86 replies to this topic

[bloodmerchant]

I'm not sure how you will perceive the examples I give so I try to find some simple ones. Easter Island should make it evident enough the Island is pretty small and its inhabitants reflect a single identity throughout the island due to the same kinds of statues found clustered over the entire island. Tribe I learned is what political entities are named for like nation state/state and chiefdom due to the kinds of economical and power distribution or hierarchy imposed and structured by the various ethnic groups and they progress and get larger as they accumulate more separate peoples under its political affiliation. It also implies Han is made up of extremely diverse peoples starting since the neolithic period.

To be honest here, the Zhou were first recognized in the Shang oracle bones as adversaries, then as allies and finally as adversaries. Yet both the Zhou and the Shang are now considered to be precursors to the Han people. Even though Erligang culture is quite different than the earlier Erlitou culture, archaeological evidence suggests that Erligang culture (probably Early Shang) replaced Erlitou culture (theoretically the mythical Xia dynasty) entirely. The Shang themselves had clusters of settlements surrounded by non-Shang peoples.

What the ethnogenesis of the Han people implies that:
1) Han Chinese are not pure. Han are mixed to a certain degree, but they are generally genetically coherent. Coherency, not purity, is the key word here. (So there are minimal cases of 'Sinicized Yue' or 'Sinicized Altaics', since the Han population was too large to take their populations into altering the ethnogenesis of Han people.)
2) Han Chinese are not a melting pot either. If it were a melting pot, then we'd be seeing constant genetic inconsistencies between Han populations, which isn't the case. There is generally minimal genetic difference between Han Chinese, even North and South we do see a spectrum. (This is the claim that Sinophobes like to make against Han Chinese, that Southern Han are 'Sinicized Vietnamese' or that Northern Han are 'Sinicized Altaics'.)

Studies state that:
1) Han Chinese are generally genetically coherent.
2) Han Chinese in a certain region are more closely related to each other as well as native ethnic minorities inhabiting the same region.
3) Han Chinese living in urban municipalities and cities are quite diverse, suggesting migration from various parts of China.

Y-chromosome haplogroup O3 is a common DNA marker in Han Chinese, as it appeared in China in prehistoric times. It is found in more than 50% of Chinese males, and ranging up to over 80% in certain regional subgroups of the Han ethnicity. However, the mitochondrial DNA of Han Chinese increases in diversity as one looks from northern to southern China, which suggests that some male migrants from northern China married with women from local peoples after arriving in Guangdong, Fujian, and other regions of southern China. Despite this, tests comparing the genetic profiles of northern Han, southern Han and southern natives determined that haplogroups O1b-M110, O2a1-M88 and O3d-M7, which are prevalent in southern natives, were only observed in some southern Hans (4% on average), but not in northern Hans. Therefore, this proves that the contribution of southern natives in southern Hans is limited. In contrast, there are consistent strong genetic similarities in the Y chromosome haplogroup distribution between the southern and northern Chinese population, and the result of principal component analysis indicates almost all Han populations form a tight cluster in their Y chromosome. Additionally, the estimated contribution of northern Hans to southern Hans is substantial in both paternal and maternal lineages and a geographic cline exists for mtDNA. As a result, the northern Hans are the primary contributors to the gene pool of the southern Hans. However, it is noteworthy that the expansion process was dominated by males, as is shown by a greater contribution to the Y-chromosome than the mtDNA from northern Hans to southern Hans. These genetic observations are in line with historical records of continuous and large migratory waves of northern China inhabitants escaping warfare and famine, to southern China. Aside from these large migratory waves, other smaller southward migrations also occurred during almost all periods in the past two millennia. Moreover, a study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences into the gene frequency data of Han subpopulations and ethnic minorities in China, showed that Han subpopulations in different regions are also genetically close to the local ethnic minorities, and it means that in many cases blood of ethnic minorities has mixed into Han, while at the same time, blood of Han also has mixed into the local ethnicities. A recent, and to date the most extensive, genome-wide association study of the Han population shows that little geographic-genetic dispersion from north to south has occurred. Ultimately, with the exception in some ethnolinguistic branches of the Han Chinese, such as Pinghua, there is a coherent genetic structure in all Han Chinese populace.

http://www.sciencedi...b86f5be748917d0

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/18726285

http://www.nature.co...jhg200837a.html

Edited by bloodmerchant, 13 March 2011 - 12:24 AM.

[YuenKamSiu]

Could u find some new words? Have u ever seen their claim? Have u ever studied why they made those claim?

Uhhh what???? I take it that English is obviously not your first language which is fine but still I have a very hard time comprehending anything you say.

What new words? What claims? I'm talking about my belief that any type of supremacism is based on false ideology. If you could, please try to keep up with the conversation.

I have said clearly enough. That's normal reaction to government's comments/policy.

