The Ancients - Liangzhu: Cradle of Chinese Civilisation?

Episode Date: September 10, 2023

Where do you begin to understand the origins of Chinese civilization? Located near the Yangtze River, the treasures of the Liangzhu culture can be found, a civilisation that dates back to the Neolithic. Today, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. Yijie Zhuang from University College London to unearth the fascinating finds and archaeology that help us piece together the story of this important culture.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, well, we're heading to China. Some 5,000 years ago, we're talking about one of the earliest known cultures, civilizations from ancient China, sometimes labelled as one of the cradles of Chinese civilization. It's a culture located in the Yangtze Delta and it's called Liangzhu. Now the archaeology recovered from Liangzhu is astonishing. This Stone Age centre, which seems to have been a

state society, the layout of the city itself with rivers, almost like a very prehistoric Venice in one sort of way. Hear me out on that later in the episode. But also surrounding Liangzhou, you have some of the earliest known water systems, hydraulic systems ever created, these prehistoric dams. It is remarkable. And that's not even covering the artefacts, the jade artefacts, these precious artefacts that have also been uncovered there. That's all to be explained in today's episode with archaeologist Dr. Yi-Jie Zhuang from University College London.

I headed over to Yi- Zhe's office earlier in the summer and it was a pleasure to do this episode with Ye Zhe in person. I really do hope you enjoy. It's about time that the ancients returned to China and its archaeology. And without further ado, here's Ye Zhe. Ye Zhe, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Nice to meet you. It's lovely to meet you too. And we're doing it in your office at UCL.

And to talk about this, Lanzhou, is that how we say it? Lanzhou, yes. Lanzhou. And this is potentially the earliest state society in East Asia. I think arguably, if we cannot explain what the criteria we use to define what a state-level society was, then we can call it probably the earliest state-level society in East Asia. And how do we therefore define a state society? So that's a long-going debate in terms of what should we call a state or a culture, a

civilization, or how do we define an archaeological culture, a state-level polity or society. And I think instead of going into those endless debates, I'll briefly summarize what's the state of art of this kind of debate in Chinese archaeology and probably in the broader context. A few decades ago, archaeologists in China, they were still using this very, I would say, Eurocentric kind of idea in terms of how should we define a civilization and some of the most salient characteristics people often used to define or to call in archaeological cultures include, for instance, it has to have writing or written records, it has to have metals. And it was getting increasingly absurd in Asian or

Chinese archaeological context because we do have great archaeological cultures like Liangzhu we are talking about today, which has fantastic monuments, extraordinary highly developed agriculture, and yet it was without writing records. So what do we call this? Can we just say there are no civilizations because they don't have written records? So I think archaeology was getting increasingly frustrated, and now a lot of archaeologists in China, or I would say maybe non-Anglo-Saxon context,

they continue to push the boundary of civilization. And in Chinese archaeological context, a lot of prehistorical archaeologists now will call those sort of late Neolithic or late prehistorical culture civilization. And this is still in quite a big contrast to what the Western archaeologists are still thinking of Chinese history.

Because a lot of Western archaeologists, they still think that we should because a lot of Western archaeologists, they still think that we should consider the beginning of civilization in China from the Shang Dynasty, which has the earliest written records. So you can see very interesting debate or conflicting thoughts in China and outside China. You mentioned late Neolithic then. So when are we talking in Chinese history with the late Neolithic then. So when are we talking in Chinese history with the late Neolithic? So different archaeologists have their own chronological framework.

Broadly speaking, we are talking about probably the last five, six millennium, 6,000 to 5,000 years before present and to the beginning of Bronze Age or sort of to the beginning of written records. So we are talking about probably one or two thousand years archaeological records across China. This is also a great time of dramatic social, economic and environmental transformations. You have highly developed agriculture, you have a large variety of introduced cultivars from Eurasian continents also arriving in China. You also have Chinese things going west.

So it's a great time of not only great socio-economic transformation, but also highly intensified regional interactions, which together define what late Neolithic cultures was like in China and probably beyond. Absolutely, those increased connections, isn't it, with people much further, and I'm guessing down river valleys, that's quite an important way that those connections occur. And therefore, you also mentioned the Shang Dynasty, but of course, we're talking about Lanzhou.

