Mr. H. E. Gibson's Lecture to Numismatic Society:
Development From Pre-Historic Times The members of the Numismatic Society of China who were present ay the third regular fortnightly meeting held on Tuesday (Oct. 23), in the reading room of the Royal Asiatic Society, 20 Museum Road, greatly enjoyed listening to an able paper by H, E. Gibson on the subject of Early Chinese Money."
Using as illustrations drawings on the blackboard of hieroglyphies from tanelent spade, pu and sword mones, and also from' the famous oracle bones of Honan, as well as some actual specimens. of early money borrowed from the Shanghat Museum (R. A. S.) for the occasion, Mr. Gibson presented It has not been determined ace tunately when the metal currency of ancient China was actually ins grated. Prior to the period of Shan Chinese, in the old part of China, that vast section of territory lying. parallel to the Yellow River and extending west to Central Asia, had a state of civilization which archaeological finds show was well advanced. The oracle bones of Shang prove that the people who first occupied this territory handed down to the inhabitants of this state a pictographic written language, which later developed into symbols and became the foundation for the seal character. This. a vivid. picture of financial trans factions in the earliest periods of Chinese history, even delving back into the pre-historical period. He showed how the various forms of money, mentioned above, evolved from objects in actual daily use, till finally the common cash coin with a square hole was devised, lasting for something like twenty-five centuries down to the recent Republican period.
Mr. A. de C. Sowerby, president of the society, in thanking Mr. Gibson for his interesting paper, suggested the tortoise shell referred to in the ancient Chinese writings was not the tortoise shell of modern commerce, but the shell of a land tortoise Prevalent in those days but now Mr. Gibson's lecture follows in part:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.