Beijing for centuries the city has acted as China's capital and today over 20 million people live within its boundaries throughout the country's final two Imperial dynasties the Ming and the Qing China's Emperors would call it home alternating their residence between the sprawling estate of lakes and Gardens known as the Summer Palace and the vast complex known today as the Forbidden City during their Reigns these men would style themselves as universal sovereigns entitled to Dominion of the known world through their possession of the Mandate of Heaven their regime fold a blueprint that was already more than a thousand years old where the rulership of China was passed from Dynasty to Dynasty with only the occasional hiatus but for all its longevity and claim Grandeur the imperial system was not to last foreign powers in the late 19th century The Prestige of the Qing Dynasty collapsed and the period of attempted reform that followed failed to arrest its decline in 1911 public discontent with the imperial system led to the outbreak of the shinhai Revolution and the next year saw the abdication of The Last Emperor a boy then only six years old in the years that followed other man would attempt to restore the Qing monarchy or even to claim their throne for themselves but none would succeed and for more than a hundred years the sons of Heaven who ruled China for more than two Millennia have been no more today their secluded residences and museums opened to the public and now ordinary citizens tread every day on ground where only a select few once stood [Music] foreign [Music] the end of the imperial system represented a decisive break with the past for over 2 000 years China was ruled by an emperor who with one notable exception was a man imbued in theory with absolute power in practice The Authority exercised by a given ruler would vary and at times this title would be disputed between multiple claimants and dynasties some of whose rule was limited to only small portions of China the more powerful of these Emperors would leave an indelible footprint on Chinese society and the centuries-long rule of dynasties such as the Han and the Tang are often described as golden periods in Chinese history it is unsurprising then that in the west knowledge of China's ancient history is almost entirely concerned with its Imperial rulers and often focuses on the imposing structures that they erected foremost amongst these are the ICONic Great Wall of China which stretches throughout much of the country's Northern reaches the mausoleum of its first emperor and its buried Army of terracotta warriors foreign complex of the Forbidden City which served as the winter residence of China's Elite for half a millennium outside of these structures other famous periods of Chinese history include the mongol-led Yuan Dynasty best known for its founder Kubla Khan and the long period of warfare between the competing dynasties of saawei shuhan and Dong woo that would later be glamorized in the mingulatory classic of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms but as famous and long-lasting as China's imperial system was the questions is rarely asked is how exactly did it come to be indeed it has long been understood by historians and archaeologists that by the time the first Imperial Dynasty Rose to power in the late 3rd Century BCE Chinese civilization was already over a millennium old and that many of the institutions and customs of the centuries ahead originated in this period and even more obscure is the period that preceded it that came before the emergence of the Region's first written script and our understanding of which depends entirely on the archaeological record it is in this off neglected dream time that the deities and culture Heroes of Chinese myth are said to have walked the Earth such as the God's new wa and fushi the yellow Emperor Juan D and the other Divine and semi-divine figures known collectively as the free sovereigns and five Emperors in works such as the bamboo annals and the records of the grand historian we are told that this period culminated in the founding of China's first dynasty the semi-mythical Shia whose claim transfer of power to the Shang Dynasty formed the ideological basis for dynastic succession in the Millennia ahead we know from the archaeological record that this period saw the emergence of China's first complex societies the development of which is inexorably tied to their slow adoption of Agriculture and sedentary living more than any others in Chinese history it is these Millennia that are marked by dramatic changes in climate technology and the lifestyle of its peoples who slowly transitioned from the hunter-gabra lifestyle that had marked Humanity up until this point to complex societies reliant on domesticated plants and animals for survival and around the beginning of the second millennium BCE these developments would culminate in the appearance of some of the earliest States in world history [Music] in this series we will attempt to fill in this neglected period of China's history to do so we will Begin by examining the archaeological record of Chinese prehistory tracing the origins of its earliest complex societies beginning with the hunter-gatherer communities that flourished after the end of the last ice age from here we will follow their slow Evolution