So whereabouts in China are we talking about with Liangzhu? So Liangzhu is situated in nowadays Hangzhou city, which is by the Hangzhou Bay of the lower Yangtze River, or broadly speaking to the south of Shanghai, which is a well-known city. And Liangzhu culture sort of rose or emerged at a very interesting window period in terms of broader environmental change because the lower Yangtze river or the Yangtze delta is exceptionally low-lying at the moment

it's only two three meters above the sea level incredible and extremely flat and we have very good geological or environmental records of how the environment has evolved in the past 10,000 years or so and we can see a very dramatic rising curve of the sea level which inundated a majority of the Yangtze Delta but at the same time it also brought abundant sediments so therefore you can see the formation of the delta gradually taking shape. And by around maybe 6,000 to 5,000 years before present, you started to have scattered lines emerge. And then these kind of line formations continue to develop,

which form a very important physical environment for the rise of the Liangzhu civilization around sort of 5,000 years before present. Now you mentioned of course that there's no writing has been found from Liangzhu but it has this extraordinary archaeology and this is monumental archaeology too so I'd like to kind of explore these various parts of it and almost actually start outside the city itself but related to the civilization because I want to talk about these dams, because they look absolutely extraordinary. And I've got in my notes, the earliest hydraulic enterprise in China.

So yes, I did write a paper in 2017, which we do call it the earliest hydraulic enterprise in China. And this was indeed groundbreaking in multiple levels. Firstly, the scale of these hydraulic systems was enormous in terms of the size. The hydraulic system consisting of high dams, low dams, and some very complicated structure levees, as I can show you in the map here. So we have high dams here, which were primarily built in the mountainous area, which is to conjoin different sections of the natural hills, so that you form a natural reservoir.

And then you have low dams in here, which is in the low-lying flatlands. And you also have a very long, so double-dyed levee. And the whole entire system was situated to the north or northwest of the Liangzhou city, which we will come back to later, and the entire volume of the hydraulic enterprise or project. Our rough estimate shows that probably the Liangzhou people were moving at least almost three million cubic meters of earth, you know, from the nearby environment to build dams like these, some of which are still standing nowadays on the surface, quite a few meters above the surrounding ground.

So these are massive construction projects that they are undertaking. Yes, and then they were also applying very clever sort of engineering technique. So they were using some sort of prehistoric sandbags. Sandbags. So basically they were digging the clay sediments from the nearby wetlands, wrap it up with the grass, and therefore you can pilot up the dam from different alignments or different arrangements. Therefore you have a actually good engineering

stability to ensure the dam can stand there for a long time and function well. And then in some dam sections at the bottom of the dams there were also stone beddings which also once again enhanced the permeability of water being drained properly so that it didn't collapse the dams. So I think they have a very good idea of what they were doing, and they have very clever sort of architectural technologies to build the dams. They really are remarkable, and to see how much of them has been preserved even down to the present day, and I love that idea of a Neolithic sandbag as you say with the grass

and everything it really shows how remarkable builders these people were. Do we know what the main purpose, the function of building these dams in the mountains to the north of Lung Ju but also on the lower terrain as well, do we know what their main function was? That's a very good question. And it is also a very difficult one. And obviously, I think the dams will have been multi-functional.

And I think some of the functions will be including protecting the city from being flooded by mountainous terrains, particularly in the summer, because the Liangzhou area is extremely flat, low-lying, and very low-lying sort of flood plains. And even probably two decades ago, people, more than residents living in here, they were still experiencing annual floods.

