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Nature Sustainability (2022 )Cite this article

The cause of the sudden increase in the complexity of prehistoric societies 4,000–6,000 years ago is unknown. Pig diet and millet-field manuring studies indicate that an intensive millet–pig system developed approximately 5,500 years ago in North China, which provided food for the growing populations of the emerging complex societies.

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Yoffee, N. Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005). This book depicts the evolutionary processes of complex societies across the world based on archaeological evidence.

Shelach-Lavi, G. The Archaeology of Early China: From Prehistory to the Han Dynasty (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2015). This book introduces the social development trajectory of early China, especially the development of socio-political complexity based on updated archaeological studies.

Leipe, C., Long, T., Sergusheva, E. A., Wagner, M. & Tarasov, P. E. Discontinuous spread of millet agriculture in eastern Asia and prehistoric population dynamics. Sci. Adv. 5, eaax6225 (2019). A review article that presents the origin and spread of millet-based agriculture across eastern Asia and reveals the importance of millet farming in underpinning the population growth in North China.

Barton, L. et al. Agricultural origins and the isotopic identity of domestication in northern China. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 5523–5528 (2009). This paper reports isotopic evidence for the early domestication of millets (7,800–7,200 cal yr bp) and the use of intensive millet agriculture by 5,900 cal yr bp at Dadiwan.

Wang, X. et al. Millet manuring as a driving force for the Late Neolithic agricultural expansion of north China. Sci. Rep. 8, 5552 (2018). This article provides the first evidence for millet manuring practices during the Late Neolithic period in North China.

Lu, H. et al. Phytoliths analysis for the discrimination of foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and common millet (Panicum miliaceum). PLoS ONE 4, e4448 (2009).

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This is a summary of: Yang, J. et al. Sustainable intensification of millet–pig agriculture in Neolithic North China. Nat. Sustain. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00905-9 (2022).

Intensive millet–pig systems supported the rise of complex societies in North China. Nat Sustain (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00907-7

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00907-7

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Nature Sustainability (Nat Sustain) ISSN 2398-9629 (online)

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