The Holocene optimum (HO) and the response of human activity: A case study of the Huai River Basin in eastern China

Jiang, Shiwei; Luo, Wuhong; Tu, Luyao; Yu, Yanyan; Fang, Fang; Liu, Xiaoyan; Zhan, Tao; Fang, Li-Dong; Zhang, Xiaolin; Zhou, Xin

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2018.08.011

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In addition, the lower Yellow River floodplain was dotted with a large number of lakes and marshes throughout most of the Holocene [58,80]. Many Holocene limnetic facies were widely distributed across the lower Yellow River floodplain and the surrounding areas [29,[56][57][58][59][60]63,77,80]. However, under the influences of climatic fluctuation, river flooding, and intensive agricultural activities, the locations and sizes of these lakes and marshes changed dramatically during the late Holocene [46,58,60,80,81].…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Throughout the Holocene, the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) has experienced complex fluctuations in the lower Yellow River floodplain and the surrounding areas [47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57]. Its fluctuation and associated conspicuous environmental changes have most likely impacted the evolution of local prehistoric cultures [11,[27][28][29][30][42][43][44][45][57][58][59][60][61][62][63].…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As mentioned above, both regional paleoclimatic records (Figure 3) and local paleoenvironmental records (Figure 4) indicate that an intense EASM and associated humid climate existed during 8.0-5.0 ka BP (roughly corresponding to the pre-Longshan period) and that subsequent weakening of the EASM and consequent drying of the climate occurred during 5.0-4.0 ka BP (roughly corresponding to the Longshan period). Thus, high precipitation in the pre-Longshan period caused widespread lakes and marshes to develop not only in the lower Yellow River floodplain [56,58,63] but also on the surrounding piedmont plain [100] and loess tablelands [54,[58][59][60] around the lower Yellow River floodplain. However, with the persistent drying of local hydroclimatic conditions driven by the weakened EASM since~5.0 ka BP, preexisting lakes and marshes most likely shrank first in the surrounding highlands and then in the lower Yellow River floodplain.…”

Section: Local Landscape Evolution With Hydroclimatic Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequently, it is necessary to further discuss this issue to understand the patterns and mechanisms of human-environment interactions during this time interval in the lower Yellow River floodplain. Additionally, considerable advances in research on the spatial-temporal patterns of Holocene paleoenvironmental changes (especially high-resolution proxy sequences of paleoclimate) [29,[47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63] and past human activities (i.e., human subsistence strategies and demographic fluctuations) [29,[64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74] in the lower Yellow River floodplain and the surrounding areas have been made over the past two decades. This provides a good opportunity for exploring the specific background for the abovementioned remarkable change in the spatial distribution of human settlement in the lower Yellow River floodplain during the Longshan period.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Spatial Expansion of Human Settlement during the Longshan Period (~4.5–~3.9 ka BP) and Its Hydroclimatic Contexts in the Lower Yellow River Floodplain, Eastern China

et al. 2021

Land

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Obvious spatial expansion of human settlement occurred in the lower Yellow River floodplain during the Longshan period, but the external factors driving this expansion remain unclear. In this study, we first delineated the hydroclimatic changes at both regional and local scales within and around the lower Yellow River floodplain and then examined the relationships of human settlements with hydroclimatic settings between the pre-Longshan and Longshan periods. The results indicate that the site distribution, site density and hydroclimatic conditions exhibited significant shifts during the pre-Longshan and Longshan periods. In the pre-Longshan period, the intense East Asian summer monsoon and abundant monsoon-related precipitation caused widespread development of lakes and marshes in the lower Yellow River floodplain. As a result, the circumjacent highlands of the lower Yellow River floodplain contained concentrated human settlements. However, the persistent weakening of the East Asian summer monsoon and consequent precipitation decline, in conjunction with accelerated soil erosion due to decreasing forest vegetation and strengthening of human activities on the upstream Loess Plateau in the Longshan period, are likely to have jointly caused both shrinking and faster filling of preexisting lakes and marshes. Subsequently, a large area of arable land had been created in the lower Yellow River floodplain and thus was occupied by locally rapid increasing population, resulting in the notable spatial expansion of human settlements during the Longshan period.

show abstract

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Local Landscape Evolution With Hydroclimatic Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Spatial Expansion of Human Settlement during the Longshan Period (~4.5–~3.9 ka BP) and Its Hydroclimatic Contexts in the Lower Yellow River Floodplain, Eastern China

et al. 2021

Land

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In East Asia, the geographical line along the Qinling Mountains and Huai River climatically divides the Chinese mainland into northern and southern regions (e.g. Jiang et al, 2018). In the Neolithic, foxtail and broomcorn millet agriculture provided the main living subsistence in northern China (north of the Qinling-Huai line) with wet-rice farming in southern China (south of the line), although both territories changed and mixed over time (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cranial morphometric analysis of early wet-rice farmers in the Yangtze River Delta of China

Okazaki

Takamuku²,

Kawakubo

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Yangtze River Delta is the best-known homeland of wet-rice agriculture. From the Middle Neolithic, rice farming expanded from the Yangtze region to both the north and the south. However, poor preservation of ancient human skeletal remains in the region has meant that the population history of these expansions has not been fully understood. In order to clarify the ancestry of early wet-rice farmers in East Asia, we conducted a cranial morphometric analysis and comparison of a Middle Neolithic skeletal assemblage excavated from the Guangfulin site, Shanghai. The results of bivariate and multivariate analyses showed that: (1) Neolithic wet-rice farmers from the lower Yangtze retained local morphological characteristics, but were nevertheless morphologically more similar to Neolithic and later populations in northern China, which was home to early millet farmers, than to Neolithic populations in south China; and (2) Neolithic and later agricultural populations in East Asia were morphologically homogeneous compared to pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer groups even though the area occupied by both was equally vast. These results suggest, respectively, that: (1) Middle Neolithic wet-rice farmers in the Yangtze Delta experienced significant gene flow from regions of northern China such as the Central Plains and Shandong even though there is currently no evidence that millet cultivation itself had yet reached the delta region; and (2) Neolithic populations resulting from interaction between the Yangtze Delta and northern China dispersed widely across much of East Asia including the Japanese archipelago together with the spread of wet-rice agricultural technologies. These two proposals are paralleled by recent stable isotope analyses using tooth enamel and bone collagen, as well as archaeological evidence from Shandong. Finally, a facial approximation was conducted using a cranium (M252) excavated from Guangfulin for the purpose of visually expressing the results of this study.

show abstract

Phytolith evidence of water management for rice growing and processing between 8,500 and 7,500 cal years bp in the middle Huai river valley, China

Luo

Yang

Lina

et al. 2020

Veget Hist Archaeobot

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Holocene optimum (HO) and the response of human activity: A case study of the Huai River Basin in eastern China

Cited by 11 publications

References 30 publications

Spatial Expansion of Human Settlement during the Longshan Period (~4.5–~3.9 ka BP) and Its Hydroclimatic Contexts in the Lower Yellow River Floodplain, Eastern China

Spatial Expansion of Human Settlement during the Longshan Period (~4.5–~3.9 ka BP) and Its Hydroclimatic Contexts in the Lower Yellow River Floodplain, Eastern China

Cranial morphometric analysis of early wet-rice farmers in the Yangtze River Delta of China

Phytolith evidence of water management for rice growing and processing between 8,500 and 7,500 cal years bp in the middle Huai river valley, China

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About