So obviously this would have been a massive problem for the residents in Liangzhou 5,000 years ago. So I think one of the most important functions of the hydraulic systems would have been preventing the systems from being flooded. And very interesting and I would say astonishing is that the radiocarbon date shows that these hydraulic systems probably predate the Liangzhou city. So in a way that they were probably deliberately engineering the entire landscape that we are going to build this down first so that we can very smoothly you know building our city without being flooded. So I think flood prevention would be probably the most important function. And then the second function I would say probably water transportation, because this mountainous

area can provide a lot of resources that were needed to build and probably operate the Liangzhou city. And we can definitely see that they were collecting a lot of stones, a lot of timbers from the mountainous area for the construction of the hydraulic systems itself, but also the city. And once these reservoirs or dams were flooded, we can see that the level had been increased many meters high, therefore making the whole area becoming sort of easy to navigate. So you can use, you know, bows and bamboo rafts, which have also been found in the Liangzhu civilization, to transport the stones and timbers, you know, from the mountainous area to the city and

nearby area. So that would be the second function. And the third one obviously would be agricultural purposes, controlling or managing water, especially in this sort of monsoon influence area, which can be dry in the winter but very wet in the summer. And very interestingly, this area we have done sort of systematic survey and we haven't found abundant agriculture or fields in this area so was that a deliberate sort of buffering zone you know um the last point probably we do need to do a bit more research in terms of fully understand how exactly these hydraulic systems were used for agriculture purposes. But it is still absolutely extraordinary, isn't it? And I love that transportation point that you mentioned there.

So these almost become waterways between the highlands and the city itself. Yes, yes, yes. Well, let's therefore focus on the city, this ancient city of Lanzhou. What do we know? Well, first of all, the water entering the city through these waterways, were there any fortifications of Liangzhu? Yes, so Liangzhu, it is a walled city which has the enclosed sort of earthen enclosures. And in fact, it's consisting of multiple rings of earthen enclosures, as you can roughly see on the map here. So we have at least probably two circles, maybe three circles.

But the inner one is best preserved. And you can see that the walls, some of them are still a few meters higher than the surrounding ground. And these walls were built by pretty much the same structure or same technology I mentioned earlier on, which is the pre-historical sandbox. You know basically that was a very clever sort of invention they have you know come up with in terms of easily transport the clay or the sediments from the surrounding environment and then piled it up

you know with some complicated structures. And we actually also done some sort of modern engineering testing. And of course these structures are much more stable than you simply just pile up without any structure. So they were building these sort of earthen walls to enclose the entire city. And probably it also functioned as a sort of some kind of boundary or to demarcate the boundary between the enclosed area and those sort of outside enclosed areas. How big is this wall circuit? Do we know roughly how big it is? So the entire enclosed area and the associated facilities total, they probably measure around 300 hectares in size. So it is pretty big.

And in that sense, it's one of the largest urban settlements or urban centers in prehistoric East Asia. Of course, you have slightly bigger, but later period, so enclosed war towns in China as well. But they were found in a sort of later period. And this is of course, they say this is not the Yellow River, this is the Yangtze River, isn't it? So that's also very interesting compared to what was initially... Exactly, and I think that's a very good point that these historical narratives always focus on the Yellow River, that's the cradle of Chinese civilization, but recent and increasing archaeological campaigns outside the Yellow River Valley has added or provided a lot of supplementary information in terms of understanding

how Chinese civilization formed. And obviously Liangzhu is quite against this conventional idea that you have an early city in the Yellow River Valley. In this case, we found a very early city in the Yangtze Delta region. The Yangtze Delta region, indeed. One more thing on the walls before we go into the interior of the town. When someone mentions walls, you've got to also think of entrances. What sorts of gates or entrances did Liangzhu have? Liangzhu, I think it has eight gates.

Some of them are so-called water gates. And we just talked about the hydraulic system. And in fact, the hydraulic system was connected to the city via quite a large number of artificial or natural canals, which the Liangzhu people dug. And I think there are so far at least 51 canals which sort of criss-crossing inside and outside the Liangzhu city and potentially connected to the hydraulic system in the highlands and the natural rivers in the lowlands. So the Liangzhu

city would have been all connected to these natural water systems and therefore they were also using water gates to come in and out of the city, you know for transportation, navigation, etc. So water gates as well as I guess terrestrial or overland gates. So if we've got to imagine that, I mean walking into the city of Liangzhou, do we therefore not just see land? Would there have been canals as well inside the city? Yes, so that's a very good point indeed.

