Spatial Expansion of Human Settlement during the Longshan Period (~4.5–~3.9 ka BP) and Its Hydroclimatic Contexts in the Lower Yellow River Floodplain, Eastern China

Kaifeng Li,Panpan Gong,Wenhua Gao,Suyuan Li,Rui Jin,Li Wu,Yi Si,Hainan Hu

doi:10.3390/land10070712

Kaifeng Li, Panpan Gong + Show 6 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/land10070712

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Journal: Land	Publication Date: Jul 6, 2021
Citations: 5	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Henan University, Anhui Normal University

Abstract

Obvious spatial expansion of human settlement occurred in the lower Yellow River floodplain during the Longshan period, but the external factors driving this expansion remain unclear. In this study, we first delineated the hydroclimatic changes at both regional and local scales within and around the lower Yellow River floodplain and then examined the relationships of human settlements with hydroclimatic settings between the pre-Longshan and Longshan periods. The results indicate that the site distribution, site density and hydroclimatic conditions exhibited significant shifts during the pre-Longshan and Longshan periods. In the pre-Longshan period, the intense East Asian summer monsoon and abundant monsoon-related precipitation caused widespread development of lakes and marshes in the lower Yellow River floodplain. As a result, the circumjacent highlands of the lower Yellow River floodplain contained concentrated human settlements. However, the persistent weakening of the East Asian summer monsoon and consequent precipitation decline, in conjunction with accelerated soil erosion due to decreasing forest vegetation and strengthening of human activities on the upstream Loess Plateau in the Longshan period, are likely to have jointly caused both shrinking and faster filling of preexisting lakes and marshes. Subsequently, a large area of arable land had been created in the lower Yellow River floodplain and thus was occupied by locally rapid increasing population, resulting in the notable spatial expansion of human settlements during the Longshan period.

Highlights

Human history can be understood as the history of complicated interactions between human activities and their surroundings [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The areas around the Songshan Mountains were the distribution center during both the pre-Longshan and Longshan periods with two secondary high-density strips along the southeastern foothill of the Taihang Mountains and along the western fringe of the Taiyi Mountains
The archaeological site distribution patterns were visibly different between the preLongshan period and the Longshan period

Summary

Introduction

Human history can be understood as the history of complicated interactions between human activities and their surroundings [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Abrupt climate changes and associated dramatic environmental changes have been repeatedly suggested to be driving factors behind the rises and falls of prehistoric and historic cultures [3,4,5,6,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26]. It is apparent that many late Neolithic or Chalcolithic cultures across China collapsed at ~4000 a BP, and the almost contemporaneous abrupt climatic event and associated hydrological changes could be responsible [19,20,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38]

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