Note 21 — Chapter XII · How Copper-culture reached China

Khotan is the ancient trading centre which connected central Asia and India, and India and China. One of the most important products of Khotan is jade—that is, important from the historical point of view. It is uncertain at what period the importation of jade into China from the Khotan area was inaugurated. But there can be no doubt about the antiquity of the jade trade between Chinese Turkestan and Babylonia. Some of the Babylonian cylinder-seals were of jade, others being of “marble, jasper, rock-crystal, emerald, amethyst, topaz, chalcedony, onyx, agate, lapis-lazuli, hæmatite, and steatite”21—all relics of ancient trade and mining activity. Turquoise was imported into Babylonia from Khotan and Kashgar. The archæological finds made on the site of the ancient Sumerian city at Nippur include cobalt, “presumably from China”.22 At Nippur was found, too, Persian marble, lapis-lazuli from Bactria, and cedar and cypress from Zagros.