HOW COPPER-CULTURE REACHED CHINA
Metals connected with Deities—Introduction of Copper—Struggles for
the First “Mine-Land”—Early Metal-working in Caucasus, Armenia, and
Persia—Civilizations of Trans-Caspian Oases—Babylonian Influence in
Mid Asia—Bronze and Jade carried into Europe—Ancient “Gold Rushes”
to Siberia—Discoveries in Chinese Turkestan—Jade carried to
Babylonia—Links between China, Iran, and Siberia—Bronze-links
between China and Europe—Evidence of Ornaments and Myths—Early
Metal-working—Far Eastern and European Furnaces Identical—Chinese
Civilization dates from 1700 B.C.—Culture-mixing in Ancient Times.
The persistent and enterprising search for wealth in ancient times,
which, as will be shown in this chapter, had so much to do with the
spread of civilization, may seem quite a natural thing to modern man.
But it is really as remarkable, when we consider the circumstances, to
find the early peoples possessed of the greed of gold as it would be to
find hungry men who have been ship-wrecked on a lonely island more
concerned about its mineral resources than the food and water they were
absolutely in need of. What was the good of gold in an ancient
civilization that had no coinage? What attraction could it possibly
hold for desert nomads?
The value attached to gold, which is a comparatively useless metal, has
always been a fictitious value. As we have seen, it became precious in
ancient times, not because of its purchasing power, but for the reason
that it had religious associations. The early peoples regarded the
precious metal as an “avatar” of the life-giving and life-sustaining
Great Mother goddess—the “Golden Hathor”, the “Golden Aphrodite”.
In Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, India, and China the cow- and sky-goddess,
the source of fertilizing water, was, in the literal sense, a goddess
of gold. In India one of the five Sanskrit names for gold is Chandra
[265] (“the moon”), and the Indus was called “Golden Stream”, not
merely because gold was found in its sand, but because of its
connection with the celestials. “Gold is the object of the wishes of
the Vedic singer, and golden treasures are mentioned as given by
patrons, along with cows and horses. Gold was used for ornaments for
neck and breast, for ear-rings, and even for cups. Gold is always
associated with the gods. All that is connected with them is of gold;
the horses of the sun are ‘gold skinned’, and so on.” This summary by
two distinguished Sanskrit scholars emphasizes the close connection
that existed in India between gold and gold ornaments and religious
beliefs. [266]
“Gold”, a reader may contend, “is, of course, a beautiful metal, and
the ancients may well have been attracted by its beauty when they began
to utilize it for ornaments.” But is there any proof that ornaments
were adopted, because, in the first place, they made appeal to the
æsthetic sense, which, after all, is a cultivated sense, and not to be
entirely divorced from certain mental leanings produced by the
experiences and customs of many generations? Do ornaments really
beautify those who wear them? Was it the æsthetic sense that prompted
the early peoples to pierce their noses and ears; and to extend the
lobes of their ears so as to “adorn” themselves with shells, stones,
and pieces of metal? Can we divorce the practice of mutilation from its
association with crude religious beliefs? Inherited ideas of beauty may
be wrong ideas, and it can be said of the modern lady who wears
collections of brilliant and costly jewels that she is not necessarily
made more beautiful by perpetuating a custom rooted in the grossest
superstitions of antiquity, for these jewels were originally charms to
preserve health, to regulate the flow of blood, to promote fertility
and birth, and, generally speaking, to secure “luck” by bringing the
wearer into close touch with the “deities”, whose “soul-substance” was
contained in them.
When the æsthetic sense of mankind reached that high stage of
development represented by Greek sculpture, the so-called ornaments
were discarded and the human form depicted in all its natural beauty
and charm.
Whatever was holy seemed beautiful to the early people, and that is why
in a country like India, with its wealth of exquisitely coloured
flowers, the Sanskrit names for gold include Jāta-rūpa (native beauty),
and Su-varna (good, or beautiful colour). The gold colour was really a
luck-bringing colour, and therefore beautiful to Aryan eyes.
Having attached in their homelands a fictitious religious value to
gold, the early prospectors and miners carried their beliefs and
customs with them wherever they went, and these were in time adopted by
the peoples with whom they came into contact.
