Chinese Science 12 (1995): 18-40 A Measure of Man in Early China: In Search of the Neolithic Inch David N. Keightley AUTHOR 's NOTE: A version of this article was presented at the symposium, "Chinese 'Identities, '" held at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 25-26 February 1994. [David N. Keightley is Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1969. He is the author of Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China (1978), and editor of The Origins of Chinese Civilization (1983). One of the editors and founders of the journal Early China, he has published a variety of articles on the religion and history of the Chinese Neolithic and Bronze Ages. Professor Keightley is currently at work on a book called Divination and Kingship in Late Shang China} * * * ost characterizations of early Chinese civilization, as represented by M the material culture and written records of the Shang and Zhou periods, acknowledge the significant religious and social role of ritual (see, e.g., Zhang Guangzhi 1960). The scrupulous attention to mortuary ritual in the Neolithic as well as the Bronze Age periods, together with the concern for correct social deportment and the precise observance of hierarchical distinctions reported in the canonical texts, suggest, on the part of early Chinese elites, a strong concern for defining and maintaining good order (Keightley 1978, 1985, 1990: 22-31). A similar concern with the regular ordering of experience can be seen in the technological skills of the Shang and Zhou bronze­ casters, whose ceramic piece molds had to be designed and fitted together with remarkable precision (Bagley 1987: 17-18, 37-44). Such concern with correct placement, order, and fit existed, presumably, in other areas of early Chinese life (as I have argued in Keightley 1987: 108-17, 1989: 39-40, 46-52). In what follows, I attempt to show how one early manifestation of this concern, involving mensuration, can be detected in the Neolithic cultures of southeast China in the 18 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 08:31:44PM via free access David N. Keightley: A Measure ofMan in Early China 19 third millennium B.C. That significant links existed between the cultures of the east coast, broadly conceived, and the Bronze Age cultures of the Xia and Shang that followed them has long been acknowledged (see, e.g., Rawson 1980: 35-40, 78-79; Fang Hui 1987; Keightley 1987: 116-17, 119, n. 16; Huber 1988: 58- 63). One of those links, I now argue, involved the units of standardized measurement by which certain early artifacts were cmstructed. The Neolithic Inch Large numbers of elegantly carved jade cong ~tubes have been found in Liangzhu ~ 1fj culture graves (ca. 2900-1900 B.C.) in the area to the east and south of Lake Tai in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. I Whatever the religious and symbolic function of these Neolithic ritual artifacts may have been,2 the regularity in the size of the registers (jie n ) on any particular cong is striking (see, e.g., Figure 1). As I have already noted, the multi-registered cong from Sidun =ff $, in Jiangsu ''which resemble rulers in appearance ... represent the essence of prescriptive, standardized, design, each register being identical to the rest. Such results could only have been achieved by the most persistent attention to precise measurement."3 My preliminary attempts to establish the existence of an actual Neolithic inch were inadequate,4 but the Sidun jade carvers' commitment to registers that were frequently some 23 mm in height (see Table 1) did at least suggest that they were attempting to replicate an agreed-upon, if variable, standard of measurement. I would note in particular that all the registers on the two-register cong M3:29 and the three-register cong M3:13 measured 23 mm precisely (Table 1).s 1Color photographs ofLiangzhu cong are reproduced at Zhejiang 1990: 7-47. I take the dates from Huang 1992: 10, 27; An Zhimin (1988: 756) gives ca. 3300--2200 B.C. For maps of Liangzhu sites, see Zhejiang 1990, facing p. 1; Huang 1992: 16--17. For the relation between east coast Neolithic and Shang jades, see Wu Hung 1985; Li 1992; Rui and Shen 1992; Sun Zhixin 1993: 31-40. 