Ch 1 - In the Beginning

Matters of Survival

Nomadic tribes established permanent settlements and developed closer ties to the land. Agriculture and the arrival of metalworking technology laid the foundation for development of regional cultures.

Strung together like beads on a necklace, native encampments sprang to life at strategic locations along many of the rutted, time-worn trails that crossed East Asia like a spider web. Wherever wandering tribes could take advantage of annual fish runs and the migratory routes of birds and mammals, wherever they found ample supplies of fruits, nuts, berries and edible plants, wherever they found easy access to water and grazing land for their herds they settled down and developed closer ties to the land. Tribes refined the manufacture of stone tools and weapons, developed advanced hunting techniques and began cooking and storing their food in earthenware containers. Living in permanent encampments, they domesticated dogs, cattle, water buffalo and horses and raised small herds of sheep, goats and pigs. It is important to remember that the evolution of tools and weapons throughout the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods was driven largely by the demands of hunting, not fighting.

By c. 3000 BC, Neolithic man had established his presence throughout the Far East. At various times and various places across Asia, people discovered they did not have to gather plants that grew wherever nature decided to plant them. With a handful of the right seeds, they could plant what they wanted to grow where they wanted it to grow. In one of history's most dramatic evolutions, people began to scratch the ground and farm the land, planting a variety of cereal grains in the fertile soil along Asia's riverbanks.

With the arrival of new varieties of crop grains such as barley, wheat, oats, millet and rice, dry agriculture became a predominant clan activity across much of East Asia. Where once a major part of clan life centered on raising livestock, men began tilling the fertile ground with digging sticks and wooden hand plows with a carved bone cutting blade, planting fields and harvesting crops. To sustain even a small agricultural community however, people had to remain in one place long enough to plant, tend and harvest their crops. This meant a more permanent way of life, new types of housing and the manufacture of new tools and farming implements. The cultural impact of this Late Neolithic shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture marked a major turning point in East Asian history.

Over time, distinct regional cultures evolved among Neolithic settlers, cultures identified by the design of their tools, weapons and pottery. To those who listen carefully, broken pottery shards, pieces of carved animal bone, sharp-edged bits of flint and polished stone tools can speak volumes about Asia's ancient ancestors. These artifacts reveal who they were, when and where and how they lived, and the extent of their influence.

Along the lower reaches of the Yangtze River plain in soutneastern China, the Hemudu culture established a presence c. 5,000 BC. The Hemudu people lived in marshy lands along rivers where the fishing was good, grew large quantities of rice, lived in skillfully-built woodframe houses, and mastered advanced weaving techniques. Later Neolithic cultures that emerged in south China related to the Hemudu developed sericulture and intricate items of carved jade.

The Yang-shao culture appeared c. 4,000 BC in the Yellow River valley of north-central China and continued until about 1,700 BC. Living in semi-permanent villages, Yang-shao homes were round structures built from mud-brick with a thatched roof and a central peak. The people used highly specialized polished stone tools, carved bone fishooks and harpoon tips. Although much of their food came from hunting and fishing, they used a "slash-and-burn" type of agriculture to clear the land to plant crops of millet, wheat, barley, and some rice. They also raised a variety of domesticated farm animals.

Across the lowlands of the North China Plain and the hills of the Shandong Peninsula, the Lung-shan culture existed from c. 2,000 BC to 1,850 BC. People lived in permanent villages surrounded by large mud walls, presumably built for protection, and there is evidence they had a well-defined social order and worshiped their male ancestors. Lung-shan farmers cultivated millet and rice and raised pigs, sheep, goats, and cattle. There is archaeological evidence that Late Neolithic cultures of northern and eastern China also had the knowledge and skills to produce copper and bronze.

The Neolithic Cholmun Culture appeared in Korea c. 3,000 BC. Named for its reddish "comb-patterned" pottery, this hunter-gatherer culture existed along major rivers in northwest Korea. Around 2,000 BC, the knowledge for a millet-based agriculture and the use of domesticated animals appeared in Korea. By c. 1,000 BC, copper and bronze metalworking skills began taking root in Korea. The people who settled the Korean peninsula lived in pit dwellings, small semi-subterranean houses either circular or roughly square in shape. A typical dwelling measured about eighteen feet across and two or three feet deep. In the center of the dwelling was an open fire pit circled with stones. Posts surrounded the pit and supported an upright frame covered with thatch that provided protection from the wind and rain. Flat stones or firmly tamped down clay provided a floor. Smaller pits dug near the hearth or the entrance to the hut provided storage for polished stone tools, weapons and food supplies. The thatched hut provided the family sleeping quarters, a cooking area, and space to perform other household chores.

