72 Field Museum or Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



casting of which was perfectly understood. The jade implements of 

 the Chou period are not only contemporaneous with the Chinese 

 bronze age, but also from an epoch when the bronze age after an exist- 

 ence of several millenniums was soon nearing its end and iron gradually 

 began to make its way; i. e. from an archaeological viewpoint, they 

 are recent products. They are not the index of a stone age, and the 

 literary records are in full agreement with this state of affairs. At 

 the time of the Chou, the Chinese lived surrounded by numerous 

 foreign peoples who partially made use of flint arrows and possibly 

 other stone weapons; but also the stock of Man tribes was acquainted 

 with copper and employed copper utensils. The stone implements 

 of their, neighbors were a source of wonder, mere curiosities, to the 

 Chinese. 



Another notable fact to be gleaned from the references above 

 given is that the association of worked stone with the God of 

 Thunder is a rather late idea and sets in only from times long after the 

 beginning of our era; in all probability, it is not earlier than the T'ang 

 dynasty, for Ch'en Tsang-k'i who lived in the beginning of the eighth 

 century is the first in whom this idea has crystallized (p. 63). We 

 observe that the thunderbolts are not found anywhere and every- 

 where, but that they are restricted to certain localities, among which 

 Lei-chou is prominent. As the Tungusic Su-sheri, from the days of 

 antiquity till the present time, are, in the minds of the Chinese, the 

 typical representatives of flint arrow makers, so the notion of thunder- 

 bolts centers around Lei-chou, the Thunder City. This cannot be 

 accidental. We know that the Chinese have been conquerors and 

 colonists in this territory, and that it was inhabited before their arrival 

 by an aboriginal tribe, the Li, the remnants of which are to be found 

 nowadays in the interior of the island of Hainan. 1 During the Sung 

 period (960-1278 a. d.) they were still settled in the prefecture of Lei- 

 chou, as at that time their language is mentioned as one spoken in that 

 locality (Hirth, Chinesische Studien, p. 169). We may safely assume 

 that the stone implements there discovered and not understood by the 

 Chinese must be credited to the Li. And if other regions like Kiang- 

 si and Sze-ch'uan are involved, we have the same state of affairs in 

 that these too were and are still inhabited by non-Chinese tribes; in 

 regard to Yiin-nan, I expressed the same opinion above (p. 32). 

 Generally speaking, wherever in southern China, the land south of the 

 Yangtse, stone implements turn up, there is the greatest probability 

 of their origin being non-Chinese. 



1 Regarding this tribe compare Hirth, Die Insel Hainan (Reprint from Bastian- 

 Festschrift, pp. 24 et seq.). 