?????Are you having a hard time? What reaction? Like I said, I don't remember the PRC government ever promoting Han supremacism. In fact if anything I've noticed that it is mainstream to support the Zhonghua Minzu concept.

"Han is pure" and "Han is melting-pot", actually those comments r all the same.
Both do not make sense.

So if the Han are not pure and if they are not a melting pot of different peoples, then what exactly are they? Is there some sort of middle ground that I'm missing?

Hey. Could u stop making some meaningless comments like above?

What part of the comments that I've made above about were meaningless? Care to elaborate?

Even primary school students know that.

And what exactly is that?

Off topic: I'm pretty sure most primary students above would have a very hard time understanding anything you are saying right now.

Out of topic: considering some of u have complained that mainland chinese do not view u as chinese,

Are you talking about me? If so, then I would concur because I'm not native Chinese, I'm an American of Chinese descent which is much different and I'm completely fine with that.

Trust me mainland Chinese have judged me in the past. I simply scoff at them and tell them how great the USA is.

I think first u should ask yourself "would u still like to learn more about mainland/chinese/china?"

Of course, I'm always interested in learning more about my heritage but at the same time, not all Mainland Chinese are knowledgeable about China. In fact a good # of the ones I've encountered a bunch of jokers.

What the ethnogenesis of the Han people implies that:
1) Han Chinese are not pure. Han are mixed to a certain degree, but they are generally genetically coherent. Coherency, not purity, is the key word here. (So there are minimal cases of 'Sinicized Yue' or 'Sinicized Altaics', since the Han population was too large to take their populations into altering the ethnogenesis of Han people.)
2) Han Chinese are not a melting pot either. If it were a melting pot, then we'd be seeing constant genetic inconsistencies between Han populations, which isn't the case. There is generally minimal genetic difference between Han Chinese, even North and South we do see a spectrum. (This is the claim that Sinophobes like to make against Han Chinese, that Southern Han are 'Sinicized Vietnamese' or that Northern Han are 'Sinicized Altaics'.)

Thank you for your educated response. With this paragraph alone, I'm able to see where you're coming from unlike vorbei. Not sure if it was a language barrier (Or maybe an intelligence one LOL) but thanks for the explanation.

Edited by YuenKamSiu, 13 March 2011 - 01:08 AM.

[Eidolon]

I think Chinese scholars have a habit of drawing premature conclusions from genetic data. But then again this is an issue with many East Asian scholars eager to provide a basis for modern nationalism. Haplogroup data suffers from a variety of sample biases and should also not be used to determine membership in (recent) ethnolingusitic groups, like Chinese. Their time divergence are much too deep for simple historical analysis. More likely, they are the markers of far older expansions, like those that occurred during the early Neolithic due to the advent of agriculture, which is a good explanation for why the clade represented by the M175 mutation (Haplogroup O) appears in something like 80+% of major populations in East and Southeast Asia. It'd take a massive bottleneck/selection/founder's effect - something akin to the sudden spread of agriculture and its associated population explosion - to create a profile like this, though without better data it's hard to prove that agriculture was what made M175 and its descendants so successful.

I think the best that can be said at this point is that Chinese, along with continental East Asians in general and Japanese to a lesser degree, share a great deal of relatively unique ancestry from a possible Paleolithic or early Neolithic expansion undertaken by bearers of the M175 mutation. These people probably overwhelmed their competitors in East Asia in terms of reproductive success, perhaps via agriculture, which allowed them to thrive in the fertile river valleys that characterize much of East Asia south of the northern steppes and east of the western steppes.

[vorbei]

I'm not sure how you will perceive the examples I give so I try to find some simple ones. Easter Island should make it evident enough the Island is pretty small and its inhabitants reflect a single identity throughout the island due to the same kinds of statues found clustered over the entire island. Tribe I learned is what political entities are named for like nation state/state and chiefdom due to the kinds of economical and power distribution or hierarchy imposed and structured by the various ethnic groups and they progress and get larger as they accumulate more separate peoples under its political affiliation. It also implies Han is made up of extremely diverse peoples starting since the neolithic period.

Your example isn't very good. Easter island may have two kinds of immigrations,one from polynesia stock and the other from south america.
http://www.pbs.org/w...tion/first.html
Modern time han r the mixture of two kinds people in neolithic
One is 古西北类型/old northwest type, representative site:西安半坡, most closet to modern time 华北组/shanxi+hebei chinese.
The other is 古中原类型/old central plain type, representative site:仰韶/Yangshao and several site along Yangtze River, most closet to modern time 华南组/Fujian+guangdong＋hainan.
Both 2 type belong to mongoloid- East asia type. So u can say chinese r mixed race like any other ethnic, but obviously chinese rn't melting-pot.If han is made up of extremely diverse people, then how do u call the SEAs and mid asians(I put mongols into mid asians)? Extremely diverse^2? And ethnic like hindi would be extremely diverse^10?

