A History of China | Page 6

surface, where they have been
brought to light by the wind as it swept away the loess. These stone-age
communities seem to have lasted a considerable time and to have been
spread not only over North China but over Mongolia and Manchuria. It
must not be assumed that the stone age came to an end at the same time
everywhere. Historical accounts have recorded, for instance, that stone
implements were still in use in Manchuria and eastern Mongolia at a
time when metal was known and used in western Mongolia and
northern China. Our knowledge about the palaeolithic period of Central
and South China is still extremely limited; we have to wait for more
excavations before anything can be said. Certainly, many implements
in this area were made of wood or more probably bamboo, such as we
still find among the non-Chinese tribes of the south-west and of
South-East Asia. Such implements, naturally, could not last until today.
About 25,000 B.C. there appears in North China a new human type,
found in upper layers in the same caves that sheltered Peking Man.
This type is beyond doubt not Mongoloid, and may have been allied to
the Ainu, a non-Mongol race still living in northern Japan. These, too,
were a palaeolithic people, though some of their implements show
technical advance. Later they disappear, probably because they were
absorbed into various populations of central and northern Asia.
Remains of them have been found in badly explored graves in northern
Korea.
4 The Neolithic age
In the period that now followed, northern China must have gradually

become arid, and the formation of loess seems to have steadily
advanced. There is once more a great gap in our knowledge until, about
4000 B.C., we can trace in North China a purely Mongoloid people
with a neolithic culture. In place of hunters we find cattle breeders, who
are even to some extent agriculturists as well. This may seem an
astonishing statement for so early an age. It is a fact, however, that pure
pastoral nomadism is exceptional, that normal pastoral nomads have
always added a little farming to their cattle-breeding, in order to secure
the needed additional food and above all fodder, for the winter.
At this time, about 4000 B.C., the other parts of China come into view.
The neolithic implements of the various regions of the Far East are far
from being uniform; there are various separate cultures. In the
north-west of China there is a system of cattle-breeding combined with
agriculture, a distinguishing feature being the possession of finely
polished axes of rectangular section, with a cutting edge. Farther east,
in the north and reaching far to the south, is found a culture with axes
of round or oval section. In the south and in the coastal region from
Nanking to Tonking, Yünnan to Fukien, and reaching as far as the
coasts of Korea and Japan, is a culture with so-called shoulder-axes.
Szechwan and Yünnan represented a further independent culture.
All these cultures were at first independent. Later the shoulder-axe
culture penetrated as far as eastern India. Its people are known to
philological research as Austroasiatics, who formed the original stock
of the Australian aborigines; they survived in India as the Munda tribes,
in Indo-China as the Mon-Khmer, and also remained in pockets on the
islands of Indonesia and especially Melanesia. All these peoples had
migrated from southern China. The peoples with the oval-axe culture
are the so-called Papuan peoples in Melanesia; they, too, migrated from
southern China, probably before the others. Both groups influenced the
ancient Japanese culture. The rectangular-axe culture of north-west
China spread widely, and moved southward, where the Austronesian
peoples (from whom the Malays are descended) were its principal
constituents, spreading that culture also to Japan.
Thus we see here, in this period around 4000 B.C., an extensive mutual

penetration of the various cultures all over the Far East, including Japan,
which in the palaeolithic age was apparently without or almost without
settlers.
5 The eight principal prehistoric cultures
In the period roughly around 2500 B.C. the general historical view
becomes much clearer. Thanks to a special method of working, making
use of the ethnological sources available from later times together with
the archaeological sources, much new knowledge has been gained in
recent years. At this time there is still no trace of a Chinese realm; we
find instead on Chinese soil a considerable number of separate local
cultures, each developing on its own lines. The chief of these cultures,
acquaintance with which is essential to a knowledge of the whole later
development of the Far East, are as follows:
(a) The north-east culture, centred in the present provinces of Hopei (in
which Peking lies), Shantung, and southern Manchuria. The people of
this culture were ancestors of the Tunguses, probably