China (for individual work)
China
China is located in the eastern part of Asia, along the west coast of the Pacific Ocean. The eastern regions are fertile alluvial plains that have been built up by China’s great river systems.
Along the edges of the Mongolian Plateau in the north lie extensive grasslands, the home of the pastoral nomadic peoples who interacted (and competed and clashed) with China’s sedentary populations virtually from the beginning of history.
The southern regions of China consist of hill country and low mountain ranges. The south receives extensive rainfall, which is ideal for rice cultivation. The success of rice farmers through the ages — from around 8000 BCE, when the grain was first harvested and domesticated — explains why China has been consistently able to support a very large population.
China is also a mountainous country. The highest of these mountain ranges, including the Himalaya, the Karakoram, and the Tien Shan, are all located in the west, where they have long acted as a formidable barrier to communication. To make these topographical barriers even more challenging, the mountain ranges are interspersed with harsh deserts like the Taklimakan and Gobi.
There is little arable land for agriculture in the west, so the smallish populations there have been confined to oasis settlements or have lived as pastoral nomads on the steppes.
This led to Chinese civilization emerging in the more arable east, north, and south. Isolated by its own “wild west,” China was cut off from the rest of Eurasia and from competing agrarian civilizations.
The shift towards agriculture began due to the change in climate which by that time had become warmer.
China’s two river systems have also greatly influenced its history and culture. The Huang He in the north, called the Yellow River because of huge amounts of silt (yellow loess soil).
The Huang He is also known as “China’s Sorrow” because of the misery its devastating floods have caused. The earliest cities, states, and civilizations of East Asia all appeared along the Huang He — the Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties were all centered there. So for millennia some of the largest populations in the world lived within the Yellow River system and faced the potential of regular flood devastation. Emperors and court officials tried numerous schemes to control these floods, but with little success.
The other major river of China is the Yangtze, the third longest river in the world after the Nile and the Amazon.
China was an area of early domestication. Recent research has shown that it occurred earlier there than was once thought. Rice was probably domesticated in southern China along the Yangtze River, about 9,500 to 8,800 years ago, by foragers who had previously harvested wild rice. Millet was domesticated along the Yellow River in northern China by 8,000 years ago. Pigs may have been domesticated independently in the north. By the eighth millennium BP, both the millet-based systems of northern China and the rice-based systems of southern China were well established.
Questions for expert groups
1. What factors influenced the appearance of the first agrarian civilization in the region?
2. What plants and animals were domesticated? When and why did the domestications happen?
3. What were the main problems of the early agrarian civilizations in the region?
Questions for the mixed groups
1. Put the agrarian civilization in the sequence of their appearance.
1 agrarian civilization (the time of appearance; domesticated plants and animals) à 2 agrarian civilization (the time of appearance; domesticated plants and animals) à 3 agrarian civilization (the time of appearance; domesticated plants and animals) à 4 agrarian civilization (the time of appearance; domesticated plants and animals)
2. Find the differences between the agrarian civilizations.
3. Find the similarities between the agrarian civilizations.
4. Conclusive questions: what factors played the major role in the development of the agrarian civilizations? Which of them were more important and less important for the development of agriculture?