If history is given long enough, it can witness the rise and fall of any human society in any region. In the 6,000-year history of the Neolithic period in China, there are many social groups that have risen and fallen, and it is difficult to count. It is not yet possible to find archaeological data on the changes of all social groups during this period, let alone study them. However, based on the available data, it is clear that three large-scale regional complex social ups and downs occurred after the Late Neolithic period (Table 1) [1]. These three ups and downs occurred in different regions, different times, different sizes of social groups, and different fates after decline, but they were all the same complex societies that emerged under China's native agricultural system, and they all greatly affected the course of China's prehistoric history. This paper argues that these three rises and falls occurred at the level of China's native agricultural region, environment, society, economy, and culture. Because different regions have had different turnarounds after the three declines, the impact on the subsequent historical course has also been very different. The re-revival of each region is no longer entirely China's original agrarian cultural system, so it is also possible to judge the extent to which the society in different regions of the Neolithic period had been reached.
The rise and fall of the first and third complex social regions occurred in the three primary agricultural cultural regions
The rise and fall of the three large-scale regional complex societies that occurred in the late Neolithic period refer to the rise and subsequent decline of the Yangshao culture in the northern Liaoxi region, the Hongshan culture in the southeast of Inner Mongolia and the Yangshao culture in the eastern Guanzhong, southern Jin, and western Henan neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Jin, and Henan, the Liangzhu culture in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the northern part of the Jianghan Plain in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and the Qujialing in the western part of the Dongting Lake Plain. The rise and subsequent decline of the Shijiahe culture, the rise and subsequent decline of the Longshan culture in the Haidai area of the North China Plain and the late Longshan culture in the Central Plains [2]. This article refers to the first, second, and third (wave) rise and fall, respectively. The regional rise and fall of these three complex societies occurred in different times and regions, but they were all closely related to the original agricultural economic and cultural zones under the natural geographical regions in which they were located.
The areas where the three ups and downs occurred were in the northern region, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the North China Plain, which were the core areas for the occurrence and early development of China's Neolithic agricultural culture. In terms of agricultural geography, these three areas are semi-agricultural and semi-pastoral, rice farming, and dry-farming, but they only began to emerge at the end of the Neolithic period, that is, the "Longshan-Erlitou period", and gradually formed in the historical period [3]. Previously, there was no animal husbandry to raise herbivorous livestock such as cattle and sheep in northern China, and there was still a considerable proportion of rice farming in northern China. In other words, this was not the case in China's native agricultural areas before the Longshan period, when the northern region, the North China Plain, and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River were dryland, rice, and rice, respectively. At the same time, in these three native agricultural areas, the native regional culture of the Neolithic Age was also formed, and cultural systems with regional characteristics such as living utensils, settlement houses, livelihood economy, and spiritual beliefs appeared. The social groups that carry these regional cultures have undergone a transformation from simple and egalitarian societies to complex societies. Each region can be further subdivided into two sub-regions, east and west, according to geographical and cultural factors, the Loess Plateau and Yanliao in the north, the Central Plains and Haidai in North China, and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. In the Neolithic primitive agricultural stage, cultural development and social flourishing occurred in each of these six regions, but the decline was zonal. This shows that the division of the three regions of zonal is more important.
The Yanliao district in the eastern part of the northern region is supposed to be the place where China's native dryland agriculture took place, and the Neolithic agriculture here occurred very early, dating back to millet and millet flotation from the Donghulin site in Beijing about 10,000 years ago [4]. In recent years, the Yumin culture in the Bashang area, which was discovered dating back to 8,500 years ago, also produced millet and millet [5]. Subsequently, the Xinglongwa culture began to form a dryland agriculture based on millet and millet cultivation. The Yanliao area is a simple dry farming area, but there is still a large proportion of gathering and hunting in the Hongshan culture period. The Loess Plateau in the western part of the northern region is not the earliest origin of native agriculture in China, and the Laoguantai culture that appeared here 7,500 years ago should be the result of the westward spread of the culture from the eastern region along the Yellow River and its tributaries, and then the Hougang culture from northern China was introduced, and then evolved into the Yangshao culture. The Yangshao culture was dominated by millet in the early period, and in the middle period it was transformed into dryland agriculture dominated by millet, but a small amount of rice was also found in the east [6] and as far west as the Guanzhong area [7]. Before the early Yangshao period, the meat source was mainly deer, but in the middle period, it changed to pigs, and the number of identifiable specimens of domestic pigs at the Xipo site reached 84% [8]. It can be seen that there should have been a mature agricultural economy in the middle of Yangshao. No matter how many archaeological cultures have been divided in different periods and different regions in the northern region, they all have the following commonalities: before the middle period of Yangshao culture, flat-bottomed pots have always been used as cooking utensils; after entering the Yangshao period, there are relatively developed painted pottery; the living mode is highly consistent, whether it is Yanliao District or the Loess Plateau, semi-crypt houses have always been used as the main residential houses, and the houses are surrounded by moats to form settlements.
