Dragon Bytes
Did you know about the pottery pigs of Yinggeling?
The upper layer (ca. 1,200 B.C.) of the Yinggeling site produced a number of pottery figurines, many of which are pigs (Tan et al. 1995a). They were deftly shaped from balls of sand-tempered clay. If you look carefully behind the ear of the pig to the right, you will see the fingerprint of the individual who made the pig. While simple, the Yinggeling pigs are vivid works of art, reflecting many of the postures and behaviours of the living animals.

The prehistoric artist's keen eye caught details that help archaeologists chart the course of domestication from wild boar to pig. The relatively thin bodies and high backs of some pigs suggest that domestication of this animal may have been ongoing at a later date in comparison with other parts of China, where the pig underwent domestication prior to 6,000 B.C. (Underhill 1997).

Cattle, sheep and horses were important in the agriculture of northeastern China, but pigs are interesting in their own right. They require a reasonably sedentary existence, and in this way contrast with animals like the sheep and cattle herded so widely by the nomadic peoples living on the grasslands to the west of Heilongjiang.

There has even been the suggestion that the term "Tungus" (for an important language family in northeast Asia) comes from Turkic peoples using a similar sounding word, meaning "pig," in reference to how important pig raising was among their linguistic cousins to the east (see Wittfogel and Feng 1949:42). The Sushen and Yilou noted in early Chinese sources, who lived in Heilongjiang in late Bronze and early Iron Period times, were invariably noted for raising pigs (Reckel 1995). Pork was an important food in the northeast, and remained one of the central foods in the daily life and rituals of the Manchus, Tungusic-speaking founders of China's last dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911).

References

Tan, Yingjie, Sun Xiuren, Zhao Hongguang, and Gan Zhigeng (1995a) The Neolithic in Heilongjiang Province. In The Archaeology of Northeast China. Beyond the Great Wall, edited by Sarah Milledge Nelson, pp. 118-144. Routledge, London and New York.

Underhill, Anne P. (1997) Current Issues in Chinese Neolithic Archaeology. Journal of World Prehistory 11(2):103-160.

Wittfogel, Karl A., and Feng Chia-sheng (1949) History of Chinese Society. Liao (907-1125). Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series 36 (1946).