Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China. E. N. Anderson
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objects turned up, some including zinc and thus “brass,” but this is surely accidental—there happened to be some zinc naturally occurring in the copper. Other sites have copper and even bronze, but again as an accident of copper and tin occurring together in the ore (Zhang Zhongpei 2002). Still, the occurrence of copper technology in Yangshao times is impressive.
A dragon figure and a tiger figure, picked out in mussel shells stuck to the floor of a tomb about 5,600 years old, were discovered in Henan in 1987 (Da 1988; K.-c. Chang 1999: 51; Morris 2010: 126; see excellent photographs in K.-c. Chang 2002b: 130, Zhang Zhongpei 2002: 78). The tomb, broadly Yangshao in culture, is probably that of a shaman or similar officiant. His skeleton is flanked by the animals, the dragon on his right, the tiger on his left. (To this day, the dragon, being yang, goes on the right; the tiger, more yin, on the left.) In the same tomb is a shell design of “an animal with a dragon’s head and a tiger’s body. A deer is seated on the tiger’s back, while on its head is a spider, and in front of it a ball … [and] a man riding on a dragon and a running tiger” (Zhang Zhongpei 2002: 77–78). The same tomb contained a Big Dipper design laid out in bones and other similar art. The dragon, tiger, and deer are still associated with soul travel (such numinous beings are called jue animals; Zhang Zhongpei 2002: 78). Shaman refers to an independent religious practitioner who engages in curing or helping rituals that involve sending his soul to the lands of gods and dead—or sometimes receives souls from there. The word comes from a Tungus language spoken on the borders of Manchuria and is actually first attested in documents from the Tungus-ruled Jin Dynasty in the 1100s CE. True shamans occur in traditional religion throughout East and Central Asia, and the term can be reasonably applied to similar traditional practitioners in indigenous societies of Siberia, native North America, and neighboring areas. The word is not correctly used as a general term for any religious practitioner in a traditional society. In this case, however, it seems highly likely that the man in ancient Henan was indeed a shaman.
Many complex farming cultures existed in China by 4000 BCE. Dates for first millet cultivation get progressively later as one leaves the interior loess lands in the Yellow River drainage. Similarly, dates for the first rice cultivation get progressively later as one leaves the Yangzi Valley. Reflecting this chronology, rice vocabularies from neighboring but only dubiously related languages show similarities all across East and Southeast Asia (Blench 2005). Japan got rice cultivation only by around 1000 (Kuzmin 2008a); large-scale, intensive cultivation spread, apparently from Korea, after 400.
Paddy agriculture in China is attested clearly by 2500 BCE (Crawford 2006) and must have been common before then. The rice of West Africa is a different species, independently domesticated about 2,000 years ago (Carney 2001). The “wild rice” of North America is neither wild nor rice; it is an aquatic grass (Zizania aquatica and/or Z. latifolia), cultivated also in China under the name lu sun, a name recently (and confusingly) used for asparagus.
Decades of failure to find Neolithic soybeans strengthened the case that the soybean came from the north in the Zhou Dynasty—as Chinese records say. Finally, however, Lee and associates (2008) have found earlier domesticated soybeans. A sequence of larger and larger soybeans—indicating deliberate breeding for size—emerged in 3000–2500 BCE in the Erlitou area of central China (where an early “Xia” city rose; see following chapter). Full domestication at around 1100–1000 occurred through north China and Korea (Crawford 2006; Lee 2007). Ping-ti Ho’s classic case for derivation from the Jung barbarians—Shanrong, in today’s usage—may still be fair enough (E. Anderson 1988). Rong, as now transcribed, was a general term for non-Chinese peoples north of the Chinese, and the northeast was the earliest center of diversity of soybeans, though centers of diversity elsewhere in China soon appeared (Lee et al. 2008). They were not called barbarians (fan or equivalent) in the early texts; calling them so was a later interpolation.