It was in the middle of Yangshao, where agriculture matured, that highly concentrated and dense large-scale settlements and their complex societies appeared simultaneously in the Yanliao and Loess Plateau regions, with the former concentrated in western Liaoning and Chifeng in Inner Mongolia, and the latter concentrated in eastern Guanzhong, southern Jinnan and western Henan. In western Liaoning and southeastern Inner Mongolia, the number of Hongshan cultural settlements is 10 times that of before, and there are hundreds of thousands or even millions of square meters of large settlements. The number of settlements in the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan has increased by about three times, and the area of ruins has increased by more than 10 times that of the previous one, with large settlements of hundreds of thousands or even two million square meters. The two regions declined at the same time in the late Yangshao period. Later, the Xiaoheyan culture in western Liaoning and southeastern Inner Mongolia regressed to a level similar to that of the Xinglongwa culture period. The decline in Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan was not so severe, but large settlements disappeared and returned to small social groups. The previously bright semi-crypt and ground-type wood-boned mud-walled houses were gradually abandoned, the Guanzhong area was the first to inhabit small caves, and gradually expanded to the entire Loess Plateau, and the painted pottery was also the first to disappear in the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan, reflecting the overall social, economic and cultural decline. This is the general picture of the rise and fall of the first wave of complex societies.
In the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, as early as about 10,000 years ago, there were settled villages and the use of rice plants. Subsequently, the Xiaohuangshan and Cross-Huqiao cultures in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the Pengtou Mountain in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and the Chengbeixi culture in the lower layer of Sooshi were all found to have traces of rice farming. There are clues that the domestication of rice was completed in the late Majiabang culture in the downstream area, and a large area of rice fields was found at the Chengtoushan site in the middle reaches of the river during the same period [9]. In the Songze culture period and the Liangzhu culture period, large areas of contiguous rice fields were found in the Yuyao Shiao site and the Linping Maoshan site. With an area of nearly 100 hectares, Shi'ao paddy field should already be a high-level intensive agriculture. At the same time, the meat resources of Songze and Liangzhu periods were also dominated by domestic pigs. The Liangzhu culture in the Taihu Lake region also has the most complex specialized stone tools in the entire Neolithic period. In the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the Neolithic period first used a kettle, and then a tripod as a cooking vessel. In the early days, the residential houses should have been ground-type wooden and mud walls, and adobe buildings were generally popular in the Qujialing and Liangzhu culture periods [10]. In the early period, there were many ring moat settlements, and the city site appeared in the middle reaches of the Youziling culture period at the latest. It was also during the mature period of rice agriculture that the Songze-Lingjiatan culture emerged as complex societies as those in Hanshan Lingjiatan and Zhangjiagang Dongshan Village. Subsequently, the Taihu Lake area reached the peak of Neolithic social development during the Liangzhu culture period and the Lianghu area during the Qujialing-Shijiahe culture period. Dense ruins appeared on the east, north, and south sides of the Taihu Lake, with the largest Liangzhu site group covering an area of 42 square kilometers and 135 sites [11]. In the area of the two lakes, there are dense city sites at the southern foot of Dahong Mountain and the western part of Dongting Lake, and the largest Shijiahe site covers an area of 8 square kilometers. In the late Liangzhu culture and the late Shijiahe culture, these two areas declined at the same time, and by the Qianshanyang-Guangfulin culture and the post-Shijiahe culture period, the number of sites was very small and there were no large settlements, and the level of feeding economy regressed, and the entire north bank of the Yangtze River became the expansion area of the contemporaneous culture in the North China Plain. This is the rise and fall of the second wave of complex societies.
Millet and millet have been found at the 9000-year-old Zhangmatun site in the Haidai area of the North China Plain, and rice has been found in other later Houli culture sites, and this area has been a mixed agriculture of drought and rice until the Longshan culture period [12]. In the Central Plains, about 8,500 years ago, when the first phase of Jiahu Lake was about 8,500 years ago, the Huaihe-Hanshui basin was completely rice farming, and there was no sign of millet and millet. In the Peiligang culture period, there should have been a mixture of dry farming and rice, but then the proportion of dry farming gradually increased, and millet dry farming was the main agriculture in the Longshan culture period [13]. In the Neolithic Age, the agricultural types in North China were not very stable, and although the details of the changes were not clear, they were generally characterized by a high proportion of westerly and northerly dry farming, and a high proportion of easterly and southerly rice farming, which can be called mixed farming areas. In the early and middle Neolithic period in North China, pots were used in the central plains in the west, and kettles were used as cooking utensils in the Haidai region in the east. After the Peiligang culture, both areas changed to use tripods as cooking utensils. Roughly before the first phase of the Beixin and Hougang cultures, the common residential houses in North China were semi-crypt houses, but the style was not as regular as the semi-crypt houses in the same period in the northern region, and they became wooden and mud-walled row houses or courtyards in the middle of the Yangshao culture and the early Dawenkou culture, and the adobe houses were mainly in the Longshan culture period. The evolution of residential housing is different from that of the northern region and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, but it is clear that it has been influenced by the long-term influence of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. In the early days, the settlements were mostly surrounded by moats, and rammed earth city ruins were also seen from the Longshan period.