When Columbus crossed the Atlantic he and his followers greatly
astonished the unsophisticated natives of the New World by their
anxiety to obtain precious metals. They found, to their joy, that “the
sands of the mountain streams glittered with particles of gold; these”,
as Washington Irving says, [267] “the natives would skilfully separate
and give to the Spaniards, without expecting a recompense”.
No doubt the early searchers for gold in Africa and Asia met with many
peoples who were as much amused and interested, and as helpful, as were
the natives of the New World, who welcomed the Spaniards as visitors
from the sky.
Gold was the earliest metal worked by man. It was first used in Egypt
to fashion imitation sea-shells, and the magical and religious value
attached to the shells was transferred to the gold which, in
consequence, became “precious” or “holy”.
Copper was the next metal to be worked. It was similarly used for the
manufacture of personal ornaments and other sacred objects, being
regarded apparently, to begin with, as a variety of gold. But in
time—some centuries, it would appear, after copper was first extracted
from malachite—some pioneer of a new era began to utilize it as a
substitute for flint, and copper knives and other implements were
introduced. This discovery of the usefulness of copper had far-reaching
effects, and greatly increased the demand for the magical metal.
Increasing numbers of miners were employed, and search was made for new
copper-mines by enterprising prospectors who, in Egypt, were employed,
or, at any rate, protected, by the State. This search had much to do
with promoting race movements, and introducing not only new modes of
life but new modes of thought into lands situated at great distances
from the areas in which these modes of life and thought had origin. The
metal-workers were the missionaries of a New Age. In this chapter it
will be shown how they reached China.
Archæologists are not agreed as to where copper was first used for the
manufacture of weapons and implements. Some favour Egypt, and others
Mesopotamia. In the former country the useful metal was worked in
pre-Dynastic times, that is, before 3500 B.C. or 4500 B.C. “Copper
ornaments and objects, found in graves earlier than the middle
pre-Dynastic period”, wrote the late Mr. Leonard W. King, “are small
and of little practical utility as compared with the beautifully flaked
flint knives, daggers, and lances.... At a rather later stage in the
pre-Dynastic period, copper dagger-blades and adzes were produced in
imitation of flint and stone forms, and these mark the transition to
the heavy weapons and tools of copper which, in the early Dynastic
period, largely ousted flint and stone implements for practical use.
The gradual attainment of skill in the working of copper ore on the
part of the early Egyptians had a marked effect on the whole status of
their culture. Their improved weapons enabled them by conquest to draw
their raw materials from a far more extended area.” [268]
Copper was found in the wadis of Upper Egypt and on the Red Sea
coast—in those very areas in which gold was worked for generations
before copper was extracted from malachite. At a later period the
Pharaohs sent gangs of miners to work the copper-mines in the Sinaitic
peninsula. King Semerket, of the early Dynastic age, had men extracting
copper in the Wadi Maghara. “His expedition was exposed to the
depredations of the wild tribes of Beduin ... and he recorded his
punishment of them in a relief on the rocks of the Wadi.” There is
evidence that at this remote period the Pharaohs “maintained foreign
relations with far remote peoples”. [269] A record of a later age (c.
2000 B.C.) affords us a vivid glimpse of life in the “Mine-Land”. An
official recorded in an inscription that he had been sent there in what
he calls the “Evil summer season”. He complained, “It is not the season
for going to this Mine-Land.... The highlands are hot in summer, and
the mountains brand the skin.” Yet he could boast that “he extracted
more copper than he had been ordered to obtain”. [270]
The transition from stone to copper cannot be traced in ancient
Babylonia. Sumerian history begins at the seaport Eridu, when that
centre of civilization was situated at the head of the Persian Gulf—a
fact that suggests the settlement there of seafaring colonists. At the
dawn of Sumerian culture, copper tools and weapons had come into use.
No metals could be found in the alluvial “plain of Shinar”.
