China’s oldest water pipes were a communal effort

In a study just published in Nature Water, the archaeological team describe a network of ceramic water pipes and drainage ditches at the Chinese walled site of Pingliangtai dating back 4,000 years to the Longshan period. 

Pingliangtai is located in what is now the Huaiyang District of Zhoukou City in central China. During Neolithic times, the town was home to about 500 people with protective earthen walls and a surrounding moat. Situated on the Upper Huai River Plain on the vast Huanghuaihai Plain, the area’s climate was marked by big seasonal climate shifts, where summer monsoons would commonly dump half a metre of rain on the region monthly.

The ceramic water pipes which make up the drainage system is the oldest complete system ever discovered in China. Made by interconnecting individual segments, the water pipes run along roads and walls to divert rainwater and show an advanced level of planning at the Neolithic site.

Research has revealed cooperation amongst the community to build and maintain the drainage system, though no evidence of a centralised power or authority. While it is not clear how the people of Pingliangtai organised and divided the labour amongst themselves to build and maintain this type of infrastructure, this kind of communal coordination would also have been necessary to build the earthen walls and moat surrounding the village as well. 

According to Yijie Zhuang:

“The discovery of this ceramic water pipe network is remarkable because the people of Pingliangtai were able to build and maintain this advanced water management system with stone age tools and without the organisation of a central power structure. This system would have required a significant level of community-wide planning and coordination, and it was all done communally.”

Read the full article: Li, C., Cao, Y., Zhang, C. et al. Earliest ceramic drainage system and the formation of hydro-sociality in monsoonal East Asia. Nature Water (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00114-4

Funding for this research was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Newton Advanced Fellowship of the British Academy. 

Read more

• Nature commentary
• UCL News

Media links

• ABC (Spanish)
• Cosmos
• Engineering and Technology Magazine
• Forbes Mexico (Spanish/English)
• Popular Science
• South China Morning Post
• The Paper (Chinese)
• Yahoo News

Image: A segment of ceramic water pipe excavated from Pingliangtai, now displayed at Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Huaiyang (Credit: Yanpeng Cao)