Yangshao culture
The Yangshao culture ( Chinese 仰韶文化 , Pinyin Yǎngsháo wénhuà ) spread alongside the Peiligang culture and the Cishan culture in the period from 5000 to 2000 BC. In some areas of central and northern China as well as on the coastal strips. With over 1000 excavation sites from Hebei to Henan , Shaanxi , Shanxi , to Qinghai and Gansu along the Huang He , this culture is particularly well documented.
The colored ceramics are characteristic of this Neolithic culture . The vessels were made without a potter's wheel and are painted black and red on a brown and brick-colored background. They are decorated with geometric and figural elements.
Yangshao culture tools were made of polished stone and bone. There were arrow and bow , harpoons , fish hooks and spears . Millet cultivation , the keeping of pigs and dogs (more rarely cattle, goats and sheep), hunting and fishing provided the basis of food . Hunting prey was horses, deer, rhinos, antelopes, leopards, hares and the like. a. Sericulture was also known.
A typical settlement of the Yangshao culture was excavated in the village of Banpo (or Banpocun) near Xi'an , Shaanxi Province. The settlement is oval over an area of 50,000 m². The residential buildings, the parish hall, the storage silos and the animal enclosures were surrounded by a 6 m wide and deep ditch. The burial grounds were in the north. Children were buried in urns in the living area. From the fact that food and grave goods were added to the deceased, one concludes that there were already images of the afterlife .
The houses were square, round or square and were relatively stable. The roof and sometimes the walls were supported by wooden posts.
Due to their different ceramic types, different Yangshao cultures named after their sites are distinguished: Banpo culture , Shijia culture , Miaodigou culture , Xiwangcun culture , Qinwangzhai culture , Hougang culture , Dasikongcun culture and Xiawanggang culture .
The Yangshao site has been on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China (1-138) since 1961 .
See also
literature
- Otto Ladstätter and Sepp Linhart : China and Japan. The cultures of East Asia. Verlag Carl Ueberreuter, Vienna 1983
- Hermann Müller-Karpe : Neolithic settlements of the Yangshao culture in northern China , based on the work of Shi Xingbang a. a., Munich Beck, 1982
- Zhongguo kexueyuan Kaogu yanjiusuo, Banpo bowuguan (Archaeological Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Banpo Museum) [ed.]: Xi'an Banpo (The Banpo Settlement near Xi'an) , Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1963
- Yan Wenming: Yangshao wenhua yanjiu (research on Yangshao culture) , Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1989
Web links
- Site of Yangshao Village (English)
- 5,500-years-old caves found ( Memento from January 6, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
Coordinates: 36 ° 18 ' N , 109 ° 6' E