VIET PEOPLE EXPLOITED YELLOW RIVER BASIN

                                                                         Ha Van Thuy

            As a miracle, in 2011 geneticists confirmed that the bone fragments found in 2003 in the Tianyuan Cave  Zhoukoudian near Beijing belonged to a 40,000-year-old man. DNA sequencing showed, “In his genome there are 1-2% of the Denisovan genes. He is the ancestor of the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese people and is the stem of the indigenous peoples of America. ”(1) One question needs to be answered: where are he from? We believe that he was from Vietnam. The number 1-2% of the Denisovan gene in his blood is of special significance. It shows that, on the way to the East, the influx of African migrants met and mixed blood with the Denisovans somewhere and brought to Vietnam 70,000 years ago. In Vietnam, immigrants was mixed blood, giving birth to ancient Viet with the Australoid genetic code with 1-2% Denisovan gene. 40,000 years ago, thanks to the warmer climate, people from Vietnam came to take over the mainland, becoming the ancestors of the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. Those who went on to Siberia and then crossed the Bering Strait into the Americas became ancestors of Native Americans. People who stayed in Vietnam became residents of Hoa Binh. Up to this point, the man Tianyuan Cave is the only evidence confirming the 1998 discovery of genetics: 40,000 years ago, people from Vietnam went up to dominate the mainland (2).

  

Tianyuan man

Archeology and genetics also show that the Tianyuan people are not the only line of people leaving Vietnam to the North. At the same time, groups of Mongoloid people, after 30,000 years of living in Northwest Vietnam, followed the western corridor of the mainland to Mongolia. Due to keeping a pure Mongoloid gene pool, they are called the North Mongoloid strain. Thus, the two lines of people from Vietnam lived in the North and South banks of Yellow River. Until the Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, the offspring of the Tianyuan man  lived for 30,000 years in the icy regions of the Yellow River basin. But during all this time archeology has only found three skulls of their at the New Cave of Zhoukoudian site 27,000 years ago. Next is the site of Shizitan in Shanxi province 28,000 - 24,000 years ago. Excavation of an area of 1,200 square meters, revealed a 15-meter-deep sediment range comprising eight cultural layers. 285 fireplaces and more than 80,000 artifacts discovered, providing a rich, unique data set. Here production of microblade continued throughout the Late Pleistocene, becoming an important part of many old Paleolithic sites widely distributed from North China to Siberia, Mongolia, and the Far East Russia, the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Islands, as well as in North America, especially during the Younger Dryas. (3) Millet seeds and many wild plants are used as food, showing that the inhabitants live mainly on hunter-gatherer in the large territory, so it is too deserted.

 

                                         Microblades in Shizitan

             

                       Jiahu Character              Flute Bird Bones

But up to 9,000 years ago, a miracle happened: the Jiahu culture in Henan province appeared. It is a large settlement, 55,000 m2 with a cemetery with 300 tombs. New stone tools in a sophisticated level. Pottery is crafted with high technique. People grow rice. The rice was used to make wine by fermenting the rice wine and then pickling with honey and hawthorn. Music has evolved with four-hole, six-hole and eight-hole flutes, made of crane bones. Here, for the first time, there are 11 hieroglyphic characters engraved on animal bones and turtle covers. There are words used to this day such as number Eight, Eye, Sun, Fire  ... One question: who is the owner of the Jiahu culture?

Seen from all the characteristics of this culture, it is clear that it is not the product of the person in place. Yet not of the residents of the North Yellow River brought down. Because, the level of people from the North Yellow River is not that level. And this is decisive: they belong to the strain Mongoloid. Only the one possibility: it is the persons from the South Yangtze because their skeleton with the genetic code Y-DNA O3-M122 belonging to the Indonesian strain of the Australoid genotype (4). The population of Jiahu is the Lac Viet, the majority group accounts for 60% of the East Asian population.

30,000 years ago, when the flow of old man Tianyuan went to the north, the people stayed to dominate Guangdong Guangxi and spread throughout the Yangtze River basin. 22,000 years ago, the Viet in Hoa Binh created new stone tools, which were pebble axes, which were carved across the entire surface of the pebble, forming the gentle and sharp tools. The ax is put the handle, becoming a tool of labor and the preeminent weapon. The Viet, the owner of the ax, is called the ax bearer, then becomes a proud race name "Viet". The ax and the "Viet" race name was brought to the South Yangtze to help open the land. 20,000 years ago, at Xianren Cave, Jiangxi province, about 100 km from the Southern Yangtze coast, the Viet made the first pottery. Continuing a life of hunting combined with cultivation, together with vegetables and fruits, the Viet cultivate rice and millet, two kinds of seed crops that have long been collected to supplement their food sources. Through each crop, the best rice and millet grains are selected for the following crop. Rice and millet are grown dry by burning up the fields and poking holes to put the seeds in. When going elsewhere, the seed is carried.

