Author: Han Jianye
Source: "Chinese Archaeological Network, Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences" WeChat public account
The original article was published in Archaeology, No. 11, 2021
Four sheep head bronze scepter head (source: "Gansu Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau" WeChat public account)
Eurasia was the center of human origin and early development, and the main stage of early civilization. The geographical regions of Eurasia are interconnected, but they are relatively independent due to natural obstacles, the natural environment is very different, and the early human culture has many commonalities and colors. If we look at the aspect of cultural diversity, the Eurasian continent during most of the pre-Holocene period of the Silk Road can be roughly divided into three major cultural circles, namely the "Early Eastern Cultural Circle" centered on the "Great Two River Basins" of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River in China, the "Early Western Cultural Circle" centered on the "Little Two River Basins" of the Tigris River and the Euphrates River, and the "Early Northern Cultural Circle" with the Eurasian steppe as the main body north of the two major cultural circles in the East and West (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Schematic map of the three major cultural circles of The Holocene Eurasia The base map adopts the world map issued by the National Bureau of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformatics (1:100 million, partial, review number: GS [2016] 2950)
In the past, the academic community had long had the view that there were two major civilization centers in the east and west of Eurasia, and the two major cultural regions of the east and the west had been studied from a macroscopic perspective. There have also been studies of the northern Eurasian steppe region, sometimes referred to as "Inner Eurasia". But it is rare to discuss the three major cultural circles from a global perspective. Some scholars have proposed the concept of "Eurasia" in the Bronze Age, the "world system" of the Bronze Age or the prehistoric "globalization", the essence of which is only to emphasize the eastward expansion of early Western culture through the Eurasian steppe, because less consideration is given to the cultural basis of the northern cultural circle itself, and the westward role of the eastern cultural circle is almost completely ignored, so such "Eurasia" and "world system" are mainly limited to the scope of the Western cultural circle.
This article intends to use ceramic containers as the main basis, combined with other remains, to discuss the scope, characteristics and development of the three major cultural circles. Since the Neolithic Age, ceramic vessels have been widely distributed in Eurasia, with complex and varied forms, sensitive and changeable, and largely able to reflect the living customs of the population at that time, which is the reason why this article takes it as the primary basis. However, factors such as pottery containers do not appear in various parts of Asia and Europe at the same time, and the process of origin, development, dissemination and exchange is quite complicated, so the scope of the three major cultural circles in different periods will naturally change to a certain extent. In addition, due to the collision and exchange of cultures, there is still a large range of intersection areas between the three major cultural circles.
First, the early Oriental cultural circle
The geographical scope of the early Eastern Cultural Circle, centered on the Yellow River and Yangtze River Basins, is mainly the "Early Chinese Cultural Circle" covering most of China, including Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands in the southeast, the Korean Peninsula and Japan Island in the east, the Eurasian steppe in the north, and the Central Asia in the west.
East Asian pottery vessels were first found in South China (including the southern edge of the Yangtze River Basin) and have a history of about 20,000 years. These world's earliest pottery are basically kettles and pots at the bottom of the circle, and many of them leave rope patterns in the production, which may be related to imitation or relying on woven pottery. After about 9000 BC, pottery with different faces began to expand in central and eastern China, especially the elegant circle foot plates, beans, pots, etc. of the lower Yangtze River culture; the pottery of the Shangshan culture was more colorful red, and even simple white and red colors appeared, which is the earliest known faience pottery. Although the later pottery forms in the Yangtze River Basin and its north were not the same as those in South China, they were probably produced under the influence of the Pottery Revelation in South China and continued to expand to the surrounding areas over time. China is also the birthplace of rice and millet agriculture. The cultivation of rice in the southern edge of the Yangtze River Basin may have a history of more than 15,000 years, and the cultivation history of millet in North China should also be more than 10,000 years, and then spread to the surrounding hunter-gatherer areas, gradually forming an agricultural pattern of "southern rice and northern millet". By about 4000 BC, in most of the Yangtze, Yellow and Liao rivers, the agricultural economy had become the mainstay. Domestic pigs can also be raised at least as early as 9,000 years ago, and later widely distributed in the north and south of the river.
