29 replies to this topic

[stardave]

Again... if those local farmers would never know those turtle bones to be Chinese writing, then who would have discovery it as Chinese writing? Because if they have no recognition of the text at all, then we won't even know about this today won't we? Surely someone must have saw the text and recognize it as somewhat simlar to the writing system of contemporary time and contact the authority etc... And guess what? They were able to use the Chinese language to decipher text didn't they? They didn't need some kind of Rosetta Stone to do it did they?

That picture I link you is the perfect example of how Chiense text is connected from ancient time to the modern. The same cannot be said for Egyptican language at all.

Here is the modern language of Egypt: Egyptian Arabic, it traced directly back to the conquering Arabic people.
http://egyptianarabi...Alphabet-sm.jpg
Here is Egyptian hieroglyphs, the language they developed on their own, they use it for thousands of years until it was lost to them and then rediscovered again in 19th century
http://upload.wikime..._curs_hiero.jpg

The 2 of them have ABSOLUTELY NO connection whatsoever. I call this a break in culture and language. The same cannot be said for Chinese language. But I understand what you saying, you are saying if traced back from Chinese history that is able to connect, there should be at least strong connection with Zhou at least, maybe not with Xia or very weak Shang connection, but no matter how weak the connection, it still exist, there is no absolute breakage.


Your second argument is that Chinese lost more than they would want to admit, let say this is true, that by your argument you can actually provide evidence at what certain period that the Chinese lost 99% of their culture at for example 100BC and what we know is only from the rest of the 1% that is passed on today, and thus it make the Chinese culture dead etc... I don't think you can provide it, there is no evidence for that. Here is what I do know, it is true that if you want to accumulate the total knowledge or traditions of all the past Chinese culture they have lost in the past, it maybe a HUGE amount, but during any certain period that was ongoing, there are more culture and traditions that was preserving than those that has been lost, and from those cultural and tradition that has been able to preserve, it continued none-stop, it gained more culture and traditions as it goes on and lost same as well, but the flow of the river has never been stopped. And this make it lasting and continuous.

Unless you can actually show me proof that there was one period of Chinese culture had this, then in a very short period of time, the next generation of Chinese have discarded the previous generation's values, regions, language in an abrupt end.

your last argument of Egyptian continuity base on the Aten is simply absurd, all this time you try to want to argue with me that Chinese has lost more than they gain etc... but yet, I already show you the almost none existent connection of Aten in the year 1100BC to the Christianity 1000 years later, by all mean and purposes , those 2 religion had no connection with each other, not on paper, not in any form of historical evidence etc... the fact they are similar is nothing but pure coincidence, but yet why do you want to take this weak connection as some kind of definitive proof that there is strong link between Ancient Egyptian and Rome? If you really want to make that kind of connection base on this kind of argument, there is 100x more strong enough connection with the between the mystical Xia dynasty with Zhou and Han.

[mohistManiac]

Again... if those local farmers would never know those turtle bones to be Chinese writing, then who would have discovery it as Chinese writing? Because if they have no recognition of the text at all, then we won't even know about this today won't we? Surely someone must have saw the text and recognize it as somewhat simlar to the writing system of contemporary time and contact the authority etc... And guess what? They were able to use the Chinese language to decipher text didn't they? They didn't need some kind of Rosetta Stone to do it did they?

That picture I link you is the perfect example of how Chiense text is connected from ancient time to the modern. The same cannot be said for Egyptican language at all.

Here is the modern language of Egypt: Egyptian Arabic, it traced directly back to the conquering Arabic people.
http://egyptianarabi...Alphabet-sm.jpg
Here is Egyptian hieroglyphs, the language they developed on their own, they use it for thousands of years until it was lost to them and then rediscovered again in 19th century
http://upload.wikime..._curs_hiero.jpg


The 2 of them have ABSOLUTELY NO connection whatsoever. I call this a break in culture and language. The same cannot be said for Chinese language. But I understand what you saying, you are saying if traced back from Chinese history that is able to connect, there should be at least strong connection with Zhou at least, maybe not with Xia or very weak Shang connection, but no matter how weak the connection, it still exist, there is no absolute breakage.

But the farmers didn't know because they sold it as medicine. They found a lot and it never occurred to them what a bunch of bones with chicken scratches on them mean. And I doubt deciphering oracle script is as easy as you make it out to be. Without some form of intermediate rosetta stone I doubt any of them could be reliably deciphered. And about the rosetta stone. It was created solely for the purpose of deciphering for the ancient Egyptians themselves. It wasn't as though the French arrived with their own rosetta stone to decipher the heiroglyphics. So you see the lax standard why there is no breakage. Xia Shang Zhou continue to exist because Chinese script had always been muddled by referring it to being the sole possession and mastery of the Xia Shang Zhou. So the Chinese can pretty much do whatever to their civilization but just as long as they use some form of Chinese script everything is okay.

