著者

佐々木 明

出版者

信州大学

雑誌

人文科学論集. 人間情報学科編 (ISSN:13422782)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.40, pp.99-122, 2006-03-15

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The 1.6-1.1 kaB.C. period was characterized by two ameriorations, early and terminal, and by stable law temperature inbetween. Increased tin production in northern China Zongyuan, where unlimited labour supply was available of the immense Neolithic populations, was the most important event of the era. The extensive mining of the semi-rare metal realized not only an ancient civilization at the very location of the inorganic yield, but also bronze penetration into whole China and southwest Asia. Contemporary circummediterranean cultures were at least indirectly affected by the abundant supply of Chinese Sn which in the Indus valley ruined the precedent economy based on locally collected and highly priced tin export, forcing the first south Asian rulers to desert their cities. In central Asia the "tin road" bronze culture zone connecting Zhongyuan and Ukraine came into existence. Although the Orient world was at its final formative phase, and the kingdoms recorded their impressive histories, Egyptian and Mesopotamian conditions followed the repeated pattern of hypsithermal disorder and hypothermal reconstruction. Anatolian highlanders, having suffered for long from the bronze production growth limited by the shortage of the carbon family element, eventually introduced steel technology which had changed the circummediterranean and southwest Asian history as early as at the end of this demimillennium. In Oceania the Micronesian navigators of Taiwanese origin were widening human habitat. Epipalaeolithic still survived in vast high latitude Americas, but until the last century of this 0.5ka period the first proto-urban complex were constructed at the both extremes of the longitudinally spread core of American prehistoric cultures. Three themes are discussed: (12.7) controlled firing was the most effective forest clearing tool of lithic peoples, (12.8) closed woodland lithic life were centered at waterside-fired grasslands and surrounding secondary forest, and (12.9) Bronze age tin problem was partially and escalatingly solved at first by minute local mining, later by Indus resources, then by material produced at Iran -Afghanistan border, and finally by the Chinese Zhongyuan metal.