DIGGING UP CHINA PAST
17 min readMore than forty years ago, when I was first admitted to the middle school,I used to feel extremely happy to know that I was born in a country whose history had already lasted 5,000 years.I say 5,000 years because it was actually the figure given to the youthful mind of my generation. The Sumerian civilization and the Egyptian civilization, we were told, might have started earlier; but they were also dead long ago.
The Hindus, too, enjoy a long tradition, but their men of learning, till recently, never seemed to think it worth while to put their tradition on written records. So when all these things have been considered, China is certainly the oldest country still existing on this earth, and possesses the longest-and this is important-continuous written history of all the nations. This was my understanding of Chinals past before the time of the Chinese Revolution.
After the revolution, things began to change. There was a time when the reformers of China were skeptical about everything recorded in and about the past, including history itself.1 The Renaissance movement in the early twentieth century was essentially a rationalist movement, more or less akin in spirit to that of the classicists of the seventeenth century.
Their slogan,”Show your proof”though destructive in nature, did bring about a more critical spirit in the study of ancient China. Thus, if onewants to pay excessive tribute to the Golden Age of Yao and Shun, well, Show your proof; if one wishes to talk about the engineering miracles of the Great Yi of the third millennium B.C., proofs must also be given.
What must be remembered in this connection is that written records alone were no longer accepted as valid proofs. This proof-seeking movement created a great deal of havoc with the traditional learning and revolutionized the method of classical studies. Modern archaeology in China was born in this atmosphere.
The task of a modern archaeologist in China, however, is not limited to the search for proofs in order to reinstate the glories that were China’s past.His more important mission is rather to answer a set of new questions conceived in the light of modern science but only dimly perceived by historians of bygone generations.The questions so raised are of two different categories but are closely interwoven with each other:the one is concerned with the origin and the formation of the Chinese people，and the other with the nature and the building of Chinese civilization.
So the new historians have been continually asking: Who were the earliest Chinese and in what manner was the Chinese civilization developed?I shall make an attempt to answer the above two questions in a general way and on the basis of modern archaeological discoveries. Let me take up the racial history of the Chinese people first.
The earliest examples of Homo sapiens discovered in the Chinese area are still those from the Upper Cave of Chou-kou-tien, first found in 1933 and briefly described in a preliminary report by Franz Weidenreich in1939.3 The skeletal remains from this cave show a curious combination of several specimens. According to Weidenreich’s descriptions, the three best preserved skulls represent “three different racial elements.. to be classified as primitive Mongoloid, Melanesoid and Eskimoid..”4What is amazing to many an anthropologist who studied these data is the great possibility that these three individuals might have belonged to only one family, if there was at that time a family organization. Weidenreich’s paper aroused some very interesting speculations in many quarters.
One of the queries stimulated by this discovery was about the possible relation of the Upper Cave skeletons to the formation of the Chinese people in historical times. According to Weidenreich’s idea, if the ancestors of the modern Chinese were already existent 20,000 years ago, they were certainly not represented in the Upper Cave of Chou-kou-tien. The concluding paragraph of his interesting paper published in the Bulletin of the Natural History Society of Peking includes the following remarks:
As to the origin of the Chinese-in so far as it is permissible to use this designation in determining a race-the discovery of Chou-kou-tien population failed to shed any light. Even so, one cannot concludethat the Chinese did not already exist during the Upper Palaeolithic time because there is evidence that Melanesian and Eskimoid types were in existence at that time. It is possible that the Chou-kou-tienfamily belonged to a migrating tribe foreign to the country and that the actual settlers who attacked and exterminated them were the real representatives of that Chinese race….
