Although north China had been settled by Homo erectus, the cold, dry interior of Siberia was only occupied much later by modern humans after about 40 000 years ago. Despite its harsh climate, much of northern Siberia comprised a productive tundra-steppe biome that supported large herds of mammoths, reindeer, and other animals. The microlithic technology of the Upper Palaeolithic cultures of this region seems to have been designed for hunting these mammals, but the warmer conditions after the Last Glacial Maximum led to a growing emphasis on marine and plant foods. Pottery has been reported in sites of the Osipovka culture along the Amur River by about 14 000 cal BC. In China, early pottery has been reported from several sites, including Miaoyan in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region where pottery has been radiocarbon-dated to before 16 000 cal BC. Although many of the early pottery sites in China are from the south of the country, recent excavations at Donghuling in Beijing and at Nanzhuangtou and Hutouliang in Hebei Province have shown that early ceramics also exist in the north. While debate continues over the precise chronology and cultural context of such early ceramic sites, there seems little doubt that pottery began in Late Pleistocene contexts in several areas of East Asia.
In central and especially north China, microblades continued well into the Early Holocene, showing that hunting still remained an important economic activity even for societies that were engaged in farming or livestock herding. Microlithic technology seems to have been associated with a northward spread of settlement in northeast China (Manchuria) in the Early Holocene. In the mountainous coastal areas of the Pacific Russian Far East, Holocene hunter-gatherers engaged in river and ocean fishing, hunting of marine and terrestrial mammals, and gathering nuts and other plant foods. In later periods, trade in animal furs was also of great importance in this region. Salmon fishing was probably one of the earliest Holocene adaptations, as in Korea and Japan. Evidence for shellfish gathering and seal hunting is known from the Boisman sites near Vladivostok at about 5000 cal BC. Cultivated foxtail millet (Setaria italica) makes its first appearance in the southern Russian Far East after 3000 cal BC.
Except for a few sites in Yunnan Province, micro-liths are rare in southernmost China where Early Holocene stone tools were part of the Hoabinhian pebble tool industry that extended into Southeast Asia. Rice farming spread widely in south China during the Early Holocene, but the hunting and gathering of wild resources also continued to be of great importance in many areas. Fishing groups along the coast of southeast China are known from sites such as Hungguashan in Fujian Province. Upland societies such as the Dulong of Yunnan, who combined hunter-gathering with swidden cultivation, continued in southwest China until the twentieth century.
World History