Archaeology has revealed a vast number of Neolithic cultures. Every part of China, as well as Korea (Nelson 1993), had a complex, sophisticated Neolithic tradition by 3000–2000 BCE. These peoples lived on grain, with many fruits, vegetables, fish, turtles, and domestic and wild animals. China was still game-rich, and deer were important. Even far-off New Guinea may have contributed: sugar cane may be a New Guinea domesticate, and it arrived in China very early. Bananas, a complex hybrid of two species (Musa acuminata × Musa balbisiana), come from somewhere in the Malaysia-Indonesia region, and recent studies suggest a date of 7000 years ago. They also came early to New Guinea (Rice 2005), where another species (Musa fehi) was also domesticated.
Vegetables and minor grain crops are not well attested early, but many were no doubt cultivated long ago (Crawford 2006). Buckwheat is first attested around 1500 BCE and was domesticated in west China, on or near the Tibetan cultural frontiers, possibly by 3000 (Ohnishi 1998).
A dramatic new find is a 4,000-year-old bowl of noodles, at Lajia in northwest China (H. Lu et al. 2005). The noodles were made from millet (both panic and foxtail) and were about 20 cm long; they were excellently preserved, in an overturned bowl that had become sealed by clay below and around it. They were probably extruded by being forced through holes in a plate and into boiling water—this being the traditional Chinese way of making noodles from low-gluten grains like millet. The history of noodles in the Western world is well known; they first occur around 200–400 CE. Perhaps they spread from China, but it seems much more likely they were independently invented. In any case, China has a clear and very long priority. However, noodles are not mentioned in Chinese writing till about 100 CE, in the Han Dynasty, by which time there had been other archaeological finds of them. Textual evidence for practical crafts is late and spotty in China.
The classic association of greater cultural complexity with a widening gap between rich and poor and between male and female is confirmed by recent studies of body size, as well as of grave goods in cemeteries. In particular, people tended to be somewhat less healthy as the Neolithic progressed; then, in the late Zhou Dynasty, males were notably taller and females smaller than in earlier times (Pechenkina and Ma 2008).
Magnificent photographs of most of the sites mentioned in this chapter are found in Allan 2002 and Yang Xiaoneng 1999.
Animals
Pigs soon became very important as a wealth item, with consumption of pork showing high status. Domesticated pigs are now reported by 7000 BCE (Lawler 2009), though this date is questioned. The possibility of their being domesticated in China, independently of the Near East, is still open (Larson et al. 2010).
By 6000 BCE, pigs were domesticated in China (and also, apparently independently, in West Asia) and being fed millet husks and waste (Jing and Flad 2002; Li Liu 2004). It is possible that they occurred even earlier; bones from 7000 may be those of domesticated swine (Cohen 2011). This is about as early as domestic pigs are also found in the Near East; they were independently domesticated in both places. This is not surprising. Pigs, like many animals, tame themselves if fed, and they are very good eating. People all over the world keep young wild pigs (and other wild game) today, especially if hunters kill a mother and young ones are left. The young are eaten when they grow big. This provides a good context for domestication. The most tranquil young may not be killed until they have bred, and thus tranquility and “domestic”-ness are selected. Tame pigs have had their brains reduced in size by a third, more than any other animal; they have been bred for docility, nonaggression, and sloth (Zeder 2012). They are still fairly intelligent as animals go, but nothing like a wild pig or peccary.
Early use and steady increase in importance of pigs is visible in the archaeological record. Significant pork-eating and the pattern of status consumption are clear by 3000 BCE (S.-O. Kim 1994). This set a pattern; the same is true today throughout China except in Muslim areas. However, it is much more evident in north China than in the Yangzi country. The latter had so much game and fish that these resources remained more important than domestic livestock until quite late, perhaps 2000 (Yuan et al. 2008). Fish were so important in the lower Yangzi area that people were buried with them. Perhaps this was food for the other world. Fish may have been sacred (as some still are in south China) or may have been totems or spirit companions. Domestic dogs have existed in China since around 8000 BCE (Liu and Chen 2012: 56)—at least as long as pigs and probably longer. In fact, the dog may be