MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
has been aptly compared to that between the old smooth- 
bore musket and the modern high-powered rifle. 
Companies of swift horsemen thus armed began early in 
the first millenium B. c. to make their influence felt in 
western Asia, where they terribly devastated wide regions. 
Gradually this method of fighting spread eastward across 
Asia, until sometime about 400 or 500 B. C., it appeared 
on the northern borders of China, and the Chinese had to 
adopt it in self-defense. 
Their doing so contributed in more ways than one to the 
overthrow of the whole feudal system. Not merely could 
bodies of light horse-archers ride rings around an old- 
fashioned army, composed only of infantry and chariots, 
and riddle it with arrows as they pleased. The social 
change involved was far more significant than this. 
Chariots had always been necessarily a mark of wealth, 
which under the feudal system meant high birth, but now 
almost everybody could get hold of a horse to ride and a 
bow to shoot. Very much in the same way did the intro- 
duction of gunpowder help to bring about the overthrow of 
the feudal nobility in medieval Europe. 
About this time, too, iron, already long used 1n northern 
China for domestic utensils and implements, began to 
be fashioned into weapons—especially long, straight 
swords, often with bronze or jade mountings. These 
proved far more effective in battle than the old bronze 
swords. Bronze continued, however, for a time to be used 
for armor; but here, too, iron eventually replaced it. 
Besides these material changes in Chinese civilization, 
ideas developed which proved scarcely less influential in 
undermining and eventually destroying the ancient feudal 
system. The period between 500 and 250 B. c. saw the 
rise of several great thinkers and teachers who founded 
different schools of philosophy. Their maxims exerted a 
powerful influence upon Chinese life in all its aspects. 
New ideas took possession of the minds of men. The time 
was ripe for changes of the most far-reaching nature. 
[ 324 ] 
