440 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



at all until a thousand years later, after the Chou conquest.^'' In the 

 Near East by that time it was already being superseded by the sword 

 of iron. 



The rather undeveloped type of bronze sword — in reality scarcely 

 more than a dagger — found from Hungary eastward all along the 

 steppe belt was that which eventually appeared in China. It was 

 undoubtedly introduced into that country by the nomads — possibly the 

 Jung people already mentioned as having attacked the Chous in the 

 eighth century B. C. In any case, China lies almost at the eastern 

 border of the bronze-sword area, and the variety found there underwent 

 far less evolution than did those of the Occident. 



Another example of culture diffusion is that afforded by the horse- 

 drawn chariot. That engine of pageantry and war originated in west- 

 ern Asia, and spread thence both east and west over much of the north 

 temperate zone of the Old World. It survived latest in marginal areas 

 like China on the one hand and the British Isles on the other. 



DOMESTIC ANIMALS AND CULTIVATED PLANTS IN ANCIENT CHINA 



Certain species of animals and plants had slowly been brought under 

 human control in the Near East before the fourth millennium B. C. 

 Far later, many of the same forms appeared in China also, around the 

 time when the Bronze Age itself began there. Whether they did so 

 one by one, at different times, or all together, as parts of an integi-ated 

 culture complex, we cannot yet say. 



Be that as it may, few if any of these animals and plants were of 

 native Chinese origin. Thus China has so far yielded no trace of a 

 possible wild ancestor for her domestic ox. Again, the Chinese sheep 

 appears not to be derived from the wild species which still occurs in 

 the mountains of the northwest, but from a western wild form, the 

 urial {Ovis vignei), also ancestral to certain early Occidental forms. 

 Nor does the Chinese domestic hoi-se seem to be descended from the 

 Mongolian wild form ; it must, on the contrary, have been introduced, 

 already domesticated, from some western region.^^ 



** On this point see, e. g., Olov Janse, Notes Bur quelques ep6es anciennes trouvies en 

 Chine, Bull. Stockholm Mus. Far Eastern Antiquities, No. 2, pp. 67-134, 1930 ; lef. on p. 93. 



At the time when they conquered northern Cliina, the Chous, like the somewliat earlier 

 Vedic Aryans when they first occupied northwestern India, seem to have had bronze daggers 

 but not swords. In many other ways also, the cultures of the two peoples present 

 interesting parallels. 



*' The domestication of any wild species is an exceedingly slow process, while the horse 

 does not appear in China until rather late. Further, certain details of conformation, 

 particularly of the skull, suggest kinship with the western domestic breeds and not with 

 the Mongolian wild horse (E. przvalskii) . That the latter has crossed with it to a slight 

 extent seems certain, however. 



