In the eight thousand years of Chinese civilization, the sites and cultural relics are diverse; they constitute three major areas, the Yellow River and the Red Mountains of the Yangtze River; the three places are all primitive dragons, and the descendants of dragons are the same roots; making a living and creating pottery rice millet, which is developed according to local conditions.
The ancient people in the settlement city, the farming rice and millet are full of stomachs, the jade is rich and beautiful for making pottery, and the writing symbols show civilization. Chinese civilization is 8,000 years old, and many sites can be confirmed.
This article introduces the following famous sites excavated from the early and middle Neolithic period (some of which have jade and writing symbols excavated at the same time):
Huanghuai River Basin
A Henan Wuyang Jia Lake relic;
B Shandong Tengzhou Beixin Ruins;
C Jiangsu Sihong Shunshan Ji Site;
D Anhui Bengbu Shuangdun Site;
E Henan Xinzheng Pei Ligang Site.
Yangtze River Basin
A Bridgehead Site in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province;
B Zhejiang Yuyao Jingtou Mountain Site;
C Pengtou Mountain Ruins in LiXian County, Hunan;
D. Site of Bashiyan, Lixian County, Hunan;
E Zhejiang Hangzhou Cross-Lake Bridge Site.
Northern region
A Ruins of Deyumin Village, Inner Mongolia;
B Inner Mongolia Nairen Tolgai Site;
C Inner Mongolia Ao Han Banner Xinglongwa Site;
D Hebei Wu'an Magnetic Mountain Ruins;
E Gansu Qin'an Dadiwan Ruins.
Huanghuai pottery rice millet civilization A Henan Wuyang Jia Lake site
Jiahu Ruins, located in Jiahu Village, 1.5 kilometers southwest of Beiwudu Town, Wuyang County, Henan Province, is an important site in the early Neolithic period of China, C14, emission dating results show that it is about 9000-7500 years old, the area of the reserve is 55,000 square meters, first discovered in the early 1960s.
The Jiahu lake site is the earliest known Neolithic cultural relic in the HuaiHe River Basin, the geographical dividing line between southern China, and provides a connection point for the Yangtze River Pottery Rice Culture to connect the Middle Reaches of the Yellow River to the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Huai River in the north, reproducing the glory of the upper reaches of the Huai River 8,000 to 9,000 years ago.
The Jiahu site is mainly ancient tombs, housing sites, pottery kilns, ash pits and so on. The tombs are mostly rectangular earth pits and vertical pits, and the tombs are mostly west and southwest, and there are no traces of burial tools. Most of the burial objects are practical products for life, and some of them appear in groups with burial products, such as tortoise shells, bone flutes, forks and forks in groups, there are more than 20 tombs, and the tombs are generally larger and the burial products are more abundant. Most of the burial products for men are stone shovels, stone axes, bone darts, bone hammers, etc., and female burial products are more bone needles, spinning wheels, and millstones. The cemetery of the JiaHu site is relatively concentrated, most of which appear in pieces, and some repeated burials are superimposed.
Most of the sites are oval, and the structure is mainly semi-crypt, mostly single rooms, with a small number of rooms expanded sequentially. There are stoves, pillar holes and so on in the premises. The kiln site is small, with kiln rooms, fire doors, flues and smoke holes, and some retain kiln walls and fire channels.
In 2004, Zhang Juzhong, an archaeologist who presided over the excavation of the Jiahu lake site, proposed joint archaeology between China and the United States. He invited the famous American archaeologist McGo to Henan to participate in the excavation of the Jia Lake site, and sent the excavated pottery fragments to the American laboratory for analysis. In the end, American archaeologists successfully extracted alcohol components from the residues on the inner wall of the pottery, confirming the existence of Jiahu ancient wine.
According to the joint archaeological results of China and the United States, the age of Jiahu ancient wine has been confirmed to be 9,000 years ago, which is the oldest wine excavated in the international archaeological community. American experts were the first to publish their research in National Geographic. Its excavation has greatly pushed forward the original 5,000-year history of world winemaking by 4,000 years, making China the world's earliest winemaking country.
Subsequently, the American archaeologist McGoe successfully cracked the brewing formula of Jiahu ancient wine, confirming that this ancient wine is made of rice, honey and hawthorn as raw materials, with an alcohol content of about 8%. McGoll also improved the formulation and patented it. According to this, a brewery in the United States produced a new type of beer, named "JiaHu City", which claimed to be the only modern beer in the world that was brewed with an ancient method of 9,000 years ago. The liquor, which sells for $12 per bottle and is already on sale in the U.S. market, is said to have a sweet and spicy taste, with the mellow aroma of rice, and is widely sought after in the United States.
Wang Zichu, former director and researcher of the Music Research Institute of the China Academy of Arts, said: "JiaHu bone flute is the most important musical archaeological discovery of mankind, and I think not only am I shocked, but the whole world should be shocked." This is our history, our archaeology, and we have never found anything like it. ”
Belwood, an academician of the Australian Academy of Sciences, said: "I think Jia Lake is a very important site for Neolithic archaeology in China. Ancestors lived here 9,000 to 7,500 years ago, and this is a very important origin of rice cultivation and pig and dog domestication. Overall, this is a very important and special discovery in archaeology. ”
Professor Liu Li of Stanford University in the United States said: "The cultural connotation of the Jia Lake site is very rich, communicating between the north and the south, east and west, on the basis of the important cultural heritage of the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin, it shows people the cultural characteristics of the Huai River Basin, and is an important position for cultural exchanges between the north and the south." ”
More experts at home and abroad also did not hesitate to praise, affirming the value and significance of the JiaHu site from agriculture, music, religion, astronomy, mathematics and other aspects. JiaHu, the most remote village in Wuyang County, Henan Province, was known overnight and was so hot that it was hot.
For the world's archaeological discoveries dating back to 80000 to 9000 a number of civilizations in a site, the Jiahu site unearthed the world's top ten: the earliest seven musical instruments, the earliest "wine", the earliest prototype of writing, the earliest religious origin, the earliest Ding, the earliest textile technology, the earliest rice cultivation, the earliest fishery breeding, the earliest domestication of livestock, the earliest decorative technology.
It is worth mentioning that soybeans have been recognized by the world as originating in China from the beginning. Through plant archaeology, soybean remains have been excavated from many sites in China, and it can be considered that the earliest cultivated soybeans were excavated from the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan, 8,000 years ago. However, the size and morphological characteristics of soybeans unearthed at the Jiahu site are between wild soybeans and cultivated soybeans, reflecting that soybeans were still in the process of being domesticated at that time. That is to say, the Jiahu people were the first humans in China and even the world to domesticate soybeans.
The Jiahu site was included in China's list of "Top 100 Archaeological Discoveries in a Hundred Years" in October 2021.
