27 replies to this topic

[DaMo]

http://www.abc.net.a...07/s1162366.htm

Discovery rewrites Chinese vehicle history

The discovery of 3,700-year-old chariot tracks has pushed back the appearance of vehicles in China by 200 years, the country's media has reported.

"It advances the history of China's vehicle use up to the Xia Dynasty (2100 - 1600 BC)," said Xu Hong, who leads the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' archaeological investigation team at the Erlitou archaeological site in Yanshi city, central Henan province.

The two parallel tracks were discovered on the grounds of a palace at the site, Xinhua news agency reported.

Erlitou, discovered in 1959, was the largest residential human settlement in China and east Asia nearly 4,000 years ago.

It boasts one of China's richest and earliest sites of palaces and bronze casting workshops.

Before the chariot discovery, the earliest vehicle traces known in China dated back to the early Shang Dynasty (1600 - 1100BC).

Because the distance between the two parallel tracks is only one metre, archaeologists believe the vehicle body of the chariot would have been much narrower than others found elsewhere in Henan, and was probably of special use.

It is unclear whether they are tracks of horse-drawn carriages, like those found in the Yin Ruins in Anyang, also in Henan.

-- AFP

[Kulong]

Yanshi City, Henan province is where my grandfather was from :) It's a tiny city often not seen on maps :(

Anyway, I've always thought vehicles existed during or before Xia Dynasty as Huang Di 黃帝 used a chariot equipped with a compass to defeat the Miao.

[Yun]

Interestingly, Western scholars have previously suggested that wheeled vehicles were not developed independently in China, and were only introduced from the Middle East in the Shang dynasty. This passage is from "The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest People from the West", by J.P. Mallory and Victor Mair (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000):

The chariot, the primary vehicle of aristocratic warfare, reflected both the military and social organisation of the Shang and later Zhou dynasties. Edward Shaughnessy has argued that the chariot, which appeared in China around 1200 BC in an already fully developed form, was initially employed by the Shang as a prestige vehicle, a command platform in battle and for riding to the hunt. It was only in the succeeding Zhou dynasty that massed chariot warfare is recorded and Shaughnessy has suggested that it may well have been the use of the chariot that permitted the Zhou dynasty to overthrow the Shang in c. 1041 BC. At this time it was used initially to assault infantry but later was employed in mass chariot assaults on opposing chariot units. Finally, the chariot was replaced by cavalry under pressure of the nomadic tribes to the north in the first centuries BC.

There is no history of wheeled vehicles of any form in China prior to the emergence of the chariot in the Shang period. For the evolution of vehicles we must look to the West where by the 4th millennium BC four-wheeled wagons and two-wheeled carts had dispersed from Mesopotamia to eastern Europe. The earliest would appear to date to about 2000 BC and while there may be debate a to precisely where the chariot, a light spoke-wheel vehicle, was first invented, there is no doubt that it was being employed by 2000 BC between the Volga and east of the Urals. The deposition of chariots is one of the major features of the steppe burials at Sintashta, a predecessor of the Andronovo culture of the eastern steppelands. The priority of the chariot in the West is indisputable and we have also seen traces of the spread of wheeled vehicles into Eastern Central Asia where disc wheels and hubs, derived from heavier carts or wagons, were recovered from the cemetery at Qizilchoqa (c. 1350-1000 BC).

It is from the same direction that we derive the propulsion of the chariot, the domestic horse. The earliest evidence of the widescale employment of the domestic horse is in the European steppelands between the Dnieper and the Ural rivers where the horse was domesticated by the 4th millennium BC in the Yamna culture and perhaps its immediate predecessors. The chariot burials are also accompanied by bow-shaped instruments that were presumably associated with driving the chariots, and knives with either a ring or an animal at the end of the hilt - both features of the steppe cultures of the period.

If the chariot came from the West, what about the name for the vehicle? Here there is some linguistic evidence to support such a movement. The Chinese word for chariot, the modern Mandarin che, would have been articulated roughly as *klYag during the Shang dynasty, and this word bears a certain resemblance to one of the Proto-Indo-European words for 'wheel' (*kwekwlo) which provided the base for the word in Tocharian, i.e. Tocharian A kukal and Tocharian B kokale. Rather than a direct Tocharian source, it has been suggested that the underlying form may have been some form of early Iranian language. This would hardly be surprising in that the Indo-Iranians perfected chariot warfare and either introduced it or, at least, were so proficient in it that they were the acknowledged masters of chariotry in the Near East. It seems probable, then, that Bronze Age Iranians or Tocharians came into contact with peoples of western China in the 2nd millennium BC and introduced the chariot to the Shang. The venue of the meeting of these two worlds was, naturally, the modern province of Xinjiang and the area just to its northeast.