The Central Plains of the North China Plain was once the most socially and culturally developed area in the middle of the Neolithic Age, and many large settlements of more than 100,000 square meters were discovered in the Houli-Shunshanji culture, and the area of the Xinzheng Tanghu site of the Peiligang culture even reached 300,000 square meters [14], which is the largest known for the same period, but the group has not yet reached the level of inequality, and soon declined. Later, large-scale entrenchment settlements of hundreds of thousands to more than one million square meters, such as Wanggou, Qingtai, and Shuanghuaishu, appeared in the Zhengluo area of the Central Plains during the Dahecun culture period [15], and these complex social groups also declined in the early period of the Longshan culture in the Central Plains (late Dawenkou culture). By the late Longshan culture in the Central Plains and the early and middle Longshan culture in the Haidai area, North China reached the peak of the local Neolithic social and cultural development. A large number of city ruins have been found in the Central Plains, among which the relatively large ones are five or six hundred thousand square meters, and the ruins of Yuzhou Wadian can reach millions of square meters. The largest settlements are found in the Haidai area, such as Linzi Tonglin and Rizhao Yaowangcheng ruins, both of which have two to three million square meters. The decline of North China was in the late period of the Haidai Longshan culture [16], especially in the southeast, and the number of sites in the late Longshan period in southeastern Shandong is only 1% of the previous one. This is the rise and fall of the third wave of complex societies. As far as the whole region of North China is concerned, this wave of decline continued until the Erlitou cultural period, and only the westernmost Luoyang Basin was revived during the Erlitou cultural period.
2. What is the scale of complex societies in the three regions?
Complex societies refer to the inequality and even stratified and large social groups that emerged after the Neolithic Age, and the research so far shows that complex societies are rarely isolated, generally appear in groups, and are competitive societies, such as the late Hongshan culture, the middle Yangshao culture, the Liangzhu culture, the Qujialing-Shijiahe culture, the Haidai Longshan culture, and the Central Plains Longshan culture. The overall rise and fall of the three regions occurred after the emergence of complex social groups, but the period of decline varied, and the scale of society reached before the decline varied.
From a global perspective, clan-tribal societies should have emerged since the Upper Paleolithic, as shown at the Göbekli site in Turkey, but there is no data available for observation of the Late Paleolithic in China. The clan and tribal societies of the early and middle Neolithic period in China are relatively clear, especially the Xinglongwa culture in Yanliao District and the early Yangshao culture on the Loess Plateau are the most abundant. During these two periods, a number of encircled settlements were excavated, and the houses in the encirclement were symmetrically arranged around a large house in the center, with the smallest settlement covering an area of 10,000 square meters, accommodating about 25 residential houses, and was a clan commune with a population of about 100 people [17]. The clan commune was the smallest and most basic social unit in the society at that time, but the clan society did not exist alone, and it was necessary to form tribes and even tribal alliances with other clan communes through marriage. Xinglongwa culture and Houli culture have found many settlements with an area of more than 100,000 square meters, and the area of the Tang household ruins of Peiligang culture even reaches 300,000 square meters, according to which it can be estimated that the population of a large clan-tribal society can be as many as more than 1,000 people. As seen in the Xinglongwa culture, the core of this clan-tribal social belief is ancestor worship, and each clan and tribe has its own honored ancestors. In neither the settlements nor the tombs, inequalities based on individuals or groups have been found, and in terms of social power, they are egalitarian societies.
The northern region reached its most prosperous period in the late Hongshan culture and the middle Yangshao culture at the same time. Dense ruins were found in the western Liaoning-southeastern Inner Mongolia and the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Shanxi, and Henan during this period. A total of 103 settlements of this period have been found in the Lingbao Basin, including a medium-sized settlement like the Xipo site every 3~5 km, and a large settlement of 50~700,000 square meters every 10~20 km [18]. The largest area of Zhoujiazhuang site in Jiangxian County, Jinnan can reach 2 million square meters. Although the late Hongshan period did not reach such a level, it is said that there are more than one million square meters of ruins [19]. There are 100,000 square meters of Tongliao Hamin ruins in the marginal area of Hongshan culture, and there are dense semi-crypt-style houses in the ring moat. The population of a large settlement of more than a million square meters may be close to 10,000, but such sites have not been excavated, and it is impossible to know their social conditions. Gaoling Yangguanzhai has an area of 250,000 square meters in the ring moat, and there are 90,000 square meters of cemetery outside the moat, and it is estimated that 2,000 tombs have been buried, and more than 300 have been cleaned up so far, most of which can only accommodate people, and there are no burial goods [20]. The 400,000-square-meter site on the western slope has been cleared out of a cemetery outside its ring moat, and there are more than 30 tombs, most of which are large tombs with coffin chambers and complete sets of burial utensils [21], indicating that even such medium-sized settlements have been socially divided. In the late Hongshan culture, the large stone mounds represented by Niuheliang are even more different from the cemeteries of ordinary settlements. However, judging from the content of stone mounds and tomb sacrifices in the late Hongshan culture, the social beliefs of this period still continued the previous ancestor worship, but the tombs were built higher and larger, and the statues of ancestral gods were even three times larger than real people[22], which fully shows the increasingly fierce competition between social groups at that time. This competitive, unequal, stratified society can be tentatively called a "chiefdom".