into early farming settlements marked by increasing size social complexity and the appearance of a visible Elite in later Millennium we will see the slow emergence of metalworking an event that overlapped with the development of the Region's first true Urban centers and kingdoms in later episodes we'll also take some time to discuss China's traditional body of History examining the Chinese people's own understanding of their past and whether any parallels can be made between the archaeological record and the claimed histories of the early societies of the Yellow River Valley finally we will conclude by examining the rise of China's first rulers which culminated in the establishment of the Qin dynasty whose Imperial model of rule would set the example for all others to follow [Music] in our first episode we will explore the lifestyles of China's final hunter-gatherer societies amongst whom we will see early signs of sedentary living and plant an animal domestication before we do so however we should note that during this series we will be largely focusing on societal developments in Eastern China particularly on the territory of what's in the west is sometimes termed China proper this is not to diminish the development of complex Societies in the other regions that comprise the modern People's Republic it is simply because the territory of the earliest Chinese dynasties was largely restricted to this region indeed it is in this comparatively low-lying area of planes and Hills we see the emergence of some of China's earliest agricultural societies many of which were concentrated around its major river valleys the Huang hu or yellow river in northern China the yangtz sea in Southwestern and eastern central China and to a lesser extent the chu Chang or Pearl River far to the South when it comes to today's episode however all of this lies far in the future instead we must cast our minds back over twenty thousand years into the past to the height of the last ice age [Music] around 20 000 BCE the climate of China was a far cry from that of today around this time the Earth was in a period known as the last glacial maximum and on average the world would have been both cooler and more arid than it is today with large amounts of water locked up in the ice caps and Glaciers the average sea level was some 130 meters lower than it is today and the now submerged Yellow Sea plane would have been exposed as far east as the Korean Peninsula and as far south as the ryuku islands in the north the average temperature would have been between six to nine degrees lower than today [Music] permafrost levels would have extended as far south as Beijing as well as throughout the Western chinling Mountains and the neighboring Tibetan plateau and there is little evidence of human occupation above these points the result is that during this time the climate around the Yellow River Valley would have largely consisted of arid desert or semi-arid step and Tundra populated at the most by a small amount of broad leaf trees further south the drop in temperature would have been less dramatic perhaps around four to five degrees and the lower lying land along the Ang sea Basin would have been largely dominated by wild grasses by the time of the last glacial maximum we are halfway through a period known as the upper Paleolithic which in this region is held to date from approximately 35 000 to 7 000 BCE exactly when or how modern humans first arrived in Southeast Asia remains a subject of debate amongst archaeologists but it is likely that by 20 000 BCE they would already have been present in the region for tens of thousands of years from examining the small number of sites that had been uncovered dating from this period we can tell that the peoples of upper Paleolithic China appear to have pursued a hunter-gatherer lifestyle similar to those of people's elsewhere in Eurasia remaining in one location only as long as the local resource is allowed there is also widespread evidence that they used common tool production methods for the period such as striking fake tools from a central Stone Court to make Choppers and scrapers and from around 43 000 BCE a type of long flight tool known as blades also became popular throughout northern China it is likely that many of these tools were in turn attached to wooden or bone handles to facilitate their use as cutting implements all were fixed to shafts to allow them to serve as projectile weapons such as Spears or bows there is also evidence that these peoples commonly made tools out of both bone and anthra and the presence of needles and alls at these sites suggest that their occupants wore tailored clothing suited to the colder environment in terms of social structure currently it is thought that these early hunter-gatherer groups were largely egalitarian and there are also signs that these people were already practicing their own forms of artistic expression evidence for this has been found at sites such as shui Dongo in the ningxia autonomous area which according to Carbon 14 dating was likely occupied around 36 000 BCE hear an inscribed Pebble bearing a number of linear markings has been found that were likely made by a stone implement a more elaborate carving has also been found on a piece of answer at the cave site of longu in Hubei Province dating from approximately 11 000 