Viewing page 72 of 182

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

8.

served that the flood caused by the rainstorm in the summer of 1929 took away a great deal of the land south of this village, how much destruction might it have done in three thousand summers? It is not to be meant that flood occurs in this place perrenially; but at the same, it must be remembered that cutting away the bank by undermining it does not need any great flood. That the course of this river was much further to the northeast on the other side of the bank can be readily ascertained by looking at the quite wide extent of the sandy bank there. It may be safely inferred in view of this situation that this part of the Huan River and its bank on the northeast might have been a part of Yin-hsü, and the treasures buried therein were all washed away. Walking on the sandy bank, one might occasionally pick up string-impressed pot-shards; its survival from flood is obviously borne on the round-off appearance of the corners.

As for the southern limit, the shafts opened in the spring season showed beyond any doubt that the deposit extends much further south. The three trenches opened in the northwest this season yielded artifacts quite similar to what are found directly north of the village, except that no inscribed bones were found. But it does not need a great deal of argument to show that such a negative character can hardly be used as evidence to prove that this part should be excluded from the area of Yin-hsü. Where the inscribed bones are found, is undoubtedly only part of the early capital of the Shang Dynasty. It would be therefore quite erroneous to take the oracle bones as the exclusive index to the buried remained of Yin-hsü. Pot-shards is certainly a much better index; if this is taken, the extent of the remains of the Shang Dynasty is certainly much greater than Hsiao-t'un Ts'un.

D. Greater part of the deposit North of the Village having been disturbed.

The chief factors responsible for the disturbance of the under-