At the same time as the middle Yangshao period and the late Hongshan period, large ring moat settlements with an area of hundreds of thousands or even millions of square meters also appeared in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, among which the large tombs in Lingjiatan [23] and Dongshan Village [24] of Zhangjiagang showed more obvious social differentiation than those in the middle Yangshao period and the late Hongshan period, and should be roughly the same chiefdom society. Subsequently, a number of ruins composed of multiple settlements were discovered in the Liangzhu culture in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River around Taihu Lake, the largest of which is the Yuhang Liangzhu ruins in the southern part of Taihu Lake. The site complex is located in the northern part of a C-shaped basin with an area of more than 800 square kilometers and open to the east, north of Hangzhou. The ruins cover an area of more than 40 square kilometers. Eleven new dams have been discovered in the gaps in the mountains to the north of the basin, and the water conservancy system formed by the dams covers 100 square kilometers of land where the site group is located. In the middle of the ruins, there is a 3 million square meter city site, and in the middle of the city, there is a 300,000 square meters, about 10 meters high, Mojiao Mountain, on which groups of large building foundations are found. In the anti-mountain cemetery in the northwest corner of Mojiao Mountain, there are 9 large-scale tombs of the early and middle Liangzhu culture, among which the largest tomb has more than 600 pieces of jade and jade-inlaid lacquerware. There are hundreds of small settlements scattered around the periphery of the site, including smaller, but closer-to-anti-mountain, high-level cemeteries such as Huiguan Mountain and Yao Mountain. The Liangzhu ruins also have a great influence on the surrounding society, and the jade produced here is widely found in the Taihu Lake area. Similar sites include Tongxiang-Haining, Linping, Deqing, Haiyan-Pinghu, Wuxian-Kunshan, Qingpu, and Changzhou Sidun sites [25], of which the Linping site group is only 20 km away from the Liangzhu site group. The Liangzhu settlement is large in scale, covering an area comparable to that of Yinxu, and the large-scale earth and stone works such as the dam, the city circle and the Mojiao Mountain show that the Liangzhu society has a high degree of organization. In the layout of the ancient city of Liangzhu, Mojiao Mountain, the center of social power, was placed in the center, which had the landscape characteristics of the later "imperial city". The "Divine Emblem" that appears on the Yue and Cong in the anti-mountain tomb in the northwest corner of Mojiao Mountain is already a symbol of social power with divinity. The population of the entire complex can reach tens of thousands [26]. It can be said that there is a justification for considering the Liangzhu settlement as an early state [27]. However, the relationship between such an early state and the surrounding settlements needs to be further studied.
At the same time as the Liangzhu culture, large and small settlements were also found in the northern part of the Jianghan Plain and the western part of Dongting Lake in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. There are 192 sites of the Shijiahe culture period found along the large and small rivers in the Liyang Plain, and there is one less than 5 kilometers [28], and nearly 20 of these settlements have been found in the city site alone, with a spacing of 10~20 kilometers, and most of the direct territories of the city site are dozens or even hundreds of square kilometers. Among them, the largest Hubei Tianmen Shijiahe ruins group covers an area of 8 square kilometers, the Shijiahe ruins built in the middle of the ruins group cover an area of 1.2 million square meters, the bottom of the city wall is nearly 100 meters wide, the moat is 60~80 meters wide, and it is still seen on the surface. In the middle of the castle, a large building foundation was found. There are more than 30 small settlements outside the city, and the remains of courtyards have been found, and there are cemeteries of the same period next to the courtyards [29]. Although the scale of Shijiahe City is not as large as that of Liangzhu, it is also the largest in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River known to be in this period.
There is no material to observe the extent to which the society in the North China Plain region reached the early stage of the Dawenkou culture (the middle Yangshao culture). In the late period of Dahecun culture (late Yangshao culture), a number of large-scale encircled moat settlements of 70~1.2 million square meters were found in Zhengzhou, such as Shuanghuaishu, Dahecun and Wanggou, and there are also large-scale sites such as Huating and Dawenkou in Shandong and northern Jiangsu, which should reach or approach the level of the previous Yangshao culture in the middle of Shaanxi, Jin, Henan and Songze-Lingjiatan culture. These large settlements in Zhengzhou declined in the early stage of the Longshan culture in the Central Plains, that is, the late period of the Dawenkou culture. In the late period of Longshan culture in the Central Plains, a large number of city sites were found in the Central Plains, but the largest area was only five or six hundred thousand square meters, generally about one or two hundred thousand square meters, and smaller city sites such as Haojiatai and Huaiyang Pingliangtai in Yuncheng, the city was the middle road, the layout of adobe row houses on both sides, and it was only a relatively large village. The largest settlements were found in the early and middle period of Longshan culture in Haidai, Shandong, such as the two towns of Rizhao, Yaowangcheng and Linzi Tonglin, the city sites on these sites or the settlements around the city, the area is more than one million square meters, and Yaowangcheng even reaches 4 million square meters. However, most of these castle sites are triple castles that have gradually developed. Some researchers believe that the site of the two towns covers an area of 740,000 square meters, and although Yaowangcheng has an area of 4 million square meters, there are large areas of open space inside, and the population size of the two should be about the same, and they are both city-state societies [30]. It's just that what kind of social organization such a city-state is needs to be further studied. At the same time, the site of the Shenmu Shiyuan Castle on the Loess Plateau was also in the form of a triple city, but the triple city was once at the same time, and the imperial city platform in the middle was obviously a "city within a city"[31], which was the same social landscape as the Mojiao Mountain in the middle of the ancient city of Liangzhu. There are no similar discoveries at the ruins of Haidai Longshan Cities. By the time of the Erlitou cultural period, although the Erlitou site was only 3 million square meters, a 100,000-square-meter "palace city" [32] was found in the center, and if this "palace city" could have been established, it might have reached the level of an early state such as Shiyuan, but it still could not be compared with the social scale of the ancient city of Liangzhu.
