Cattle was one of the most important domestic animals since antiquity,serving as the solid evidence of the prehistoric species globalization.Cattle not only provided the primary products such as meat,hide and bones,but also offer the secondary products like milk and power.It spent about 6000 years for cat-tle from the domestication center in west Asia to China with large-scale breeding.Archaeological finding across Eurasia reveal two waves of cattle spread into China.The first wave happened in the late fourth mil-lennium BCE,originating from the Volga Valley to the Altai Mountains,and then sporadically into northeast China and Gansu-Qinghai Region;however,this spread nearly had no impact on ancient China's societies.The second wave appeared in the late third millennium BCE,starting from the Altai Mountains to south Xin-jiang and the Yellow River Valley.Subsequently,ancient Chinese began to raise cattle in large scale and fur-ther exploit the grasslands,which were previously difficultly exploited without domestic herbivorous ani-mals.The cattle had provided new sources of food(heat),raw materials for handicraft industry and power,which marked a great leap in materials and energy utilization in China history,triggered a herding revolution that catalyzed the birth of early states in contemporary north Shaanxi province and south Shanxi province.During the spread progress,climate change might play a critical role.
the cattle roadherding revolutionearly statesclimate change
维普
万方数据
