Page 520 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

New Understandings of Chinese Prehistory

ZHANG ZHONGPEI | The last eighty years of archaeological investigation of China's prehistory have traced the habi-
tation of the continent back some eight million years, and sketched a timeline of successive
cultures in particular regions. What follows is a precis of our current understanding of China's
earliest history; much of it has developed over the last twenty years.

P A L A E O L I T H I C A R C H A E O L O G Y
Hominid remains found in China raise the likelihood that the Asian continent constitutes
a locis for the origin of man. These hominid fossils include Dryopithecus kaiyuanensis
(8 million years BP, found in Xiaolongtan, Kaiyuan county, Yunnan province); Ramapithecus
lufengsis (6 million years BP, found in Shinuba, Lufeng county, Yunnan province); Ramapithecus
hudienensis (4 million years BP, found in Yuanmou, Yunnan province); and Gigantopithecus
(2-5 million years BP, found in the provinces of Guangxi, Sichuan, and Hubei). Fossils of Homo

erectus, together with associated cultural remains, have also been found, including Lantian Man,
Peking Man, and the oldest known traces of Homo erectus in China (1.7 million years BP): Yuan-
mou Man. Fossil remains of archaic Homo sapiens found in China include Dingcun Man, Jin-
niushan Man, Maba Man, and Chaoxian Man; remains of Homo sapiens (for example, Liujiang
Man, Ziyang Man, and Shandingdong Man) have been found in many as forty localities. Certain
inherited physical features of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens (in particular, shovel-shaped inci-
sors, sagittal ridges, flat faces, and wide and straight noses) suggest that the Chinese of the
present day are the descendants of the region's Palaeolithic inhabitants.
Stone techniques and stone tools developed uninterruptedly from the early to the late
Palaeolithic period in China. While we can trace certain continuities in stoneworking, a
regional diversity is also evident. Recent studies indicate the Qinling Mountains marked a di-
viding line between southern and northern styles of stoneworking. Toward the late Palaeolithic
period, the northern style divided into three regional styles; stoneworking in the south also
displays regional variation.

T H E T R A N S I T I O N FROM P A L A E O L I T H I C T H R O U G H M E S O L I T H I C A N D N E O L I T H I C
Although few Mesolithic sites have been identified in China, they are widely distributed — in
southern, northern, northeastern, and central China — an indication that the transition from
Palaeolithic to Mesolithic cultures occurred in several areas. Though Mesolithic cultures typi-
cally relied on hunting, gathering, and fishing for subsistence, different sites indicate that
specific subsistence activities were favored in particular areas. The transition to Neolithic
cultures is marked by the addition of farming to the hunting-and-gathering economy of
Mesolithic cultures, a development for which we have evidence in southern and northeastern
Cat. 5, detail China. Farming seems to have comprised two staple crops: rice was cultivated mainly in the

5^9