirmed that these earthen platforms were built by the ancestors of the Liangzhu culture period.
According to the theoretical framework of contemporary anthropology, chiefdoms belong to a form of pre-state society, the archetype of the state. The fact that the Taihu Lake Basin region had entered the heyday of chiefdom society 5,000 years ago shows that the dawn of civilization has already erupted from the southeast at this time; the country and civilization are just like the majestic sunrise, and the emergence of the world is only between the two of them.
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