Professor E.A.Hooton，while agreeing with Weidenreich’s major diagnosis，expressed his dissension on one point.He believed that the Old Man of the Upper Cave，whom Weidenreich classified as primitive Mongoloid，”.looks like a primitive European White，with more than a dash of the archaic Australoid features and can be duplicated almost exactly in the skulls of modern Ainu…
Professor Hooton’s remark is the more interesting because it serves tolink the discovery of the Upper Cave not only with modern anthropologyof the Far Eastern region but also with some curious tales transmitted from early China.
Among the strange tales told in the Mountain and Sea Classics, there is one story about a Hairy People in Book 17.8 This book is devoted to the folklore of the northeastern region of the Ancient East, covering approximately the territory of modern Manchuria, eastern Siberia, and the islands of Sakhalin and Japan. The description of the Mao-min of this region, that is, the Hairy People, includes some statements about boththeir physical appearance and their food habits. An explanatory note attached to the term Mao-min by a fourth-century commentator says that the faces and bodies of these people were all covered with hair.? It is obvious that both the author of Shan-hai-ching(that is, the Mountain and Sea Classics) and its commentator must have been more or less familiar with the appearance of the Mao-min, as their descriptions of these people almost exactly fit the modern Ainu, still surviving in the northern part of Japan.
Even more significant than this interesting tale about the Mao-min is a statement occurring in the chapter on antiphrenology of Hsin-tzi, the great Confucian philosopher of the third century B.C. In his scathing criticism of the practice of, and the superstitious beliefs in, phrenology, Hsin-tzu said:”In Hung Yao’s physical appearance, no skin is visible on his bodily surface..”meaning that the strange appearance of Hung Yao did in no way check his eminent career.
Hung Yao, as is well known to students of ancient Chinese history, was one of the ten most prominent ministers who composed the brain trust in the court of the founders of the Chou dynasty.11 If his face was all covered with hair, it would be by no means too speculative to take him as one of the kinsmen of the Ainu’s ancestors or，perhaps，a descendant of the Old Man of the Chou-kou-tien Upper Cave，if one were inclined to accept the opinions of the late Professor Hooton.Since the Ainu have been classified as one of the Palaeo-Asiatic peoples，the assumption is certainly well justified that they played an important role in the formation of the Chinese people in the protohistorical period.But evidently they were in a small minority，as in the time of Hsiin-tzu their hairiness was already considered more or less unusual.
As to the Melanesian elements，it is also interesting to speculate as to when they became“exterminated”by representatives of the Chinese，as Dr.Weidenreich has put it.We know almost for certain that there were still Negrito survivals in South China as late as the ninth century A.D.，12and perhaps even later，a fact that tends，indirectly at least，to confirm what the French archaeologists found in the prehistoricalsites of Indo-China，the presence of pre-Melanesian skulls.On ancient Chinese bronzes，one occasionally finds，among their profuse decorative patterns，the casting of the human face realistically done；the Melanesian appearance is by no means rare.The most illuminating example is from the Sumitomo’s collection，13 a yu wine vase cast in the form of a tiger embracing a child；the face of the child shows a decidedly Negroidcountenance with which the designer of this bronze must have beenintimately acquainted.A big bronze tetrapod，weighing many hundred pounds，was dug out during World War II by a group of peasants in the neighborhood of the ancient capital of the Shang dynasty.This，too，shows，on the two standing lugs above the rim，a decorative pattern consisting of a human head，Negroid in appearance，placed between the heads of two tigers standing on their hind legs and arranged antithetically. Other instances of this kind need not be repeated.
But down to the close of the Neolithic time in North China，the people who dominated this area were Mongoloid and，according to the study of Davidson Black，”conformed to a type essentially similar to that represented by the present-day Northern Chinese….” Three years later Black again said，in the concluding chapter of his study on the Kansu and Honan Aeneolithic skulls：
As a result of the foregoing investigations into the group measurements and form relations of the Honan and Kansu prehistoric crania in comparison with recent North China material，it would seem to be established beyond any reasonable doubt that the prehistoric populations represented were essentially oriental in physical character.
