A Neolithic China TL

It would seem that there is exactly one China thread in the "Before 1900" section, and even that is a DBWI, despite China currently having ~20% of the world's population and historically having had from 1/4 to 1/3 of it. I find that a pity, personally, so here goes nothing (I'm planning on just following the timeline and doing the research as I go, without any long-term plan).
Before I begin: I'm not going to change toponyms from OTL ones, because they don't really have any effect to the timeline besides making it more confusing and because the POD is very prehistoric and TTL's languages are going to be unintelligible to us thanks to the vagaries of linguistics.
I'm also not going to engage in any narrative (at least not internal narrative), because we can't truly comprehend the actions of historical people even in OTL (it's an issue I have with some historical fiction - after all, the past is a foreign country) and it's worse in an ATL.
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China and the lower Yangtze in the Neolithic era: Shangshan and Early Kuahuqiao

Perhaps because Chinese cuisine is today so heavily associated with rice, laypeople rarely know much about the many other crops that were cultivated by the first Chinese farmers in both the north and the south of the country. For the former we have, for instance, the nearly-forgotten broomcorn millet, which was probably cultivated in the Cishan site up to ten millenniums ago.

In the warm and humid lower Yangtze, some form of water caltrop aquaculture appears to have developed in the Shangshan culture (ca. 9000~7000 BC) roughly concurrently with the early domestication of rice; the Shangshan site itself reveals an unnaturally large number of both
Trapa natans and Trapa bicornis shells, the oldest of which has been dated to around 7600 BC (ca. 9600 cal. BP). The seeds of both species are eaten by the Chinese today. Aquaculture became both more diverse and more important during the Kuahuqiao culture (ca. 7000~5000 BC), which followed the Shangshan in the lower Yangtze. By the Kuahuqiao era around ten aquatic genera were being regularly cultivated as a food source in the environment of the lower Yangtze: the aforementioned water caltrops (Trapa) but also fox nuts (Euryale), lotuses (Nelumbo), arrowheads (Sagittaria), water chestnuts (Eleocharis), wild rice (Zizania), water dropworts (Oenanthe), water shields (Brasenia), water spinach (Ipomoea) and cattails (Typha). Another genus, Juncus (rushes), was grown solely because of their inedible stems, which were used to make mats, baskets, and lamps.

Another Early Kuahuqiao (7th millennium BC) innovation was the invention of the tournette, or the "slow wheel." This was a significant, if not revolutionary, change in the making of pottery. Instead of making all pot completely by hand as had been the norm in both China and the wider world for millenniums, certain pots were now "wheel thrown," meaning that the potter could now rotate a simple wheel-head to facilitate making the pot. The tournette had more widespread uses as well; it was also used for smoothing, finishing, trimming, and shaving. However, not all pots were yet made with tournettes, since their intrinsic limitations meant that the wheel-thrown pot would not become ubiquitous until the emergence of the true potter's wheel.

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So here's some OTL explanation to this.
All of the cultures I just mentioned existed at the time period I ascribed to them (the source is The Archaeology of China: From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age), and the POD is just that aquaculture in the lower Yangtze begins about 2500 years before it actually did (all of the plants I just mentioned above began to be cultivated in the Hemudu culture in OTL, which was from around 5000 to 3000 BC - even the proliferation of water caltrop shells is rooted in actual history). While this may seem ASB, the people of the Shangshan culture in the lower Yangtze weren't strangers to the concept of plant cultivation or agriculture, seeing as they were probably already cultivating various types of rice (some of which seems to be domesticated and resemble japonica). The climate in the region during the time was warm and humid, and it would continue to be so for a few centuries (again probably better for aquaculture - if we look at Hemudu aquaculture it began during the climatic optimum). Early aquaculture should allow a relatively larger population in the long term, which in turn leads to earlier technological breakthroughs - that's where I'm heading with the tournettes. Yangshao pots in OTL, about 6200 years old, appear to have been wheel-thrown, probably with tournettes, so it's not too unrealistic to think it could emerge somewhat earlier, considering that Kuahuqiao pottery is fairly sophisticated anyways (to the point that there's a specialized settlement around the Kuahuqiao site that was probably a pottery locus). I don't think aquaculture could make the lower Yangtze be the center of China anyways, but it's still a fun exercise especially seeing how much the lower Yangtze affected "Chinese" civilization even in OTL (for example the Six Ritual Jades come from the lower Yangtze).
Sources for this are Keightley's The Origins of Chinese Civilization and A Companion to Chinese Archaeology as well as The Archaeology of China that I already mentioned.
 
