The Xinglongwa culture () ( 6200– 5400 BC) was a

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

culture in northeastern China, found mainly around the

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

- Liaoning border at the Liao River basin. Xinglongwa pottery was primarily cylindrical and baked at low temperatures. The Xinglongwa culture showed several signs of communal planning. At three Xinglongwa sites, houses were built in rows. Several Xinglongwa sites also featured a large central building. In addition, several Xinglongwa sites were surrounded by ditches. The

type site In archaeology, a type site is the site used to define a particular archaeological culture or other typological unit, which is often named after it. For example, discoveries at La Tène and Hallstatt led scholars to divide the European Iron A ...

at Xinglongwa is located on the southwest side of a hill at

Aohan Banner Aohan Banner ( Mongolian: ''Aoqan qosiɣu''; ) is a banner of southeastern Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China, bordering Liaoning province to the south. It is under the administration of Chifeng Chifeng ( zh, s=赤峰市), also known ...

Chifeng Chifeng ( zh, s=赤峰市), also known as Ulanhad ( mn, (Улаанхад хот), ''Ulaɣanqada qota'', , "red cliff"), is a prefecture-level city in Southeastern Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China. It borders Xilin Gol League to the ...

; the site is named after a village 1.3 km to the southeast of the site. 120 pit-houses were discovered at Xinglongwa. Each home had a hearth at its center. Xinglongwa also featured a large building in the center of the village. Xinglongwa is the earliest discovered site in China to be surrounded by a ditch. Xinglongwa also featured an unusual burial custom, as some bodies were buried directly under the houses. Jade objects were also discovered. In the most lavish grave, a man was buried with a pair of pigs, as well as jade objects. According to the study of 34 sets of human remains from Xinglongwa in-house burials, male individuals apparently predominate over female individuals at roughly 2:1 ratio (23 males vs. 11 females). Within the male group, no individuals were identified as being over 55 in age, whereas all of females belong to middle-to-old age group (no one younger than 35 years old). The youngest individuals examined were at age 13 or 14, so it's suspected that children before mature sex-awareness might not have been buried in-house. From examined samples, the average height of males was between 163.8 cm and 168.8 cm, while the average height of females was between 153.4 cm – 159.9 cm. According to some papers, the Xinglongwa are perhaps the distant ancestors of the present-day Northeast Asian peoples that belong to the proposed "Transeurasian" (aka

Altaic Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are ...

) language family, but this view has also been criticized. The recently discovered site at

Xinglonggou Xinglonggou is a Neolithic through Bronze Age archaeological site complex consisting of three separate sites. The sites are located on a loess slope above the left bank of the Mangniu River north of the Qilaotu Mountains in Aohan Banner, Inner Mon ...

is the only site of the culture to show evidence of any sort of

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...

, with evidence of millet remains. Some of the oldest

Comb Ceramic Comb Ceramic or Pit-Comb Ware (in Europe), Jeulmun pottery or Jeulmun vessel (in Korea) is a type of pottery subjected to geometric patterns from a comb-like tool. This type of pottery was widely distributed in the Baltic, Finland, the Volga upst ...

artifacts were found in the Xinglongwa culture. 王巍（中国社会科学院考古研究所・副所長）
(in Japanese)A Zhimin (1988)
Archaeological research on neolithic China
''Current Anthropology''

References

* Allan, Sarah (ed), ''The Formation of Chinese Civilization: An Archaeological Perspective'', * Nelson, Sarah Milledge (ed), ''The Archaeology of Northeast China: Beyond the Great Wall'', *

Stark, Miriam T. Miriam T. Stark (born September 14, 1962) is an American archaeologist whose field experience and emphasis of studies have included locations in North America, the Near East and Southeast Asia. She is currently a professor of Southeast Asian Arch ...

(ed), ''Archaeology of Asia'', {{coord, 42.4625, N, 120.2840, E, source:wikidata, display=title History of Inner Mongolia Neolithic cultures of China History of Liaoning 6th millennium BC de:Xinglongwa-Kultur

See also

References