Huanghuai pottery rice millet civilization B Shandong Tengzhou Beixin site
Beixin ruins are located in Guanqiao Town, Tengzhou City, Shandong Province, north and south of Xin Village, north of the xuegu river, an area of about 50,000 square meters, the dating site is 8400 years ago ∽ 7300 years ago, is the earliest Neolithic site found in China in the Huanghuai area, because it reflects its own unique cultural style, it was named "Beixin Culture" by the state.
The Beixin site was first discovered in the 1964 shandong provincial cultural relics census, and excavated by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences from the winter of 1978 to the spring of 1979, with a total excavation area of 2,583 square meters and more than 2,000 cultural relics unearthed.
From the autumn of 1978 to the spring of 1979, the Shandong team of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Tengzhou Museum jointly conducted two large-scale excavations. A number of ash pits, cellars and tombs were cleaned up, and a large number of stone tools, pottery, bone tools, mussels and horns were excavated. The Beixin culture reflects that in settled settlements, people can also hunt, breed, etc.
Pottery excavated from the Beixin site: pottery is divided into two kinds of sand pottery and clay pottery, except for a few mixed and fragmented sand pottery, most of the mixed sand particles are finer. The pottery color is mainly yellow-brown, and the clay is mainly red pottery. There are also gray pottery and gray and black pottery, and the pottery color is generally more pure. The clay of the bowl is thinner, and some have a red area on the outside of the mouth, and the bottom of it is bluish gray, which is the so-called "red top bowl".
The Beixin cultural site, known as the Xue River Valley Tribe, is one of the earliest areas where humans lived on the land of China.
First, from the excavation of stone shovels, stone axes, millstones, grinding rods, antler hoes, mussels and millet grains, agricultural production at that time from farming, sowing to harvesting, processing, has a relatively complete set of tools, primitive agriculture began to take shape, agricultural production has become an important source of their living materials, but also an important guarantee for the consolidation of settled life.
Second, through the excavation of domestic pig-shaped animal skeletons and chickens and dogs and other remains, the domestication of livestock at that time has begun, and the livestock breeding industry has nearly taken shape.
Third, judging from the pottery net pendants and fish darts unearthed, the fishing technology at that time was quite superb.
Fourth, from the perspective of excavated bone needles and stone spinning wheels, at that time, wild fibers and animal fluff were begun to be used for spinning and weaving, and the ancestors of Beixin transitioned from wearing animal skins to the stage of civilization of clothing.
Fifth, from the perspective of excavated bone, tooth and mussel tools, the cutting, cutting, splitting, scraping and other utensils in the production tools at that time have been initially formed, and the handicraft industry has been relatively developed.
Sixth, from the excavated cover ding, red top bowl, nail print pattern bowl, red pottery pot, the pottery technology at that time has been relatively advanced, these utensils not only pay attention to the practicality of life, but also pay attention to aesthetic artistry, especially the red top bowl, according to archaeologists, for the Oriental faience pottery found a source.
Seventh, a pair of carved symbols resembling bird's feet were found at the bottom of a piece of pottery excavated, which has been praised by philologists and historians as "the origin of writing" and "the dawn of civilization".
Eighth, judging from the pillars of the excavated residential area, the structure of the houses at that time was more reasonable. Judging from the stratigraphic accumulation of the Beixin site, the ancestors of Beixin have experienced three stages here and lived for more than a thousand years, and the reason why they chose this mountain plain, three rivers, and fertile land to settle down shows that it is rich in natural resources and superior geographical environment, and is the most suitable place for human habitation.
The connotation carried by Beixin culture is very rich, with high archaeological value and academic value, further development and research, so that the traditional and excellent history and culture can be inherited and carried forward.
The accumulation layer of the Belsin site is more than 1.5 meters thick, reflecting the long period of time that the inhabitants of the time lived here. They use tools such as stone shovels and antler hoes to turn over the land and engage in agricultural production. Pottery is in a more primitive stage, the utensils are relatively simple, and the handwritten traces are more obvious, but the "red top bowl" that uses single color has been found, which traces the origin of the faience pottery that appeared in the original culture of the East after that. The discovery of the Beixin site and the naming of the "Beixin culture" are important harvests of Chinese prehistoric archaeology.
The agricultural characteristics of the Beixin culture are the discovery of corn kernel carbonized particles and the excavation of a large number of grinding production tools. At the bottom of some of the cellars, millet crop particles have been found, and these carbonized millet particles are one of the earliest crops found in northern China, which shows that agricultural production is the main source of their means of subsistence and an important guarantee for the survival of settled life.
Millet, commonly known as millet, millet, peeling called millet. Millet millet is a drought-tolerant crop, from the geographical environment, soil and climate point of view, the Beixin culture is located in the zone is very conducive to ancient human habitation and ancient agricultural production. Because the precipitation in this area is concentrated in the summer, which is not as high as the average annual precipitation in the south, the inhabitants of the Beixin culture naturally choose millet with drought tolerance and early maturation as the main crop. Its discovery not only confirms that China has developed primitive agriculture, but also confirms that China is the earliest country in the world with developed agriculture.
Huanghuai pottery rice civilization C Jiangsu Sihong Shunshan collection site
Shunshan Ji Ruins is located in the southwest of Daxinzhuang, Meihua Town, Sihong County, Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, at the northern foot of Chonggang Mountain, west of Zhaozhuang Reservoir, and about 2 kilometers east of Ningxu Highway. It is a hilly mound-shaped site. It is about 250 meters long from north to south, about 200 meters wide from east to west, and has an area of about 50,000 square meters. The surface of the earth is yellow ash soil, mixed with red burnt soil blocks, and the relics are widely distributed. The eastern part of the site is sand mined by the village, exposing the cultural layer of about 100 meters long, and its thickness is about 1.5 meters.
Most of the following are yellow natural soil layers and sand and gravel layers. From the cross-section, there are also more fragments of relics. The pottery pieces collected in the cross-section are mainly sand red-brown pottery and clay red pottery, and the arguable shapes include ding, bean, bowl, pot, and patterned decorative pottery bracket. The site has also unearthed stone axes, red sand pottery pestles, pottery pendants and so on. Trenches were also found in the cross-section of the site, about 4 meters deep and stacked with early relics. Carbon measurements confirm that the site dates back about 8,300 years.
The discovery of the Shunshanji site, the study of the Qingliangang culture and the distribution of early human settlement sites in northern Jiangsu, especially the discovery of trenches, are of great significance to the study of the human living environment in the Neolithic period.
With its highly representative characteristics, the Shunshanji site was listed in the "2012 National Top Ten Archaeological New Discoveries".
Life as an ancient human being. Located on the east side of Zhao Zhuang, Meihua Town, Sihong County, Jiangsu Province, the Shunshan Ji site is the earliest and largest ring trench settlement found in the entire lower Huai River basin, and the excavated rice specimens were confirmed by the College of Culture and Science of Peking University with carbon-14 testing, dating from 8300 years ago to 8300 years ago ∽ 8100 years ago.
