Does Chinese Civilization Come from Ancient Egypt?
foreignpolicy.com
foreignpolicy.com
The theory is IMO wrong for a much simpler reason. It assumes (as many theories of history do) that the vastness of our planet means that we used to live in disconnected communities, islands of humanity spread out and yet not talking to each other.
You can walk around the globe in 10-20 years. It is unimaginable that trade routes such as the Silk Road did not carry knowledge such as how to smelt bronze, like those African ores, and any other precious good. Wherever there were people, they were innovating and trading goods and knowledge with their neighbors. Only exceptionally were pockets of humanity actually isolated.
You don't need an emperor and his navy to carry knowledge halfway across the globe. One or two people, on foot, will do it, and did it, and so, this nullifies the theory that Chinese civilization somehow sprang from Egyptian civilization. The two co-developed together with the entire connected world at the time.
This is an important footnote that many historians seem to overlook.
However a similar argument makes the seaborne theory plausible too, as it took less than three years to sail or row around the globe, probably ever since the invention of the sailboat (~4000BC?).
I disagree. Supposed evidence cited in this English summary:
(1) Northwards the stream is divided and becomes the nine rivers. What the original Chinese is saying is that a river to the north of the current location divides and rejoins. This is normal for many rivers, particularly in silted plains such as that of the Yellow River, the dominant river north of the centers of early Chinese civilization. The Yellow river is known to have flooded and changed course many times over history.
(2) Chemical composition more closely resembled those of ancient Egyptian bronzes than native Chinese ores. Tin was traded by many early civilizations, even if you have direct evidence that tin came from the other side of the world it doesn't mean much at all.
(3) Hyksos possessed at an earlier date almost all the same remarkable technology — bronze metallurgy, chariots, literacy, domesticated plants and animals — that archaeologists discovered at the ancient city of Yin, the capital of China’s second dynasty, the Shang. Well, none are hard to invent if you live on a flood-plain with horses, and Chinese civilizations definitely had all of those (in the case of literacy, to some extent) in the Xia (ie. prior to Shang).
(4) Since the Hyksos are known to have developed ships for war and trade that enabled them to sail the Red and Mediterranean seas, Sun speculates that a small population escaped their collapsing dynasty using seafaring technology that eventually brought them and their Bronze Age culture to the coast of China. Oh yeah... so they skipped major cultural centers like the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia's seafaring kingdoms on the way and came all the way to China for no apparent reason? Without needing repairs? Sounds likely. I'd wager local sailors familiar with local conditions were far more likely to trade information and goods in a chain fashion than for a far-flung ship to make it all the way with no particular purpose or direction.
In any event, back then 'China' did not exist, instead you had a few settled peoples in what is now northern coastal China and adjacent areas intermingling. Recent research shows, IIRC, that the genetics of peoples as far north as Shanghai derive in part from Southeast Asian Negrito and Austronesian populations.
Also, the article ignores the fact that at the same time as the Xia and Shang Dynasties you had very developed, independent bronze culture complexes in Sichuan[0] and north Vietnam/Yunnan/Guangxi[1][2], the latter spreading across much of mainland and island Southeast Asia. Central Asia no doubt also had well developed bronze at this stage. Furthermore, if the claims were true there would be genetic evidence, but the real kicker is that the Bronze Age in South Asia began around 3000 BCE. Why would China need to reference Egypt? Archaeology shows they already had bronze, chariots, writing, animal raising and agriculture themselves.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanxingdui [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%C3%B4ng_S%C6%A1n_drums [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%E1%BB%93ng_B%C3%A0ng_dynasty
“There is only one major river in the world which flows northwards. Which one is it?” the professor asked.
Ob', Yenisej, Lena. All great Siberian rivers flow northwards. I don't intend to explain that ancient Chinese text. The only thing I want to say is that the article is complete BS.
So, foreignpolicy.com is a less-trustworthy source.
But when the writing system was new, other classes were a lot more common than they are now.
[1] The categories, and examples of each, as listed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati... :
- Direct pictorial representation of a physical object, as 水 is just a picture of water, or 马 is just a picture of a horse. (Both are ridiculous now, but recognizable in their original forms.)
- "Pictorial" representation of an abstract idea, as 上 depicts "up", 下 depicts "down", and 三 depicts "three". (These still work!)
- Semantic compounds, formed from several more basic characters all of which are used for the meaning. Apparently the subject of much debate, but examples in the spirit of the category are 森 "forest" = 木 tree + tree + tree; 好 "good" = 女 woman + 子 child; 尖 "sharp" depicting something which is 小 (small) at one end and 大 (big) at the other; 歪 "crooked" = 不 not + 正 straight; etc.
- "Loans", characters which are used solely for their phonetic content. For example, the character 英 which means "Eng"land is identical with the character 英, pronounced ying but meaning "hero". A lot of characters which were originally loans like this have subsequently developed distinctions, as 来 and 麦 have.
