Chapter 2 Section 1 The origin of agriculture in its own right

In the millions of years of human history, most of the time lived on gathering, fishing and hunting. This kind of activity for obtaining the food necessary for human survival can also be included in agriculture in the broadest sense; but in the strict sense China's agriculture, which started with the invention of planting and animal husbandry, has a history of only about 10,000 years.Although both agriculture and hunting use natural animals and plants as labor objects, the latter relies on ready-made products in nature and is a "grab economy"; the former multiplies natural products through human labor and is a "production economy".Only with the development of agriculture can we change the state of "seek for food when you are hungry and discard surplus when you are full" in the hunter-gatherer economy, make long-term settlement and stable surplus products possible, and thus provide a basis for cultural accumulation, social division of labor and The foundations were laid for the birth of civilization.

Agriculture originated in the remote ancient times. There were no written records at that time, and people could only find its traces from myths and legends and underground excavations. In the legends of ancient Chinese history, there is a family named Youchao, who lived on trees and collected nuts and fruits for a living; Xi Shi, he invented the net 罟 [gu 古] and led the people to engage in large-scale fishing and hunting activities.After the Paoxi clan came the Shennong clan, who was the inventor of agriculture.Before that, people ate insects, animals, fruits, vegetables, snails and mussels. Later, the population gradually increased and food was insufficient, so it was urgent to find new sources of food. Shennong tried all kinds of herbs for this. He was poisoned many times, and fortunately found the antidote Methods, go through all kinds of difficulties and dangers, and finally select the grains that can be eaten by human beings.Then, observing the right time and place, he created the axe (jin is also an axe, it and the axe are both tools for felling forests) Leisi ([leisi is like], two kinds of in-line digging tools, see the next section for details), and taught people Grow grain.As a result, agriculture appeared, and medicine also came into being.In Shennong's era, people also knew how to make pottery and weave.

How should we view these myths and legends?Obviously, the above-mentioned series of inventions cannot be the gift of a certain hero or god, but the collective creation of primitive human beings in the long-term production struggle.But in the era when there were no written records, the struggle achievements of primitive humans could only be passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth. Condensed into colorful mythical stories and characters.After entering the class society, people often use the image of future emperors to transform them.If we remove these added elements, we can discover the real historical core through the shell of myth.For example, Youchao clan, Suiren clan and Fuxi clan reflect several stages of the development of hunter-gathering economy from low level to high level in the primitive age of our country, while Shennong clan represents the entire era in which Chinese agriculture took place and was established, from which we can see that the Chinese nation How our ancestors invented agriculture to open up new food sources in the development of forager economies.How did the invention of agriculture lead to a series of major changes in the social economy.

Archaeologists' hoes also break new ground in our search for the origins of agriculture.At present, tens of thousands of Neolithic agricultural relics have been discovered in my country, distributed in the vast land from Lingnan to Mobei, from the coast of the East China Sea to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, especially in the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin. The Peiligang Culture and Cishan Culture are distributed in the foothills at the junction of the Loess Plateau and the Great Plains in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. Dozens of ruins have been discovered 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, forming the earliest known agricultural area in the Yellow River Basin.The original residents of this area have already regarded planting as the most important source of living materials, and the main crop is millet, commonly known as millet.At the Cishan site, 88 cellars piled with yellow millet were found, and the original reserves were estimated to be 130,000 jin.The unearthed agricultural tools include stone axes for felling trees, stone shovels for loosening soil, stone sickles for harvesting crops, stone millstones and stone millsticks for grain processing, etc., which are exquisitely made and matched with Jackie Chan.Livestock include pigs, dogs, chickens and possibly cattle.In addition to planting grain and raising livestock, people also used bows and arrows, fish darts, nets, etc. for fishing and hunting, and collected hazelnuts, walnuts, etc. as food supplements.Among these ruins are semi-underground houses, cellars for storage, kiln sites for pottery making and public cemeteries, etc., which constitute the original settled settlements.The Lijiacun culture in southern Shaanxi and the Dadiwan culture in eastern Longdong are comparable in age to the Peiligang and Cishan cultures, and have similar economic outlooks.For example, at the Dadiwan site in Qin'an, Gansu, the remains of cultivated millet more than 7,000 years ago were discovered.These cultures are collectively referred to as the former Yangshao culture.The agricultural culture of the Yellow River Basin developed on the basis of it.During the Yangshao Culture period from 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, agricultural sites spread all over the Yellow River Basin, including large-scale settled agricultural village sites of hundreds of thousands of square meters.During the Longshan Culture period from 5,000 to 4,000 years ago, the agriculture and animal husbandry in the Yellow River Basin was more developed, and there were already relatively stable surplus products. A large number of well-built storage cellars and complete sets of wine vessels were unearthed. proof.It is on this basis that professional craftsmen for making stone, bone, jade, and pottery have appeared, class differentiation is quite obvious, and the dawn of civilization has been shown in front of people.

