528 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



place, however, such cultures have often demanded large numbers of 

 human victims for sacrifice in connection with fertility rites. To 

 this fact we may attribute the extreme frequency of human sacrifices 

 and the absence of slave owning and slave labor during Shang times. 

 Along with this (and here we are reminded of what has been said in 

 connection with the Southern and the Coastal Cultures) went the 

 existance of a priestly caste of great power and importance. 



In contrast to all this we may set the lack, among the Chous as 

 among so many pastoral peoples, of rites accompanied by human 

 sacrifice, their place being taken by great offerings of animals. The 

 Chous, as a people with a tradition of pastoralism, may well have 

 made use of slaves originally for watcliing their flocks and herds. 

 They had moreover a keen appreciation, acquired in the course of tiieir 

 wandering mode of life, of the advantages inherent in a disciplined 

 government. Hence they used their captives of war not as human 

 sacrifices but as servants. Since, however, the}'^ had already given up 

 their pastoral economy before their conquest of the Shang kingdom 

 but had not, on the other hand, gone on to develop one of great landed 

 estates, and had but little knowledge of land management, they left 

 the latter to their subjects. Such slaves as they had they emploj'ed 

 merely for watching and other similar services — a clear remembrance 

 of their original manner of using slaves during their former pastoral 

 life.'^ Tliis instance will perhaps sufTicc to show how our new working- 

 hypothesis may bo used in the solution of particular problems, and 

 how by its use we may reach a clearer understanding of nuiny phenom- 

 ena. We may also draw an inference of a somewhat similar sort from 

 the fact that the Shangs sacrificed in temples, but the Chous on the 

 other hand in the open air— another significant cultural distinction. 



As an objection to our theory that the Chinese civilization grew 

 up out of the interaction of various local cultures, it may be urged 

 that in the first millennium B. C. the art of the entire Chinese area 

 was obviously uniform in style. This is, however, not fundamental. 

 It can be sho\vTi that the callings of certain families were exercised over 

 wide areas and during long periods of time in accordance with heredi- 

 tary traditions. For mstance, there still lived in Lo-yang as late as 

 the fifth century A. D. a group of potters who claimed descent from the 

 ancient Shang population and who thus seem to have been carrying on 

 a particular craft for some 1,500 years. We also find references to the 

 existence of families of bronze casters; these suggest that, speaking 

 generally, bronze vessels were in all probability made by individuals 

 or families \dth whom the process was an inherited tradition. Par- 

 ticular pieces, obviously provincial in origin, will have to be explained 

 as the work of local families. 



" The rite of "following in death," occasionally met with in thoChou culture, differs somewhat from the 

 above-mentioned human sacrifices of the Shangs; it is a practice by no means unknown among pastoral 

 peoples. 



