The Yangtze River cultures are the lesser-known of China's most ancient civilizations. While the Yellow River Culture tends to receive most of the attention paid to ancient China, the Yangtze River peoples may well have been equal in importance. Unfortunately, the inaccessible areas they inhabited weren't archaeologically explored until the 1970s, so much less is known about them, and the Three Gorges Dam will flood the entire region, and scant attention has been paid to the issue by the Chinese government.

By the Later Zhou Dynasty (during the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period) the cultures of the Yangtze River were likely just as culturally advanced and they engaged in trade and cultural interchange with the Zhou people along the Yellow River. Each of the major cultures of the region - the Ba, Chu, and Shu - posessed a kingdom. Eventually, the Chu and Shu kingdoms merged and drove the Ba into decline, and legend holds that the Ba then disappeared into caves.

Earlier than that, civilization probably developed in parallel in both areas. Human fossils and stone tools dating from the Paleolithic era have been found in sites along the Yangtze River. Very probably agriculture developed at approximately the same time as in the Yellow River valley, although neither date can be ascertained with any certainty. Most likely the various Yangtze civilizations grew at around the same pace as the Han civilization, with tribal life giving away to permanent settlements around the beginning of the Xia dynasty, and with societal and technological advances up until the end of the Qin Dynasty, after which the Yangtze cultures seem to have disappeared, perhaps due to the pressures exerted by the growing (and increasingly militaristic) Han culture of the Qin period. Most likely given the history of cultural interchange, the Yangtze groups were assimilated into the Han culture, along with many other groups throughout early Chinese history.

Unfortunately, the many questions still unanswered will remain that way; most likely, these sites will not be adequately excavated before the completion of the Three Gorges dam, and thus historians and anthropologists will never be able to further their analysis of the cultures of the area. The Chinese government has earmarked a very limited sum of money for the excavation, but it will certainly not be completed before the entire region is flooded.