Corresponding to the former Yangshao Culture, Yangshao Culture, and Longshan Culture, there are Dadiwan Culture, Majiayao Culture, and Qijia Culture in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, and Beixin Culture, Dawenkou Culture, and Shandong Longshan Culture in the lower reaches of the Yellow River. They are The millet farming settlement agricultural cultures are related to each other but independent. In Northeast China, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and other places north of the Great Wall, many Neolithic farming sites have also been discovered.In other sites, fishing and hunting still played an important role for quite a long time.

Although the former Yangshao Culture is the earliest known agricultural culture in the Yellow River Basin, agriculture here is by no means new.Judging from the situation of our country and the nations that are still in the stage of primitive agriculture in modern times in the world, the beginning of agriculture generally experienced the stage of slash farming.At this time, people often choose mountains and forests as arable land, cut down the trees, dry them and burn them, and sow seeds directly without turning the soil.This kind of arable land will be abandoned after only one year of cultivation, so new land must be found every year to cut and burn again.This is called wasteland farming.The only farm tools in this period were knives, axes and pointed sticks for digging out eyespots for cutting trees, and people still lived an erratic life.There is a so-called Lieshan clan in the legends of ancient Chinese history. It is said that his son was named "Zhu" and "can breed hundreds of grains and vegetables".The so-called "Lieshan" is to set fire to the wasteland, and the so-called "pillars" are pointed wooden sticks for digging eyes and planting. They represent the two main interconnected operations in slash farming, but they are anthropomorphized in legends. .This is the historical shadow left by our country's ancient slash-and-slash agriculture.Primitive agriculture continued to develop. People made tools such as hoes and shovels for turning the soil, and they knew how to loosen the soil before planting. In this way, a piece of forest land can be planted for several years after being cut and burned, and then abandoned. This is called cooked wasteland farming.At this time, the focus of production technology gradually shifted from tree cutting to land processing, and people also transitioned from a state of indeterminate migration to relative settlement.This is the stage of hoe farming.The former Yangshao culture has obviously entered the stage of hoeing and farming.Therefore, the beginning of agriculture in the Yellow River Basin should be traced back for quite a long time.

