66 G. Elliot Smith on 



mariners, for the things they were searching for were very few 

 and far between. But in Japan pearl-shell, gold and copper were 

 found and were responsible for the planting in Japan of the 

 germs of western culture. This fact lies at the root of the 

 remarkable contrast between the histories of China and Japan. 

 The latter was inoculated with the powerful and disturbing 

 stimulus of civilization, at a time when the inert mass of China 

 was yet almost uninfluenced, except by the gradual and more 

 peaceful penetration of western influence in a very attenuated 

 and much modified form. For the percolation of Babylonian 

 culture into Persia, thence through Turkestan along the Tian Shan 

 route (see map J) into eastern China, was a very slow and insidious 

 process, vastly different from the sudden irruption into Japan of 

 swarms of rough sailors in a hurry to rob it of its precious 

 metals and its pearls. These men also found gold in Korea and 

 in the watershed of the Amur, and they settled down to exploit 

 it, gradually making their way west along the river (see map, F) 

 until eventually they seem to have met, near the headwaters of 

 the Yenesei (see map, Y), the terminus of another, and probably 

 more ancient, band of gold-prospectors who had been led to the 

 " Mountains of G-old " (Altai) by the series of gold deposits 

 stretching from Persia through Russian Turkestan (see map, E). 



Stone Pyramids blaze the track of the men who wandered 

 west from Manchuria {F) ; dolmens, smaller stone monuments 

 and irrigation works those of the earlier band from Persia {E). 



But the coastal wanderings of the ancient mariners did not 

 end at Korea. They pushed further north and seem to have 

 discovered gold at one spot on the Sea of Okhotsh (See map 0), 

 the place where the metal still occurs ; there are also found ships 

 revealing certain distinctive peculiarities of the earliest Egyptian 

 sea-going vessels. 



There can also be little doubt that the wanderings extended 

 further still, to Alaska, and along the Pacific coast of America 

 (see map, P). 



But there was another movement in the direction of America 