Your second argument is that Chinese lost more than they would want to admit, let say this is true, that by your argument you can actually provide evidence at what certain period that the Chinese lost 99% of their culture at for example 100BC and what we know is only from the rest of the 1% that is passed on today, and thus it make the Chinese culture dead etc... I don't think you can provide it, there is no evidence for that. Here is what I do know, it is true that if you want to accumulate the total knowledge or traditions of all the past Chinese culture they have lost in the past, it maybe a HUGE amount, but during any certain period that was ongoing, there are more culture and traditions that was preserving than those that has been lost, and from those cultural and tradition that has been able to preserve, it continued none-stop, it gained more culture and traditions as it goes on and lost same as well, but the flow of the river has never been stopped. And this make it lasting and continuous.

The same is said about the Egyptians because they passed on learning and civilization to other areas and the result of being conquered by other peoples is that really technically speaking it was still the same culture overall. Christianity an preoccupation for the afterlife. Islam, an preoccupation for an afterlife just as well. So this is basically the same as losing 99 parts but still retaining 1 part of it. What did the Chinese lose? Shamanic totemic and sacrificial culture (sort of like native Americans). Bronze culture of li and yue. Total war culture. Scripts culture because only one script that was retained by law was the Qin script. Highly likely some philosophical schools never resurfaced due to this reason. The cutoff point was during the Han dynasty. They didn't even know what the strange symbolisms were doing on their vessels and didn't much care so you see their total disappearance and the invention of new decorative motifs. But the design of the vessels remained. You still have the tripod vessel for incense offerings but that too changed into other forms.

Unless you can actually show me proof that there was one period of Chinese culture had this, then in a very short period of time, the next generation of Chinese have discarded the previous generation's values, regions, language in an abrupt end.

I don't see it as being an abrupt end but I think it's quite understandable for people to come to terms with the continuation of China in terms of cutoff periods. Once the threshold has been passed there was no going back. Kind of like stone age and bronze age.

your last argument of Egyptian continuity base on the Aten is simply absurd, all this time you try to want to argue with me that Chinese has lost more than they gain etc... but yet, I already show you the almost none existent connection of Aten in the year 1100BC to the Christianity 1000 years later, by all mean and purposes , those 2 religion had no connection with each other, not on paper, not in any form of historical evidence etc... the fact they are similar is nothing but pure coincidence, but yet why do you want to take this weak connection as some kind of definitive proof that there is strong link between Ancient Egyptian and Rome? If you really want to make that kind of connection base on this kind of argument, there is 100x more strong enough connection with the between the mystical Xia dynasty with Zhou and Han.

How will there be a connection between a Xia dynasty which is in story form and a strong component of Zhou ideology and the Han dynasty which took on after the Qin which defied the Zhou?

[Hooly]

mohistManiac,

I guess it depends on what you consider 'core values' that define a civilization. You and I obviously don't agree on these 'core values'.

"Unearthed Tang dynasty artifacts that can't be deciphered" ?? Comparing "Oracle bone inscriptions" to the Rosetta Stone ?? And the worse, calling the Qin state a 'barbarian' state when in fact it was the most legitimate of the Seven Warring States !!

Just because we don't know what a few obscure artifacts from the Tang dynasty is used for doesn't mean there is a break, I would rather concentrate on the fact that the Tang dynasty emperors were surnamed Li ( 李 ), one of the most common surnames amongst the Chinese today. You concentrate on obscure artifacts, I'll concentrate of surnames. Do modern Egyptians share the names of the ancients? Do the demes of Athens still exist in modern Greece? Do the great gens (Julii, Claudii, Cornelii) of ancient Rome still bear fruit ??n

And no, the Oracle Bones are not the rediscovery of ancient writing from the Shang, they are not the equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, ... the educated elite of China always maintained their knowledge of the ancient written forms, they practiced these forms in the art of calligraphy throughout the history of China, this again is another 'core value' that distinguishes China from the other dead civilizations like Sumeria, Egypt, Indus.

And the State of Qin, out of all the other Warring States were the ONLY ones legitimately enfeoffed by the Kings of the Zhou Dynasty. Qin's territory lay in the original homeland of the Zhou Dynasty in the 'Land Within the Passes'. All the other ruling houses of the other States were either usupers (Qi, Yan), partitioning rebels (Zhao, Wei, Han) and barbarian (Chu). Seen in this light, Qin's ultimate victory is the victory of Huaxia civilization over rebellious vassals of the Zhou dynasty.

[stardave]

But the farmers didn't know because they sold it as medicine. They found a lot and it never occurred to them what a bunch of bones with chicken scratches on them mean. And I doubt deciphering oracle script is as easy as you make it out to be. Without some form of intermediate rosetta stone I doubt any of them could be reliably deciphered. And about the rosetta stone. It was created solely for the purpose of deciphering for the ancient Egyptians themselves. It wasn't as though the French arrived with their own rosetta stone to decipher the heiroglyphics. So you see the lax standard why there is no breakage. Xia Shang Zhou continue to exist because Chinese script had always been muddled by referring it to being the sole possession and mastery of the Xia Shang Zhou. So the Chinese can pretty much do whatever to their civilization but just as long as they use some form of Chinese script everything is okay.

