Part 1 - The Blade Masters

A BLADE MUST have an edge, but it can be much more than a simple cutting tool.

In the hands of the Blade Masters of Temixwten, a blade could be a communication device carrying news of the world, such as the domestication of the horse and the elephant, and big lava flows in Kamchatka.

High end, Asian-made Neolithic blades from Temixwten are frequently decorated with archaic Chinese dragons.

The dragons found at Temixwten include examples of the oldest known forms of the Chinese dragon: the Yangshao Snake Dragon and the Hongshan C-Dragon and Pig Dragon, as well as the oldest known depictions of the now traditional "nine attributes" camel-headed form of the dragon, and the oldest known depiction of the Dragon King of the North Sea.

Many high end Neolithic blades from Temixwten contain what seem to be scenes from holy myths -- frequently involving the Serpent and the One-Eyed God -- as well as precious documents, such as maps. The more complex blades can even serve as a puzzle or game to while away a few spare moments.

You can feel discernable human personality in the finer Temixwten blades -- both the personality of the anonymous Blade Masters of Temixwten who crafted them, and the personality of the men who carried them. These aren't just cold pieces of stone. They represent actual individuals, actual people, and they speak for their interests and beliefs. They also show their personal sense of style, for the blade a man carried 6,500 years ago said as much about him then as the cell phone he carries says about him today.

Altogether, this exhibit -- The Blade Masters of Temixwten -- documents three millennia of Chinese dragon culture in the New World through 36 blades that were manufactured in late Neolithic and Bronze Age Asia, and carried by the ancestors of the Salish to the ancient Northwest Coast Indian village called Temixwten ("Te-MOOKH-ten"), or "Sacred Homeland" in Lhéchelesem, the most archaic dialect of Salish.

Specifically, The Blade Masters of Temixwten covers the period between the domestication of the horse in northeast Asia and the rise of the first kings in China, or roughly between 6,500 and 3,500 years ago.

Part 2 - Temixwten

LOCATED IN the lower Fraser Valley about 50 miles from modern Vancouver, BC, Canada, Temixwten was once the leading port of entry to the New World south of the ice, and the Americas' greatest cultural center.

Later, during the 3,000 year period covered by this exhibit, Temixwten was the dominant village in the Fertile Crescent of the Salish -- the 60 mile stretch of the lower Fraser Valley that is the ancestral home of the Salishan People -- when the Salish claimed most of the Pacific Northwest, from the Inside Passage in the north to the Columbia River in the south, and east to the Bitterroot.

Much later, after the white invaders' diseases began to ravage the Salish, Temixwten was an early center of Sxwo:yxwey, the great spiritual healing figure of the late Salish. In fact, Temixwten may even have been the birthplace of Sxwo:yxwey, for Salish legend says Sxwo:yxwey came out of a lake, and the posts and bird figures that comprise the main features of the Sxwo:yxwey mask can be seen as an iconographic representation of Temixwten, with its famously bird-rich lake, its distinctive posted houses and fabulous posted salmon weir.

Later still, In historic times, Temixwten fell under the Sto:lo sphere of influence and was called Kw’ekw’e’i:qw in the modern Halkomelem dialect of Salish. According to Sonny McHalsie of the Stó:lō Nation's Cultural Research and Resource Management Centre, the union of Temixwten and Sto:lo was transacted in typical Salish fashion with a high status marriage, which in this case brought the famous Salish stone statue of T'xwelátse to Temixwten as part of the bride's dowry.

Throughout the most of the last 6,500 years, Temixwten was the leading tool manufacturing center of the Salish world. There isn't another Salish center anywhere in what is now British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho or Montana that can compare to Temixwten in terms of breadth, depth or duration of high end stone tool production, especially in nephrite. Beautifully polished jade tools of every size and sort were the specialty of the Blade Masters of Temixwten, and their work spread by trade throughout the Pacific Northwest.

There were several obvious reasons for the millennia-long dominance of the Temixwten Tool Works on the Northwest Coast. One was ready access to Fraser River nephrite. Another was long, cold winters to work their craft while the dancers circled the longhouse and pit house fires. The biggest reason, though, was the incredibly rich tool-making tradition that the Blade Masters of Temixwten had to build on, as this exhibit dramatically demonstrates. Six thousand years ago, there were more examples of high end tool design in the Northwest Coast Indian village of Temixwten than there were on the entire continent of Europe.

