was shown that the traditional chronology is wrong and another must be adopted, reducing all the dates for the more ancient history, before 900 B.C.  Finally, all narratives and reports from China’s earliest period have been dealt a mortal blow by modern archaeology, with the excavations of recent years.  There was no trace of any high civilization in the third millennium B.C., and, indeed, we can only speak of a real “Chinese civilization” from 1300 B.C. onward.  The peoples of the China of that time had come from the most varied sources; from 1300 B.C. they underwent a common process of development that welded them into a new unity.  In this sense and emphasizing the cultural aspects, we are justified in using from then on a new name, “Chinese”, for the peoples of China.  Those sections, however, of their ancestral populations who played no part in the subsequent cultural and racial fusion, we may fairly call “non-Chinese”.  This distinction answers the question that continually crops up, whether the Chinese are “autochthonons”.  They are autochthonons in the sense that they formed a unit in the Far East, in the geographical region of the present China, and were not immigrants from the Middle East.

2 The Peking Man

Man makes his appearance in the Far East at a time when remains in other parts of the world are very rare and are disputed.  He appears as the so-called “Peking Man”, whose bones were found in caves of Chou-k’ou-tien south of Peking.  The Peking Man is vastly different from the men of today, and forms a special branch of the human race, closely allied to the Pithecanthropus of Java.  The formation of later races of mankind from these types has not yet been traced, if it occurred at all.  Some anthropologists consider, however, that the Peking Man possessed already certain characteristics peculiar to the yellow race.

The Peking Man lived in caves; no doubt he was a hunter, already in possession of very simple stone implements and also of the art of making fire.  As none of the skeletons so far found are complete, it is assumed that he buried certain bones of the dead in different places from the rest.  This burial custom, which is found among primitive peoples in other parts of the world, suggests the conclusion that the Peking Man already had religious notions.  We have no knowledge yet of the length of time the Peking Man may have inhabited the Far East.  His first traces are attributed to a million years ago, and he may have flourished in 500,000 B.C.

3 The Palaeolithic Age

After the period of the Peking Man there comes a great gap in our knowledge.  All that we know indicates that at the time of the Peking Man there must have been a warmer and especially a damper climate in North China and Inner Mongolia than today.  Great areas of the Ordos region, now dry steppe, were traversed in that epoch by small rivers and lakes beside which men could live.  There were elephants, rhinoceroses,