3. The regional decline of complex societies and after their decline
If the rise of these complex societies is inevitable in the development of agricultural societies, it is difficult to find a single cause for their decline. Worldwide, the decline of early complex societies is a regular occurrence in all native agricultural areas, but there is no satisfactory answer to the question of why complex societies decline [33]. Moreover, what is decline, is it social, economic, or cultural, and the causes of decline are environmental or social, and it is difficult to accurately assess them at the time [34]. The rise and fall of the above-mentioned three waves of complex societies occurred at different times, in different native agricultural areas, and at different times the complexity of their respective societies and the degree of decline were also different, but there were also some commonalities. The decline of the Hongshan culture in the Yanliao region, the Yangshao period in the Shaanxi-Jin-Henan border area, the Qujialing-Shijiahe and Liangzhu cultures in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the Longshan culture in the eastern part of the North China Plain occurred in the northern dry farming area, the rice farming area in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the mixed farming area in North China, respectively. Complex societies emerge in clusters in each region, and each region obviously has its own specific economic model or path dependence on feeding, and complements other economic and cultural links to maximize benefits. Many complex social groups within the region are highly isomorphic in terms of resources, economic and cultural models, and there must be fierce competition between them in terms of resources, society, economy and culture.
In contrast, the northern region is the most fragile among the three regions, and some previous studies have suggested that the environmental aridification of Yanliao region has caused the decline of Hongshan culture. However, there is still insufficient evidence for the complex societies of the late Hongshan period in the Yanliao region and the middle Yangshao period in the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Jin, and Henan, and the distance between east and west, and whether environmental changes affected such a large area at the same time. Both regions have a single dryland farming system, with millet as the main crop and then millet, and the only meat sources are pigs, which compete with humans for food, and the proportion of hunter-gatherers is relatively high. In both Yangshao and Hongshan cultures, the residential houses were semi-crypt and required a large amount of wood, especially in the middle of Yangshao, when the houses were built larger and larger, and the demand for timber naturally increased [35]. A prominent social phenomenon in complex societies is the intensification of social and natural resource competition between communities. As far as the Hongshan culture is concerned, the competition for social resources is very obvious, and each community has built its own ancestral statues and sacrificial buildings (cemeteries) to strengthen the cohesion of the community, and this competition has brought a large amount of additional natural resources, forming a vicious circle. In the middle of Yangshao, large semi-crypt buildings can be seen in various settlements, and local excavations on the western slope found a number of buildings of more than 200 square meters, and the largest area can reach more than 500 square meters, which is also the result of social competition. After the society reached the most prosperous stage in the middle of Yangshao, the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan in the eastern part of the Loess Plateau took the lead in decline, while other areas of the Loess Plateau, such as the Haishengbulang culture in the Hetao area and the Majiayao culture in the Ganqing area, still continued the tradition of Yangshao culture and continued to develop for hundreds of years in the late Yangshao period, which can show that it was the fierce social competition that caused the decline of Yangshao in the middle period. Similarly, the decline of the Hongshan culture was also in the most socially competitive places in western Liaoning and southeastern Inner Mongolia.
Although there is a small amount of millet agriculture in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, it is more like a single rice farming area, especially in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River around the Taihu Lake, which has always had a tradition of relying on aquatic environmental resources, and to the Liangzhu culture period, it is specialized into a highly dependent rice production industry, not only with large-scale paddy fields as evidence, but also the most diverse stone tools in the Neolithic Age of the whole China, including a large number of reclamation, The cultivation of farmland and the tools used for cultivation such as harvesting show that the Liangzhu culture had the characteristics of intensive agriculture in paddy fields, which was the most developed in the Neolithic period. The Liangzhu period also relied heavily on raising pigs as a source of meat. Due to the particularly large labor input in paddy field agriculture and the large labor force required for large-scale water conservancy projects and construction projects, the society in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River is more inclined to settle and stabilize as a labor-intensive society. At the same time, due to the convenience of waterway transportation, the transportation of various resources is convenient, which is more conducive to the generation of large-scale agricultural social groups. At the same time as the middle Yangshao and the late Hongshan period, the Lingjiatan site was already the largest settlement at that time, with an area of 1.10~1.4 million square meters enclosed by the double ring moat that has been preserved to this day, and it is likely that half of the southern part of the settlement was washed away by the Yuxi River. Later, the Shijiahe civilization in the Lianghu area and the Liangzhu civilization in the Taihu Lake area far exceeded the social scale of the Shaanxi, Jin, and Henan neighboring areas in the middle of Yangshao and the late Hongshan culture. The simultaneous decline of the Liangzhu culture and the Shijiahe culture was about 600 years later than the first wave, and the complex society lasted for a longer time, during which the social competition was not weaker than that in other regions, and the reason for this should be that the potential of rice agriculture was greater than that of dry farming.
