Scholars have been studying Hemudu since its discovery in 1973. Over the past decades, scholars and archaeologists have explored many aspects of the everyday life of the Hemudu Culture and the endeavors will be going on for a long time to come. Today, dozens of archaeological sites have been explored in eastern Zhejiang. These sites are in Ningbo, Shaoxing and Zhoushan Archipelago. The people of Hemudu led a stable life for about 2,000 years from 7,000 to 5,000 years ago. For reference, the Liangzhu Culture lasted about 1,000 years before it vanished.

It is now known that the people of Hemudu lived in a region relatively remote and isolated. To the east was the sea, to the south were undulating mountains, and the region was flanked by Cao’e River on the west and Hangzhou Bay on the north. Experts say that the climate was warmer and wetter in the 2,000 years of the Hemudu Culture than it is now. Over the past forty-some years, archaeologists have excavated over 50 sites. Even though all of them are named after where they are exactly today, they have a lot in common: the people of Hemudu lived in stilt houses, cultivated rice, made black pottery, produced ivory pieces adorned with sculpted patterns, made tools of bone, stone, and wood, and there were animals and plants in their everyday life.

The most outstanding site of these sites is Tianluoshan. Over the past 10 years, I have visited it many times. In my eye, the Tianluoshan site is more important than the Hemudu site. The settlement at Tianluoshan follows the pattern of many other major settlements of the Hemudu Culture: it is at the foot of a mountain and it has a river nearby; people there were farmers, gatherers, hunters, fishermen, and craftsmen. They made tools and they built houses. What makes Tianluoshan most significant is that it gives up more secrets of the life led by the people of Hemudu, offers more material pieces of evidence, and the settlement existed for about 2,000 years.

Unlike archaeological projects which lasted for a few months up to a year at many other Hemudu sites, the exploration of the Tianluoshan site lasted from 2004 to 2014. It is the best-preserved ancient settlement of the Hemudu Culture. Though the site measures only 8,000 square meters, it has yielded over 10,000 artifacts and a huge amount of garbage such as plants and fish bones.

During one of my visits to the site, I was shown a reef-woven piece. All the similar woven pieces at Tianluoshan were unearthed near stilt houses, the largest being about one square meter but most pieces just as large as a seat. Scrutiny negates the idea that reef-woven pieces were food wraps. Scholars believe these reef-woven pieces were either mats on the ground or curtains used in house construction.

Another discovery at Tianluoshan reveals that the people loved to fish. There were heaps of fish bones buried in pits. The miniature landfills suggest that fish as the food was consumed in a relatively short period, indicating the people then knew when to fish and when not to. Another big find is that some fish remains had salt in them, suggesting some fish were pickled or even made into a fish paste for storage and future consumption.

The ruins of stilt houses unearthed at Tianluoshan offers a better insight into the structures and technological advances. It is true that similar remains were first found at the prototypical Hemudu site in 1973, but scholars back then were too poorly equipped to take a closer look at the layers of the 2,000 years, a period from 7,000 to 5000 years ago. For nearly 2,000 years at Tianluoshan, stilt houses were repeatedly built and demolished and built on the same plots again and again, just like buildings in a modern city. The pillars (stilts) vary in shape and reveal how building skills advanced over centuries. For example, some pillars are circular and some pillars are square, suggesting that square pillars represent better wood processing technology and carpentry skills. One pillar stands on a wood board. The 6,000-year-old wooden board stabilized the pillar better. The technology was widely used in the south of China later in subsequent ancient times. At the bottom of another standing pillar, there was no wooden board. The pillar was 6,500 years old in a deeper layer, indicating the carpenters needed another 500 years to invent and use wooden boards as a foundation.

The settlement was composed of stilt houses, some for everyday life, and some for rituals in different parts of the settlement. The settlement was encircled by a wooden fence and ditches. Rice paddies in different sizes were just outside the settlement.

Convinced that residents at Tianluoshan must have used canoes or rafts or boats to reach the outside world, archaeologists spent ten years at the site trying to find remains of boats or canoes. They came up with 30 some oars in different styles. It was not until 2014 when the archaeological project was about to come to an end that they uncovered a canoe model, as long and wide as half a magazine. Canoe makers must have used it as a sample canoe to make a real and much bigger one.