So Liangzhou, we can pretty much call it a water city. Some local archaeologists, they also consider it a prototype of so-called urban water town, prototype of so-called urban water town which is still or was very prevalent in this part of China half a century ago. You know if you visit some of those very well preserved water town outside Shanghai they're pretty amazing. So some local archaeologists consider Liangzhu the prototype of that kind of you know way of living and engineering the landscape. On American History Hit, we ride the wild Oregon Trail, delve deep beneath Central Park, and fight the forgotten war of 1812.

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5,000 years old, you've got these waterways in the town itself. So around these waterways, what has the archaeology revealed about the layout of Liangzhou? So Liangzhou city, as you can see, it's a sort of roundy shape or roughly square shape, kind of enclosed area with two sort of multiple outer kind of circuses. And then right in the middle of the city is the so-called Mojiaoshan Palatial Platforms, which itself is massive in size. It's measuring around 30 hectares in size. And the Mojiao Mountain is really an extraordinary structure. As you can see that the Mojiao Mountain is entirely elevated by constructing these earthen layers. This is the cross section of the Mojiao Mountain glacier platform. Some of them is up to 50 meters high.

So it's an extraordinary engineering project. And then on top of the Mojiao Shan, you can see that it has quite a few small palaces and small man-made platforms or mounds. Unfortunately, a lot of them have already gone. They're going to be preserved. But the foundation itself is really massive. And these are some of the so-called well-preserved sandbags we have found. You can see that you can almost see you know the plants are still there I mean it's fantastic. And then scattered between these palatial platforms are some of the elite cemeteries that have been found inside the city as well as other functional areas such as an area immediately to the south of

the Mojiaoshan Palatial Platform which contains abundant hundreds of tons of rice remains have been found in there. So could that potentially be in a granary or something? Yes, exactly. Yes, so some have called it a state granary and the extraordinary thing about this is that in several thousand square meters, very large areas, you see a meter deep kind of pure carbonized rice there. So the estimates of these rice remains would be tons, you know, hundreds of tons of rice being preserved there. For what reason why this was not consumed but instead have been burned, we don't quite know. You don't quite know.

So there's no... Go on, sorry. Go on, you go. No, we don't quite know what was the reason why they were... Because this is a huge amount of rice and they were not eating it or consuming it. This rice was burned. So was it because of a fire or because of some other purposes? We don't quite know yet. Have you found any other evidence for fire in the city itself

that might suggest it was burned down? Do we not know that yet? Obviously, to get preserved, it has to be burned, carbonized. So obviously there was a massive fire, but whether this was a deliberate fire or fire out of it, some sort of ice stand, we don't quite know yet. The Moji Shan, do we think it's at the center, and you say palatial, do we therefore think that this potentially was the seat of power for the ruler or whoever was at the top of this state society? Probably the elite class, they were living and performing all kinds of ritual sort of activities in the Mojiaoshan. But as I say, unfortunately, a lot of these architects have already gone. So we don't quite know, you know, what was the structure, you know, what were the functions of these palatial architects. And the Anzhu itself itself, in terms of the social hierarchy or social structure, is also very unique.

One of the things, which we will probably come back to in a minute, is the jade. The beautiful jade, yeah. The Liangzhu, at least they were obsessed with jade production. And what's also extraordinary is that they have this very almost homogeneous design of the motifs or some call it insignia. It's like a sort of symbol of the entire state-like society. Okay, yep. Which was commonly acknowledged not only in Liangzhou but across the entire Yangtze Delta area.

And one has to know that this very complicated design with extremely fluid lines, it's only one centimeter. So you can almost imagine that the elite probably have spent a huge amount of time in doing this, in carving the jade. And obviously this was driven by religious or religious-like sort of belief. They probably believed that this was a very important thing in a society and this has some certain power that can unify or coordinate the society and being acknowledged by neighboring communities as well. So collectively,

it probably defined the religious-like ideology of belief in Liangzhu. And the Mojiaoshan elites, whoever were living there, they were probably involved in the production of these kinds of J artifacts as well. And in fact, at the eastern slope of the Mojiaoshan palatial platforms, we can find that there were probably a lot of workshops that's been organized or located in there. And some of the workshops probably were used to produce some of the J artifacts I just showed you. And, of course, this is a very complicated issue.