Located on the slope of the northern edge of Chonggang Mountain about 500 meters southwest of Daxinzhuang, Meihua Town, Sihong County, Jiangsu Province, the Shunshan Ji Neolithic site has a total area of 175,000 square meters, and after dating, it was confirmed to be a prehistoric ring trench settlement dating back to about 8,000 years ago. According to Lin Liugen, director and researcher of the Institute of Archaeology of Nanjing Museum, several excavations have cleaned up 92 tombs, 26 ash pits, 5 housing sites, and unearthed more than 400 pottery, stone tools, jade and bone tools. The discovery of the Shunshanji site has filled the gap in the archaeology and archaeological culture of prehistoric settlements in the middle and lower reaches of the Huai River.
Huanghuai pottery rice huang civilization D Anhui Bengbu shuangdun site
Located in the north of Shuangdun Village, Xiao bengbu Town, Huaishang District, Bengbu City, Anhui Province, the Shuangdun site is the earliest Neolithic cultural relics that have been found in the middle reaches of the Huai River, and is a strong evidence of the early civilization of the Huai River Basin.
The Shuangdun site is a terrace site, and the preservation range of the site is about 180 meters long from north to south, about 140 meters wide from east to west, and about 25,200 square meters. A large number of pottery, stone tools, bone horn tools, mussels, braised clay block architectural remains, animal bones and snail shells have been excavated from shuangdun, and there are many kinds of production tools, living utensils, as well as a large number of carved symbols and clay sculpture artworks.
The central area of the Shuangdun site is about 10,000 square meters. The excavated relics of the Shuangdun site are concentrated in a large depression in the southeast of the site, which extends from northwest to southeast, with an east-west width of more than 40 meters and a depth of more than 2.5 meters. The cultural layer is a slope-like accumulation, and the formation time of each formation seems to be shorter and faster, and the boundary between layers is more obvious.
A single Neolithic culture was piled up, typical of which were jar-shaped ding, bowl-shaped ding, bracket, bowl, bowl, reed, instrument seat, spinning wheel and net pendant, etc., with four-hammer flat-bottomed can-shaped kettle and bowl-shaped kettle, dwarf circle foot or false circle foot cake bottom bowl, dwarf horn seat bean, bird head or bull nose shaped ear tag, bottom abdomen with grate holes and ancestral brackets to form a combination of utensils. A total of more than 600 pieces were found in the three excavations. In the outer circle foot of the pottery bowl, there are more carved symbols, with dozens of fish-shaped, pig-shaped, deer-shaped, silkworm-shaped, leaf vein-shaped, petal-shaped, triangular, square-shaped, "ten" shape, mesh shape, circle shape, architectural shape and so on in single, double and multiple lines. It can be divided into two categories: pictograms and geometric shapes, and constitutes an important content of the remains of the double piers with early times, large quantity, many types and rich contents.
The Shuangdun site is associated with other primitive cultures of the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin at the same time. Neolithic sites with the same cultural outlook as the Shuangdun site have a certain distribution range in the Huai River Basin, and the Shuangdun site is a representative of this new archaeological culture.
Similar cultural sites represented by the Shuangdun site are mainly distributed in the middle reaches of the Huai River, and such cultural relics are the most typical of the Shuangdun site, which has the unique regional cultural characteristics of the Huai River Basin, and some characteristics of the early and middle primitive cultures in the north and south, and at the same time has a certain era span and geographical distribution, and has the basic elements of archaeological culture naming, which is determined as an archaeological culture - Shuangdun culture.
There are five carbon-14 detection data and phyto-siliceous analysis data at the Shuangdun site, with an age span of 8000 years to 5500 years, which is called "Shuangdun Culture" by scholars.
The relics excavated from the Shuangdun site comprehensively reflect the types, shapes and combinations of artifacts, and the ceramic sculpture face human head unearthed in the site is the earliest sculpture work found in China, which not only has high historical research value, but also occupies an important position in the history of Chinese art. Double-pier pottery sculpture of human head, its exquisite production, facial mysterious ornament symbols, very rare. The double-pier pottery sculpture of the head of the human head is distributed on both sides of the nose and the wings of the face, and the ornamental symbols with five pokes in each row should be related to the early ancestors' number worship, and the later concept of the five elements should also be traced back to this. Another set of double-circled symbols on the forehead should be considered sun symbols, related to the early sun worship.
The relics are mainly from the cultural layer, there are a large number of pottery pieces, pottery fragments and a certain number of damaged stone tools, horn tools, bone tools, mussels, and rich snail shells and animal bones, which is the result of the long-term dumping of waste along the ditch by the ancestors of Shuangdun. The discovery of the Shuangdun site confirms that the Huai River Basin is also one of the birthplaces of ancient Chinese civilization.
The more than 600 pieces of pottery with carved symbols excavated from the Shuangdun site are the earliest, largest and richest archaeological data of the same kind found in Neolithic archaeology, which are valuable for the discovery and research of early Chinese characters. The carved symbols are depicted on the inside of the pottery bowl, the pottery bowl and the flared high circle foot. Its content is quite extensive, including hunting, fishing, net birds, planting, silkworm farming, weaving, raising livestock, chronicles, astronomical calendars, geographical locations, etc., reflecting the characteristics of primitive economy, culture, religion, and art. The double pier carved symbols actually have the literal function of memorizing the number of events, and are one of the important sources for studying the origin of Chinese characters.
The carved symbols of the Shuangdun site have certain similarities with the carved symbols of other Neolithic sites such as Xi'an Banpo, Lintong Jiangzhai, Yichang Yangjiawan, Zigui Liulinxi, Qinghai Liuwan, and Dawenkou and Liangzhu, but also have their own obvious characteristics. Such depictions have also been found at the Site of Houjiazhai in Dingyuan, indicating that it is a record symbol that expresses a specific meaning between clan groups in a certain geographical range.
The Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the University of Science and Technology of China, in 2017 and 2018, conducted research and scientific research on the Shuangdun site in Bengbu, Anhui Province, and the scientific and technological archaeology team found that the coexistence of rice in the south and dry in the north 7,000 years ago in the middle reaches of the Huai River, which is also the earliest record of rice coexistence found in the middle and lower reaches of the Huai River. The research results were published online in the journal of archaeological science, an authoritative journal of international archaeology.
Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China took advantage of the two-year archaeological excavation of the Shuangdun site in Bengbu, Anhui Province, by taking samples from the site, collecting sedimentary samples of multiple strata at the site for phytosilica analysis. The results of the study show that between 7300 and 6800 years ago, drywood and rice have appeared at the same time at the site, and rice occupies an absolute dominant position in its crop composition, and the proportion of millet is relatively low.
The carbonized rice found by phytosilicate morphological analysis shows that between 8000 years ago and 5500 years ago, the rice at the Shuangdun site was a primitive japonica-type cultivated rice in the domestication stage, and its domestication level was significantly higher than the level of domestication of rice between 8500 and 7500 years ago found at the adjacent Shunshanji site in Jiangsu. This result shows that the Huai River Basin is also an important region for the evolution of rice on the mainland, and its early rice may have had an independent domestication process, which provides a new clue for the study of the origin of rice.
