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Comment by orange_joe | Hacker News Reader

While this debate is very interesting from an academic level, it should also be noted that it exists as a part of a nationalistic Chinese history of claiming a unique anthropological history of the Han as emerging from a separate course of evolution. [1] In some case scholars have gone as far as claiming an “out-of-asia” theory as opposed to the broadly accepted African origin of humanity [1]. Whereas these fossils could very well represent a new species of “Dragon Man” (note the mythical/national connection in the name) these claims need to be understood within the social and political framework of their originating nation.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-china-is-rewr...

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> In some case scholars have gone as far as claiming an “out-of-asia” theory as opposed to the broadly accepted African origin of humanity

My favorite over-the-top example of this:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/mandarin-chine...

tl;dr: some Chinese "scholars" claim English is a Mandarin dialect and Europe had no history before the 15th century (and Greece, Rome, etc. were fabricated in imitation of Chinese history).

We had our fair share of scholars in the west thinking there was no civilization in North America before Columbus.

We do? I've never even heard of this idea. Just debates about exactly how many thousands of years ago people got here.

...unless you mean "civilization" in terms of "not savages" which is totally unrelated kind of dumbness.

Civilization has at its root the concept of cities, so by that standard it's fair to say that large parts of North America had no civilizations.

Whether this is particularly important is open to debate; I prefer to think that it is relevant (cities allow for specialization) but should not be considered a sign of sophistication.

Most archaeologists and anthropologists don't like the term 'civilization' as a whole because it's overloaded with these outdated connotations that reflect the biases of the speaker rather than anything meaningful about the society under discussion. You can repeat the first sentence to any Americanist you like and see if they agree with the spirit of what it says.

There were a 100M Native Americans just a few years before Europeans arrived. They mostly died to a plague, but there were cities with millions.

Note that I specified North America. Most of the cities were in Central or South America.

Mexico is in North America, buddy.

Not according to the UN: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for...

The UN scheme deliberately uses the term "Northern America" to differentiate it from the continent of a similar name. The second sentence on the wiki page says as much:

> Note that the continent of North America comprises the intermediate regions of the Caribbean, Central America, and Northern America.

The UN uses that scheme because Mexico is part of the Latin America region and makes more sense grouped with them for statistical purposes than with the US and Canada.

Sounds like you understood him perfectly well, then. Not sure why all this writing was necessary in that case.

Because Mexico is in North America, despite what Colin said? Seems worth clarifying.

After a tour de force comment like the one at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27639407 I'm inclined to want more writing from this person, not less.

Most people in the world don't seem to have any problem with distinguishing North-America-the-Continent from North-America-the-Region depending on context. For example in my native tongue there's not even a way of phrasing them differently. Yet humans can somehow disambiguate the two just fine.

Even if you interpret my comment to mean something other than what I meant, what I said is still true: Large parts of North America had no cities prior to European settlement.

Like everything in archaeology, that depends on your definitions. Restricting the scope to the lower 48 for sanity and taking Michael Smith's attributes of urbanism (a good default starting point), a good chunk of the US had pre-columbian urbanism. The southwest and southeast are inarguable. The Midwest had similar urban agglomerations on a smaller scale. The PNW and California (aside from the bits already described by 'the southwest') displayed most attributes aside from "true agriculture", which is a silly eurocentric concept anyway. That leaves the Northeast where I'm simply not familiar enough with the archaeology to comment.

Florida, possibly a bit of the plains, and the upper northeast could be said to lack cities, sure. That's a far cry from how I understand your statement. What am I missing here?

Canada? There were a few cities in what is now southern Ontario but AFAIK that's about it.

Is there a point be made by including areas that continue to lack cities and urbanization even today? I was assuming that you were making a point about pre-contact demography in North America being unique in some way. If you were just stating random characteristics it shares with every other continent, my mistake I guess?

Umm... Canada is highly urbanized.

I give up.

Not a single pre-columbian city in the americas had a million people.

In North America, the largest city, Cahokia, had 15,000 - 20,000 and peaked around 1100 AD. North America was mostly a stone age culture without a lot of cities.

You had more advanced civilizations in central and south america.

The Aztecs were the biggest. The largest urban area were the two sister cities of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco. Again, population estimates are hard to come by, but 200,000–400,000 inhabitants are estimated for Tenochtitlan and half that for Tlatelolco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan

Teotihuacan was the largest city in the Americas during the classical period, beginning to decline around 600 AD and virtually dissapearing by 1000 AD. Peak population of 150-250,000 around 450 AD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan

The absolutely fascinating Olmecs (with the enormous heads and jade masks), were the largest before then, but they died out around 450 AD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmecs

Population estimates for their biggest city, La Venta, are about 20,000 people.