They probably have already developed some sort of specialized production. Certain workshops responsible for production of certain kind of jade. It's so interesting from archaeology how you can see all across the world from, let's say, the Neolithic period or just the prehistoric period,

the construction of important buildings at the center which have more than one purpose. It could be a powerful elite center, center ritual but also workshops and all this stuff like the canossos the minoans and even a broch even in scotland it is extraordinary to see that again here in china those jade artifacts you did say we were going to go back to them and we are going to go back to them because i mean that particular design you showed just now just to describe it, as you say, it's quite small, those designs, but meticulously carved.

And it resembles, it's a face, isn't it? With like eyes and a nose and maybe a mouth. It's an extraordinary design. So, yes, it's hard not to be fascinated by these kind of incredibly, as you say, meticulously designed and carved jade artifacts as well as, you know, its symbols. And there are a lot of interpretations in terms of what they symbolize. And I think one of the common sort of narratives about the meaning of this insignia or sort of symbols is that it probably represents a sort of prototype of sort of ancestral worship which commemorating some kind of heroic events

of the of the tribe of the of the society which according to some scholars had came a long way before they finally settled in Liangzhu and they were suggesting that in their long march to Liangzhu they probably encountered a lot of difficulties and through those sort of combating the difficulties some heroic figures emerged and therefore these were commemorating by the later generation of the society and this probably was also one of the ways for the rise of these elite groups. And also because of that kind of activities, jade production and also using jade as a material medium to convey these kind of almost religious like ancestral beliefs, you know, become very important and also spread out,

become acknowledged by the neighboring communities. Therefore, Liangzhu elites were able to summon or pull together huge amount of resources to build their huge hydraulic systems, huge monuments, huge massive earthen walls, etc. So it's almost like you say that we're really struck up. So these elites might have almost tried to claim descendancy from these semi-mythical figures. might have almost tried to claim descendancy from these semi-mythical figures, like elite Romans tried to claim descent from their semi-mythical figures who lived hundreds of years ago. It's same potentially here as well and that is kind of a visual representation of it.

I think so. I think there's definitely a lot of sort of similarities in terms of this kind of approach. Obviously, because Liangzhou is much earlier than those examples you just mentioned, we couldn't say with certainty, but obviously this arguably is a very important way for the Liangzhou elite to unify the entire area, because not only in the Liangzhou center, but across the region, we can see that pretty much everybody was you know using these kind of or was sort of having some sort of you know very similar design of sort of similar kind of jade in the society so this map roughly shows you different sort of clusters of sites across the

Liangzhou area in this sort of side cluster called Limping side clusters for instance which is around 30 kilometers away. There we also found you know some jade artifacts with very similar design. Very very very cool. Well let's focus on one other part of Liangzhu where I know there's quite a lot of jade artifacts and really extraordinary parts. This cemetery, what is this cemetery that we have? So far there are about, I think, three or five elite cemeteries that's been found in the Liangzhu area or in Liangzhu city. These are commonly believed to be belonging to elites or some even call it a

royal sort of lineage of the Liangzhou city. If we want to call Liangzhou a state, then these elite cemeteries were used by these kind of royal groups. And one of the most remarkable characteristics of these barriers is the jade. Huge number, huge quantity and diverse sort of shape of jade has been found from these barriers. The most important one is one from the Fanshan Cemetery, one that's considered to be belonging to a king. And roughly speaking, there are about 500 pieces of jade that's been found in one single tomb. And this, you know, obviously, if we can sort of consider jade as a sort of currency, then these people probably were extremely powerful in order to amass that huge amount of, I would

say, wealth or fortune, and then barrier in his outer life. This is really, really extraordinary. It's a display of power, isn't it? It really is. Yes, yes. I wouldn't say it can be directly translated into wealth or wealth in financial terms. But obviously the jade was very important in terms of displaying power, displaying social status during the Liangzhu time.

