EASTERN ASIA — BISHOP 443 



millennium B. C, however, first in western Asia, then a little later 

 along the northern borders of China, we find a growing use of mounted 

 troops. How this development took place, we cannot say; but the 

 analogous one that occurred among the American Plains Indians when 

 they a-cquired the horse from the Spaniards affords some illuminating 

 suggestions. 



BRONZE GIVES PLACE TO IRON IN THE FAR EAST 



In the Occident, bronze gave place to iron far earlier than in China. 

 In the latter country the change did not begin until about the middle 

 of the first millennium B. C, and was not completed until shortly 

 before the commencement of the Christian Era. 



Meanwhile the older metal had diffused itself well beyond the limits 

 of the ancient Chinese culture group proper into various marginal 

 areas. In these the Bronze Age survived even later than in the Yellow 

 River basin itself. Thus, in extreme southern China and the adjacent 

 portions of Indo-China iron did not supplant bronze (under Chinese 

 influence) until just after the beginning of our era. In Korea too we 

 find a belated Bronze Age, introduced there from China probably dur- 

 ing the Eastern Chou period. From the peninsula bronze soon spread 

 to southern and western Japan; but before it had had time to reach 

 the east and north of that country, iron overtook and supplanted it. 

 These events marked the definitive close of the Bronze Age, and the 

 commencement of that of Iron in the Far East. 



SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS DURING THE LATE CHOU 



PERIOD 



During the latter part of the Chou period Chinese feudalism 

 gradually crumbled. Among the causes were the supplanting of the 

 old chariotry (the arm par excellence of the feudal nobles) by bodies 

 of militarily more efficient horse-bowmen, copied, as the old Chinese 

 records expressly state, from the northern nomads, and the rise of a 

 money economy which slowly replaced the ownership of land and 

 serf labor as the source of wealth and power. There emerged in 

 place of the older political system a number of large centralized 

 states which waged frequent war on one another and paid scant 

 heed to the claims of their nominal suzerains, the Chou kings. In 

 this historical process the compelling need for the consolidation of 

 authority over systems of hydraulic engineering — of flood control 

 and irrigation — played an important part. But the period, though 

 thus politically unstable, was a most fruitful one in the development 

 of Chinese civilization, particularly in the realm of thought. 