The early Babylonians (Sumerians) had to obtain their supplies of
copper from Sinai, Armenia, the Caucasus area, and Persia. It may be
that their earliest supplies came from Sinai, and that the battles in
that “Mine-Land”, recorded in early Egyptian inscriptions, were fought
between rival claimants of the ore from the Nile valley and the valley
of the Tigris and Euphrates. One ancient Pharaoh refers in an
inscription to his “first occurrence of smiting the Easterners” in
Sinai. “This designation”, comments Breasted, “of the event as the
‘first occurrence’ would indicate that it was a customary thing for the
kings of the time (First Dynasty, c. 3500 B.C.) to chastise the
barbarians.” [271] But were they really “barbarians”? Is it likely that
barbarians would be found in such a region, especially in summer? It is
more probable that the “Easterners” came from an area in which the
demand for copper was as great as it was in Egypt.
The regular battles between the ancient “peggers-out” of “claims” in
Mine-Land no doubt forced the “Easterners” to search for copper
elsewhere. By following the course of the Tigris the Sumerian
prospectors were led to the rich mineral area of the Armenian
Highlands, and it is of special significance in this connection to find
that the earliest Assyrian colonies were founded by Sumerians.
Apparently Nineveh (Mosul) had origin as a trading centre at which
metal ores were collected and sent southward some time before the
Semitic Akkadians obtained control of the northern part of the
Babylonian plain.
The copper obtained from Armenia and other western Asiatic areas was
less suitable than Sinaitic copper, being much softer. Sinaitic and
Egyptian copper is naturally hard on account of the proportion of
sulphur it contains. But after tin was found, and it was discovered
that, when mixed with copper, it produced the hard amalgam known as
bronze, the Sumerians appear to have entirely deserted the Sinaitic
Mine-Land, and left it to the Egyptians.
The Egyptians continued in their Copper Age until their civilization
ceased to be controlled by native kings.
Babylonia had likewise a Copper Age to begin with, but copper was at an
early period entirely supplanted by bronze, except for religious
purposes—a fact which is of great importance, especially when it is
found that the religious beliefs associated with copper and gold were
disseminated far and wide by the early miners—the troglodytes of Sinai
in the early Egyptian texts—who formed colonies that became industrial
and trading centres. Votive images found in Babylonia are of copper. A
good example of early Sumerian religious objects is the interesting
bull’s head in copper from Tello, which is dated c. 3000 B.C. The eyes
of this image of the bull-god—the “Bull of Heaven”, the sky-god, whose
mother or spouse was the “Cow of Heaven”—“are inlaid with
mother-of-pearl and lapis-lazuli”. A “very similar method is met with
in the copper head of a goat which was found at Fara”. [272] Here we
find fused in early Sumerian religious objects complex religious
beliefs connected with domesticated animals, sea-shells, and metals.
The opinion, suggested here by the writer, that the battles between
rival miners in Sinai compelled the Sumerians to search for copper
elsewhere and to discover means whereby the softer copper could be
hardened, appears to accord with the view that bronze was first
manufactured in Babylonia, or in some area colonized by Babylonia. In
his able summary of the archæological evidence regarding the
introduction of bronze, Sir Hercules Read shows that “the attribution
of the discovery to Babylonia is preferred as offering fewest
difficulties”. [273]
Recent archæological finds make out a good case for Russian Turkestan
as the “cradle of the bronze industry”.
In Troy and Crete bronze supplanted flint and obsidian. There was no
Copper Age in either of these culture centres. The copper artifacts
found in Crete are simply small and useless votive axes and other
religious objects.
Whence did the Babylonians receive, after the discovery was made how to
manufacture bronze, the necessary supplies of tin? Armenia and the
Caucasus “appear”, as Read says, “to be devoid of stanniferous ores”.
Apparently the early metal-searchers had gone as far as Khorassan in
Persia before their fellows had ceased to wage battles with Egyptians
in the Sinaitic “Mine-Land”. Tin has been located at Khorassan and “in
other parts of Persia, near Asterabad and Tabriz. [274]... From such
areas as these”, Reid says, “the tin used in casting the earliest
bronze may have been derived.” We are now fairly on our way along the
highway leading to China. “In Eastern Asia, beyond the radius of the
ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia”, Read continues, “there would
seem to be no region likely to have witnessed the discovery (of how to
work bronze) nearer than Southern China; for India, which has copper
implements of a very primitive type, is poor in tin ... while the Malay
peninsula, an extremely rich stanniferous region, does not appear to
have been mined in very ancient times”. [275] It is unlikely that
bronze was first manufactured in China, considering the period of its
introduction into Babylonia, which antedates by several centuries the
earliest traces of civilization in the Far East.
