Very recommendable! Amazing stuff! This find also raises some serious philosophical and political science questions about the role of government!
"Archaeologists have made a stunning discovery at the Chinese walled site of Pingliangtai. They discovered a pipe that dates back 4,000 years, to a time when Pingliangtai didn't have a centralized authority. So, it's not only that this population built a long, complex water management system — but they did so without a centralized structure. ...
"The square-shaped settlement has a clear layout, with a symmetrical structure of the gates, a north-south road on the central line and row houses on the two sides," ... "It might be an important origin of the central axis pattern, which was followed by many capital cities in later periods. And the town was equipped with a two-tiered drainage system consisting of ditches and ceramic drainpipes, which is the earliest ceramic drainage system in China. And some ruts were found on the road near the southern gate, which are also the earliest ruts in China." ...
When the authors did some digging at the site, they uncovered a two-tiered drainage system that was constructed 4100 years ago and continuously upgraded and repaired for 200 years. The ditches and drains parallel to the houses could have been managed on a household level. However, there are also large drainage pipes in public areas — these would have required careful planning and coordination. ..."
From the abstract:
"The earliest ceramic drainage system unearthed at the Pingliangtai site on the Central Plains of China represents an unprecedented social and environmental manipulation as societies faced surging environmental crises in the Late Holocene East Asian Monsoon region. Here we present results of excavation and a geoarchaeological survey of the water-management infrastructures and environment which reveal the operation and maintenance of a well-planned and regulated two-tiered drainage system. Rather than a ‘centralized hierarchy’, the drainage activities were mainly practised at household and communal levels, through which Pingliangtai society was drawn to more pragmatic aspects of social governance. Through their emphasis on spatial uniformity, cooperation in public affairs, and a series of technological innovations, water management at Pingliangtai gravitated to collective shared interest as the society responded to recurrent environmental contingencies. Such a pragmatic focus on public affairs constituted a previously unrecognized, alternative pathway to the development of power structure and social governance on the Central Plains regimes in late Neolithic and later times."
Earliest ceramic drainage system and the formation of hydro-sociality in monsoonal East Asia (open access)
Fig. 3: Plans at Pingliangtai.
Closeup photo of water pipe segments fitted together in situ at Pingliangtai.
Photo of in situ water pipes leading to a drainage ditch near Pingliangtai's southern gate.
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