Teotihuacan had about 125K around 500 A.D, but again collapsed by around 1000 AD.

In South America, the largest Incan city, Cusco, had a peak population of up to 150,000.

https://www.worldhistory.org/Cuzco/

Tikal, the largest Mayan city, had about 200,000 (Peaking around 900 A.D)

Etc

> In North America, the largest city, Cahokia, had 15,000 - 20,000 and peaked around 1100 AD.

> You had more advanced civilizations in central and south america.

Central America is part of North America.

Sounds like a category error. Regions vs. continents.

> Not a single pre-columbian city in the americas had a million people.

Hardly any cities anywhere had ever had 1m people at that time. A quick google puts ancient Rome at 450,000, ancient Athens at 200,000, and London in 1500AD at 50,000 (200,000 by 1600AD)

Can't edit. I'm off by half an order of magnitude and I'm not sure when I picked the incorrect information up.

Tens of millions of Native Americans / indigenous peoples. Much larger area, so cities with tens of thousands, not millions.

the dumbness is not unrelated.

How many of them in the last (conservatively) 100 years? This "the entire history of western civilization is China fanfic" deal is from 2019.

ehh no one in china takes these claims seriously

if i've learned anything in the last year... there might actually be a sizeable amount of people (who you might not interact with on daily basis) that actually deeply believe it

If you are taking about relative importance, then these people's voice will be negaliable compared to main stream views.

If you are talking about absolute number, then of course it could be substantial, but that's true for any situation, I.e., there are just more people there.

Haven't we learned anything when looking at America over the past 5 years? "Nobody important actually thinks that" becomes legitimate nationalistic pride.

Well, that's one thing I now point out often to American people (I was born and raised in China), American nationalism is not same as Chinese one. To some degree, Chinese nationalism went beyond the narrow view point already in the Mao era. Chinese people nowadays are very sensitive to nationalism topics, but they are also rational. I never saw Chinese people disapprove facts for national pride. It's that Chinese people have a conviction that they can do whatever other people can do, and probably can do some better. That's one benefit of tight propaganda control, as the CCP knows very well how powerful and uncontrollable the nationalism can be. So they are relatively adept in managing the sentiment.

"I never saw Chinese people disapprove facts for national pride. It's that Chinese people have a conviction that they can do whatever other people can do, and probably can do some better"

Are you sure about this? Because if the view that humanity developed in china is still popular, despite strong dna evidence suggesting otherwise - I do see nationalistic skewing of facts here.

> humanity developed in china is still popular

Factually wrong statement

1. The claim was that Chinese were developed in the China land. Not humanity as a whole

2. People do not take such claim seriously.

Your statement appears that majority or at least large number of Chinese support this ridiculous claim.

> 2. People do not take such claim seriously.

This reads "I don't, and I assume others don't, too", which, again, America has proven even the most ridiculous of ideas are believed by _some_, and oftentimes _lots_ of people.

Isn't that need to considered in relative term? Some people showing certain behavior, when they are below certain percentage, just not going to affect the overall outlook of the nation. And we are talking about the national sentiment of China, comparably speaking, that applies to equally large scale sentiment in US. For example, there are a lot of people believe in flat earth theory, but that does not stand to be a US sentiment, one cannot claim that US people believe in flat earth. Same, one cannot claim Chinese people believe they are evolved from independent source than people living in other countries.

> For example, there are a lot of people believe in flat earth theory, but that does not stand to be a US sentiment,

Nobody but you in this thread is speaking in absolutes. _Some_ to _lots of_ US citizens believe the earth is flat.

> Same, one cannot claim Chinese people believe they are evolved from independent source than people living in other countries.

_Some_ to _lots of_ Chinese people _do_ believe this. You keep saying "Nobody actually thinks ___", which isn't true.

Never meant to say nobody actually think. I was saying it's ratio is very low. My English might not be precise.

> I never saw Chinese people disapprove facts for national pride. ... That's one benefit of tight propaganda control, as the CCP knows very well how powerful and uncontrollable the nationalism can be.

CCP propaganda has a long, terrible history, to the present day. They require compliance with it and hire people to spread it. The CCP regularly stirs up nationalism, for example over the Nine Dashed Line.

You prove my point, I.e., CCP can very well manage China's nationalism sentiment.

My parents believe that Coliseum and Notre Dame weren't built by humans, so yeah pretty safe bet!

Who do they think built them?

Some kind of highly anthropomorphic non-human entity is highly popular throughout history.

ayylmaos?

Flavian Amphitheatre ("Colosseum"): Sasquatch Trolls.