The history of the development of the industries and commerce of early
Babylonia is the history of the growth and dissemination of
civilization, not only in western Asia, but in the “Mid East” and the
“Far East”.
Babylonia, the Asiatic granary of the ancient world, lay across the
trade routes. Both its situation and its agricultural resources gave it
great commercial importance. It had abundant supplies of surplus food
to stimulate trade, and its industrial activity created a demand for
materials that could not be obtained in the rich alluvial plain. “Over
the Persian Gulf”, says Professor Goodspeed, [276] “teak-wood, found in
Eridu (the seaside “cradle” of Sumerian culture), was brought from
India. Cotton also made its way from the same source to the southern
cities. Over Arabia, by way of Ur, which stood at the foot of a natural
opening from the desert ... were led the caravans laden with stone,
spices, copper, and gold [277] from Sinai, Yemen, and Egypt.
Door-sockets of Sinaitic stone found at Nippur attest this traffic.”
Cedar wood was imported from the Syrian mountains “for the adornment of
palaces and temples. From the east, down the pass of Holwan, came the
marble and precious metal of the mountains. Much of this raw material
was worked over by Babylonian artisans and shipped back to
less-favoured lands, along with the grain, dates, and fish, the rugs
and cloths of native production. All this traffic was in the hands of
Babylonian traders, who fearlessly ventured into the borders of distant
countries, and must have carried with them thither the knowledge of the
civilization and wealth of their own home, for only thus can the
widespread influence of Babylonian culture in the earliest periods be
explained.”
It was evidently due to the influence of the searchers for metals and
the traders that the culture of early Sumeria spread across the Iranian
plateau. As Laufer has shown, [278] “the Iranians were the great
mediators between the West and the East”. The Chinese “were positive
utilitarians, and always interested in matters of reality; they have
bequeathed to us a great amount of useful information on Iranian
plants, products, animals, minerals, customs, and institutions”. Not
only plants but also Western ideas were conveyed to China by the
Iranians. [279]
The discoveries of archæological relics made by the De Morgan
Expedition in Elam (western Persia), and by the Pumpelly Expedition in
Russian Turkestan, have provided further evidence that
Sumero-Babylonian civilization exercised great influence over wide
areas in ancient times. Unfortunately no such records as those made by
the Egyptians who visited Mine-Land have been discovered either in
Babylonia or beside the mineral workings exploited by the Sumerians or
Akkadians. The Egyptian Pharaohs, as we have seen, had to send military
forces to protect their miners, and on one occasion found it necessary
to conduct mining operations in the hot season instead of in the cool
season, a fact which suggests that the opposition shown by rivals was
at times very formidable. It does not follow that the Babylonians had
to contend with similar opposition in Armenia and Persia. They appear
to have won the co-operation of the native peoples in the mid-Asian
mining districts, and to have made it worth their while to keep up the
supply of gold, and copper, and tin. Babylonia had corn and
manufactured articles to sell, and they made it possible for native
chiefs to organize their countries and to acquire wealth and a degree
of luxury. Nomadic pastoral peoples became traders, and communities of
them adopted Babylonian modes of life. Mr. W. J. Perry has shown that
in districts where minerals were anciently worked, the system of
irrigation, which brought wealth and comfort in Babylonia and the Nile
valley, was adopted, and that megalithic monuments were erected. [280]
The early searchers for metals and pearls and precious stones were
apparently the pioneers of civilization in many a district occupied by
backward peoples.
