Peiligang culture distribution area

Up to now, more than 40 counties and cities in Henan have discovered cultural sites 100, ranging from 1 to 89. Among them, the south bank of the Yellow River is concentrated in central Henan, and it is also distributed in shallow hills in western Henan and most areas in southern Henan. It reaches Anyang area north of the Yellow River in the north, Xinyang area adjacent to Hubei in the south, Lushi in the upper reaches of Luohe and Xichuan in the west, and Qixian and Xiangcheng areas in Huiji River Basin and Heying River Basin in the east. The area of Peiligang cultural site is small, ranging from several thousand square meters to 10000 or tens of thousands of square meters. The average thickness of the simple Peiligang cultural accumulation layer is about 1 m. If a site contains Peiligang culture, Yangshao culture and Longshan culture at the same time, its area is generally tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of square meters, and the cultural accumulation is relatively thick.

Geologically, the vast area of Henan Province is built on the North China Platform. Many mountain basins and valleys have been formed due to many uplifts in the history of geological movement, such as Luo Yi Basin, Ruying Valley and Qin Xiao Valley in western Henan. East of Taihang Mountain is Linxian Basin; To the east of Songshan is the alluvial plain of the Yellow River. Overlooking the whole land of Zhongzhou, it seems that there are fertile fields everywhere, but from a small area, there are many hills and gullies. Seven or eight thousand years ago, most clans and tribes of Peiligang culture lived on hills near rivers. Quaternary loess is widely covered in this area, especially in the eastern Henan plain, and the secondary loess alluvial by the Yellow River is very beneficial to the development of ancient agriculture. According to meteorological research, in the middle Holocene from 2500 to 8000 years ago, the annual average temperature in the Central Plains and North China was much higher than it is now, and the origin of millet farming is likely to happen here.

In addition to Peiligang, there are more than 40 typical cultural sites of Peiligang, such as Shawoli in Xinzheng, Tanghu Village, Xinmigou, Changgegang River, Lin Ruzhong Shanzhai, Ding in Xuchang, Shuiquan in Jiaxian and Tieshenggou in Gongxian. Carbon 14 dating is about 6200 BC to 5500 BC, which has experienced 700 years of development and entered Yangshao culture in the middle of Neolithic age.