The Earliest China

“The Earliest China” is the first archaeological book in China to translate in the dominant language of the world on the origin of Chinese ancient civilization in the Central Plains and the study of Xia dynastic culture. It shows readers all over the world the outstanding achievements in the study of the formation of early state in China and is the first English translation monograph on the birth history of the first dynasty of Hua-Xia nation from the perspective of archaeology. With the specific archaeological data on the basis of excavations and investigation conducted in recent years, this book focuses on the interpretation of the rise and development of the ancient civilization having initially appeared in the Central Plain of China and even in the Eastern Asia. The book contents include abundant manifestations of the first flourishing civilization especially at the Erlitou site along the Yi and Luo Rivers, characteristic of ultra-large capital city, palace buildings, elaborate bronze vessels, and stratified social organization. With the combination of previously literature, the original author attempts to further explain how the earliest China, a royal-powered, and large-scaled state, emerged four thousand years ago. In this book, the analysis on a comprehensive landscape of the ancient civilization prior to the Shang Dynasty leads the point of views, distinctively from the traditional historical perspectives. With a global perspective, he further compares with other significant civilizations in the world and also points out cultural communications between the early China and other external cultures in the Bronze Age. Therefore, this book, the Earliest China of English translated version, is so appropriate to be recommended to foreign scholars and sinologists, as well as everyone who has been attracted by China’s charm overseas. With book contents, ideas, and thoughts that it contains, one can easily acknowledge the goals, methods, and reconstruction process of China’s prehistory, so English readers will acknowledge so well about the Chinese Archaeology in the Bronze Age, which does vary in many aspects from that of European and American. 

Hong Xu, is the original author, a second-grade researcher of the Institute of Archaeology (Beijing), Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and the professor of the Graduate School of CASS. He is one of the top scholars who is engaged in the archaeological research of early cities, early states, and early civilization in China. Most noteworthy is that he continuously conducted archaeological field-work and presided over the excavation of Erlitou site in the Central Plain, Luoyang, for over 20 years from 1999 to 2019. He is the author of “The Archaeology of Enclosure Settlements in Pre-Qin Period (7000-221BC)”, and wrote a series of popular science books on the interpretation of Early China including “The Earliest China” (2009), “How China Was” (2014), and “The Archaeology of Enclosure Settlements in Pre-Qin Period” (2017). He also edited large- scale archaeological reports such as “Erlitou (1999-2006)”, and published hundreds of related academic articles.

Li Sang, the translation author of this book, received her Ph.D. degree in archaeology from the University of Tübingen in Germany. She is now working as an associate professor and a full-time researcher in the International Research Center of He-Luo Culture at  Luoyang Normal  University. She has studied both Chinese and Western archaeology, and is mainly engaged in the teaching and research on the process of pluralistic integration of the Hua-Xia civilization, formation of early states, and comparative study between Chinese and Near Eastern civilizations. Her English monograph “Burial Practices of the Third Millennium BCE in the Middle Euphrates Region” (2015) was published by BAR in the UK, and she also published many original and comprehensive archaeological papers.