But someone did find out didn't say? Someone did realize it was Chinese text before then tun it over didn't they? That means what they saw was not completely alien to them wasn't it? And how can you know for sure those farmers didn't realize before but didn't care for it, because they were too poor or too lack of imagination of thinking it have another use rather than grind it down for medicine. The Rosetta Stone was completely different, before they found that out, the Egyptians had staring at the writing on their grand monuments for almost 2000 years and have no idea what thier ancestor was talking about, do you think that no one have tried? Of course they did, I bet during this 2000 years countless Egyptians and other people try to find out what was the writing on those beautiful monuments, but depict all of thier effort, no one was able to understand what the heck it was saying, it was not only until the stone was discovered they were finally able to find found that out what it was saying. The samething cannot said for Oracle bones, how long did it took them from recognize the bone's writing is a language to decipher it is meaning? Not very long wasn't it? And did they have to wait for some kind of Rosetta Stone to translate it for them? No I don't think so, they looked at thier own archaeological evidence, the evolution from modern CHINESE language and from that process found out what it was saying. That is a HUGE different from the way of discovery the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs, I don't want to repeat myself agin.. this should be easy for you to understand

The same is said about the Egyptians because they passed on learning and civilization to other areas and the result of being conquered by other peoples is that really technically speaking it was still the same culture overall. Christianity an preoccupation for the afterlife. Islam, an preoccupation for an afterlife just as well. So this is basically the same as losing 99 parts but still retaining 1 part of it. What did the Chinese lose? Shamanic totemic and sacrificial culture (sort of like native Americans). Bronze culture of li and yue. Total war culture. Scripts culture because only one script that was retained by law was the Qin script. Highly likely some philosophical schools never resurfaced due to this reason. The cutoff point was during the Han dynasty. They didn't even know what the strange symbolisms were doing on their vessels and didn't much care so you see their total disappearance and the invention of new decorative motifs. But the design of the vessels remained. You still have the tripod vessel for incense offerings but that too changed into other forms.

Acient Egyptian worshiped few dozen gods which is totally unrecognizable from today's Islam, not only the beliefs, but also the costumes as well, the clothe they wear, the daily routines, the value system etc... everything today was totally unrecognizable and different from ancient Egyptians. This has been achieve from outside invasion, and culture replacement from the invaders, the difference is when Egypet was invaded and took over, the invader's culture took over Egypt's, when outsider invaded China, they adopted Chinese culture and became a patron of the Chinese culture itself and mostly preserve it. Again... you really don't have any knowldege about Ancient Egyptian culture and Christianity, those 2 have absolutely nothing in common, or at least it is very safe to say there is absolutely no archaeological or historical evidnce to support that they have a link, what you are doing is by your own arbitrary finding that you find those 2 culture have similarity, and without any archaeological evidence you like them together, just becase you see one have in common with the other, therefore in your mind, they must be connected, and if by this logic, you can find any connection between any culture on earth, you can find the same link of Chinese Han with the Mayan America etc.... This is not scientific, this is without evidence. Ok as for the Han cutoff, I don't know your sources for this, but I'll assume it exist, if you can proof that there was a total cut off not just difference in the decoration on vessiles, but also cutoff in the philosophical believe in mandate of heaven, Confucianism, Taoism, ancestor worship etc... that the new generation have absolutely nothing to do with the old one, and you can actually proof it. Then I support your argument.

But I think what happening is, you see some cutoff, and you want to do nothing but emphasis the importance of that cutoff, but at the same time, ignore those links that are still connected and able to pass on, and this make it seems that there is very little or no connections in the end. Because again, you need to proof to me that before Han, there was a actual 99% cut off, not just in vessel design, but also in language, custom, culture and philosophical beliefs.

How will there be a connection between a Xia dynasty which is in story form and a strong component of Zhou ideology and the Han dynasty which took on after the Qin which defied the Zhou?

I was making a metaphor, that you find 2 completely different religious practiced 1000 years apart, that have no archaeological/historical connection whatsoever, but yet you were able to find some similarity, but without any evidence you want to use this to support your claim that there was strong connection between those 2 civilizations, but yet in the main while when it come to Chinese culture, you totally ignore any similar archaeological/historical connection, while emphasis their difference to make them seems to be very different or no connection.

If you want to use one standard to judge and support your thesis, please make it consistent on all matters please.

Edited by stardave, 21 June 2012 - 01:30 PM.

[mohistManiac]

But someone did find out didn't say? Someone did realize it was Chinese text before then tun it over didn't they? That means what they saw was not completely alien to them wasn't it? And how can you know for sure those farmers didn't realize before but didn't care for it, because they were too poor or too lack of imagination of thinking it have another use rather than grind it down for medicine. The Rosetta Stone was completely different, before they found that out, the Egyptians had staring at the writing on their grand monuments for almost 2000 years and have no idea what thier ancestor was talking about, do you think that no one have tried? Of course they did, I bet during this 2000 years countless Egyptians and other people try to find out what was the writing on those beautiful monuments, but depict all of thier effort, no one was able to understand what the heck it was saying, it was not only until the stone was discovered they were finally able to find found that out what it was saying. The samething cannot said for Oracle bones, how long did it took them from recognize the bone's writing is a language to decipher it is meaning? Not very long wasn't it? And did they have to wait for some kind of Rosetta Stone to translate it for them? No I don't think so, they looked at thier own archaeological evidence, the evolution from modern CHINESE language and from that process found out what it was saying. That is a HUGE different from the way of discovery the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs, I don't want to repeat myself agin.. this should be easy for you to understand

So they had to recover a tablet which contained translations. That's not a very big deal. The tablet was already made by Egyptians knowing that it was crucial to preserve the accurate transmission of the language by backing it up against other languages. This isn't a scenario where the language was totally irrecoverable, one just had to know what to do just like the Chinese would have to know what the oracle bone scripts would have to compare to. It's the job of linguists not everyday folk doing run of the mill things.