Further，the resemblances between these prehistoric and recent North China populations would appear to be such that the term”proto hinese”may with some propriety be applied to the former.
It is to be observed that from the time of the Old Man of the UpperCave of Chou-kou-tien to the Late Neolithic of North China, the time interval is more than 10,000 years. Modern archaeology has not yet beenable to supply any material for a study regarding the emergence of theproto-Chinese or to fill up the gap with an evolutionary series of the Mongolian race from the primitive Mongoloid to the formation of the Chinese people in historical time, except for the find of a single tooth of Upper Palaeolithic time in the Ordos region,15 discovered by Licent andTeilhard de Chardin, and described by Davidson Black as a “shovel-shaped upper incisor.”
This isolated find, on account of its unique morphological character, has aroused a great deal of interest among both anthropologists and historians. It is doubly significant because on the one hand this morphological feature seems to be related to Sinanthropus pekinensis, according to Franz Weidenreich, and on the other hand to the modern Chinese. Weidenreich’s study on the “Dentition of Sinanthropus Pekinensis”devoted fully two pages to discussing the problem of shovel-shaped incisors in recent mankind and made the following remarks: As to the occurrences of these types in recent mankind, the essential point is not that they may be found to a certain extent in all races in a minor percentage, but that they occur in special races up to almost 100 per cent; as, for instance, in Eskimo and Chinese, at least as far as the lateral incisors are concerned; and the same percentage must be taken to be characteristic for Sinanthropus..
It is not my purpose to discuss any possible relation between the Sinanthropus and the Mongoloid or the Chinese. But it is important to note that Professor Weidenreich’s statement about the frequency of the shovel-shaped incisors among the Chinese has recently been confirmed by an examination of the incisor teeth of freshmen of the Taiwan University.17Among 803 male freshman students examined in 1952, more than 90 per cent possessed shovel-shaped upper incisors; the same was true of 121 female freshmen.In both sexes the incisors of less than 1 percent showed a non-shovel-shaped appearance.
In addition to the above confirmatory evidence it is to be further noted that Davidson Black，in his note on the Ordos tooth，made use of a number of the upper lateral incisors recovered from the Aeneolithic sites in North China for comparative study.He said that in all thesespecimens，whether Early Bronze and Copper Age or modern North China，we are dealing with well-formed incisor teeth, conforming in all essentials and most details to a type aptly described by Hrdlicka as shovel-shaped.
Thus modern archaeology and modern anthropology have jointly established a case that in Eastern Asia the evolution of Hominidae, from the time of early Pleistocene down to the modern age, is accompanied at different stages by a persistent morphological characterization: the invariable presence of the shovel-shaped upper incisor teeth. It is a phenomenon quite peculiar to this region, which so far has found no parallel anywhere else.
There seems to be little question that the origin of the ancestors of the Chinese is tied up with the origin of the Mongoloid; and the Mongoloidrace, on the evidence now available, must have evolved east of the Ural Mountains. With this background as a working hypothesis, we should be better prepared for an interpretation of early Chinese history.
I propose to start the discussion of early Chinese history with the Neolithic phase, as it is only at this stage that there is something definite to work upon.
It is well known that prehistorical researches in China started with the Swedish geologist, Dr.J.G. Andersson, who not only discovered the locality of Chou-kou-tien and the first trace of Peking Man but was also the first scientist to find the existence of a widely distributed prehistorical culture of the late Neolithic phase in North China. The interest shown in this discovery by archaeologists all the world over is mainly due to the possible relation this culture might have had with the West. This fascinating question, however, could hardly be settled at present on the basis of available data; so let us confine our discussion to the field of the Chinese area.
In the last thirty years archaeologists have located the presence of the Painted Pottery culture along the major portion of the Yellow River Valley basin in North China, with, however,a marked exception in the province of Shantung. Its sphere of influence reached Manchuria in the east and Sinkiang in the west；its zone of concentration is located in the section of the Yellow River Valley between T’ung Kuan and Taihang Shan that divides the province of Honan from Shansi.
