**:People**.
"Xia Li", "Yin Li" and "Zhou Li" are the essence of the Yellow River culture, and the "State of Etiquette" is a significant feature of Chinese civilization.
Centennial archaeology revealed that various regions of China entered the threshold of civilization around 3300 B.C., and around 2000 B.C., many early kingships and regional civilizations found by archaeology declined at the same time, and only in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, with the Luoyang Basin as the center, the Xia Dynasty formed and grown. For more than 3,000 years, the Songshan Heluo area, centered on Zhengzhou and Luoyang, served as the capital of the orthodox dynasty for a long time.
In the late period of Yangshao culture from 3300 BC to 2800 BC, a new peak of Yangshao cultural development appeared in the hinterland of the Central Plains. Ongoing archaeological discoveries have proved that the encircled moat settlements in this area are generally popular and significantly expanded, such as Zhengzhou Dahe Village, Xingyang Qingtai, Gongyi Shuanghuaishu, etc., with an area of more than 500,000 square meters. The site of Gongyi Shuanghuai Tree is located at the confluence of the Yiluo River into the Yellow River, with an area of more than 1 million square meters, with a triple ring moat, and the central area is a "palace" area similar to the palace city composed of multiple rows of large houses surrounded by semi-walls and moats, and there is a large-scale activity square carefully built by deep rammed earth, presenting the layout of "sleeping in front and back". During the same period, the Dawenkou culture in the east moved westward, and the Qujialing culture in the south moved northward, which promoted the complexity of the social organization structure and the formation of early civilization.
Since 2800 B.C., the Longshan culture has formed a cultural landscape full of cities. In the hinterland of the Central Plains, small and medium-sized cities centered on rammed earth walls were widely built, such as Dengfeng Wangchenggang, Xinmi Ancient Walled City, Mengzhuang in Huixian County, and Xubao in Wenxian County, reflecting the gradual acceleration of regional social integration. Around 2300 B.C., the middle reaches of the Yellow River formed super-large capitals such as Xiangfen Tao Temple and Shenmu Shijiao, representing a new breakthrough in the form of regional settlements and a new model of regional social organization. The site of Tao Temple, covering an area of at least 2.8 million square meters, has been discovered in an unprecedented scale of the city site, the magnificent palace wall, the regular layout of the cemetery, etc., and the residential area, storage area, handicraft workshop area and so on are readily available. The ruins of the stone ridge on the plateau of northern Shaanxi are composed of the majestic imperial city platform, the impregnable inner city and the large-scale outer city, and a large number of jade, bone tools, musical instruments, pottery, etc. They eventually merge into the great current of the origins of Chinese civilization.
The hinterland of the Central Plains is located in the "middle of the world", and the development model of emphasizing agriculture and consolidating the foundation and benefiting the four parties has become a reasonable and favorable historical choice. After a long period of political practice and exploration, by around 1800 BC, the hinterland of the Central Plains formed the Erlitou culture represented by Yanshi Erlitou.
The area of the Erlitou site is about 3 million square meters, showing a multi-palace grid layout separated by the road network and the fence, the palace city of about 100,000 square meters is the center of gravity of the capital, and the courtyard-style palace temple building with the layout of the east and west two groups of central axis has become the precursor of the palace room system in later generations, and the special handicraft workshop area has opened a precedent for the official handicraft industry in the later generations, and the instrument system represented by the bronze and jade ritual ware was born. Although the area of Erlitou did not exceed the largest capital in the previous Longshan period, a new spatial order and value order appeared, and the national ritual system such as the royal capital regulation and the instrument system embodied by it became more mature, and the capital became a city with a large scale, complex structure and rich connotation on the land of China at that time.
The Xia and Shang dynasties formed the way of state governance, the concept of building a royal capital, the strategy of local governance, and the ceremonial systems such as the palace system, the instrument system, and the tomb system. "Xia Li", "Yin Li" and "Zhou Li" are the essence of the Yellow River culture, and the "State of Etiquette" is a significant feature of Chinese civilization. In the archaeological discoveries of Yin Ruins in the late Shang Dynasty, the mature oracle bone inscriptions and Jin inscriptions are the source of Chinese characters that have been passed down to this day, which is also an important link to maintain Chinese civilization.
The author is Hou Weidong, a professor at the Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development Research Center of Henan University
People** December 09, 2023 Edition 07).