The social development of North China is more complex, in contrast, the development of Haidai District is relatively stable, and the cultural and social development level of Dahe Village, which developed at the same time as the Liangzhu culture in the Central Plains, is at most equivalent to the middle Yangshao period in the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Jin, and Henan, and soon declined at the same time as the Liangzhu culture and Shijiahe culture, and it was not until the late period of the Longshan culture in the Central Plains that it reached the heyday of the complex society in the region together with the Haidai District, and declined together in the late period of the Haidai Longshan culture, and the development speed and degree of development were not as fast as the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
The three waves of decline in the three regions are the overall decline of the region closely related to the specific environmental, economic and cultural areas, and the comprehensive decline of the social structure, population, economy and culture of the complex society. However, the timing and roads of subsequent restoration in the three regions are not the same. The first wave of decline in the northern region, the Hongshan culture in the Yanliao area degenerated into a small riverside culture, and the way of livelihood, house style and even basic utensils did not change much, from the end of the Hongshan culture to the beginning of the Xiajiadian culture, which lasted for thousands of years, and never recovered, until the emergence of the lower culture of Xiajiadian. In the second wave of the decline of Shijiahe culture and Liangzhu culture in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River became the marginal area for the expansion of Longshan culture and Erlitou culture in North China, and then it did not recover to the population and economic development level of Shijiahe culture and Liangzhu culture period, and there were no large-scale settlements and influential cultures, until the late Shang Dynasty, under the influence of Shang culture, it was recovered, and it also experienced thousands of years.
Only the Loess Plateau after the first wave of decline is different. After the decline of complex societies in the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan, although large settlements disappeared, the population did not seem to have decreased significantly. In the following Yangshao period, it was re-dispersed into small communities, and the livelihood economy declined significantly, and the faience pottery first disappeared in the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Jin, and Henan, indicating that the culture here also declined, and the large semi-crypt houses in the settlements were replaced by simple caves. By the time of the second phase of Miaodigou, the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Jin, and Henan took the lead in the emergence of a new type of culture represented by cave-like settlements and empty three-legged vessels. The emergence of empty three-legged ware was once called a "revolution" by Zhang Zhongpei[36], but this "revolution" was not led by the change of pottery. Different from the Yangshao semi-crypt house settlements distributed along the river valley terraces, the cave settlements of the new culture of the second phase of Miaodigou are located on the slopes of mountains or even on the top of the mountain, which is detached from the landscape pattern of the original Yangshao culture in the early and middle stages of the settlements that can only use the river valley terraces, so that the second phase of Miaodigou - the lower culture of Changshan can penetrate deep into the hinterland of the Loess Plateau, and gradually replace the Majiayao belonging to the Yangshao tradition from the late Yangshao period to the west and north to the west and north. The Machang culture and the Haisheng Bulang culture drove the Majiayao-Banshan-Machang culture distributed in the northwest of the Loess Plateau to expand to the Hexi Corridor and even the eastern part of Xinjiang, where it encountered the Afanashevo culture from the Eurasian steppe and the subsequent Chemurchek culture that entered the northern part of Xinjiang 5,000 years ago. The economic culture of the original dry farming on the Loess Plateau began to have a stable contact with the culture on the western side of Eurasia. During the Longshan period, the Loess Plateau began to raise a large number of herbivorous livestock such as cattle and sheep from the west, and also began to absorb bronze metallurgy, forming a new type of semi-agricultural and semi-pastoral agriculture that was connected with the entire Eurasian continent. The second phase of Miaodigou began from the "New Culture Movement" in the southeast of the Loess Plateau to the early Longshan-Qijia culture and spread rapidly throughout the Loess Plateau, and in just four or five hundred years, it first gave birth to the early Lushan Pass in Yan'an [37] and the early Xiangfen Tao Temple [38], and then grew into a larger large-scale social group such as Shiyuan. Subsequently, during the Erlitou culture period, this new type of culture also appeared in the Yanliao area, that is, the lower culture of Xiajiadian. The prosperity of the lower culture of Xiajiadian broke out suddenly in the local area, and the density of settlements was even higher than that of the Luoyang Basin, the core area of Erlitou culture in the same period. At this point, the entire northern region was fully revived.
