The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
historians.org
historians.org
I am a bit suspicious of these claims as they are central to Chinese nationalism. In order to hold them you have to disregard the several periods where the country was split in several parts and have to integrate somehow the mongol conquest.
To the best of my knowledge, the best claimants to the longest enduring and continuously existing organizations are the Holy See and when it comes to governing bodies, Iceland's Althing (founded in 930)
Edit: 12k would be the origin of the yellow river and Yangtze river delta civilizations, if memory serves. These would grow into the overarching Ancient China and then into China as a nation.
If you are just talking about tribes of people with some arts and crafts, then you can find cave paintings in Spain dating back 35,000 years (https://www.oldest.org/artliterature/cave-paintings/), a structured society living in caves in Sri Lanka 35,000 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archaeological_sites_b...) or the Gobekle Teple (the world's oldest temple) in Turkey 11,000 years ago -- and they even had "scripts" there. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worl...
The point is, humans migrated out of Africa a _long_ time ago and there is a long history of things like tool making, cooking, art, making structures, making symbols in proto languages, which is scattered all across the world from Latin America to Europe to Asia. But none of these by themselves constitute what is traditionally considered a "civilization", although of course this is just a long standing convention. Having a written language and organized public buildings is required for that.
I mean this measuring stick is basically determining if an area has been continuously civilized.
Chinese civilizations have gone through many changes, including being overrun by Mongols and having their entire government replaced by mongo officials.
Just like the Egyptians have been overrun by Nubians from Sudan.
The examples I heard were that Ancient Chinese poetry is still understandable and taught to Chinese school-children, that Chinese cuisine in most areas has not changed dramatically, and that many Chinese religious traditions are practiced very similarly. Even the Mongol invasion of China has apparently had more of an effect of making the Mongols adopt Chinese customs than the other way around.
Please note that I may well have fallen for state propaganda on any or all of the above. I am not claiming to know any of these from direct scholarship.
That's what makes it seem like a propaganda spin to me. That or hipster.
It is through self-identification however. The Chinese people keep their history record consecutive for about 3000 years, if discounted Xia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-Four_Histories
Several key factors:
1. Chinese characters have been used in China ever since Qin, and never been successfully replaced by external conquerers. The character itself is pretty much recognizable by today's Chinese citizens.
2. China's dominating philosophy/religion, the Confucianism, is pretty much alive and never been replaced either. This top-down, parental style state-over-individual system is still a key element in operation of Chinese society on micro/macro level.
3. The dynasty model. One after another, never changes.
All in all, it is still due to self-identification.
1. The Greek alphabet, a bit younger than Chinese characters (just 2900 years old, unless you want to claim the Phoenician alphabet, father of both the Greek and Latin one) is almost identical to modern Greek alphabet. Until recently, being literate in ancient Greek was seen as a mark of erudition and very common in the scientific community.
2. Around the time when Confucius was describing his system, Plato was writing "The Republic".
3. Dynastic rule a political invention? It is the natural system that emerges everywhere! There has been dynasties in Egypt for more than 5000 years!
Knowing Chinese character however, you would be able to at least make sense of ancient texts, knowing what roughly the underlying text is talking about.
I think you have confused with my claim. It is about continuity. Chinese culture's strong consistency makes it very easy to create a narrative around its histories that it is episodic in nature.
After all, your identity is a collective imagination, it is your belief. It is not an easy sale to German/French people that are bounded by blood because they share some ancient Rome heritage.
In China's case it is an easy sale. The history is written in this way already
Kings of Europe would claim their legitimacy comes from the Roman empire times. The pope would continue to crown people emperors of Rome, like Charlemagne (emperor of both Germany and France) Napoleon or the Habsburgs. And Roman empire was in the clear cultural continuity of ancient Greece.
We just don't do these claims (outside of some fringe far-right groups), because they are not really relevant to what our countries are today. Ancient Greeks were xenophobic, misogynistic, pedophiles, mostly authoritarian and militaristic. We are nothing like them, but most cultures have very ancient roots.
And I'll tell you why I react strongly with that. We used to have school programs teaching us similar bullshit. Mostly, the national narrative would be that we, French, are Celts, Franks, who were occupied by the Roman empire, which spawned the aristocracy, until we defeated it during the Revolution. That sense of belonging to a 3000 years old continuity served to foster nationalism and make sure that we don't feel too close to our neighbors.
It is an easy sale, you can write a history with that that is mostly correct. You have to ignore some facts, but for 100 years, "history was written that way" or at least, text books were.