If u knew more about chinese culture and history, then u should know chinese r quit xenophobia.Some dynasty, for example like Tang/Ming dynasty, government even forbidded han intermarried with the other ethnic.
A lot of so called miniorities,like Xianbei/Xiongnu which was said to be assimilated into han,r also not pure ethnic, and the largest part of them may be ethnic han.
And according to some of u here ,chinese is a cultural things.But the chinese culture has such a regulation "u r chinese only when your father is chinese".

I think Chinese scholars have a habit of drawing premature conclusions from genetic data. But then again this is an issue with many East Asian scholars eager to provide a basis for modern nationalism. Haplogroup data suffers from a variety of sample biases and should also not be used to determine membership in (recent) ethnolingusitic groups, like Chinese. Their time divergence are much too deep for simple historical analysis. More likely, they are the markers of far older expansions, like those that occurred during the early Neolithic due to the advent of agriculture, which is a good explanation for why the clade represented by the M175 mutation (Haplogroup O) appears in something like 80+% of major populations in East and Southeast Asia. It'd take a massive bottleneck/selection/founder's effect - something akin to the sudden spread of agriculture and its associated population explosion - to create a profile like this, though without better data it's hard to prove that agriculture was what made M175 and its descendants so successful.
I think the best that can be said at this point is that Chinese, along with continental East Asians in general and Japanese to a lesser degree, share a great deal of relatively unique ancestry from a possible Paleolithic or early Neolithic expansion undertaken by bearers of the M175 mutation. These people probably overwhelmed their competitors in East Asia in terms of reproductive success, perhaps via agriculture, which allowed them to thrive in the fertile river valleys that characterize much of East Asia south of the northern steppes and east of the western steppes.

LOL, CHF's anthropology is quit out of date.
"han is extremely diversified" this is the political correctness in china now. So even experts like Li Hui would make ridiculous jokes like claim "tanka and southern Wu speak a tai-kradai language"

[mohistManiac]

To be honest here, the Zhou were first recognized in the Shang oracle bones as adversaries, then as allies and finally as adversaries. Yet both the Zhou and the Shang are now considered to be precursors to the Han people. Even though Erligang culture is quite different than the earlier Erlitou culture, archaeological evidence suggests that Erligang culture (probably Early Shang) replaced Erlitou culture (theoretically the mythical Xia dynasty) entirely. The Shang themselves had clusters of settlements surrounded by non-Shang peoples.

What the ethnogenesis of the Han people implies that:
1) Han Chinese are not pure. Han are mixed to a certain degree, but they are generally genetically coherent. Coherency, not purity, is the key word here. (So there are minimal cases of 'Sinicized Yue' or 'Sinicized Altaics', since the Han population was too large to take their populations into altering the ethnogenesis of Han people.)
2) Han Chinese are not a melting pot either. If it were a melting pot, then we'd be seeing constant genetic inconsistencies between Han populations, which isn't the case. There is generally minimal genetic difference between Han Chinese, even North and South we do see a spectrum. (This is the claim that Sinophobes like to make against Han Chinese, that Southern Han are 'Sinicized Vietnamese' or that Northern Han are 'Sinicized Altaics'.)

Studies state that:
1) Han Chinese are generally genetically coherent.
2) Han Chinese in a certain region are more closely related to each other as well as native ethnic minorities inhabiting the same region.
3) Han Chinese living in urban municipalities and cities are quite diverse, suggesting migration from various parts of China.



http://www.sciencedi...b86f5be748917d0

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/18726285

http://www.nature.co...jhg200837a.html

Can't you see what you just discribed using the examples you gave make up a scenario of rather clear cut divisions between different peoples in the past? Like a mythical Xia that the Shang neglected to write about since they weren't ever allies and finally got replaced? Thae Shang were like the Terminators of the Xia and the Zhou were like the Terminators of the Shang. They were all using tripod pottery wares imported from other cultures which were quite distanced from their own yellow river regions but each time there were conflicts you could see the transition in culture to being more steadily adopted towards a new trend. This is what is meant by Han, something accumulated from all over and yet filtered down to some recognized essentials so that it doesn't get too complicated and this is determined by the ruling elite which were derived from those that were successful in the power struggles. I recommend the book K.C. Chang Art, Myth, and Ritual The Path to Political Authority in an Ancient China since it has much to offer concerning the dynamics at play among those powerful rivaling each other and creating their own ethnic groups in the past.

[mariusj]

Thae Shang were like the Terminators of the Xia and the Zhou were like the Terminators of the Shang.

