Das Neolithikum (The Neolithic in Vietnam)

Abstract

Let us begin with some definitions. The term “Neolithic” refers to a period of relative, rather than absolute, time in human prehistory. This is because its absolute chronology varied from place to place. It commenced much earlier, for instance, in the Fertile Crescent (Middle East) and the Yellow-Yangzi regions of central China than in Western Europe or Vietnam. The Neolithic can be defined as the period of human prehistory when people first subsisted by the production of food, eventually coming to rely on genetically, morphologically and behaviourally domesticated plants and animals for the bulk of their food supplies (Bellwood 2005, 2009, 2010, 2013). Food production post-dated the universal hunting and collection of non-domesticated foods, practiced by all Palaeolithic human ancestors between two million and about ten thousand years ago. The Neolithic in turn preceded the “Bronze Age” invention of copper and bronze metallurgy, both of which spread into Vietnam close to 1200 BC from origins elsewhere in Asia.