So in this first exhibit of The Museum of the Salish, we honor the ancestors -- the first ancestors, the ancestors who came to Temixwten in the great canoe journey recorded in the Salish People's own origin legend, The Story of the Great Flood. Let the first ancestors be not forgotten! The ancestors of the Salish were men and women of courage and intelligence and heart who took a huge chance on a long and perilous canoe journey into the unknown -- into the vast blackness of the uncharted sea shown in the Asian Dangerous Pass Ceramic Jade Blade Map (45-WH-5-1662) -- and prospered mightily for their efforts.

Everyone who lives in what we now call the Pacific Northwest can claim these people as first ancestors too.

Part 3 - Exhibit Highlights

THE BLADE Masters of Temixwten is the first significant exhibit of artifacts from Temixwten. Among its offerings, this online exhibition of Temixwten blades features:

* Thirty-six blades manufactured in Neolithic and early Bronze Age Asia. These blades are a small part of the largest and finest cache of ancient Chinese artifacts ever found in North America. 45-WH-5-1641, 45-WH-5-1586, 45-WH-5-1556, 45-WH-5-1628, 45-WH-5-1436, 45-WH-5-1647, 45-WH-5-1625, 45-WH-5-75, 45-WH-5-1646, 45-WH-5-1491, 45-WH-5-1612, 45-WH-5-1321, 45-WH-5-1630, 45-WH-5-1631, 45-WH-5-1415, 45-WH-5-1538, 45-WH-5-1483, 45-WH-5-1476, 45-WH-5-1650, 45-WH-5-1513, 45-WH-5-1629, 45-WH-5-1254, 45-H-5-1626, 45-WH-5-1655, 45-WH-5-1613, 45-WH-5-1643, 45-WH-5-1656, 45-WH-5-1657, 45-WH-5-1662, 45-WH-5-1683, 45-WH-5-1685, 45-WH-5-1686, 45-WH-5-1607

* An Asian-made, black jade blade mapping the Bering Strait crossing out of Asia into America. This is the oldest known map of North America. 45-WH-5-1483

* An Asian-made ceramic blade with an archaic gilt dragon wrapping around the handle. This is the oldest gilded artifact ever found in North America. It is also the oldest known piece of gilded Chinese stoneware anywhere in the world, including China. 45-WH-5-1647

* Twenty Asian-made blades depicting the domesticated horse with a bridle or halter, but without a bit. Since the horse was domesticated in northeast Asia about 7,000 years ago, and the horse bit was introduced about 5,600 years ago, these blades must date to the 1,400 year period in between. These are the oldest known images of the domesticated horse and tack anywhere in the world. 45-WH-5-1641, 45-WH-5-1586, 45-WH-5-1556, 45-WH-5-1628, 45-WH-5-1436, 45-WH-5-1647, 45-WH-5-1625, 45-WH-5-75, 45-WH-5-1646, 45-WH-5-1491, 45-WH-5-1612, 45-WH-5-1321, 45-WH-5-1630, 45-WH-5-1415, 45-WH-5-1483, 45-WH-5-1650, 45-WH-5-1513, 45-WH-5-1629, 45-WH-5-1655, 45-WH-5-1686

* Three Asian-made blades that show the evolution of Chinese macrame from a loose, almost free-form method of joining several attachments to the same point on a horse bridle before the invention of strong metal rings, into the highly formalized and decorative craft known today. These are the oldest known images of Chinese macrame anywhere in the world, including China. 45-WH-5-1556, 45-WH-5-1491, 45-WH-5-1476

* Twenty-five Asian-made ceramic stoneware blades that are either unfinished or have been black fired, coated with oxides and/or proto-glazed, ancient methods of finishing pottery from the time before ceramic glazing was invented. These blades utilize stoneware as a material for making stone tools, not as a material for throwing or molding or any of the other common uses for stoneware seen over the last 5,000 years. These are the oldest surviving Chinese ceramic stoneware artifacts anywhere in the world, including China. 45-WH-5-1641, 45-WH-5-1586, 45-WH-5-1556, 45-WH-5-1628, 45-WH-5-1436, 45-WH-5-1647, 45-WH-5-1630, 45-WH-5-1631, 45-WH-5-1538, 45-WH-5-1650, 45-WH-5-1513, 45-WH-5-1629, 45-WH-5-1655, 45-WH-5-1613, 45-WH-5-1643, 45-WH-5-1656, 45-WH-5-1415, 45-WH-5-1662, 45-WH-5-1683, 45-WH-5-1685, 45-WH-5-1686, 45-WH-5-1657, 45-WH-5-1607, 45-WH-5-1662, 45-WH-5-1496, 45-WH-5-1506

