And Their Bearing upon the Origin of the Chinese People By Arthur de Carle Sowerby, ¥.2.0.8., 7.2.8.
The origin of the been a question that has exercised the mind of anthropologists and antiquarians ever since the sciences concerned © of any importance, but to this day none of the many theories advanced has been definitely or universally accepted.
Chinese history, mythical and authentic, gives somewhere in the region of tha Wei River basin, in the north-western part of China, as the point of orgin and centre of expansion of the Chinese, or, more properly, the sons of Han, who gradually during the succeeding centuries spread their conquest over the whole of the country now known as China. But whether these sons of Han developed their civilization in the loess hills and proad alluvial valleys of the northwest, there arising out of the primtive state, or came from some other part of the great Asiatic land mass with their civilization and culture already developed, are points which it seems very difficult to decide. Some have seen in the Chinese culture something akin to that of the ancient Sumarians of Mesopotamia, and suggest that the Chinese originally came from somewhere in the region of Babylon. Others have suggested that Baby-jon borrowed from China.
Comparatively recently another theory has been gaining ground. It is that the Chinese of to-day are the original and indigenous inhabitants of the soil they now occupy, or, rather, that Chinese have arisen from the original state of savagery, from which all nations have sprung, on the site they now inhabit, which site they reached, while still in the primitive state, from the highlands of Centra] Asia,.the probable home of all the Mongoloid races.
Discoveries, archelogical and even palzontological, have been made in the last few years that point to this, and, when we come to consider the numerous so-called aboriginal mountain-dwelling races that occur in China in conjunction with these discoveries, we are fain te admit that there are considerable grounds for this new theory.
Tue Sons or Han.
Doubtless the sons of Han, and each successive tribe that they conquered with them, did overrun the rest of China, till the whole of this part of Southeastern Asia was brought under one rule, but this does not mean that all the present day Chinese, nor even any considerable proportion of them, are desfendants of those sons of Han. It is far more likely that they are the descendants of the people that the sons of Han conquered, with, perhaps, here and there a sprinkling of Han blood, and, in the north especially, a good deal larger sprinkling of Tartar and Mongol blood. But, as has been the case in so many other parts of the world, the substratum Chinese has: of the race has remained the samo} from the time of the original occupation of the land by an early savage race till now.
As to the evidence of the civilization of China having arisen in China, and not having been brought in from soma outside country, it may be pointed out that recently jq@uscoveries have been made in Honan in old quarternary strata of relics that prove, or go towards proving, that the methods of divination used in Chine in classical tames, and possibly even today, are the same as those used in prehistorical times. Turtle shells, which can have been used for no other purpose than divination as mentioned in the "Odes of Con-furious"'
By taper, reed, and tortoise shell I have divined And all, O Love, is well Eave been found mixed up with bones of animals that suggest sacrifice and even with human remains.
A still more significant thing in this connexion is the discovery of stone implements that bear a remarkable resemblance to iron implements in use amongst the Chinese today. But these discoveries in themselves are not suflicient to prove the theory put forward, and we must wait for many more such finds before they can bs accepted as definite proof of it.
This makes it necessary for us to see what we can discover in an examination of the people who live in China to help us to prove or disprove our theory of their origin.
Many AsorioinaL TRIBES.
In the "Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society of 1920" there appeared a request on behalf of a gentleman who was making a study of the aborigines of China for any information that could be supplied upon certain points enumerated. from these points it is evident that there are a great many more aboriginal tribes in China Proper tuan the man in the street, or even those who know China fairly well, have any idea about. And the significant thing about these aborigines is that they are all hill tribes and are scattered throughout west, central, south, and southeast China, in short, over a considerable proportion of the country. Apparently their languages, er the dialects they speak, are all more or less related, and belong to the group of monosyllabic Janguages,;0f which Chinese and Siamese are; members. In other words, the Chinese that live in the valleys and on the plains of the parts of China under discussion are related to these hill tribes, are nearer to them, in fact, than they are to the Mongols and Tartars, with whom they have nothing in common in the matter of language.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.