546 ANNUAL RErORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



to tho basin of the Huang Ho (the Yellow River) through Central 

 Asia; and to that of the Yangtze from Farther India, along the same 

 path as that taken in prehistoric times by rice, the domestic fowl, and 

 other culture-elements.*^^ In any case, once it had appeared, it seems 

 to have spread witliin a century or two over most of northern and 

 central China proper. 



It is noteworthy that when the need arose for a written symbol to 

 denote the new implement, the determinative chosen was not that in 

 regular use with ideographs having to do with agriculture (see p. 545) 

 but the character for "ox"; as though in the minds of the Chinese 

 scribes the significant tiling about the plow was not so much its use 

 in tillage as its association with animal traction. 



The Far Eastern plow of today is frequently (although by no 

 means invariably) drawn by one or sometimes two animals harnessed 

 with rope traces to a swingletree pivoting on the end of a short and 

 usually much curved plow-beam (pis. 4 and 5). Whether this method 

 of attachment is really ancient in China is uncertain; but we know 

 from the evidence of old paintings that it was in use at least as far 

 back as the twelfth century A. D."' 



North of China, in Mongolia, the sedentary "peasant" type of 

 culture which occupied that area during Neolithic times had given 

 place, apparently by tho middle of tho first millennium B. C, to a 

 pastoral nomadism not unlike that found there today. In this, the 

 plow could naturally play little part. In other directions — east, west, 

 and south — the spread of the traction plow from China as a secondary 

 center of diffusion went on apace. Here the Chinese accounts are of 

 particular value for the light that they throw upon the workings of a 

 process which in the lands of the Occident had gone on largely un- 

 recorded. 



Thus it was from China that the plow reached eastern Tibet — 

 according to a late source, in the early centuries of the Christian Era; 

 in the central and western portions of that country, as we might 

 expect, Indian contacts are more apparent. 



From the Yangtze Valley the plow traveled to what are now south- 

 ern China and French Indochina, perhaps just before the com- 

 mencement of our era. From northern China, around the same 

 period, the plow reached southern Manchuria and Korea. Either 

 from the latter country or directly from China it was carried, about 

 the fifth or sixth century A. D., to the Japanese islands. But there 

 it never acquired first-rate importance, the peasantry placing depend- 

 ence rather upon hoes, mattocks, and implements of the foot-plow and 

 man-drawn classes. 



M The importance of this "back-door" to China has never received the recognition which it deserves; 

 yet through it have come many important elements of the Chinese civilization from prehistoric times down 

 to the present day. 



«» Dr. A. W. Hummel has very kindly brought to my attention Chinese paintings of that period in the 

 Library of Congress which illustrate the point involved. 