The spread of pottery and crops has a roughly consistent range and route.
1. After 4000 BC, the petal-patterned faience pottery of the xiangbei temple bottom ditch reached the northern edge of south-central Inner Mongolia, and even the possibility of reaching southeastern Mongolia is not even ruled out. Millet agriculture also has the potential to spread to these areas. After 1500 BC, pottery rays originating in northern China were found as far north as central and eastern Mongolia and transbaikal regions.
2. Northeast-east Hougang-style pottery reached the Xiliao River Basin after 5000 BC, reaching as far as the Second Songhua River Basin. After 3000 BC, Dawenkou-Yongshan style pottery appeared in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, and the spiral pottery decoration of Dawenkou was once found in the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River. After 2000 BC, pottery mane was found in the Nen River basin. Millet farming has appeared in the Xinglongwa culture of the Xiliao River Basin around 6000 BC, and arrived on the Korean Peninsula more than 3000 BC.
3. After about 4000 BC to the southeast, pottery from the southeast coast of the mainland has spread to the island of Taiwan on the opposite shore; after about 2500 BC, similar to the circular kettle and beans in south China were extended to the Philippines; after about 1500 BC, the circular kettle, beans and other factors reached Melanesia and the western polynesia. This pottery spread route, roughly the same as the rice farming spread route, is believed to be related to the origin and spread of the Austronesian language family.
4. To the west, about 4000 BC, the Miaodigou faience extended as far west as eastern Qinghai and northwestern Sichuan. After about 3500 BC, the Majiayao culture in Ganqing and other places entered the Hexi Corridor in the west and stepped on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the southwest, and its influence even reached the Kashmir region for a time. After about 2500 BC, the Majiayao culture eventually expanded to eastern Xinjiang. After about 1500 BC, the faience pottery originating from Ganqing expanded from eastern Xinjiang to most of the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, reaching as far as the Fergana Basin and even southwest Turkmenistan. The place where these faience cultures went was roughly where millet agriculture arrived. More than 2,000 years BC found in Kazakhstan and Kashmir, it is likely that it spread through this route.
Oriental jade, lacquerware, silk fabrics, etc. are all unique utensils. Jade first appeared in the Late Paleolithic Altai and Transbaikal regions, more than 5,000 years BC, from northeast China to Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Haidai and other places, adding a lot of warmth to the Hemudu culture, Majiabang culture, Dawenkou culture, Songze culture, Liangzhu culture and other eastern Chinese Neolithic cultures. After 2500 BC, while the eastern jade tended to decline, the Central Plains, Jianghan, and northern Shaanxi all had more developed jade, and even spread west to the Ganqing region. After about 2000 BC, Yuyazhang, which originated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, even spread to Southeast Asia. Lacquerware has appeared at least around 6000 BC in the cross-lake bridge culture, Hemudu culture, etc., and the Liangzhu culture period has been very popular. The production of silk fabrics dates back to at least the 5,000 BC, and the Shang and Zhou Dynasties were already very developed. By the late Warring States period, lacquerware and silk fabrics had spread westward to the Tianshan Mountains of Xinjiang and the Altai region of Russia.
Although bronze and iron are both of Western origin, they spread to East Asia and formed their own characteristics. After about 2500 BC, a unique tradition of composite pottery casting bronze vessels has been formed in the Central Plains. Since 1600 BC, Shang bronzes have spread north to the Xiliao River Basin, south to the Yangtze River Basin, and west to the Qinghai region. After the introduction of iron to China, in about the 8th century BC, a unique cast iron technology was formed in the Central Plains. After the 5th century BC, cast iron technology spread northeast to the Korean Peninsula and Japan, and west to most of Xinjiang.