The mineral area to the south-east of the Caspian Sea appears to have
been exploited as early as the third millennium B.C., as was also the
mineral area stretching from the Caspian to the eastern coast of the
Black Sea. New trade routes were opened up and connections established,
not only with Elam and Babylonia in the south, but with Egypt, through
Palestine, and with Crete and with the whole Ægean area. Troy became
the “clearing-house” of this early trade flowing from western Asia into
Europe. The enterprising sea-kings of Crete appear to have penetrated
the Dardanelles and reached the eastern shores of the Black Sea, where
they tapped the overland trade routes. [281] Dr. Hubert Schmidt, who
accompanied the Pumpelly expedition to Russian Turkestan in 1903–4,
found Cretan Vasiliki pottery in one of the excavated mounds, and, in
another, “three-sided seal-stones of Middle Minoan type (c. 2000 B.C.),
engraved with Minoan designs”. [282] There is evidence which suggests
that this trade in metals between western Asia and the Ægean area was
in existence long before 2500 B.C., and not long after 3000 B.C.
One of the great centres of Mesopotamian culture in the south-eastern
Caspian area was Anau, near Askabad, on the Merve-Caspian railway
route. Another was Meshed, which lies to the south-east of Anau in a
rich metalliferous mountain region. One of the “Kurgans” (mounds)
excavated at Anau yielded archæological relics that indicated an early
connection between Turkestan and Elam in south-western Persia. In
another “Kurgan” were found traces of a copper-culture. The early
searchers for metals were evidently the originators or introducers of
this culture, and as the stratum contained baked clay figurines of the
Sumerian mother-goddess, the prototype of Ishtar, little doubt can
remain whence came the earliest miners. This region of desolate
sand-dunes was in ancient times irrigated by the Mesopotamian colonists
who sowed not only the seeds of barley, wheat, and millet, but also the
seeds of civilization, and stimulated progress among the native tribes.
The settlers built houses of bricks which had been sun-dried in
accordance with the prevailing Babylonian fashion. The Egyptian
potter’s wheel was introduced—another indication that regular trading
relations between Babylonia and Egypt were maintained at a very early
period.
Mr. Pumpelly, in the first flush of enthusiasm aroused by the mid-Asia
revelations, urged the claim that the agricultural mode of life
originated in the Transcaspian Oases, and that it passed thence to
Babylonia and Egypt. But the discovery of husks of barley in the
stomachs of naturally mummified bodies found in the hot dry sands of
Upper Egypt affords proof that cannot be overlooked in this connection.
[283] Agriculture was practised in the Nile valley long centuries
before the Transcaspian Copper Age was inaugurated. Besides, barley and
millet grow wild in the Delta area.
The early Mesopotamian searchers for metals, and their pupils from the
Transcaspian region, continued the explorations towards the east. They
appear to have wandered to the north-west of the Oxus and the
south-east of the Lake Balkash and apparently to the very borders of
China. This eastward drift must have been in progress long before the
introduction of bronze into central Europe, which had a Stone Age
culture for three or four centuries after bronze implements had become
common in Troy and Crete. The traders who carried bronze into Hungary
carried jade too, and the beliefs which had been connected with jade in
Asia. The earliest supplies of European jade objects must have come, as
will be shown, from Chinese Turkestan.
There was good reason for the early gold rush towards the east. Gold
can still be easily found “everywhere and in every form” in Siberia.
The Altai means “gold mountains”, and these yield silver and copper as
well as gold. Indeed, eastern Siberia is a much richer metalliferous
area than western Siberia, and this fact appears to have been
ascertained at a very remote period. The searchers for metals not only
collected gold, copper, and silver on the Altai Mountains and the area
of the upper reaches of the Yenesei River, but also penetrated into
Chinese Turkestan, where, as in Russian Turkestan, trading colonies
were founded, the metals were worked, and the agricultural mode of
life, including the system of irrigation, adopted with undoubted
success. [284] Important archæological excavations, conducted by Dr.
Stein in Chinese Turkestan, “on behalf of the Indian Government”, have
revealed traces of the far-reaching influences exercised by
Mesopotamian culture in a region now covered by the vast and confusing
sand-dunes of the Taklamakan Desert. At Khotan the discoveries made
were of similar character to those at Anau.