It is precisely within this zone that the simplest type of painted pottery, in shape as well as in patterns of decoration, is located.19 Liang Ssu-yung, followed by G.D. Wu, was of the opinion that the paintedpottery discovered by him at Hou-kang in Anyang represented the earliest stage-at any rate earlier than the Yangshao group. Wu went a step further and assigned definite dates to the Hou-kang cultures in his chronological table of Chinese prehistory.20 It seems to be quite definite that, as far as present knowledge goes, neither in the northwest from Kansu to Sinkiang nor in the northeast from Hopei to the Liaotung Peninsula has there been discovered, up to the present time, any painted pottery culture simpler and more primitive than that found in Hou-kang, located in the northernmost part of Honan province.
What is particularly baffling in regard to the distribution of the Yangshao culture is its complete absence in the province of Shantung.
In spite of the many efforts made by a number of archaeologists to find Neolithic remains in this peninsula, no trace of painted pottery has ever been discovered there. Shantung is China’s Holy Land, not merely for the reason that Confucius was born there; it was also, as many historianswould testify, the cultural center of China in the first millennium B.C.
And, what is even more important, it was most probably the homeland where the culture of the Shang dynasty had its early growth.
It was precisely in this province that another phase of the prehistorical culture of North China was discovered by the young archaeologist Wu Gin Ding(G.D. Wu) in 1930, just after he was graduated from the Tsing Hua Research Institute. This phase is known as the Lungshan culture after the name of the village near which the first and the type site is located. Themost characteristic feature of this culture, as of the Yangshao remains, is its pottery; but unlike the Yangshao pottery the Lungshan ceramics are mostly monochrome, of which the most distinguished group is pure black, lustrous, and thin. Subsequently it was found that this culture also covereda wide area in eastern and northeastern China,21 extending northward to the Liaotung Peninsula and southward to the delta region of Hangchow Bay.
Following this discovery arose the chronological problem of the relative sequence of these two prehistorical cultures in North China as a whole.The basic work in the field that determined the time relation of these two cultures was carried out in the Anyang region by members of the Archaeological Section of the Academia Sinica.Here were discovered many sites in which three distinct types of cultural remains were found in successive deposition；they were:（1）the Painted Pottery culture，（2）the Black Pottery culture，and（3）the historical culture of the Shang dynasty，of which the white pottery has received the most attention from antiquarians.
In the stratified area of the Hou-kang site, three types of relations of thethree different types of cultures were observed: the superposition is either the Shang over the Yangshao, or the Shang over the Lungshan, or, thirdly, the Lungshan over the Yangshao. These orders have been found to exist wherever intact stratified cultural remains have been located. The reverseof such orders was not reported in any of the excavated areas within this region. So the sequence thus determined may be given as: the Painted Pottery culture as the earliest, followed by the Black Pottery culture, and then the historical Shang culture.
But it must be made clear at once: this established sequence has its geographical limitation.
Now about the earliest historical Chinese culture, the culture of the Shang dynasty. For quite some time it was thought that, from the latest phase of the Neolithic culture discovered in North China to the earliest phase of the historical remains discovered in Anyang, there was a close and almost immediate succession. The cultural sequence established in Anyang and confirmed in a number of other places has been usually taken as a positive proof of the closeness in time of the Lungshan andthe historical Shang cultures. But a more critical examination of theirdetailed contents, especially the pre-Shang and the Shang remains found in Hsiao-t’ un, reveals the existence of a gap which might have been caused by interrupted development,a discontinuity which might be an indication of some time interval.25
What distinguished the historical remains of the Shang at Hsiao-t’ un from the pre-Shang deposits found quite extensively in Anyang, including Hsiao-t’ un, are the following six groups of cultural traits:
(1) New development of ceramic industry
(2) Employment of bronze to cast tools, weapons, and sacrificial vessels
(3) The presence of a highly developed writing system
(4) Chamber burials and human sacrifices
(5) Use of chariots
(6) Advanced stone carvings
None of the above six cultural traits could be linked，as far as is known，in even a remote way to the Yangshao and the Lungshan cultures.
