The Dongyi or Eastern Yi – The Neolithic China

The Dongyi or Eastern Yi (literally “Eastern Barbarians”) was a collective term, referring to ancient peoples who lived in eastern China during the prehistory of ancient China and in lands located to the east of ancient China.

People referred to as Dongyi vary across the ages. They were one of the Siyi (Four Barbarians) in Chinese culture, along with the Northern Di, the Southern Man, and the Western Rong; as such, the name “Yi” was something of a catch-all and was applied to different groups over time.

According to the earliest Chinese record, the Zuo Zhuan, the Shang Dynasty was attacked by King Wu of Zhou while attacking the Dongyi and collapsed afterwards.

Dongyi culture was one of the oldest neolithic cultures in China. Some Chinese scholars extend the historical use of Dongyi to prehistoric times, according to this belief, the neolithic culture correlates to Houli culture, Beixin culture, Dawenkou culture, Longshan culture and Yueshi culture, five evolutionary phases. Deliang He, thinks that Dongyi culture used to be one of the leading cultures in neolithic China.

The writing system of Dongyi was one of the oldest writing systems in neolithic China. There are opinions that the 20 pictogram characters discovered in a Dongyi tomb in Shandong indicates that some of the characters found are still used in Chinese characters.

There are also opinions that Dongyi people were the inventor of arrows. Some classic Chinese history records like Zuo Zhuan, Shuowen Jiezi, Classic of Rites, all have some similar records about this.