Historical Perspectives on Agro-Ecological Development and Human Mobility in China

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Past studies on agricultural history of China show a tendency to stick to a text critique in the framework of the sinology, and lack in generating more elastic hypotheses which are based on substantial observations and keen interviews with farmers in the field. This project was organized by more field work-oriented researchers of those disciplines like natural geography, agricultural ecology, forest ecology, anthropology, as well as historians and archaeologists.Some hypotheses generated in this project are as follows,1. Desert basins and Ssu Chuan basin are large-scale sinkholes which have been formed as a result of corrosion of salt-bearing layers in Mesozoic formations.2. Steppe which extends in the vast Eurasian plain is supposed to have been formed by humanactivities which operated on originally existing deciduous shrub for the creation of pasture. The disappearance of the shrub is supposed to have been completed until the mid-Neolithic era.3. Millet culture which appeared suddenl … More y at early stage of Neolithic era in KAHOKU plain was formed by the impulse spread of irrigated wheat farming which was established in oases of West Asia in the seventh millenium. Oasis type irrigation culture then apparently proceeded to the boundary between KANSHUKU and KYOUSEI.4. The influence of Millet culture in KAHOKU induced the domestication of wild rice varieties to result in the initiations of wet rice culture. The rice domestication was assumingly established in the tide-affected coastal plains of and also in flooded plain in the mid-streams of the yangtse.5. The painted potteries of KANSHUKU and western China seem to have closer similarities to those of West Asia while they are apparently different from those fish-painted potteres which appeared at the early HANPA stage in KYOUSEI.6. Wheat culture become popular in RYUUZAN period.7. In the bronze era, nomadic people the steppe employed hoarse-riding in the pastoralism, and took a big military power. There were two vents where the hoarse-riding nomadic people gushed out and made the bronze culture, eg., Ordos and Luristan bronze culture. These two cultures may be understood as representing an entity at two terminals of the steppe plain of Eurosia. One group deviated to UN-NAN where they made SEKISAISAN culture and further downstream to make Dong Song culture. Grain-farming penetrated to the valleys of Indochina peninsular.8. In SHUNJUN. SENGOKU period, HYAKUETSU and HYAKUBOKU migrated to Insular Malay worked, bringing rice culture together. On the other hand decorative motives of these people spreaded even Mongolian plain. Less