Oriental architectural forms are diverse, but there are two most distinctive building techniques, one is the wooden construction technology of mortise and tenon structure, and the other is rammed earth technology. Judging from the stone tools such as antimony and chisel unearthed in eastern China around 7000 BC, wood processing and tenoning techniques should have appeared in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins at that time, and it is likely that they were mainly used for house construction. After 5000 BC, the tenon and tenon technology has been relatively mature, only from the distribution of stone chisels, north to the Xiliao River Valley, south to Southeast Asia, west to the Ganqing region, which should also be the range of tenon and tenon technology can radiate. Rammed earth technology appeared in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River more than 3000 YEARS BC, not only building houses, but also building cities, and even adobe was also used to ramming and molding technology, and its influence reached at least as far north as the Xiliao River Basin. In the middle reaches of the Yellow River in China, a large-scale cemetery appeared in the 7,000 BC, the tombs were arranged neatly, buried roughly in different parts, and the rectangular vertical pit tombs occupied an absolute advantage, and the tombs of the same period in each cemetery showed generally consistent customs in terms of head orientation, burial chamber shape, burial style, and burial products. This burial custom was later extended to most of the eastern cultural circle identified by the pottery described above.
In general, the above elements of the Eastern cultural circle are closely related to each other, and their roots lie in settlement and agriculture. The emergence of oriental pottery as early as 20,000 years ago, the original function should be related to the cooking and consumption of plant seeds, fish mussels and other resources, and should also be the embodiment of the increase in the degree of settlement under a relatively stable economic conditions of grabbing. More than 10,000 years later, with the birth of primitive agriculture, the degree of settlement has further increased, and pottery has become more and more abundant. The earliest appearance of axes, hammers, chisels and other grinding stone tools, mainly woodworking tools, should be related to the wood processing of wood structures required for settlement, the production of tenon and tenon structures, etc. After about 4000 BC, most of the Yellow River, Yangtze River and Liao River basins have established the main body of agriculture, forming a dual agricultural system of "southern rice and northern millet", as well as the world's largest agricultural and cultural area. Pottery was complex and diverse, faience pottery prevailed, lacquerware and silk fabrics began to be common, daily life was rich, central settlements appeared, and social differentiation formed an early Chinese cultural circle. The large-scale expansion of Chinese culture into the surrounding areas was also roughly at this time. Around 3000 BC, when the conflict between the population was unprecedentedly fierce, the society was rapidly complicated, and the early Chinese civilization was officially born, the ideograph should have appeared at this time (although a large number of oracle bones, jinwen, etc. were discovered after the late Shang). In addition, the composite pottery fan bronze casting technology that appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium BC and the cast iron technology invented in the early 1st millennium BC should also be related to the long-established pottery firing technology in China.
The super-large-scale settled society and agricultural economy have long subtly formed the concept of stability and introversion in East Asia, respecting the heavens and the ancestors, at least around 6000 BC, there were celestial sacrifice ceremonies, visual timing and elephant number thinking, as well as the ancestor worship, cautious pursuit and long-standing historical memory tradition embodied in the neatly arranged generations of "family burials", and the primitive form of etiquette appeared after about 4000 BC. Although jade originated in Siberia, it is the most developed in central and eastern China, which should be related to the inherent qualities of jade such as warmth, femininity and hardness, and later even evolved into the ideal spiritual quality of Chinese. Bronze ware technology originated in the West, and in China, it evolved into a cast container ceremonial vessel, becoming a Chinese characteristic artifact that materialized the social order.
Second, the early Western cultural circle
The early Western cultural circle, with its core in West Asia, included North Africa, southern Central Asia, South Asia, and southern Europe.
The earliest pottery vessels in the broad West were found in North Africa, dating back to about 12,000 years ago, but only fragments are found, and the relationship with the development of culture after that is unknown. The earliest pottery in Western Asia, which did not appear until about 6900 BC, began to be mainly flat-bottomed vessels with plain surfaces, or to imitate stone vessels that had already existed in the region. Soon after the advent of West Asian pottery, faience pottery began to be popular, and its degree of development exceeded that of Chinese faience pottery of the same period, and it rapidly expanded to all sides. Western agriculture and livestock rearing originated at least in the "crescent-shaped" zone of the Levant, Turkey and the mountains of northwest Iran in about 9500 BC, mainly growing wheat and barley, raising sheep, goats, cattle, etc., and then spreading around. After 6900 BC, pottery, crops, and livestock spread in combination (parcels) to the surrounding hunter-gatherer regions, mostly accompanied by the migration and blending of people.
