High-Risk Survey For The Earliest Agriculture In North China

农业的发明是人类最伟大的成就之一，也是考古学面临的最大挑战。尽管在考古学的理解上取得了巨大的进步，但考古学家仍然不能完全理解为什么第一次农业实验开始得这么晚（公元前10,000年），而且只在少数几个中心（近东，中美洲，南美洲，华北，南亚，非洲）。在这少数几个中心中，华北中心是最不为人所知的，也最有可能为这些问题提供新的线索。华北地区的问题在于，考古学上的狩猎采集者对植物的了解奠定了农业的基础，但他们在时间和空间上与目前已知的最古老的农业文化（磁山、裴李岗和大地湾）相距甚远，这些文化发展得太过发达，不足以代表农业的最初阶段。连接两者的过渡群体，华北最早的农学家，已经消失了。对于华北西部的大地湾文化（7000年前），在正北250英里（400公里）的贺兰-腾格里序列（12，700 - 10，000年前）中发现了早期的狩猎-采集复合体，这是中国（陈发虎）和美国学者（R.贝廷格河Elston，P. J. Brantingham，and D. B。马德森）自1989年以来一直在内蒙古自治区和宁夏回族自治区进行。这项研究表明，早全新世植物强化开始于贺兰-腾格里研究区，但最早的农业实验是在更南边的大地湾。这些可能开始于约9300 BP的暖湿期，这一时期鼓励北方狩猎采集者加强植物利用，并以有限的方式试验植物繁殖，以增加更受欢迎的食物来源，主要是游戏。一个严重的，寒冷干燥的气候逆转记录约9000 BP迫使这种模式进一步向南，大地湾地区，在那里农业成为建立在小规模，然后急剧扩大时，气候变得温暖和潮湿约8000 BP。显然，连接北方狩猎采集的贺兰-腾格里复合体和南方发达的大地湾农业复合体的早期农业遗址一定位于这两个地区之间。拟议的调查将使用大量的车辆旅行来定位，并步行到达该干预区域的可能现场位置。将从贺兰-腾格里-大地湾间隙内的石器和陶瓷遗址中获得适合放射性碳测年的考古木炭。我们的美国和中国学者研究团队在黄河以北的此类调查方面拥有丰富的经验，但在其南部的拟议研究区域却没有经验，那里的地点位置应该是不同的，可能更难以检测。成功地找到这些遗址并确定其年代还不能保证，但肯定意义重大。它将阐明中国从狩猎和采集向农业过渡的第一个连续记录，并以此记录世界上最伟大的文明之一发展的第一个关键步骤。

The invention of agriculture is one of humankind's greatest achievements and archaeology's greatest challenges. Despite great strides in archaeological understanding, archaeologists still do not fully grasp why the first experiments with agriculture began so late in time (10,000 BP) and in only a handful of centers (Near East, Mesoamerica, South America, North China, South Asia, Africa). Of this handful, the North China center is the least known and most likely to shed new light on these questions. The problem in North China is that the archaeological hunter-gatherers whose knowledge of plants laid the foundation for agriculture are well removed in time and space from the oldest presently known agricultural cultures (Cishan, Peiligang, and Dadiwan), which are too highly developed to represent the first stages of agriculture. The transitional groups that connect the two, North China's earliest agriculturalists, are missing. For the Dadiwan culture (7000 BP) in western North China, the antecedent hunter-gatherer complex is found 250 miles (400 km) due north, in the Helan-Tengger sequence (12,700 - 10,000 BP) documented in surveys and excavations by a team of Chinese (Chen Fahu) and US scholars (R. Bettinger, R. Elston, P. J. Brantingham, and D. B. Madsen) have been conducting in Nei Mongol Autonomous Region and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region since 1989. The research suggests that early Holocene plant intensification began in the Helan-Tengger study area but that the earliest agricultural experiments were somewhat further south, toward Dadiwan. These probably began during a warm-wet episode about 9300 BP that encouraged northern hunter-gatherers to intensify plant use and experiment with plant propagation in a limited way to augment more favored food sources, mainly game. A severe, cold-dry climatic reversal documented around 9000 BP forced this pattern further south, to the Dadiwan area, where agriculture became established on a small scale and then expanded dramatically when climate turned warmer and wetter around 8000 BP. Plainly, the early agricultural sites that connect the hunter-gatherer Helan-Tengger complex in the North to the developed agricultural Dadiwan complex in the South must lie in the area between. The proposed survey will use substantial vehicle travel to locate, and foot travel to reach, likely site locations in this intervening area. Archaeological charcoal suitable for radiocarbon dating will be obtained from sites whose stone tools and ceramics place them within the Helan-Tengger to Dadiwan gap. Our research team of US and PRC scholars has extensive experience with this sort of survey north of the Yellow River but none in the proposed study area to its south, where site locations should be different and perhaps more difficult to detect. Success in finding and dating these sites is not assured but would surely be of great significance. It would articulate the first continuous record of the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in China - and in so doing document this first critical step in the development of one of the world's greatest civilizations.