Acient Egyptian worshiped few dozen gods which is totally unrecognizable from today's Islam, not only the beliefs, but also the costumes as well, the clothe they wear, the daily routines, the value system etc... everything today was totally unrecognizable and different from ancient Egyptians. This has been achieve from outside invasion, and culture replacement from the invaders, the difference is when Egypet was invaded and took over, the invader's culture took over Egypt's, when outsider invaded China, they adopted Chinese culture and became a patron of the Chinese culture itself and mostly preserve it. Again... you really don't have any knowldege about Ancient Egyptian culture and Christianity, those 2 have absolutely nothing in common, or at least it is very safe to say there is absolutely no archaeological or historical evidnce to support that they have a link, what you are doing is by your own arbitrary finding that you find those 2 culture have similarity, and without any archaeological evidence you like them together, just becase you see one have in common with the other, therefore in your mind, they must be connected, and if by this logic, you can find any connection between any culture on earth, you can find the same link of Chinese Han with the Mayan America etc.... This is not scientific, this is without evidence. Ok as for the Han cutoff, I don't know your sources for this, but I'll assume it exist, if you can proof that there was a total cut off not just difference in the decoration on vessiles, but also cutoff in the philosophical believe in mandate of heaven, Confucianism, Taoism, ancestor worship etc... that the new generation have absolutely nothing to do with the old one, and you can actually proof it. Then I support your argument.

But I think what happening is, you see some cutoff, and you want to do nothing but emphasis the importance of that cutoff, but at the same time, ignore those links that are still connected and able to pass on, and this make it seems that there is very little or no connections in the end. Because again, you need to proof to me that before Han, there was a actual 99% cut off, not just in vessel design, but also in language, custom, culture and philosophical beliefs.

Without going into which cutoff entails what I need to say that I was only trying to showing the argument that China may have died is a valid argument. I have discussed earlier that what the masters of the civilization understood to be a decline in their civilization could quite literally signal the death of the civilization. This is not an unfair assessment. The people which once managed a past civilization are able to gauge themselves whether they are in their golden years and whether over time they could maintain their civilization's merits and prestige. For those that realize too little too late they may have not been able to do much which could revert their process of decline. One such cutoff point would be during the Zhou when their final struggle to maintain dominance ended in disaster as neighboring states began to wield as much power as it once did. Except instead of recovering China to its original state of fiefdom and vassalage the lands would be unified in extensive campaigns to mold it towards a huge bureaucracy of standards. The Zhou saw this as being the ultimate demise as it would underwrite all those things which were meant to exist on the level of being homegrown and fork them over to anyone who proclaimed knowledge of the classics through rote memorization and methods of syncretization. It just so happened that these classics changed often according to the tastes of those closest to the elite ranking landowners.

For making connections I tend to see the path that an evolution would take and to see this path I have need of something available to base it off of. So quite naturally an Egyptian column would influence Greek column and would then influence Roman column. It is not difficult to see connections in things which are closer to each other in distance and time as opposed to seeing connections existing at all between vast distances and time. By the time of the Han I would say the only things which were genuinely passed down in spirit of their forebears since Zhou was their pictographic script and agricultural industry. These would naturally lend themselves to building grand canals and inventing paper and printing etc.

I was making a metaphor, that you find 2 completely different religious practiced 1000 years apart, that have no archaeological/historical connection whatsoever, but yet you were able to find some similarity, but without any evidence you want to use this to support your claim that there was strong connection between those 2 civilizations, but yet in the main while when it come to Chinese culture, you totally ignore any similar archaeological/historical connection, while emphasis their difference to make them seems to be very different or no connection.

I have often seen the connections made and they are usually very abstract. The connections I find most amusing are those which point directly at the core values of Chinese culture and how they have arrived about. Those "professors" would state that Confucianism was in fact a later byproduct of some earlier social attitude/attribute that had dated to the Xia and Shang. I mean that is a jump of some 2000 years too. So the Chinese story seems to be China had everything that it could have ever possibly dreamed of around 4000 years ago for it to be Chinese. I feel this is worse than saying Judaism Christianity and Islam were arrived at through actual predecessors of their religions in the same cross cultural vicinity.

[Hooly]

I have often seen the connections made and they are usually very abstract. The connections I find most amusing are those which point directly at the core values of Chinese culture and how they have arrived about. Those "professors" would state that Confucianism was in fact a later byproduct of some earlier social attitude/attribute that had dated to the Xia and Shang. I mean that is a jump of some 2000 years too. So the Chinese story seems to be China had everything that it could have ever possibly dreamed of around 4000 years ago for it to be Chinese. I feel this is worse than saying Judaism Christianity and Islam were arrived at through actual predecessors of their religions in the same cross cultural vicinity.