- Phono-semantic compounds. The topic of discussion here. As 切 qie "cut" sounds similar to 七 qi "seven", but means similarly to 刀 dao "knife", or 到 dao "to" sounds similar to 刀 dao "knife", but means similarly to 至 zhi "to", or 打 da "strike" sounds similar to 丁 ding "fourth in a sequence", but means similarly to 手 shou "hand".
- A mystery category, involving pairs of related characters, that we no longer understand. Example: 考 / 老.
This pretty well covers all the logical possibilities: direct representations, compounds involving only meaning, characters used only for sound (a compound would be superfluous there), and compounds involving meaning and sound together.
It took me all of a few seconds to look up the proverb 独木不成林 "one tree alone is not a forest". What do you think the 木 means there?
Eh, 木 is used commonly by itself.
这张椅子是用木做的。 (This chair is made of wood)
If you go back far enough, my assessment could still be correct. That is, the original standardization (oracle bones -> Qin dynasty) of Chinese characters probably had less words constructed with a sound indicator.
At the Qin dynasty, China became an empire and incorporated many new ethnic groups. It then had multiple words used in different regions (like he and jiang for river).
Pictorial and semantic characters take more thought to construct, with pictorial probably more difficult and historical. Later on, it became possible to build upon these to quickly form characters, perhaps even as a shorthand.
So it's not surprising that phono-semantic took over. This process even continued as traditional characters became simplified in modern times.
Your discussion on what characters should sound like may be more complicated. Old Chinese pronunciation is much different from Mandarin, and today's simplified characters may or may not have followed the pattern (I don't know, I didn't learn simplified).
IMO, those kinds of phono-characters were always lazy creations.
This seems the most likely because it only takes one person in ancient times moving from one society to another to impart such knowledge. Anyone supporting that idea doesn't have to offer any evidence -- it's up to the person disagreeing to disprove it because their position is far less likely.
Given that both Chinese and hieroglyphs both have radicals (in Chinese, as part of a character, and in hieroglyphs, trailing the character), the concept of radicals may also have spread the same way.
This seems consistent with ideas of Africa as the crucible of human civilisation; you appear to think that idea is some sort of Western imperialism?
Can you explain further how a group of Egyptians traveling to China supports the notion of Western (ie West Europe + North America) notions of superiority?
Even if the whole concept had been born out of Western imperialism, that wouldn't of course make it wrong.
>'President Yuan Shikai referred to it obliquely, calling China “the famous descendant from Kunlun Peak,” which Chinese mythology locates in the far, far West' //
Is interesting enough IMO to warrant an initial investigation.
The radiographic data is another facet, that could be explained by getting the ores from Egypt.
>there is no reason to construct a hypothesis //
Surely there's always a reason to construct a hypothesis as that's the basis of the modern scientific method. One creates a hypothesis that can be falsified, the longevity of the hypothesis then indicates the verity of the claims.
Candelabras exist in many cultures but if you find a picture showing a 7 branched one (of the right form) there's a compelling reason to hypothesise that it's a menorah.
Do you real consider it implausible that people traveled from one part of the world to another and has a major influence on the other's cultural development.
昆侖國 ("The Country of Kunlun"), an ancient Chinese term apparently broadly used to refer to a general swathe of southerly island Southeast Asia circa the Moluccas, equivalent to period Sanskrit Dvipatala or Pali Dipattala (also Jipattala, Nipattala).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunlun [1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Manshu
I'm not sure if the anecdote in the beginning is a true one but it says it takes place in Hefei, so I'm not sure it's a particularly American piece of misinformation.
So famous rivers like the Sine, Elbe, Oder etc. all flow "north".
As far as he could determine, some researcher was once asked on some random TV interview what the most poisonous spider was, and responded that no one knew, and that it may well be the daddy long legs. From that an entire generation of internet consumers now believe they are.
That was random thought lol. But, I thought they thought it flowed backwards because their direction was backwards. Similar to how electron charge is negative so it flows backwards cnceptually.
Made for a whole mess with the flooding of Devils Lake which put a south town[1] in danger and forced the planners to deal with Canada because of overflow.
1) they literally had security while they built a concrete damn for fear someone would create their own outlet.
At least in North America though glaciers usually melt from South to North, so downhill isn't necessarily evenly distributed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Hyksos
For a good up-to-date erudite but readable account, see '1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed' by Eric Cline.
I think its plausible that civilization itself spread via sea faring peoples, so perhaps it was some hyksos like people that brought not their genetics, but knowledge.
Humans are ~200,000 years old;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ancient_history
Religion was born when first con-man met the first fool;
"Earth is flat" --Religion
The simplest explanation is that trade existed even in prehistoric times. It did not have to be the same person that took ore from African mines all the way to China. While merchants traveled a lot, those in high ranks did not have a reason to travel much.
This story appears to be on par with Jesus Christ being from India.
Would be an appropriate headline
Way to be impartial, headlines.