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Jiahu
Jiahu () was the site of a Neolithic settlement based in the central plain of ancient China, near the Yellow River. It is located between the floodplains of the Ni River to the north, and the Sha River to the south, north of the modern city of Wuyang, Henan Province. Most archaeologists consider the site to be one of the earliest examples of the Peiligang culture. Settled around 7000 BC, the site was later flooded and abandoned around 5700 BC. The settlement was surrounded by a moat and covered a relatively large area of 55,000 square meters (5.5 hectare). At one time, it was "a complex, highly organized Chinese Neolithic society", home to at least 250 people and perhaps as many as 800. The important discoveries of the Jiahu archaeological site include the Jiahu symbols, possibly an early example of proto-writing, carved into tortoise shells and bones; the thirty-three Jiahu flutes carved from the wing bones of cranes, believed to be among the oldest playable musical ins ...
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Jiahu Flutes
The Jiahu gǔdí () are the oldest known musical instruments from China, dating back to around 6000 BCE. ''Gudi'' means "bone flute" in Chinese. History Since 1984, six complete bone flutes, as well as the fragments of at least thirty more, have been excavated from several early Neolithic Jiahu culture tombs in Jiahu, Wuyan County, Henan Province, in Central China. They have been dated to 6000 BCE. Description The bone flutes have average dimensions of approximately , and are made from the legs of the red-crowned crane. They are open-ended and vary in the number of their finger holes, from one to eight; the 24 holed version has 23 holes in front and one thumb hole in back. Jiahu bone whistles are much shorter than the flutes, with lengths of , and having only a couple of holes. The number of holes and the spacing between the holes determined the musical range and scale or mode in which the flute was intended to function. Lee and Shen believed that the Jiahu culture und ...
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Peiligang Culture
The Peiligang culture was a Neolithic culture in the Yi-Luo river basin (in modern Henan Province, China) that existed from 7000 to 5000 BC. Over 100 sites have been identified with the Peiligang culture, nearly all of them in a fairly compact area of about 100 square kilometers in the area just south of the river and along its banks. Peiligang culture The culture is named after the site discovered in 1977 at Peiligang, a village in Xinzheng County. Archaeologists believe that the Peiligang culture was egalitarian, with little political organization. The culture practiced agriculture in the form of cultivating millet and animal husbandry in the form of raising pigs and possibly poultry. The people hunted deer and wild boar, and fished for carp in the nearby river, using nets made from hemp fibers. The culture is also one of the oldest in ancient China to make pottery. This culture typically had separate residential and burial areas, or cemeteries, like most Neolithic cul ...
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Proto-writing
Proto-writing consists of visible marks communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in Eastern Europe and China. They used ideographic or early mnemonic symbols or both to represent a limited number of concepts, in contrast to true writing systems, which record the language of the writer. Neolithic Neolithic China In 2003, tortoise shells were found in 24 Neolithic graves excavated at Jiahu, Henan province, northern China, with radiocarbon dates from the 7th millennium BC. According to some archaeologists, the symbols carved on the shells had similarities to the late 2nd millennium BC oracle bone script.. Others have dismissed this claim as insufficiently substantiated, claiming that simple geometric designs such as those found on the Jiahu shells cannot be linked to early writing. Neolithic Europe The Dispilio tablet is a wooden tablet bearing inscribed ma ...
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Jiahu Symbols
The Jiahu symbols () consist of 16 distinct markings on prehistoric artifacts found in Jiahu, a neolithic Peiligang culture site found in Henan, China, and excavated in 1989. The Jiahu symbols are dated to around 6000 BC. The archaeologists who made the original finds believed the markings to be similar in form to some characters used in the much later oracle bone script (e.g. similar markings of "eye", "sun; day"), but most doubt that the markings represent systematic writing. A 2003 report in ''Antiquity'' interpreted them "not as writing itself, but as features of a lengthy period of sign-use which led eventually to a fully-fledged system of writing." The earliest known body of writing in the oracle bone script dates much later to the reign of the late Shang dynasty king Wu Ding, which started in about c. 1250 BC or 1200 BC. See also *Gudi (instrument) * Neolithic signs in China *Undeciphered writing systems An undeciphered writing system is a written form of lang ...
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Dawenkou
The Dawenkou culture was a Chinese Neolithic culture primarily located in the eastern province of Shandong, but also appearing in Anhui, Henan and Jiangsu. The culture existed from 4300 to 2600 BC, and co-existed with the Yangshao culture. Turquoise, jade and ivory artefacts are commonly found at Dawenkou sites. The earliest examples of alligator drums appear at Dawenkou sites. Neolithic signs, perhaps related to subsequent scripts, such as those of the Shang dynasty, have been found on Dawenkou pottery. Chronology Archaeologists commonly divide the culture into three phases: the early phase (4100–3500 BC), the middle phase (3500–3000 BC) and the late phase (3000–2600 BC). Based on the evidence from grave goods, the early phase was highly egalitarian. The phase is typified by the presence of individually designed, long-stemmed cups. Graves built with earthen ledges became increasingly common during the latter parts of the early phase. During the middle phase, grav ...