In the past, people often regarded the Yellow River Basin as the only center of ancient agricultural culture in my country, and believed that the agriculture in the Yangtze River Basin and its southern border was spread from the Yellow River Basin.Archaeological discoveries have fundamentally disproved this view.The Yangtze River Basin is another center for the origin of agriculture in my country. It not only originated very early, but also has a significantly different appearance from the Yellow River Basin.In the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, rich remains of cultivated rice were unearthed from the Hemudu site in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province and the Luojiajiao site in Tongxiang, nearly 7,000 years ago.For example, in the fourth cultural layer of the Hemudu site, there is a large area of ​​rice, straw and rice husk accumulations tens of centimeters thick, which is estimated to be equivalent to 240,000 catties of the original rice.People used cattle shoulder blades to make a large number of bone plows, which were probably used for digging ditches or turning the soil. This shows that the local paddy field agriculture has entered the stage of hoe (plow) plowing agriculture.In addition to the pigs and dogs that are also available in the north, the domestic animals raised also include buffaloes that are rare in the north.Gathering, fishing and hunting are still relatively developed. People can drive canoes to farther waters to catch fish. There are aquatic plants such as water chestnut in the collection, reflecting the characteristics of the water town.The housing is also different from the northern crypt and semi-crypt buildings. It is a dry column building with the living surface suspended. The above-mentioned discoveries at the Hemudu site in the 1970s shocked the domestic and international archaeological circles. It shows that the Yangtze River Basin, like the Yellow River Basin, is the cradle of Chinese agricultural culture.After the Hemudu Culture, the Majiabin Culture entered the Liangzhu Culture (about 5,000 years ago), the paddy field agriculture in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River was more developed, people used stone plows for farming, and there were more types of crops, and they knew how to use ramie and silk to weave.The emergence of exquisite jade products as ritual vessels and obvious signs of class differentiation marked the dawn of the age of civilization.

In Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan and other provinces in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, there are also well-developed rice farming. At the end of the 1980s, carbonized rice grains contained in pottery shards and red-fired soil were found in the Pengtoushan site in Lixian County, Hunan Province, 9,000 years ago. It was people who inserted rice husks when making pottery and building walls. was thus preserved.This is one of the earliest remains of rice cultivation in China and the world so far.Similar agricultural sites have been found in the Lishui River Basin in Hunan, northwest of Dongting Lake, and near the mouth of the Three Gorges in western Hubei, indicating that the original inhabitants of this area had been engaged in primitive rice farming as early as the early Neolithic period, eight or nine thousand years ago.Recently, 10,000-year-old cultivated rice was discovered at the Wangchanyan site in Dao County, Hunan Province, which provides the latest information for exploring the origin of rice cultivation in my country.

In the southern region including Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, and Jiangxi, early Neolithic sites are often found in caves, and the residents there still rely on hunting as their main means of livelihood, but agriculture may have taken place in some places.For example, the early cultural layer of the Piyan site in Guilin, Guangxi has a history of more than 9,000 years, and unearthed the earliest domestic pig bones known at home and abroad, as well as rough pottery, which should be related to settled agriculture; The polished stone axes, stone adzes (ben Ben) and short cylindrical stone pestles unearthed from this site may be early agricultural tools.In the Xianrendong and Diaotongyan ruins in Wannian County, Shanxi Province, the remains of cultivated rice dating back 10,000 years were also found.In the later development, some original residents established villages in the hills and valleys and engaged in rice farming, while others made a living by fishing in areas near rivers and lakes, and at the same time operated agriculture.In addition, Yunnan, Guizhou, Tibet and Taiwan have all discovered agricultural sites dating back about 4,000 years or even earlier.

From a global perspective, there are three main centers of agricultural origin: Southwest Asia, Central and South America, and East Asia.The origin center of East Asia is mainly China.China's primitive agriculture has characteristics that are obviously different from those in other parts of the world.In terms of planting, China mainly produces millet in the north and rice in the south, which is different from West Asia, which mainly grows wheat and barley, and Central and South America, which mainly grows potatoes, pumpkins, and corn.In terms of animal husbandry, the earliest livestock raised in China were dogs, pigs, chickens and buffaloes, and pigs have always been the main livestock.China is also the first country in the world to raise silkworms and reel silk. It is different from Western Asia, which has been mainly raising sheep and goats for a long time, and it is also different from Central and South America who only know how to raise alpacas.China's primitive agricultural tools, such as Leisi, which is used for digging soil with hands and feet together, and stone knives for harvesting grain ears (Figure 1), all show characteristics different from those of other regions.Seven or eight thousand years ago, our country had a well-developed primitive agriculture. The origin of agriculture can be traced back to about 10,000 years ago, which is comparable to that of West Asia.In short, China is undoubtedly one of the origin centers of world agriculture with independent development and self-contained system.