中国新石器时代至先秦时期生业初探

Preliminary Investigations into the Subsistence Economies from the Neolithic to the Pre Qin Period in China

古人经历了长时段的通过采集渔猎方式获取食物资源的历史。自新石器时代开始,古人开发了种植农作物和饲养家畜等新的生产力要素,这些新的生产力要素随着人口数量的增加逐步发展,在文化交流的过程中进一步引进新的农作物和家畜种类,带动整个生产力的发展,由此从整体上促进了社会的进步。由于东北及内蒙古东部地区、黄河上游及新疆地区、黄河中游及华北地区、黄淮下游地区、长江上、中、下游地区和岭南及相关地区的自然环境和文化传统的不同,生业发展在各个地区显示出不同的特征。中原地区最终能够形成早期国家并得以持续发展,是以其得天独厚的自然环境和一直持续发展的生业经济为基础的。其他地区新石器时代的生业发展尽管有些起步较晚,有些没有在整体上表现出明显的持续性,但是进入先秦时期,则呈现出试图后来居上的势头,这是古代中国经历多国争霸、直至走向秦统一六国的不可或缺的经济基础。

People have a long history of hunting,fishing,and gathering.From the Neolithic period onwards,people developed new subsistence strategies,those are various ways of food production including domestications of plants and animals.These food production strategies gradually developed parallelly with the growing population size,which in turn increased interconnectivity between regions and facilitated exchanges of different crops and livestock.These development in food production,cultural exchange,and population size all promoted the social development in China.However,differences in environments and cultural traditions in northeast China,Inner Mongolia,the upper Yellow River and the Xinjiang region,the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River,the Yellow River and the Huai River region,and the Yangtze River region,the Lingnan region and other related regions,all resulted in divergent economic trajectories.While the Central Plains region eventually formed the earliest state in China because of its unique environment and sustainable economic development,other regions adopted a Neolithic lifeway in later time periods,some of which even failed to show obvious signs of cultural continuity.However,by the pre-Qin period,all regional cultures in China started moving towards an economic and cultural unity as a result of Qin’s indispensable economic foundation for unifying the six countries.