Andrew Lawler

Beyond the Yellow River: How China Became China

Archaeologists have long thought that Chinese civilization was born along the central plains of the Yellow River. But dramatic discoveries across China in the past 2 decades are challenging long-held views. From Manchuria in the north, to the Chengdu plain to the west, and to the coastal cities of the south, excavations are revealing a host of complex and distinct ancient cultures, each with its own artifacts and traditions. Striking carved faces found in Liangzhu are one example; other cultures developed enormous bronze statues, large stone ceremonial complexes, and a golden, whirling sun motif. Yellow River sites like Erlitou, believed since its discovery in 1959 to have been the long-lost first capital of China (see sidebar), remain key to understanding the first true urban centers in China. But other, far-flung cultures also contain the seeds of Chinese traditions.

Boring No More, a Trade-Savvy Indus Emerges

Long in the shadow of its sister civilizations to the west, the Indus is emerging as the powerhouse of commerce and technology in the 3rd millennium B.C.E. But political and economic troubles dog archaeologists9 efforts to understand what made this vast society tick.

The Battle Over Violence

With its world wars, genocides, and innumerable revolutions and civil wars, the 20th century was the bloodiest in human history. World War II alone left some 60 million dead—2.5% of the world9s population, or the total number of people who lived in Europe during the Middle Ages. Yet a group of researchers argues that complex industrialized societies, even Nazi Germany or Stalin9s Russia, are far safer places to live than among smaller groups of hunter-gatherers or farmers, in which tribal feuds and homicide typically felled more than 10% of the population.

Collapse? What Collapse? Societal Change Revisited

An eclectic group of scholars who met recently at the University of Cambridge argues that true social collapse is a rare phenomenon. They say that new data demonstrate that classic examples of massive collapse such as the disintegration of Egypt9s Old Kingdom, the end of the Classic Maya period, and the vanishing of pre-Columbian societies of the U.S. Southwest were neither sudden nor disastrous for all segments of their populations. Rome, for example, didn9t fall in a day; recent work underscores the fact that the sack of Rome was just one step in a long and complex spiral of decline that affected peoples of the empire differently. This emphasis on decline and transformation rather than abrupt fall represents something of a backlash against a recent spate of claims that environmental disasters, both natural and humanmade, are the true culprits behind many ancient societal collapses.

Bridging East and West

Archaeology in ChinaAlthough far from the ancient centers of Chinese culture, some archaeologists believe that the remote region of Xinjiang in northwest China may hold the key to understanding early Chinese civilization because of its crucial role in trade. They argue that as far back as the 3rd millennium B.C.E., during the rise of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus civilizations, Xinjiang may have served as a critical bridge between East and West, funneling some combination of bronzemaking, wheat domestication, and other technologies toward the incipient Chinese culture. Those technologies may have helped jump-start Chinese urban life along the Yellow and Yangtze rivers in the 2nd millennium B.C.E. (see p. [930][1]). That is a novel, even radical, idea among Chinese academics, many of whom still see Xinjiang as a distant region that enters history only when a unified China began to assert control in the early centuries B.C.E. Indeed, not so long ago, such discussion of outside influence on Chinas origins would have been at best frowned upon and at worst dangerous. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/325/5943/930

Indus Collapse: The End or the Beginning of an Asian Culture?

The puzzling downfall of an ancient civilization more than 3 millennia ago sparks debate today in both scientific and political circles.

Civilization's Double-Edged Sword

Mass warfare and civilization share a 6000-year history. The killing field at Tell Brak, about 500 kilometers northeast of Damascus near the Iraqi border, documents what is perhaps the world9s oldest known large massacre or organized battle. When the violence occurred in about 3800 B.C.E., this settlement was evolving into one of the world9s first fledgling cities. What took place here and at other sites where complex societies were starting to coalesce is of particular interest to researchers studying human violence. Some scientists argue that civilization replaced tribal anarchy with a more organized way of life that reduced rates of violence (see p. 829). But recent finds around the world suggest an upsurge, not a decline, in violence during the key period when societies transitioned from the simpler organization of tribes and chiefdoms into complex urban life.

Did Modern Humans Travel Out of Africa Via Arabia

One hundred twenty-five thousand years ago, when the Sahara desert was savanna, with plentiful water and game, a group of hominids made tools under the protection of a rock overhang in Jebel Faya, United Arab Emirates. A German-led team argues on page 453 of this week9s issue of Science that these toolmakers were modern humans who may have crossed directly from Africa as part of a migration spreading across Europe, Asia, and Australia. Although most researchers agree that our species came out of Africa in one or more waves (see p. 392), those dates are more than 50,000 years earlier than most believe our ancestors left the continent.

Did the First Cities Grow From Marshes

The first American archaeological research team to visit Iraq in a quarter-century suggests that cities and civilization didn9t rise along riverbanks, as most archaeologists have supposed, but out of swamps, which provided rich animal and plant resources to complement irrigation agriculture and animal husbandry. The team9s findings were presented at a meeting in November. But additional on-the-ground data will be crucial to convince interested but skeptical colleagues.

In Search of the Wild Chicken

Researchers agree that the red jungle fowl gave rise to the barnyard chicken somewhere in South Asia. But they agree on little else. Some contend that domestication took place 8000 years ago; others suggest that tame chickens are only 4000 years old. Some say the bird was domesticated only once; others look to several independent centers of domestication. The genes of isolated populations of red jungle fowl are now being sequenced (see sidebar) as part of a larger effort to understand the world9s most common bird and biggest source of animal protein. The proliferation of factory farms, mass bird deaths from avian influenza, and dwindling diversity in chickens have raised concerns about this critical source of food.