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Apricot
An apricot (, ) is a fruit, or the tree that bears the fruit, of several species in the genus '' Prunus''. Usually, an apricot is from the species '' P. armeniaca'', but the fruits of the other species in ''Prunus'' sect. ''Armeniaca'' are also called apricots. Etymology ''Apricot'' first appeared in English in the 16th century as ''abrecock'' from the Middle French ''aubercot'' or later ''abricot'', from Spanish '' albaricoque'' and Catalan ''a(l)bercoc'', in turn from Arabic الْبَرْقُوق (al-barqūq, "the plums"), from Byzantine Greek βερικοκκίᾱ (berikokkíā, "apricot tree"), derived from late Greek ''πραικόκιον'' (''praikókion'', "apricot") from Latin '' ersica ("peach")praecocia'' (''praecoquus'', "early ripening"). Species Apricots are species belonging to ''Prunus'' sect. ''Armeniaca''. The taxonomic position of '' P. brigantina'' is disputed. It is grouped with plum species according to chloroplast DNA sequences, but more closel ...
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Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This "Neolithic package" included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement. It began about 12,000 years ago when farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East, and later in other parts of the world. The Neolithic lasted in the Near East until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) from about 6,500 years ago (4500 BC), marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age. In other places the Neolithic followed the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) and then lasted until later. In Ancient Egypt, the Neolithic lasted until the Protodynastic period, 3150 BC.Karin Sowada and Peter Grave. Egyp ...
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Red-crowned Crane
The red-crowned crane (''Grus japonensis''), also called the Manchurian crane or Japanese crane (; the Chinese character '丹' means 'red', '頂/顶' means 'crown' and '鶴/鹤' means 'crane'), is a large East Asian crane among the rarest cranes in the world. In some parts of its range, it is known as a symbol of luck, longevity, and fidelity. Description Adult red-crowned cranes are named for a patch of red bare skin on the crown, which becomes brighter during the mating season. Overall, they are snow white in color with black on the wing secondaries, which can appear almost like a black tail when the birds are standing, but the real tail feathers are actually white. Males are black on the cheeks, throat, and neck, while females are pearly gray in these spots. The bill is olive green to a greenish horn, the legs are slate to grayish black, and the iris is dark brown.Archibald G.W. & Meine, C.D. 1996. ''Family Gruidae (Cranes)''. In: del Hoyo J, Elliott A, Sargatal J. (Eds.). ...
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Common Carp
The Eurasian carp or European carp (''Cyprinus carpio''), widely known as the common carp, is a widespread freshwater fish of eutrophic waters in lakes and large rivers in Europe and Asia.Fishbase''Cyprinus carpio'' Linnaeus, 1758/ref>Arkive The native wild populations are considered vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), but the species has also been domesticated and introduced (see aquaculture) into environments worldwide, and is often considered a destructive invasive species, being included in the list of the world's 100 worst invasive species. It gives its name to the carp family, Cyprinidae. Taxonomy The two subspecies are: * ''Cyprinus carpio carpio'', native to much of Europe (notably the Danube and Volga rivers)Jian Feng Zhou, Qing Jiang Wu, Yu Zhen Ye & Jin Gou Tong (2003). Genetic divergence between ''Cyprinus carpio carpio'' and ''Cyprinus carpio haematopterus'' as assessed by mitochondrial DNA analysis, with emp ...
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Hemp
Hemp, or industrial hemp, is a botanical class of '' Cannabis sativa'' cultivars grown specifically for industrial or medicinal use. It can be used to make a wide range of products. Along with bamboo, hemp is among the fastest growing plants on Earth. It was also one of the first plants to be spun into usable fiber 50,000 years ago. It can be refined into a variety of commercial items, including paper, rope, textiles, clothing, biodegradable plastics, paint, insulation, biofuel, food, and animal feed. Although chemotype I cannabis and hemp (types II, III, IV, V) are both ''Cannabis sativa'' and contain the psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), they represent distinct cultivar groups, typically with unique phytochemical compositions and uses. Hemp typically has lower concentrations of total THC and may have higher concentrations of cannabidiol (CBD), which potentially mitigates the psychoactive effects of THC. The legality of hemp varies widely among coun ...
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Rabbit
Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit species and its descendants, the world's 305 breeds of domestic rabbit. ''Sylvilagus'' includes 13 wild rabbit species, among them the seven types of cottontail. The European rabbit, which has been introduced on every continent except Antarctica, is familiar throughout the world as a wild prey animal and as a domesticated form of livestock and pet. With its widespread effect on ecologies and cultures, the rabbit is, in many areas of the world, a part of daily life—as food, clothing, a companion, and a source of artistic inspiration. Although once considered rodents, lagomorphs like rabbits have been discovered to have diverged separately and earlier than their rodent cousins and have a number of traits rodents lack, like two extra i ...
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Boar
The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The species is now one of the widest-ranging mammals in the world, as well as the most widespread suiform. It has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List due to its wide range, high numbers, and adaptability to a diversity of habitats. It has become an invasive species in part of its introduced range. Wild boars probably originated in Southeast Asia during the Early Pleistocene and outcompeted other suid species as they spread throughout the Old World. , up to 16 subspecies are recognized, which are divided into four regional groupings based on skull height and lacrimal bone length. The species lives in matriarchal societies consisting of interrelated females and their young (both male and female). Fully grown males are usually solitar ...
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