Rise and fall of complex societies in the Yiluo region, North China: The spatial and temporal changes

The Spatiotemporal Pattern of Cultural Evolution Response to Agricultural Development and Climate Change From Yangshao Culture to Bronze Age in the Yellow River Basin and Surrounding Regions, North China

“…Considering topics like agricultural diversification and climate change also happens in a similar spatiotemporal scale, and the corresponding cultural response is more suitable to be examined from a macroscopic perspective. Meanwhile, other regional studies could be more accurate on dataset and superior in manifesting cultural response to regional events like micro-landform change and rapid environmental incidents (e.g., An et al, 2005;Li et al, 2017;Liu et al, 2019;Drennan et al, 2014).…”

The Possible Stimulation of the Mid-Holocene Period’s Initial Hydrological Recession on the Development of Neolithic Cultures along the Margin of the East Asian Summer Monsoon

“…Even though the vicissitudes of prehistoric culture were mainly driven by climate fluctuations [24,163], similar climatic conditions would generate distinct social outcomes (the flourishing or collapse of culture) because of imperative subsistence strategies regulating the relationship between humans and the environment [164,165], the various degrees of climatic deterioration, and the impact of the contextual factors of those cultures [24,164]. More economical and socially specialized societies might be more vulnerable to any abrupt environmental transition [29].…”

“…Rain-watered agriculture began to develop at the time [5] when fishing, hunting, and gathering were the primary In the northern-central region, including the Wei River valley, the Guanzhong Basin, the Wei and Yellow River confluence, and Inner Mon (central and south), there are a high concentration of archaeological sites assigned to the mid-Yangshao culture (Figure 8) [62], indicating substantial population growth [61,62]. The Yiluo region, a core area of Chinese civilization in the Yellow River valley, experienced dramatic population growth, and a two-tiered settlement system spread to a large part of the region during the middle-late Yangshao periods [19,165]. Millet farming and pig domestication became more intensive in the meantime, while wild cereal and tubers collected were part of subsistence strategies [165,173].…”

“…The Yiluo region, a core area of Chinese civilization in the Yellow River valley, experienced dramatic population growth, and a two-tiered settlement system spread to a large part of the region during the middle-late Yangshao periods [19,165]. Millet farming and pig domestication became more intensive in the meantime, while wild cereal and tubers collected were part of subsistence strategies [165,173]. Large-scale movements of populations from the southeastern regions to Henan during the late Yangshao periods, were evidenced by the presence of ceramics and typical cultural practices, such as tooth extraction, which came from the mid-late Dawenkou culture in Shangdong and Qujialing cultures in Hubei, confirming the development of greater social complexity, probably due to resource shortage as a result of environmental deterioration [19,174].…”

“…The transformation of the diet structure can probably be attributed to climatic fluctuations that might have led to the depletion of wild resources around 3500 BC. An increased number of houses and settlement sizes indicated population growth in Miaozigou village in central-south Inner Mongolia [165], where the developed Miaozigou culture inherited the property of the Miaodigou culture from the Zhongyuan region, and reached its peak in the initial stage of environmental degradation [176]. A typical jade dragon was found in the Nihewan-Huliu Basin of Hebei with obvious characteristics of the Hongshan culture, also indicating geographically different cultures meeting and coexisting~6.5-5 ka ago [177,178].…”