BCE this item contains a series of incised wavy lines as appear to have been originally filled with red ocher along with a complex interlaced design and rectangular pattern that are without parallel elsewhere in the period alongside these simple carvings there is also evidence that at least some of these peoples were decorating themselves with ornaments made from bone and shell the most elaborate example of these were found in the upper caves of the chokodian complex in Beijing hear what is interpreted as a burial area containing the remains of eight people has been found coated in red ocher alongside which were found large amounts of animal teeth bones and shells many of these items show signs of drill holes and perforations which would have allowed them to be hung as pendants necklaces and bracelets or possibly sewn onto clothing as decoration and in addition to their decorative qualities the presence of these shells at a site so far inland also demonstrates that some form of long-range Trade Network was operating in the region with precious items likely being passed from one Community to another until they had traveled vast distances from the coast when it comes to habitation sites in China dating from the second half of the upper Paleolithic our knowledge is currently limited to only a few places this is unsurprising as it is thought that at this time its inhabitants would larger have been mobile hunter gatherers whose temporary Dwelling Places would have left only a limited trace on their environment we do however know of a number of sites throughout northern and southern China that give us some insights into these communities foreign from the evidence covered at these locations we can tell that peoples in these two regions were already employing their own specialized methods to survive in their respective ecosystems in northern China much of our knowledge of the late Paleolithic comes from four major clusters of sites Shia Chuan shizutan and long Wang Chang in shanxi Province and huto Liang in Hubei Province with the exception of shizutan which shows evidence of much longer occupation these clusters largely date from between twenty thousand to thirteen thousand BCE and each consists of a dozen or more seasonal campsites from the remains found at these sites we can tell that their occupants would have lived a highly mobile forager lifestyle regularly shifting their place of residence whenever resources grew scarce to make the most of their colder environment these peoples appear to have hunted a broad spectrum of local animal life including species such as wild pig antelope deer Ox Turtles rats fish Buffalo and even ostrich this hunting would in turn have been aided by their adoption of a new type of tool that may have been designed for the colder environment in addition to other common Paleolithic tools such as large Flakes and heavy duty axes adsers and wet Stones these communities also appear to have made ample use of a technology known as microblades as their name suggests these versatile tools consist of small blades that are more than twice as long as they are wide and which can be inserted into cleft handles to make composite points cutting edges and Barbs the earliest known examples have been found at the site of Sharma Bay dating from approximately forty thousand years ago but it is thought that these tools only became a major feature of Paleolithic communities in Northern China between roughly 18 000 to 14 000 BCE compared to larger Flakes and Blades it has been argued that these composite tools would have been both more durable and quicker to replace and the Pebbles and stone cores from which they were struck may have been more portable than those required for other tools these features would have made them highly attractive to a mobile hunter gatherer as they would have allowed their owners to patrol a greater hunting range without being tied to specific sources of tool making materials in addition to this tool usage it is at a number of these sites but we also see some of our earliest known evidence for widespread exploitation of plant resources in the region to demonstrate this let us examine one of these site clusters in a little more detail at chisotan some 25 residential sites have been found situated alongside the chanshui river a tributary of the larger Yellow River some of which appear to have only been occupied for short periods the earliest of these sites dates from roughly 19000 BCE and from its remains we can tell that the people here were largely subsisting on a diet of antelope while Pig deer ox and rat alongside the microblade tools of the time this site is also marked by the presence of a small number of grinding Sipes and hand stones analysis of the residues taken from the surfaces of these items as found that they were used to grind a wide range of plants including acorns beans tubers and the seeds of wild grasses which would have resulted in a rough form of flour that could be used to make simple foodstuffs interestingly these grasses may have included the wild ancestors of both foxtail and broomcorn millets the domesticated forms of which would go on to be a major foodstuff for agricultural communities along the Yellow River Basin and the Millennia ahead similar grindstones have also been found at long Wang Chang and Shia Chuan an analysis of