* An Asian-made, black-fired ceramic stoneware blade that has a raised metal wire imbedded in the ceramic. Although the area below the imbedded wire has been removed by resharpening, it appears that this raised wire may have served as the compartment for some sort of proto-cloisonne coloring. This is the oldest example in the world of the raised wire technology that is one of the requirements for cloisonne. 45-WH-5-1513

* Four Asian-made ceramic stoneware core blades showing that the ancestors of the Salish not only brought superior ceramic tools with them from Asia, they also brought the means of making MORE ceramic tools once they got to the New World and Temixwten. These are the first Neolithic Asian-made ceramic stoneware cores ever identified in North America. 45-WH-5-1613, 45-WH-5-1643, 45-WH-5-1656, 45-WH-5-1679

* Five Neolithic Asian-made glazed ceramic stoneware blades. Although glazed, these blades also date from the time when stoneware was an exciting new material for making stone tools. These are the oldest surviving Chinese glazed ceramic stoneware artifacts ever found in the Americas. I believe two of them are also the oldest glazed stoneware artifacts ever found anywhere in the world, including China. 45-WH-5-1254, 45-WH-5-1321, 45-WH-5-1626, 45-WH-5-1657, 45-WH-5-1679

* Six Asian-made ceramic jade blades that show the evolution and dramatically increased sophistication of Chinese synthetic nephrite manufacture during the 3,000 year period covered by The Blade Masters of Temixwten. These are the oldest known example of ceramic jade in the world, including China. 45-WH-5-1657, 45-WH-5-1662, 45-WH-5-1607, 45-WH-5-1686, 45-WH-5-1506, 45-WH-5-1496

* An Asian-made, proto-glazed ceramic stoneware blade that depicts the Sea Dragon in the crashing waves of a stormy sea as two small boats struggle to round a rocky island. This is the oldest image of the Sea Dragon anywhere in the world, including China. 45-WH-5-1683

* Two Asian-made ceramic blades that are reworked fragments of pots or jars -- one that is made of unglazed white Kaolin clay stoneware, and one of yellow clay that has a crude proto-glaze on one side and appears to have been fired at a lower temperature. These are the oldest thrown ceramic artifacts ever found in North America. 45-WH-5-1650, 45-WH-5-1626

Part 4 - New World Colonization

TAKEN TOGETHER, the 36 blades in The Blade Masters of Temixwten paint a very different picture of the colonization of North America than commonly prevails today.

Instead of a small number of Paleo-Indian colonists -- who crossed the Bering Land Bridge or Ice Bridge very early, and perhaps even accidentally -– The Blade Masters of Temixwten shows that the Paleo-Indian colonization went on for many thousands of years, and continued after the waters of the Bering Strait separated Asia from North America.

The thirty-six blades in this collection conclusively prove that contact between Asia and the Americas across the Bering Strait continued through at least the early the Bronze Age.

Significantly, the Asian Bering Strait Map Blade (45-WH-5-1483) also indicates that the ancestors of the Salish came to the New World as part of planned colonial ventures. The ancestors of the Salish were not a shuffling bunch of hunter/gatherers who missed the last bus back to Asia! The record they leave in The Blade Masters of Temixwten shows them to be intelligent, devout and industrious: a people who were trained by daily habit and experience with their tools to look at things from a variety of angles and be alive to subtlety.

Furthermore, the ancestors of the Salish carried dramatically superior technology with them out of Hongshan Era Asia in the form of Chinese ceramic blades, nearly two dozen of which are included in The Blade Masters of Temixwten.

The fineness of some of the Neolithic Asian blades found at Temixwten also indicates that some Paleo-Indian New World colonists were affluent and cultured people.

