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[[underline]] Chapter XVIII. [[/underline]]  39^[[5.]]

of cultivation is very harmful to the soil, which it rapidly robs of its fertility. Hence fresh patches of arable land must constantly be sought, at ever increasing distances from the home village. At length the latter itself has to be moved, to bring it nearer the areas latest to be brought under cultivation. It is this fact which seems most plausibly to explain the evidence found by Mr. Tung and his helpers of those temporary abandonments of the site at Wa Cha Hsieh, already mentioned (see page 379).
  In all liklihood the heavier and more arduous work, that of clearing the ground (usually with the aid of fire) and of preparing it for planting, was performed by the men; while the women, for magical reasons connected with the idea of fertility and reproduction, did the actual cultivating.  Such at least is the practice, and such the motives underlying it, among the more backward peoples of southern China, Indo-China, and the East Indian Islands, among whom this method of growing crops still survives.  Fields during Neolithic times, just as far down into the historical period, were probably tilled in common; for the practice of [[underline]] jhūming [[/underline]] is incompati^[[b]]le with the joint ownership of land [[superscript]] [[strikethrough]] ( [[/strikethrough]] (350-a) [[/superscript]].
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[[superscript]] (350-a) [[/superscript]]  In China until well toward the close of the pre-Christian period the land was owned by clans of nobles, though tilled by their subject population of peasant-serfs. It was only by degrees, during the past 2000 years or thereabout, that the present system of peasant ownership was adopted, and then only in part.
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  As in modern China, so too among the Neolithic people of Wa Cha Hsieh much use was no doubt made of leaf and root crops; though naturally no traces of these has survived. Neither did the excavators find any remains either of wheat or of rice. However they discovered, apparently [[underline]] in situ [[/underline]], carbonized grains of [[underline]] kao-liang [[/underline]], or "giant millet" ([[underline]] Sorghum vulgare [[/underline]]), today an important food-plant in China but generally believed not to have been introduced into that country, pretty surely from India, until about the 6th century A.D. [[superscript]] (351) [[/superscipt]] One such find alone, however, is not enough