The World of 5,000 Years Ago: A Tale for the Lantern Festival Eve of the Fire Horse Year 2026

The world today is truly chaotic. Let us look back at the global order of 5,000 years ago, a time when there were only three states and every household was enjoying an era of peace. This is not a subjective sentiment, but a scientific certainty boldly unveiled by Chinese archaeologists—a truth officially cemented when UNESCO recognized the Liangzhu archaeological site as a World Heritage Site in 2019.

If you are still approaching history through textbooks compiled before 2019, your knowledge system may be shrouded in a fog of misinformation, molded and kneaded over the past three millennia. From the dawn of the Xia dynasty starting in 2070 BC, through the propaganda of the Han, Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, right up until Puyi abdicated the throne in 1912, a colossal political propaganda machine operated continuously to weave the myth of the Yellow River as the solitary cradle of human civilization.


The Chinese government has since utilized these new findings as an official declaration regarding the length of the country's history at major summits. It is now affirmed that the origins of Chinese civilization began in Liangzhu (Zhejiang), backed by confirmed evidence of an early state dating back approximately 5,300 years.

Thus, historical truth, when stripped of its mythological shell, reveals a starkly contrasting reality. Around 3000 BC, concepts such as a "state" (state-level civilization), "nation," and "high-level social organization" were an extremely rare privilege on a global scale. In the superpower club at the dawn of humanity possessing these concepts, and backed by sufficient archaeological evidence recognized by UNESCO, the world of 5,000 years ago recorded only three entities with legitimate state structures:

  1. The Youngest: The ancient Egyptians, unified by the Pharaohs along the Nile River (from 3100 BC).

  2. The Middle: The Liangzhu people south of the Yangtze River, with their massive palace and agricultural irrigation systems (from 3300 BC).

  3. The Oldest: The Sumerians in Mesopotamia, with their city-states and the first cuneiform writing (from 3500 BC).

The most courageous aspect of this scientific realization is this: while these three representatives had reached the pinnacle of governance, hydraulics, and art, the Yellow River basin remained a land of scattered tribes, having yet to form any state structure whatsoever. The Xia dynasty, historically hailed as the origin of China, actually began only around 2070 BC ,more than 1,200 years after the civilization south of the Yangtze River. A millennial gap serves as ironclad evidence of the power of political communication to alter human perception over 3,000 years. It also demonstrates that the communities south of the Yangtze not only borrowed nothing, but were the very pioneers leading the entire East Asian region.

The civilization south of the Yangtze River during the Liangzhu period was truly a marvel of humanity. By 3300 BC, its inhabitants had designed and operated a massive irrigation system comprising 11 dams built across waterways for flood control and to serve extensive wet-rice agriculture. This was the earliest and largest-scale water management project in the world, demanding a level of social organization and workforce mobilization that the North at that time could not even fathom. The Southern inhabitants of that era lived a genuinely civilized life: they ate white rice, wove silk, and, most notably, crafted jade with an enchanting level of sophistication. The "animal-faced deity" motifs carved on jade cong cylinders and bi discs were not merely ornaments; they were symbols of a unified ideology and a firmly established state power.

However, the script of history always harbors apocalyptic twists. Around 2300 BC, a legendary Great Flood, triggered by climate change, swept across the globe, reshaping the geopolitical landscape of East Asia. For the Yellow River basin, this flood inadvertently became a historical catalyst. The legend of Yu the Great successfully taming the waters allowed him to consolidate the strength of various tribes, thereby giving birth to the Xia dynasty. Objectively speaking, the Yellow River civilization was essentially a belated "startup project," capitalizing on the opportunity presented by a natural disaster to step into the era of statehood.

Yet, for the civilization south of the Yangtze River, which had blossomed so brilliantly alongside its wet-rice fields, the Great Flood was a devastating catastrophe, one that submerged its resplendent centers of power deep beneath the mud.


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