of urban civilization and the invention of writing. The typical
Yang-shao culture seems to have come to an end around 1600 or 1500 B.C.
It continued in some more remote areas, especially of Kansu, perhaps to
about 700 B.C. Remnants of this painted pottery have been found over a
wide area from Southern Manchuria, Hopei, Shansi, Honan, Shensi to
Kansu; some pieces have also been discovered in Sinkiang. Thus far, it
seems that it occurred mainly in the mountainous parts of North and
North-West China. The people of this culture lived in villages near to
the rivers and creeks. They had various forms of houses, including
underground dwellings and animal enclosures. They practised some
agriculture; some authors believe that rice was already known to them.
They also had domesticated animals. Their implements were of stone with
rare specimens of bone. The axes were of the rectangular type. Metal was
as yet unknown, but seems to have been introduced towards the end of the
period. They buried their dead on the higher elevations, and here the
painted pottery was found. For their daily life, they used predominantly
a coarse grey pottery.

After the discovery of this culture, its pottery was compared with the
painted pottery of the West, and a number of resemblances were found,
especially with the pottery of the Lower Danube basin and that of Anau,
in Turkestan. Some authors claim that such resemblances are fortuitous
and believe that the older layers of this culture are to be found in the
eastern part of its distribution and only the later layers in the west.
It is, they say, these later stages which show the strongest
resemblances with the West. Other authors believe that the painted
pottery came from the West where it occurs definitely earlier than in
the Far East; some investigators went so far as to regard the
Indo-Europeans as the parents of that civilization. As we find people
who spoke an Indo-European language in the Far East in a later period,