1. Linear pottery originating north from Anatolia and the Levantine region, as well as crops such as wheat and barley, sheep, cattle and other livestock, appeared in central Europe around 5500 BC and spread to southern Scandinavia around 5000 BC.
2. To the west pottery and wheat, barley and other crops, around 5500 BC has reached France, Spain and other places on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, and around 4000 BC to the British Isles.
3. South Levantine pottery, wheat, barley and other crops, as well as sheep and other livestock, spread to North Africa around 5000 BC, including the Nile Delta; the Egyptian civilization that developed later affected the upper Nile region to the south.
4. To the east wheat, barley and other crops, sheep, cattle and other livestock, in about 6000 BC, east-southeast direction reached the southern region of Central Asia. After 3500 BC, the animal husbandry culture represented by sheep and cattle, which may have included wheat cultivation, had expanded eastward through the Eurasian steppe to the western part of Xinjiang to the middle reaches of the Yenisei River. Agriculture, livestock, etc. on the southern front gradually expanded to the Indus Valley after 7000 BC. Further east, Central Asian faience patterns spread to the Ganqing region of China, and sheep, cattle, wheat, etc. spread to most parts of China.
In particular, the domestication of horses in the central Eurasian steppe around 3000 BC was the result of the influence of Western Asian sheep and cattle domestication techniques. The light horse-drawn two-wheeled chariot invented in the northwestern region of Kazakhstan around the end of the 3rd millennium BC should also have originated from the solid wheeler of cattle, donkeys and other traction invented by West Asia in the 4th millennium BC. The West Asian-style solid wheelers later spread throughout the early Western cultural circles, reaching as far east as Xinjiang in China, while horses and horse-drawn carriages spread to most of Eurasia.
Bronze and iron tools were far-reaching inventions in early Western cultural circles. In addition to being used as ornaments, containers, and sculptures, the most important function of these two metal tools is to serve as tools and weapons, which played a key role in the development of early Western productive forces and the great expansion of foreign countries. Natural copper forging bronze in West Asia first appeared more than 10,000 years ago, artificial copper smelting in southern Europe and West Asia began at least in the early 5th millennium BC, bronze smelting and casting can be as early as the middle of the 5th millennium BC. Bronze technology, along with sheep, cattle, and wheat, spread around, and spread to central China and other places in about the 3rd millennium BC, and reached Southeast Asia in the 2nd millennium BC. The use of meteoric iron is about 5,000 years old, and the artificial smelting of iron began at least in the 3rd millennium BC, and spread to Xinjiang and Ganqing regions of China by the middle of the 2nd millennium BC.
Seals, sculptures, goldware, glazed sand, etc. are also typical cultural factors in the Western world. Seals are artifacts with documentary and symbolic significance, which appeared in West Asia in the 7th millennium BC, and have since influenced Egypt, Iran, Central Asia, the Indus Valley and other places; it is closely related to the emergence of West Asian cuneiform scripts, Egyptian hieroglyphs, etc., and cuneiform scripts eventually developed into epigraphic alphabets. Humanoid and animal sculpture has been popular in the Western world as early as the late Paleolithic period, and the earliest ceramic woman statue (Venus) has a history of nearly 30,000 years; after entering the Neolithic Age, the sculptural tradition has continued, and the most representative ones, such as Egyptian and Greek sculptures, have an impact on almost most of the early Western cultural circles. Goldware was known and used by West Asians at least 10,000 years ago, and since then this sun-like metal has been favored by Westerners, and a large number of gold objects have been buried in the Varna cemetery in the 5th millennium BC. Glazed sand (Feons) appeared in West Asia around the 3rd millennium BC, and later flourished in Egypt and spread to all parts of the west, spread to northern Xinjiang in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, and was widely seen in the Yangtze River basin of the Yellow River in China in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. In addition, the West has long appeared and popular incense burners, perfumes, lamps and lanterns. It has also been suggested that Europe and Central Asia-Middle East are the main distribution areas for amber and lapis lazuli, respectively.