Archeology shows that humans came to reside in Xianren Cave area from 25,000 years ago. As a habit, initially both millet and rice are cultivating dry. But here, in the swamp lowland, wet rice plants grow better. People break the land into paddy fields. Due to special care, the rice plant produces a lot of arista, and the arista produces many seeds. The seeds are more big and less broken when harvested, so the rice is harvested when it's fully ripe and the seeds germinate better. Due to the creation of large fields, the cultivated rice is no longer mixed with wild rice, so the quality of the crop and the grain is better. Probably the Xianren Cave people at that time did not know the concept of "taming" but only cultivated. But under such farming conditions, the rice plants have been "domesticated." In 2012, when surveying the leftover rice grain at the Xianren Cave site, scholars believe that 12,400 years ago, the people here successfully domesticated the Oryza sativa wet rice from the Oryza nivara species. Meanwhile, millet, due to its low productivity, is considered a sub-crop, still planted in a slash-and-burn manner, poking holes to put seeds, creating small fields, surrounded by wild millet populations. The continuous cross-pollination took place, making the millet genome selected for planting always infected with the wild gene. Therefore, millet is not domesticated.

The rice seed from Xianren Cave was spread throughout the Yangtze basin.

It can be sure that, during the Ice Age period, although it was very cold, the Yangtze River was not a wall preventing people from sharing the same race and voices. Although the North is cold, it is not completely strange to the people of the South bank. Product exchanges and adventures may have taken place. 10,000 years ago, the Ice Age ended, the climate warmed. Melting ice, green ground, water overflowing rivers ... opening the Spring of mankind. The Viet in the South were bustling for their march to the North. Compared to two exodus that occurred 50,000 and 40,000 years ago, the Southerners are too rich today. In the travel luggage, there were rice seeds , millet seeds , chicken breeds, dog breeds, pigs and buffaloes. The old, rudimentary stone ax has been transformed into a Bac Son polished ax, and all kinds of pottery. Immediately after the ice melted, the pioneers crossed the river. It is these brave people who left their earliest traces on the soil of Shandong 10,000 years ago. At Xihe and Yantai, artifacts with radioactive carbon ranged from 10,000 to 7400 calories. BP (4)

Most likely, a group of adventurers from Xianren Cave,  Yuchannian of Jiangxi, Guangxi went to Jiahu. They met their countrymen who were living by hunting and gathering. The two communities joined hands to set up the village of Jiahu, the first village in the Yellow River basin 9000 years ago as a milestone marking the opening footsteps of the Viet people. Low land is leveled, banks are covered for rice fields. In high places, cut trees, slash-and-burn to culture millet. Vegetables and fruits are grown for human consumption and animal husbandry. Good land birds perched, people find more fun. News spread through the flow of people like a festival. People told each other about the warm coastal area of Shandong, with heavy rainfall, highlands with many rivers and streams, easy to fish, and grows rice, millet ... 8000 years ago, Houli culture with locations Yuezhang, Zhangmatun, Xihe was born.

There are streams of people going to the Northwest, to the Loess  Plateau, in Shanxi, Shaanxi today. Here, the climate is too dry and there is no place for rice, so millet becomes the main crop, creating a site for Laoguantai  millet cultivation 8000 years ago. 7000 years ago, the Yangshao culture appeared on an area of 3,000,000 m2, throughout the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Gansu, Henan, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Hubei, Qinghai, Ningxia ... existing up to 3,000 years BC. New stone culture Yangshao leaves the following artifacts:

- Large number of grinding pebble tools including axes, hoes, spades, shovels, and seeding tools.

- Many red, brown, and black enamel wares are finely crafted

- Many houses are half-submerged, and in the house there are jars containing large numbers of millet shells.

- Many bones of pigs, chickens, dogs.

- In the graveyards found remains of the Southern Mongoloid, close to the present Han people.

