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Banpo Neolithic Village Museum
  
The
remains of this village, located just east of Xian and inhabited from about 4500
B.C. to 3750 B.C., were discovered in 1953. The museum was built in 1958.
Placards in both Chinese and English help the visitor understand this very early
settlement of the area. Inside the museum, there are the hall for the ruins, the
hall for cultural relics, and the clay cave ruins. The Banpo Lady Statue on the
rock in the garden pond bears a physical resemblance to the early Banpo people.
 Six
to seven thousand years ago, a stable village was built by a late Neolithic
people. Banpo had about 500 people lived in the village. Visitors today can see
the remains of 45 houses, 2 stables, more than 200 cellars, 6 kilns, and
about 250 graves. It was a
matriarchal society based on farming. The houses were constructed of thatch over
wood beams while the floors were sunk two to three feet into the ground. Heat
was provided by a central fire. Food was stored in underground caves, dug deep
enough to protect the provisions from being devoured by wildlife or contaminated
by insects. Architecture, village organization, and food storage methods appear
to have been strikingly similar to the way of life of some native American
plains tribes.
The Banpo
worked together. They dug a trench around the entire complex both for protection
and for drainage. There was a large meeting hall in the center of the village
and a place for central storage. Most of the tools (e.g., axes, hoes, knives)
were of stone, but some implements were of bone (e.g., needles for sewing). The
stone tools look remarkably sharp, but it was still fortunate that the Banpo
settled in an area where the soil was loose and easily tilled.
Art, in
the form of geometric designs and human and animal figures, is found on many of
the pots. Some of the pottery items have marks scratched on them that may well
anticipate a form of writing. The village pottery produced specialized pots for
drinking, storage, cooking, and burial. (Although adults were buried in the
cemetery outside the village, children and infants were buried alongside the
huts in special clay urns; the reason for this continues to be matter for
speculation.)
Over the
next 3000 years, the descendants of the Banpo people founded new villages, began
to build cities, used jade, bronze, and copper, and increased their skills in
agriculture. The first dynasty (or unified government) was called the Xia and
lasted from approximately 2200 B.C. to 1700 B.C.
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