Qijia and Erlitou: The Question of Contacts with Distant Cultures

This paper investigates the relationships between the Early Metal Age cultures of the Inner Mongolia and Gansu-Qinghai area with the Erlitou culture of the Central Plains region, and addresses the issue whether specific metal objects characteristic of these cultures may have their source of inspiration in areas as remote as southern Siberia and present-day Afghanistan and southern Turkmenistan. The proposal that China at the very beginning of its Bronze Age may have been affected by long-distance cultural transmissions depends upon recent reevaluations of the early history of the Eurasian steppe, in particular the advent of nomadic pastoralism and horse riding, and upon newly recalibrated carbon dates ascertained for specific Siberian sites and for the Bactrian-Margiana complex. 本文考査了內蒙古和甘靑地區早期金屬時代文化與中原地區二里頭文化的關係,探討這些文化中幾種金屬器的特徵是否曾受到遠至西伯利亞南部、阿富汗和南土庫曼斯坦等地區文化的啓發.根據最近對歐亞大平原早期歷史的重新評估一尤其是對騎馬和遊牧畜獵出現的討論一, 並依據西伯利亞幾處遺址以及貝克特里亞一瑪基安納文化群的最新碳十四校正年代, 作者認爲中國早在靑銅時代濫觴期即已受到異域文化的影響.