LONDON, ENGLAND—According to a statement released by University College London, ceramic water pipes have been found at China’s Neolithic site of Pingliangtai, which is located in central China. The 4,000-year-old settlement, surrounded by earthen walls and a moat, was home to an estimated 500 people. Drainage ditches had been dug parallel to the rows of small houses to divert monsoon rainwater to a series of ceramic pipes that then carried the water to the moat and away from the village. Yijie Zhuang of the University College London and Hai Zhang of Peking University said that the water management system would have required community-wide planning and coordination, and yet was completed without a central power structure. Houses in the settlement are all of similar small size and do not show signs of social stratification, Zhuang explained. Likewise, the community’s burials have not yielded evidence of an elite, powerful group. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature Water. For more on ancient irrigation systems in China, go to "Like Water for Wheat."
