extinct species of stag and bull, even tapirs and other wild animals.  About 50,000 B.C. there lived by these lakes a hunting people whose stone implements (and a few of bone) have been found in many places.  The implements are comparable in type with the palaeolithic implements of Europe (Mousterian type, and more rarely Aurignacian or even Magdalenian).  They are not, however, exactly like the European implements, but have a character of their own.  We do not yet know what the men of these communities looked like, because as yet no indisputable human remains have been found.  All the stone implements have been found on the surface, where they have been brought to light by the wind as it swept away the loess.  These stone-age communities seem to have lasted a considerable time and to have been spread not only over North China but over Mongolia and Manchuria.  It must not be assumed that the stone age came to an end at the same time everywhere.  Historical accounts have recorded, for instance, that stone implements were still in use in Manchuria and eastern Mongolia at a time when metal was known and used in western Mongolia and northern China.  Our knowledge about the palaeolithic period of Central and South China is still extremely limited; we have to wait for more excavations before anything can be said.  Certainly, many implements in this area were made of wood or more probably bamboo, such as we still find among the non-Chinese tribes of the south-west and of South-East Asia.  Such implements, naturally, could not last until today.

About 25,000 B.C. there appears in North China a new human type, found in upper layers in the same caves that sheltered Peking Man.  This type is beyond doubt not Mongoloid, and may have been allied to the Ainu, a non-Mongol race still living in northern Japan.  These, too, were a palaeolithic people, though some of their implements show technical advance.  Later they disappear, probably because they were absorbed into various populations of central and northern Asia.  Remains of them have been found in badly explored graves in northern Korea.

4 The Neolithic age

In the period that now followed, northern China must have gradually become arid, and the formation of loess seems to have steadily advanced.  There is once more a great gap in our knowledge until, about 4000 B.C., we can trace in North China a purely Mongoloid people with a neolithic culture.  In place of hunters we find cattle breeders, who are even to some extent agriculturists as well.  This may seem an astonishing statement for so early an age.  It is a fact, however, that pure pastoral nomadism is exceptional, that normal pastoral nomads have always added a little farming to their cattle-breeding, in order to secure the needed additional food and above all fodder, for the winter.