Khotan is the ancient trading centre which connected central Asia and
India, and India and China. One of the most important products of
Khotan is jade—that is, important from the historical point of view. It
is uncertain at what period the importation of jade into China from the
Khotan area was inaugurated. But there can be no doubt about the
antiquity of the jade trade between Chinese Turkestan and Babylonia.
Some of the Babylonian cylinder-seals were of jade, others being of
“marble, jasper, rock-crystal, emerald, amethyst, topaz, chalcedony,
onyx, agate, lapis-lazuli, hæmatite, and steatite” [285]—all relics of
ancient trade and mining activity. Turquoise was imported into
Babylonia from Khotan and Kashgar. The archæological finds made on the
site of the ancient Sumerian city at Nippur include cobalt, “presumably
from China”. [286] At Nippur was found, too, Persian marble,
lapis-lazuli from Bactria, and cedar and cypress from Zagros.
When it is borne in mind that the chief incentive behind the search for
precious metals and precious stones was a religious one, we should not
express surprise to find that not only the products of centres of
ancient civilization were carried across Asia to outlying parts, but
also myths, legends, and religious beliefs of complex character. These
were given a local colouring in different areas. In northern Siberia,
for instance, the local fauna displaced the fauna of the southern
religious cults, the reindeer or the goat taking the place of the
gazelle or the antelope. Mythological monsters received new parts, just
as the dolphin-god of Cretan and other seafaring peoples received an
elephant’s head in northern India and became the makara; and the
seafarers’ shark-god received in China the head of a lion, although the
lion is not found in China. No doubt the lion was introduced into China
as a religious art motif by some intruding cult. Touching on this phase
of the problem of early cultural contact, Ellis H. Minns [287] suggests
a number of possibilities to account for the similarities between
Siberian and Chinese art. One is that “the resemblance may be due to
both (Siberians and Chinese) having borrowed from Iranian or some other
Central Asian art.... In each case,” he adds, “we seem to have an
intrusion of monsters ultimately derived from Mesopotamia, the great
breeding-ground of monsters.” The data summarized in a previous chapter
[288] dealing with the Chinese dragon affords confirmation of this
view.
Dr. Joseph Edkins, writing in the seventies of last century as a
Christian missionary who made an intensive study of Chinese religious
beliefs at first hand, had much to say about the “grafting process” or
culture-mixing. “Every impartial investigator”, he wrote, “will
probably admit that the ceremonies and ideas of the Chinese sacrifices
link them with Western antiquity. The inference to be drawn is this,
that the Chinese primeval religion was of common origin with the
religions of the West. But if the religion was one, then the political
ideas, the mental habits, the sociology, the early arts and knowledge
of nature, should have been of common origin also with those of the
West.” [289]
No doubt the stories brought from Siberia by the early explorers tended
to stimulate the imaginations of the myth-makers of Mesopotamia, India,
and China. The mineral and hot springs in the cold regions may have
been regarded as proof that “the wells of life” had real existence.
Some of these wells are so greatly saturated with carbonic acid gas
that they burst skin and stone bottles. “Here is living water indeed!”
the early explorer may have exclaimed when he attempted to carry away a
sample. “The feathers in the air”, as Herodotus puts it when referring
to the snow, and the aurora borealis must have greatly impressed the
early miners in the mysterious Altai region—a region possessing so much
mineral wealth that it must have been regarded as a veritable
wonderland of the gods by the early prospectors. Who knows but that the
story of Gilgamesh’s pilgrimage through the dark mountain to the land
in which trees bore gems instead of fruit owes something to the
narratives of the early explorers who reached mysterious regions rich
in metals and gems, where the strange murmurings that fill the air on
still winter nights are still referred to as “the whisperings of the
stars”, and the aurora borealis, which scatters the darkness and
illumines snow-clad mountain ranges and valleys, displays wonderful and
vivid colours in great variety.
That the early culture which was disseminated eastward across Siberia
to China and westward into Europe was of common origin, is clearly
indicated by the archæological remains.