2For recent explorations of the how cong may have been used, see, e.g., Hayashi 1988; Zhang Guangzhi 1987; Teng 1991; Huo and Li 1992; Zang 1993. 3Keightley 1987: 111; referring in particular to the jade cong from Sidun reported at Kaogu 1984: 118-19. 4Keightley 1987: 124, n. 74. I had not realized that the height of the Sidun registers, which I had estimated in that note, were given with more precision in the body of the Kaogu report; I now reproduce those heights in Table 1. SThe intense, almost "inhuman" regularity of these registers is clearly evident in the color photographs; see Kaogu 1984: pl. 4.2, for M3:13; see too Zhejiang 1990, no. 51, for M3:1, a four-register cong, each register measuring 21 mm. Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 08:31:44PM via free access 20 Chinese Science I 2 (1995) 4 111:1!. M3 l!J±.3i?i! l.M3:72 2.M3:15 3.M3:35 ~.M3:71 5.M3!25 6.M3:36 7.M3:26 8.M.1:16 9.M3:22 Figure 1. Nine jade cong from M3. Si dun (Kaogu 1984.2: 119, fig. 9). It will be objected that most of the registers from this burial did not measure 23 mm (see Table 1). Registers on one cong alone might frequently vary in size; the registers on M3:71, for example, ranged from 23 to 27 mm, those on M3 :36 ranged from 22 to 26 mm, and so on. And the average height of the registers on each multi-registered cong (I exclude those with only one register) also varied, ranging from 18.9 mm on the thirteen-register M3 :22 to 25.9 mm on the six­ register M3:30 (Table 2). Given such variations, how can one speak of a unit of measurement, of a "Neolithic inch"? Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 08:31:44PM via free access Table 1. Height of the Registers (in cm) on the Jade Cong from Sidun M3 (after Kaogu 1984.2: 126-27) Mf! iHli fLf! P<HLf! lit! iii J:~ r~ J:~ r~ J:~ r~ J:~ r~ iiil!t jpjlj WSM 4.1 7.4-7.5 7.2-7.3 0.45-0.6 0.4-0.5 6.7 6.6 6.5 6.5 2 1.7 1.7 :41 5.1 10.3-10.4 10.0-10.2 2.4-2.9 2.0-3.2 5.6 5.8 5.6 5.8 1 4.1-4.2 :5 6.1 13.6-13.7 13.2-13.5 0.3-0.4 0.3-0.5 4.1 4.0 3.2 3.2 1 4.9 :29 6.7 10.8-10.9 10.4-10.6 2.7-3.5 2.2-3.7 5.1 5.4 5.0 5.3 2 2.3, 2.3 :13 9.0 9.5-9.7 9.1-9.2 2.2-3.6 2.2-3.5 4.9 4.7 4.0 3.8 3 2.3, 2.3, 2.3 :1 10.8 5.7-5.8 5.3-5.4 0.3-0.65 0.2-0.7 5.2 5.0 5.2 5.0 4 2.1, 2.1, 2.1, 2.1 :72 15.4 6.8-0.9 6.3-0.5 0.7-2 0.6-1.6 5.1-5.2 5.0-5.1 4.2 3.9 5 2.5-2.6, 2.5-2.4, 2.6-2.5, 2.6-2.4, 2.5-2.4 :35 16.7 7.1-7.3 6.8-7.1 0.9-1.7 6.8-7 5.1-5.2 5.2-5.3 5.1-5.2 5.2-5.3 6 2.1, 2.3, 2.3, 2.3, 2.3, 2.0 :31 17.2 7.0-7.2 6.6-8.7 0.6-1.1 0.6-1.1 5.8 5.4 5.8 5.4 6 2.4, 2.4-2.5, 2.3-2.4, 2.4-2.5, 2.3-2.4, 2.4-2.5 :12 18.1 7.9-8.0 7.4-7.5 1.0-2.0 0.7-1.7 5.7 5.8 5.7 5.8 6 2.3-2.4, 2.2-2.3, 2.2-2.4, 2.3, 2.2, 2.4-2.5 :15 18.6 7.3 7.0 0.7-1.5 0.7-1.5 5.6-5.7 5.4 5.6-5.7 5.4 6 2.5-2.6, 2.4, 2.5-2.6, 2.4-2.5, 2.4-2.5, 2. 7-2.8 :17 18.6 6.8-8.9 6.3-0.5 0.9-2.0 0.7-1.8 4.6-4.8 4.5-4.6 2.9 3.0 6 2.4, 2.5, 2.4, 2.4, 2.5, 2.4 :36 18.8 9.5 8.9-9.0 1.8-2.5 1.3-2.2 5.8 5.9 5.3 5.4 6 2.4, 2.4, 2.3-2.4, 2.2-2.3, 2.4, 2.5-2.6 :30 18.9 8.0-8.1 7.5-7.6 0.6-1.0 0.5-1.1 6.4 6.3 5.5 5.4 6 2.5-2.6, 2.6, 2.5-2.6, 2.6, 2.5, 2.7-2.8 :33 17.6 5.9-8.0 5.1-5.2 0.7-1.5 0.5-1.2 4.2 4.0 2.8 3.2 7 2.0-2.1, 2.1-2.2, 2.1-2.2, 1.8-1.9, 2.1, 2.1, 2.0-2.2 :25 18.8 7.1-7.2 6.8-8.9 0.7-1.6 0.4-1.2 5.8 5.7 4.5 4.5 7 2.4-2.5, 1.9-2.1, 1.9-2.0, 2.1-2.2, 2.0-2.2, 2.0-2.1, 2.0-2.2 :28 19.5 5.5-5.6 4.9-5.0 0.7-1.5 0.5-1.6 3.9 3.7 3.0 2.7 7 2.4, 2.4, 2.1, 2.0, 2.1, 2.1-2.2, 2.3-2.4 :24 19.4 7.2-7.3 6.6-8.7 0.6-1.9 0.5-1.7 5.6 5.2 4.3 4.0 7 2.3, 2.3, 2.1-2.3, 2.1-2.2, 2.1-2.2, 2.1, 1.9-2.0 :18 20.6 8.7 7.8 1.4-2.4 1.0-2.0 5.7-5.8 5.6-5.7 4.3 4.3 7 2.3-2.4, 2.4, 2.3, 2.4, 2.3-2.5, 2.3, 2.4 :20 22.2 7.5 6.8 0.9-1.9 0.7-1.5 5.4 5.3 4.5 4.5 7 2.5, 2.6, 2.6, 2.4-2.5, 2.6, 2.5, 2.6 :71 22.4 7.7-7.8 7.1-7.2 1.0-1.8 0.7-1.6 5.8 5.7 5.7 5.7 7 2.