The Chinese Ceramic Lava Flow Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1629), the Asian Dragon Man Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1415), the Asian Ceramic C-Dragon Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1586) and the Asian Gilt Ceramic Flat Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1647) are all blades fit for a king, except kings hadn't been invented yet.

Part 5 - Northwest Pre-History

THE BLADE Masters of Temixwten revolutionizes the pre-history of the Pacific Northwest as well.

Instead of a succession of lithically defined "culture phases" with names like Charles and Locarno Beach that wander in and out of the fog of pre-history for no apparent reason, The Blade Masters of Temixwten shows that at least some of the big cultural and technological advances on the Northwest Coast of North America over the last 6,500 years have been driven by big cultural and technological advances on the Northeast Coast of Asia.

So the lithic advances seen in the Charles culture phase correlate to the large wave of Paleo-Indian immigrants that arrived from Asia shortly after the domestication of the horse in Northeast Asia, and the advances of the Locarno Beach culture phase correlate to another wave of Asian immigrants during the early Dynastic Period in China.

The Blade Masters of Temixwten conclusively demonstrates for the first time that Paleo-Indian immigrants out of Asia brought with them all the lithic technologies and styles seen in Northwest Coast Indian stone work, including Temixten's signature juxtaposition of glossy stone polish with natural stone surfaces seen in the 45-WH-5-1625 and 45-WH-5-1496.

Similarly, The Blade Masters of Temixwten shows that Paleo-Indian immigrants from Asia carried with them many of the major conventions of Northwest Coast Indian art -- such as the stacking of figures seen in totem poles -- and even some recognizable characters from the Northwest Coast pantheon -- such as the bear. Both are visible in the figures on the back of the Chinese Black Fired Ceramic Cloisonne Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1513) from approximately 3,500 years ago.

So The Blade Masters of Temixwten brings the study of Northwest Coast Indian cultures full circle. Early anthropologists such as Charles Marius Barbeau, "the father of Canadian anthropology," noted the similarities between Pacific Northwest Coast Indian art and the art of ancient China. He and others -- including Creel (1935), Hentze (1936), Schuster (1951), Covarrubias (1954), Badner (1966), Fraser (1968), Coe (1972), and Davis and Davis (1974) -- speculated that Northwest Coast Indian art had developed from ancient Chinese art.

These theories were rejected for "lack of evidence," but now The Blade Masters of Temixwten provides concrete, irrefutable proof that Barbeau and all the others were correct. There is no more room for doubt. Northwest Coast Indian art developed out of the art of China, and much more recently than is generally believed, which Barbeau also said.

Part 6 - Salish Origin Legend

IT SHOULD be noted that the radically old picture of Pacific Northwest prehistory that emerges from The Blade Masters of Temixwten fundamentally agrees with the Salish People's own legend of their origin, "The Story of the Great Flood."

In fact, The Blade Masters of Temixwten provides the first archaeological evidence supporting "The Story of the Great Flood," which before now has has been universally discredited and dismissed by conventional archaeologists.

Among other things, The Blade Masters of Temixwten indicates that the ancestors of the Salish came to the Northwest by water. It says that they not only crossed the Bering Strait by water about 6,500 years ago -- as indicated by the Bering Strait Blade Map of Temixwten (45-WH-5-1483) -- but they also came all the way down the Northwest Coast to Temixten by water.

A water journey is indicated by the fact that they carried a great deal of heavy stone with them -- blades, ceramic cores for making more blades, stone saws and other tools necessary for working and finishing nephrite, which they did on both sides of the North Pacific. Among the artifacts in the Museum of the Salish Collection are two large Asian-made ceramic cores (each weighs nearly 9 pounds) with Chinese dragons emblazoned on them. Another artifact is an Asian-made stone saw in the shape of a domesticated horse head bridled with an upper lip band and no bit, as seen on nearly two dozen Asian-made blades in The Blade Masters of Temixwten.

Paleo-Indian immigrants traveling by foot from the Bering Strait simply could not have carried this kind of weight of stone to Temixwten, nearly 3,000 miles into North America. But as ballast in the bottom of a big sailing canoe, these heavy stone tools for making stone tools would have been no problem. The Salish had to come by water to the Pacific Northwest, as the Salish origin legend has always said.

