ABSTRACT
Somewhat more than 9000 years ago, certain human populations in China changed their subsistence patterns from hunting to a more settled way of life and began to cultivate plants and to domesticate animals. Pigs especially were of economic importance throughout the period, since they could provide meat rapidly, ensuring a regular food supply for large groups of people, and organic fertilizer for farming. As a supplier of meat, the horse was of little importance in the earliest Neolithic cultures. In the past half century, many Bronze-age chariot burials with horses have been excavated in China, indicating the rapid progress of horse- raising in this period. The height of the withers of domesticated horses of the Shang Dynasty Anyang phase, found in the sacrificial pits at the northern part of Wuguan village, Yin Hsu, is 133-143 cm. The Eastern Han bronze horses, excavated from Kansu, illustrate perfectly the graceful carriage of the tarpan breed in which the horse is shown as flying with its hoof on a falcon.
