on excavations and the analysis of their data, it is believed
that the fi rst cities in Asia were in China. Urbanism devel-
oped next in South Asia, particularly Pakistan, followed by
Southeast Asia and, fi nally, Korea and Japan.
CHINA’S MOST ANCIENT CITIES
Not only are China’s cities the oldest in Asia, but they also
most readily lend themselves to defi nition. Th e Chinese word
for city, cheng, is the same as the word for wall, and evidence
of Chinese walls is at least as old as the evidence of cities.
Th e fi rst-known walled settlement in China is a Neolithic vil-
lage of the sixth millennium b.c.e. in Li County in Hunan
Province. An earthen wall 19.5 feet wide at the base that nar-
rowed to about 5 feet at the top, roughly rectangular in shape,
enclosed an area of 35,888 square yards. A ditch associated
with the wall was also discovered. Several thousand miles to
the north, in Aohanqi, Inner Mongolia, a ditch, but without
any remains of a wall, enclosed a settlement of 28,700 square
yards. Its date was determined by carbon-14 testing to be be-
tween 6200 and 5400 b.c.e. Houses in the Aohanqi settlement
were arranged in rows. Remains of a cemetery dated to the
mid-seventh millennium b.c.e., associated with a residential
settlement but with no evidence of a wall or ditch, have been
found in Wuyang County in the province of Henan. By the
fi ft h millennium b.c.e. a settlement in Shaanxi Province in-
cluded houses of at least three sizes, three cemeteries, a pot-
tery workshop, and animal pens.
Walled settlements of the fourth millennium b.c.e. have
been found in every region of China. A nearly circular wall
surrounded by a moat enclosed a settlement in Zhengzhou,
Henan. Also circular, enclosed by both wall and moat, was
Chengtoushan, in Li County. At 95,680 square yards in area,
it is more than twice as large as any other settlement known
in Asia at the time. Both Zhengzhou and Chengtoushan had
walls that were made using the rammed earth technique,
associated with Chinese wall construction for the next four
thousand years. (In the rammed-earth technique, walls are
constructed of earth mixed with sand, gravel, and clay. Th e
dampened material is poured into a form and then com-
pacted, and the process is repeated until the desired height is
reached.) By the fourth millennium b.c.e. Chinese cities were
defi ned by walls, moats, residential architecture, cemeteries,
and sometimes workshops.
It has been said that China experienced an urban revolu-
tion in the third millennium b.c.e., which was still nearly a
thousand years before China entered the Bronze Age or had a
written language. Cities from this period were huge in com-
parison to earlier times, sometimes between 1,195,990 and
3,587,970 square yards and serving a population that spread
as many as 60 miles in either direction. It has been estimated
that medium-size cities served a population of between 1,250
and 3,750 households, whereas the largest cities may have ser-
viced as many as 50,000. Wall shapes appear to have become
predominantly quadrilateral, in contrast to the more circular
confi gurations found in the fi ft h and fourth millennia b.c.e.
Jade ritual reaping knife, from Henan province, northern China, during
the Erlitou Period (17th-16th centuries b.c.e); a large number of items
made of such materials as bronze, jade, lacquer, and bone attest to a
complex urban life at this site. (© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)cities: Asia and the Pacific 215