Shimao is now the largest known Neolithic settlement in China with art and technology that came from the northern steppe and would influence future Chinese dynasties.

Together with recent discoveries at other prehistoric sites nearby and along the coast, Shimao is forcing historians to rethink the beginnings of Chinese civilization—expanding their understanding of the geographical locations and outside influences of its earliest cultures. Shimao is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of this century. It gives us a new way of looking at the development of China’s early civilization. Carbon-dating determined that parts of Shimao, as the site is called (its original name is unknown), date back 4300 years, 2000 years before the oldest section of the Great Wall—and 500 years before Chinese civilization took root on the Central Plains, several 100 km to the south.

2023-06-07: The genetic roots go back even further

We now know that the Han, 95% of the citizens of today’s People’s Republic of China, are scions of hunters and foragers who roamed the Yellow and Yangzi river valleys at the end of the last Ice Age, 12 ka BP. Today’s Chinese carry DNA startlingly similar to an individual buried in Tianyun Cave, near modern Beijing, 40 ka BP. China might not have the oldest continuous recorded history (Mesopotamia owns this distinction). But it comes close, and on the far more astonishing scale of 10s of 1000s of years, the Chinese people’s biological continuity knows no parallel.