The 5.5 cal ka BP climate event, population growth, circumscription and the emergence of the earliest complex societies in China  被引量:9

The 5.5 cal ka BP climate event, population growth,circumscription and the emergence of the earliest complex societies in China

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作  者:WU WenXiang ZHENG HongBo HOU Mei GE QuanSheng 

机构地区:[1]Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China [2]Research Center for Earth System Science, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, China [3]University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

出  处:《Science China Earth Sciences》2018年第2期134-148,共15页中国科学(地球科学英文版)

基  金:supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41672176);the State Key Basic Research and Development Program (Grant No. 2015CB953802)

摘  要:The emergence of complex society is a milestone in the history of human society evolution. China is one of the few regions in the world where the earliest complex society appeared; however, its driving mechanisms remain unresolved. On the base of available evidence from both archaeology and Holocene climate, in combination with agency theory, this study attempts to address the driving mechanisms for the simultaneous emergence of complex societies in multiple areas of China around 5.5 cal ka BP. It is hypothesized that three factors, including climate change, population growth, and circumscription, jointly act and cause regional population-resource imbalance and trigger inter-group conflicts and wars. Such competitions provide the opportunity for some power-pursuing agents to break the restriction of social leveling mechanism and to become the centralized decision-making leaders, which further lead to the emergence of incipient large-scale complex societies. Increase in extreme climate events during 6.0–5.0 cal ka BP cooling period causes frequent occurrence of resource stress and increase in the frequency of inter-group competitions, which creates conditions for the legitimation, institutionalization, and persistence of centralized leadership, and finally leads to the formation of persistent institutionalized inequity. Our research result can explain not only the process and mechanism of complex society formation, but also two phenomena which cannot be reasonably explained by previous theories, that are, why the earliest complex societies in China emerge around 5.5 cal ka BP, and why they appear simultaneously in multiple regions.The emergence of complex society is a milestone in the history of human society evolution. China is one of the few regions in the world where the earliest complex society appeared; however, its driving mechanisms remain unresolved. On the base of available evidence from both archaeology and Holocene climate, in combination with agency theory, this study attempts to address the driving mechanisms for the simultaneous emergence of complex societies in multiple areas of China around 5.5 cal ka BP. It is hypothesized that three factors, including climate change, population growth, and circumscription, jointly act and cause regional population-resource imbalance and trigger inter-group conflicts and wars. Such competitions provide the op- portunity for some power-pursuing agents to break the restriction of social leveling mechanism and to become the centralized decision-making leaders, which further lead to the emergence of incipient large-scale complex societies. Increase in extreme climate events during 6.0-5.0 cal ka BP cooling period causes frequent occurrence of resource stress and increase in the frequency of inter-group competitions, which creates conditions for the legitimation, institutionalization, and persistence of centralized leadership, and finally leads to the formation of persistent institutionalized inequity. Our research result can explain not only the process and mechanism of complex society formation, but also two phenomena which cannot be reasonably explained by previous theories, that are, why the earliest complex societies in China emerge around 5.5 cal ka BP, and why they appear simultaneously in multiple regions.

关 键 词:5.5 cal ka BP climate event Population growth CIRCUMSCRIPTION Complex society Driving mechanisms 

分 类 号:K87[历史地理—考古学及博物馆学]

 

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