The third wave of decline in North China began in the late Longshan period in the east and continued throughout the Erlitou culture period, during which the Erlitou culture in the Luoyang Basin was revived, but it was limited to Zhengluo and its surroundings, and the revival of the North China Plain as a whole was after the Erligang Shang culture. The Shang culture that emerged in North China, with the use of the mustache as a tool, developed bronze metallurgy, and a large number of herbivorous livestock such as cattle and sheep, is in the same vein as the new cultural body of the Loess Plateau, the Yanliao region and the northern North China (Hebei) Shiyuan culture, Qijia culture, Keshengzhuang Phase II culture, Xiajiadian lower culture and Xiaqiyuan culture. The Shang culture covered the North China Plain in the early Shang Dynasty, and its tentacles even reached the Yangtze River basin, and under the continuous expansion of the subsequent Late Shang and Western Zhou cultures, the lower reaches of the Yangtze River were gradually restored to the economic and cultural level of the Shijiahe culture and Liangzhu culture. Therefore, it can be said that it was the first new type of culture in the Miaodigou Phase II-Longshan period that appeared on the Loess Plateau, which gradually ended the decline of the three waves of native agricultural culture on the Loess Plateau, Yanliao region, North China and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Taking the opportunity of the decline of the complex society in the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan, and the geographical conditions close to the western side of the Eurasian continent, the new culture of the Miaodigou Phase II - Longshan period introduced new crops such as barley, wheat, sheep, goats, cattle (and horses after the Shang Dynasty), and herbivorous livestock, as well as bronze metallurgy, which opened a new economic and cultural model in China's Bronze Age. This new type of economic culture is connected with the entire Eurasian continent and is no longer the three types of economic culture native to the Neolithic period in China.
4. How far did China's proto-Neolithic society go
If it had not been for the emergence of a new type of integrated economy on the Loess Plateau and even in the northern region of Eurasia, China's original agricultural culture would have been developed in isolation, and to what extent would its social carrier have been able to reach? As far as the situation of the three major agricultural origins of West Asia, China, and the Americas is concerned, complex societies began to emerge about four or five thousand years after the origin of agriculture, but there are many varieties of agricultural crops in West Asia, and there are also cattle and sheep and other herbivores in addition to pigs, plus horses can provide animal power in the future, and there is a "revolution in agricultural and sideline products" potential, and at a very early age began to have metallurgy. In contrast, both China and the Americas have a single variety of agricultural crops, and neither has large livestock to provide animal power. The original agricultural civilization of the Americas has two systems, Central America and South America, both of which lasted until 1492, during which there was a written Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica, and the Aztec civilization rose less than a thousand years after the decline of the Mayan civilization, and the Andean civilization also developed in South America. In terms of the system of primary agriculture alone, China's original agricultural civilization is more similar to the original agricultural civilization of the Americas, and the heights that have been reached have all been produced in the Liangzhu-style labor-intensive society. However, there is no comparison between the native agricultural civilization of China and the Americas, the two native agricultural systems of the Americas occurred in the Andes Mountains of Central America and South America respectively, and the distance between the two is far away, and their respective hinterlands are narrow and cramped; China's rice farming and dry farming in the south and north are very close to each other, and both have a broad space for development, and if China's native agricultural civilization continues to develop, it will be different from the situation in the Americas. However, history does not give us a chance to examine.
From the perspective of the development path of the world's native agricultural areas, the emergence of a complex prehistoric society in China is inevitable, but the development is not linear. The development of China's agricultural civilization has gone through a more complex process, involving the interaction of many aspects, such as environmental and geographical conditions, types of agricultural economy, adaptability of agricultural culture, development speed of different agricultural cultures, transformation after the decline of complex societies, and its relationship with the agricultural economy and agricultural society on the western side of Eurasia. Roughly in the middle of the Neolithic Age, the northern and southern regions of China's agricultural development core areas and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River became dry farming areas and rice farming areas respectively, and the North China Plain between these two agricultural areas had both dry farming and rice farming, but the proportion of dry farming and rice farming in different regions was different in different periods and was not stable enough. The three industrial economic zones are also different in terms of living style and daily utensils, but they are stable for a long time within the three zones, showing long-term cultural adaptability, forming three agricultural economic and cultural systems in the development of China's native agriculture, and at the same time starting the process of social complexity. In the middle period of Yangshao culture on the Loess Plateau, the late Hongshan culture in Yanliao area, the early Dawenkou culture in Haidai area, the Youziling culture period in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and the Lingjiatan-Songze culture period in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the first batch of complex societies at the level of chiefdoms were produced in the three regions almost simultaneously. The first batch of complex societies lasted only 500 years before they declined, but only the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Jin, and Henan in the northern region and the late Hongshan culture were regional declines, which this paper calls the first wave of regional rise and fall of complex societies. In the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, chiefdoms such as Lingjiatan also "declined" during the same period, but this decline should be different from that in the north, such as the jade culture of the upper class of Lingjiatan society did not disappear, and then a larger Liangzhu community suddenly emerged in the southern part of Taihu Lake, where the Songze culture was not very developed, and its upper social culture continued the previous Lingjiatan tradition. Liangzhu and other settlements represent a group of new social groups that emerged during the Liangzhu culture period, as well as the Qujialing-Shijiahe culture in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River during the same period. These new social groups were concentrated in the northern, eastern and southern parts of Taihu Lake in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and in the northern and western parts of the Lianghu Plain in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The Liangzhu and Qujialing-Shijiahe cultures in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River lasted for 600 years before the regional overall decline occurred, which is called the regional rise and fall of the second wave of complex societies in this paper. The situation in the North China Plain is somewhat more complex, and the evidence for discovery and research is insufficient. According to the current findings, in the late period of the Dahecun culture at the same time as the Liangzhu culture, there was a complex society like the double locust tree in the Central Plains, which may have reached the level of the middle Yangshao in the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Jin, and Henan, but the Longshan culture in the Central Plains declined as a whole in the early stage. The cultural continuity of the Haidai area is stronger, in the Longshan culture period after the Dawenkou culture, both the Central Plains and the Haidai area have produced a number of larger social groups, the largest of these social groups such as Tonglin, Liangcheng, Yaowangcheng and even a little later Erlitou may be able to reach the same level of Taosi and Shiyuan in the same period, but not as good as Liangzhu. These complex social groups lasted for about four to five hundred years, and also experienced an overall decline during the late Longshan-Erlitou cultural period, which this paper calls the regional rise and fall of the third wave of complex societies.
