At the same time as the Fertile Crescent region was shifting from nomadic to settled tribal life headed by chieftains, a similar process was occurring 3,500 miles to the east in the lower Yangtze River Valley. Around 10,000 BCE, the Paleolithic culture shifted to Neolithic, marked by the development of ceramics and the beginnings of agriculture (Hucker 1995, 25–26). By 8000 BCE, foxtail millet and bottle gourd cultivation had spread through the Yellow River Valley in Northern China; within a millennium water chestnut, common millet, mulberry, and rice cultivation had spread to the north (Christian 2004, 219).

Grain cultivation laid the foundation for a widespread village culture with its predictable population increase and the subsequent emergence of powerful cities. Distinctive round houses mark the village of Pan-p’o outside Xian. Here, a distinctive black-pottery culture emerged, reaching its peak about 2000 BCE; by the second millennium BCE, a mile square settlement at Cheng-chou had fortified its position with a surrounding pounded earth wall more than 30-feet high, a clear indication of centralized power capable of organizing a substantial workforce (Pfeiffer 1977, 220–23). During this period, chieftain leadership evolved into rule by kings.

Most of our knowledge of early Chinese history derives from writings during the later Zhou Dynasty (1045–227 BCE). But Zhou writings begin with kings who are alleged to have lived more than a millennium earlier. Inevitably, this means that “history” is a misnomer; we are moving into a boundary region of mythic history, or perhaps literary fabrication. The earliest king according to the Zhou writers was the emperor Yu (c. 2150–2106 BCE). Legends and apocryphal stories attached to him make it difficult to assess his service to ancient China and suggest that many surviving stories have been enhanced through the centuries. Yu is alleged to have been called to deal with flooding after several water-control programs had failed. He is said to have traveled through the empire for more than a decade working out plans for dredging and draining the waters. His mythical dimension is indicated in an apocryphal story that he was assisted by a yellow dragon and black turtle (Lewis 2006, 104–105, 191–92). Such legends appear to have originated up to a millennium later as part of the Zhou Dynasty's reworking of China's past.