Neolithic in China
The Neolithic in China corresponds, within the territory of present-day China, to an economic revolution during which populations learned to produce their food resources through the domestication of plants and animals. Around 9700 BCE, climate warming led to the development of wild food resources and a reduction in nomadism. Hunter-gatherers moved less; they began to store supplies, often stocks of acorns. Neolithization, which marks the transition to the Neolithic period, mainly occurred between 7000 and 5000 BCE. The appearance of pottery is separate from this process, as it occurred earlier, among populations of the Late Paleolithic. The Neolithic period began during a generally warm climatic phase called the Holocene. Among plant-based foods, wild rice appeared and was gradually domesticated in the Lower Yangtze region around 6000–5000 BCE; the same occurred in the Yellow River basin with millet. Millet and rice, initially gathered and consumed in their wild forms, were progressively domesticated around 6000–5000 BCE. At first, they only made a minor contribution to the diet, competing with other wild plants and hunting resources. Underground silos were often used to store certain plant-based foods. Then, from around 5000 BCE, agriculture became a much more significant part of the diet of Chinese populations, with millet in the North and rice in the South.
By the Late Neolithic in Gansu, on the edge of the Hexi Corridor, exchanges with the North and West as well as the East and South made it possible to cultivate up to six cereals: wheat, barley, oats, rice, and two types of millet.
The archaeological cultures that emerged in the Late Neolithic produced items unique to China, such as jade artifacts, including those shaped like discs and tubes. This material, difficult to work with, served as a marker of elite status, and this was the case in multiple regions, due to exchanges that sometimes occurred over very long distances.
Chinese prehistoric cultures thus reveal a rich material culture. Pottery appeared particularly early and achieved a high level of refinement during this period. Jades followed, as did the first lacquered objects, which also appeared here. Neolithic artisans adopted glass technology through trade with the West, but this production remained very marginal. Few wooden objects have survived, but they generally indicate everyday use. In addition to these wooden objects, others made from natural fibers, basketry materials, and horns have survived locally. Many prestige objects show hybrid forms, and their creators produced a wide variety. This abundant production offers evidence of symbolic activity that would accompany the economic development of the Bronze Age in China.
Toward the Neolithic
Climate warming
While around 14000 BCE, China was a cold and dry environment, and the sea level was more than 100 meters below today's level, around 9700 BCE the Holocene began, marked by the warming of continental air masses and the influence of a stronger monsoon. During the Holocene climatic optimum, temperatures were 1 to 3 °C warmer than today, the monsoon was stronger, and lake levels were significantly higher. Northern and northwestern regions experienced heavy monsoon rains by around 7000 BCE, whereas today they are arid or semi-arid regions. These northward monsoon advances facilitated the first Neolithic settlements along the Liao River, the middle Yellow River, and its lower course.Cold and dry periods
This southeast monsoon push later receded south of the Yangtze between 4000 and 1000 BCE, bringing about a cooler and drier period in the north and wetter conditions in the south. This forced some populations to abandon settlements, population density declined, and some cultures disappeared, such as the Hongshan culture, which collapsed around 3000 BCE, replaced by a form of extensive pastoralism, or the peaceful Yangshao culture, which gave way to the Longshan culture, marked by the gradual emergence of social hierarchies and the construction of defensive ditches.Elsewhere, walls and ditches were built to control flooding, as excavations have revealed in the Daxi, Qujialing, Shijiahe, and Liangzhu cultures. In southeastern China and Taiwan, the same phenomenon is observed: the sea level reached approximately its current level around 5500 BCE, then reached a maximum between 4000 and 2500 BCE.
In the 2000s, several studies provided more precise information on these periods on a global scale: around 6200, 3200, and 2200 BCE. Each episode lasted several hundred years. In China, these fluctuations were detected, but their dating varies significantly from one author to another, which could result from a strong interaction between the specific effects of climate change on a global scale and the geographical and regional characteristics specific to China in its distinctly different regions. The aforementioned studies seem to demonstrate that these fluctuations were at the origin of millet cultivation and that elsewhere, the social response consisted in a strengthening of community cohesion and the collective appropriation of certain territories by these communities. These cold and dry periods alternated with others that were warmer and more humid.
The first postglacial shock, around 6400–6000 BCE, produced an arid and cold period in the North Atlantic, North America, Africa, and Asia. In China, a similar fluctuation, around 5300 BCE, a period of drought, could explain why only a few sites dating back to before 6000 BCE have been discovered, located in well-watered valleys: Xinglonggou in the Liao River Valley, as well as the earliest sites of Peiligang in the Huang Huai Valley, and a few sites of Pengtoushan in the Yangzi River Valley. After these cold and dry episodes, the return of rains and the monsoon corresponds to the development of Neolithic cultures and their spread from north to south.
File:Weirivermap.png|thumb|The course of the Wei River, a tributary of the Yellow River, in northern China
Variations
To give a revealing example of the effects of climate, the vast lands located north of the lower part of the Wei River were, it seems, covered by vegetation and deep lakes, and a large part of this region was likely uninhabited. At the same time, small areas increasingly populated began to multiply here and there, with all the practices typical of the Neolithic: a production-based economy, followed by rivalries over possession of the most fertile areas.While the transition toward certain aspects of the Neolithic occurred slowly in some places, and without local continuity, in many other regions the practices of hunter-gatherers from the Epipaleolithic tradition continued well into the Holocene, among populations that had already entered the Neolithic.
Neolithization
At the beginning of the Holocene, in a context of abundant and stable resources, groups of hunter-gatherers reduced their mobility and adopted more diversified strategies to exploit these various local resources. Gradually, and depending on the location, new practices emerged, from foraging and gathering—becoming more selective —sometimes involving partial sedentarization, to new types of production such as pottery. This pottery appeared alongside rare polished stone tools, within subsistence strategies that still belonged to the Late Paleolithic.Neolithization is a complex process. In a landscape whose vegetation cover had changed, humans employed diverse strategies depending on local and temporal conditions. This neolithization is marked by the progressive sedentarization of human groups and the establishment of food reserves during the Early Neolithic.
Neolithization, a slow and uneven process, is difficult to grasp when it comes to small groups whose strategies vary depending on the areas they encounter and local climatic variations. The difficulty also lies in trying to connect population movements, linguistic histories, technological changes indicating new economic or social adaptations, and evidence of domestication of animals and plants. This effort has created the illusion of a unified "neolithization" process, rather than acknowledging the complex histories of mosaics of peoples practicing eclectic strategies that cannot be easily classified as either hunter-gatherers or farmers.
Polished stones seem to be associated with agriculture, in the case of grinding stones used to crush grains, but plants were already being crushed before that. However, flaked stone tools continued to be used for a long time, depending on the intended purpose. The intellectual processes involved are therefore complex, and it seems that some individuals distinguished themselves from their peers and entered into rivalry during this period. Furthermore, these societies came into contact with hunter-gatherers, and such exchanges were beneficial to both sides, transforming them reciprocally.
Domestication of certain animals, cultivation of cereals and other plants, new tools—the essential traits of Neolithic culture—developed independently of one another, both in time and space, and exchanges with even the most distant cultures played a role in this slow and dispersed neolithization. Neolithic cultures, from 7000 to 1500 BCE, within which these practices continued to evolve, formed locally and sometimes disappeared, often witnessing—more or less gradually—the emergence of social differences and violent conflicts.