556 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



tinct culture areas. In the north and extending over into what is 

 now southern Manchuria were various tribes wath cultures basically- 

 akin to those of eastern Siberia generally, though beginning to be 

 modified b}'^ influences both from the neighboring Chinese states and 

 from Central Asia.^^ Farther to the south the peninsula was the 

 home of the peoples called by the early Chinese writers the " Three 

 Han." While the precise boundaries of these are unknown, gen- 

 erally speaking the Ma-IIan occupied the west and southwest of the 

 peninsula, with the Shen-Han to the east of them, on the Sea of 

 Japan, and the Pien-Han in the extreme south. These three Han 

 peoples were clearly recognized by their Chinese contemporaries 

 as quite distinct from their northern neighbors, while on the other 

 hand there evidently existed between them and the primitive Jap- 

 anese an extremely close kinship if not indeed an actual identity. 

 The same was also true, apparently, of the people of Quelpart Is- 

 land, where traces of southern contacts are unmistakable to this 

 da3^-° This entire region, in fact, formed in prehistoric times a dis- 

 tinct culture area whose closest connections are to be sought in the 

 Chinese coast lands as they were before they came under the in- 

 fluence of Chinese civilization. It was only shortly before the be- 

 ginning of the Christian era that bands of refugees, fleeing from the 

 wars then devastating China, founded various states in southern 

 Korea in which they introduced that Late Bronze Age culture which 

 then characterized their own country. Shen-Han — later the kingdom 

 of Hsin-lo, or Silla — in spite of its comparative isolation with re- 

 gard to China, maintained especially close relations with that coun- 

 try, and the consequent superiority in culture which it enjoyed as 

 compared with its immediate neighbors is evident throughout its 

 history. 



INTRODUCTION OF BRONZE AND IRON INTO JAPAN 



There can be little doubt that it w^as from these newly founded 

 states of southern Korea that metal was first introduced into Japan. 

 The history of bronze in that country is peculiar. It can not, in 



»■ On the old Neolithic culture of eastern Asia, see R. and K. Torii : fitudes arch<5ologi- 

 ques et ethnologiques : Popiilations primitives de la Mongolia Oricntale, Joiirn. College of 

 Sci., Tokyo Imp. Univ., vol. 3fi, 1913-1915. art. 4 ; also review of same by II. Masp^ro 

 in Bull, ficole Frangaise d'Extrfime Oiient, vol. 14, 1914, pp. 79-80. 



«> H. B. Hulbert : The Island of Quelpart, Bull. Amer. Googr. Soc, vol. 37, 1905, pp. 

 396-408, passim. 



For the probable Japanese affinities of the people of Quelpart, cf. E. H. Parker in 

 Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journ., 1885, p. 303 ; also W. G. Aston, Nihongi, vol. 2, 

 p. 323, note 5. 



A seventh-century king of T'am-na, as the Island was then called, bore a name, Yuri- 

 toro, which has a decidedly Japanese sound. 



