O SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I42 



HISTORY 



The record of man's first appearance and way of life in West China 

 is lost in antiquity. The many natural caves and rock shelters for the 

 most part show no traces of human habitation until recent centuries. 

 The climate of much of West China, especially of Szechwan, is warm- 

 temperate, and we may perhaps conclude that generally prehistoric 

 man in West China constructed his own habitations and was not a 

 dweller in caves and rock shelters. 



In November and December of 1925 Dr, N. C. Nelson, associate 

 curator of archeology in the American Museum of Natural History, 

 accompanied by Walter Granger, a paleontologist, conducted an 

 expedition in the Yangtse Gorges as far as Wan-hsien. They collected 

 many stone artifacts and some pottery sherds, which are now deposited 

 in the American Museum of Natural History (Nelson, 1926). 



Rev. J. Huston Edgar collected many chipped- and polished-stone 

 implements in Szechwan and eastern Tibet, and a few red neolithic 

 sherds at Wei-chou, nearly all of which were deposited in the museum 

 of the West China Union University. I collected two boxes full of 

 finely polished stone implements near Lo-piao, south of Suifu, and a 

 few chipped- and polished-stone implements near Ch'ien-wei and else- 

 where, which were also left in the museum of the West China Union 

 University, In 1937 Dr, J. G. Andersson, one of the discoverers of the 

 cave of Peking Man, headed an archeological surveying expedition 

 into Sikang. Other members w^ere Mr. Chou, a geologist on the staff 

 of vSzechwan University, Mr, Hsieh, an archeologist of the Academia 

 Sinica, and myself. On this expedition we found a number of sites of 

 prehistoric man, some of which were apparently neolithic, yielding 

 pottery and polished-stone implements, yet not one paleolith was recog- 

 nized and not one chipped-stone implement was found. 



The theory that most archeologists and scientists have accepted, on 

 the evidence now available, is that prehistoric man was kept out of 

 West China by dense forests until he had developed tools wath which 

 he could cut down trees and the use of fire to burn them ; that he lived 

 in dwellings of his own construction, and that he was an agriculturist. 

 It is believed that he came to West China on rivers and streams by 

 means of boats or rafts. However, very little scientific excavation has 

 been done in West China, and further excavations and discoveries 

 may make necessary a revision of this theory. It has recently been re- 

 ported that a skull of a paleolithic man was found in Szechwan. 



After a careful study of the stone implements from West China in 

 the American Museum of Natural History and in the West China 



