MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
Very little archeological research has as yet been under- 
taken in that country, particularly in connection with its 
early periods. We know enough, however, to justify us 
in trying to reconstruct the main outlines of its story, 
which parallels closely the course of events in the other 
great river valleys we have been studying—those of the 
Euphrates and Tigris, the Nile, and the Indus. 
China proper falls naturally into two main divisions, 
a northern and a southern. The latter is rugged, in parts 
even mountainous, and covered with a network of per- 
ennial streams, while the former, on the other hand, con- 
sists of a great alluvial plain bordered by hilly regions. 
Here there extended, in recent geological ages, a shallow 
sea, which gradually filled up with the earth brought down 
by various streams, particularly the Yellow River, known, 
on account of its terrible floods, as “‘China’s Sorrow.”’ 
Over all of China, north and south alike, there once 
stretched a vast expanse of forest, interspersed, where the 
rivers had not yet completed their work of filling in, with 
wide marshes, swamps, and lakes. Remnants of these 
still exist. : 
There is some reason to believe that southern China, in 
times much more recent than the Old Stone Age in 
Europe, was occupied by a race of Negritos—curly-haired 
pygmies like those still existing in out-of-the-way regions 
in the Philippines, New Guinea, and elsewhere. In time 
this race was exterminated or absorbed by successive 
waves of brown or yellow-skinned peoples coming from 
regions farther north—the ancestors of the present-day 
population—who brought with them a simple, undevel- 
oped form of New Stone Age culture akin in its main 
features to that which once overspread a large part of the 
globe. The invaders built huts, used implements of pol- 
ished stone, and made a coarse gray pottery marked with 
impressions of matting or basketry. They also practiced a 
sort of rudimentary agriculture, supplemented by hunting 
the game with which China at that time swarmed, and 
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