A History of China | Page 5

brought
China, as early as in the third millennium B.C., to an astonishingly high
cultural level. However, all we know of the origin of civilizations
makes this of itself entirely improbable; no other civilization in the
world originated in any such way. As time went on, Chinese historians
found more and more to say about primeval times. All these narratives
were collected in the great imperial history that appeared at the
beginning of the Manchu epoch. That book was translated into French,
and all the works written in Western languages until recent years on
Chinese history and civilization have been based in the last resort on
that translation.
Modern research has not only demonstrated that all these accounts are
inventions of a much later period, but has also shown why such
narratives were composed. The older historical sources make no
mention of any rulers before 2200 B.C., no mention even of their
names. The names of earlier rulers first appear in documents of about
400 B.C.; the deeds attributed to them and the dates assigned to them
often do not appear until much later. Secondly, it was shown that the
traditional chronology is wrong and another must be adopted, reducing
all the dates for the more ancient history, before 900 B.C. Finally, all
narratives and reports from China's earliest period have been dealt a
mortal blow by modern archaeology, with the excavations of recent
years. There was no trace of any high civilization in the third
millennium B.C., and, indeed, we can only speak of a real "Chinese
civilization" from 1300 B.C. onward. The peoples of the China of that
time had come from the most varied sources; from 1300 B.C. they
underwent a common process of development that welded them into a
new unity. In this sense and emphasizing the cultural aspects, we are
justified in using from then on a new name, "Chinese", for the peoples
of China. Those sections, however, of their ancestral populations who
played no part in the subsequent cultural and racial fusion, we may

fairly call "non-Chinese". This distinction answers the question that
continually crops up, whether the Chinese are "autochthonons". They
are autochthonons in the sense that they formed a unit in the Far East,
in the geographical region of the present China, and were not
immigrants from the Middle East.
2 The Peking Man
Man makes his appearance in the Far East at a time when remains in
other parts of the world are very rare and are disputed. He appears as
the so-called "Peking Man", whose bones were found in caves of
Chou-k'ou-tien south of Peking. The Peking Man is vastly different
from the men of today, and forms a special branch of the human race,
closely allied to the Pithecanthropus of Java. The formation of later
races of mankind from these types has not yet been traced, if it
occurred at all. Some anthropologists consider, however, that the
Peking Man possessed already certain characteristics peculiar to the
yellow race.
The Peking Man lived in caves; no doubt he was a hunter, already in
possession of very simple stone implements and also of the art of
making fire. As none of the skeletons so far found are complete, it is
assumed that he buried certain bones of the dead in different places
from the rest. This burial custom, which is found among primitive
peoples in other parts of the world, suggests the conclusion that the
Peking Man already had religious notions. We have no knowledge yet
of the length of time the Peking Man may have inhabited the Far East.
His first traces are attributed to a million years ago, and he may have
flourished in 500,000 B.C.
3 The Palaeolithic Age
After the period of the Peking Man there comes a great gap in our
knowledge. All that we know indicates that at the time of the Peking
Man there must have been a warmer and especially a damper climate in
North China and Inner Mongolia than today. Great areas of the Ordos
region, now dry steppe, were traversed in that epoch by small rivers
and lakes beside which men could live. There were elephants,

rhinoceroses, extinct species of stag and bull, even tapirs and other wild
animals. About 50,000 B.C. there lived by these lakes a hunting people
whose stone implements (and a few of bone) have been found in many
places. The implements are comparable in type with the palaeolithic
implements of Europe (Mousterian type, and more rarely Aurignacian
or even Magdalenian). They are not, however, exactly like the
European implements, but have a character of their own. We do not yet
know what the men of these communities looked like, because as yet
no indisputable human remains have been found. All the stone
implements have been found on the