Shiji said
汤封夏之後，至周封於杞也。
Zheng yi kuo di zhi said
汴州雍丘县，古杞国城也。周武王封禹後，号东楼公也。
----------------------------------------
Shiji also said
封纣子武庚、禄父，以续殷祀，令修行盘庚之政。殷民大说。於是周武王为天子。其後世贬帝号，号为王。而封殷後为诸侯，属周。 周武王崩，武庚与管叔、蔡叔作乱，成王命周公诛之，而立微子於宋，以续殷後焉。

It is very clear that its nothing like the terminators. In fact, dynastic succession in China is far more kind than any other.

[mariusj]

So u can say chinese r mixed race like any other ethnic, but obviously chinese rn't melting-pot.If han is made up of extremely diverse people, then how do u call the SEAs and mid asians(I put mongols into mid asians)? Extremely diverse^2? And ethnic like hindi would be extremely diverse^10?

This is a logical fallacy. What does bringing in SEAs and mid Asians have to do with this topic? Is there some sort of analogy we are missing here?
Anyhow, if the Chinese are not a mix race, and its not a melting pot, then what is it?

If u knew more about chinese culture and history, then u should know chinese r quit xenophobia.Some dynasty, for example like Tang/Ming dynasty, government even forbidded han intermarried with the other ethnic.

Source please.
The only time I can find about Tang in forbidding intermarriage is in a specific province under a specific governor.
Under 卢钧，字子和, during the time when he is 岭南节度使, it was said in New Tang Book that

蕃獠与华人错居，相婚嫁，多占田营第舍，吏或挠之，则相苾为乱；钧下令蕃华不得通婚，禁名田产，阖部肃壹无敢犯。

It is a local and limited situation.

During Ming dynasty.
Da Ming Lu said

凡蒙古色目人聽與中國人為婚姻務要兩相情願不許本類自相嫁娶違者丈八十男女入官為奴其中國人不願與回回欽察為婚姻者聽從本類自相嫁娶不在禁限

Are you making claims without knowing what you are talking about?

A lot of so called miniorities,like Xianbei/Xiongnu which was said to be assimilated into han,r also not pure ethnic, and the largest part of them may be ethnic han.

If they are assimilated, then are no longer minorities.
And I want to know how you could make claim that large parts of Xianbei/Xiongnu, prior to their assimilation, maybe already be ethnic Han.

And according to some of u here ,chinese is a cultural things.But the chinese culture has such a regulation "u r chinese only when your father is chinese".

A regulation? From which law?
Or do you mean some custom? If that is what you mean, then you are merely generalizing. You are saying if some people said xxx then xxx must be true, another logical fallacy.

LOL, CHF's anthropology is quit out of date.
"han is extremely diversified" this is the political correctness in china now. So even experts like Li Hui would make ridiculous jokes like claim "tanka and southern Wu speak a tai-kradai language"

Again, the same logical fallacy that if enough people says it, it become correct.

[bloodmerchant]

Can't you see what you just discribed using the examples you gave make up a scenario of rather clear cut divisions between different peoples in the past? Like a mythical Xia that the Shang neglected to write about since they weren't ever allies and finally got replaced? Thae Shang were like the Terminators of the Xia and the Zhou were like the Terminators of the Shang. They were all using tripod pottery wares imported from other cultures which were quite distanced from their own yellow river regions but each time there were conflicts you could see the transition in culture to being more steadily adopted towards a new trend. This is what is meant by Han, something accumulated from all over and yet filtered down to some recognized essentials so that it doesn't get too complicated and this is determined by the ruling elite which were derived from those that were successful in the power struggles. I recommend the book K.C. Chang Art, Myth, and Ritual The Path to Political Authority in an Ancient China since it has much to offer concerning the dynamics at play among those powerful rivaling each other and creating their own ethnic groups in the past.

Well, yes. I'm not disagreeing nor agreeing with anyone. I just gave my opinion on the matter, that's all. Though it does suggest that what made up Chinese was something like a melting pot during its early period. But like I said, Han Chinese today are largely genetically coherent even if there was varying differences between Neolithic cultures, and something within all or most of those Neolithic cultures somehow wound up in Chinese culture, both ancient and modern.

The Shang realm was divided into four 'tu', or four cardinal domains of north, south, east and west. On the other hand, non-Shang realms were called 'fang'. Dynastic succession was much more different and had more to do with social discontent. The mythical Xia fell because of discontent towards Jie. The Shang fell because of discontent. Much of this forms the basis of the Mandate of Heaven that began during the Zhou in order to legitimize the rule of Zhou kings. Kings simply did not have the 'divine right' to rule as do European rulers.

By the time of the creation of the Qin dynasty, almost all social classes, to an extent, had surnames. So many peasants and non-free peoples chose surnames that reminded them of their former state/polity after they were conquered by another state during the Zhou dynasty. For example, if you adopted the surname 蔡 at the time, then your ancestors probably came from 蔡國, which was conquered by Qin. Made sense in a way, as surnameless people in villages tended to have the same ancestors and the same previous sovereign ruler. And if you were one of those peasants, you bet the peasants in that other village ruled by that same local lord a couple of meters away would share the same ancestors as you. This didn't really happen when it came to the more prestigious classes who already had surnames conferred onto them or something else, such as a matriarchal surname.

