| Abstract: |
This paper examines settlement patterns in the middle and lower Yellow River valley in the Longshan period (2600 - 2000 BC), when the Neolithis culture was transformed to a state-level social organisation. During this period a series of changes in climate, ecology, and geomorphology took place. This external pressure triggered large-scale population movements, realignment of social groups, and inter-polity conflict, all of which are demonstrated in the changing patterns of settlement distribution. During this unstable era, many societies declined in terms of degree of sociopolitical complexity, but some polities in the Central Plains (the Erlitou culture in Henan) became highly integrated with a nucleated settlement pattern and developed the first urbanism in China. Climatic fluctuation and environmental conditions are important variables in social change, but it was the differing human responses to external challenges and social interaction which ultimately determined the development or decline of complex societies and the emergence of civilisation in China.
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