Although the surface details are different in some respects, the underlying stories are identical. The traditional Salish legend of "The Story of the Great Flood" and The Blade Masters of Temixwten both say:

The ancestors of the Salish came by canoe on water so vast and deep it covered all the land. Finally, they saw mountains sticking up out of the water. They paddled to these mountains and tied their canoes to them, and made this place their home.

And that's the way it actually happened, as The Blade Masters of Temixwten proves for the first time.

Part 7 - Chinese Dragon Culture

Because the Chinese dragons at Temixwten are so ancient and so numerous, it is possible to make some observations about the basic nature of the Chinese dragon, which has long been a source of speculation and inquiry among Chinese scholars.

First of all, it appears from the archaeological evidence at Temixwten that the primitive dragon embodied invention and transformation, specifically human inventions that had the power to transform the world, beginning with the capture of fire -- both in the original Promethean sense, and also in the contemporary sense of ceramic stoneware, an invention of Neolithic Asia that we still value highly today.

This is why most dragons breath fire, including the Pig Dragon on the Asian Ceramic Pig Dragon Horse Blade of Temixwten, which is apparently the oldest blade included in The Blade Masters of Temixwten, and the camel-headed dragon on the Asian Ceramic Dragon Horse Blade of Temixwten, which is one of the oldest known depictions of the Chinese dragon in what is now considered the traditional "nine attributes" form.

After fire, the domestication of the pig, horse and elephant -- in that apparent chronological order -- are the big transformational powers on display in the Chinese dragons at Temixwten. The domestication of the horse, particularly, seems to have resounded through the Neolithic World like Krakatoa, with aftershocks that ran on for millennia, judging from the evidence on the blades included in the The Blade Masters of Temixwten.

There are nearly two dozen blades in The Blade Masters of Temixwten that contain images of the domesticated horse with archaic Neolithic bridle featuring an upper lip band but no bit, and couple more where the horse is apparently bitted. On some of these, the iconography of domestication -- e.g. the horse's bridle -- merges with the iconography of the deity, so that the dragon becomes the horse's bridle and the dragon IS domestication! At other times, the dragon is shown in the regalia of domestication. For instance, the dragons on the Chinese Bridled Dragon Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1476) and Asian Dragon Eye Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1491) are both shown wearing the Neolithic bridles of ancient domesticated horses.

The deep Chinese association of the dragon with water seems more latent at the earliest phases visible from Temixwten. The One-Eyed God, who seems to be a form of -- or a force associated with -- the Serpent or dragon seen on so many Temixwten artifacts, is frequently shown with water flowing down his face like a salmon stream, as on Asian Nephrite Dragon River Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1612) and the Chinese Ceramic Jade One-Eyed God Blade #2 (45-WH-5-1506). But the dragon itself does not seem to have a direct water association or power in the earliest blades included in The Blade Masters of Temixwten.

The overt connection between the dragon and water first appears in The Blade Masters of Temixwten with the Sea Dragon on the Chinese Ceramic Sea Dagon Map Blade (45-WH-5-1683), a black fired and heavily englobed ceramic stoneware blade where the dragon IS the sea. This blade appears to date to the early Dynastic Period in China, or toward the end of the 3,000 year period surveyed in The Blade Masters of Temixwten.

Based on the staggering number of Chinese dragons depicted on the late Neolithic artifacts at Temixwten -- a dozen of which are shown on this page alone -- it seems apparent that the Salish dragon originated in the Chinese dragon that the ancestors of the Salish brought with them from Asia.

In fact, the Asian origin of the Salish dragon is also evident linguistically. The Salish dragon is called ch'inekw' in L'hechelselem or ch'inekw'e in Straits Salish, and also spelled, tzinquaw.

Ch'inekw' contains the root, "ch'ine," the same root as the French, "Chine," and the English, "China."

And as the black dragon on Side 1 of the Bering Strait Blade Map of Temixwten (45-WH-5-1483) demonstrates, the ancestors of the Salish associated the dragon with Chinese Asia -- just as the French, English, Americans and much of the rest of the world still does today.

Part 8 - Domesticated Horse

THE DOMESTICATED horse plays a peculiar and powerful role in the history of Temixwten, even though no Asian horse apparently ever set foot there.

When the ancestors of the Salish immigrated to the New World, the domesticated horse was huge news in the Neolithic World. So powerful was the horse, in fact, that equine iconography merged with the iconography of the reigning deities, as seen in the Asian Ceramic Pig Dragon Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1641), the Asian Ceramic C-Dragon Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1586) and the Chinese Bridled Dragon Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1476).

