Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-12-09
NO. 41-THE CIVILIZING PROCESS

CHINA
Meanwhile, as this triple system of White
Man civilization developed in India and in
the lands about the meeting places of Asia,
Africa and Europe, another and quite dis
tinCt civilization was developing and spread
ing out from the then fertile but now dry
and desolate valley Of the farm and from
the slopes of the Kuen-lun mountains in two
directions down the course of the Hwang-
no, and later into the valley of the Yang-tse-
kiang. We know practically nothing as yet
of the archaeology of China do not
know anything of the Stone Age in that part
Of the world, and at present our ideas OF
this early civilization are derived from the
still very imperfectly explored Chinese lit
erature.
The Part Played by Southern China
1t has evidently been from the first and
throughout a Monaghan civilization. Until
after the time of Alexander the Great there
are few traces of any Aryan or Semitic, much
less of Hamitic influence. All such influences
were still in another world separated by
mountains, deserts, and wild nomadic tribes
until that time. The Chinese seem to have
made their civilization spontaneously and I'M
assisted.
Some recent writer's suppose indeed con
nection with ancient Sumeria OF course both
China and Sumeria arose on the basis of the
almost worldwide early Neolithic culture
but the Tarim valley and the lower Euphrates
are separated by such vast obstacles O
mountain and desert as to forbid the idea OF
any migration or interchange of peoples who
had once settled down. Perhaps the move
ment from the north met another movement
of culture coming from the south.
Though the civilization of China il
wholly Monaghan Gas we have defined Mon
golian) it does not follow that the northern
roots are the only ones from which it grew.
If it grew first in the Tarim valley, then un-
like all other civilizations (includ:ng the
Mexican and Peruvian) it did not grow out
of the heliolithic culture.
We Europeans know very little as vet
of the ethnolOgy and pre-hstory of southern
China. There the Chinese mingle with such
kindred peoples as the Siamese and Burmese,
and seem to bridge over toward the darker
Dravidian peoples and toward the Malays. 1t
is quite clear from the Chinese records that
there were southern well as northern be-
ginnings of civilization, and that the Chi
nese civilization that comes into history 2,000
B. c. is the result of long process of con-
flicts, minglings and interchanges between a
southern and northern culture ofwhich the
southern may have been the earlier and more
highly developed.
The southern Chinese perhaps played the
role toward the northern Chinese that the
Hamites or Sumerians played to the A.yan
and Semitic peoples in the west, or that the
settled Dravidians played toward the Aryans
in India. They may have been the first ag-
riculturists and the first temple builders.
But so little is known as yet of his attract
i've chapter in pre-history, that we cannot
dwell upon it further here.
The Original Huns
The chief foreigners mentioned in the early
annals of China were Ural-Altaic people on
the northeast frontier, the Huns, against
whom certain of the earlier emperors made
war.
Chinese history is still very little known
to European students, and our accounts of
the early records are particularly unsatisfac.
tory. About 200 to 2400 B. G. reigned five
emperors, who seem to have been almost in
credibly exemplary beings.
There follows upon these first five en-
perors series of dynasties, of which the &C
counts become more and more exact and con-
yincing as they become more recent.
China has to tell long history of border
warfare and of grayer struggles between the
settled and nomad peoples. To begin with
China, like Sumer and like Egypt was a
land of city states. The government was at
first government of numerous kings; they
became loosely feudal under the emperor, as
the Egyptians did; and then later, as with
the Egyptians, came a centralzing empire.
Shang 1750 to 1925 B. c. and Chow
(1125 to $50 B. CO. are named as being
the two great dynastie. of the feudal period
Bronze vessels of these earlier dynasties,
beautiful, splendid, and with a distinctive
style of their own still exist and there can
be no doubt of the existence of a high state
of culture even before the days of Shang
Tt is perhaps a sense of symmetry that