Spatiotemporal variation in human settlements and their interaction with living environments in Neolithic and Bronze Age China

Abstract

It is evident that the origin, development, and expansion of agriculture and animal husbandry during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods across Eurasia facilitated the increase of the world population and emergence of ancient civilizations, as well as altering human livelihoods, especially in East Asia. However, different areas of China have different histories in terms of the development of agriculture and of extensive human settlement during that period, and the spatial differences in human–environment interaction are not yet well understood. Here, we review up-to-date results of radiocarbon dating, archaeobotanical, and zooarchaeological analysis from Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in China, along with high-resolution paleoclimatic records, to explore the spatiotemporal variation of human settlement and its relationship to the development of agriculture and to climate change in different areas during the period 10,000–2200 BP. The results suggest that human settlement intensities in the northern East Asia Monsoon Region and south China were relatively low during 10,000–6500 BP, with a small peak during ∼8000–7500 BP, and evidently increased since ∼6500 BP, whereas farming groups began to settle intensively on the Tibetan Plateau and the inland arid region since ∼5200 BP and ∼4000 BP, respectively. The spatiotemporal variation in the intensification of human settlement in China during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods was primarily induced by agricultural intensification and expansion across prehistoric Eurasia; climate change may have influenced the hydrothermal and vegetation conditions for crop cultivation and livestock production. The asynchronous intensive human settlements in different areas of China resulted in spatial differences in the impact of activities by human on the environments surrounding them during 10,000–2200 BP, shedding light on the evolution of the human–land relationship in China during the Neolithic and Bronze periods.