HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH
145
Iron was also used to make arrow heads, fishing hooks, and knives and the finding of moulds for making them points again to the fact that they were made on the spot.
Finally we must mention that skeletons have been found in those sites; the horn of a large deer of species unknown; and that near the Lantau site is the pattern carved on a rock. This pattern is used by the aborigines of Hainan Island for tattooing, but it would be unsafe to infer a connection on these grounds alone. It is, however, a proof of aboriginal settlement.
This brief summary of the prehistoric population of our region must suffice. In later chapters we shall try to discover what these people were and when they lived. At present, it is necessary to emphasise that they were a seaboard people who practised primitive industries of their own, but who imported a great many of their possessions either from China, Indo-China or the East Indies archipelago; in other words, they were connected up with a trade route, or were even possibly one of the links in the trade routes which in early times were used in the Far East.
III. SOUTH CHINA BEFORE THE HANS
There is all kinds of evidence as to a prehistoric migration of peoples using stone tools between India, the Far East, Polynesia and even Europe. These migrants, who are called "Austronesians” by the prehistorians, are believed to have navigated the seas and rivers in outrigger boats and to have introduced a very early exchange of objects the prehistoric world valued, such as cowries, tortoise shells and the like.
The archaeological finds point to a survival of this culture in South China. How late it survived is not absolutely clear and unfortunately no authoritative opinion on the subject has been given. But from the position of the sites it might be supposed that the inhabitants were pushed onto the seacoast by the pressure of other peoples and their survival may have lasted well into historic times, even possibly as late as the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960), the date, as we shall see, when Chinese peasants first began to migrate into this region.
The Tanka might, in theory, be the descendants of these earlier
Page 146 is missing
Page 150
Page 151