Edited by bloodmerchant, 20 March 2011 - 10:40 AM.

[mohistManiac]

Well, yes. I'm not disagreeing nor agreeing with anyone. I just gave my opinion on the matter, that's all. Though it does suggest that what made up Chinese was something like a melting pot during its early period. But like I said, Han Chinese today are largely genetically coherent even if there was varying differences between Neolithic cultures, and something within all or most of those Neolithic cultures somehow wound up in Chinese culture, both ancient and modern.

The Shang realm was divided into four 'tu', or four cardinal domains of north, south, east and west. On the other hand, non-Shang realms were called 'fang'. Dynastic succession was much more different and had more to do with social discontent. The mythical Xia fell because of discontent towards Jie. The Shang fell because of discontent. Much of this forms the basis of the Mandate of Heaven that began during the Zhou in order to legitimize the rule of Zhou kings. Kings simply did not have the 'divine right' to rule as do European rulers.

By the time of the creation of the Qin dynasty, all social classes had surnames. So many people chose surnames that reminded them of their former state/polity after they were conquered by another state during the Zhou dynasty. For example, if you adopted the surname 蔡 at the time, then your ancestors probably came from 蔡國, which was conquered by Qin. Made sense in a way, as people in villages tended to have the same ancestors and the same previous sovereign ruler.

So Gan pointed out something quite interesting as well that ethnic groups like Han tend to be encompassing concepts of more recent events considering the whole of human history and I'm bound to agree. People like other animals tend to adapt rather than simply adopt their newcomer surroundings in effect creating new cultures within that ecosystem. Likewise it isn't surprising that Chinese history was full of accounts where a dominant group begins to rise like the Xia Shang and Zhou but in later periods as well where there were numerous kingdoms competing against one another. These scenarios lend well to the ethnic branching that are apparent in the diversification of language and dialects that we see across the whole landscape of China today. This process never stops as changes to culture occur and the phenomenon is ever present. Han is a very political concept which includes many ethnic categories which have assimilated to it over time due to the broad nature of the Chinese government in the past to favor those in service which use the dominant ideology as cofounded by various schools of thoughts from areas all around China since the early days of the Han dynasty. Genetic coherence today would largely be a side effect of that historical pattern of migration of trying to be inclusive to fit to a dominant ideological order of the immediate surroundings and contributing to the mega political body that is Han but we can't underestimate about the complex nature of the route that it took to get there.

[bloodmerchant]

So Gan pointed out something quite interesting as well that ethnic groups like Han tend to be encompassing concepts of more recent events considering the whole of human history and I'm bound to agree. People like other animals tend to adapt rather than simply adopt their newcomer surroundings in effect creating new cultures within that ecosystem. Likewise it isn't surprising that Chinese history was full of accounts where a dominant group begins to rise like the Xia Shang and Zhou but in later periods as well where there were numerous kingdoms competing against one another. These scenarios lend well to the ethnic branching that are apparent in the diversification of language and dialects that we see across the whole landscape of China today. This process never stops as changes to culture occur and the phenomenon is ever present. Han is a very political concept which includes many ethnic categories which have assimilated to it over time due to the broad nature of the Chinese government in the past to favor those in service which use the dominant ideology as cofounded by various schools of thoughts from areas all around China since the early days of the Han dynasty. Genetic coherence today would largely be a side effect of that historical pattern of migration of trying to be inclusive to fit to a dominant ideological order of the immediate surroundings and contributing to the mega political body that is Han but we can't underestimate about the complex nature of the route that it took to get there.

On another note, some even suggested that the Xia was a myth propagated by the Zhou dynasty in order to legitimize their rule further. Given that the 'Xia' did not have written records of their own, and the earliest written records were that of the Shang. Many of the Neolithic cultures on the East Asian mainland have much in common, but were also different from each other and many of their traditions merged to become Chinese culture. The Hemudu, Majiabang and Liangzhu cultures were jade-mining, rice-cultivating and silkworm farming cultures alien to that of the Northern Chinese civilizations of Longshan, Yangshao and Erlitou. Yet jade and silkworms are now associated with China, and rice (to an extent), of course. The Zhou Li (周禮) of the Han Dynasty theorized that the jade bi and jade cong (which were commonly found at a Liangzhu gravesite, which may have been the origins of the jade suits worn by Chinese nobility/royalty.) represent heaven and earth, respectively. This does coincide with Shang cosmology in that the world in which they lived in was square, their heavens were a circle, supported by four pillars. So maybe this does support my speculation that all of those Chinese neolithic cultures, whether proto-Sinitic or not, contributed to a common culture. Even the supposedly 'alien' culture at Sanxingdui had artifacts with some elements of Chinese mythology, such as the bronze 'sacred tree' with ten birds (suns?).

http://www.china.org...ture/235672.htm

Going a bit off topic, many late Neolithic burial sites had pits in which decapitated corpses were put in after they were allegedly sacrificed. Apparently, there must be some form of violence and warfare. Eventually prisoners were captured, decapitated and their headless bodies thrown into a well. On the contrast, there were also burial sites where people were carefully interred without getting decapitated. Was the head a symbol of importance to the precursors of the Han Chinese?