You've hit the nail on the head there mohistManiac, ... yes, China became Chinese 5000 years ago during the legendary age of the 3 Sovereigns and 5 Emperors and the Three Dynasties of Xia, Shang and Zhou. Everything that defines modern Chinese can be traced to those times, ... surnames, writing, language and secular outlook is what defines being Chinese to me.

[mohistManiac]

You've hit the nail on the head there mohistManiac, ... yes, China became Chinese 5000 years ago during the legendary age of the 3 Sovereigns and 5 Emperors and the Three Dynasties of Xia, Shang and Zhou. Everything that defines modern Chinese can be traced to those times, ... surnames, writing, language and secular outlook is what defines being Chinese to me.

What surnames are you talking about. 5000 years ago there was no writing in China and no printing, only person to person communication. And its 4000 years ago to mark the beginning of Xia, which doesn't really exist but as a fable as a part of the Zhou ideological strategy to win hearts and minds. Heaven's mandate was not very secular although if applied today it seems that way due to the nature of religion in China these days.

mohistManiac,

I guess it depends on what you consider 'core values' that define a civilization. You and I obviously don't agree on these 'core values'.

"Unearthed Tang dynasty artifacts that can't be deciphered" ?? Comparing "Oracle bone inscriptions" to the Rosetta Stone ?? And the worse, calling the Qin state a 'barbarian' state when in fact it was the most legitimate of the Seven Warring States !!

Having to guess at what your forefathers placed inside their graves is a sign they didn't really transition to you so to speak. Sure one can say there is always the practice of burying people along with grave goods but that's besides the point. You cannot say the Tang got their idea from the Qin who got their idea of terracotta warriors from somewhere else and so on and so forth. You may say that but it isn't really in the best interest when you are trying to actually understand the details. I'm not trying to degrade the Chinese graves and the goods inside and there may yet be connections to modern practices but I would say for the most part it is better to look at later periods than Tang.

Just because we don't know what a few obscure artifacts from the Tang dynasty is used for doesn't mean there is a break, I would rather concentrate on the fact that the Tang dynasty emperors were surnamed Li ( 李 ), one of the most common surnames amongst the Chinese today. You concentrate on obscure artifacts, I'll concentrate of surnames. Do modern Egyptians share the names of the ancients? Do the demes of Athens still exist in modern Greece? Do the great gens (Julii, Claudii, Cornelii) of ancient Rome still bear fruit ??n

And no, the Oracle Bones are not the rediscovery of ancient writing from the Shang, they are not the equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, ... the educated elite of China always maintained their knowledge of the ancient written forms, they practiced these forms in the art of calligraphy throughout the history of China, this again is another 'core value' that distinguishes China from the other dead civilizations like Sumeria, Egypt, Indus.

There are also people with surname Huang does this mean they all descended from emperors and legendary beings?

I didn't say the oracle bones are rosetta stone I said they are in need of an intermediary step like a rosetta stone in order to be deciphered.

And the State of Qin, out of all the other Warring States were the ONLY ones legitimately enfeoffed by the Kings of the Zhou Dynasty. Qin's territory lay in the original homeland of the Zhou Dynasty in the 'Land Within the Passes'. All the other ruling houses of the other States were either usupers (Qi, Yan), partitioning rebels (Zhao, Wei, Han) and barbarian (Chu). Seen in this light, Qin's ultimate victory is the victory of Huaxia civilization over rebellious vassals of the Zhou dynasty.

Please try not to take what I say in the wrong way. The Qins were very contributing to the history of China. However they also did some very "nasty" things which led to others looking down on them. And these are people which highly cherished traditional forms, an symbolic act of usurpation to those witnessing from the eastern end.

Edited by mohistManiac, 21 June 2012 - 10:54 PM.

[stardave]

So they had to recover a tablet which contained translations. That's not a very big deal. The tablet was already made by Egyptians knowing that it was crucial to preserve the accurate transmission of the language by backing it up against other languages. This isn't a scenario where the language was totally irrecoverable, one just had to know what to do just like the Chinese would have to know what the oracle bone scripts would have to compare to. It's the job of linguists not everyday folk doing run of the mill things.

Again WRONG, the purpose for the Rosetta stone was made by the Greek rulers that already took over Egypt for a few hundred years, they were doing this for PR purposes to translate what they were saying to the general public who spoke the hieroglyphs, so that the ruler can make it’s subject know what they are talking about. The goal of the table was for telling the Egyptian population how great of a job the Greek rulers are doing, they are NOT there to preserve for the benefit of the future generation to discover, and to hint at this is very absurd, because when they made the tablet, they have no idea that their rule would fall apart and be taken over by another invader, just as the current US government think the good time will last forever until the end of the time. And again, this is VERY different from the oracle bones, the language of oracle bones was NEVER lost to the Chinese, once they saw the writing on the bones, it took them no time to fully deciphered all of it is meaning, because they cannot not know what they already know, aka their own current language. However for the Egypt hieroglyphs, they did indeed had to wait almost 2000 years for someone to find it out and rediscover it, and during all of this time, their religion, their language was by all mean and purposes lost and gone, and thus it is NOT continuous like the Chinese language, which was never broken. So no, language wise, China is still very much continues from the very beginning of time to today. While Egypt was totally interrupted for 2000 years, and still interrupted today because even if they finally know how to read the old hieroglyphs, but guess what? 99.999999999999% of the modern Egyptian no longer use this language anymore, but 100% of the modern Chinese uses the language that can be directly connected to the writing on the oracle bones.