But when was this? The latest Mitochondrial DNA research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in January 2012, indicates that the horse was independently domesticated at least 17 different times in different places during the Neolithic. According to Alessandro Achilli of the Università di Perugi, the lead author for "Mitochondrial genomes from modern horses reveal the major haplogroups that underwent domestication," the horse may first have been domesticated as long as 10,000 years ago, but the big burst in domestication apparently occurred between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago. Archaeological research further narrows the prime period of equine domestication to between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago.

However, the horse bit -- which is now emblematic of the domesticated horse and horse tack -- was actually not widely adopted until a millennia or more later. In his 2009 paper in Science, "The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking," lead author Alan Outram of the Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, UK, found that the Botai Culture of Kazakhstan had domesticated horses that were bridled with a bit about 5,600 years ago. Outram and his co-authors presented evidence of "bit wear" in Botoi horses, meaning the dental remains of Botoi horses showed the sort of wear patterns commonly seen in bitted horses.

It was during the 1,400 year period in between the domestication of the horse and the widespread adoption of the bit that most of the horse blades in The Blade Masters of Temixwten were manufactured. Only two of the blades in this collection appear to show horses bridled with a bit and round metal rings, which are depicted as dragons on the Chinese Ceramic Jade Bird Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1657), again showing the dragon as the avatar of invention and world-changing transformation.

Because of their connection to northeast Asia, the people of Temixwten were acquainted with the domesticated horse very early -- ironically, long before Europe. The oldest images of the domesticated horse at Temixwten predate the oldest European depiction of the domesticated horse -- the Uffington White Horse -- by several thousand years. But since no one ever successfully ferried horses across the Bering Strait into the New World, Temixwten had knowledge, but not actual possession.

And on the Asian side of the Bering Strait, the only way the horse people of the Asian Steppes could use the stupendous new power of the domesticated horse was by moving south and west, which is what they did, ultimately riding to conquest over more of Eurasian than anyone before or since. This horse-powered wave of conquest eventually circled the globe and reached the New World more than six millennia later with the Spanish Conquistadors, still moving west, and still conquering everything before it.

Speaking personally, I can't help wondering why the ancestors of the Salish turned their back on the horse. They were well acquainted with this huge new power that was going to transform the world, and yet they went to a place where the horse couldn't follow. Why? Well, if the Salishan people were contemporary with Hongshan -- as the Asian Ceramic Pig Dragon Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1641), the Asian Ceramic C-Dragon Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1586) and other Temixwten artifacts indicate -- then they came from the last time of free men on Earth.

The ancestors of the Salish came from the time before currencies and kings, before slaves and systems of subjugation of one man over another. The horse was in the process of changing all that, though. The First Dynasty was about to arise in China, and with it the system that generates 99 percent of the appalling evils that beset the world today.

So perhaps the ancestors of the Salish left China and the shining promise of the horse because they wanted to be free men, and they didn't want to live in a world where there was anything as evil as kings, which ironically must have a familiar ring to many Americans of European descent!

Part 9 -- Changing Face of Asia

THE CHANGING face of Asia is captured in The Blade Masters of Temixwten as well.

While many of the Asian-made blades from 6,500 years ago included in The Blade Masters of Temixwten depict the people of northeast Asia with epicanthic fold eyes, some do not.

A few -- such as the Chinese Ceramic White Dragon Blade (45-WH-5-1691) -- depict northeast Asian people from that time without the "Asian eye," and one blade shows both. While the main face on the Chinese Ceramic Dragon Man Blade (45-WH-5-1415) clearly has the "Asian eye," the smaller "mystery man" does not.

Several blades in The Blade Masters of Temixwten also show faces with full, heavy Caucasian beards -- such as the Chinese Ceramic Jade One-Eyed God #2 (45-WH-5-1506).

What do these Neolithic Asian faces with Caucasian features mean? They apparently testify to a time before the First Dynasty when China didn't exist yet, and China's various ethnic and racial components were not as well mixed as they later became: China was still in the process of becoming China.

