434 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



PEASANT TYPES OF PREHISTORIC CULTURES 



Wherever climate, soil, and freedom from forest cover allowed, 

 the New Stone Age peoples of the Far East drew their sustenance 

 mainly from what they could grow. Their chief source of food 

 seems to have been millet {Panlcum miliaceum) ; although rice ap- 

 peared in central China before the end of the period. Neither of 

 these plants is indigenous to eastern Asia ; hence only as a result 

 of culture diffusion, almost certainly from or through India, could 

 they have reached China. Rice spread to that country consider- 

 ably after millet,® and did not appear in the islands off the coast of 

 eastern Asia until later still. 



On all save the youngest Chinese Neolithic sites, the only remains 

 of domestic animals are those of the dog and pig. On the later 

 sites occur also bones of the sheep and ox. Those of the horse are 

 likewise reported on some of them; but whether these belong to 

 domestic individuals seems uncertain. A true wild horse {Eqmis 

 przvalskii) — not merely an animal descended from escaped do- 

 mestic stock — still exists in Mongolia, and may formerly have ranged 

 over the northern Chinese plains also. 



These Neolithic planting peoples of the Far East made a coarse 

 unglazed pottery, shaped by hand (most often, perhaps, by the 

 "coiling" process) and decorated with impressions of various kinds 

 or with lumps and strips of clay stuck on before firing. Such ware 

 seems, indeed, to have survived among the Chinese peasantry until 

 far down in the historical period.** 



Religion was pretty surely animistic in character. Among the 

 planting peoples, at least, there seem to have been orgiastic fertility 

 rites, perhaps accompanied by human sacrifice. In many parts of 

 the Far East, maiden sacrifice by drowning or exposure persisted 

 even into historical times. Today the worship of goddesses appears 

 most commonly in areas like the eastern Asiatic coast and islands, 

 regions marginal to the ancient Chinese civilization proper, and 

 latest in being influenced by it. The Japanese Sun Goddess, offi- 

 cially claimed as ancestress of the imperial line, is probably the best 

 known example. 



Indications exist too of a former matrilineal social organization, 

 with "priestesses" (really exorcists or medicine women) and female 

 rulers. Society in the Far East during the New Stone Age seems 

 indeed to have borne a decidedly feminine cast. 



• Numerous indications, drawn from all parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, have led me 

 to believe millet the first cereal brought under cultivation by man. 



» Verbal communication from T. Y. Ch'iu, of the Peldng Historical Museum, confirmed 

 by my own observations in the field. 



