ABSTRACT
The last chapter described, in summary, the manner in which knowledge of the early history and pre-history of China passed, during the decade of the 1930’s, from mythology and surmise to factual evidence and a proved chronology. The effect of the archaeological findings in China may be compared to that achieved, in the case of Europe, by modern investigators, when they first accurately ‘placed’ the hitherto legendary sites and movements of the Homeric and Hellenic epochs, on a mundane scale of time and place, and related them to preceding and concurrent events in the Eastern Mediterranean. A starting-point was thus given to the scientific treatment of Chinese history. Most important, the actual antecedents and circumstances of that ‘model’ system of social organisation and thought, the classical society of the supposed Golden Age—the key conception which formed and coloured all subsequent Chinese thought and development—were identified with a specific period, and specific places and personalities (or at least dynasties).