gosses found on Flakes retrieved from the latter in the case they may have been used as crude sickles to reap the seeds of wild grasses we will discuss the implications of these activities on plant domestication soon for the moment however we can say that we now have some idea of the lifestyles of late Paleolithic hunter-gatherers in northern China with this accomplished let us turn our attention elsewhere and examine what evidence we have for Paleolithic life in the south in this region we currently lack evidence for any open-air sites along the lines of those discovered in the North instead most of our information on how people would have lived here in the Millennia after the end of the last glacial maximum comes from a series of seasonally occupied cave sites that have been discovered South of the Yang sea these include you chanyeon in Hunan Province diaotong huan and shanren Dong in Northern guangxi Province and Diane meow Yan and Zhong Pian in guangxi province these sites date from a number of different periods between roughly 18 000 to 7000 BCE and are characterized by the presence of halves Ash piles and burials along with thick deposits of plants and animal remains and tools made from bone Stone and antler that's you chanyeon for example a site that was occupied between roughly 16 000 to 12 000 BCE there is evidence that the inhabitants were subsisting on a broad spectrum diet of pig deer tortoise fish birds and some 40 different species of seeds as with other sites the implements found here largely consist of stone Choppers and flight tools along with a number of items made from Stone bone an ansler that may have been used to dig soil for tubers and a number of polish shells that may have been used as cutting blades interestingly little evidence has been found at these sites for the use of stone blades and microblades and it has been suggested that these tools were more of an adaptation to the resource poor environments of the north that were unnecessary in the comparatively resource Rich South and it is also at these size we see the use of a new technology the development of which long predates its appearance at other early agricultural centers outside of Southeast Asia pottery the Paleolithic Pottery of Southern and Central China is the earliest yet discovered anywhere in the world the oldest reliably dated examples have been found at shanren long cave and consist of fragments that have been dated to between 18 000 to 17 000 BCE based on radiocarbon analysis of surrounding materials these vessels consist of simple containers made from clay and tempered with quartz that would have been sculpted by hand using a rounded bottom coils of clay were then built up around this resulting in uneven walls roughly a centimeter thick after this The Vessel would have been fired at a low temperature to produce a fragile container [Music] simple Pottery has also been found at many of the sites dating from this period with their exact form and components varying between them at Diane Pottery shards have been discovered with walls up to three centimeters thick whilst the TU chanyan the fragmentary remains of vessels dating from around 16 000 BCE have been found tempered with charcoal and sand interestingly at the latter site these shirts were numerous enough that two vessels were able to be reconstructed one of which features a pointed bottom along with decorative cord marks that are a common feature of early Chinese pottery we should also note the use of pottery during the late Paleolithic is not unique to Southern China a small number of pot shirts have also been found in northern China at the site of Hutto Liang though currently its exact function here remains uncertain Pottery has also been found throughout other East Asian sites dating from roughly the same period most notably at those belonging to the incipient German culture of Japan along with a small number of locales in the Russian Far East [Music] the discovery of this early Pottery in East Asia initially presented a quandary for archaeologists [Music] since the early 20th century models of agricultural development most knows widows championed by the influential Professor Gordon child held the appearance of pottery to be a defining feature of early farming communities where it was primarily used for storage and cooking the discovery of pottery amongst the Paleolithic peoples of East Asia contradicted this Theory and it is now accepted that whilst Pottery is often more abundant in early agricultural settlements it was originally invented by mobile hunter gatherer communities [Music] in terms of their function there has currently been little in the way of systematic studies examining how these vessels would have been used [Music] for the moment however we do have a few theories foreign marks on the surface of some of these fragments that they may have been used in much the same way as in later societies to cook simple foodstuffs [Music] at Zhang Pian for example a major component of the inhabitants diet was fish shellfish and mollusks such as snails and it is likely that these Foods would have been cooked in pots prior to their consumption it has also been theorized that Pottery may have been involved in the processing of animal remains found at Yu chanyan possibly being used to Aid the extraction of fatty grease and Marrow from