The Yangshao culture
Millet farmers along the Yellow River make painted pottery and build the first Chinese villages.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 2 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 200 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
Yangshao settlements from around 5000 BCE, notably Banpo near Xi'an, consist of semi-subterranean houses around a central space, with a surrounding ditch and separate kiln and cemetery areas. Their painted pottery, decorated with fish, faces and geometric motifs, is among the finest of the period. The culture is broadly ancestral to the later Longshan and to the Chinese Bronze Age states.