The advances of the Neolithic Revolution continue to spread throughout the planet.

The cultivation of emmer wheat reaches Egypt shortly after 6000 BCE, and Germany and Spain by 5000 BCE, by which time highly organized social structures have formed.

Among the many such, notable examples include the Samarra culture in Mesopotamia, the Linear pottery culture in Central Europe, and various cultures in China: the Yangshao, the Hemudu, the Majiabang, the Daxi.

Man had first appeared in the Balkans during the Pleistocene Epoch, a period of advancing and receding glacial ice that began about six hundred thousand years ago.

Once the glaciers had withdrawn completely, a humid climate prevailed in the area and thick forests covered the terrain.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the Balkan regions were populated well before the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age; about ten thousand years ago).

Agriculture, together with the domestication of food animals, spreads throughout the Crescent during the sixth millennium.

People are everywhere on the move: some groups, still using stone tools but with knowledge of agriculture, reach the Aegean from Anatolia or farther east and settle in parts of the Greek mainland and in Crete.

At some point in the early- to mid-sixth millennium, rising sea levels evidently breach the natural dam at the Bosporus that separates the Mediterranean Sea from the great freshwater lake occupying the basin of the modern Black Sea, three hundred and fifty feet below present sea level.

Fueled by the infinite waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, the seawaters rush in for the next year or so with the force and volume of multiple Niagaras, increasing the lake area by a third.

Surviving marine life is driven into the newly abbreviated estuaries of the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper, Don and Bug Rivers.

In flatter coastal areas, the shoreline may advance daily by as much as a mile.

Indo-European people are present in the Balkans beginning about 5500 BCE.

The Majiabang culture at the mouth of the Yangtze River, primarily around the Taihu area and north of Hangzhou Bay in China, spreads throughout southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang from around 5000 BCE.

Initially, archaeologists had considered the Majiabang sites and sites in northern Jiangsu to be part of the same culture, naming it the Qingliangang culture.

Archaeologists later realized that the northern Jiangsu sites were of the later Dawenkou culture and renamed the southern Jiangsu sites as the Majiabang culture.

The Majiabang culture is to coexist with the Hemudu culture for over a thousand years as two separate and distinct cultures, with cultural transmissions between the two cultures.

Majiabang people cultivate rice.

At Caoxieshan, a site of the Majiabang culture, archaeologists excavated paddy fields.

However, faunal remains excavated from Majiabang archaeological sites indicated that people had domesticated pigs.

In addition, the remains of sika and roe deer have been found, showing that people were not completely reliant on agricultural production.

Archaeological sites also bear evidence that Majiabang people produced jade ornaments.

China’s Hemudu culture flourishes in Jiangnan, in modern Yuyao, Zhejiang, just south of the Hangzhou Bay.

The site at Hemudu, twenty-two kilometers northwest of Ningbo, was discovered in 1973.

Hemudu sites were also discovered on the islands of Zhoushan.

The Hemudu culture coexisted with the Majiabang culture as two separate and distinct cultures, with cultural transmissions between the two.

Two major floods caused the nearby Yaojiang River to change its course and inundated the soil with salt, forcing the people of Hemudu to abandon its settlements.

The Hemudu people lived in long, stilt houses.

The Hemudu culture is one of the earliest cultures to cultivate rice.

Most of the artifacts discovered at Hemudu consist of animal bones, exemplified by hoes made of shoulder bones used for cultivating rice.

The culture also produced lacquer wood.

The remains of various plants, including water caltrop, Nelumbo nucifera, acorns, beans, Gorgon euryale and bottle gourd, were found at Hemudu.

The Hemudu people likely domesticated pigs, water buffalo, and dogs.

The people at Hemudu also fished and hunted, as evidence by the remains of bone harpoons and bows and arrowheads.

Music instruments, such as bone whistles and wooden drums, were also found at Hemudu.

The culture produced a thick, porous pottery.

The distinct pottery was typically black and made with charcoal powder.

Plant and geometric designs were commonly painted onto the pottery; the pottery was sometimes also cord-marked.

The culture also produced carved jade ornaments, carved ivory artifacts and small, clay figurines.

Fossilized amoeboids and pollen suggests Hemudu culture emerged and developed in the middle of the Holocene Climatic Optimum.

A study of a sea-level highstand in the Ningshao Plain from 7000 – 5000 BP shows that there may have been stabilized lower sea levels at this time followed by frequent flooding, from 5000 to 3900 BP.