Longshan: the first walled towns of China
On the middle Yellow River appear settlements with rammed-earth walls, the potter's wheel and divination by bones—the things from which the Chinese state will grow.
Around 2500 BCE settlements enclosed by rammed-earth walls stand along the middle Yellow River; the largest stretch for kilometres. Here the potter's wheel appears, with fine black pottery, wine vessels, jade axes and discs. Divination is done on the shoulder blades of animals, scorched and read by their cracks, a thousand years before the inscribed oracle bones of Shang. Wars are fought between the settlements: traces of fighting and mass burials are found by the walls. The Chinese chronicles place their legendary first rulers in this age; archaeologists see here the soil from which the kingdoms of Xia and Shang will grow.
Sources
Documents of the period
- the excavations of Taosi and Chengziya — the walls, the black pottery and the divination bones
Scholarship
- archaeology of China — the dating and the link to the kingdoms of Xia and Shang
Basis: documents and evidence.