THE SHANG DYNASTY MENZIES 553 



we have a fruitful source of information regarding the sounds of 

 the ancient Shang Dynasty language. 



Let us now turn from the technical interpretation of the latter to 

 some of the more obvious residts of its study. First, let us not be 

 misled by the notion that because its script was pictorial, it was 

 therefore in its infancy. That this was not the case is shown at once 

 by the most common characters which it possesses, viz., the numerals 

 and the 22 cyclical characters. These are already conventionalized 

 in many cases. Thus while it is possible to see the reason for the use 

 of the symbols for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 10, 1 think I am safe in saying that 

 the meaning of the remaining numerals and of the»cyclical charac- 

 ters is not obvious, nor is it clear what they portray. This fact 

 indicates that the script was already old and conventionalized and 

 that it had already undergone a long process of development before 

 the fourteenth century B. C. 



Secondly, let us not allow ourselves to be carried away with the 

 idea that Chinese writing, simply because of its age, had its origin 

 in Sumeria. In 1929 I visited the sites of Ur and of Kish, in 

 Mesopotamia, and can assure you that the most pictographic scripts 

 found in those two places, dating from before 3000 B. C, are far 

 more conventionalized than is our Chinese script of about 1400 B. C. 

 It is inconceivable that a form of writing already well convention- 

 alized before 3000 B. C. should have retrograded into a more primi- 

 tive pictographic form 16 centuries later. Such similarities as exist 

 are to be explained by the fact that the minds of the Shang Dynasty 

 Chinese and those of the ancient Sumerians worked in similar ways. 

 Such a book, for example, as C. J. Ball's " Chinese and Sumerian " 

 is so defective on the side of the ancient Chinese script as to be value- 

 less for purposes of comparison. 



THE CHINESE PEOPLE BEFORE THE SHANG DYNASTY 



As to the origin of the Chinese people and the relationship of the 

 Shang Dynasty culture to the older prehistoric finds from northern 

 China, all that our present knowledge justifies us in saying is that 

 the interval between the Paleolithic Period and the fourteenth cen- 

 tury B. C. is so enormous that the two fall into two entirely different 

 and widely separated epochs. We are, however, sure of two very 

 important points. One is, that man did exist in North China in 

 very remote times, so that there is no necessity of introducing him 

 from the West within the historical period. The other point is, that 

 by 1400 B. C- the Chinese people had already developed a very high 

 indigenous culture on the great plain of North China. 



Now Dr. J. G. Andersson has found numerous examples of a 

 •' painted pottery " ware in various parts of northwestern China, 



