East and West, always different

I mentioned earlier a small ice age that hit the Neolithic villages of Europe 6400-6200 BC. I noticed that the end of the age coincided with Caucasian "hunter gatherers" turned into fishermen, roaming up the Russian rivers.

In that light, Saraceni links to a relevant article, which we missed last month: common carp aquaculture in Neolithic China dating back 8,000 years That's 6200-5700 BC. "China" wasn't the word those people in what we're calling Henan would have used of course; I don't think even "Xia" was yet uttered.

I'm guessing that in those winters, the hunter gathers ran out of game to hunt. Instead they learnt to fish. When the climate rebounded, the populations increased... and fished out their rivers. Same problem at the same time, in different places. Affecting different nations.

Those who became IndoEuropeans solved this by moving elsewhere; those of Henan solved it by public works. Since the latter stayed put, I conclude they already spoke what became Shang Chinese. Those lessons could be re-applied when their legendary Floods came, millennia later.