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China and the lower Yangtze in the Neolithic era: The Kuahuqiao "Revolution"

It has been generally accepted that the Chinese Neolithic can be divided into three segments: the early, the middle, and the late. For the lower Yangtze, the Early Neolithic is represented by Shangshan, the Middle Neolithic by Hemudu, and the Lower Neolithic by Liangzhu. The Late Kuahuqiao period (in other words, the 6th millennium BC) is then significant because its radical changes represent the transition from the Early to the Middle Neolithic periods, from still a foraging-centered economy to a mostly agricultural one.

The tournette method of pottery making that had been pioneered for the first time in the world during the Shangshan period continued to undergo innovations, resulting in a "fast" or "true" potter's wheel around 5400 BC. Although only a simple (as opposed to composite) potter's wheel that required that the potter have an assistant to continuously rotate it, it greatly increased the efficiency of pot-making. And although the potter's wheel was the most significant Kuahuqiao innovation in the realm of pottery, it was hardly the only one. The thickness of many Kuahuqiao vessels are of a uniform thinness, demonstrating both the skill and the connectivity of the culture. The majority of Kuahuqiao ceramics are fiber-tempered, probably from influence upriver from the west. The diversity of the ceramics - from cauldrons to pots, from plates to stands, from bowels to painted ware - is also astonishing. By the twilight days of the culture, Kuahuqiao ceramic technology is widely accepted as having "reached an unparalleled level" even on a global scale.

Rice cultivation and domestication continued. Rice samples show an increasingly rapid rate of domestication to the point that by 5000 BC 82% of spikelets show a tough rachis (a telltale sign of domesticated rice as opposed to merely cultivated wild rice). Around 5200 BC, almost by the end of the Kuahuqiao settlement, the first documented rice paddies were made southeast of the settlement near fresh water bodies. As we would expect, remains from wild plants (mainly nuts) decline as the number of rice grains rise. The Kuahuqiao were probably still reliant on hunting for their protein intake; although they had dogs and pigs, most unearthed animal bones are those of wild prey, ranging from swans to tigers.

Most intriguingly, Kuahuqiao seems to have been a maritime center. A pine dugout canoe dating to 6000 BC, equipped with outriggers, paddles, and sails, have been excavated at the site, and tools associated with building or repairing canoes have also been found. The excavated canoe is quite large and was definitely seaworthy, although the Kuahuqiao themselves probably preferred to navigate rivers and lakes based on the location of their settlements. The similarities between the Kuahuqiao canoe and later Austronesian ones may demonstrate an early link between lower Yangtze populations and Austronesian speakers further south.

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OTL explanation: most of this is still based on fact. The categorization of the Chinese Neolithic is largely accurate, many Kuahuqiao vessels are of a uniform thinness, the majority (58%) are fiber-tempered, and they did eat swans and tigers (and seemingly eat disproportionately less dogs and pigs). It is also true that Kuahuqiao was probably a center for (a) canoe workshop(s), and a canoe and three paddles were excavated at Kuahuqiao (and may actually have had outriggers and sails, although it's disputable). What I changed was:
  • The Kuahuqiao didn't have tournettes as mentioned above, and naturally they lacked potter's wheels; in OTL that appears in the region only by late Majiabang times (mid-4th century BC).
  • The Kuahuqiao were sedentary, but rice wasn't as important as in TTL, and they definitely lacked rice paddies in OTL. That appears (like the true potter's wheel) in the Middle Neolithic.
  • The excavated Kuahuqiao canoe in OTL is too narrow and shallow to have ever been seaworthy.
 
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I don't know enough about Neolithic China to say anything intelligent, but I'd certainly like to see more of this. Are you going for an urban civilization about the same time as Egypt and Sumer rather than a thousand years later, and will these canoes be the basis of an early maritime trade?
 
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