Many of those Chinese Neolithic cultures had a lot in common, especially through burials.
Burial goods were meant to show status, the more the burial goods, the higher the person's status.
Burial goods might represent transition to the afterlife. A modern analogy is where people today actually buy joss paper to burn to deceased relatives. Even joss paper cellphones and joss paper houses.

Obviously Han is a political concept in a way, but the genetic coherence could be as a result. I got a little confused along the way.

Edited by bloodmerchant, 13 March 2011 - 03:02 PM.

[mohistManiac]

On another note, some even suggested that the Xia was a myth propagated by the Zhou dynasty in order to legitimize their rule further. Given that the 'Xia' did not have written records of their own, and the earliest written records were that of the Shang. Many of the Neolithic cultures on the East Asian mainland have much in common, but were also different from each other and many of their traditions merged to become Chinese culture. The Hemudu, Majiabang and Liangzhu cultures were jade-mining, rice-cultivating and silkworm farming cultures alien to that of the Northern Chinese civilizations of Longshan, Yangshao and Erlitou. Yet jade and silkworms are now associated with China, and rice (to an extent), of course. The Zhou Li (周禮) of the Han Dynasty theorized that the jade bi and jade cong (which were commonly found at a Liangzhu gravesite, which may have been the origins of the jade suits worn by Chinese nobility/royalty.) represent heaven and earth, respectively. This does coincide with Shang cosmology in that the world in which they lived in was square, their heavens were a circle, supported by four pillars. So maybe this does support my speculation that all of those Chinese neolithic cultures, whether proto-Sinitic or not, contributed to a common culture. Even the supposedly 'alien' culture at Sanxingdui had artifacts with some elements of Chinese mythology, such as the bronze 'sacred tree' with ten birds (suns?).

http://www.china.org...ture/235672.htm

Going a bit off topic, many late Neolithic burial sites had pits in which decapitated corpses were put in after they were allegedly sacrificed. Apparently, there must be some form of violence and warfare. Eventually prisoners were captured, decapitated and their headless bodies thrown into a well. On the contrast, there were also burial sites where people were carefully interred without getting decapitated. Was the head a symbol of importance to the precursors of the Han Chinese?

Many of those Chinese Neolithic cultures had a lot in common, especially through burials.
Burial goods were meant to show status, the more the burial goods, the higher the person's status.
Burial goods might represent transition to the afterlife. A modern analogy is where people today actually buy joss paper to burn to deceased relatives. Even joss paper cellphones and joss paper houses.

Obviously Han is a political concept in a way, but the genetic coherence could be as a result. I got a little confused along the way.

Yea I've found it quite interesting to learn some of the things I happened across in looking at various cultures of the neolithic within China. There was a neolithic tribe named Qujialing culture which made thousands of these figurines for their elite's burials much like the way Qin Shi Huang was claimed to have been buried with his army of the famous terracotta warriors but on much smaller scale. Qujialing on the Yangtze isn't exactly adjacent to modern day Xian but I guess either through trade or the migration of peoples the ideas are going to flow continuously further from the point of origination as well as population mixing. And now due to the discovery of the terracotta warriors it has become yet another "lens" or representation of Chinese culture on the whole when in fact you don't find that kind of thing absolutely everywhere in China at least not in the manner of obsessive importance as it once did in ancient China. So when things change it will be due to a pattern of diversification due to a pattern of fanning outwards but chronologically speaking they trace to more or less a few areas (which if you continue to trace and trace end up at the hands of some ancient inventor living in some remote village). When a lot of these ripples touch and blend into all sorts of various patterns that kind of economic setup is going to be won over by a very strong governmental force which tries to prolong the lifespan of the setup but in reality there is just a lot of diversification going on.

