Yangshao painted pottery and Yellow River farming villages

c. 5000 – 3000 BCE·Culture, arts & philosophy·East Asia (Yellow River, China)·

c. 5000 – 3000 BCEDate

Culture, arts & philosophyCategory

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Date: c. 5000 – 3000 BCE
Category: Culture, arts & philosophy
Region: East Asia (Yellow River, China)
Era: Prehistory
Significance

Along the middle Yellow River in China, the Yangshao culture flourished from about 5000 to 3000 BCE, representing one of the great independent centres of the Neolithic world.

Yangshao farmers cultivated millet, kept domesticated animals, produced silk, and lived in sizeable villages of pit and surface houses arranged around central spaces, as preserved at the well-known site of Banpo near Xi'an. The culture is celebrated above all for its painted pottery: red-bodied bowls, basins and jars decorated with bold black geometric designs, spirals, and stylised fish and human-faced motifs, fired in purpose-built kilns. This East Asian Neolithic tradition developed on its own terms, rooted in millet (rather than wheat or barley) agriculture and a distinctive material culture, and it laid foundations for the later trajectory toward complex societies and, eventually, the Chinese Bronze Age. It is a crucial counterweight to Eurocentric and Near East-centred narratives of early village life.

See the world map in c. 5000 – 3000 BCE →More culture, arts & philosophy The Prehistory era

Yangshao painted pottery and Yellow River farming villages

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Yangshao painted pottery and Yellow River farming villages

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Related culture, arts & philosophy events

Further reading

The Story of Art