They also differ among themselves in the degree of the suddenness of their emergence from a total obscurity in the Neolithic time to the foreground of the historical scene.Of these six groups the ceramic craft especially needs some discussion.The nine types of pottery which occurred most frequently in the Shang（Yin）stratum were all novel as compared with the pottery forms of the black pottery in the bottom deposit underneath the Shang stratum.The prevalent six types of the gritty and the black wares of the prehistorical period disappeared almost completely in the cultural stratum of the Shang period.The Shang potters discarded altogether the fine and delicate craft of producing the thin，lustrous，and beautifully turned black ware.They went on experimenting with some inventions of their own and introduced for the first time in the history of ceramic art the use of kaolin clay，with which they produced the famous white pottery.They also made the earliest attempt to cover the external surface of the stoneware with an extra coating of glaze.It is true that methods used by potters of the preceding periods were still continued in the Shang time to produce certain types of wares for daily use，but there was a distinct change in both the style and the method of production of the more refined articles.
Of the other five cultural elements which made their first appearance in the Shang dynasty，the writing system and the bronze may be discussed together.The general impression has been that these two cultural activities seem to have started almost simultaneously.
As I have tried to show in another connection, their simultaneity is more apparent than real; and both of them must have had an earlier development from which their Hsiao-t’ un phase was evolved. Taking firstthe problem of the bronzes found in Hsiao-t’ un, it is obvious to anyone who has examined this problem that an earlier background must be postulated in order to explain the stage of development which the bronze of Hsiao-t’ un attained. Among the Hsiao-t’ un remains themselves, evidence was by no means lacking to show that the history of bronze foundry in this locality is divisible into two substages; and the earlier substage may lead back to a still more primitive phase.
The writing system of the Hsiao-t’ un stage as found on the oracle bones, like the Hsiao-t’ un bronzes, represents a development on a comparatively advanced level. It is of course a well-known fact that the Hsiao-t’ un scripts are 1,600 to 1,800 years later than the earliest Sumerian writing; and in this time interval the idea of keeping some written records might have migrated from the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates to the valley of the Yellow River. Still this does not explain how such a highly complicated system as the earliest known Chinese writing, composed of more than 2,000 characters and totally unlike the cuneiform scripts in either form or structure, should have appeared all of a sudden on Chinese soil. It is to be remembered that in the middle of the second millennium B.C, east of the Ural Mountains and the Indian peninsula, North China was the only literate spot in the whole region bordering onthe Pacific. Even the most earnest diffusionist must prove his thesis by gathering evidence in the intervening region between Mesopotamia and the northeastern China plain before any convincing arguments can bemade to support the idea of complete borrowing. Personally,I am more inclined to believe that the birth of all great civilizations, in the past as well as the present, is due to cultural contact. But before we accept this as true of any particular civilization, no effort should be spared to collect all available data in order to examine in detail the process of actual growth.
In China’s past，only a small area has been properly investigated up to the present time，and，even in this area，the task is hardly half done.In fact，just when scientific data were being accumulated in the middle 1930’s，the endeavor was brought to a sudden end by the Japanese invasion.
And now，after a lapse of almost twenty years since World War II started in the Far East，we are still dependent upon the materials collected in the brief span of nine years（1929-1937）when the Academia Sinica excavated in Anyang and its adjacent region. In many key areas, although there have been plenty of fruitful lootings, hardly any properly conducted archaeological excavations have taken place. There is scarcely any doubt that our urgent problem is still to look for new facts so that the sudden emergence of the bronze industry, as well as the writing system, may be explained on a more substantial basis.
