Dr. Li Min is a professor of prehistoric and Bronze Age Chinese archaeology at UCLA, who focuses on state formation, social memory, and story telling. He is also a key player in the excavation of Shimao, a site on the Yellow River in Northwest China that displays iconography from four thousand years ago that looks strikingly Mesoamerican. We discuss the context in which Shimao rose to become a major regional power, the heady interaction sphere between the city and the shamanic Steppe and Altai cultures that surrounded it, the persistence of imagery unchanged across thousands of years, and much more. Dig into Dr. Li Min’s work by reading up on Social Memory and State Formation in Early China, available for purchase in a way that supports the podcast: https://amzn.to/3s0UG6p 00:00:00 Go! 00:00:58 State Formation in Early China 00:03:24 Initiation of Metallurgy 00:07:17 Sintashta Culture 00:17:50 Patreon Ask 00:18:05 Neolithic Transition 00:31:53 China-Mesoamerica Connection 00:38:39 Shimao Remote Sensing 00:46:11 Outsiders Arrive 00:55:04 Underwater Cities 01:03:27 Pilgrimage Site or Factory? 01:07:31 CLIP start 01:08:18 Mind of Culture 01:13:40 Sophisticated Substance 01:20:17 Cannabis Not Alcohol for the Ancients 01:29:16 Cultural Others 01:34:19 Visualizing Ancient China 01:44:22 Missing Ancestor Civilization 01:59:20 Trans-Pacific Connection Theory 02:03:54 Luangzhu Cylinders 02:10:10 Future of Chinese Archeology 02:14:19 Great Flood Controller 02:19:55 Culture-Nature Interface 02:31:40 Final Thoughts Support the scientific revolution by joining our Patreon: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB Tell us what you think in the comments or on our Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub #ancient #civilization #ancientchina Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience AND our material science investigations of atomics, @MaterialAtomics https://www.youtube.com/@MaterialAtomics Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671