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris: A fragile temporary alliance of vampires and werewolves.

Obviously.

Then who are they for? Certainly no one outside China takes them seriously, either.

Party officials. The more absurd the claim, the more loyal you are. Extremely few actually believe these statements, but the statements are more widely viewed as being politically useful.

No way! What a weird system. Is democracy vulnerable to this?

How sure of that are you? This sounds remarkably similar to the claims about, say, Great Zimbabwe; up until the 20th century, almost everyone assumed it was built by some sort of outsider (weirder contenders include the Queen of Sheba!) rather than the locals, and indeed in Rhodesia, where the site was located, it was not permitted to question this until the regime collapsed. Professional modern archaeologists didn’t buy this, of course, but it hardly mattered; normal people believed it because they were told it.

> ehh no one in china takes these claims seriously

I know that. I believe they were roundly mocked on Chinese social media, but the claims are so over the top to be utterly hilarious.

We have our share of crackpots like those in our country as well. No one takes them seriously. Most of them do not even have a history on anthropology degree. They're the laughing stock of younger history majors.

The thing about crackpots with wildly unsubstantiated self-aggrandizing anthropological theories is that they often wield disproportionate power and influence. Take the Mormon church for example: they believe Native Americans were white Jews who were cursed with dark skin and it was god's will they be wiped out by European settlers. It's horrifically racist and there's zero evidence to support the origin story. And yet, the church holds over $100 billion in their investment portfolio alone and nearly had one of their own elected as US president. It's hard to laugh at.

The US is just crazy. This is especially after I've seen the people who've stormed the Capitol with Qanon t-shirts.

We're practicaly neighbours with the Mormon mission here but they seem all right. Friendly, very clean, tall. It's true that they're all white.

Religion fundamentalists the world over very angrily push their myths as literal facts, and often politicians have to at least somewhat indulge them.

While multiple US examples are probably well known here, I’d like to suggest one from India from circa 2008, the controversy over the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal.

India wanted to dig a “canal” (more like dredge a shipping channel) in the waters between India and Sri Lanka. Religious fundamentalists opposed this because it would involve cutting a natural rock formation. What so special about these rocks? Well they were placed there by Lord Ram and his army of monkeys as chronicled in the Ramayana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sethusamudram_Shipping_Canal_P...

Why a debate needs to be understood within social and political framework? A debate should be based on evidence, nothing else. If a Trump supporter has some evidence to support his claim, you shouldn't discard his opinion because he is in the different political camp.

I guess the out of India theory has competition! All hail nationalism comedy!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Aryanism

If you actually read the scientific American article cited, you can see that the title is click baiting.

The only direct statement for the point of the title:

"""

Some Western researchers suggest that there is a hint of nationalism in Chinese palaeontologists' support for continuity. “The Chinese — they do not accept the idea that H. sapiens evolved in Africa,” says one researcher. “They want everything to come from China.”

Chinese researchers reject such allegations. “This has nothing to do with nationalism,” says Wu. It's all about the evidence — the transitional fossils and archaeological artefacts, he says. “Everything points to continuous evolution in China from H. erectus to modern human.”

"""

And the rest of the article enumerates many evidences that prove the evidences uncovered in China and many other Asian countries pose a lot of questions of the established theory.

I don't think it's fair to put nationalism at the center of the discussion.

Edit: I would not expected down voting on this comment if this was in before 2016 (just rough impression). Now I fully prepared to it. The lack of inter exchange is killing the vitality of this forum. Hope this idea becomes more evident here. After all, there are so many pther places to not engage in serious discussion, this forum is most valuable when it predominantly values facts.

No, the nationalism is a real issue, though it's not a majority view among Chinese researchers.

What Wu claims above is directly and unambiguously contradicted by genetic evidence. Han are overwhelmingly O-M122 (sometimes written as O2 or O3) which absolutely goes back to the common African ancestor. You can look up the lineage yourself on the wikipage for haplogroups. What's true is they're a fairly recent split off the "spine"

This is a settled matter, not one where HN is somehow censoring evidence based debate. The argument is fundamentally dishonest vs the evidence in total.

Edit:

Just to follow up with more useful information:

What we are learning that's overturning some conventional views from recent digs in India and across Asia is about how technology/culture diffused amongst modern humans once they were resigning there. We're finding it was more of a web than a linear diffusion as previously thought. But that's all, again, among modern humans, not evidence of independent evolution of the Han people from homo erectus.

> No, the nationalism is a real issue

Sure, totally agree.

I was pointing out it's not fair to pick this issue for this particular new discovery.

Science is never settled. That's how science do.

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