Abstract
This study presents high-resolution pollen and charcoal records from Guxu Lake in the Taihu Lake Basin, eastern China, spanning the last 23,000 years. The sedimentary sequences revealed dynamic terrestrial and lacustrine environments during 23.0-11.7 cal ka BP, the climate was relatively cold and dry, and the vegetation was dominated by evergreen-deciduous broadleaf and coniferous mixed forest. During 11.7-4.4 cal ka BP, the Quercus- and Castanopsis-dominated evergreen-deciduous broadleaf mixed forest expanded, while the Poaceae and Artemisia were still the major terrestrial herbs under warmer and more humid conditions. After this period, the climate became relatively cool and dry again, and the vegetation landscape was comparatively stable, as it remains today. Wild rice likely grew before Neolithic humans occupied this area. The variations in Oryza-type Poaceae pollen spectra and distributions of Neolithic archaeological sites indicate rice agriculture may have first appeared and developed with human occupation in ca. 7.0-4.4 ka BP. During the historical period, beginning approximately 4 ka BP, a clear signal of intensified anthropogenic disturbance is evident from the clearing of forests, high charcoal concentrations and the presence of rice pollen in large quantities. These results suggest more intensified rice farming was widespread, with increasing human impact on the environment.
Highlights
This study presents high-resolution pollen and charcoal records from Guxu Lake in the Taihu Lake Basin, eastern China, spanning the last 23,000 years
The accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) dating result (Table 1) was obtained based on TOC extracted from the sediment of the
An age-depth model for the 1446 cm of this new Guxu Lake record was built using the Bayesian age-depth modelling program BACON48 version 2.3.9.1 and suggests that this record covers at least the last ca. 30 cal ka BP (Fig. 2)
Summary
This study presents high-resolution pollen and charcoal records from Guxu Lake in the Taihu Lake Basin, eastern China, spanning the last 23,000 years. Neolithic archaeological research has suggested that ancient people occupied this area through the Majiabang (7.0-5.8 ka BP)[25], Songze (5.8-5.3 ka BP)[26], Liangzhu (5.3-4.3 ka BP)[27] and even Guangfulin-Qianshanyang (4.3-4.0 ka BP)[28] periods These cultures were based on rice farming[29,30,31,32], which changed the prehistoric vegetation landscape in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and greatly promoted the development and changes of regional archeological cultures[33,34]. The Taihu Lake Basin, called the “East Asian half-arc for rice agriculture”[40], serves as an ideal area for the study of regional responses and human adaptations to global change, especially during the Holocene This Basin provides an excellent natural base to explore the occurrence and development of rice farming in China and East Asia as well as its relationship to the development of prehistoric culture and environmental changes
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