The neighboring islands supported a few scattered fishing villages, while Kowloon peninsula and the New Territories to to the north were settled by rice farmers of several large clans. It was not until the 1920's that scholars begin to examine the pare-British period of Hong Kong's history. A few tantalizing earlier references exist which may correlate with places in Hong Kong, and describe salt industries and pearl fisheries that may have been practiced here. Archaeological investigation also began in the 1920's and showed that Hong Kong had a much longer history of human occupation, extending back to the Neolithic.
Sites abound on outlying islands and along the coastline of the New Territories.
More than one hundred sites of the Neolithic and Bronze Age have been recorded, and many have been systematically surveyed or excavated. The results of this research have been well published in recent decades, and scientific studies of excavated materials have thrown much light on prehistoric life in the area. There are no caves in the area to preserve even earlier sites, and open sites would now be in the seabed. In addition to the dramatic extension of Hong Kong's prehistory back several thousands of years, fieldwork in the last two decades suggests that there was a general continuity of occupation and population from the earliest period down to recent historical times. Discoveries of early Chinese civilization in the Central Plains of North China gave rise to notions that material progress in agriculture, bronze metallurgy, art, etc.