You've mentioned how we find examples of this in the wider area around Liangzhu. Do we know where this jade was sourced from? That's a very important but probably difficult question. We don't quite know yet. I know some teams from Zhejiang University, they are investigating where this jade source potentially could be from. And there's so far some signs that it could be actually from nearby mountains. One thing we have to bear in mind is that when we talk about jade in prehistoric China, they are different from the jade we refer to later times. In the later times, jade is the same as jade dye,

whereas the jade in prehistoric China, they refer to serpentine. So there are different geological terms of minerals. And some teams from Zhejiang University, for instance, they have found some of the mines of serpentines in nearby mountains. So we don't quite know yet where these jade raw materials was coming from. As you say, they come in these various different sizes and shapes. I've only got one last thing on the jade that we're going to move on, but the Lanzhou Jade Kong. Tong. Tong, that's how you say it. So what are these artifacts? How are they shaped? So the Lanzhou people or the Lanzhou elite obviously have very clear idea in terms of

producing their jade. They have very strict design. What a Cong like you just mentioned, or what a big disc should be like. They have very clear, very strict design of Cong, for instance, you know, it has to have a sort of curly, square kind of shape, sort of outer shape, and then roundy sort of middle, hollow sort of middle. And sometimes the Cong can be also divided into different segments and then between the segments you will see the carved symbols of the of the sacred humans we just mentioned and obviously this J was used to display

You can see that because the the symbol will be carved in this corner, right? So the J will be on display and the viewers will be able to see the symbol. So this jade, a lot of them actually were used by these elites when they were alive. And of course, after their death, they were also buried together into their tombs. And then you also have other types of jade, which they were probably used as kind of ornaments or kind of fittings for their clothes. So jade obviously was the most important artifact in the Liangzhu elite society. And then later you can see that the jade spread out across China and they were used in different times by different cultures and because of Liangzhu people had such

a complicated design and very strict sort of design in terms of what a Cong should be like you can see that a later period of people from other regions they were trying to imitate the Liangzhu Cong artifact, but they didn't quite get it. They would either get the design wrong or they would get a symbol wrong, or they use it in a different context. But once again, such an importance and you know, there's a long-reaching connection that you have in that late Neolithic period. I mean, we've got to keep moving on. I want to ask briefly about these other artifacts that were discovered. I mean, you mentioned B disks or big disks

Yeah, so what are these going and how do they sit alongside these other types of artifacts that have been discovered? so B disks appear if we If we say that the Liangzhu people have an inventory of jade, Cong and other artifacts obviously appear much earlier and obviously they were because you know this is really the center of the elite life you know for a thousand years new forms keep coming you know keep coming out. B disks appear slightly later and there's also theory or scholarly opinion that B disks emerged later and was very quickly being used to display wealth.

So, tongs might be a very important object in the ritual kind of ceremonies, whereas bead discs may be used to simplify or simplify a display, you know, wealth. simplify or simplify a display, you know, width because in some tombs we can see dozens of big discs were used and displayed in this sort of funeral contest. And how they look? They are just small round almost disc shapes kind of things? No, some big discs, some of them are in the British Museum. They are actually massive. They are really huge in size and and yet they don't have or some of them do but a lot of them don't have these extremely meticulously carved motifs therefore you can see that the labor expenditure in that is not that huge as

carving the tongs yet you do need a huge amount of raw materials and they were also used in abundance. And because of these reasons, some scholars consider that the B-discs may be one of the important signs of wealth in the Liangzhu society. And they are also made out of jade, are they? Yes. Right. And so do we therefore have any artifacts that relate to the everyday people of Liangzhu? Do we have ceramics or anything like that? Oh, the Liangzhu people, they were also extremely sophisticated porters, for instance. They produced extremely beautiful, shining black pottery.