the bones of Red Deer as such it has been suggested by professors Lee Liu and Shin Chan Chen in their work the archeology of China that the adoption of pottery in this region May reflect an improved form of cooking for foods that had already been consumed here for millennia alternatively it has been suggested that this early Pottery may have had more of a social role in support of this Theory it should be noted that the amount of pottery that has been retrieved from these sites is somewhat small and rather than being used as a day-to-day item it may instead have been produced to Mark special occasions and communal feasting many of these cave sites would be intermittently occupied for much of the Paleolithic and there is evidence that diaotongquan and Zhong pyang remained occupied for Millennia afterwards [Music] we will return to some of these sites along with others that emerged during a later part of this period shortly but as we now have a fair understanding of the lifestyles of the Paleolithic peoples of both northern and southern China the time has come for us to move forwards in the final stages of the Paleolithic China's climate would vary dramatically since the end of the last glacial maximum its average temperature had been increasing between 13 000 and 10 800 BCE China's climate was marked by a number of warm-up periods this increased temperature resulted in a major change in the distributions of the Region's plant species one that would have a profound effect on its residents lifestyles then as in modern times the East Asian seasonal Monsoon would have brought warm moist air to China's southernmost regions facilitating the growth of wild rice unlike the other cereal crops at early agricultural societies would come to rely on in the north rice is effectively a marsh plant and its growth relies more on high temperatures and a constant supply of water rather than soil quality this means that as the region warmed the range of wild rice would have expanded northwards into the Yangtze River Valley where it would have been gathered by a local hunter-gatherer groups the remains of small amounts of wild rice have been found alongside early pottery and shell knives that may have been used to harvest it at the aotong huan the amount of wild rice observed at the site surges 10 volt around 11 200 BCE indicating that the residents of this site were likely harvesting it to supplement their diet during this period and whilst we lack any evidence that this plant was been actively cultivated at this time this simple Gathering is fought by many archaeologists to represent the earliest stages of rice domestication a process that would continue for millennia thank you foreign BCE the climate changed again much of the northern hemisphere saw a sudden drop in temperature and the corresponding return to glacial conditions this event is referred to in both European and North American archeology as the younger dryas and a similar cool period is observed throughout southeast Asia though its exact timeline varies between regions this return to Cool temperatures continued for just over a millennium during which time China's climate may have been somewhat unstable the range of wild rice contracted southwards and evidence for its consumption largely disappears from the aotong Huang during this period then after 9600 BCE the average temperature throughout China began to increase again with this warming also came an increase in rainfall as the East Asian Monsoon began to penetrate further north once again and much of Eastern China would come to consist of swamps and lakelands sea levels also Rose to cover much of the previously exposed Yellow Sea plain potentially submerging many Paleolithic sites in the process it is during this period of warming that we begin to see changes in the subsistence Strategies employed by China's hunter-gatherer population whilst in the north the inhabitants of shizutan continue to display a mobile foraging strategy similar to those of earlier Paleolithic communities he bought other sites began to remain in the same place for longer periods of time this can be observed at sites such as Don quailin and Chuan yen in Northern Beijing Yan Chong toe in her Bay Province and Lee Jiang go in Hernan Province whilst a cave settlement dating from this period has also been found at bianbiandong in Shandong province under this approach dubbed the collector's strategy by Professor Robert bettinger these communities would remain at a single residential site for an extended time and rather than moving on once their local resources had been exhausted but instead appear to have sent out small groups to collect far-off foodstuffs these more permanent sites are characterized by their increased size compared to those of earlier Paleolithic communities along with more formalized burials and an increased use of pottery at donghui Lin for example a three thousand meter squared site has been Unearthed on a mountainous River Terrace close to the Qing shui River this site was likely inhabited somewhere between 9 000 to 7000 BCE and is marked by the presence of halves and Ash pits along with a large amount of artifacts made from bone shell and Stone it is these finds along with a large amount of animal and plant remains that were found on the site that allow us to infer that the site was used by its