Yangshao

Yangshao is a major Neolithic culture of ancient China that flourished along the Yellow River basin, especially in the middle to upper reaches within present-day Shaanxi, Henan, and Shanxi. It dates roughly from 5000 to 3000 BCE. The culture is named after Yangshao Village, where early excavations in the 1920s identified distinctive painted pottery and helped establish it as a major regional culture.

Material culture is best known for its painted pottery, with red and black designs applied to buff or white surfaces. Motifs include geometric bands, animals, and stylized human figures. Pottery was largely handmade and tempered with grains or sand, and varied across sites alongside more plain ware.

Yangshao settlements ranged from small villages to larger complexes along river terraces. Houses were typically semi-subterranean with timber frames and daub walls, often arranged in rows. The economy centered on millet cultivation, with complementary foraging, hunting, and animal domestication, notably pigs and dogs.

Regional variation and increasingly organized village life indicate social differentiation and broader exchange networks, with multiple local traditions within a general Yangshao framework.

The Yangshao culture contributed to early Chinese civilization through advances in ceramics and settled agricultural life. It gradually waned in the late 3rd millennium BCE, giving way to the Longshan culture, which introduced newer pottery styles and more complex social organization along the Yellow River.