History 423
any major outside influences. There is little dispute, on the other hand, that the earliest cultures emerged from 4 000 BC and must be seen within the framework of a changing environment in which sea levels rose from depths of 100 metres below the present inexorably submerging vast tracts of coastal plain and forming basically the modern shoreline and ecology to which human groups had to adapt, or perish.
Archaeological excavations have revealed two main Neolithic cultures lying in stratified sequence. The final phase of Hong Kong's prehistory was marked by the appearance of bronze around the middle of the second millennium BC. Bronze artefacts seem not to have been in common use, but fine specimens of weapons, knives, arrowheads and halberds, and tools such as fishing hooks and axes have been excavated from Hong Kong sites. There is evidence, too, in the form of stone moulds from Kwo Lo Wan on the original Chek Lap Kok Island, Tung Wan and Sha Lo Wan on Lantau Island and Tai Wan and Sha Po Tsuen on Lamma Island, that bronze was actually made locally.
The Bronze Age pots have designs that often resemble the geometric patterns of the late Neolithic period, but with their own distinctive style, including the 'Kui dragon' or 'double F' pattern so characteristic of the region during that period.
Early Chinese written records refer to maritime peoples living in China's southeastern seaboard as 'Yue'. It is possible, therefore, that at least some of Hong Kong's prehistoric inhabitants were from the 'Hundred Yue'.
A prehistoric burial ground was discovered at Tung Wan Tsai North on Ma Wan Island in 1997. Among the 20 graves discovered, 15 yielded human skeletal remains, seven skeletons were relatively well preserved. Study of the human bones revealed they belonged to Asian Mongoloid, early inhabitants whose features resemble that of inhabitants of the tropics.
A Neolithic stone-working site was discovered at Ho Chung, Sai Kung, in 1999. Scattered around a work floor of about 200 square metres, were a number of stone cores, flakes, chipped stone tools, carving tools and polished implements. The artefacts provide valuable data for the study of the stone-working technology of Hong Kong's Neolithic inhabitants.
A team of experts from Hong Kong and the Mainland dug up a site in Sha Ha, Sai Kung, between October 2001 and September 2002. The findings not only helped complete the chronology of Hong Kong's ancient cultures, but also provided important clues to the kind of society that existed at the time and the way settlements formed in the Pearl River Delta.
Rock carvings with geometric designs, and patterns resembling stylised animals most likely made by these early inhabitants, were found at Shek Pik on Lantau Island, on Kau Sai Chau, Po Toi, Cheung Chau and Tung Lung Chau, and at Big Wave Bay and Wong Chuk Hang on Hong Kong Island.
The conquest of South China by the military from the North during the Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220) dynasties brought increasing numbers of
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