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[[underlined]] Chapter XIX. [[/underlined]] 409.
with potsherds, artifacts, and fragments of charcoal (apparently the remains of ancient campfires built in the open, since we found no regular enclosed hearths), were innumerable specimens of what were beyond doubt the dried and semi-fossilized dung of sheep or goats---perhaps of both. [[superscript]] (364) [[/superscript]] 
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[[superscript]] (364) [[/superscript]]  Mixed flocks of sheep and goats, the latter generally black, are still common in the T'ai-ku region, as well as elsewhere in northern and northwestern China.
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The significance of this material lay in the fact that it almost certainly indicated the domestication of one or both of these animals; since wild members of neither species normally frequent the haunts of men or the vicinity of campfires. Moreover the domestic sheep and goats of China seem, on osteological grounds, not to derive from the corresponding wild forms inhabiting that country but from others found in regions much farther to the west.[[superscript]] (365) [[/superscript]]
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[[superscript]] (365) [[/superscript]] Thus the Chinese domestic sheep, like that of early Europe, appears to be derived ultimately from the wild [[underlined]] Ovis vignei [[/underlined]], the urial, a native of the Near and Middle East but not of China. The wild sheep of the latter country belong to quite a different group, zoologically speaking.
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     By way of additional confirmation of the presence here of sheep or goats, we encountered in the same culture-deposit a worked fragment, bearing tool-marks, apparently from a leg-bone of one or other of those animals. 
     The above facts showed almost conclusively that what we had here was a new culture, hitherto unknown in China, partly pastoral in type and possibly introduced from outside; for previously the only domestic animals found on Chinese prehistoric sites had been the dog and the pig, neither of which we found here on the Shih Hsiang site.

[[underlined]] Hunting and Fishing. [[/underlined]]
    Of the possible hunting of wild game, we found no indications here