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Comment by Johnwbh | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. One of the things that ancient China had that other comparable civilizations didn't was an intellectual culture that transcended the political divisions of the time. Which allowed for a lot of innovation, and spreading of knowledge. Closest thing in Europe before the modern time is maybe late Rome, but it was fairly centralized, which made it harder for innovations to spread and take hold. Whereas ancient China had power spread out much more, even when it was notionally ruled by a single dynasty

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Wasn't the church pretty much independent of the individual European kingdoms and empires? Also starting with the renaissance, but probably even before that, scientists and philosophers could move between courts.

The Church had its own religious purview but it took a while for it to become its own political force. In that respect it rose at the same time as the improvements in government, land management, international travel, trade etc. that occurred in the later half of the Middle Ages.

The first comprehensive system of intellectual dissemination came through universities, starting in the 11th/12th c. Those who wanted to study law went to Bologna, theology to Paris, medicine to Montpellier etc. Universities were international places where people used Latin as a vehicular language. Broke student spending their time drinking and living in hovels were legion and became a hotbed of radicalism [1].

By the time the Renaissance came around, there was an entire industry of private education with lay academies everywhere and teachers travelling all over the continent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Paris_strike,_12...

Hellenic culture played a similar role, including in Rome.

But regime change often means history is changed. Some Chinese dynasties did their best to erase the history of their former challengers.

I ran into this idea when researching the history of tea. It can be easily traced back until you reach a point in the time-line where a god-like dynasty founder made tea sua sponte. Prior history having been deliberately erased by the proponents of the anointed inventor of tea made it impossible to research further, even though there would have been written records otherwise.

That is not correct;

I believe the "god-like dynasty founder" you're referring to is Shennong, the mythical 2nd emperor of Chine who is said to have invented tea, medicine and government[0]. If so, there is (obviously) no historical evidence of his existence.

On the other hand, the history of tea is well understood. Tea originated in Yunnan province and was used by the local minority groups along the Lancang river (the headwaters of the Mekong) as a masicient, chewed like coca leaf in the Andes and Holly in North America, for its stimulating properties. Before the Tang Dynasty, tea was a medicinal herb, part of the broader group of herbs used as a medicine by the wondering mendicants of Southern China, who spread its use throughout the southern provenances.

Tea became a regional drink pre-Tang, but didn't begin to spread throughout China until the introduction of Buddhism and its adoption into the Buddhist practice as part of the Chinese temperance movement (used in place of alcohol).

Most of the myths around tea originated with Lu Yu[1] a real historical figure who wrote "Cha Jing" or Tea Bible during the Tang - working outside the widely accepted historical texts, he attributed any nebulous mention of medicinal herb (then called "Tu" in classical Chinese) to the tea plant and built up a corpus of mythologies and stories around the new plant (as a type of promotion), including the addition of tea to the older existing myth of Shennong.

Anyway - that is all to say: the history of tea is also the story of the spread of Chan Buddhism and its (inconsistent) anti-alcohol temperance moment from a niche herb in Southern China to one of the largest agricultural commodities today.

I'd recommend "Tea In China: A Religous And Cultural History by James A. Benn"[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shennong

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Yu

[2] https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/tea-in-china-a-religious-an...

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