The Huai River Basin is a transitional zone between different climatic environments, agricultural types and cultural traditions in the north and south of eastern China, and its prehistoric agricultural structure evolution and agricultural economic formation process have been an important part of the study of environmental change and human adaptation in eastern China since the Holocene, and have long been the focus of Chinese and foreign researchers.
Huanghuai pottery rice civilization E Henan Xinzheng Pei Ligang site
The Pei Li Gang site is a relic of human culture from 8,000 years ago, which is of great significance to the study of prehistoric civilization on the mainland. Located about 8 kilometers northwest of Xinzheng County, Henan Province, in the west of Pei Li Gang Village, it is called "Pei Li Gang Ruins".
Early Neolithic culture in the middle reaches of the Yellow River in China. It is named after the fact that it was first discovered in 1977 in Xinzheng Pei Ligang, Henan, China. It appeared between about 5500 and 4900 BC. It dates from 8,000 to 7,000 years ago. It is mainly distributed in the central region of Henan, represented by the culture excavated from Pei Ligang, reflecting the cultural outlook after the middle of the early Neolithic period.
There are village ruins such as house foundations, kiln caves, and cemeteries in the Pei Li Gang site, which have a certain layout, and the residential buildings are concentrated in the middle of the site. The kilns are mainly in the south, and the cemeteries are in the west and northwest. The base of the house is square or circular semi-crypt. The tombs are concentrated in public cemeteries, and the tombs are arranged in an orderly manner, mostly single burials. There are more grinding stone tools than stone tools, and the most representative types are the foot millstone, the toothed stone sickle and the double-curved stone shovel. Agriculture occupies a major position, and the crop is millet. Breeding has also emerged, with domestic pigs, domestic dogs, domestic chickens and even domestic cattle. Hunting remained an important productive activity, with wooden bows and bone arrows as hunting tools. The pottery industry has already had a certain scale. Pottery has two kinds of reddish-brown sand and clay, many bowls, bowls, dings, pots and other daily utensils, and the thickness of the pottery wall is uneven. The economic life of the residents is mainly based on agriculture, planting crops such as millet, grinding serrated stone sickles, stone hoes, shoe sole-shaped stone grinding discs and stone grinding rods as agricultural tools. Pottery is relatively primitive and handmade; pottery such as three-legged bowls, crescent-shaped amphora pots, three-legged pots and dings have a unique style in shape. The houses are square and circular, both semi-crypt-style buildings. There are circular cellars where things are stored. After death, people are buried in the clan public cemetery, all of which are rectangular earthen pit tombs, and most of them have pottery and stone tools as burial objects.
The Pei Ligang culture, like other types of early Neolithic cultures in North China, has fine stone remnants, indicating that it has a relationship with the remnants of Mesolithic tools represented by Henan Lingjing and Shaanxi Shayuan. From the perspective of architectural remains, burial customs, agricultural production, especially pottery shapes and ornaments, it is more closely related to the later Yangshao culture, and it is generally believed that the Hougang type in Yangshao culture is the inheritance and development of Pei Ligang culture and Magnetic Hill culture. Pei Ligang culture, together with the cultures of Laoguantai in Shaanxi, Lijiacun and Cishan in Hebei, is the predecessor of Yangshao culture, so it is collectively known as the new period culture of the "former Yangshao" period. This culture is closely related to the Magnetic Hill culture. Its discoveries fill an important gap in China's early Neolithic culture.
As an earlier remnant of China's Neolithic culture, Pei Ligang culture has made people aware of the unique appearance of ancient Chinese culture before Yangshao culture since it was first discovered in Pei Ligang Village, Xinzheng City, Henan Province in the 1970s. Distributed in the Henan area, this early culture of using red pottery, filling water with water, and cooking rice with three-legged bowls is actually one of the origins of Chinese rice farming, and a series of unprecedented contents such as planting yellow and carving symbols on turtle bones found in the Pei Ligang culture have forced the academic community to re-evaluate the development level of ancient Chinese culture.
The peiligang site covers an area of 20,000 square meters. The discovery of the site fills a gap in the history of the early Neolithic period before the Yangshao culture on the mainland.
At present, 114 tombs, 1 pottery kiln, more than 10 ash pits have been excavated, and several broken cave dwelling foundations have been excavated. More than 400 artifacts of various kinds have been unearthed, including stone tools, pottery, bone tools, as well as original works of art such as pottery spinning wheels, ceramic sculptures of pig heads, sheep heads and so on.
The eastern half of the site is a village site, with a cultural layer of 1 to 2 meters thick and containing very few relics. The western half is a clan cemetery. The crater is rectangular in shape and has irregular edges. The burials were mainly stone tools and pottery. Stone tools are ground or polished, among which typical utensils are serrated stone sickles, strip stone shovels with blades at both ends, etc. The pottery is handmade, and the representative utensils are three-legged pottery bowls, barrel-shaped pots, etc. The excavated charcoal specimens were determined to be about 8,000 years old, more than 1,000 years earlier than the Yangshao culture.
In October 2021, the site of Xinzheng Pei Ligang in Henan was included in China's list of "Top 100 Archaeological Discoveries in a Hundred Years".
Yangtze River Tao Dao Civilization A Zhejiang Yiwu Bridgehead Site
Located in the west of Qiaotou Village, Chengxi Subdistrict, Yiwu City, Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, the Qiaotou Site is a terrace of about 2,000 square meters, dating from 9,000 years ago to 8,000 years ago. Since the excavation in 2012, many late faience potteries of the Shangshan culture (11,000 years ago ∽ 8,500 years ago) have been unearthed, and the number and completeness have attracted the attention of the archaeological community.
The ruins of the bridgehead settlement have gone through a long time, but the ring trenches connecting each other are still clearly visible.
The first tomb of the Shangshan culture was found here. At present, two human bones have been found at the qiaotou site, one of which is relatively well preserved is a man of 30 or 40 years old with a height of 1.73 meters holding a red clay pot, and the other is buried relatively shallow and has been damaged. The man holding the red clay pot may be the leader of the tribe, at least a "drunkard" who loved to drink alcohol before he died, because the clay pot has the residue of rice wine.
Among the pottery excavated from the Qiaotou site, there are 7 pieces of pottery vases, which are exquisitely similar to the Song Dynasty wine plum bottles. The research team analyzed the starch, silica phytolite (plant fossils), fungi and other microfossil residues extracted from the inner surface of the jar, as well as microbial residues such as mold and yeast, and the silica phytophytolite of rice husks and other plants is also present in the residue, which is consistent with the residue of wine fermentation. The results suggest that these clay vases were used to hold wine, a fermented beverage made from rice, barley and uncertain tubers. It is likely to be a slightly fermented and cloudy dessert wine, or thick wine, rice wine, rice wine, experts call it "beer".