And some of them also have very similar carvings that we can see from the jade. And they also produced a huge amount of lacquerware. So this presumably was used in daily life for eating, for drinking, but also for ritual ceremonies, for displaying food, offering food to the ancestors, etc. There's a huge inventory of artifacts that's been found in the Liangzhou city. And because this is also a waterlogged kind of environment, a lot of these organic materials get very well preserved. So therefore we are very fortunate to see incredibly preserved kind of lacquer wares,

bamboo sort of sleeping mats for instance, huge varieties of daily life artifacts that's been found from the Liangzhu excavation as well. So you've got late Neolithic beds in the parts of these bamboo, well potentially hammock kind of things that they had these people were... Yes, I couldn't find that picture but we do have very beautifully sort of interwoven kind of bamboo artifacts presumably used as a mat, as a mat at least in domestic context. I wouldn't say it's a bed but this is a resting area. Not a bed, not a hammock bed but this is a resting area not a bed not a hammock but as you say a resting area and a potential cover last question therefore all of

this incredible archaeology from the dams to the walls to the elite jade to these everyday artifacts preserved because of the waterlogged conditions and the burning what has all the archaeology therefore revealed about Liangzhou so far? What has it suggested about this site's importance and the people who lived here in the third millennium BC? So we can look at this from different perspectives. And obviously one thing, as I just mentioned, is that the date of the Liangzhu urban operation is really much earlier than previously thought and also because it's in the lower Yangtze river it's out of the conventional idea where the Chinese civilization originated from. So it provides us an extraordinary material evidence to see that in other parts of China, not the central

plains, you also have this highly developed early state-like entity emerge from a very early time. And they obviously have incredibly sophisticated engineering ability, highly organized society, and most importantly, highly developed rice-based agriculture economy. And all these support the huge undertaking of the earthen monuments, of the hydraulic systems, and define the Liangzhu civilization. And another thing I want to mention is that the Liangzhu civilization is also about water. They obviously had very sophisticated knowledge about how to control the water, and they also had a means to tame or confine the water.

Because without that, they couldn't have survived, let of flourished in this kind of waterlogged, you know, wetland, very low-lying environment. And yeah, I think that's probably, those are probably very important sort of characteristics about Liangzhu civilization. And they were obviously able to not have direct control, but establish a very far-reaching kind of connection with their neighbors. We are not just talking about Liangzhou city, but we are talking about almost a thousand sites in this area. And this huge number of sites, they share some similarities, such as the kind of religious belief I mentioned early on. They were all supported by rice agriculture. They all have very similar architectural technologies, such as building the mounds. So we are talking about a regional

phenomenon, not just one single site from the Liangzhou city. It is absolutely extraordinary, Yujie, and extraordinary must be such a privilege to be able to work on this archaeology and as you say this is like breaking down barriers this is new evidence that is suggesting as you've highlighted there that this old idea of the river as this traditional center of chinese civilization a cradle almost almost, it may not necessarily be there. You also have this incredibly sophisticated, flourishing culture also existing along the Yangtze River in the late Neolithic period, so it's some 5,000 years ago. It must be fascinating to study that and to learn more about it. Yes, and then I think one of the fascinating thing about recent archeological development in China

is that you do have, I think now we can almost say that you have multiple centers of civilizations in China. You have the Yangtze River, we also have a massive, almost equivalent Yangtze in the middle Yangtze River. And thenzhou in the middle Yangtze River. And then up in the upper Yangtze River in nowadays Chengdu, you also have highly developed civilizations. They are all more or less about the late Neolithic period I mentioned.

So we can see multiple centers of these highly developed early civilizations across China. And I think together they were interacting, they were communicating, and together they defined, you know, what we call Chinese civilization. Well, Yijie, this has been absolutely fascinating. And it just goes me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. My pleasure. Thank you. us today. My pleasure. Thank you. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Yi Jie Zhuang talking all things Liang Zhu. I hope you enjoyed the episode today. And as mentioned in the intro, it's about time we return to China and its archaeology. And don't you worry, we'll be doing more topics on that in the near future. In the meantime meantime if you've been enjoying the ancients and you want to help us out as we enjoy this incredible growth spurt over the last few months

it has been absolutely brilliant if you want to help us out well you know what you can do you can leave us a lovely rating on apple podcast on spotify wherever you get your podcast from it really helps us as we continue to grow the podcast to take it to even greater heights and to continue our infinite mission to share these amazing stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible but that's enough from me and i will see you in the next episode