| Millet is one of the earliest domesticated crops in the world.Millet agriculture Take up an extremely important position in the formation and development process of civilization in northern China.For a long time,the origin and development of millet farming has been a key concern of archaeological circles at home and abroad.After decades of research using traditional archaeology,macro and micro botanical method,we have realized that the origin of millet farming has undergone a long development process.In the late Paleolithic period,the characteristics of the intensive collection and utilization of wild millet plants was discovered on millstones.Until 9000-7000 years ago,primitive millet agriculture developed rapidly under the background of the Holocene warm period climate.Traces of the remains of millet were found in Hebei,Shandong,Henan,Inner Mongolia,Liaoning and Gansu.The research on the remains of early millet has achieved fruitful results,but the understanding of the development process of millet agriculture and the propagation mechanism is still unclear.This paper selects the animal skeletons unearthed at Cishan site as the research object,and further studies the breeding methods and management of domestic animals in the site by analyzing the food structure of the animals at the Cishan site.Then discusses the economic model of the ancestors’livelihood industry,and clarifies which position Cishan site was in the stage of millet agricultural development.This article applies carbon and nitrogen stable isotopic analysis on 25animal skeleton samples unearthed from the Cishan site,including 9 pigs,4 dogs,6 deer,1 bovid,1 rabbits,2 fish,1 badger,and 1 bear.The carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data of wild animal skeletons shows that the predominant food of wild animals in Cishan site is C3 plants.The stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic characteristics of different species of animals are herbivores（-21.7‰～-17.1‰,-20.7±1.5‰;3.8‰～5.7‰,4.5±0.6‰,n=8）and omnivores（-21.5～-19.4‰,-20.7±0.9‰,4.0～5.1‰,4.4±0.5‰,n=4）,carnivores（-16.9‰,7.6‰,n=1）,freshwater fish（-23.0‰,7.6‰,n=1）.This indicates that the terrestrial and aquatic plants around the Cishan site are mainly C3 plants.The food structure of domestic pigs（-18.3‰～-13.3‰,-16.2±2.6‰;5.9‰～6.6‰,6.3±0.4‰,n=3）and domestic dogs（-16.7‰～-14.4‰,-16±1.1‰;7.2‰～9.4‰,8.0±1.0‰,n=4）has a certain proportion of C4 plants,which shows a clear difference from wild animals,reflecting the intervention and control of domestic animals by human.Under the management of the human,a certain proportion of C4 plants were included in the food structure of domestic animals,indicating that the agricultural product has been quite stable,and there are enough surplusroducts for feeding livestock.Considering the fractionation effect in the process of trophic level transmission,it can be inferred that the food structure of the human contained more millet.The study found that millet agriculture at Cishan site has developed to a great extent under suitable climatic conditions in the late ice age.Fishing and hunting are still an indispensable part of the subsistence economy,and millet used in livestock feeding is still quite limited. |