Later sent to Stanford University for testing and research, experts believe that the gelatinized starch produced by heating in the residue of the ceramic bottle is consistent with the damage characteristics of low-temperature fermentation, and low-temperature fermentation is the basic principle of winemaking. It proves that the Qiaotou people 9,000 years ago, like the Jiahu people of the same period, have mastered the technology of winemaking. As the old saying goes, "No wine is no etiquette", wine is a must for religious sacrifices and interpersonal interactions.
The above research conclusions were published in the journal "Public Science Library General" in the United States, entitled "Early Evidence of Drinking on the Ground in the 9,000 Years of Southern China". The authors of the study were Wang Jiajing, an assistant professor at Dartmouth University, Jiang Leping, a researcher at the Zhejiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and Dr. Sun Hanlong.
Since its excavations in 2012, the Qiaotou site has unearthed hundreds of painted pottery from the middle and late Shangshan cultures, which have shocked the archaeological community in number and completeness. Bowls, pots, bottles, cans, everything, such as blind ear pots, large mouth pots, flat bottom plates, circle foot plates, etc. These faience pottery, bright pottery clothes, mainly red clothes, but also milky white clothes, in the current excavation of the Shangshan cultural sites, the number is obviously the first.
The craftsmanship of these pottery is so superb. Pottery like red-haired white-clothed pottery is rare in contemporaneous archaeological excavations across the country.
Some strange milky white bumps on the faience, some in groups of three, some in groups of six, with three bars in shape, or three dots, may represent some kind of meaning, perhaps because people at that time already had the concept of yin and yang.
The altar of the ancients, called the Hill of Yangtai, the terrace in the center of the bridgehead site, may be the altar where the ancients engaged in religious activities.
Three sun ornaments have been found at the bridgehead site. One of the sun patterns, with a line drawn in the middle of the pattern, represents the rising sun. All things grow by the sun, the sun is a common natural object, painted on the ordinary pottery used for daily use, symbolizing the pursuit of a vigorous and bright and brilliant ideal realm of life, is the noble consciousness expression of spiritual civilization progress.
Yangtze River Tao Dao Civilization B Zhejiang Yuyao Jingtou Mountain Site
The site of Jingtou Mountain, which was selected as one of the "Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in China in 2020", is located in Jingtou Mountain, Sanqi Town, Yuyao City, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. The JingtouShan site is the earliest and deepest buried prehistoric shell mound site in China's coastal areas. According to the determination of many laboratories such as the Carbon 14 Laboratory of the School of Archaeology and Archaeology of Peking University, the age of the Jingtou Mountain site is 8300 years ago ∽ 7800 years ago.
At present, the excavation of the first phase of the Jingtou Mountain site has come to an end. The total area of the site is 20,000 square meters, and the excavations have unearthed the remains of settlements such as open-air fire pits, food storage and treatment pits, wooden fences in the beach area, and processing areas for daily life, as well as more than 400 artifacts for production and life, such as pottery, stone tools, bone tools, shellware, wooden utensils, and weavings.
Tens of thousands of pieces of pottery have been excavated from the site, and after preliminary finishing, they have been restored into more than 30 pieces of pottery, with the shape of kettles, open basins, circle foot plates, bowls, small cups, deep belly pots, kettle feet, pottery beats, etc. Stone tools include axes, hammers, hammers, chisels, hammers, grinding plates, grinding discs, disc-shaped cushion cakes (anvils) and more than 30 pieces. The site also unearthed more than 100 pieces of wood, including paddles, handles, pin-nailed wood, spear-shaped tools, point sticks, double-pointed wooden sticks, single-pointed wooden sticks, pestles, bowls, flat-shouldered wooden tools, etc., of which the largest number and the most special processing are the "knife" shaped handles dug and chiseled with regular oval holes.
More than 100 bone artifacts have been excavated from the JingtouShan site, and the shapes of the instruments include hammers, antler cones, darts, chisels, needles, spoons, beads, fences, whistles and so on. In addition, there are more than 60 pieces of shellware (耜, shovel, knife, spoon, etc.) processed and ground with large oyster shells, which are the first time in the archaeological history of Zhejiang.
The natural remains found at the site are dominated by animal and plant remains, as well as a large number of small reefs cemented with oyster shells. The largest number of animal remains are the shells of marine mollusks that were eaten and discarded by the ancestors at that time, the main species are mud cockles, conchs, oysters, clams, clams and clams, followed by the skeletons of various types of fishing and hunting animals, mainly deer bones, there are also some pigs, dogs, holy buffaloes, otters and other animal bones, as well as marine fish vertebrae, teeth, otoliths and so on. Some people joke that as early as 8,000 years ago, the ancestors began to enjoy the "seafood feast".
In addition, a large number of woven fabrics also provide a rare basis for restoring the lives of the ancestors, including woven fabrics made of reeds, bamboo, etc., with mats, baskets, baskets, back baskets, fish covers, fans, etc., as well as a clump of fishing net fragments. This is something that has rarely been seen before and is a rare and important discovery.
Among the plant remains, the most are wooden sticks, wooden strips, etc., as well as acorns, hemp oak fruits, peach cores, fruit shells, pine cones, reishi blocks, a small amount of carbonized rice grains, rice spike shafts, etc., as well as seeds of plants such as sumac, yellow wood, kiwi fruit, etc. in the storage pit; and some raw materials for making woven fabrics and ropes, such as reed stalks, hemp fibers and other plant remains, in the fetal soil of the pottery kettle feet, more rice husk fragments can be distinguished.
The Jingtou Mountain ruins are a thriving clan tribe and the earliest source of civilization in China and even the world that combines marine fishing and farming.
Yangtze River Tao Dao Civilization C Pengtou Mountain Ruins in Li County, Hunan
The pengtou mountain site is located in the middle of the Liyang Plain in Lixian County, Hunan Province. It is a Neolithic clan tribal site in the Yangtze River Basin, and the carbon detection year is about 8200 years ago ∽ 7800 years ago.
The settlement is rectangular in shape, surrounded by trenches, piles of earth and natural rivers as a guard, with a total area of about 30,000 square meters. Archaeological remains include ground-type and shallow crypt-type architectural remains and tombs dominated by small pit secondary burials.
Most of the stone tools unearthed are made of stone tools, ranging from large gravel tools to small black tunnel tools, which are not much different from the local late Paleolithic tradition. Pottery manufacturing is simple and simple, all made of the original plastering method, the tire thickness is uneven, most of the pottery tire mud is sandwiched with charcoal chips, generally reddish brown or gray-brown.
The discovery of the world's early traces of rice farming, rice husks and grains, laid the foundation for establishing the historical position of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in the origin and development of rice agriculture in China and even in the world.
Yangtze River Tao Dao Civilization D Hunan Li County Eighty Ruins
Located in Wufu Village, Mengxi Town, Lixian County, Hunan Province, the site of Bashidi is 8,000-7,000 years old. A large amount of carbonized rice and rice have been excavated at the site, and their morphology is well preserved, called "Eighty Ancient Rice".
