This is the History of the World Podcast with me Chris Hasler

and this is volume 2 the ancient world

episode 29 Neolithic China. Oh, Now it is time to turn our attention to the fourth river system Society of the ancient world.

We've described Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, the Indus Valley,

and now we move over to China. Let's clarify what we already know about

Neolithic China. We know Pottery emerged very early in China and the cultivation of rice

may not have been long after. Also we know that the Chinese societies were independently domesticating pigs, yack, buffalo and jungle Fowl.

Evidence of millet cultivation soon followed.

By and large, these societies were settling around the Yellow and Yanktze rivers.

It's time to look at the next stage of China's history and bring it up to date with the rest of the areas in the podcast.

Initially we are going to target the Yancey River and explore what was happening around there.

We are going to go right back to 5,500 B.C.

E.

This might sound like a long time ago when compared to our other ancient world stories

But when it comes to China, it is very important that we appreciate that a lot of the cultural emergencies

that we're about to start have it evolved into the China that we know today.

We picked up on this during the episodes about the story of

writing where we believe that the earliest Chinese writings are a direct

ancestor to modern Chinese writing. China is astonishing for this reason. Its culture has survived even though the power has shifted and we can't say

that about our other ancient river societies whose cultures have had to have been interpreted without any modern clues.

Hemudu

Back in 1973 an ancient site was discovered that would open a doorway into the past

...