stone tools were found at Longgupo in Wushan (now belonging to Chongqing), Sichuan Province. The stratum containing the hominid fossils was dated to 2 million years ago, which makes the Longgupo fossils the earliest example of Homo erectus in China. The reliability of the dates, however, is open to question (Huang and Ciochonetal 1995).

Even before visiting the Zhoukoudian site, Lewis Binford and Chuan Kun Ho challenged the long-established conclusions that Peking Man controlled fire and that the Zhoukoudian cave was the home of Peking Man (Binford and Ho 1985). Many Chinese archaeologists were outraged, and Jia Lanpo, one of the excavators of Zhoukoudian, defended Peking Man’s reputation with great passion (Jia 1991). The strong reaction from the Chinese archaeological community is understandable when the issue is placed in the context of rising nationalism in China. Within the framework of the regional evolutionary model, Peking Man appears to have been regarded as one of the direct, but remote, ancestors of the nation.

The Origins of Food Production

When the Hemudu site (ca. 7000 b.p.) in the lower Yangzi River Valley was excavated in 1974, it was claimed that the large quantity of rice remains found there was the earliest evidence of domesticated rice in the world. However, rice production at Hemudu was in a somewhat advanced stage, and the origin of rice cultivation was still an open question. In the 1980s, rice remains dated to 8000–9000 b.p. were found at Pengtoushan and several other sites in the middle Yangzi River Valley, which was regarded as a possible center for the origins of rice domestication. The great potential of finding the earliest evidence of rice production in southern China attracted both Chinese and western archaeologists, and more excavations employing new methods and techniques—including flotation, phytolith analysis, and isotopic analysis—were carried out in the 1990s. Consequently, rice remains dated to 8000–9000 b.p. or earlier were found at Jiahu in southern Henan Province, Bashidang and Yuchanyan in Hunan Province, and Xianrendong and Diaotonghuan in Jiangxi Province (Chen 1999a; Lu 1999).

Excavations at the cave sites Xianrendong and Diaotonghuan, conducted by a Sino-American collaborative project led by Yan Wenming and Richard MacNeish, yielded long sequences of cultural development, suggesting that rice domestication can be traced back to a period as early as 10,000–11,000 b.p., followed by the earliest pottery making in 9000–10,000 b.p. (MacNeish and Libby 1995; Zhao 1998). The origin and rapid expansion of rice cultivation from the Yangze River Valley may imply the introduction of languages and genes from southern China to broader territories in adjacent regions (Higham and Lu 1998). Southern China may have also been one of the places where the earliest pottery was invented (Chen 1998). These findings have certainly promoted the significant role that China has played in world history.

The Origins of Civilization

The years since 1980 have witnessed a radically changed view of the development of Chinese civilization in archaeology, with a shift from the concept of a central-plains-centered tradition to that of a multicentered parallel development. This change was not simply a product of political propaganda, and it did not happen overnight. It has gradually emerged and crystallized as the result of a complex interplay of several factors. These include voluminous new archaeological discoveries made in areas outside the central plains, traditionally regarded as the core area of Chinese civilization; the recognition of diversified regional cultural traditions based on these new findings; a changing view of nationalism in recent years; and increased confidence in the credibility of the textual record.

New Archaeological Discoveries

Since the end of the Cultural Revolution numerous archaeological discoveries have been made—most of them in areas outside the central plains. In southern China, new evidence indicates that this region not only had its own indigenous origins of Neolithic traditions (earliest rice and pottery) but that it evolved into complex societies at same time as, if not earlier than,