The site can be divided into three phases: early, middle and late, with an early range of more than 30,000 square meters and a late period of about 200 square meters. In the middle period, it is less than 30,000 square meters, but it is the most prosperous period of the site, and the prominent symbol is the excavation and stacking of the settlement ring trench and the wall, which forms a daily activity circle, which is about 300 meters long from north to south and 160 meters wide from east to west. The trench is about 4 meters wide on the top, about 2 meters wide and deep underneath, about 5 meters wide at the bottom of the wall, about 2 meters wide at the top, and 1 to 2 meters high. It is estimated to be related to protection and drainage. The architectural ruins within the walls are semi-crypt, ground, dry column and countertop type, and there are stove pits inside. Eighteen-year settlement is known as "China's first city" and the world's earliest town.
There are more than 100 tombs. There are square, rectangular, cylindrical, etc., and the burial items are mainly pottery.
The site is of great value for the study of early Neolithic settlement morphology and rice cultivation.
The site also has dozens of plant seeds, animal and livestock skeletons, as well as various bones, bamboo, wood tools, woven fabrics and rice, rice. The plants have been identified as the genus Sedge, Sedge, Quercus, Quercus, Hanging Hook, Comfrey, Andia, etc., indicating that the site was close to the water at that time and the climate was mild. There are also a large number of diamond horns, mustard fruits, lotus seeds and so on. Animal skeletons include deer, chamois, cattle, pigs, chickens, fish and so on. Wood utensils include hammers, shovels, cones, pestles, drills, wood, bamboo cards and so on.
Nearly 15,000 pieces of rice and rice were collected, exceeding the total amount collected in China, and the preservation status was good. Named "Eighty Ancient Rice", in-depth research can reveal the origin of cultivated rice and set a yardstick for its demonstration process.
Yangtze River Tao Dao Civilization E Zhejiang Hangzhou Cross-Lake Bridge Site
The ruins of the cross-lake bridge are located in the Xianghu Lake Tourism Development Zone, Xianghu Village, Chengxiang Town, Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, about 4 kilometers from Xiaoshan City, and about 3 kilometers southwest of the confluence of the Qiantang River, Fuchun River and Puyang River. The ruins of the cross-lake bridge are named after a cross-lake bridge between the upper and lower Xianghu springs of the ancient Xianghu Lake. The ruins of the Cross-Lake Bridge are located in the Xianghu Lake Area, about 700 meters southwest of the Cross-Lake Bridge. A total of 29 carbon 14th years and pyro-light dating data were determined at the site, all distributed in about 8000-7000 years ago.
Since its first excavation in June 1990, the site of the Bridge Across the Lake has undergone three archaeological excavations, among which the canoe and related remains excavated in 2002, which were carbon 14 years old, are 8,000-7,000 years old, making it the earliest canoe in the world ever discovered. The canoe is made by the fire coke method, and when it is excavated, a large number of related relics and relics such as pile structures, wooden oars, stone hammers, and woven fabrics are found around it, which will have a significant and far-reaching impact on the study of the history of shipbuilding in the mainland, the history of transportation and the history of shipbuilding in the world. Known as the "world's first boat", the canoe across the lake bridge adopts the method of original site protection and lies in the ruins hall 6.5 meters under the water of Xianghu Lake.
The general path of human civilization is to develop from mountains and caves to river valleys and plains. Judging from the actual archaeological findings, the earliest Neolithic culture in Zhejiang was distributed in the zhongshan district of Zhejiang, and the cross-lake bridge culture was an early branch of the development of mountain culture to plain culture. The birth of the cross-lake bridge civilization is closely related to the changes in the climate and environment. There was an intermittent cooling event in the early Holocene, and the low latitudes of East Asia showed an arid climate, and humans were forced to move downstream with more abundant water sources in order to survive better. The ancient cross-lake bridge people went down the river, with the budding agricultural cultural tradition, to the estuary area more suitable for human survival, and rapidly prospered and developed at the time of 8,000 to 7,000 years ago, creating a prehistoric civilization with regional characteristics.
The people who crossed the lake and bridge lived on the shore of Guxiang Lake for nearly a thousand years. Agriculture, gathering, fishing and hunting support their basic livelihoods. They make bone tools, wood, stone tools as production tools, make a variety of exquisite pottery as living utensils, wood technology has been very developed, mortise and mortise technology has emerged, it is commendable that the natural knowledge of the people across the lake bridge is very rich, the people across the lake bridge know how to use raw lacquer to decorate wood, glue pottery with animal or plant glue, in their spiritual world, there has been a religious concept of worshiping fire and worship.
The origin of agriculture is a historic event in the transformation of human beings from a grabbing economy to a productive economy, known as the "Great Agricultural Revolution", indicating that the origin of agriculture is closely related to human civilization. At the same time, human beings have begun to transition from hunting and gathering solely on natural resources to food production, the most notable of which is the domestication of animals and plants. The rice crop remains of the Cross-Lake Bridge site are widely distributed, and more than 50% of the rice is obviously different from ordinary wild rice, which is cultivated rice after human domestication. In the cross-lake bridge culture, the domestication of wild boars into domestic pigs is also an important link.
The discovery of clay pots and chinese medicine residues at the site of Cross-Lake Bridge proves that the ancient ancestors began to boil Chinese medicine more than 8,000 years ago, which not only reflects the diligence and wisdom of the ancient ancestors, but also reflects the long history of mainland Chinese medicine and Chinese medicine. History is about 5,000 years ago, "Fuxi tasted a hundred medicines", "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs to invent grains and medicine", and the people across the lake bridge planted rice and boiled Chinese medicine three thousand years earlier than Fuxi and Shennong. Therefore, this clay pot is definitely a good treasure that proves the origin of Chinese medicine.
Northern Tao Huang Civilization A Inner Mongolia Hua DeYu Min Village Ruins
In Huade County, about 350 kilometers from Beijing and located in the northeast of Wulanchabu City, Inner Mongolia, an ancient village site with a total area of about 5,000 square meters from the early Neolithic Period was shortlisted for the "Archaeological Forum of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences • New Discoveries of Chinese Archaeology in 2016", which is the site of Yumin Village in Huade County, which is recognized as the earliest Neolithic culture in Inner Mongolia.
The ruins of Yumin Village in Huade County are located 1.25 kilometers northeast of Yumin Village, Debaotu Township, Huade County, Wulanchabu City, Inner Mongolia, surrounded by hills on three sides, with gentle slopes in the north-south direction, in the shape of a dustpan, with an altitude of 1460 meters. It was discovered in 2010 during an archaeological survey by the local archaeological department. In 2014, the Inner Mongolia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the Wulanchabu City Museum and the Huade County Cultural Relics Management Institute jointly conducted another archaeological excavation, which lasted three years and had a total excavation area of 3,750 square meters, and today, the entire excavation area is about 5,000 square meters.