inhabitants to pursue a broad spectrum strategy of hunting Red Deer and wild pigs along with Gathering Seafood whilst also increasingly exploiting the local plant foodstuffs at the time of its initial occupation the temperature of this region would have been some two to three degrees higher than today and the local environment would increasingly have been dominated by a mixture of forest and grassland which would have been abundant in nuts and various types of edible grass seeds from residue analysis of the numerous grindstones and querns that have been found at the site we know that its residents were using them to process large amounts of acorns along with the grains of wild grasses it has also been suggested that the initial use of pottery in this region may have been to Aid in the processing of these foodstuffs whilst acorns and other nuts appear to have been widely exploited as foodstuffs they also contain compounds known as tannins which are toxic to humans if consumed however in some cases these compounds can be removed simply by leaving them submerged in water for a few days a function for which a simple pot would have been ideal once grinding was complete these same tools could then have been used to cook the resulting nuts flour into a simple but edible gruel one that could have been readily combined with other foodstuffs the extensive usage of both rhinestones and Pottery by these communities has also been interpreted by archaeologists as reflecting an increasingly sedentary lifestyle as these heavy objects would have required greater time to produce and would have been more difficult to transport between locations this tendency towards remaining in one spot for longer portions of the year has also been linked with the increasing appearance of another tool that is thought to have been linked with increasing investment in construction whilst microblades and flakes Remain the dominant tools amongst these communities a small amount of water termed polished or ground stone tools have also been unnerved at a number of settlements dating from this period unlike Flakes and Blades which would have been shaped by simple napping these implements would have been further refined by slowly rubbing them against a grindstone resulting in a partial or fully polished surface whilst this process required greater time investment the resulting axes and adds us would have been far more durable than flight tools and it is thought that these tools would have been developed to facilitate increased woodworking associated with the building of more permanent shelters however it should be noted that other than a small number of decayed wooden poles found at Nan chuangto no clear remains of wooden structures have been observed at any of these sites and even then polish stone tools are conspicuously absent from this settlement foreign for us to acknowledge that polystone tools were not an entirely new development in the region a stone Implement matching the style was also found at the earlier site of long Wang Chan where it is hypothesized that it may have been used as a digging implement however it is from this point in the archaeological record onwards that they begin to increase in number and in future Millennia they would eventually displace blades and microblades as the most prominent form of stone tool it is alongside the more sedentary features observed at these sites that we see some of the earliest evidence for both animal and plants domestication in China we previously explored this process in detail in another series on this channel the birth of civilization to give a brief overview however domestication refers to the process by which wild plants and animals are selectively bred for trees that make them more attractive for human food production and management in the case of plants this process is usually achieved through selective cultivation where seeds with preferred traits are increasingly reared in artificial settings such as fields in its earliest forms the selection May well have been unintentional with hunter-gatherers simply replanting the seeds they knew grew well in their local environment these seeds could have been marked by larger grain sizes or may have adhered more strongly to their stalk and thus have been easier to gather once grown this selection process is a slow one and it can often continue for many Millennia before recognizably domesticated plant forms emerge in the course of this episode we've already seen some limited evidence in earlier Paleolithic communities of possible plant cultivation seen in the remains of wild rice at Southern cave sites such as jiaotongquan and Shan Rendon along with the potential sickle Blaze discovered at Shia Chuan exactly when this simple cultivation progressed to more intense Management in China is currently unknown but it is from sites dating to this period that we begin to see the earliest evidence yet discovered the domesticated millet at the sites of nanchuangto which has been radiocarbon dated to between 9500 to 9000 BCE a large number of grindstones and mullers have been Unearthed in 2012 the surface of one set of these was microscopically analyzed reviewing the presence of over 400 starch grains roughly 50 percent of which belong to local varieties of millet amongst these the remains of larger Millet grains were discovered with