36 | New Scientist | 21 March 2020The civilisation
that time forgot
The discovery of a stunning culture in east Asia
that rivals ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia is
rewriting human history, finds David Robson
N
EARLY five-and-a-half millennia ago,
a bustling metropolis lay in the delta
of the lower Yangtze, in what is now
China. You could enter on foot – there was a
single road through the towering city walls –
but most people travelled by boat via an
intricate network of canals. At its heart, was
a massive palatial complex built on a platform
of earth. There were huge granaries and
cemeteries filled with elaborately decorated
tombs, while the water system was controlled
by an impressive series of dams and reservoirs.
The inhabitants of this city, known today as
Liangzhu, ruled the surrounding floodplains
for nearly 1000 years, their culture extending
into the countryside for hundreds of
kilometres. Then, around 4300 years ago, the
society quickly declined, and its achievements
were largely forgotten. It is only within the past
decade that archaeologists have begun to
reveal its true importance in world history.
Their startling discoveries suggest that
Liangzhu was eastern Asia’s oldest state-based
society, and its infrastructure may even have
surpassed the achievements of Egypt and
Mesopotamia, thousands of miles to the
west. “There’s nothing in the world, from my
vantage point, that is as monumental in terms
of water management – or for that matter, any
kind of management – that occurs so early in
history,” says Vernon Scarborough at the
University of Cincinnati in Ohio. One of the
biggest chapters in humanity’s story, the birth
of civilisation, may need to be rewritten.
The first evidence of a lost ancient culture in
the Yangtze delta was uncovered in 1936, by Shi
Xingeng, who worked at the nearby West Lake
Museum in Hangzhou. He named the site
Liangzhu, after a nearby town. However, the
FAblack pottery artefacts he found didn’t initially
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seem remarkable. It was only in the 1970s and
1980s that Liangzhu began to generate much
greater excitement, beginning with the
excavation of some cemeteries in and around
the ancient city.
While many of the tombs were rather
spartan, with few burial goods, some
contained hundreds of beautiful jade objects,
including the earliest examples of China’s
iconic cong vessels and delicate bi discs. Many
of these artefacts were engraved with the
image of a man wearing an enormous, plumed
headdress, who appears to be riding a large,
fanged monster – a motif that could represent
a mythical or religious story. The graves also
held ceremonial axes, pendants, and plaques
depicting the same mythical figures, which
seem to have been attached to headgear. These
kinds of objects had previously been assigned
to much later periods, starting with the Zhou
dynasty in 1046 BC, but here they were, in a
5000-year-old, Neolithic burial place. It was
the first sign that Liangzhu may have been
a complex society, with workers producing
costly and time-consuming artwork and a
social elite rich enough to pay for it.
Later digs, inspired by these discoveries,
revealed a huge earthen platform at the heart
of the city. It is more than 9 metres high and
covers 300,000 square metres, and appears to
have supported a large palatial complex with
buildings made of wood and bamboo, which
the researchers named Mojiaoshan. Then
came signs of city walls, more than 20 metres
wide and often accompanied by internal and
external moats. There was obviously an
abundance of food too: one pit in the city
contains more than 10,000 kilograms
of burnt rice from a local granary.
Then, in December 2017, a bombshell paper