 

Pottery painting Yangshao

The Yangshao culture is of great importance because, with the emergence of a high-level indigenous culture in making new stone tools, ceramics and grain agriculture, it affirms the role of East civilization, rejecting the old concept that Western civilization spread to the East. For the Chinese, it is especially significant because it is the first place to find "remains of Chinese ancestors," as the master of civilization. From here appeared the concept of Chinese civilization was born from Yangshao and spread to the Southeast. (6) One question needs to be answered: Where did the Southern Mongoloid come from? According to tradition, people from the Northwest immigrated to the Central Yellow River, giving birth to the Huaxia culture and people, the Han ancestor. But when surveying the Northwestern population 7000 years ago, there were no Southern Mongoloid, Chinese scholar Zhou Jixu (7) said that the Yangshao people were from the South. However, archeology does not support this because during the Stone Age there were no Mongolians in the South!

We believe that, due to living together by Yellow River, 7,000 years ago the Northern Mongoloid came into contact with the Australoid Viet born the  Southern Mongoloid in Yangshao. Later called the modern Viet. Over time, the modern Viet multiplied, becoming the subject of the Yellow River basin. About 6000 to 5500 years ago, due to the changing climate, stronger summer winds, bringing rain to the Loess plateau, bringing water to the rivers in the region, creating conditions for rice to grow, making agriculture rice. Up to now, archeology has recorded a multitude of cultural relics in the Yellow River basin during the period between c. 6500 and c. 500 BC: Shandong 7134 locations, Henan 2159, Shanxi 4611 and Shaanxi 6267 (8). In 1982, the Xinglonggou archaeological culture was discovered in the Liaohe River basin in Inner Mongolia with the age of 8,000 to 7500 years ago, the precursor to the Xinglongwa culture (5500 - 5000 BP), the Hongshan culture (4000 - 3500 BP) and Xiajiadian culture. These are highly developed cultures in the Inner Mongolia region. A comparison of time and cultural features shows that this area is heavily influenced by the Yangshao culture.

 

                                    Statue of goddess Hong Son restored

        The above presentation shows that, about 6500 years ago, in the Yellow River basin, the Viet people lived in a crowded setting, creating more than 2000 large and small villages with developed agriculture: depending on the climate, the place of rice cultivation, the place of cultivation millet with many types of vegetables and fruits. Raising chickens, pigs, dogs, buffaloes ... combining with hunting and fishing.  In the last two decades, due to its cooperation with the West and its well-organized research program, Chinese archeology has gained great success, helping to bring to light many of the achievements of Neolithic and Bronze Age. Not only material culture but also the spiritual and ideological progress. From the discovery of the capable tomb of Fuxi in Buyang Henan 6500 years ago, shows the concept of a square earth, circle heaven astronomy, geography, and Y-ching maturity ...  revealing the first phase of the formation of the Viet states in the basin of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers: the state of shannong 5300 BC with the capital of Liangzhou and then the state of Xichquy by Kinh Duong Vuong 2879 BC. From here, entering the period of brassiness with the famous Lungshan culture, leading to the reign of the Emperor, Xia, Shang, and Zhou.             

                                                                           

                                                                    Saigon, 18.10. 2020

References: 

1. A relative from the Tianyuan Cave. https://www.mpg.de/6842535/dna-Tianyuan-cave)

2. Chu et al. Genetic relationship of populations in China https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC21714/

3. Yanhua Song. Re-thinking the evolution of microblade technology in East Asia: Techno-functional understanding of the lithic assemblage from Shizitan 29 (Shanxi, China)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6388932/

4. O3系创造了灿烂的贾湖文化，多项领先中国 

https://www.360kuai.com/pc/970d318e8b693f401?cota=4&sign=360_7bc3b157

5. Gary W Crawford et al. People and plant interaction at the Houli Culture Yuezhuang site in Shandong Province, China https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303769400_People_and_plant_interaction_at_the_Houli_Culture_Yuezhuang_site_in_Shandong_Province_China

6. 仰韶文化 http://baike.baidu.com/view/9771.htm  

7.  Zhou Jixu. The Rise of Agricultural Civilization in China: The Disparity between Archeological Discovery and the Documentary Record and Its Explanation.  SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS Number 175  December, 2006

8. GuiYun Jin et al. Archaeobotanical records of Middle and Late Neolithic agriculture from Shandong Province, East China, and a major change in regional subsistence during the Dawenkou Culture

file:///C:/Users/Admin/Downloads/Archaeobotanical_records_of_Middle_and_L%20(2).pdf