258 proceedings: anthropological society 



and differ strikingly from the Chinese in physical appearance, language, 

 and social institutions. 



The third theory is held by a number of distinguished scholars and 

 declares that the Chinese are autochthonous and their civilization 

 indigenous. It must be admitted that the oldest existing records of 

 China seem to know no other region as the home of the Chinese fore- 

 fathers than the valley of the Yellow River, and it is held accordingly 

 that they gave up nomadic habits and settled as agriculturists there in 

 an unknown antiquity and that it was there that they developed 

 their civilization, including their written language. As to the last- 

 mentioned the theory is almost certainly wrong. This civihzation, 

 including the use of the ideograms, appears to have been shared by 

 surrounding tribes, from among whom in fact some of their most famous 

 rulers came. 



One of these tribes, the Chou, headed a league of nine tribes from the 

 west which subdued the Shang Dynasty about 1200 B.C. These 

 tribes were amalgamated with the earlier and much of the culture of 

 China must be ascribed to the Chou. This fact and the enforced 

 migration of the Mon-Khmer, Tibeto-Burmans, and Shans to the 

 south because of some disturbance apparently in central Asia gives 

 plausibility to the fourth theory. 



This theory would place the origin of the race in central or in western 

 Asia. A number of distinguished scholars have held this view. Pump- 

 elly's explorations in central Asia have shown that that region was the 

 seat of an ancient civilization as old as 8250 B.C. Great chmatic 

 changes have there converted what was once a moist and fertile land 

 into an arid desert and caused the inhabitants to migrate to other 

 parts of the world. It was this perhaps that drove the Sumerians into 

 the Euphrates valley and that forced other peoples down upon the 

 Tibeto-Burmans and caused the movements of population in China. 

 The earliest Sumerian monuments show that people to have been 

 Turanian, not Semitic, and to have had obliquely-set eyes. Dr. 

 C. J. Ball, of Oxford, has shown that there are striking resemblances 

 between the earliest Sumerian ideograms and those of the Chinese. 

 He has also published a vocabulary of more than a thousand words 

 which show similarities of sound and meaning in Chinese and Sumerian. 

 This lends weight to the theory that both have a common origin and 

 that the peoples were probably related. Most of the mounds of central 

 Asia remain to l)e explored and it is not too much to hope that, in the 

 not far distant future, evidence may be found establishing conclusively 

 that the Chinese race originated in that locality. 



In the discussion which followed the paper Dr. Ales Hrdlicka 

 called especial attention to the importance of the whole subject and the 

 urgent need of archeological and anthropological investigations in these 

 regions. Others who discussed the paper were Dr. John R. Swanton, 

 Mr. James Mooney, and Mr. Henry Farquhar. 



The 524th meeting of the Society was held in the West Study Room 

 of the Public Library on Tuesday evening, March 26, 1918, at 8 p.m. 