features more closely resembling those of domesticated plants in the earliest layers of the site these cultivated grains already make up around 45 percent of all starch grades present and over time this proportion would increase to over 50 percent whilst the proportion of wild Millers fell from roughly a third to just 15 percent a similar pattern of morphological changes has also been observed in Millet start residues collected at dongwei Lin and whilst it should be noted that only a small number of grindstones were analyzed at both sites this study suggests that the changes associated with domestication had likely already been occurring for a long period of time when these sites were established in addition to these early signs of crop domestication it is at nanchuangto that we see what may be the earliest evidence for animal domestication in China this can be seen in the form of a canid skull that has been Unearthed at the site that based on morphological changes in its mandible like we belongs to an early domesticated dog it is widely agreed amongst archaeologists the ancestor of dogs in this region is the Mongolian or Tibetan wolf canis lupus changko but exactly when its domestication began is still debated the remains of canines have been found at earlier Paleolithic sites such as hutoliang but morphologically these still resemble those of wild wolves what's more is that by the time of Nyan Trang tall we know that the dog had already been domesticated by other Eurasian peoples several thousand years earlier and it has been suggested that the domestication process in China would also begun Millennia before recognized by domesticated dogs appear either way the value of dogs to human communities still reliant on the hunting of wild animals for survival would have been obvious their remains will continue to increase in the archaeological record in the Millennia ahead where they likely remained a valuable hunting partner and at times also seemed to have been consumed as a source of protein similar signs of domestication and an increasingly sedentary way of life could be observed at communities in Central and Southern China dating from this period whilst the out Tong Juan and Zhang piang show evidence of continuing occupation during the final Millennia of the Paleolithic here our picture of life has been aided by the discovery of the earliest known open-air site in the region [Music] situated on a tributary of the chantang river in the Eastern shoshang Province a remarkable site known as shangshan has been found that stretches over some thirty thousand square meters since the mid-2000s excavations here have uncovered large amounts of halves storage pits organized refuse areas and possible burials unlike contemporary sites in the north this site is also marked by the remains of several large Dwelling Places which has led to it being dubbed China's first Village these buildings likely consisted of what are known as pile structures long-raised dwellings supported by rows of wooden posts built over an Earthen foundation with a surrounding Trench the resulting building would have enclosed a substantial area with one building excavated on this site measuring some 14 by 6 meters according to radiocarbon dating of local Pottery shirts this site was occupied between approximately 9400 to 6600 BCE during this time the environment here and throughout much of southern China would have been subtropical and the local fauna would have been dominated by nut-bearing deciduous and evergreen trees along with a range of non-arboreal and Wetland herbs and grasses in its layout the settlement displays a far greater population density than earlier Paleolithic sites and it is likely that it was occupied for long periods if not year round as in northern China its residents likely followed a collect a subsistence strategy with the backbone of their diet still being supplied by hunting wild animals which they supplemented by consuming large amounts of nuts and other wild grasses interestingly there is also evidence that shangshan's residents were beginning to store less perishable foods long term which they buried in square and circular pits dug over half a meter into the Earth in terms of tools the site is largely marked by a continuance of the Region's Paleolithic tradition of using chipped and Fleet tools along with a very small proportion of polished stone tools that may reflect the increasing demand for woodworking associated with construction of the settlements buildings we also see the presence of hundreds of grindstones similar to those found at earlier sites the surfaces of which appear to have been used to process large amounts of acorns into simple foodstuffs in addition this settlement is also marked by the presence of large amounts of pottery the majority of which consists of large basins along with small numbers of balls and plates these simple vessels were likely constructed using what is known as the slab modeling method where clay sheets are layered together into angular ceramics some of these basins also contain a loop fixed to their outer surface which may have been designed to allow them to be attached to a cord curiously though none of these vessels are known to display any signs of charring or soot marks making their exact relation to cooking unclear one explanation is that instead of