The origin of Chinese seals remains obscure in modern research. Most publications, influenced by the traditional point of view, have dealt with the seals handed down from the Eastern Zhou (771-256 B.C.). Only a few studies have discussed seals from their earliest-and still neglected-history. There have even been some suggestions, based on the idea of using a seal and using it on clay first developed in Mesopotamia, that the seal was introduced to China from the Near East. This proposed foreign origin makes the history of Chinese seals more complicated.
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