524 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



between the Western Culture and that of the Scythians. However, 

 such an early appearance of the Scythians in the area in question has 

 not yet been proved.'" A second component of the Yang Shao culture 

 is to be found in the Northern Culture, from which it took its pit 

 dwellings, its use of bone in the manufacture of implements, and the 

 common gray pottery decorated with cord or mat impressions. Still 

 a third source is to be found in the Southern Culture, from which came 

 rice growing, already proved for the Yang Shao ; to it we may add also 

 the sedentary mode of life. Wliether the vSouthwestern Culture like- 

 wise played a part in the formation of the Yang Shao is not yet clear; 

 but in any event it seems not to have made its influence as strongly 

 felt as that of the others named. 



2. At somewhere about the same time that the Yang Shao culture 

 was taking shape in western China or only a very little later, there 

 appeared in what is now the province of Shantung, in eastern China, 

 the Lung Shan (sometimes called Ch'eng Tzu Yai) culture, with its 

 characteristic pottery of black earthenware. This we do not as yet 

 know very well; but we can say mth assurance that in it hkewise there 

 appears a strong clement of the Northern Culture^ — a stronger one, 

 indeed, than that which we have just found in the Yang Shao. With 

 this there also ai)pears an clement derived from one or other of the two 

 southern cultures. That of Limg Shan is in any case very much mixed, 

 and is a direct first step in the formation of the culture of the Shang 

 people, which we have now to consider. 



3. The Shang culture is the oldest in China for which we have as 

 yet both historical and archeological evidence. In this also is to 

 be found a marked element of the Northern Culture, just as we saw in 

 that of the Yang Shao; but this seems to be slowly losing its strength 

 among the Shangs. Far more powerful was the influence exerted by 

 the Southern Culture, with its rice growing, its cattle breeding, and 

 its production of silk. Most clearly significant in this connection is 

 the influence which has been exerted by the speech. For these Shang 

 people, as the inscriptions which have been discovered testify, al- 

 ready spoke a language very similar on the one hand to that of the 

 present-day Chinese, while on the other it was most closely related, 

 among those of all these early cultures, to the speech of the T'ai 

 peoples. The same inscriptions also speak of clans, whose names we 

 recognize as those of ones which existed, later on, in the Ch'u kingdom 

 previously mentioned. 



Shang agricultural implements were probably of wood, since none 

 of their remains have thus far been found. Recent Chinese investiga- 

 tions have, however, made it very probable that the Shangs had the 



" The question to what extent these people, whether Scythians or not, were Indo-Europeans, and how far 

 northern influences, Siberian or even Nordic European, are to be talcen into consideration, forms another 

 fleldoflnvestipation which has thus far yielded no definite results. In post-Christian limes, however, blond 

 people appear in western China. 