The overall decline of a regionally complex society is very different from the rise and fall of individual communities, and is often characterized by a large decline in the regional population, socio-economic regression, the disappearance of large communities, and the cultural rupture of the upper elite of society. Such a decline should be related to the emergence of complex social groups in relatively small areas, fierce social competition, and the depletion of social resources. And since these three waves of fading are zonal and simultaneous, they may be related to the zonal changes of the environment. The Yanliao region after the first wave of decline and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River after the second wave of decline did not undergo any fundamental socio-economic and cultural changes, and both lasted for about a thousand years and could not be recovered. Only the Loess Plateau declined in the late Yangshao period, and soon after that, a sustained "New Culture Movement" took place. In the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan, the alternative living methods that appeared after the decline - cave settlements are more resource-saving than the previous Yangshao semi-crypt houses, and are also more suitable for the geographical conditions of the Loess Plateau, which makes the subsequent settlements of the second phase of Miaodigou deeper into the hinterland of the Loess Plateau, driving the follow-up culture of the late Yangshao period (Majiayao, Banshan, Machang) in the northwest into the Hexi Corridor, and thus has long been in contact with the culture on the west side of the Eurasian continent from the Eurasian steppe and even the southern part of Central Asia (oasis). During the Qijia culture period, a semi-agricultural and semi-pastoral agricultural culture was formed, and then occupied the entire Loess Plateau. Miaodi ditch phase II— The change of Shiyuan culture (early Qijia) is not only to change several utensils, but also from the way of living to the comprehensive change of livelihood, but also the transformation of resource utilization and development mode, this new culture is more adapted to the environment and landscape of the Loess Plateau and the northern region, so in about 400 years, it witnessed the early rise of Lushan Pass and Taosi, and then there was a larger social group like the ancient city of Shiyuan, and then in the Erlitou period, it was transferred to the Yanliao area, and there was a more considerable social and cultural explosion in the lower culture period of Xiajiadian。 The emergence of the lower-class culture of Xiajiadian in Yanliao area is obviously not something that can be achieved by the sustainable development of the original Hongshan-Xiaoheyan culture.
The rise and fall of the Longshan-Erlitou culture in the North China Plain coincided with the emerging culture of the lower classes of Shiyuan and Qijia-Xiajiadian in the northern region, but until the late decline of the Longshan culture, the traditional native agricultural culture of the North China Plain had not undergone great changes, and it can still be regarded as the third wave of decline of the native agricultural culture. This decline continued to the Erlitou period, and only the Luoyang Basin once had a large social group like Erlitou until the arrival of the Erligang-Yinxu Shang culture period. The direct predecessor of the Erligang-Yinxu Shang culture, which replaced the Erlitou culture, is a new type of culture in the northern region. With the Shang culture spreading throughout North China and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, China's native agricultural Neolithic culture ceased to exist, and China's Bronze Age was fully opened. History only gave time for the three waves of regional rise and fall of China's original Neolithic culture, during which the three agricultural cultural regions where the three agricultural cultural systems were located had given birth to regional complex societies, and the most prosperous Chinese, the largest population, and the largest social group were obviously the Liangzhu culture and the early Liangzhu state in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, followed by the Qujialing-Shijiahe culture and Shijiahe community in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and the social groups in the Longshan-Erlitou cultural period had not reached such a level. This shows that in China's native agricultural areas, rice farming can support a larger society, water conservancy and transportation can also solve the flow of materials needed in social competition, and social groups are relatively more stable. Without the emergence of the "New Culture Movement" in the northern region and the revival of China's native agricultural culture after three waves of decline, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River would still be a potential area for the emergence of the largest social groups, although this did not happen. In any case, in the actual course of China's Neolithic history, in terms of the heights that China's original agricultural society once reached, the Liangzhu civilization went the farthest.
Author: Zhang Chi (Professor, School of Archaeology, Culture and Museums, Peking University)
Source: Cultural Relics, Issue 6, 2023