The Huang River valley in China was a vital center for civilization, where early humans developed agriculture, social organization, and ideographic communication. The river’s floods deposited nutrient-rich loess, creating a raised, flat plateau where humans established a Neolithic community. Innovations included primitive writing, irrigation ditches, ritual burials, and dams and levees to control floods. The region continues to fight floods by building a large-scale dam across the Yellow River.
The Huang River valley in China has given rise to one of the four cradles of civilization on earth. From 8,000 to 4,000 years ago, primitive humans developed agriculture, domestication of animals, hierarchical social organization, ideographic communication and other cornerstones of society. River valleys, such as those surrounding the Nile and Indus, were the most vital centers for civilization because they provided water for drinking and irrigation, seasonal flooding to enrich the soil for agriculture, and a navigable trade route.
The Huang He River, also known as the Yellow River, flows through northern China for 3,400 miles (5500 km), with its central portion forming the Huang River valley. Heavy summer rainfall in the Kunlun Mountains feeds the river’s western origins with water and a kind of loam called loess. Loess, which also gives the river its striking yellow color, is a kind of silt, ideal for cultivation. The Huang He River, dubbed “China’s pain”, erratically floods the central plains, having killed countless people over the centuries. However, beneficial floods deposited the nutrient-rich loess in a low-lying area of the Huang River valley, creating the raised, flat loess plateau called Tai Yuan where humans established a Neolithic community.
As early as 8,000 years ago, Tai Yuan was not as eroded as it is today. Hence, the Huang River valley boasted the best location in China for early humans to develop surplus food supplies, protect their settlements from traveling tribes competing for resources, and create permanent habitations. Humans moved from egalitarian societies that hunted and gathered, but always remained on the verge of starvation, to patriarchal communities with divided labor. This social organization has distributed resources in order to promote other advances.
Among the many innovations of the people of the Huang River valley were primitive writing in ideographic characters, irrigation ditches to irrigate crops, ritual burials for exalted rulers, and dams and levees to control the floods of the Huang He. Early Chinese settlers grew many crops, such as wheat and rice, peaches and grapes, green onions, and ginger root. They even domesticated pigs. Later, approx. 3,000 years ago, they began to forge bronze, form pottery on a potter’s wheel, weave silk, and write on paper. In modern times, the people of this region continue to fight the floods by building a large-scale dam across the Yellow River.
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