[Eidolon]

So Gan pointed out something quite interesting as well that ethnic groups like Han tend to be encompassing concepts of more recent events considering the whole of human history and I'm bound to agree. People like other animals tend to adapt rather than simply adopt their newcomer surroundings in effect creating new cultures within that ecosystem. Likewise it isn't surprising that Chinese history was full of accounts where a dominant group begins to rise like the Xia Shang and Zhou but in later periods as well where there were numerous kingdoms competing against one another. These scenarios lend well to the ethnic branching that are apparent in the diversification of language and dialects that we see across the whole landscape of China today. This process never stops as changes to culture occur and the phenomenon is ever present. Han is a very political concept which includes many ethnic categories which have assimilated to it over time due to the broad nature of the Chinese government in the past to favor those in service which use the dominant ideology as cofounded by various schools of thoughts from areas all around China since the early days of the Han dynasty. Genetic coherence today would largely be a side effect of that historical pattern of migration of trying to be inclusive to fit to a dominant ideological order of the immediate surroundings and contributing to the mega political body that is Han but we can't underestimate about the complex nature of the route that it took to get there.

Genetic coherence has a number of definitions, not all of which would agree with your idea. Genetic coherence in the sense of being an intermarrying population is one concept, genetic coherence in terms of a common haplotypic ancestry, quite another. I'm not actually sure what Chinese geneticists/anthropologists buy into these days, nor what they mean by genetic coherence, but it's necessary to keep the two separate in your mind, since they are becoming very important in the study of ethnogenesis, linguistics, etc.

Autosomal genetic coherence -> a relationship typically established by intermarriage (admixture)

Haplotypic genetic coherence -> a relationship typically established by common descent from a founding population

Edited by Eidolon, 13 March 2011 - 04:20 PM.

[Eidolon]

On another note, some even suggested that the Xia was a myth propagated by the Zhou dynasty in order to legitimize their rule further. Given that the 'Xia' did not have written records of their own, and the earliest written records were that of the Shang. Many of the Neolithic cultures on the East Asian mainland have much in common, but were also different from each other and many of their traditions merged to become Chinese culture. The Hemudu, Majiabang and Liangzhu cultures were jade-mining, rice-cultivating and silkworm farming cultures alien to that of the Northern Chinese civilizations of Longshan, Yangshao and Erlitou. Yet jade and silkworms are now associated with China, and rice (to an extent), of course. The Zhou Li (周禮) of the Han Dynasty theorized that the jade bi and jade cong (which were commonly found at a Liangzhu gravesite, which may have been the origins of the jade suits worn by Chinese nobility/royalty.) represent heaven and earth, respectively. This does coincide with Shang cosmology in that the world in which they lived in was square, their heavens were a circle, supported by four pillars. So maybe this does support my speculation that all of those Chinese neolithic cultures, whether proto-Sinitic or not, contributed to a common culture. Even the supposedly 'alien' culture at Sanxingdui had artifacts with some elements of Chinese mythology, such as the bronze 'sacred tree' with ten birds (suns?).

http://www.china.org...ture/235672.htm

Going a bit off topic, many late Neolithic burial sites had pits in which decapitated corpses were put in after they were allegedly sacrificed. Apparently, there must be some form of violence and warfare. Eventually prisoners were captured, decapitated and their headless bodies thrown into a well. On the contrast, there were also burial sites where people were carefully interred without getting decapitated. Was the head a symbol of importance to the precursors of the Han Chinese?

Many of those Chinese Neolithic cultures had a lot in common, especially through burials.
Burial goods were meant to show status, the more the burial goods, the higher the person's status.
Burial goods might represent transition to the afterlife. A modern analogy is where people today actually buy joss paper to burn to deceased relatives. Even joss paper cellphones and joss paper houses.

Obviously Han is a political concept in a way, but the genetic coherence could be as a result. I got a little confused along the way.

Not sure I agree with your time scales. Silk worm raising was practiced by the Yangshao and Longshan cultures, and jade products were widespread during the Longshan. Rice cultivation was practiced even by early cultures at Peiligang (Jiahu in particular), and spread into north China in the early/mid-Neolithic. I'm not just disagreeing for the sake of being pedantic, either. The relationship between the technologies and practices of Neolithic cultures in China make it a wellspring of theories for ethnolinguists, and is at the core of debates about the proto-linguistic affiliations of various Neolithic sites and their migrations. This is why there is controversy over whether Hongshan was "proto-Altaic," whether Liangzhu was "proto-Austro-Asiatic" or "proto-Tai-Kradai," whether Dawenkou was "proto-Austronesian mixed with proto-Tibeto-Burman," etc. And such arguments do have relevance to the discussion of later Chinese history, as there is a tendency especially by East Asian scholars to assume core lineal descent with respect to cultures. Thus, Guo Da-Shun's claim that Shang culture came from Lower Xiajiadian (which in his mind probably meant that Lower Xiajiadian if not also Hongshan was "proto-Chinese") has been used by some other scholars to claim that Shang was "non-Chinese" since Lower Xiajiadian was "more likely to be non-Chinese or proto-Altaic at the time," which may then have spurred the effort to trace Shang to Erlitou, instead.

