The archaeological evidence suggests that it was primarily
from the
north that modern humans entered China. People with a culture of an
Upper Palaeolithic character are attested in Siberia from about forty
thousand years ago, and seem to have expanded southward into northern
China, Korea, and Japan. South China, like Southeast Asia, is more or
less a blank until the Holocene. But there was apparently a population
of cave-dwelling Negritos on Taiwan down to the nineteenth century, and
this could be a residue of an early coastal entry of modern humans from
Southeast Asia. A few Negrito groups survive there, and bear more
resemblance to the native peoples of New Guinea than to Southeast
Asians of the present day.
It is with the Neolithic that China comes into sharp
focus. Two major
developments marked its onset. In the valley of the Yellow River,
settled farming based on domesticated millet had appeared by about 6000
B.C. In the Yangtze Valley, domesticated rice was being cultivated by
about 5500 B.C., and perhaps as early as 7500 B.C. (this seems to be
the source of later rice cultivation in southern China, Southeast Asia,
and India, though there is no certainty yet regarding where rice was
first domesticated). As might be expected, the cultivation of these
crops came to be associated with domesticated animals, notably the
chicken, the pig, and the water buffalo; but it is not yet clear just
when they were domesticated. The two crops differed significantly: the
millet grown in the north was adapted to arid conditions, whereas the
rice grown in the Yangtze Valley flourished in shallow water. But the
overall pattern seems familiar enough from the onset of farming
elsewhere. Yet one feature of the Chinese Neolithic is distinctly
unusual: ;Orr from the start the major developments took place in the
river valleys. This is not how it was in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or—so far
as we can tell—the Indus Valley. Here perhaps is one reason why the
subsequent buildup of settled village life was so strong in Neolithic
China. By the end of the third millennium, solid agricultural
foundations had been laid for the emergence of a civilization.
