DRAGON BONES IN THE YELLOW EARTH

A following of archeological field work in China offers an unusual in situ view. The Chinese peasants' fruitful quest for dragon bones, sold profitably to druggists for medicinal use, was a business built on a treasure trove of fossils -- not dragons, but mastodons, dinosaurs, three-toed horses. Archeologists quickly became another source of income. The authors trace expeditions, whether by Swedish Dr. Andersson or American Roy Chapman Andrews, and their finds -- from dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert to Peking Man, then the successor of Sinanthropus, the Painted Pottery People, whose discovery proved the existence of Neolithic culture in China. Oracle bones provided clues to the Shang Yin people -- and the authors reconstruct a culture from archeological clues. Since the Communist take-over, reports have been sparse; expeditions have been mainly salvage operations, without the reconstructive theory that is so well displayed here. What new finds and significances there have been are noted in the final chapter. The working ways of the breed are perhaps as impressive as the history of finds for oriented readers.