The bottomline in all of these examples is that people have a tendency to not respect the archaic nature of these Neolithic cultures, which predated the establishment of any of the ethnolinguistic identities we know today and which, like you said, probably affected all of them in various ways. But part of this blame must rest on the historical linguists, who have tended to play hard and fast with their macro-linguistic theories, assigning entire cultures and cultural lines to one or another proto-linguistic family, even before the dust has settled on what these families ought to be. The point of bringing genetics into the picture is partly to check the credibility of such claims, which presume much (perhaps too much, in some cases) about the way languages diffuse.

In any case, I agree with the general notion that Chinese, like other modern ethnolinguistic groups, was the product of a long historical process involving substantial assimilation and merging. But the real question is: what does this mean? And it is here that linguists, geneticists, historians, anthropologists, nationalists, etc. start disagreeing.

Edited by Eidolon, 13 March 2011 - 05:05 PM.

[mohistManiac]

Genetic coherence has a number of definitions, not all of which would agree with your idea. Genetic coherence in the sense of being an intermarrying population is one concept, genetic coherence in terms of a common haplotypic ancestry, quite another. I'm not actually sure what Chinese geneticists/anthropologists buy into these days, nor what they mean by genetic coherence, but it's necessary to keep the two separate in your mind, since they are becoming very important in the study of ethnogenesis, linguistics, etc.

Autosomal genetic coherence -> a relationship typically established by intermarriage (admixture)

Haplotypic genetic coherence -> a relationship typically established by common descent from a founding population

Well I began by pointing out that basically the lone activity centers which ancient neolithic peoples settled allowed for their relatively isolated economic setups and cultures. It's off topic but the simplest example is the Easter Island setup. Anyways these cultures will come to envelop the resources they controlled and find they bordered on someone else's turf at some point in time. At this stage resonant political entities of many closer proximity ethnic groups can form to control what goes in and out of their territory and they become entities like Xia Shang and Zhou. They can be seen as different ethnic groups altogether and yet there can still be further melding at junctures which receive the most traffic flow. In the end you get something like Han which tries to make an economic setup of the whole thing. This is what I think bloodmerchant was refering to when he calls it a genetic coherence. From one distinct population to the next people ought to be experiencing genetic similarities due to the migration patterns and intermarriage and this to me is the level at which new emerging ethnic groups will come to be except in China they will just be recognized as Han if the Han identity continues to be indefinitely recognized. Since I keep rambling on and on and make some people confused if someone who understands can make it more clear by rephrasing what I've just said I would appreciate it, thanks.

[bloodmerchant]

Not sure I agree with your time scales. Silk worm raising was practiced by the Yangshao and Longshan cultures, and jade products were widespread during the Longshan. Rice cultivation was practiced even by early cultures at Peiligang (Jiahu in particular), and spread into north China in the early/mid-Neolithic. I'm not just disagreeing for the sake of being pedantic, either. The relationship between the technologies and practices of Neolithic cultures in China make it a wellspring of theories for ethnolinguists, and is at the core of debates about the proto-linguistic affiliations of various Neolithic sites and their migrations. This is why there is controversy over whether Hongshan was "proto-Altaic," whether Liangzhu was "proto-Austro-Asiatic" or "proto-Tai-Kradai," whether Dawenkou was "proto-Austronesian mixed with proto-Tibeto-Burman," etc. And such arguments do have relevance to the discussion of later Chinese history, as there is a tendency especially by East Asian scholars to assume core lineal descent with respect to cultures. Thus, Guo Da-Shun's claim that Shang culture came from Lower Xiajiadian (which in his mind probably meant that Lower Xiajiadian if not also Hongshan was "proto-Chinese") has been used by some other scholars to claim that Shang was "non-Chinese" since Lower Xiajiadian was "more likely to be non-Chinese or proto-Altaic at the time," which may then have spurred the effort to trace Shang to Erlitou, instead.

From what I know, the Neolithic cultures of the Lower Yangtze were among the first to mine jade and raise silkworms. Even if there were jade products and silkworm products at other Neolithic sites, it is likely that those were trade goods. Much of the elites during the Neolithic often traded their luxury goods with each other. Erligang was considered to be an Early Shang neolithic culture, and that Erlitou was a precursor culture that was replaced entirely by Erligang. It is theorized to be Xia, but since the Xia left no written records, we don't know for sure. And I dislike how people associate linguistic groups with Neolithic cultures. We certainly don't know what language they spoke, they might have spoken language isolates. This often serves nationalists of whatever nation to associate a particular culture to some ethno-linguistic group just to make irredentist claims. And even by looking at a map, those cultures often overlapped with one another, honeycombed near unrelated settlements. And of course, Chinese historians, as well as other East Asian historians, love to connect their mythological fairy tales with actual neolithic cultures, history and archaeology.

But I honestly think we're getting derailed and going off topic quite a bit here.

Edited by bloodmerchant, 13 March 2011 - 06:09 PM.