MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
numerous elements of a still higher civilization. In many 
cases, doubtless, they did not import the inventions them- 
selves (peacefully or otherwise) so much as the concepts 
underlying them. These, finding in the Chinese mind a 
fertile soil, took root easily and developed along inde- 
pendent lines. 
Thus we find many inventions, processes, and ideas, 
which we know underwent a long evolution in the West, 
appearing quite suddenly on Chinese soil, fully developed. 
An instance will illustrate this point. In the West we 
find a regular series of weapons, beginning with the Neo- 
lithic flint dagger and passing step by step, through vari- 
ous copper forms, into the fully developed Late Bronze 
Age sword. China contains no trace of this evolution. 
There we find appearing all at once highly finished swords 
cast in one piece with the hilt, as they were cast in the West 
only toward the very close of the Bronze Age. We must 
infer that the ancient Chinese did not invent bronze 
swords for themselves, but got the idea already fully de- 
veloped from their neighbors. 
The knowledge of bronze reached China as one element 
of a whole culture complex—a well-developed civilization. 
Far down into historical times, however, this type of cul- 
ture, although of extraordinary brilliance, remained almost 
exclusively the possession of the upper classes, who used 
bronze weapons and war chariots in fighting. A very rigid 
type of family organization headed by the father, through 
whom descent was traced, characterized their social sys- 
tem. Northern China came to be occupied by a multitude 
of little city-states not unlike those of earliest Babylonia, 
each of which was ruled over by a princely family, as its 
religious as well as its political head, whose ancestors were 
among the chief divinities worshiped. The land belonged 
to the princes and nobles, much as it did in medieval 
Europe. 
The masses, on the other hand, long remained in much 
the same condition in which they had existed during the 
[ 320 ] 
