From first rice to emergence of cities, light shed on origins of civilisation in China

The Star

26-05-2025

BEIJING: In a single domesticated grain seed, one might see the bud of great civilisations.
The birth of agriculture was a turning point in humans' social development, as stable food supplies enabled people to transcend the constraints of food gained by hunting and gathering. After that, people were able to settle down and experience population booms.
As one of the major areas around the globe where agriculture originated, China has contributed to the world's domesticated rice, millet, buckwheat and soybeans. Archaeological studies have unveiled that the planting of rice originated around 10,000 years ago in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, leading to the eventual replacement there of hunting and gathering practices dating back 5,000 to 6,000 years.
"It marked the formation of a rice-based agricultural society in the area," said Zhao Zhijun, an archaeologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
Archaeological studies of the origins of rice-based agriculture are an important part of a national project tracing the origins of Chinese civilisation itself. President Xi Jinping has greatly valued the project.
At a group study session of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee on May 27, 2022, Xi, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, emphasised the significance of the project and the role that archaeological studies play in better understanding Chinese civilisation.
The project to trace the origins of Chinese civilisation, in addition to finding signs of human activity more than one million years ago, has also proved that China's history includes 10,000 years of culture and more than 5,000 years of civilisation.
The project has provided clear knowledge of the origins and formation of Chinese civilisation, the history of its development, the process of the formation and development of its pluralistic and integrated pattern, and the characteristics of the civilisation and why it was formed in such a way, he added.
This was not the first time that Xi emphasised the importance of the origin-tracing project. Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC in 2012, Xi has toured more than 100 historical and cultural locations and issued many instructions related to archaeology and the origin-tracing project.
During the 23rd group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in 2020, Xi called for giving more attention to archaeological research and letting historical facts speak for themselves.
"This will provide strong support for our efforts to carry forward the best of traditional Chinese culture and increase our cultural confidence," said Xi.
The origin-tracing project has been carried out since 2002. Its ongoing fifth phase, which started in 2020, involves the participation of more than 500 researchers from 29 institutes across the country.
It primarily centres on several ancient capital sites, including the Liangzhu site in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, the Taosi site in Xiangfen county, Shanxi province, the Shimao site in Shenmu, Shaanxi province, and the Erlitou site in Luoyang, Henan province, from 3,500 to 5,500 years ago, as well as other settlements mainly along the basins of the Yellow, Yangtze and Liaohe rivers.
The project has also expanded to a wider geographic and chronological framework to decode how Chinese civilisation emerged and how its diverse elements formed a unity.
Excavation of the Liangzhu site, which is over 5,000 years old and is one of the major sites covered in the origin-tracing project, has yielded an inner city covering three million square metres and an outer city of 6.3 million sq m, making it the world's largest capital at the time. It also had a giant water control system, which contributed to the formation of a rice-based agricultural society.
By calculating the earthwork volume, archaeologists found that building the entire ancient city, the water control system and Mojiaoshan — a ten-metre-tall man-made terrace in the centre of the city — required 10,000 people working daily for seven-and-a-half years.
The discoveries show that Liangzhu had a kingship able to organise people for large-scale public construction, and its social differentiation, emergence of the city concept and existence of a kingship prove that it became a civilised society, said Wang Wei, a veteran archaeologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Wang said that tracing the origins of a civilisation is a significant topic in the research of human history. Over the years, the Chinese project has provided China's answer to how to define civilisations.
In 2022, Xi commended the efforts and stressed that the project has made creative contributions to the research on tracing the origins of the world's civilisations.
Wang said: "International academia has proposed three indispensable elements for a civilised society based on features of Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilisations: written characters, metallurgy and the city concept. But we can find that some of the three elements were absent in many ancient civilisations. For example, the Mayan civilisation had no metallurgy, while the Incan civilisation didn't have written characters."
Western scholars believe that Chinese civilisation began with the Yinxu Ruins in Anyang, Henan province, a capital of the late Shang Dynasty (c.16th century-11th century BC), based on the discovery of inscribed oracle bones from that time. However, Chinese archaeologists don't agree.
With continued archaeological research, international academia now believes that places around the world can propose criteria for civilisation based on their own ancient social development.
China's archaeological studies have shaped the nation's criteria in defining a civilisation: the development of productivity, an increase in population, the appearance of cities, social differentiation and the emergence of kingship and state.
"These criteria are suitable for identifying other civilisations as well," said Wang. "Civilisations have in common the appearance of kingship and state. They are only different in the ways of imposing kingship and the forms of state."
In China, kingship and state "were shown by exquisite jade and bronze ritual artifacts, grand palaces and magnificent mausoleums imitating aboveground palaces", he added. "In Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, they were demonstrated through superb stone temples, pyramids and large-scale tombs."
President Xi said in 2020 that archaeologists should work closely with researchers from other fields to make an interpretive analysis of material remains.
Zhang Chi, a professor of archaeology at Peking University, said that since material remains are often the research focus of archaeological studies, these should not only be observed with the eyes, but also studied using scientific and technological tools. Therefore, from the perspective of research methods, archaeology is by nature a multidisciplinary subject, Zhang added.
Wang, the CASS archaeologist, highlighted the application in archaeology of strontium isotope analysis, which determines the geographic origin of individuals by analysing the ratio of different strontium isotopes found in their remains. Using this approach, researchers can determine whether humans whose remains they study stayed in the same place from birth to death or migrated to the place where they eventually were buried.
The technology has been applied in studies of the Erlitou site, widely believed to be a late capital of the Xia Dynasty (c.21st century-16th century BC), enabling researchers to confirm that the site had a large number of migrants.
Wang said the technology can support scholars' understanding of Erlitou's role as a capital that attracted people from other places. - China Daily/ANN