At this time, about 4000 B.C., the other parts of China come into view.  The neolithic implements of the various regions of the Far East are far from being uniform; there are various separate cultures.  In the north-west of China there is a system of cattle-breeding combined with agriculture, a distinguishing feature being the possession of finely polished axes of rectangular section, with a cutting edge.  Farther east, in the north and reaching far to the south, is found a culture with axes of round or oval section.  In the south and in the coastal region from Nanking to Tonking, Yuennan to Fukien, and reaching as far as the coasts of Korea and Japan, is a culture with so-called shoulder-axes.  Szechwan and Yuennan represented a further independent culture.

All these cultures were at first independent.  Later the shoulder-axe culture penetrated as far as eastern India.  Its people are known to philological research as Austroasiatics, who formed the original stock of the Australian aborigines; they survived in India as the Munda tribes, in Indo-China as the Mon-Khmer, and also remained in pockets on the islands of Indonesia and especially Melanesia.  All these peoples had migrated from southern China.  The peoples with the oval-axe culture are the so-called Papuan peoples in Melanesia; they, too, migrated from southern China, probably before the others.  Both groups influenced the ancient Japanese culture.  The rectangular-axe culture of north-west China spread widely, and moved southward, where the Austronesian peoples (from whom the Malays are descended) were its principal constituents, spreading that culture also to Japan.

Thus we see here, in this period around 4000 B.C., an extensive mutual penetration of the various cultures all over the Far East, including Japan, which in the palaeolithic age was apparently without or almost without settlers.

5 The eight principal prehistoric cultures

In the period roughly around 2500 B.C. the general historical view becomes much clearer.  Thanks to a special method of working, making use of the ethnological sources available from later times together with the archaeological sources, much new knowledge has been gained in recent years.  At this time there is still no trace of a Chinese realm; we find instead on Chinese soil a considerable number of separate local cultures, each developing on its own lines.  The chief of these cultures, acquaintance with which is essential to a knowledge of the whole later development of the Far East, are as follows: 

(a) The north-east culture, centred in the present provinces of Hopei (in which Peking lies), Shantung, and southern Manchuria.  The people of this culture were ancestors of the Tunguses, probably mixed with an element that is contained in the present-day Paleo-Siberian tribes.  These men were mainly hunters, but probably soon developed a little primitive agriculture and made coarse, thick pottery with certain basic forms which were long preserved in subsequent Chinese pottery (for instance, a type of the so-called tripods).  Later, pig-breeding became typical of this culture.