Without going into which cutoff entails what I need to say that I was only trying to showing the argument that China may have died is a valid argument. I have discussed earlier that what the masters of the civilization understood to be a decline in their civilization could quite literally signal the death of the civilization. This is not an unfair assessment. The people which once managed a past civilization are able to gauge themselves whether they are in their golden years and whether over time they could maintain their civilization's merits and prestige. For those that realize too little too late they may have not been able to do much which could revert their process of decline. One such cutoff point would be during the Zhou when their final struggle to maintain dominance ended in disaster as neighboring states began to wield as much power as it once did. Except instead of recovering China to its original state of fiefdom and vassalage the lands would be unified in extensive campaigns to mold it towards a huge bureaucracy of standards. The Zhou saw this as being the ultimate demise as it would underwrite all those things which were meant to exist on the level of being homegrown and fork them over to anyone who proclaimed knowledge of the classics through rote memorization and methods of syncretization. It just so happened that these classics changed often according to the tastes of those closest to the elite ranking landowners.

For making connections I tend to see the path that an evolution would take and to see this path I have need of something available to base it off of. So quite naturally an Egyptian column would influence Greek column and would then influence Roman column. It is not difficult to see connections in things which are closer to each other in distance and time as opposed to seeing connections existing at all between vast distances and time. By the time of the Han I would say the only things which were genuinely passed down in spirit of their forebears since Zhou was their pictographic script and agricultural industry. These would naturally lend themselves to building grand canals and inventing paper and printing etc.

Let me see… you cannot provide any evidence for the cutoff, therefore you want to resort to anecdote evidence that it was broken… but yet you don’t exactly know what was kept and what was broken, and then make a overall comprehensive analysis of the whole situation, well you may see vessel design change or political change as everything, but here is what I see that is still being preserved. Language, as I have point out above, by all mean and purpose since the day confucius, taoism, legalism was invented, it is still exist and strong to this very day, and recently they discovered a well preserved 4000 year old noodle in China, and judging from the texture and content of the food, it is very much similar to the Chinese noodle food today. Just from that I can tell you the traditional religion/way of life is still continues, the language is still continuous, the food is still continuous, and I must have missed a whole bunch other more, but if what you saying is, all of them only accounts for 1% that was passed on, that must mean the ancient had a HUGE amount of knowledge, even more than the modern day Chinese, can you prove it? I don’t think you can.

As for the political discontinuity, don’t you think at the end of Qing dynasty didn’t the Manchu felt the same way? That the dynasty it took them hundreds of years to conquer is suddenly going to get away from their grasp, that they are going to lose control, that a new political entity/power is going to take over? I am sure the Zhou rulers at the same time felt something similar, but when Zhou died, does it mean the culture died with them for good? Nope, the next generation of ruler is able to preserve many if not most of Zhou’s tradition and culture etc… just as the modern PRC is able to preserve many if not most of the Chinese culture as well. If your logic is that the death of one political entity such as Zhou means the breakage and death of the culture, then China would not only have died at Zhou, they would have died at Qin, Han, Sui, Tang etc…. the Chinese cultured would have died for about 2 dozen times already, obviously this is false as vast majority of Chinese don’t think so.

And again, you would like to use Western culture to make connections, from Egyptian to Greek, from Greek to Romans etc… but yet, you have no idea just how much was lost vs how much was pass on from each culture to the next, hint, they are FAR FAR less than what was passed on from one Chinese dynasty to the next. It is not just difference in language, religion but also difference in geography and also difference and breakage in time as well. Because if you want to make that connection, then one can say United State of America is a continuous of Roman Republic 2500 years ago. But that is obvious not the case, even the founding fathers of America have closely looked at what Roman Republic was like, their government structure and copy many aspect from it. But it does not mean Marcus Brutus’s great grand son from the Roman Republic was involved in the writing of US constitution.

I have often seen the connections made and they are usually very abstract. The connections I find most amusing are those which point directly at the core values of Chinese culture and how they have arrived about. Those "professors" would state that Confucianism was in fact a later byproduct of some earlier social attitude/attribute that had dated to the Xia and Shang. I mean that is a jump of some 2000 years too. So the Chinese story seems to be China had everything that it could have ever possibly dreamed of around 4000 years ago for it to be Chinese. I feel this is worse than saying Judaism Christianity and Islam were arrived at through actual predecessors of their religions in the same cross cultural vicinity.

Again.. I was pointing out your flaw because you at one hand so willing to dismiss archeological connection within the Chinese history, but at the same time you are so willing to accept connections in the western history, that are 1000 years and 5000km apart which have no archeological or historical connection whatsoever.

One can indeed say the connection between Shang and Confucianism to be very weak, but it still have much more strong connection between the Egyptian Aten god in the 1100BC to Christianity of 20AD, no matter how weak the connection is. If not Xia and Shang, there are certainly enough evidence to support the continue connection from Zhou to Warring period to Qin to today.

