21 March 2020 | New Scientist | 39required organised labour to build their moats
and walls. “Liangzhu is by far the biggest, but
you find other walled urban centres,” says
Jessica Rawson at the University of Oxford.
“And you get high levels of craftsmanship,
not just in jade, but in several types of
ceramics, in several parts of China.” There will
have been communication between some of
these sites, with the larger settlements acting
as local power hubs. Liangzhu’s cultural
influence, for instance, can be found in rural
sites more than 100 kilometres away.
This paints a very different picture from the
traditional view of Chinese history. Small rice-
farming communities began to appear around
10,000 years ago. Until recently, however, it
was thought that the first Chinese state
society – one with a formal political system and
complex social organisation – emerged just
3600 years ago, with the rise of the Shang
dynasty in the Central Plains. But Liangzhu,
far to the south-east, has many of the features
of a state society around 1700 years earlier,
argue Renfrew and Liu, who has conducted
much of the archaeological research at the site.
Hallmarks of state
First, there is the size of the population. Liu’s
team estimates that this peaked at between
22,900 and 34,500, which is many times larger
than any earlier Chinese community. Then
there is clear evidence of a strict social
hierarchy, such as the vast differences between
the tombs of the rich and the poor. Finally,
there is the ambition of the communal works,
including the building of the city walls, the
Mojiaoshan platform and palatial complex,
and the sophisticated hydraulic engineering.
The construction work is particularly
impressive when you consider that the city’s
inhabitants had no pack animals, such as
horses or donkeys, or oxen to pull a plough,
says Rawson. Nevertheless, they were able to
relieve enough people from their agricultural
duties to build these monumental structures.
“Everything is dependent on human labour,”
says Rawson. “And the key thing then is to
organise that labour.” Liu’s team has estimated
that constructing the dams alone would have
required the movement of around 2.9 million
cubic metres of earth, which would have taken
3000 workers eight years to complete. This was
a huge undertaking, of the kind that can only
come from a sophisticated society with central
organisation and planning. “You can’t think of
this hydraulic project without planning,” says
Rawson. “This is not a small group of people –
this is large-scale management.”
Discoveries in China point to a
previously unknown civilisation
in east Asia. How does
Liangzhu measure up to other
early human civilisations?
To archaeologists, a
civilisation is an urbanised
state society with central
settlements in the form of
towns and cities, and complex
social organisation, such as a
class system or a ruling elite.
Civilisations also have some
control over the environment,
so that people are more
resistant to the whims of
nature and can create a surplus
of food that allows various
industries to flourish. By-
products of this way of living
include writing, long-distance
trade and monuments.
The so-called Fertile Crescent
east of the Mediterranean has
often been called “the cradle
of civilisation”, thanks to the
emergence of city-states such
as Uruk in Mesopotamia, which
became increasingly urbanised
from around 6000 years ago.
Estimates of Uruk’s population
vary wildly, but, by around
4900 years ago, it is thought
to have housed more than
60,000 people. Its communal
works included temples and
canals for irrigation. Uruk’s
inhabitants invented the first
known form of writing,
cuneiform, and their texts
include the earliest surviving
great work of literature, The
Epic of Gilgamesh, about a
legendary king of the city.
At the western end of the
Fertile Crescent, another
civilisation was emerging at
about the same time. Farming
communities in Egypt also
became increasingly urbanised
and, by 5100 years ago, they
had coalesced into a society
ruled from the city of Memphis
by the first pharaoh, Narmer.
This “first kingdom” used the
waters of the Nile for irrigation,
had elaborate tombs –
although not yet as ambitiousas the famous pyramids – and a
rudimentary writing system
based on hieroglyphics.
We now know that complex
societies were developing
independently elsewhere,
though. The Indus valley in
south Asia, for instance,
became increasingly urbanised
between 6000 and 5000 years
ago, with the formation of
cities such as Harappa, home to
tens of thousands of people.
Intriguingly, there seems to
have been some
communication and trade
between the people of Harappa
and Mesopotamia. It isn’t yet
clear, however, whether the
symbols found on Indus valley
artefacts constituted a fully
fledged writing system.
The Liangzhu culture on the
lower Yangtze had much in
common with these early
civilisations. With its social
elite, skilled craftwork and
refined architecture, itdemonstrated the most
important characteristics of a
state society more than 5000
years ago. Its population of up
to 34,500 put it on a scale with
Uruk, Memphis and Harappa.
And its communal works would
have required large-scale social
organisation and management.
Liangzhu’s enormous hydraulic
system, which allowed its
citizens to master their watery
landscape, was so advanced
that some consider it the most
impressive anywhere in the
world at that time. It is time to
abandon the idea that
civilisation had a single cradle.Cradles of civilization
“ It is time to
abandon
the idea that
civilisation had
a single cradle”
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