“…[3] Previous studies have shown that a dry climate followed early Holocene humid conditions in northern China [e.g., An et al, 2000;Zhou et al, 2001Zhou et al, , 2002C.-T. A. Chen et al, 2003;Jiang et al, 2006]. However, the initiation of mid-Holocene drying varies between sites in northern China, starting between 9000 and 4000 years ago [e.g., An et al, 1993;Chen et al, 1999;Zhou et al, 2001Zhou et al, , 2002Liu et al, 2002;Shi et al, 2002;C.-T. A. Chen et al, 2003;F.-H. Chen et al, 2003;An et al, 2003;Li et al, 2003;He et al, 2004;Jiang et al, 2006].…”