Typical western architecture is characterized by earth and stone, with adobe (sunburned bricks), brick or stone blocks to build walls to bear loads, and even the pillars are often stone, which is quite popular in West Asia, Egypt, and Central Asia. Adobe (sun-dried bricks) appeared in West Asia 10,000 years ago, and has since expanded in all directions, spreading eastward to eastern Xinjiang and the Hexi Corridor by the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Of course, like the Plains of Europe, due to the wide forest, it is naturally mostly wooden houses or wooden mud wall houses. Early West Asian tombs did not see neatly arranged burials such as the Peiligang culture, common room burials and sky burials; later in West Asia, Europe, Iran, Central Asia and other places are still common cremation; until around 4000 BC, only in West Asia, Egypt, Central Asia and other places began to appear more family burial cemeteries.
Elements of the early Western cultural circle were also organically linked to each other. Although West Asia is also one of the earliest agricultural regions, it is mainly only a wheat agricultural system, and there is no pattern of coexistence of two major agricultural systems like China. The places where agriculture can be developed in the West are naturally not small, but the agricultural central area is relatively scattered, and the two river basins, the Nile river basin, the Indus river basin, and the Amu Darya river basin are far apart from each other, and they formed relatively independent civilization centers in the early and middle millennium BC, rather than the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins in China, which are connected together, forming a large and multi-branched early Chinese civilization. The earliest domesticated sheep and cattle in West Asia were domestic animals that needed to be grazed in larger grasslands, which laid the foundation of animal husbandry from the beginning, and the horses domesticated in the Eurasian steppes under its influence were typical grassland animals, making their culture fundamentally have the characteristics of greater swimming and broader vision, which is different from the domestic pig breeding that is dependent on agriculture in China. One of the central areas of Western civilization is the Mediterranean coast, transportation mostly use boats and four-wheeled vehicles, and later in the Eurasian steppe and the invention of two-wheeled carriages, its movement speed, distance, are not comparable to walking.
All of this makes Western culture relatively mobile and risky. Western pottery is not as developed as China, but the metal utensils that are easy to carry are more developed; Western burials and cremations are more popular, idolatry of gods takes precedence over ancestor worship, and there are many shrines and temples; Western bronze and iron tools are developed, advocating gold, glass and other utensils with dazzling luster, as well as incense burners, perfumes and other volatile items, coupled with the development of Western economic and trade, which will also forge the cultural characteristics of Western martial arts and extroversion.
Third, the early northern cultural circle
The early northern cultural circle, the main body is the Eurasian steppe, affecting the forest-steppe zone further north, bounded by the Lena River and the Ural Mountains, which can be divided into three parts: east, middle and west, the southeast extends to northeast China, Japan Island and the Korean Peninsula, the south spreads along the Great Wall of China, the southwest reaches the North Caucasus region, and the northwest reaches Scandinavia.
After about 14500 BC, pottery appeared in Japan, the Heilongjiang River Basin and the Transbaikal region. Among them, the pottery in The Outer Baikal and the middle reaches of the Heilongjiang River is mostly pointed bottom or round bottom pots, decorated with rope patterns, grate patterns, etc., similar to the earliest pottery in South China, and even the practice of pearl patterns along the outer edge of the mouth is also seen earlier in jade toad rock pottery, which is likely to be the result of the influence of pottery technology in South China. Japan's earliest spire bottom plain clay pot, the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River Basin the earliest grate pattern flat bottom clay pot, although slightly different from South China pottery, but also does not rule out the possibility of accepting the South China revelation, of course, the specific shape of the utensils may be related to imitation or with the help of local woven fabrics, bark barrel pottery. After that, this type of circular bottom tank began an incredibly long-distance expansion process. To the north in the 4th millennium BC to the middle reaches of the Lena River; to the west to Finland after 5000 BC, and as far as northern Sweden after 4000 BC, known as the grate pottery culture, before the Traditional Pottery of The West Asian culture reached these areas; southwestern, around 6000 BC, interspersed into the Inner Mongolia Xilingol League, the eastern part of the Ulanqab League and the Zhangjiakou region of Hebei Province, and penetrated into the Amu Darya River Valley in Central Asia around 5000 BC. In addition, the flat-bottomed cylindrical tanks in northeast China and the northern part of the Korean Peninsula after 13,000 years ago should also belong to this large cultural circle and can be regarded as a mutated form of circular bottom tanks. Even the Magnetic Mountain culture of pottery cups or straight-bellied basins east of China's Taihang Mountains is actually inextricably linked to flat-bottomed cylindrical or even circular-bottomed cans.
