Su Bingqi

Su Bingqi proposed that Chinese civilization originated from multiple independent regional cultural zones rather than a single Yellow River cradle. He divided ancient China into six major cultural areas, each with its own developmental trajectory. This framework, developed during his decades at Peking University, became foundational to modern Chinese archaeology.

Before Su Bingqi's work, the dominant model credited the Central Plain (Yellow River valley) as the sole birthplace of Chinese civilization. His regional system showed that areas like the Yangtze basin and northeast China developed sophisticated cultures in parallel. Discoveries such as Sanxingdui in Sichuan later provided dramatic archaeological support for his multi-origin model.

Su Bingqi established and led the archaeology program at Peking University, training generations of Chinese archaeologists across a career spanning from the 1930s to the 1990s. He developed systematic typological methods for classifying Neolithic pottery that became standard practice in the field. He remained academically active until his death in 1997.

Su Bingqi contributed significantly to the study of Yangshao culture in the Yellow River region and helped define the characteristics of Hongshan culture in northeast China. His typological analysis of pottery from these sites allowed archaeologists to construct relative chronologies for Neolithic China. He also studied the Majiayao culture in northwestern China as part of his regional framework.