North China

History

In prehistory, the region was home to the Yangshao and Longshan cultures. Peking Man was found near modern-day Beijing.

The main agricultural lands of China lay in the area known as the Central Plain, an area bordered by the Yangtze River to its south and the Yellow River to its north. Further north of the Yellow River lies the Gobi Desert and steppe lands that extend west across Eurasia. This region has long, harsh winters. It has relatively little in the way of water resources.

Despite these challenges, some forms of agriculture have been successful in this region, especially animal husbandry, certainly of horse and camel, and possibly other types of animals. The crops Panicum Miliaceum and Setaria Italica, both types of millet grain, are believed to be indigenous to northern China. Panicum Miliaceum is known from the Cishan culture in Hebei province, recovered as Phytoliths from pits in stratigraphic sections. Sediments from the pits have radiocarbon dates from 8500 to 7500 BCE. Archaeological evidence of charred grains found in early Holocene layers in Hebei province at Nanzhuangtou and Cishan has led scholars to revise the earliest dates associated with millet by about two millennia. Millet sites are concentrated along the boundaries of the Loess and Mongolian Plateau, separated by a mountain chain from the Huabei Plain and the Dongbei Plain, North China's main alluvial plains, located to the west. Millet cultivation was similarly situated relative to the Qinling Mountains at Dadiwan, and the Yitai Mountains at Yuezhuang. Macrofossil evidence (charred grains of foxtail and broomcorn millet) has been recovered from Xinglonggou in Inner Mongolia, Xinle in Liaoning, Cishan in Hebei, and Dadiwan in Gansu, among other sites in Eastern and Central China.

Administrative divisions in the PRC

Cities with urban area over one million in population

: Provincial capitals in bold.

References

References

1. "regional - quarterly by province - national accounts - gross regional product". China NBS.
2. (10 September 2015). "Spatiotemporal variability of extreme precipitation in north and south of the Qinling-Huaihe region and influencing factors during 1960-2013". The Chinese Journal of Geography.
3. Hu, Richard. (2023). "Reinventing the Chinese City". [[Columbia University Press]].
4. (2015). "The Cambridge World History Volume II A World With Agriculture 12,000 BCE-500CE". Cambridge University Press.
5. [http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/work/design/chinastdb_1210.doc GB/T 2260 codes for the provinces of China]
6. [[ISO 3166-2:CN]] ([[International Organization for Standardization. ISO]] [[ISO 3166-2. 3166-2]] codes for the provinces of China)
7. (2012). China Statistics Press