[mohistManiac]

Again WRONG, the purpose for the Rosetta stone was made by the Greek rulers that already took over Egypt for a few hundred years, they were doing this for PR purposes to translate what they were saying to the general public who spoke the hieroglyphs, so that the ruler can make it’s subject know what they are talking about. The goal of the table was for telling the Egyptian population how great of a job the Greek rulers are doing, they are NOT there to preserve for the benefit of the future generation to discover, and to hint at this is very absurd, because when they made the tablet, they have no idea that their rule would fall apart and be taken over by another invader, just as the current US government think the good time will last forever until the end of the time. And again, this is VERY different from the oracle bones, the language of oracle bones was NEVER lost to the Chinese, once they saw the writing on the bones, it took them no time to fully deciphered all of it is meaning, because they cannot not know what they already know, aka their own current language. However for the Egypt hieroglyphs, they did indeed had to wait almost 2000 years for someone to find it out and rediscover it, and during all of this time, their religion, their language was by all mean and purposes lost and gone, and thus it is NOT continuous like the Chinese language, which was never broken. So no, language wise, China is still very much continues from the very beginning of time to today. While Egypt was totally interrupted for 2000 years, and still interrupted today because even if they finally know how to read the old hieroglyphs, but guess what? 99.999999999999% of the modern Egyptian no longer use this language anymore, but 100% of the modern Chinese uses the language that can be directly connected to the writing on the oracle bones.

Great clarification. I always just figured there would be something to rely on than just the rosetta stone but it seems it's one of a kind. When the scripts are lost then all the libraries in the world won't do any good if you simply can't decipher what is in broad daylight. However I'm still aware of the notion that the Egyptians at least know the difference between what is Egyptian and as a result know what has been lost because there is a clear distinction between artifacts which contain ancient Egyptian script and those which came from the arrival of invaders containing other scripts. However within Chinese civilization there exists the tradition of passing the baton to those whom might not necessarily wish to conform to precedents in Chinese culture. They can take their time to familiarize themselves with the Chinese literati culture but can equally bend the culture to their will. If the culture of the ancient Egyptians had been preserved in the hieroglyphs of their past then a good translation work might well compare to all the effort which had been poured into deciphering oracle bone script.

Let me see… you cannot provide any evidence for the cutoff, therefore you want to resort to anecdote evidence that it was broken… but yet you don’t exactly know what was kept and what was broken, and then make a overall comprehensive analysis of the whole situation, well you may see vessel design change or political change as everything, but here is what I see that is still being preserved. Language, as I have point out above, by all mean and purpose since the day confucius, taoism, legalism was invented, it is still exist and strong to this very day, and recently they discovered a well preserved 4000 year old noodle in China, and judging from the texture and content of the food, it is very much similar to the Chinese noodle food today. Just from that I can tell you the traditional religion/way of life is still continues, the language is still continuous, the food is still continuous, and I must have missed a whole bunch other more, but if what you saying is, all of them only accounts for 1% that was passed on, that must mean the ancient had a HUGE amount of knowledge, even more than the modern day Chinese, can you prove it? I don’t think you can.

I've also stated that China has some very old enduring features like its preference of silk and jade, certain foods and using chopsticks. But these provide only the ingredients for routine and are scattered remnants of making a culture Chinese. That is not to say the ingredients are not Chinese. The society can continue being Chinese in the sense that there is no prohibition for anyone in China to declare new concepts and practices and call them Chinese but over time the collective set of changes will prove to be a large breakage away from an unfamiliar past. I would say the identifiable changes an original ethos of a people undergoes which accurately measures the development from one kind of civilization to another suggesting the death of the past civilization or the death of the former societal standard.

As for the political discontinuity, don’t you think at the end of Qing dynasty didn’t the Manchu felt the same way? That the dynasty it took them hundreds of years to conquer is suddenly going to get away from their grasp, that they are going to lose control, that a new political entity/power is going to take over? I am sure the Zhou rulers at the same time felt something similar, but when Zhou died, does it mean the culture died with them for good? Nope, the next generation of ruler is able to preserve many if not most of Zhou’s tradition and culture etc… just as the modern PRC is able to preserve many if not most of the Chinese culture as well. If your logic is that the death of one political entity such as Zhou means the breakage and death of the culture, then China would not only have died at Zhou, they would have died at Qin, Han, Sui, Tang etc…. the Chinese cultured would have died for about 2 dozen times already, obviously this is false as vast majority of Chinese don’t think so.

I was trying to hint at a death at some point but not necessarily that it had to have died so many multiple times. It is all a matter of comparison.

And again, you would like to use Western culture to make connections, from Egyptian to Greek, from Greek to Romans etc… but yet, you have no idea just how much was lost vs how much was pass on from each culture to the next, hint, they are FAR FAR less than what was passed on from one Chinese dynasty to the next. It is not just difference in language, religion but also difference in geography and also difference and breakage in time as well. Because if you want to make that connection, then one can say United State of America is a continuous of Roman Republic 2500 years ago. But that is obvious not the case, even the founding fathers of America have closely looked at what Roman Republic was like, their government structure and copy many aspect from it. But it does not mean Marcus Brutus’s great grand son from the Roman Republic was involved in the writing of US constitution.

