The Yellow River Valley
As in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and along the Indus River, Chinese civilization began within a major river valley. Modern China itself is a huge geographical expanse. Around 4000 BC, this huge area contained an almost infinite number of ethnic groups and languages. The course of Chinese history, however, is in part dominated by a single ethnic group and language. This history, in which a vast area populated by diverse ethnic groups became, over time, a more or less single culture, began in the Yellow River Valley.


The Yellow River is the northernmost of the major Chinese rivers. Directly to the south is the Yangtze River; south of the Yangtze is the West River; south of the West River is the Red River, much of which passes through modern-day Vietnam. Sometime around 4000 BC, when the area was much more temperate and forested, populations around the southern bend of the Yellow River began to practice agriculture. They sowed millet, but some time later, the Chinese began cultivating rice to the south, near the Huai River. These were a Neolithic, tribal people who used stone tools. We know also that they domesticated animals very early on, but they still continued as a hunter society as well. Remains of game animals are almost as common as domestic animals in these villages. We know almost nothing about them, for they left no records, and the life-blood of a people does not flow in the archaeological refuse they leave behind. We believe that tribal warfare was common and that they may have had some form of ancestor worship, but these are mere guesses.
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Yellow River Cultures

Learning Modules



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The Agricultural Revolution






In the Chinese version of history, however, history begins with three semi-mystical and legendary individuals who taught the Chinese the arts of civilization around 2800-2600 BC: Fu Hsi, the inventor of writing, hunting, trapping, and fishing; Shen Nung, the inventor of agriculture and mercantilism, and the Yellow Emperor (around 2700 BC), who invented government and Taoist philosophy (compare this history with the Hebrew version of the founding of civilization and its arts in Genesis, Chapter 3). While Western historians dismiss these Three Cultural Heroes as legend, they were regarded as historical fact for most of Chinese history.

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About Yellow River

. Chinese New Year . Yellow River Index . Yellow River: Geographic and Historical Settings 2 . Yellow River: Geographic and Historical Settings . The Yellow River . Water Cellar . Yellow River¡¯s Upper Reaches . Chinese New Year 2 . Land utilization in the loess plateau . River Lantern Festival . Silhouette Puppet Show . Nadam Fair . Wedding Procession . Waist Drum Dance

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