College of Foreign Languages&Cultures, SCU
The Origin of Chinese Civilization
The Neolithic Period
The Neolithic culture in China bore fundamental resemblances to the Neolithic in many parts of Eurasia but also had some distinctive features. In different parts of China, moreover, there were from early times regional variations. There was apparently a continuity of population from Neolithic times into the historic period, and there are some evidences of cultural continuity as well. But the sources of information available allow no simple conclusion about the connection between the civilization of China and other ancient centers to the west.
College of Foreign Languages&Cultures, SCU
The Origin of Chinese Civilization
Paleolithic in China The Lower Cave at Zhoukoudian has yielded evidence of intermittent human use from about 460,000 to 230,000 years ago, and fossils of Peking man found in the complex have been dated to about 770,000 years ago. Many caves and other sites in Anhui, Hebei, Henan, Liaoning, Shandong, Shanxi and Shaanxi in northern China and in Guizhou and Hubei in the south suggest that H. erectus achieved wide distribution in China.
College of Foreign Languages&Cultures, SCU
No Trustable Historical Literature
• The Oldest Chinese historical literature, in the Shu Jing (Classic of History or Book of Documents)---part of it the so-called ancient text, a late forgery---and the earliest extant collection of ancient songs and poems, the Shi Jing (Classic of Odes or Book of Songs), cannot be depended upon for information earlier than the 1st millennium BC, and much of that is by no means uncontested. The earliest documents in even these books show a civilization already far removed from primitive conditions and contain no certain proof of either a native or a foreign origin for the Chinese.
College of Foreign Languages&Cultures, SCU
Lecture One
The Origin of Chinese Civilization
College of Foreign Languages&Cultures, SCU
Paleolithic in China
College of Foreign Languages&Cultures, SCU
The Origin of Chinesegins of Chinese people and their civilization are still undetermined. It is unlikely that the people were of one original stock or that the civilization spread from one center either within or outside the modern boundaries. More likely, many different ethnic groups and many separate centers of primitive culture gradually merged and mingled to produce the civilization that has been continuously unfolding and spreading over this continental region.
The fossil record in China promises fundamental contributions to the understanding of human origins. There is considerable evidence of Homo erectus by the time of the Lower Paleolithic (the Paleolithic Period [Old Stone Age] began about 2,500,000 years ago and ended 10,000 years ago) at sites such as Lantian, Shaanxi; Hexian, Anhui; Yuanmou, Yunnan; and, the most famous, that of Peking man at Zhoukoudian, Beijing.