6 _The Yang-shao culture_

The various cultures here described gradually penetrated one another,
especially at points where they met. Such a process does not yield a
simple total of the cultural elements involved; any new combination
produces entirely different conditions with corresponding new results
which, in turn, represent the characteristics of the culture that
supervenes. We can no longer follow this process of penetration in
detail; it need not by any means have been always warlike. Conquest of
one group by another was only one way of mutual cultural penetration. In
other cases, a group which occupied the higher altitudes and practiced
hunting or slash-and-burn agriculture came into closer contacts with
another group in the valleys which practiced some form of higher
agriculture; frequently, such contacts resulted in particular forms of
division of labour in a unified and often stratified new form of
society. Recent and present developments in South-East Asia present a
number of examples for such changes. Increase of population is certainly
one of the most important elements which lead to these developments. The
result, as a rule, was a stratified society being made up of at least
one privileged and one ruled stratum. Thus there came into existence
around 2000 B.C. some new cultures, which are well known
archaeologically. The most important of these are the Yang-shao culture
in the west and the Lung-shan culture in the east. Our knowledge of both
these cultures is of quite recent date and there are many enigmas still
to be cleared up.

The _Yang-shao culture_ takes its name from a prehistoric settlement in
the west of the present province of Honan, where Swedish investigators
discovered it. Typical of this culture is its wonderfully fine pottery,
apparently used as gifts to the dead. It is painted in three colours,