The need for rain had also led to primitive worship of other animals that live in the water, such as carp and crocodiles, whose features were added into the incarnation of dragon. Through centuries, Chinese ancestors living in different regions continued to enrich the dragon image with features of their familiar animals.
For example, human society flourished along the Liaohe River in northeast China and added characteristics of their familiar animal -- hog -- into the dragon image. People in central China created cow-dragon, and people in north China region, which is in the present-day Shanxi Province, produced snake-dragon.
Despite minor variations, the holistic image of dragon has come down from generation to generation, which has come to be the common identity of all the Chinese. China is known as the "land of the dragon" and the Chinese people regard themselves as "children of the dragon. Discuss It. Among the artifacts from the sites of the Peiligang-Cishan Culture in north China, millstones for husking millet are quite common.
The Hemudu site, about 7, years old, was one of the earliest New Stone Age locations along the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Archaeological studies have proved that the area of Hemudu at the time was covered under large tracts of marshland, providing suitable conditions for cultivating rice and developing farming.
At the sites, indications of rice cultivation are in great abundance, as piles of rice grains, husks, stalks and leaves have been found there.
In some places, the piles were one meter high. Examinations reveal that the rice grown at Hemudu was long-grained non-glutinous rice, and is the earliest example of artificially-cultivated rice that has been found in China to date.
The relics are also the oldest rice found so far in Asia. This verifies that China was one of the key areas in the world where rice cultivation originated and reflects the advance of farming along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River during the New Stone Age. During the Spring and Autumn Period BC , two revolutionary improvements in farming technology took place.
One was the use of iron tools and beasts of burden to pull plows, and the other was the large-scale harnessing of rivers and development of water conservancy projects. Before the Spring and Autumn Period, farm tools were mostly made of stone or wood. Human labor had to be employed to pull primitive plows. Farming areas were strictly limited by the natural environment. Iron plows pulled by cattle could plow larger areas of farmland within a shorter period of time, in addition to being able to plow deeper.
This enabled the opening up of the desolate Loess Plateau. Improvements in iron smelting technology and the extensive application of iron tools served as a great impetus to the economy of the Warring States Period. Dikes for controlling water extended alluvial plains with water conservancy facilities for farming until they covered most areas in north China. Several noticeable water conservancy projects of the Warring States Period were completed. Li Bing, a local official, organized the building of the Dujiang Dam in today's suburban Chengdu, Sichuan Province, which rationally solved the problem of diverting floods and irrigating farmland.
This project greatly promoted agriculture in the region, and even today still irrigates more than , hectares of farmland on the Chengdu Plain. Another canal called the Canal of the State of Zheng played its part in developing agricultural production in the Guanzhong region in today's Shaanxi Province. Economic development promoted urban prosperity. According to records, Linzi, capital of the State of Qi, had a population of 70, households and was crowded with carriages, carts and pedestrians.
Yingdu, capital of the State of Chu, was no less bustling. Someone described the city by saying that the streets were so crowded with people that brand-new clothes put on in the morning got terribly worn by the evening. The canal not only facilitated water transportation but also served as a channel to link the Central Plains with the areas south of the Qinling Mountains. It was also used to irrigate fields. Even today, it brings water to some 3, hectares of farmland.
China was the first country in the world to raise silkworms and make silk. Jade effigies of silkworms as well as silk fabrics pasted on the surface of bronzes which have been unearthed at Dasikong Village, Anyang, Henan Province, prove that during the Shang Dynasty centuries BC sericulture and silk making had already reached maturity.
During the Warring States Period, more eye-pleasing silk textiles were produced. A piece of satin unearthed in a tomb of the State of Chu during the Warring States Period in Jiangling, Hubei Province, is 51 centimeters wide and has a pattern of eight groups of dancers in seven categories, along with dragons, phoenixes and animals.
Its beauty and elegance fully demonstrate the scale and achievements of silk weaving of the period. Such tools were available in even remote border regions, as indicated by the Han Dynasty iron plow discovered in Liaoyang, Liaoning Province. Genetic studies show that goats and other livestock accompanied the westward spread of agriculture into Europe, helping to revolutionize Stone Age society. While the extent to which farmers themselves migrated west remains a subject of debate, the dramatic impact of dairy farming on Europeans is clearly stamped in their DNA.
Prior to the arrival of domestic cattle in Europe, prehistoric populations weren't able to stomach raw cow milk. But at some point during the spread of farming into southeastern Europe, a mutation occurred for lactose tolerance that increased in frequency through natural selection thanks to the nourishing benefits of milk.
Judging from the prevalence of the milk-drinking gene in Europeans today — as high as 90 percent in populations of northern countries such as Sweden — the vast majority are descended from cow herders.