China has decided on this nationalistic narrative that they are a very old consistent and coherent nation that has lasted 3000 years. Never mind the CCP coming to power by being pretty much the opposite of what the empire was or that China has been much smaller and much divided than it is today for most of its history [1]. What it says is that they want to use this history as the basis to legitimate their authoritarianism, "because that's how it always were". I am sure they will put far less emphasis on the periods when it was separated in several different kingdoms. Or on the fact that their unity is more of a successful Mongol enterprise than a local Chinese discovery of good government.
Only China and India have had continuous civilization from the ancient to the present. That remains true even though the Yuan dynasty were foreign invaders.
Contrast that to the Saxon invasion of Britain or the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs or the gothic conquest of Italy.
Paper is written in 1944. None of that was true for that time and does not apply to modern days at all. It seems to be influenced by pre-war mystical New Ageish movements in Europe, that claimed many things... like, that Europeans came from Tibet...
I'm really confused about definitions here. What we define as Western, Chinese, Indian civilization and what we define as civilization at all.
You can like it or hate it, but modern Chinese nowadays belong to Western civilization - they use Western inventions(and they still steal them - no offense, but I think, it is a right thing to do for them to get into better economical position and you should do the same) - phones, computers, mechanisms, medicine, sanitation, building, use western clothing and even Mao spread western ideas... At this point Chinese civilization as such certainly does not exist and it is a myth. Same applies to others.
Let's clarify some things about Western civilization: Western civilization does not apply exclusively to Western Europe. Roman Empire, that was melting pot of nations and cultures was spread in northern Africa and for most of what is considered world of Islam. Not bothering with colonies, core lands of ancient Greeks were in what is now called west of modern Turkey. Most of the world still does not know about great Chinese works, but they too don't predate works of ancient Greeks(as they were written more recently). There certainly existed even more ancient literature works in ancient China, but so did in civilization, what we consider western.
What you are talking about continuity of Chinese applies the same to Europeans as well, as they stem from steppe people, that were initially located in Eastern Europe and they even more efficiently than Chinese replaced local population. Heck, those steppe people even invaded civilization of Indus valley, eventually destroying it and replacing male population for most of northern India. Talk about continuity of ancient India - did you meant Tamil people or Harappans? Because if Harappans(Indus valley civilization) is considered Indian, then Tamil ancestors are thought to come from somewhere west of India and are not really native to India... unlike Veddas in Sri Lanka or Sentinelese of Andaman islands.
Now some nitpicks: Goths did not left any traces of Gothic civilization in Italy - besides, how do you even dear to consider Goths not belonging to Roman Empire, as they were employed by Romans! As far as I know, Goths did not invade only Italy, but also invaded Spain and settled in most fertile part of Roman Empire - Africa, so they walked over whole Roman Empire. There was no specific civilization of Britain during Saxon invasions. What did they even replace? And how do you differ them from Normans, Angles or even earlier Viking invasions? For all I know - all of them might belong to the same culture. Because of Spanish conquest, Americas are now considered part of Western civilization. Aztecs came from deserts of modern USA and were rulers over natives, so what's your point? And even then Aztecs were not unique civilization, but only part of civilization region of what we call Mesoamerica. Isn't is a hypocrisy to consider multiple states of China, that fought among themselves as continuous civilization(even today there are 2 Chinese states)... while looking on different European countries, who share the same civilization not consider them as continuous...
> A civilization or civilisation (see English spelling differences) is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification imposed by a cultural elite, symbolic systems of communication (for example, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization
In my college ancient history class I learned civilization was any group comprising the following:
* Fixed and defined geographical boundaries
* A systematically developed art/culture
* A government, even something as primitive as despotism
* A developed institution of one or more religions and/or science
What's the use of learned knowledge, if it can't be used for practical purposes? Your definition of civilization is enough to ponder what makes civilization now:
one internet for communication, K-POP, impossibility to do isolated science, global corporations with factories in China, that will suffer shortages because of Coronavirus, that can be spread by connecting airlines. Suddenly Chinese eating habits is concern for the rest of the world.
>For instance, one of the message sticks in the Dandiiri Maiwar Exhibition at the Queensland Museum and Science centre is as follows: Bishop White of Carpentaria described how he delivered a message stick on behalf of an Aboriginal boy in Darwin to a boy in Daly Waters. Bishop White asked the boy from Darwin to explain the message. The boy read the message symbols which requested headbands and boomerangs from Daly Waters. The Bishop delivered the message stick and asked the recipient to tell him what the message was. The boy interpreted the message stick exactly as the boy from Darwin had explained it.
40,000 years of oral traditions accurately reproduced over the generations. We 'civilised Europeans' can't even do 80 years.
The argument can be made that the FNP of Australia are not only the longest running civilisation, but in terms of actual human activity, the most advanced.
