Evidence of the earliest rice cultivation in the Yellow River basin comes from carbonized rice grains from the Yuezhuang site in Jinan, Shandong.

The carbonized rice is dated using AMS radiocarbon dating to 7050±80.

Archaeologists also excavated millet from the Yuezhuang site.

Farmers of the late Neolithic cultures of western and eastern China live in permanent settlements; their culture has now expanded into the eastern plains, Manchuria, and Central and South China.

Rice cultivation is clearly established by this time.

Silk culture may originate in China as early as the third millennium BCE; Chinese tradition ascribes its discovery, and the invention of the silk reel, to Xilingji, the fourteen-year-old wife of Huangdi.

Early sericulture consists of small-scale production by raising and domesticating the silkworm Bombyx mori.

The cultivation and weaving of silk begins to be a closely guarded secret in China.

Wheel-turned, highly polished black pottery, commonly used for ritual purposes and funerary ware, had replaced the Yangshao type at the end of China’s Neolithic period.

The prosperous Longshan culture, centered on the central and lower Yellow River, is notable for its highly polished black pottery (or egg-shell pottery); its thin walls and metallic, burnished finish marking a great technical advance.

Named after Longshan, Shandong Province, the first excavated site and dated from about 3000 BCE to 2000 BCE, the culture’s distinctive feature is the high level of skill in pottery making, including the use of pottery wheels.

The four centuries from 3000 BCE to 2600 BCE are considered the early period of the Longshan culture.

The Longshan type of thin-walled and polished black pottery will also be discovered in the Yangzi River valley and as far as the southeastern coast of China proper, a clear indication that Neolithic agricultural sub-groups of the greater Longshan Culture will eventually spread out across China proper.

Life during the Longshan culture marks a transition to the establishment of cities, as rammed earth walls and moats begin to appear; the site at Taosi is the largest walled Longshan settlement.

The first of China's legendary Five Emperors, the Yellow Emperor, or Huangdi, supposedly reigned from 2697 BCE; among his many accomplishments, Huangdi has been credited with the invention of the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. (According to the writings in the Shiji by historian Sima Qian [145 BC-90 BCE], the reign of Huangdi, or the Yellow Emperor, lasts until his death in 2598 BCE.)

Remains found at Chinese archaeological sites suggest that the inhabitants used a method of divination based on interpreting the crack patterns formed in heated cattle bones.

Cangjie, a bureaucrat under the legendary sovereign and Han Chinese cultural hero Huangdi, will be said to have invented Chinese characters around 2650 BCE.

The legend tells that Cangjie was hunting on Mount Yangxu (today Shanxi) when he saw a tortoise whose veins caught his curiosity.

Inspired by the possibility of a logical relation of those veins, he studied the animals of the world, the landscape of the earth, and the stars in the sky, and invented a symbolic system called zì: Chinese characters.

It was said that on the day the characters were born, Chinese heard the devil mourning, and saw crops falling like rain, as it marked the beginning of the world.

A variety of geographic regions of China are involved among the various sub-periods of the Longshan civilization, particularly for the Late Longshan period.

For example, the middle reaches of the Jing River and Wei River evince settlement known as the Shaanxi Longshan.

The We'i River valley will participate in key historic events in China as the North Silk Road develops in this same area.

Life during the Longshan culture marks a transition to the establishment of cities, as rammed earth walls and moats began to appear; the site at Taosi is the largest walled Longshan settlement, by which time rice cultivation is clearly established.

…Shandong, located on the eastern edge of the North China Plain, which acknowledges Zhou rulership and takes part in the elite culture.

The spread of Zhou bronzes has been concurrent with the continued use of Shang style pottery in the outlying regions of the kingdom.

Shandong has felt the influence of Chinese civilization since its very beginnings.

The first dynasties, the Shang and the Zhou, have exerted varying degrees of control over western Shandong, while eastern Shandong is inhabited by the Laiyi peoples, an ethnic group of Dongyi (literally: "Eastern Foreigners" or "Eastern 'Barbarians'", a collective term for people in eastern China and in lands located to the east of ancient China).

Zhang Bu, nominally the Prince of Qi under Liu Yong, independently controls the modern Shandong region.

Seeing the futility of resistance, Zhang surrenders and is created a marquess.