The Yumin site is a cultural relic of the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic era, and is the earliest archaeological culture found in Inner Mongolia so far, and it is relatively rare to find such an early Neolithic site in the grasslands of northern China. After the carbon fourteen determination of the Science and Technology Archaeology Laboratory of Peking University, the human bones excavated from the site are about 8400 years old, the excavated animal bones are 8200-7800 years old, carbon fourteen measured by the Beta Radiological Laboratory in the United States, and the carbonized millet grains excavated from the site are corrected by the tree wheel, which is about 8400 years ago, marking that this is the earliest Neolithic cultural site in Inner Mongolia and even the world to plant millet.
Yumin unearthed a total of 14 house sites, 1 ash ditch and 1 tomb. Houses are distributed according to the slope of the terrain, different sizes, the diameter of the house is 280-400 cm, it is a circular two-story platform semi-crypt type, there is a circular ground stove in the middle of the site, the ash burnt soil of the stove surface is higher, some of the stove surface is placed with stones, there are two housing sites found to have doorways, and the doorway is a long strip slope type. Most of the more than 5,000 artifacts unearthed are stone tools, and there are a small number of pottery and bone tools. Stone tools are mainly semi-circular stone shovels, spear-shaped tools, triangular stone cones and a small number of grinding stones such as grinding discs, grinding rods, grinding stones, stone axes and other grinding stone tools; pottery excavations are mostly small pottery pieces, mainly sand yellow-brown pottery, loose texture, simple utensils; bone tools unearthed bone shovels, bone cones, bone knives, bone sickles and so on.
The houses of the Yumin Settlement Site have the protection of double columns or have the function of keeping warm. There are many traces of fire use in some of the sites, and the ash soil on the stove is piled up high, and no ash pits are found, indicating that the living materials at that time were not rich. Judging from the large number of animal bones and production tools excavated, as well as the pottery with simple shape, loose pottery, thick pottery tires and low heat, the population of the site is primitive and is mainly based on hunting and gathering. At the same time, in the analysis of plant flotation samples, millet (millet) and artemisia seeds were also found. In some of the housing sites, a large number of animal bones have been excavated, which have been identified as mussels, pheasants, birds, dogs, wolves and so on.
Yumin village site culture, distinguished from other known archaeological cultures, belongs to the early Neolithic period, this type of remains are distributed in the grassland area north of the Yin Mountains, filling the archaeological gap in this area, providing precious information for the study of archaeological cultural sequence, genealogy, type of life and origin of civilization in the grassland area of Inner Mongolia, which has extremely important research value.
Northern Tao Huang Civilization B Inner Mongolia Yellow Flag Nairen Tolgai Ruins
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, in 2020, a Neolithic human settlement site dating from 8400 to 7600 years ago was found on the Yellow Flag Grassland in Inner Mongolia. More than 270 sites have been found in the site of this large early Neolithic settlement named the Ruins of Naren Tolgai, with two-story platforms, pillar holes, and stoves. The site unearthed animal bones, pottery pieces, bone tools and a large number of stone tools.
The Nairen Tolgai site is a large-scale early Neolithic inhabited site found in Inner Mongolia. Its findings provide more clues for studying the types of prehistoric cultures in Northeast Asia and the primitive production and life patterns in the ecological staggered areas of northern China.
Judging from the remains of animals and plants, production tools and pottery remnants excavated from yumin, Nairen Tolgai and other sites, the combination of stone tools mainly based on fine stone tools may generally include hunting, gathering, primitive farming, stone, bone, wood tools production, food processing and other functions; animal and plant remains show that the objects captured by the Yumin cultural population include wild social animals such as deer, horses, cattle, sheep, donkeys, rabbits, birds and other small animals and fish mussel aquatic resources, and also widely collect grass seeds, mountain apricots and other wild fruits of the grass family and quinoa family Analysis of residues from flakes (similar to edible utensils) showed the use of tuber resources, while flotation of small quantities of millet and the use of the more intensive stone shoveling tool point to primitive millet dryland agricultural cultivation. Therefore, the ancestors of the Yumin and Naren Tao gai cultures adopted a diversified livelihood model to maximize the use of limited food resources.
Northern Tao Huang Civilization C Inner Mongolia Ao Han Banner Xinglongwa Site
Ruins of Xinglongwa. Located at the western edge of the 1.3-kilometer hilly village southeast of Xinglongwa Village, Xinglongwa Town, Ao Han Banner, Inner Mongolia (formerly Baoguo Tuxiang), The Site of an Early Neolithic Ancestor Settlement covers an area of 60,000 square meters. The housing sites in the Xinglongwa site settlement are distributed in rows, surrounded by oval-shaped trenches, which is a relatively complete primitive village. A large number of stone tools, pottery, bone tools, mussels, jade, etc. have been excavated from the Xinglongwa site, which provide detailed information for the study of neolithic settlement forms in the northern region. On November 20, 1996, the Xinglongwa site was announced by the State Council of the People's Republic of China as the fourth batch of national key cultural relics protection units.
The Xinglongwa site is currently the first prehistoric Chinese ancestral settlement in China to reveal all the residential relics such as waigou, housing sites, kilns, tombs, etc., and is the earliest known, largest and best preserved Neolithic primitive settlement site in China, dating back to about 8200 years ago, mainly based on agriculture, concurrently engaged in gathering and hunting, known as "the first village in China". At that time, there were such magnificent and uniform villages, indicating that the history of Chinese national civilization would extend from 8,000 years ago to a more distant era.
In 2002, more than 1,500 grains of carbonized millet were unearthed at the Xinglongwa site. Due to the inflated absolute age of early Western archaeology, the history of the origin of millet has been reversed. In the world, Europe and West Asia actually have millet, millet was once believed by the West to have originated in West Asia 7,000 years ago.
But in 2003, Chinese archaeology excavated the Xinglongwa site in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, and found millet dating back to 7600 years ago.
Where exactly is the origin of millet? Are the millets of China, West Asia, and Europe two different centers with their own origins, or do they have only one origin? This problem cannot be solved by us archaeologists alone.
Therefore, the top plant archaeology experts at home and abroad cooperated to use scientific methods to conduct a variety of analytical methods in China, West Asia and Europe. First of all, scientific "dating" became the basis for solving problems... High-precision dating instruments from the United States, Canada, Japan, China and other countries have dated the carbonized millet selected from the Xinglongwa site, and the results are more than 7600 years old.
Before the batch of millet excavated at the Xinglongwa site, the academic community believed that the world's earliest millet was excavated in West Asia, with a history of 7,000 years, and the millet unearthed in Europe was 5,000 years old. However, the latest high-precision dating studies by international experts have shown that millet in neither region is earlier than "4500 years old". More than 3100 years later than the early millet found in China.
The results of the international expert collaborative genetic research show that "all the millet in the world comes from the same origin, and this origin is the northern region of China." ”
In October 2021, the Xinglongwa site of Ao Han Banner in Inner Mongolia was included in the list of China's "Top 100 Archaeological Discoveries in 100 Years".
