Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China. E. N. Anderson

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СКАЧАТЬ may view urban heat and noise as mere pollutants. The Germans say, “city air makes people free.” (Early German elites lived in the countryside on their estates, however, whereas Chinese elites generally preferred to live in the biggest cities they could find, making Chinese city air rather less free than the German form.)

      Civilization, like agriculture in the Old World, appears first in the Near East and then about a thousand years later in China. With agriculture, we can safely assume independent invention, but this is not true of cities. It seems eminently possible that the idea of cities and civilization diffused across Central Asia to China (see Mair 2005—though this source deals mainly with later centuries). We know that bronze technology, horses and chariots, and funeral rites spread from west to east in early civilized times. This being the case, it seems likely that the whole idea of urbanization spread similarly. By 2000 BCE, when the first signs of civilization appear in China, cities and urban life were well established all the way from the entire Nile Valley to northern and central India and the western edges of Central Asia. Large, sophisticated towns flourished throughout much of Central Asia, though they were to vanish in the dark ages that afflicted much of the Western world in the few centuries just before and after 1000. (Climate was one reason—it turned colder and drier—but there were other poorly known factors.)

      On the other hand, it seems fairly clear that the Chinese independently invented writing (on early Chinese writing, see Li Feng and Branner 2011). The Chinese would not have invented such a difficult and problematic system if they had had access to the cuneiform or alphabetic options that arose in the Near East. (I realize that this claim could earn me a charge of bias, but I cannot see how it could have been otherwise. The value of the Chinese writing system today is that it distinguishes the countless homonyms of Mandarin. Reconstructions show that the ancient Chinese did not have anything like the current problem in that regard.) Nor would their writing have shown such clear evidence of slow and organic development in place.

      Chinese civilization arose in a core area in the western parts of the North China Plain and the adjacent Wei Valley. Until recently, it seemed to be a civilization that began in one area and spread in discrete rings outward, like the ripples from a stone cast in a pond. This neat scenario was early questioned by Wolfram Eberhard (one of my teachers). Today, we know Eberhard was right.

      The people of the Yangzi Valley were as advanced as those on the North China Plain, if not more so, from earliest times onward. By 2000 BCE they had large towns and sophisticated art, similar to and culturally related to the proto-civilization of the North China Plain (Underhill and Habu 2006. Sichuan is also providing dramatic new finds that show a related but distinctive early civilization there (Bagley 2001). Urban-size sites extended from the far north to the Yangzi and inland to Chengdu by 2500–2000 BCE. Many had huge walls and large public buildings. Differentiated occupations, complex religion, and other features of civilization are attested all over north and central China. Shao Wangping (2002) believes that neither the view of a West Asian origin for Chinese civilization nor the view of Chinese culture as spreading from a point source on the Yellow River can be sustained any longer. However, Western inspiration for urbanization is not ruled out. The spread of writing (at least) from the central Yellow River area is clear.

      Moreover, stunning recent finds in north and northeast China reveal utterly unexpected cultures there. The mysterious and controversial Hongshan culture (4500–3000 BCE) had intensive agriculture, as well as pig burials (Nelson 1994, 1995). It produced many large towns long before China had dynasties. “A huge ritual complex, about 8 by 10 km², was discovered at the late Hongshan period (ca. 3500–3000 BCE) site of Niuheliang in western Liaoning province…. It contains stone platforms interpreted as altars, stone foundations that could have been temples,” sculptures, images, jewels, shamanic figures, “pig-dragons,” and much more (Underhill and Habu 2006: 131). Perhaps more striking is a statuette of a woman with inset eyes of pale blue jade (Morris 2010: 126). She was presumably blue-eyed. (This does not necessarily mean the people of the town were blue-eyed. In Chinese folk belief, spirit beings were often white-eyed or blue-eyed.) She has been regarded as a “goddess,” and the whole complex called a goddess temple. Hongshan declined (Liu and Chen 2012) and the great sites were no more, but the Liao valleys continued to be important cultural foci.

      Although their monumental architecture is huge, the communities were small, perhaps a thousand people. The subsequent Xiajiadian culture created huge stone walls, evidently for defense (Shelach et al. 2011). Magnificent photographs of these finds are now available and show a site a great deal like a city (Zhang Zhongpei 2002: 79–80). If writing were present, no one would hesitate to call it one. However, no writing or anything comparable is associated with these sites. The Hongshan culture remains totally mysterious. Its people may have spoken ancestral Chinese, ancestral Korean, or some lost language. Could they be among the Rong? We will probably never know.

      Similar monumental settlements are now being found in northwest China and Inner Mongolia. These finds appear to be greeted with enthusiasm by local people. In one recent case, a road was being built between the Inner Mongolian towns of Chifeng and Chaoyang. Construction turned up a large town 4,000 years old, with a huge wall and several major structures. The choice was made, all the way up from the local archaeologist to Beijing, to delay the road and save the buildings. The mayor of Chifeng gave his opinion in a line that should be circulated to all archaeology projects: “We, people of Chifeng, would rather travel to Chaoyang by donkey than destroy this site.” The site was saved by building an underpass below it (Carver 2011: 714).

      Moving back to the focal area on the central Yellow River: Taosi in Shanxi reached 3 square km—the size of a middling Classic Mayan city or small early Near Eastern one—by 2300 BCE or so. It was nearly abandoned by 1900, possibly because of a severe drying trend in this very dry part of China (Li Min 2012; Shao 2002). Taosi had perhaps 10,000 people and major architectural relics. Burials indicate stratification: “one in ten was bigger, but about one in a hundred (always male) was enormous. Some of the giant graves held two hundred offerings … [some including] clay or wood drums with crocodile [actually alligator] skins, large stone chimes, and an odd-looking copper bell…. About two thousand years later the Rites of Zhou, a Confucian handbook on ceremonies, would still list all the instrument types … as appropriate for elite rituals” (Morris 2010: 204).

      Other cities were comparably large. So far, scholars have been very cautious about calling them civilizations. This is partly because they all lack writing, which first appeared with the Shang Dynasty in the Yellow River plain area by around 1300–1500 BCE. Signs on vessels before 2000 (see, e.g., photographs in Shao 2002: 106 and K.-c. Chang 2002b: 133) are suggestive, but most of them clearly are tally marks rather than real characters (see, again, Li Feng and Branner 2011). Earlier writing will, however, probably turn up. The earliest Shang writing has a well-developed look, implying some prior history. Fast-wheel pottery, a technically sophisticated craft, was locally known by this time (Shao 2002). Spectacular jade work was common; many through the centuries have held that Chinese civilization never equaled the quality of its precivilization jades (see Shao 2002 for spectacular photographs that might convince many more). Southeast Asia has produced nothing so large so early, but advanced cultures by 1500 BCE show that this area too was advancing almost in step with China.

      In short, Chinese civilization was a diverse set of traditions from earliest times. Different language groups are certainly represented and surely include Thai as well as Sinitic; most scholars suspect that Miao (Hmong), Yao (Mien), Altaic, and other groups were also involved.

       The Earliest Dynasties

      According to historical tradition, China’s first dynasty was the Xia, which ruled the very center of the Chinese world: the great bend area of the Yellow River as it turns from the mountains to cross the North China Plain. It was founded by the legendary Great Yu, who tamed the Yellow River floods and prepared the land for planting. He was so busy that, according to folklore, he passed his family door several times over many years without once going in. This later gave him a reputation for a lack of filial feeling, causing СКАЧАТЬ