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Nature Sustainability (2022 )Cite this article
The emergence of complex societies represents one of the major developments of human prehistory. Diverse agricultural strategies were implemented to produce the increased grain surplus necessary to allow the development of complex societies across the world. Little is known, however, about the millet–pig system that developed in Neolithic North China and ultimately underpinned the more complex societies, such as cities and states, in this region. Our data from studies of phytoliths and starches from pig dental residues and stable isotopes of millet grains excavated from the Dadiwan site demonstrate that an intensive crop–livestock system was in practice by at least 5,500 years ago. This novel system, characterized by the feeding of millet crop residues to pigs and the fertilization of millet fields with pig and/or human dung, enabled sustainable intensification in agriculture and fed the early complex societies in North China.
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Our sincere thanks go to the millet farmer P. Feng in Wuxiang county, Shanxi province, for permission to access his fields and plant samples and for providing cultivation histories. We thank D. R. Piperno and L. Putterman for their helpful comments for an earlier version of this paper. We thank G. Dong, M. Yi, Y. Cui, W. Fan for collecting charred millet grains analysed in this paper. We are grateful to the support of Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology for our samples collection. This work is supported by the Basic Science Center for Tibetan Plateau Earth System project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (41988101 granted to F.C. and X.Y.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41790421 granted to F.C., 41771225 granted to D.Z. and 41930323 granted to X.Y.), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (lzujbky-2021-ct03 granted to D.Z. and X.Y.) and National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFA0606402 granted to F.C. and D.Z.).
These authors contributed equally: Jishuai Yang, Dongju Zhang, Xiaoyan Yang
Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China
Jishuai Yang, Dongju Zhang, Xiaoyan Yang, Jian Wang, Lele Ren, Huan Xia, Xuke Shen, Juanting Yao & Fahu Chen
Group of Alpine Paleoecology and Human Adaptation (ALPHA), State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Jishuai Yang, Dongju Zhang, Xiaoyan Yang, Yu Gao & Fahu Chen
Department of Archaeology and Natural History, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia & the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
The Foundation for Archaeobotanical Research in Microfossils, Fairfax, VA, USA
Department of Anthropology, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK
School of Cultural Heritage, Northwest University, Xi’an, China
College of Humanities & Social Development, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
Institution of Chinese Agricultural Civilization, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
School of Earth Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China
History and Culture School, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China
Department of Cultural Heritage and Museology & Institute of Archaeological Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Lanzhou, China
Hui Wang & Yishi Yang
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D.Z., F.C. and X.Y. designed the project; J. Yang, W.W., H.W., Y.Y., D.Z., H.L., J.W., L.R., X.S. and J. Yao collected dental residue samples and charred millet samples; J. Yang, X.Y. and W.W. performed microfossil analysis; J. Yang, D.Z., X.Y., F.C., L.P., W.W., D.Q.F. and Y.G. analysed data; J.W. and L.R. identified the faunal remains; H.L. identified the millet grains; J. Yang, D.Z. and J. Yao carried out stable isotope analysis; H.X., H.L. and J. Yang processed dating samples; J. Yang performed modern field survey and sampling; J. Yang, D.Z., X.Y., F.C., D.Q.F. and L.P. wrote the paper with contributions of all authors.
Correspondence to Dongju Zhang or Xiaoyan Yang.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Sustainability thanks Gideon Shelach-Lavi and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Yellow and light green horizontal bars represent the chronological range of pig jawbones and millet grains in this study, respectively.
a-d, η/Ω type phytoliths from millet husks. e, Bilobate. f, Cross. g, Cylindrical polylobate. h, Short saddle. i, Long saddle. j, Bulliform. k, Reed bulliform. l, Wavy-trapezoid. m, Wavy-narrow-trapezoid. n, Hat. o, Tower. p, Smooth elongate. q, Sinuate elongate. r, Square. s, Rectangle. t, Point. Scale bars: 20 μm.
a, Millets (Panicum miliaceum and/or Setaria italica). b, Triticeae. c-f, Underground storage organs (USOs). g and h, Unidentified types. Scale bars: 20 μm.
‘PYS’ is the abbreviation of ‘Pre-Yangshao’. ‘LYS’ is the abbreviation of ‘Late Yangshao.
a, Map showing locations of sampling plot and the Dadiwan site. Annual precipitation data is from the Resource and Environment Science and Data Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences (http://www.resdc.cn/DOI)61. The remote sensing base map was prepared from the ArcGIS ‘World Imagery’. b, Foxtail millet plot manured by pig dung in Wuxiang county, Shanxi province. There are many weeds growing outside the field. Photograph by J. Yang.
The box-plot elements are defined as: white square, mean; center line, median; box limits, upper and lower quartiles; whiskers, minimum and maximum.
Yang, J., Zhang, D., Yang, X. et al. Sustainable intensification of millet–pig agriculture in Neolithic North China. Nat Sustain (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00905-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00905-9
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