Ping-Ti Ho

The Paleoenvironment of North China A Review Article

T he Origins of Chinese Civilization, edited by David N. Keightley, is the outcome of a conference held in Berkeley in June 1978. In addition to Keightley, Kwang-chih Chang, who contributed the chapter on the three ancient dynasties and wrote the concluding remarks, played a decisive role in planning the conference. In this article, I shall discuss two of the most important issues raised in the volume, namely, the character of the paleoenvironment in which the northern type of Chinese agriculture emerged and the earliest system of land cultivation in North China. Then I shall assess the volume as a whole.