Feb., 191 2. Jade. 79 



purpose, and it thence follows that not the Chinese, full-fledged agri- 

 culturists from the beginning of their history, invented it, but the hoe- 

 culturists adjoining them on the south. This aspect of things will 

 account also for the absence of this stone celt on Chinese soil, as the 

 Chinese had no use for it. They imitated it in a miniature bronze 

 form adapted to the purpose of barter, and if it occurs again in the 

 ceremonial dance-axes of bronze and jade, the reason for this derivation 

 is not far to seek, if we remember that the Chinese, according to their 

 own accounts, derived many of their pantomimic dances from their 

 southern barbarian neighbors, the Man. 1 If they derived the dances, 

 there is good reason to believe that they derived simultaneously also 

 the paraphernalia belonging to them. The spade-shaped form of 

 implement in its bronze derivate, accordingly, is one of the numerous 

 objects and ideas which the Chinese took up from the culture-sphere 

 of the South-east at a period when these two great cultural provinces 

 were still separated. The gradual welding of these two into one 

 finally resulted in that culture unit which we now call simply China. 



1 And most probably, all their ancient dances come from that source. The 

 Chinese have never been a dancing nation, as is easily seen in modern China where 

 no man and no woman is given to dancing; but with the Tibetans, the Man and 

 all Southeast-Asiatic tribes including the Malayan, dancing is popular and national. 