Longest-running, still in operation, mineral mines (20,000 years). They had cryptographic systems which not only kept the peace between 300 different languages, but enabled a massive trade network to flourish.
Personally, I consider China young in comparison, and the West absolutely juvenile.
Does anyone have any recommendations on books covering the major Chinese historical eras? This article and the diagram in it are a great start that I would love to dig deeper into.
I always thought this is uniquely Chinese thing, but recently learnt that Athens had a similar history. Many of Athens architectures are actually built by its conquerors who admired its culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassical_architecture
Another example - the common language of ancient Rome, Latin, is still the official spoken language of the Catholic Church. Until the 1960s, priestly instruction and most Catholic masses were conducted in Latin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_Latin#Current_u...
I get the impression that Taiwanese and Hong Kong people might not agree with this point to describe the mainlanders.
Thats an understatement. Look at the history with the Great Leap Forward and how it changed chinese culture forever.
I've heard some commentators say that Taiwan preserves much of this "lost" Chinese culture and history, but outside of temples and dragon dancing, I don't really know what this means. Could anyone shine a light?
Also the writing script and literary tradition, as well as a general appreciation of erudition. Pre-revolutionary family and social values.
Which is to say that I suspect that, despite all the tumult of the cultural revolution, just modernization has likely been the largest force upending the previous culture order.
You see the thing about virtually all pre-industrial societies is that only a quite small minority of the population were at all educated in the intricacies of the culture - with most people having to work as farmers to simply support the society, few people could be educated, few people could read, etc. So most people educated today have been educated in the process of industrialization and so they have whatever knowledge was being handed out, and they got it in the way that modern people are educated.
Damaging tradition is one of the traditions. Think of the first emperor literally damaged the culture of the six kingdoms to unite China in 213 B.C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_o...
Ironically given the book-burning context, our youthful protagonists in the latter are equipped with magic library cards.
Bullshit and Chinese Propaganda with their "5000 years old culture".
5000 years ago we are talking about bones inscribed with precursors of the Chinese writing system. Not bad, but compare this to the Pyramids at the same time?
Around the year 0 the Chinese culture was en par with the level of western culture and technology - speak Rome.
Only during the middle ages the west fell so far beyond and Chinese had indeed a superior level of technology, knowledge and administration. Things reversed again with the industrial revolution and the center of industrial GDP moved to the west again. Now since China and the rest of Asia has also industrialized and due to far more people in Asia, the center of world GDP has shifted back to the East.
If you can really talk about a "continuous civilization" for 5000, 3500 or even 2000 years is doubtful.
The experience from businessman with Chinese: 30 years ago they had an inferior complex because they were technological too far behind and a feeling of cultural superiority. Now the have the feeling of technological superiority combined with cultural superiority.
Chinese culture has a lot of strengths. But it also comes with a lot of weaknesses. I am skeptical about the "Chinese Century"
Egypt, to take an example GP used, had numerous cultures and languages sweep through its geographic location so that modern Egypt has nothing in common with the one 5000 years ago except for the fact that some pyramids are still standing.
Perhaps the secret to perceived Chinese contiuity is (besides considerable geographic isolation) the non-phonetic writing system which should be relatively stable when dialects inevitably diverge when regions shift apart politically for more than a few decades.
So it would seem that the case for a continuous civilization isn't as clear cut.
Rome has been a hugely important influence to many cultures and nations, but the identity fanned out into numerous branches to thin to bear identity:
The city itself, well, that's still standing but it's certainly no empire.
The (western) administrative network, in a freak turn of events that you couldn't make up if you tried, lives on in the Catholic church, headed by that one office of republican Rome that kind of still exists. Pontifex Maximus, head priest in charge of making up calendar rules to strike fear upon software developers.
The political entity, it lived on far into the middle ages. But how Roman can you be when you don't talk a word of Latin?
The various populations who did talk Latin: power positions taken over by foreign warlords with little talent for or interest in administrative continuity (which is how the church got to monopolize all clerical applications) and by the time they had assimilated with the locals, cultural identity had long transformed into something new.
The Frankish peregrine kings and their successors who occasionally got an outmaneuvered pope and the acclaim of bribed and/or terrified townspeople to declare them emperor? Not much Roman about them, not even much territorial overlap. The continued existence of the actual Roman Empire somewhere else did help either and those two certainly did not agree that they were one.
The brand that we think of when we hear "Roman Empire" is Cesar, Cicero, their language and their gang of pagan gods. But that's just a snapshot, it ignores centuries of Christian empire, the many centuries of Christian Greek empire. The cultural identity died before the political entity, perhaps this is pay of why the echoes of the cultural identity are so strong.
https://en.m.wikiversity.org/wiki/Comparison_between_Roman_a...
