Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City

Five thousand years ago a rice-farming state rose near the Yangtze delta, and the ruins of Liangzhu prove it. Occupied from roughly 3300 to 2300 BCE, the four-part site pairs a planned earthen city with high and low dams from one of the world's earliest large water-management systems, while cemeteries of sharply unequal burials chart an already stratified society. UNESCO inscribed the Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City in 2019 as landmark evidence of early urban civilization.