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5. 

   If we take the development of zoomorphic decoration as a whole, some of the features concerning this particular problem can be better explained.  In his study on Archaic Chinese Jades, collected by a. W. Bahr, B. Laufer has printed in one plate(Fig.16) ten different [[strikethrough]]f[[/strikethrough]] forms of oxhead cared [[strikethrough]]of[[/strikethrough]] on Jade, which he classified as as naturalistic (1,2,5,6), conventionalized(8,10) and intermediate type(3,4,7).  All these he assigns to the Chou period, because it "is the style of the Chou bronze fonders and it is obvious that this school of lapidaries [[strikethrough]]derive[[/strikethrough]] derived its inspiration from the sacrosanct bronze vessels.  Another school of naturalistic tendencies flourished, perhaps in some other locality and may have worked after traditions going back to the Shang period...." (B. Laufer, Archaic Chinese Jades, p35)  This statement was certainly made with great caution and the most justifiable at the time.  But if we compare 4 [[strikethrough]]of[[/strikethrough]] in Fig. 16 a, with Fig. 16 b , we find almost an exact duplicate.  The loop handle (Fig. 16 c) seems to be a cross of 8 and 9 in Fig. 16a, only more conventionalized.  It must not be supposed that in this period decoration was limited to bronze of jade or pottery.  Only these materials happen to have survived to the present.  It is possible, and probably, that perishable material like wood might have also been decorated, and carried a long series of this particular art.  So if we do not find a lineal series of development of , say animalart, carried on one material, it is by no means surprizing [[surprising]].  For what have been evolved on wood might be all of a sudden transferred to pottery or jade or bronze or any other materical for further evolution without repeating the whole series from the very beginning. This was probably what really happened to the beginning of the bronze art in China: the bronze founders not only inherited the tradition of the jade carvers and potters,[[strikethrough]]that [[/strikethrough]] also of the wood carvers, basket makers or what not.
At any rate it is evident[[strikethrough]] it 
is clear [[/strikethrough]] that China had already an animal style of her own in the process of conventioalization as early as the later part of the second Millenium B.C. This is fresh food for thought especially for those who try to account for the development of the animal style of decoration in ancient China by Scythian origin.