The civilisation of Japan
cannot be traced back beyond about the eighth century B.C. Even
then the population was probably a mixed flotsam from
neighbouring lands-- Ainus, Koreans, Chinese, and Malays. What
was the character of the primitive civilisation resulting from
the mixture of these different cultures we do not know. But the
chief elements of Japanese civilisation came later from China.
Japan had no written language of any kind until it received one
from China about the sixth century of the Christian Era.
The civilisation of China itself goes back at least to about 2300
B.C., but we cannot carry it further back with any confidence.
The authorities, endeavouring to pick their steps carefully among
old Chinese legends, are now generally agreed that the primitive
Chinese were a nomadic tribe which slowly wandered across Asia
from about the shores of the Caspian Sea. In other words, they
started from a region close to the cradle of western
civilisation. Some students, in fact, make them akin to the
Akkadians, who founded civilisation in Mesopotamia. At all
events, they seem to have conveyed a higher culture to the
isolated inhabitants of Western Asia, and a long era of progress
followed their settlement in a new environment.
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