Ancient Chinese History Thread

[Free Capitalist]

Let me try to put this thread in some context.

The original purpose of this thread was to discuss ancient Chinese history, and validity of various claims made about it. Now the reason why I started talking about Persia here is because the two nations have a lot in common. Thus, someone knowledgeable with ancient Western history, and is therefore familiar with Persia, can use this knowledge to understand ancient China, with proper emendations from people who have studied ancient Chinese history directly.

Now a brief note about Persia -- it certainly was not some sort of a primitive tribal country. They made advances in various fields, for example astronomy, which the later Greek scientists used as a starting point for their subsequent thinking, and if you've seen some of their steles, the Persians were not incompetent at cutting stone and making depictions either. Let's not minimize the importance of the fact of how big the empire was that the Persians ended up ruling, and such degree of rule is impossible without an advanced state of bureaucracy and a system of laws. Plus, the Persians were the first people in history to develop postal service and transmission of letters and packages over distance. Herodotus' described that vast and efficient system, "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds", and that phrase was adopted by the United States Postal Service as its logo:

More about China, later.

[Free Capitalist]

Ok alright, so that's Persia -- even though not as advanced as the Greeks, they were not stupid, or primitive. Now China:

However, the Chinese had always been innovators in technology, even in ancient times.

Of course Europe eventually eclipsed them when Aristotlean logicism returned during the Renaissance, but the point remains that, when compared to other independently developing civilizations, such as the African tribes and the American empires (the Incans, Mayans, and Aztecs) China was very advanced.

I think this is precisely the kind of example of falling victim to propaganda about the Chinese, that I've mentioned before. The Chinese were not that advanced. They first acquired the use of iron as late as 400BC (even the barbarian Celts not only had it, but perfected its use, by 500BC), their first surviving example of writing is around 1000BC, far later than Mycenean Greeks (2000BC) and their first real great historian is around 100BC. True, the greatest Chinese man of thought, Confucius, flourished early, in the 6th century BC (150 years before Socrates), but Buddha was also around during this time, in India.

So, while respect should be acorded to Ancient Chinese for things they developed, the civilization should not be glorified so completely out of proportion. Besides let's not forget that the real ancient civilization was Egypt, which already flourished around 3000BC, and built Pyramids, thousands of years before anyone on the Yellow River could write even his own name. From now all the way back to Caesar, that's how long of a time elapsed between the Chinese flourishing, and the Egyptians.

So the Chinese civilization should be viewed in a very strict context, and the outright propaganda spread today about its "incredible" advancement and superiority should be guarded against. The Chinese did eventually develop their own writing, technology, etc, but so did the Indians around exactly the same time, impressing Alexander and his generals when he invaded.

Were the Chinese more than advanced than the Mayans or the Africans? Of course, but then again so was just about everyone... it doesn't really do much to compare the two.

One of the major reasons why the myth of Chinese superiority is becoming increasingly popular today because of the power that the country has acquired in recent years. People are becoming impressed, and trying to find historic roots. Imagine if Egypt was a world power to rival America now -- don't you think they'd rub in everyone's noses the fact of their antiquity, and saying how much better they are than the West? But they're not any kind of power at all, so no one cares about them. No one's imagination is enflamed by the mind-boggling antiquity of the Egyptian civilization in comparison to every other culture out there. So my recommendation would be to be very careful when hearing about extraordinary claims sometimes made about ancient Chinese history. They were a pretty advanced ancient civilization, like some others of the time. That's about all that can be said there.

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Next post: comparison between Ancient China and the West.

Edited December 8, 2005 by Free Capitalist

[Adrian Hester]

The Chinese were not that advanced. They first acquired the use of iron as late as 400BC (even the barbarian Celts not only had it, but perfected its use, by 500BC), their first surviving example of writing is around 1000BC, far later than Mycenean Greeks (2000BC) and their first real great historian is around 100BC. True, the greatest Chinese man of thought, Confucius, flourished early, in the 6th century BC (150 years before Socrates), but Buddha was also around during this time, in India.

I agree with most of what you have posted here, but not the bit about writing. The oracle bone inscriptions are usually dated to between 1300 and 1100 BC, and monuments in Linear B are usually dated to around 1500-1200 BC. (Linear A, which dates to around 2000-1200 BC, was Minoan and thus might well not have been Greek.) And though Socrates is the obvious figure to compare him to, Confucius lived around the same time as the early Ionian philosophers.

Edited December 9, 2005 by Adrian Hester

[DavidOdden]

{of the Chinese} their first surviving example of writing is around 1000BC, far later than Mycenean Greeks (2000BC)

Lemme interject a note on writing issues. Adrian correctly points to the booboo in Mycenean dating, and I will add that Old Chinese inscriptions date to about 1,400 BJ just assuming the uncontroversial Shang dynasty bone inscriptions, or much further back if you consider the pottery inscriptions in Shandong from as far back as 4,500 BJ (more recently discovered; and also (though less pointedly) he mentions that Mycenean script is conceptually derivative from (something presumptively non-Indo-European) namely Minoan writing. If you want to get to the root of the concept of writing, look at the Egyptians and Sumerians, noting that earliest Sumerian writing kicks Greek ass by about 1600 years minimally (and Egyptian is basically contemporaneous). Now, if you want something kinda suggesting writing, look at the Vinca inscriptions which are maybe as old as 7,000 BJ. The only problem is, we don't know if it is "writing" as opposed to "drawing". Idem the Harappa inscriptions, which go back to something like 3300 BJ, but again they might have just been pretty pictures. That is the problem with using "writing" -- without a translation an linguistic analysis, it's hard to distinguish writing from pretty pictures.

Mycenean writing was conceptually derivative from a different, earlier non-Indo-European (Greek) source (Minoan at the minimum; Egyptian or possibly Sumerian ultimately). Chinese script is not derived from that source, but comes from independent discovery. The question should not be who had writing, but who discovered the concept of "writing" (meaning, a particular representation of language in fixed graphic form). BTW if it's not clear, in my mind the West made certain fundamental discoveries much earlier than the Chinese did, and the Chinese had the sole advantage of not having totally disintegrated as happened in the West. However, the issue of interpreting historical data is sufficiently important to me to cause me to take notice of what you said.

[Free Capitalist]

Just a brief note:

When comparing Mycenean Greek writing and Ancient Chinese, I was not making a comparison between the Western civilization and China, but only making a point that there were civilizations out there who started writing long before the Chinese did. Whether it were the Minoans or Myceneans, native or acquired from an earlier civilization, isn't really what I'm getting at. The point is, whoever they are, they had that writing a long time ago. (Besides, you can't really consider the Mycenean Greeks as "Greeks" in the classical sense, so I couldn't there have been making a comparison between the West and China even if I wanted to.)

Edited December 9, 2005 by Free Capitalist