The Daxi Culture and the Eastward Spread of the Hmong Culture

The Daxi Culture and the Eastward Spread of the Hmong Culture 

 2010/07/05

 

niamtxiv | 2010年07月05日

Early Rice Cultivation and Civilization of the Hmong-Mien speaking people. Daxi Culture Daxi sites are typified by the presence of dou (cylindrical bottles), white pan (plates), and red pottery. The Daxi people cultivated rice extensively. Daxi sites were some of the earliest in China to show evidence of moats and walled settlements. The Daxi culture showed evidence of cultural interactions with the Yangtze River Delta region. The white pan artefacts from the culture were discovered at several Yangtze River Delta sites, including the type site at Majiabang. Conversely, jade artefacts at Daxi sites show possible influence from the Yangtze River Delta region. The Daxi culture was followed by the Qujialing culture. The Daxi culture (大溪文化) (5000 BC- 3000 BC) was a Neolithic culture centered in the Three Gorges region, around the middle Yangtze River, China. The culture ranged from western Hubei to eastern Sichuan and the Pearl River Delta. The site at Daxi, located in the Qutang Gorge around Wushan, Chongqing, was discovered by Nels C. Nelson in the 1920s. In 2007, Many key archaeological sites from the Daxi culture, including the site at Daxi were destroyed by the completion of the Three Gorges Dam. The Hmong-Mien ancient culture disappeared under water. Another huge tragic to the Hmong people and historians after thousand of years of searching for answers. "The Daxi culture was contemporary with the Yangshao culture, and there are certain similarities in pottery forms and decorations, indicating a cultural interaction with each other", this is saying that interaction with the people from the Yangtze and the Yellow River had probably and concievably happened due to similarities between these cultures. "A famous legend concerning the ancient San-Miao tribe, thought to be the ancestor of present-day H-M populations, is of great interest. The San-Miao tribe expanded northward to the Yellow River drainage area; then, led by the Chiyou, they battled against the Yan-Huang tribe (one of the primary Sino-Tibetan ancestors) in Zhulu (in present-day Hubei Province near Beijing). The Chiyou were defeated and pushed back to the south before the Yan-Huang dominated the northern China. Our mtDNA data might provide some clues for tracing this march. As we showed earlier, the southern lineages account for only about 50% of Miao mtDNAs; most of the lineages prevalent in NEA are found in Miao-Hunan (MHN), which has the highest frequency of such haplogroups in the H-M populations. A careful inspection of the distribution of the northern mtDNA lineages revealed more information. A6 is almost absent in other southern populations, but it is present in Miao-Hunan. C5 is the dominating haplogroup C type in the southern populations; however, almost all haplogroup C mtDNAs are non-C5 in the two Miao populations. G3 is a very rare in NEA, and it is completely absent in the south. Surprisingly, two Miao-Hunan mtDNAs carry this haplogroup. These observations suggest that the Miao (Hmong) people may have more contact with the NEA. " (Bo Wen et al, 2004)