Adaptive changes of prehistoric hunter-gatherers during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in China

This dissertation examines a fundamental question in Chinese prehistory, i.e., why did food production emerge in some cultural-ecological areas and not in others? At first, a theoretical exploration is made on the adaptive mechanism of hunter-gatherers. Secondly, a modeling method is used to project and predict the adaptive changes of hunters-gatherers in an assumed environment, which is established on the basis of Chinese weather station data. Thirdly, along with the theoretical framework and modeling, archaeological records are synthesized to answer the questions. Finally, the comparison of these three perspectives leads to some suggestions for the archaeological practice in the future.; Food production emerged as the outcome of a long evolutionary process. Human adaptive strategy always tends to energy and security maximizing. Also, food production is resulted from the interaction between the diversification of resource uses and the intensification of those species with potentials as domesticates. Mobility, as an "order parameter", played a crucial role in the adaptive changes of hunter-gatherers. As a result of the long evolutionary process, food production would not come into being if there was not the essential factor structure in a cultural adaptive system. Environmental factors have a dual effect on the origins of food production, such as the positive effect in an ecotone and the negative effect in a restricted environment.; The modeling predicts that forager strategies would be seen in the plant-dependents of South China and Southwest China, as well as the animal dependents of the northeast-southwest transitional zone, which has the highest hunting resources. Comparatively, collector strategies would be used by the plant-dependents in North and Central China, where food production emerged.; Archaeological records suggest that the earliest evidence of food production in China is found in the ecotonal zones of North and Central China. With increasing sophistication of food production, the centers of domestication moved towards the fluvial plains. However, owing to the paleoenvironmental change that led to the movement of the ecotonal zones, the early centers of diversification and intensification drifted northwards with the warming process since the Last Glacial Maximum.; The coincidence of modeling results and archaeological records reflects the usefulness of modeling, and give the possibility of directing the future archaeological work.