[Chinaconqueror]

Can someone tell me more about Longshan culture? When did it exist and did it belong to the tool age?

[chinaking]

Longshan Culture 龙山文化 represents a civilization in which both stone and bronze tools were in application. It was first discovered at Longshan town of Zhangqiu City in Shandong Province, hence its name. Its influence mainly spread out in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River about 4,350 to 3,950 years ago.

During the time of Longshan Culture, people were organized in patriarchal clan community.

In pottery making, they widely adopted the use of potter wheel. Painted potteries gave way to black ones. The black earthenwares were carefully polished for much finer quality, some objects even had the outer walls made as thin as eggshell. Longshan Culture, with the highest level of pottery making in Chinese history, is also known as Black Pottery Culture.

At the same time, bronze forge appeared. There are two pieces of bronze **** unearthed at Sanlihe village, in Jiaoxian County of Shandong Province, which remained from this transitional period between Stone Age and Bronze Age.

In aspect of construction, on the site of Longshan town, there found ruins of an earth platform, rectangular in shape. It was made of layers of compact earth. This kind of architectural technique prevailed during Shang Dynasty (16th B.C-11th B.C.). Furthermore, defensive works was built up in ground structure, evolving from oldest big moat underground. A large number of walls of rammed-earth walls came into being. Around Shandong Province, more than ten vestiges of ancient walls were discovered. Among them, there are seven walls densely located together, forming into wall complex. The appearance of wall marked the emergence of city that heralded the coming of a new era in which human civilization underwent mass production. Originally, the word wall stands for the word city.

[Tyler]

So it's the Bronze Age, So during the Longshan culture did bronze wepons start to get made?

[General_Zhaoyun]

Liu Ce, on Aug 21 2004, 03:54 PM, said:

So it's the Bronze Age, So during the Longshan culture did bronze wepons start to get made?

I think, during the Longshan culture, the weapons were made of stone.

[AhMan]

so which area was the centre of Longshan culture? ShanDong or Henan?

[Kenneth]

Longshan is a broad east coast neolithic with many phases and subcultures beneath it.
One group makes the pottery Janz referes too....and one specific group within them may have had rudimentary bronze, that kind of rings a bell but I forget the specifics. Various groups certainly had hammered raw copper pendants and sheets, but that isnt casting or alloying. It is still neolithic
I'll find the quote, but it might be the end phase of LongShan so the grouping itself is not a bronze culture and also lasts for a consideraby longer time period than Janz supplies above (as a single phase within it would be at least that long).
The earliest bronzes I have seen pictures of are Erlitou vessells but there are ideas that there were sheet metal prototypes before the casting of bronze, and some cast bronzes of Erlitou and early Shang clearly copy the LongShan pottery vessels.

I will need to check the references to some sort of metal working like this I saw in ''Art & Archeaology in Ancient China'' which had quite a lot if info on phases of Long Shan and Yangshao neolithic.

[TwinkieDP]

Tyler, on Aug 21 2004, 03:54 AM, said:

So it's the Bronze Age, So during the Longshan culture did bronze wepons start to get made?

A little side note on the Stone/Bronze/Iron Age.

I do continue to hold the belief that the use of Bronze as opposed to stone is a technological advance. However, regarding transition from Bronze made materials to Iron, I must add that early weapons made from Iron were generally poorer in quality than early Bronze weapons.

Not until people were able to fully remove phosphorus and sulphur, reduce carbon content to less than 1%, and make use of alloying elements such as chromium/vanadium that steel came into being.

This post has been edited by TwinkieDP: 08 September 2005 - 07:46 AM

[somechineseperson]

AFAIK the Longshan culture is roughly from 3200 - 2000 BC in northern China.

Did Longshan culture have bronze? I'm not sure. I think they did use copper. But there is a difference between copper and bronze.

According to western sources I have read, Longshan culture only had towns, not cities. And it was late neolithic not a Bronze Age culture. Therefore it is still classified as a chiefdom society, not a state society. China's first Bronze Age state society was I think the Erlitou culture from around 1900 BC, which might be the Xia Dynasty.

If Longshan culture had bronze and cities, then it would count as a state society and therefore the starting point of Chinese civilisation would be pushed back 1000 years, equaling that of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. But the western sources all say that Longshan was a late neolithic chiefdom society, not a Bronze Age state society.

Chinaconqueror, on Aug 21 2004, 06:29 AM, said:

Can someone tell me more about Longshan culture? When did it exist and did it belong to the tool age?

If I'm not mistaken, I believe "tool age" is a classification used in Age of Empires. (Stong Age - Tool Age - Bronze Age - Iron Age) I think Tool Age would roughly corresponds to "late Neolithic" in the official classification scheme. So yes, the Longshan culture was late Neolithic, but (according to western sources at least) not Bronze Age. Nor was it a state society. It consisted of numerous small chiefdoms, there wasn't a centralised politico-religious state like the later Xia (possibly) or Shang.

This post has been edited by somechineseperson: 02 November 2005 - 04:04 PM