The early northern cultural circle has a developed and long fine stone tool tradition, the most important economic method is hunting and gathering, its crops and livestock mainly originate from the early Eastern cultural circle and the early Western cultural circle in the south, and the millet and millet in the Xiliaohe River and other places in northeast China, although it can be as early as the beginning of the 6th millennium BC, it should be spread from north China. Wheat, sheep, cattle, etc. in the western Caspian Sea and the northern shore of the Black Sea in the Western Eurasian steppe spread from The West Asia. More importantly, as mentioned above, under the influence of West Asia, horses were domesticated in the Eurasian steppe, and the two-wheeled carriage was invented secondarily, and the emergence of horses and carriages and their expansion throughout eurasia showed the special status and powerful driving force of the Eurasian steppe.
Jade is the most important original cultural factor in the early northern cultural circle, which first appeared in the Altai and Baikal regions of the late Paleolithic Period, introduced to the Heilongjiang region of China at the beginning of the Holocene, and gradually reached the Xinglongwa culture in the Xiliao River Basin around 6000 BC, and flourished in the Hongshan culture and the Hamin BusyHa culture after 3500 BC. The cultural source of jade should be the earliest perforated ornaments produced in the late Paleolithic period in North Africa and western Eurasia, when such ornaments are occasionally made of Siberian jade, they become jade, and may gradually highlight their characteristics as jade in the process of use, in fact, there is no essential difference from the ostrich eggshell bead decoration in Shuidonggou and the bone stone ornament of the mountaintop cave.
The sculptural tradition is also an important feature of this cultural circle. The Hongshan culture in northeast China is known for its "goddess" statues, in fact, there are many other male or sexual characteristics are not obvious, as well as various animal images, dating back to the Xinglongwa culture, Magnetic Hill culture, Zhao Baogou culture since 6000 BC, stone statues, ceramic sculptures, humanoid "masks" and so on. In the Minushinsk Basin in the middle of the Siberian steppe, the Altai-Ob River Valley, more than 2,000 BC, various humanoid stone carvings or ceramic sculptures were commonly seen in the Okunev culture and the Chemurcek culture. The sculptural tradition in northeast China may have the foundation of the Paleolithic age in Northeast Asia, and some jade and ceramic "goddess" statues of the Hongshan culture are similar to the figures of sites such as Malta in the Baikal region more than 20,000 years ago. The Siberian tradition of sculpture is very late, the lineage is unknown, and it may have been influenced by early Western cultural circles and northeast China.
As the main body of the early northern cultural circle, the Eurasian steppe area is actually a fast channel for cultural exchanges between the East and the West. Bronzes, iron, gold, glazed sand, wheat, sheep, cattle, etc., which originated in the West, most of them spread eastward through this channel. Crops such as millet and millet, which originated in northern China, also spread westward along this channel. These typical elements of the East and the West also became important cultural components of the early northern cultural circle.
The hunter-gatherer and animal husbandry economic mode of the early northern cultural circle determined that its degree of settlement was not high, mainly living in simple and easy-to-build shacks, tents, etc., but there were also more stable settlements and houses in the southern rim, such as the semi-crypt houses in the Zhangjiakou area 8,000 years ago, and the circular centripetal multi-house settlement on the southeast edge of the Ural 4,000 years ago. The overall social complexity is limited and lacks a true center of civilization. The tombs of the Arran nomadic nobles in the Tuva region of the early 1st millennium BC represent the highest level of social complexity in the early northern cultural circles, but the lack of corresponding stable settlements, let alone large cities, is difficult to determine whether there is a civilized society behind this. The cultural circle is influenced by the eastern and western cultural circles, and the tomb situation is different from the east to the west, and western cremation has become a major feature.
