A History of China | Page 8

elements involved; any new combination
produces entirely different conditions with corresponding new results
which, in turn, represent the characteristics of the culture that
supervenes. We can no longer follow this process of penetration in
detail; it need not by any means have been always warlike. Conquest of
one group by another was only one way of mutual cultural penetration.
In other cases, a group which occupied the higher altitudes and
practised hunting or slash-and-burn agriculture came into closer
contacts with another group in the valleys which practised some form
of higher agriculture; frequently, such contacts resulted in particular
forms of division of labour in a unified and often stratified new form of
society. Recent and present developments in South-East Asia present a
number of examples for such changes. Increase of population is

certainly one of the most important elements which lead to these
developments. The result, as a rule, was a stratified society being made
up of at least one privileged and one ruled stratum. Thus there came
into existence around 2000 B.C. some new cultures, which are well
known archaeologically. The most important of these are the
Yang-shao culture in the west and the Lung-shan culture in the east.
Our knowledge of both these cultures is of quite recent date and there
are many enigmas still to be cleared up.
[Illustration: Map 1. Regions of the principal local cultures in
prehistoric times. _Local cultures of minor importance have not been
shown._]
The Yang-shao culture takes its name from a prehistoric settlement in
the west of the present province of Honan, where Swedish investigators
discovered it. Typical of this culture is its wonderfully fine pottery,
apparently used as gifts to the dead. It is painted in three colours, white,
red, and black. The patterns are all stylized, designs copied from nature
being rare. We are now able to divide this painted pottery into several
sub-types of specific distribution, and we know that this style existed
from c. 2200 B.C. on. In general, it tends to disappear as does painted
pottery in other parts of the world with the beginning of urban
civilization and the invention of writing. The typical Yang-shao culture
seems to have come to an end around 1600 or 1500 B.C. It continued in
some more remote areas, especially of Kansu, perhaps to about 700
B.C. Remnants of this painted pottery have been found over a wide
area from Southern Manchuria, Hopei, Shansi, Honan, Shensi to Kansu;
some pieces have also been discovered in Sinkiang. Thus far, it seems
that it occurred mainly in the mountainous parts of North and
North-West China. The people of this culture lived in villages near to
the rivers and creeks. They had various forms of houses, including
underground dwellings and animal enclosures. They practised some
agriculture; some authors believe that rice was already known to them.
They also had domesticated animals. Their implements were of stone
with rare specimens of bone. The axes were of the rectangular type.
Metal was as yet unknown, but seems to have been introduced towards
the end of the period. They buried their dead on the higher elevations,

and here the painted pottery was found. For their daily life, they used
predominantly a coarse grey pottery.
After the discovery of this culture, its pottery was compared with the
painted pottery of the West, and a number of resemblances were found,
especially with the pottery of the Lower Danube basin and that of Anau,
in Turkestan. Some authors claim that such resemblances are fortuitous
and believe that the older layers of this culture are to be found in the
eastern part of its distribution and only the later layers in the west. It is,
they say, these later stages which show the strongest resemblances with
the West. Other authors believe that the painted pottery came from the
West where it occurs definitely earlier than in the Far East; some
investigators went so far as to regard the Indo-Europeans as the parents
of that civilization. As we find people who spoke an Indo-European
language in the Far East in a later period, they tend to connect the
spread of painted pottery with the spread of Indo-European-speaking
groups. As most findings of painted pottery in the Far East do not stem
from scientific excavations it is difficult to make any decision at this
moment. We will have to wait for more and modern excavations.
From our knowledge of primeval settlement in West and North-West
China we know, however, that Tibetan groups, probably mixed with
Turkish elements, must have been the main inhabitants of the whole
region in which this painted pottery existed. Whatever the origin of the
painted pottery may be, it seems that people of these two groups were
the main users of it. Most of the shapes of their pottery