Dealing with the bronzes of Russia and Siberia, Sir Hercules Read
writes: “At both extremities of the vast area stretching from Lake
Baikal through the Southern Siberian Steppes across the Ural Mountains
to the basin of the Volga, and even beyond to the valleys of the Don
and Dnieper, there have been found, generally in tombs, but
occasionally on the surface of the ground, implements and weapons
marked by the same peculiarities of form, and by a single style of
decoration. These objects exhibit an undoubted affinity with those
discovered in China; but some of the distinctive features have been
traced in the bronze industry of Hungary and the Caucasus; for example,
pierced axes and sickles have a close resemblance to Hungarian and
Caucasian forms. The Siberian bronzes have this relationship both in
the East and West, but their kinship with Chinese antiquities being the
more obvious, it is natural to assume that the culture which they
represent is of East Asiatic origin.” Read notes, however, that “most
of the Chinese bronze implements are of developed, and therefore not of
primitive forms.... Such forms can only have been reached after a long
period of evolution, but their prototypes are found neither in the
Ural-Altaic region itself, where some objects may indeed be simpler in
design than others, but cannot be described as quite primitive; nor as
yet within the limits of China.” [290]
The evidence afforded by ancient religious beliefs and customs tends to
show that the cultural centre in Asia, which stimulated the growth of
civilization, was Babylonia, while Egyptian influence flowed northward
through Palestine and into Syria. In time the influence of Cretan
civilization made itself felt on the eastern shores of the Black Sea.
The ebb and flow of cultural influences along the trade routes at
various periods renders the problem of highly complex character. But
one leading fact appears to emerge. The demand for metals and precious
stones in the earliest seats of civilization—that is, in Babylonia and
Egypt—stimulated exploration and the spread of a culture based on the
agricultural mode of life. Not only was the system of irrigation, first
introduced in the Nilotic and Tigro-Euphratean valleys, adopted by
colonies of miners and traders who settled in mid-Asia and founded
sub-cultural centres that radiated westward and eastward; the religious
ideas and customs that had grown up with the agricultural mode of life
in the cradles of ancient civilization were adopted too. New
experiences and new inventions imparted “local colour” to colonial
culture, but the leading religious principles that veined that culture
underwent little change. The immemorial quest for the elixir of life
was never forgotten. It was not to purchase their daily bread alone
that men lived laborious days washing gold dust from river sands,
crushing quartz among the Altai Mountains, or quarrying and fishing
jade in Chinese Turkestan; they were chiefly concerned about
“purchasing” the “food of life” so as to secure immortality. The fear
of death, which sent Gilgamesh on his long journey, caused many a man
in ancient times to wander far and wide in search of life-giving
metals, precious stones, pearls, and plants. And so we find in China as
in Egypt, in Babylonia as in western Europe, that the quest of
immortality was the chief incentive that stimulated research,
discovery, and the spread of civilization. The demand for the wood of
sacred trees, incense-bearing trees and plants, precious metals and
precious stones in the temples of Egypt and Babylonia, had much to do
with the development of early trade. The Pharaohs of Egypt and the
Patesies of Sumeria fitted out expeditions to obtain treasure for their
holy places, and to keep open the trade routes along which the treasure
was carried.
That the system of metal-working had anciently an area of origin is
emphasized by the investigations conducted by Professor Gowland. [291]
He deals first with the Japanese evidence. “The method which was
practised, and the furnace employed by the early workers, still”, he
writes, “survive in use at several mines in Japan at the present time.”
A hole in the ground forms the furnace, and a bellows is used to
introduce the blast from the top. After the copper is smelted it is
allowed to cool off, and when it is nearly solidified it is taken out
and broken up. “The copper thus produced in Japan is never cast direct
from the smelting furnaces into useful forms, but is always resmelted
in crucibles, a mode of procedure which undoubtedly prevailed in Europe
during the early Metal and the Bronze Ages.” The Japanese clay
crucibles “are analogous to those found in the pile-dwellings of the
Swiss and Upper Austrian lakes”.
Dealing with iron-furnaces, the Professor shows that the Ancient
Egyptian furnace resembled “the Japanese furnace for copper, tin, and
lead”. The Etruscan furnace also resembled the Egyptian one. “From
metallurgical considerations only”, Gowland adds, “we would certainly
be led to the inference that the Etruscans had obtained their knowledge
of the method of extracting metal from that (the Egyptian) source.”