I find that to be the case too. The American civilization is a western one but it doesn't make a fuss about saying it is the direct inheritor of Roman civilization. What America has is taken many scattered elements of European civilization and combined it to form American civilization.

Again.. I was pointing out your flaw because you at one hand so willing to dismiss archeological connection within the Chinese history, but at the same time you are so willing to accept connections in the western history, that are 1000 years and 5000km apart which have no archeological or historical connection whatsoever.

One can indeed say the connection between Shang and Confucianism to be very weak, but it still have much more strong connection between the Egyptian Aten god in the 1100BC to Christianity of 20AD, no matter how weak the connection is. If not Xia and Shang, there are certainly enough evidence to support the continue connection from Zhou to Warring period to Qin to today.

That may be because the Chinese still read up on their history and like to draw analysis by using historical figures in the past. But the western world does this often too. How many times have you heard of the famous philosophical quote "The only thing I know is that I don't know". If the Chinese can trace their heritage all the way back to someone named Confucius then Greeks can certainly trace their heritage all the way back to Socrates. But I think that is somehow missing the point of civilization which is more about the trends of the great activities which occupy the minds of those participating in them at the present moment. Philosophical societies may have existed to serve Chinese and Greek civilization in a great way but I don't think that is the case any more for either of them.

[Mak Jo Si]

Wow that is a LOT of history up there, you guys reall make me read! haha! This is the only forum I found which people actually spend the time to type up good juicy stuff. Thanks! But still, I hated Yuan Dynasty very much because things gone so crooked with the mongolians and Taoism really F'd up during that time too. Sigh, it had been a tragedy and the tragedy even last so long to even now. VEry bad...

[mohistManiac]

Wow that is a LOT of history up there, you guys reall make me read! haha! This is the only forum I found which people actually spend the time to type up good juicy stuff. Thanks! But still, I hated Yuan Dynasty very much because things gone so crooked with the mongolians and Taoism really F'd up during that time too. Sigh, it had been a tragedy and the tragedy even last so long to even now. VEry bad...

It's funny because I only come up with the long winded answers to defeat the arguments presented which I don't agree with. What would your Taoist philosophy say about that?

[KLdome]

With globalization can we say there are any unconquered countries or cultures any more? Modern Chinese material culture is becoming identical to foreign, mostly American lifestyles. If someone thinks post Yuan is no longer Chinese, then the present state of affairs is indescribable, lol.

[Zhou-ist]

With globalization can we say there are any unconquered countries or cultures any more? Modern Chinese material culture is becoming identical to foreign, mostly American lifestyles. If someone thinks post Yuan is no longer Chinese, then the present state of affairs is indescribable, lol.

 

The material is superficial ... clothes, hair, modes of transportation. The core of a people is what is most important, ... language, philosophy, family, race, clan ... in this the Chinese are the same as our ancestors, more than any other people since on the Chinese worship our ancestors. 

 

Contrast this to say, the modern Greeks, Romans and Italians ... they've lost their culture, language, philosophy since it now so differs for that of their ancestors. 

[rocket7777]

Do you think China is dead a long time ago? From the Yuan Dynasty, mongolians took over the place and basically China is getting so crooked back then already. I just don't see why people still think China is China after that. Anything after the Yuan Dynasty is very weird too. What do you guys think?

So many philosophers and wise one in history talk about how to govern with virtues and so on, how many kings followed? Not really much. sigh~

Even if you ignore the fact that everyone is african.  There was never pure chinese..

So lets say han started as one man, and became tribe of relatively fair skin, straight hair, not too hairy. I would guess they started south china/burma area.  And aggressive and racist preference and spread.  But so far evidence are that early dynasties such as qin were either very mixed or not han.  But does not matter, han gene and han lighter skin were preferred(as in racism) and spread like crazy.

[mohistManiac]

Even if you ignore the fact that everyone is african.  There was never pure chinese..

So lets say han started as one man, and became tribe of relatively fair skin, straight hair, not too hairy. I would guess they started south china/burma area.  And aggressive and racist preference and spread.  But so far evidence are that early dynasties such as qin were either very mixed or not han.  But does not matter, han gene and han lighter skin were preferred(as in racism) and spread like crazy.

I don't know why you continue insisting the view that everyone is African which is just as ludicrous as saying everyone Chinese is some Turkized or Koreanic or Mongolic.  Only because might makes right?  Han was not racist because it was supraethnic and included the Turkized Koreanic and Mongolic, Tungusic and Siberic.  Qin is the worst example for inherent racism because it was thoroughly mixed with Rong Di Hu and Xiongnu populations which one might add was beneficial to their military success in conquering the other states.  They were also like an ancient America, responsible for importing much of its higher educated population from abroad to help manage their growing legalist system.  Many "Kunlun" or dark skin toned Chinese came from the west which included Tibetans, Nepalese, GoTurkics, Tanguts, Tuoba, Qiang, Ba Shu you name it.  I think people in the end are made of star stuff, Carbonians, from which ever local region on Earth that substance may come from.  We all are but if you insist we are only Africans then so be it, to each their own.

Edited by mohistManiac, 19 May 2013 - 04:49 PM.