This is actually propaganda from the US War Department.
The linked text is part of a bigger publication, it's linked at the bottom. Scanning through it revealed some juicy "dictator, but a good one" love notes to Chiang Kai-shek.
I could also talk of the "western culture" and take Sanskrit and all indu-germanic languages that are descendant from it - so basically nearly all of the European languages" as "one culture".
> Around the year 0 the Chinese culture was en par with the level of western
> culture and technology - speak Rome.
>
> Only during the middle ages the west fell so far beyond and Chinese had indeed
> a superior level of technology, knowledge and administration. Things reversed
> again with the industrial revolution and the center of industrial GDP moved to
> the west again.
The Roman Empire was on par with China, but the Roman Empire was centred around the Near East – Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, etc.
Western European parts of the Empire were very under-developed, and only really served as a buffer for Rome. (Consider how quickly the Roman Empire gave up the West after moving its capital to the East.)
In the Middle Ages the West was behind, but it was in ancient times too, so no difference. And the Near East was still on par – no difference again.
It's only really modern times that have been difference, with the West exploding out of nowhere. But that is probably just a blip, and in the grand scheme we will probably end up with China and the Near East rising again.
Quote:
There was never in Byzantium anything resembling the autonomous universities of the Latin West. Higher education was designed to train officials of the state and church, not masters of the arts and sciences.
edit: I guess that's a reference to later developments, though...
The article is talking about between 730 and 1453. Oxf*rd wasn't teaching until 1096, so I think it's fair to say England was behind for at least 300 years. It wouldn't be until the renaissance (after 1450) that you started seeing a break from scholastic teaching and academics like Bacon.
I looked up "ancient history": "Although the ending date of ancient history is disputed, some Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD"
China was far inferier compared to Egypt of that time. For now, lets consider Egypt be part of my "western" argument.
So when between the Highs of Egypt and the rise of Rome was China superior in technology? I admit, out of my head, that Asia may have had the far greater GDP product based on the number ob people. But I don't see any Asian or Chinese superiority.
"with the West exploding out of nowhere." Ignoring the Cultures and Empires of Egypt and Rome is a bit of a stretch.
"But that is probably just a blip, and in the grand scheme we will probably end up with China and the Near East rising again."
Doubt it. The Chinese culture has tremendous strength. But, as often, it comes with tremendous weaknesses.
Since we talk about empires. I know what Rome, what the Soviet Union, what Islam, what "America" had or has to offer. What does China has to offer?
It wasn't bullshit. Generally, the merchants and voyagers who reached china were in awe. It was why europeans wanted to get to china in the first place and not the other way around. Even decades after the opium wars, europeans were still in awe even while burning and pillaging.
"... I have done well. The [local] people are very civil, but I think the grandees hate us, as they must after what we did the Palace. You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made one's heart sore to burn them; in fact, these places were so large, and we were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder them carefully. Quantities of gold ornaments were burnt, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralising work for an army. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Summer_Palace
Now that the roles are reversed, it's the chinese that are in awe of us. It's why they send so many students, merchants, etc to the US. For a few hundreds years, it was europeans who were as eager to go to china as chinese are now eager to get to the West.
> Chinese Propaganda with their "5000 years old culture".
Yeah, the continuous 5000 years is really a stretch. If they have 5000 years, then might as well say europe has 5000 years or more.
> If you can really talk about a "continuous civilization" for 5000, 3500 or even 2000 years is doubtful.
Even 1000 is doubtful as the mongols conquered china for a while there.
> I am skeptical about the "Chinese Century"
We are 2 decades in and nowhere close to a "Chinese Century". This century will most likely become a multipolar century.
Well, this was after Rome, and while after the middle ages, still before the industrial revolution.
> It was why europeans wanted to get to china in the first place and not the other way around.
The reason why Europe explored more during that time says more about China than Europe.
"Even decades after the opium wars, europeans were still in awe even while burning and pillaging."
Why should they? Even if they are writings about "superior culture" from that time, we had Roman writers write too about "superior Germanic culture" (bellum germanicum). By the way, do you know why the Opium war happened? Besides having the inferior technology on the Chinese side? Do you know what the reasons was? It should be a warning to China today.
If india and china were able to free itself and industrialize when japan did, india and china would easily have the two largest economies in the world today. It's disheartening thinking about all the wealth, knowledge, goods, discoveries etc the world missed out because of shortsighted greed and brutality.
What it needed were the markets to sell the factory produce. That is what they traded in return for the spices and raw materials.
Hence it destroyed the competing industries in it's colonies like India - which was a huge market.