In general, the early northern cultural circle has its own characteristics, implicit and introverted jade, sculptures with strong religious colors, are important material carriers of shamanic primitive religion, shamanic beliefs contained in the concept of animism, three realms connection, etc., also became the core of the early northern cultural circle of faith, and shamans are generally considered to be in line with the hunter-gatherer economy. Of course, the early northern cultural circles were indeed deeply influenced by the two major cultural circles of the east and the west, which made them different from the east. Due to the instability of the hunter-gatherer-animal husbandry economy, the cultural continuity is poor, and the population mobility is large, resulting in the highest instability.
IV. Conclusion
The formation of the three major cultural circles of The Holocene Eurasia is deeply backgrounded in the natural geographical environment. The key to the distinction between the early Eastern and Western cultural circles lies in the huge obstacles caused by the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, thus dividing the two geographical units and two major cultural units that are relatively independent of each other, so that their populations can develop and blend mainly in their own cultural circles for a long time. Of course, the natural environment of the two major geographical units in the east and west is also different, and there are differences between the west wind belt-Mediterranean climate and the East Asian monsoon climate, as well as the differences in topography, landforms, animal and plant resources, etc., thus laying the foundation for the unique characteristics of the two cultural circles. On the other hand, both major geographical units belong to the mid-latitudes, with moderate temperature and precipitation, and abundant soil, so they can develop cereal agriculture and the civilized society on which to base it. The early northern cultural circle was different, it and the two southern cultural circles did not have a particularly large obstacle, the Yin Mountains, Tianshan Mountains, Caucasus and a series of east-west mountain ranges formed a rough north-south dividing line, far less difficult to cross than the Pamir Plateau. The relative independence of the north is mainly due to its high latitude, low temperature, and roughly similar grassland-forest environment, which is more suitable for hunter-gatherer and animal husbandry economies as a whole.
Although the three major cultural circles are significantly more than the Holocene, they have actually appeared in the early Paleolithic Period, and the famous "Movis Line" roughly divides the two major stone tool technology traditions of the east and west by the Pamir. In fact, in the western part of the Eurasian steppe north of the two traditions, there is also a tradition that is different from the former two. Entering the late Paleolithic period, the distinction between these three traditions still exists roughly. Under the Western tradition, from the exquisite and standardized Ashley hand axe in the early Paleolithic Era to the late stone leaf technology, sculpture art, and decorative art of wearing, the spirit of imposing human consciousness on nature and the primitive religious concept of idolatry have long been embodied. Under the Oriental tradition, the entire Paleolithic period generally continued the stone shard stone tool technology, rare sculptural art, showing a simple and natural style. These are all connected to the two major cultural circles in the west and east that followed. As for the northern region, since the late Paleolithic period, there has been a developed fine stone tool industry, influenced by the early Western cultural circle and the emergence of sculpture art, wearing decorative arts (including jade), forming a shamanic tradition, passed down to the Neolithic Age, the later influence of the Eastern and Western traditions is greater, becoming an important channel for east and west exchanges.
Cultural exchange is an important mechanism for the development and evolution of the three major cultural circles. The early exchange between the northern cultural circle and the southern two major cultural circles began at the beginning of the Holocene, and began to be mainly the northern transmission of crops and livestock in the south, about 2000 BC, as the northern animal husbandry economy matured, which in turn oppressed the south, and the situation of long-distance north-south confrontation between the east and west was initially formed at this time. The exchanges between the two major cultural circles of the East and the West mainly occurred after the middle of the 4th millennium BC, and the exchange of faience, metal tools, crops, livestock, etc., promoted the formation and development of Eastern and Western civilizations. Further, increasing cultural exchanges led to more and more commonalities between the three major cultural circles, and finally formed the second stage of the "Eurasian world" around 2000 BC – if the "globalization" of the late Paleolithic period created the first stage of the "Eurasian world". Of course, cultural exchanges do not always take place in a peaceful manner. There are large-scale interactive zones between the three major cultural circles, which are the result of cultural exchanges and are often at the forefront of cultural collisions and crowd conflicts.
The author is Han Jianye, a professor at the School of History, Chinese Min University
Comments from omitted, the full version please refer to the original text.
Editor: Xiang Yu
Proofreader: Water Life
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