British evidence suggests that the methods obtaining in ancient times
were introduced from “the Mediterranean region of Europe.... The actual
process for the extraction of iron from its ores in Europe, in fact in
all countries in early times, was practically the same.”
Elsewhere, Professor Gowland has written: “It is important to note ...
that the type of furnace which survives in India among the hill tribes
of the Ghats is closely analogous to the prehistoric furnace of the
Danube, and of the Jura district in Europe”. [292]
“Culture-drifts” can thus be followed in their results. Backward
communities that adopted inventions in early times continue to use them
in precisely the same manner as did those ancient peoples by whom they
were first introduced. In like manner are early beliefs and customs
still perpetuated in isolated areas. But it does not follow that all
these beliefs had origin among the peoples who still cling to them.
Some so-called “primitive” beliefs are really of highly complex
character, with as long a history of development as has the primitive
type of furnace utilized by the hill tribes of India.
In the next chapter it will be shown that in the jade beliefs of China
traces survive of ideas not necessarily of Chinese origin—ideas that,
in fact, grew up and passed through processes of development in
countries in which jade was never found. For, as the Chinese bronze
implements are “not of primitive forms”, and therefore not indigenous,
neither are all Chinese beliefs and customs “primitive” in the same
sense, or, in the real sense, indigenous either. As the stimulus to
work metals in China came from an outside source, so, apparently, did
the stimulus to search for such a “life-giving” and “luck-conferring”
material as jade come from other countries, and from races unrelated to
those that occupied China in early times.
The beliefs associated with jade were developed in China, although they
did not originate there; and these beliefs were similar to those
attached to the pearls, the precious stones, and the precious metals
searched for by the ancient prospectors who discovered and first worked
jade in Chinese Turkestan and on the borders of China.
To sum up, it would appear that the elements of a religious culture,
closely associated with the agricultural mode of life, and common to
Sumeria and Egypt, passed across Asia towards China, reaching the
Shensi province about 1700 B.C. At a much later period the complex
culture of the Egyptian Empire period gradually drifted along the sea
route and left its impress on the Chinese coast. Iranian culture, which
was impregnated with Babylonian and Egyptian ideas, likewise exercised
a persisting influence, and was renewed again and again.
One of the ultimate results of the rise of Persia as a world-power, and
of the invasion of Asia by Alexander, was to bring China into direct
touch with the Hellenistic world.
Indian influence is represented chiefly by Buddhism. In northern India
Buddhism had been blended with Naga (serpent) worship, and when it
reached China, the local beliefs regarding dragons were given a
Buddhistic colouring. The Chinese Buddhists mixed the newly-imported
religious culture with their own. The “Islands of the Blest” were
retained by the cult of the East, and the Western Paradise by the cult
of the West. The latter paradise is unknown to the Buddhists in Burmah
and Ceylon, but has never been forgotten by the Buddhists of northern
China. A Buddha called “Boundless Age” was placed in the garden of the
Royal Lady of the West, but that goddess still lingered beside the
Peach Tree of Immortality, while the sky-goddess continued to weave the
web of the constellations, and the pious men and women of the Taoist
faith were supposed to reach her stellar Paradise by sailing along the
Celestial River in dragon-boats or riding on the back of dragons. The
Chinese Buddhists found ideas regarding Nirvana less satisfying than
those associated with the Paradise of the “Peaceful Land of the West”
and the higher Paradise of the “Palaces of the Stars”, in which dwelt
the gods and the demi-gods of the older faiths.
Writing in this connection, Dr. Joseph Edkins says: “A mighty branch of
foreign origin has been grafted in the old stock. The metaphysical
religion of Shakyamuni was added to the moral doctrines of Confucius.
Another process may then be witnessed. A native twig was grafted in the
Indian branch. Modern Taoism has grown up on the model supplied by
Buddhism. That it is possible to observe the modus operandi of this
repeated grafting, and to estimate the amount of gain and loss to the
people of China, resulting from the varied religious teaching which
they have thus received, is a circumstance of the greatest interest to
the investigator of the world’s religions.” [293]