Photograph by Robert Madden. Fertile Crescent. Near East. Stone Age. Media Credits The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. Media If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer.
Text Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Interactives Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. Related Resources. Agricultural Communities. View Collection. View leveled Article. View Article. In this study, phytolith analysis was conducted on samples from a Peiligang Culture site, Tanghu, in the Middle Yellow River region of southern North China.
Our analyses provide new data for understanding the cultivation and spread of broomcorn millet and rice, and the mixed farming of the two crops in Peiligang Cultural period. A prehistoric culture, Peiligang Culture, developed there and extended into the Shang and Zhou dynasties [25] , [26]. This archaeological site covers c. Forty-one semisubterranean round houses some with double rooms and pits were found in a excavation [26]. Unfortunately, no crop remains were found during macrofossil flotation personal communication with Juzhong Zhang.
In this current study, we collected two types of samples for phytolith analysis. One was from the profile of an archaeological layer from excavation Unit , the other was from deposits from pits and houses Figure 2.
All necessary permits were obtained for the described field studies from Zhengzhou Provincial Cultural Relics and Archeology Research Institute. The plan positions of archaeological units is after Xin et al. The deposits from profile cm in thickness can be divided into five layers from top to bottom according to the structure of the stratigraphy, soil color, and the archaeological remains: 1 0—22 cm, modern cultivated layer; 2 22—66 cm, light yellow loess and loose deposits containing ceramic fragments; 3 66—85 cm, brown soil, dense deposits containing charcoal and ceramic fragments; 4 85—98 cm, red-brown soil, very dense deposits of red burned soil and charcoal; and 5 below 98 cm, pit deposit pit H We successively collected the samples at 5-cm intervals from the eastern wall of excavation Unit In total 14 samples were taken from the 60 to cm section, including five AMS dating samples Figure 2.
These samples were dense deposits of red-brown, and rich in charcoal. Phytolith analysis was conducted on all 23 samples c. Phytolith counting and identification were performed using a Leica microscope with phase-contrast at magnification. In most samples, more than phytoliths were counted. Identification was aided by the use of reference materials [29] — [31] and published keys [9] , [19] , [32] — [34].
Ages of AMS dating are given in Figure 3. Nine 14 C ages, dated using paleosoil rich in charcoal, cover the period from to cal. Most of ages are consistent with archaeological chronology inferred from archaeological stratigraphy and artifacts [25] , [26]. CalPal was used to calibrate the data [59] , [60]. Dated materials are paleosoil rich in charcoal. Although some phytoliths appeared partly dissolved, most had distinct features to aid identification.
The identification of broomcorn millet phytoliths refers to Lu et al [22] and rice double-peaked and bulliform phytoliths refer to the work of Wang and Lu [35] , Lu et al. Finally, a total of 20 phytolith types were identified according to the classification system of Lu et al. Phytolith abundance was expressed as a percentage of all phytoliths counted. In this study, only rice bulliforms with obvious, uneroded surface features were counted.
Fifty-five grains of possible rice bulliforms with dissolved surface were not included in the total samples Figure 5. Rice bulliform and double-peaked types were present in the profile at a depth of — cm double-peaked; dated older than cal. No millet phytoliths were found in the profile. Sample H92 cal. A total of 19 rice phytoliths including four double-peaks and 15 precise rice bulliforms Figure 4a, 4e 4f, and 4g and pieces of broomcorn millet husks were present in this sample Figure 4h, 4i.
The concentrations of rice and millet phytoliths were, respectively, c. Morphological characteristics vertical and horizontal length of each individual bulliform were measured following the definition of Zheng et al [43]. The average vertical length VL of rice bulliforms was The standard deviations of the references are not provided in the original paper.
Phytolith portrait is after Fujiwara [37]. Rice bulliform and broomcorn millet phytoliths were found in samples H50 and F in small quantities c.
According to the archaeological stratigraphy and artifacts [25] , [26] , these two samples were from the Peiligang Cultural period. In summary, broomcorn millet was present in samples F and H92, while rice appears in samples H50 and H92, as well as the profile samples at depths of , , and 85 cm. The temporal coverage of the millet and rice occurrence at the Tanghu site ranges from to cal. Particularly, rice and millet occurred in the same sample H92 , and tested the same age, cal.
Our phytolith results indicated that the millet remains in samples F and H92 from houses and pits at the Tanghu site were broomcorn millet. These results provided reliable evidence of broomcorn millet cultivation in the Peiligang Culture at cal. Previous studies from Xinglonggou cal. This means that the former was more significant than the latter in the early stages of food production in North China.
0コメント