[Kulong]

Interestingly, Western scholars have previously suggested that wheeled vehicles were not developed independently in China, and were only introduced from the Middle East in the Shang dynasty.

Western "scholars" are willing to do anything to claim that their ancestors invented everything.

[DaMo]

Interestingly, Western scholars have previously suggested that wheeled vehicles were not developed independently in China, and were only introduced from the Middle East in the Shang dynasty.

Western "scholars" are willing to do anything to claim that their ancestors invented everything.

Well, in this case, they could very well be right. The evidence for transmission of horse-driven chariot technology to the East from the West is quite sound. Unless significantly older forms of vehicles are excavated in China, the only reasonable conclusion is that the chariot was not indigenously invented by the Chinese.

[Kulong]

Interestingly, Western scholars have previously suggested that wheeled vehicles were not developed independently in China, and were only introduced from the Middle East in the Shang dynasty.

Western "scholars" are willing to do anything to claim that their ancestors invented everything.

Well, in this case, they could very well be right. The evidence for transmission of horse-driven chariot technology to the East from the West is quite sound. Unless significantly older forms of vehicles are excavated in China, the only reasonable conclusion is that the chariot was not indigenously invented by the Chinese.

What exactly is "West" anyway. <_<

I don't believe the Middle East should be considered the "West" :rolleyes:

[Yun]

So, looking at this latest piece of evidence, shall we say that the dating for the transmission of wheeled vehicle technology from Mesopotamia to China via Eastern Europe has shifted back to the Xia dynasty?

Kulong, don't get too agitated by any suggestion that the world doesn't owe all its technology to China. :P I'm Chinese myself and a great admirer of Chinese scientific achievements, but I also know that Victor Mair is a reputable and objective academic who has spent his life researching the cultures of the Silk Road, and is a great friend of the Chinese.

[Kulong]

Kulong, don't get too agitated by any suggestion that the world doesn't owe all its technology to China. :P I'm Chinese myself and a great admirer of Chinese scientific achievements, but I also know that Victor Mair is a reputable and objective academic who has spent his life researching the cultures of the Silk Road, and is a great friend of the Chinese.

I am far from believing China invented everything. :P

All I wish for is China to receive credit when it's due. Having these Western "scholars" constantly claiming that the "West" invented everything just makes me upset.

[General_Zhaoyun]

Not all inventions were invented by chinese or west.. every civilizations had their share

[janz]

ok, here is my question. was xia dynasty real?

we found stuff from shang dynasty, but did we find anything from xia dynasty?

[General_Zhaoyun]

Xia dynasty was considered in the west to be a legendary dynasty due to the lack of archaeological proof. But according to many chinese sources, it was supposed to be the 1st dynasty (or state) formed in China. Today, more archaeological founding has begun to prove that this dynasty actually existed. I think, one day, enough evidence will reveal that this 'legendary' dynasty was exactly as what's described in chinese history classics.

[Kulong]

Xia dynasty was considered in the west to be a legendary dynasty due to the lack of archaeological proof. But according to many chinese sources, it was supposed to be the 1st dynasty (or state) formed in China. Today, more archaeological founding has begun to prove that this dynasty actually existed. I think, one day, enough evidence will reveal that this 'legendary' dynasty was exactly as what's described in chinese history classics.

But just what is "enough" to these Western "scholars"> <_<

[DaMo]

Having these Western "scholars" constantly claiming that the "West" invented everything just makes me upset.

Kulong, the evidence for the transmission of the wheeled vehicle to China is not some great Western conspiracy. Why are you so upset that the ancient Chinese did not invent wheeled vehicles? They've invented many other useful things, inventions that even those Western scholars admit are genuine. But as far as the evidence goes, the wheeled vehicle appeared in Western Asia and Eastern Europe long before it appeared in East Asia. Have you any evidence to the contrary that we have not heard of? If not, then you'll just have to accept the known facts until such evidence appears.

[Bryan]

But just what is "enough" to these Western "scholars"> <_<

Well, one of my old history profs said it is usually accepted when some form of valid documents are found or some such... though whether or not this is the case, I have no clue...

[Yun]

In this case, documents won't help because the evidence we need dates to before the invention of writing. So we have to look to archaeological evidence - whichever region has the earliest finds of wheeled vehicles would be regarded as the point of origin, until new finds prove otherwise.