later
Chinese pottery.

7 _The Lung-shan culture_

While the Yang-shao culture flourished in the mountain regions of
northern and western China around 2000 B.C., there came into existence
in the plains of eastern China another culture, which is called the
Lung-shan culture, from the scene of the principal discoveries.
Lung-shan is in the province of Shantung, near Chinan-fu. This culture,
discovered only about twenty-five years ago, is distinguished by a black
pottery of exceptionally fine quality and by a similar absence of metal.
The pottery has a polished appearance on the exterior; it is never
painted, and mostly without decoration; at most it may have incised
geometrical patterns. The forms of the vessels are the same as have
remained typical of Chinese pottery, and of Far Eastern pottery in
general. To that extent the Lung-shan culture may be described as one of
the direct predecessors of the later Chinese civilization.

As in the West, we find in Lung-shan much grey pottery out of which
vessels for everyday use were produced. This simple corded or matted
ware seems to be in connection with Tunguse people who lived in the
north-east. The people of the Lung-shan culture lived on mounds produced
by repeated building on the ruins of earlier settlements, as did the
inhabitants of the "Tells" in the Near East. They were therefore a
long-settled population of agriculturists. Their houses were of mud, and
their villages were surrounded with mud walls. There are signs that
their society was stratified. So far as is known at present, this
culture was spread over the present provinces of Shantung, Kiangsu,
Chekiang, and Anhui, and some specimens of its pottery went as far as
Honan and Shansi, into the region of the painted pottery. This culture
lasted in the east until about 1600 B.C., with clear evidence of rather
longer duration only in the south. As black pottery of a similar
character occurs also in the Near East, some authors believe that it has
been introduced into the Far East by another migration (Pontic
migration) following that migration which supposedly brought the painted
pottery. This theory has not been generally accepted because of the fact
that typical black pottery is limited to the plains of East China; if it
had been brought in from the West, we should expect to find it in
considerable amounts also in West China. Ordinary black pottery can be
simply the result of a special temperature in the pottery k