468 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
intensive study, it seems to me that the most significant lesson that 
they teach is the vital necessity of placing Chinese archeological 
study on a permanent and definitely organized basis, with proper 
governmental recognition and support, and with provision made for 
the training up of a staff of scientific archeologists. China has had 
her antiquarians for centuries; and I should be the last to under- 
rate the value of the work done by them. But antiquarian lore alone 
is not enough to extract from a site like this even a tithe of the 
information which might have been secured had the work been con- 
trolled from the first by men possessing both technical training and 
field experience. It is perhaps not too much to say that a properly 
conducted excavation here would have doubled our knowledge of 
the material culture and perhaps too of the religious beliefs of a 
period of the highest importance in the development of Chinese 
civilization. 
The thought suggests itself in this connection (it is not original 
with me but has been in the air for several years)—can there not be 
established a school of Chinese archeology, supported by Chinese and 
foreign institutions alike, both for the training of a force of com- 
petent field workers and for the undertaking of a systematic study 
of the still remaining traces of man’s former existence in this coun- 
try? Few things would do more, either to extend the general sum 
of human knowledge or, more specifically, to enhance among occi- 
dental nations the appreciation of a great civilization, destined to 
exercise, in the centuries to come, such a profound influence upon the 
destinies of mankind, 