being placed directly over Flames some of these large containers would instead have been filled with water into which heated Stones were placed to boil food whilst it is still unproven this Theory may be supported by the presence of large numbers of stone balls that have also been unnerved Elsewhere on the site it is in what may seem like a minor element of these vessels but we also see a potential insight into early crop domestication in southern China as part of their construction these vessels would have undergone a process known as temporary where materials were added to the raw clay to prevent it from cracking whilst being fired in the early layers of shangshan the most common material used for this was the fibrous husks of local grasses the majority of which came from wild rice in addition to these husks a number of attached rice stalks have also been found on the surfaces of these vessels suggesting that they were harvested with cutting implements rather than having their seeds plucked by hand a recent study analyzing the residue and wear patterns on flight tools found at the site as found further support for this argument concluding that these implements were indeed used to Aid in harvesting wild grasses [Music] analysis of rice remains collected from this site also concluded that they more resemble those of domesticated rice rather than wild types and on this basis it has been theorized that this crop was in the process of being domesticated here in the ninth millennium BCE it should be said though that this claim has not gone entirely without pushback in particular it has been argued by some Scholars the remains found at this site and others dating to the period are actually those of wild rice and that fully domesticated rice only emerged in the region several Millennia later the results of this analysis have also been Complicated by the extremely small number of rice remains on which it was based even with these concerns however it seems clear from where analysis that the inhabitants of shangshan were actively harvesting and possibly cultivating the local wild grasses though likely only as a small portion of their diet less ambiguous evidence for Rice cultivation and the beginnings of domestication can also be observed at the cave site of diaotong huan during this period after a drop in rice remains associated with the cooler period of the younger dryas after eight thousand BCE rice remains reappear here in substantial quantities and are marked by a mixture of wild a more domestic-like forms the proportion of the latter of which would only increase in future millennia we have now come to the end of the Paleolithic by this point it is clear that people in this region were beginning to live in larger more permanently occupied settlements and were practicing a degree of early animal and crop domestication whilst the microblade tool set of the North and the flight tools of the South Remain the dominant Implements of the period it is also during this time that we see the emergence of small quantities of polished axes and answers that would become dominant in the Millennia ahead Pottery was also growing more widespread and at some sites it is seen to take on less portable forms perhaps reflecting the less mobile nature of these communities but despite these developments these peoples would have still relied Upon A hunter-gatherer lifestyle similar to that pursued in the earlier Paleolithic wild animals Remain the staple of their tires and the dominant plant food exploited by these communities was still the acorn and other varieties of nuts rather than domesticated cereals such as Millet and rice with the exception of shangshan we also lack evidence for long-term dwellings at these sites and even at this site it is likely that the population was still relocating on either a seasonal or annual basis finally there is little evidence for any organized social Elite in these settlements and burials found at sites such as donkey Lin consist of simple internments of bodies placed on their side in a flexed position accompanied at the most by the occasional trinket but by 7000 BCE this way of life was drawing slowly to an end from this point we enter a period known as the Neolithic or new stone age and he remarked in its later stages by the emergence of fully sedentary communities that would come to rely on domesticated plants and animals for survival the warming Trend that began around 9600 BCE would continue into the early Neolithic with the exception of a brief cold period around 6200 BCE this period saw average temperatures and rainfall rise to levels above that of modern China it is alongside this warming period that we begin to see hundreds of early Villages appearing throughout both the yellow and Yangtze river valleys in our next episode we will examine life amongst these early Neolithic cultures the settlements of which are marked by growing population sizes greater investment in housing and Agriculture and burial of the Dead in more organized cemeteries these Trends would continue into later Millennia until eventually we see the emergence of Walled agricultural settlements the denizens of which lived under a queer social hierarchy and whose Elites were the recipients of elaborate burials accompanied by a luxury goods we will discuss all this and more next time [Music] thank you