Note 14 — Chapter XII · How Copper-culture reached China
Reading edition
It was evidently due to the influence of the searchers for metals and the traders that the culture of early Sumeria spread across the Iranian plateau. As Laufer has shown,14 “the Iranians were the great mediators between the West and the East”. The Chinese “were positive utilitarians, and always interested in matters of reality; they have bequeathed to us a great amount of useful information on Iranian plants, products, animals, minerals, customs, and institutions”. Not only plants but also Western ideas were conveyed to China by the Iranians.15