I. JADE AND OTHER STONE IMPLEMENTS 



The number of stone implements hitherto discovered on Chinese 

 soil is exceedingly small, a fact to be accounted for in several ways. 

 First it is due to the lack of systematic archaeological searchings and 

 excavations on sound methods handicapped by the prejudices of the 

 people ; secondly, the indifference of the Chinese towards these seemingly 

 trifling objects which bear no inscriptions and therefore offer no antiqua- 

 rian interest to them. While they have delved at all times in the graves 

 of their ancestors to their hearts' delight to revel in antiquities of 

 bronze, jade, or pottery, they left unnoticed or carelessly threw aside 

 minor objects of stone and bone or small fragments which seem to us 

 of primary scientific importance. A third reason, and probably the 

 most weighty of all, will be found in the fact which we shall establish 

 in the course of this investigation that, as far as the present state of 

 our archaeological knowledge and the literary records point out, the 

 Chinese have never passed through an epoch which for other culture- 

 regions has been designated as a stone age. 



We can merely assert at the present time with some degree of cer- 

 tainty that at some remote indefinable period stone implements have 

 been in use to a certain extent within the boundaries of what we now 

 call the Chinese empire; this does not yet mean that they have been 

 manufactured and employed by Chinese peoples themselves, as many 

 other groups of tribes related and unrelated to the Chinese have been 

 inhabiting the empire. It is therefore safe only to speak of stone 

 implements of China, whereas it is not warranted to speak of Chinese 

 stone implements. The evidence for such stone implements is furnished 

 by three sources: (i) by a number of actual specimens which have come 

 down to us, (2) by references made to such implements in Chinese 

 records, and (3) by survivals of such plain implements in more elaborate 

 ceremonial implements of later ages usually made of jade, or of other 

 materials like copper and bronze. We shall take up these subjects 

 gradatim. Before discussing a considerable amount of new material 

 here published for the first time, it may be advisable to sum up briefly 

 what has become known of such stone implements in our literature. 



On April 30, 1884, the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian 

 Society contained a paper by the mineralogist Heinrich Fischer in 

 Freiburg "On Stone Implements in Asia," in which a survey of stone 

 implements then known from India, China, Siberia and Japan is given. 



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