In stark contrast to the lives of the settled cultures of East Asia, the pastoral herders of Mongolia and northern China lived a life closely bound to the care and feeding of their animals (horses, cattle, sheep, camels, and yaks). These domesticated animals provided fuel (dried dung), shelter (wool and hides), clothing (hair and furs) and help in daily tasks (transportation and plowing fields). Animals also provided a variety of food products to meet essential needs (meat, milk, cheese, and butter). The magnificent, muscular bullock became the farmer's most prized and dependable livestock. It carried heavy loads, drew carts, and pulled plows. Without it the farmer would be lost, for no other animal had sufficient strength to drag a plow through the adhesive mud of a grain field.

The clan represented the basic social unit of the Late Neolithic period, an extended family bound together by its own distinct blood line. In Korea, fewer than two hundred clan names existed at the time and over half of them were associated with a particular region or section of the country. The people who settled Korea over the centuries gradually merged with one another to produce the ancestral bloodlines of a unique, homogeneous race with distinct physical characteristics, one language and one culture;  the people that represent the unbroken continuum of the Korean race.

Tribal cultures evolved from the daily lives of the people. From their earliest known history, Asian clans saw everything in their environment as animate and believed every object in the nature possessed a soul or spirit. Shamanism and spirit worship, both deeply rooted in the dim past of Siberian tradition, permeated Asian clan life, particularly in Korea. Each animal, each tall hill and mountain, each forest and garden, every body of water, especially medicinal streams and springs, had its own deity. Only the fine line of visibility separated people from the surrounding spirit world. Their deep belief in this world of spirits led early people to fear the fickleness and whim of the spirits controlling natural disasters even more than they feared the threat of attack from other humans. Each clan used shamans, or priests, to rid itself and its environment of evil spirits. While men performed the ritualistic ceremonies to honor the clan's ancestors, female witches took charge of placating and eradicating the spirits.

Daily life meant constant exposure to more earthly dangers. Summer brought on such natural disasters such as drought, flood, and deadly sandstorms. Winter meant deadly blizzards. Wandering packs of half-starved predators usually followed in their wake. Overgrazing and livestock diseases such as pleuro-pneumonia frequently killed entire animal herds and led to regional famines.

The total population of East Asia during the Paleolithic Age was quite low, less than that of many modern major metropolitan cities. Early hunter-gatherer tribes scratched out a living from the steppes and grasslands of Mongolia and northern China traveling in small groups of twenty to forty people, a life that required moving over a very large area, territory too large to either control or defend. Each clan community was essentially an independent and self-sufficient tribal unit, self-reliant enough that they actually prohibited gathering, hunting and fishing within the territories claimed by neighboring clans.

Once a tribe shifted from hunting to herding, shelter and possessions no longer had to be portable. Food could be gathered and stored. The men who decided when and where the tribe moved its small herds exerted a control that implied ownership and animal herds became valued property to be protected. Although the need for collective protection against natural disasters was far more important than any fear of harm from fellow human beings, many clans kept well-trained mastiff dogs for protection to guard against rustlers and pillagers. Clans had to remain constantly vigilant to the possibility of raids by aggressive neighbors looking to grab extra food rations for the winter. Still, early man faced far greater dangers while hunting than from any threat of an attack by other tribes.

Man's aggressive instincts are deeply rooted in prehistory, a time when man was a hunter and a killer of other men. Whether man's capacity for killing is instinctive or culturally induced is a matter of some controversy. Organized warfare is not. Mankind practiced the basics of warfare for thousands of years and Late Neolithic man was certainly a fighter capable of organized warfare. Hunting not only nurtured the mechanisms of death, it taught men how to kill in organized groups, a skill that required the willingness of a tribe to work as a team, to move in and kill prey at close quarters, a skill learned as a matter of survival.

The threat of raids by the Altai and Turkic-Mongol nomads who controlled the borderlands north of China became a major problem during the 21st century BC throughout the great farming regions developing in northern China and the Liao River basin. The Chinese considered these northern tribes to be a barbaric lot and referred to them disdainfully as Xiungnu, a term meaning nomad. All nomads hunted in one form or another, but the Xiungnu lived a life that provided a virtually permanent training ground for war.

War requires learning, organization and teamwork and can be executed efficiently only after intensive training, usually accompanied by firm, sometimes savage, discipline. Here, the Xiungnu had one great advantage over the Chinese;  they could fight where they lived - on horseback. They trained horses, hunted in disciplined units under their clan leader, and always practiced using their weapons on horseback. Archery was basic to their fighting prowess and the composite bow was their primary weapon. All able-bodied men, not to mention many women, were highly skilled in shooting a composite bow from the back of a horse while riding at a full gallop. In less than a century these "barbarians" became an established force in western Mongolia. The legendary horsemen of the Xiungnu, known later in the western world as the Huns, created the first truly Asian nomadic empire by 500 BC. So it seems that by the time man first learned how to write, he already had wars to write about.