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Yangshao culture was a Neolithic culture which thrived in northern China circa 5000 to 3000 BCE. Though long believed to have been a singular dominant culture which spread over the region and eventually developed into the [[Han people]] & "Chinese" culture, most scholars today choose to see the Yangshao as only one of a number of cultures in the region, which between them, in their interactions, constituted the proto-origins of "Chinese" people and culture. These other cultures include groups known as the Hemedu and Majiabang (c. 5000-3000 BCE), the Dalongtan, the Dapenkeng (c. 5000-2500 BCE), and the Xinle (c. 7000-5000 BCE), each of which, like the Yangshao culture, are known chiefly by their [[pottery]].
The long-held "nuclear area" thesis for Chinese origins held that the Yangshao culture, which originated and centered near the great bend of the [[Yellow River]], simply spread out from there to encompass a sizable portion of what is today northern China proper. This was posited based chiefly upon finds of closely related pottery across a wide area, all similar enough to be identified as likely belonging to a single culture, that which archaeologists dubbed "Yangshao." However, newer scholarship suggests that the Yangshao began to interact with a number of other groups around 4000 BCE, and that it was out of these interactions, over roughly a thousand years from 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE, that a coherent culture was born which would later develop into "Chinese" culture.
Some scholars, however, challenge the idea that there was a coherent or unified "Chinese" culture even after 3000 BCE. In any case, the Yangshao are believed to have held sway over a considerable area for several thousand years, and to have produced beautiful early pottery.
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==References==
*Conrad Schirokauer, et al, ''A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations'', Fourth Edition, Cengage Learning (2012), 4-6.
[[Category:Jomon Period]]