Northern Pottery Civilization D Hebei Wu'an Magnetic Mountain Ruins
The Magnetic Hill Site is located in Cishan Second Street, Cishan Town, Wu'an City, Hebei Province, and the middle of the terrace is the handan railway running through the north and south, and the west of the railway is the main area of the Magnetic Hill ruins. Most of the ruins are now cultivated on Cishan 2nd Street, and the southwest of the site is occupied by small iron works. The east of the railway is now the Magnetic Hill Culture Museum and the Nanhuan River Iron Mine; the west of the site is a cliff, the southwest is the Cishan Second Street Iron Works Industrial Zone; the south of the site is the nanhuan Riverbed; the north cliff of the site is closely adjacent to the Wu (Wu'an - Magnetic Mountain) Magnetic Highway.
The Magnetic Hill site is one of the cultures of Neolithic archaeology in China, and the Carbon 14 Laboratory of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has determined that the age of the Magnetic Hill culture is 7355 ± 105 years ago. The site is 412 meters long from east to west and 380 meters wide from north to south, located in the southeast of Cishan Second Street in Cishan Town, with an irregular rectangle and an area of more than 130,000 square meters.
According to the excavation data of the Magnetic Mountain site, the original inhabitants of Magnetic Mountain settled on the north bank of the Nanhuan River about 8,000 years ago and began to work hard; after the Yangshao to Longshan era, people mainly lived on the opposite bank of the site and its surrounding areas, while the Magnetic Mountain site was no longer inhabited for a long time; in the early stage of the Late Xia Dynasty and the Shang Dynasty, about 3700 years ago, the main activities of the residents of Magnetic Mountain were basically distributed on the north side of the site; from the Shang Dynasty to the Song and Jin Dynasties, there were living relics in the south of the site, and the Song and Jin dynasties have been cultivated land since then.
After three archaeological excavations, the types of remains are mainly divided into architectural remains (including house sites, ash pits, cellars), living and production tools (including bones, mussels, stones, pottery, etc.), means of production (including crop millet seeds and poultry and livestock remains).
The economic life of the ancient residents of Magnetic Hill was mainly primitive agriculture, and the crops were millet. Stone sickles, stone shovels, stone knives, stone axes and willow-shaped stone grinding discs are used as production tools, and the stone grinding discs are attached with three or four legs, which are unique in shape. Raise dogs, pigs and other livestock, and also do fishing and hunting. The pottery industry is relatively primitive and is in the hand-made stage; oval mouth cups, boot-shaped supports, three-legged bowls and deep-belly pots are typical pottery. The surface of the pottery is decorated with rope patterns, grate patterns and scratches. The houses are circular or oval, and are semi-crypt buildings. There are many caves where things are stored.
Magnetic Hill culture is closely related to Pei Li Gang culture, and some people call the two "Pei Li Gang ∽ Magnetic Hill Culture". Its discovery fills an important missing link in China's early Neolithic culture. In October 2021, the site of Wu'an Magnetic Mountain in Hebei Province was selected into the list of China's "Top 100 Archaeological Discoveries in a Hundred Years".
Northwest Pottery Civilization E Gansu Qin'an Dadiwan Ruins
Gansu belongs to the Yellow River Basin, and because it is in the northwest, it is included in the northern region. The Ruins of Dadiwan, located on the east side of Shaodian Village in Wuying Township, 45 kilometers northeast of Qin'an County, Tianshui City, Gansu Province, are located on the second and third terraces on the south bank of the Qingshui River, a tributary of the Hulu River, and on the adjacent gentle slope mountains, with a total area of 2.7 million square meters.
The Dadiwan site is a prehistoric site dating from 8,000 to 4,800 years ago, and is an earlier site discovered in the Neolithic period of China. Excavations in 2006 showed that the history of human activity at the Dadiwan site was pushed forward from 8,000 years ago to 60,000 years ago. Nearly 10,000 pieces of pottery, stone, jade, bone, horn, mussel and other cultural relics have been excavated from the site, and 241 housing sites have been excavated. The site is of great value for exploring the clues and original features of Chinese civilization, revealing the archaeological chronicles and cultural sequences of the ancient cultures of Longyou and Tianshui.
The remains of Dadiwan contain five cultural periods, dating from carbon-14 to about 7800-4800 years, spanning about three thousand years. The first phase of the Dadiwan remains, the former Yangshao culture or The Dadiwan culture, is about 7800-7300 years ago. The second phase of the Dadiwan culture is the early Yangshao culture, which is about 6500-5900 years ago. The third phase of the Dadiwan site is the middle yangshao culture, which is about 5900-5600 years ago. The fourth phase of the Dadiwan site is the late Yangshao culture, which is about 5500-4900 years ago. The fifth phase of the Dadiwan site is the lower Changshan culture, which is about 4900-4800 years ago.
Since the first excavation of the Dadiwan site in 1978, nearly 10,000 pieces of pottery, stone, jade, bone, horn, mussel and other cultural relics have been excavated, and 241 excavated house sites are deep cave shack buildings, with 104 stove sites, 321 ash pits and kiln caves, 35 kiln sites, 70 tombs, and 9 trenches.
The total area of the Dadiwan site is 2.7 million square meters, which is an earlier, largest and most Chinese architectural style "palace-style building", with a regular layout, balanced and symmetrical, composed of the main room, the east and west side rooms and the back room, the front door appendages, a total area of 420 square meters, and the design layout of the walls, doors, stoves and stoves has also added a fire protection layer.
In the ash pit of The First Phase of Dadiwan, rapeseeds from the grass family and cruciferous family were collected, which is one of the earliest specimens of the same crop in China. The excavated agricultural production and processing tools such as stone shovels, stone knives, grinding stones, and grinding discs show that a complete set of production and processing technologies for primitive agricultural production at that time had been formed. The Qingshui River Valley, centered on the Ruins of Dadiwan, is the earliest cultivation site for grain and oil crops in China and one of the birthplaces of China's dryland agriculture.
The study of the Dadiwan site shows that the ancients successively experienced four stages of economic development: primitive hunter-gatherer, developed hunter-gatherer Dadiwan site, Dadiwan Phase I primitive agriculture and Yangshao's early and late mature agriculture, which provided detailed information for the study of primitive architecture, art, agricultural origin, writing and religion in northwest China. The discovery of the Dadiwan site is of great significance for the establishment of a prehistoric cultural sequence in the upper reaches of the Weihe River, the study of the emergence and development of neolithic cultures in the Yellow River Basin, and the exploration of the historical process of the origin of Chinese civilization. The faience pottery at the Dadiwan site has important academic value for the study of the origin of Chinese painting and the painting art of primitive society, and the carved symbols found on the pottery provide extremely important materials and clues for the origin of Chinese writing.
In October 2021, the site of Dadiwan in Qin'an, Gansu Province, was included in the list of China's "Top 100 Archaeological Discoveries in a Hundred Years".