The ancestors of the Salish were a part of that coalescing Chinese mix -- a part that opted out, and probably among the very last paleo-Indian immigrants to the New World. In the Old World, the ancestors of the Salish apparently were an indigenous people of northeast Asia, probably from somewhere on or near the Sea of Okhotsk, who looked much as they do now: copper skinned and Caucasian eyed, with light to medium beard in males.

Roy L. Carlson traces the Salish pebble tool tradition to the area "around Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk" in Wayne Suttles's Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 7 Northwest Coast, and the Asian Bering Strait Blade Map of Temixwten (45-WH-5-1483) further pinpoints the mouth of the Okhota River near the modern town of Okhotsk, Russia, as the probable starting point of the Salishan People's great journey to Temixwten.

The ancestors of the Salish were "not Chinese," according to Nooksack Salish linguist George Adams's grandmother, Lucille Solomon, and they did not have the "Asian eye," but they were Asian, and they carried a great deal of what was rapidly becoming "Chinese" culture and technology with them to Temixwten, which is to say they carried the most advanced culture and technology in the world.

Culturally, the ancestors of the Salish carried first and foremost the Chinese dragon -- which became the Salish dragon or ch'inekw' -- along with a reverence for their ancestors, a deep love of jade, the practice of living in longhouses and pit houses, various habits of dress including conical rain hats, and a riverine, salmon-based economy.

The Blade Masters of Temixwten paints a particularly revealing picture of the ancestors of the Salish at the moment they immigrated to the New World. What we see is a people who were both thoughtful and spiritual, and since the imagery of war is entirely absent from their work, we may also conclude that the ancestors of the Salish were not a warrior people.

Part 10 - Terminology

A NOTE on terminology: in the conventional usage of modern archaeology, a "blade" is defined by form, not function.

So in conventional lithic parlance, a blade is a simple finger of stone that may have a cutting edge on one or both sides, and is almost never decorated or ornamented.

But as The Blade Masters of Temixwten demonstrates, many high end Neolithic cutting tools are highly ornamented, and many don't look at all like what archaeologists say a blade should look like.

In fact, one measure of a high end Neolithic blade is the number of cutting edges it offers, which translates into usage before the blade has to either be resharpened or discarded.

Three splendid examples of luxurious personal cutting tools that maximize the edge count are the Asian Ceramic C-Dragon Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1586), which had five cutting edges, two of them cleverly arrayed on the holy horn of the rhinoceros, and the Chinese Ceramic Lava Flow Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1629) and the Chinese Ceramic Dragon Horse Blade (45-WH5-1630), both of which boasted a princely eight cutting edges.

Additionally, most of the Neolithic stone tools featured in The Blade Masters of Temixwten are multi-purpose tools. The disease of specialization had not conquered humanity yet, and a good tool was SUPPOSED to perform several functions. So while I am treating these Temixwten artifacts as blades, they may also have functioned as awls, and/or scrapers and/or points, etc.

Despite their shape, size or material, though, all these stone tools have (or had) a sharp edge, and in the real world they could be used as a cutting blade.

Finally, I have used the term "Asian" to denote blades manufactured before the Dynastic Period in China, and the term "Chinese" to denote those manufactured after the nascent Chinese nation state came into being.

Actually, the culture of the Chinese dragon both precedes and supercedes what we now call China.

Part 11 - Provenance

ALL OF the Temixwten artifacts discussed and displayed here were collected at Temíxwten by the property owner.

With one exception -- the Chinese Ceramic Jade Bird Horse Blade (45-WH-5-1657) -- there is no stratigraphy associated with any of them.

Therefore, I have attempted to approximately date them on the basis of (1) visual references to external historical events, such as the domesticated horse, and (2) by comparison to artifacts from the oldest known Salish sites -- all of which are located nearby in the lower Fraser Valley -- such as the Glenrose Cannery, Xa:ytem, Katz and Milliken sites.

Such dating is approximate at best, but in a sense the specific dates don’t really matter. The blades themselves tell a stupendous story of human ingenuity and achievement. They show how what we now call “technology” arises from human creativity and work when they are relentlessly applied to the same problem over thousands and thousands of years.

So here’s the sweep of the human adventure across the North Pacific, from the Old World to the New World, seen through 3,000 years of technological evolution in one tool, the crucial, all-purpose blade / knife -– all from The Blade Masters of Temixwten...

-- Bruce Brown
Temixwten
January 1, 2012
Updated March 19, 2012