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Does it make sense to talk about the Chinese civilization like a single continuous civilization? That's a bit like saying Italy's civilization dates from the fi

by Iv 7y ago

Does it make sense to talk about the Chinese civilization like a single continuous civilization? That's a bit like saying Italy's civilization dates from the first Etruscan settlements or that French civilization is as old as the megaliths in Brittany. I am a bit suspicious of these claims as they are central to Chinese nationalism. In order to hold them you have to disregard the several periods where the country was split in several parts and have to integrate somehow the mongol conquest. To the best of my knowledge, the best claimants to the longest enduring and continuously existing organizations are the Holy See and when it comes to governing bodies, Iceland's Althing (founded in 930)

brailsafe 7y ago
It depends on how you define civilization I suppose, but there is definitely a difference between nation and civ, as well as sub-civs, and those can be reasonably estimated to date back ~12000 years. Edit: 12k would be the origin of the yellow river and Yangtze river delta civilizations, if memory serves. These would grow into the overarching Ancient China and then into China as a nation.
- rsj_hn 7y ago
  As of what is known today, the earliest Chinese writing dates to ~ 2K BC, or about a thousand years later than earliest written languages in Mesopotamia. The Chinese Bronze Age starts at 1600 BC, whereas you have the Bronze Age starting around 3000 BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia. All evidence points to Chinese civilization being about 1000-2000 years "younger" than Mesopotamia or Egypt, and also younger than India.
  - brailsafe 7y ago
    Those may be true, but it seems like you're just defining civilization as the point at which a given group of people developed a writing system, and also pointing to a lot non-mutually exclusive events. That's far from "all evidence" and you're just describing multiple civilizations occurring at different times. You also had the Indus Valley Civ around the same time. Likewise, even if one is younger than the other, obviously doesn't mean it's considered to have the same longevity.
    - rsj_hn 7y ago
      I did not invent the criteria. When we talk about "civilization", we mean a writing system, public buildings, centralized government with some formalized structure. If you are just talking about tribes of people with some arts and crafts, then you can find cave paintings in Spain dating back 35,000 years (https://www.oldest.org/artliterature/cave-paintings/ https://www.oldest.org/artliterature/cave-paintings/), a structured society living in caves in Sri Lanka 35,000 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archaeological_sites_by_continent_and_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archaeological_sites_b...) or the Gobekle Teple (the world's oldest temple) in Turkey 11,000 years ago -- and they even had "scripts" there. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worl... The point is, humans migrated out of Africa a _long_ time ago and there is a long history of things like tool making, cooking, art, making structures, making symbols in proto languages, which is scattered all across the world from Latin America to Europe to Asia. But none of these by themselves constitute what is traditionally considered a "civilization", although of course this is just a long standing convention. Having a written language and organized public buildings is required for that.
      - cygx 7y ago
        There is a bit of a case insofar that we have a (limited) form of macro-organization along songlines.
INTPenis 7y ago
I was thinking the same thing, but not the Romans, rather the egyptians would be the oldest civilizations still there. I mean this measuring stick is basically determining if an area has been continuously civilized. Chinese civilizations have gone through many changes, including being overrun by Mongols and having their entire government replaced by mongo officials. Just like the Egyptians have been overrun by Nubians from Sudan.
tsimionescu 7y ago
The difference I've heard mentioned is that current Chinese civilization has much more in common with the ancient Chinese living in the same area than Italy has with the Roman empire, or even than Greece has with Ancient Greek civilizations. The examples I heard were that Ancient Chinese poetry is still understandable and taught to Chinese school-children, that Chinese cuisine in most areas has not changed dramatically, and that many Chinese religious traditions are practiced very similarly. Even the Mongol invasion of China has apparently had more of an effect of making the Mongols adopt Chinese customs than the other way around. Please note that I may well have fallen for state propaganda on any or all of the above. I am not claiming to know any of these from direct scholarship.
- beerandt 7y ago
  I get that culture is valuable, but it's weird to me that part of a claim of modern superiority relies on bragging about doing things the same way you were doing them hundreds or thousands of years ago. That's what makes it seem like a propaganda spin to me. That or hipster.
tanilama 7y ago
I think so. It is through self-identification however. The Chinese people keep their history record consecutive for about 3000 years, if discounted Xia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-Four_Histories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-Four_Histories Several key factors: 1. Chinese characters have been used in China ever since Qin, and never been successfully replaced by external conquerers. The character itself is pretty much recognizable by today's Chinese citizens. 2. China's dominating philosophy/religion, the Confucianism, is pretty much alive and never been replaced either. This top-down, parental style state-over-individual system is still a key element in operation of Chinese society on micro/macro level. 3. The dynasty model. One after another, never changes. All in all, it is still due to self-identification.
- Iv 7y ago
  Well through self-identification, we Europeans consider ourselves heirs of the ancient Greek culture. If this is really an old-dick contest, we can date it back to Mycenaean Greeks. 1. The Greek alphabet, a bit younger than Chinese characters (just 2900 years old, unless you want to claim the Phoenician alphabet, father of both the Greek and Latin one) is almost identical to modern Greek alphabet. Until recently, being literate in ancient Greek was seen as a mark of erudition and very common in the scientific community. 2. Around the time when Confucius was describing his system, Plato was writing "The Republic". 3. Dynastic rule a political invention? It is the natural system that emerges everywhere! There has been dynasties in Egypt for more than 5000 years!
  - tanilama 7y ago
    So there is the thing. Knowing an alphabet isn't enough for anyone to read Greek or any European languages. Knowing Chinese character however, you would be able to at least make sense of ancient texts, knowing what roughly the underlying text is talking about. I think you have confused with my claim. It is about continuity. Chinese culture's strong consistency makes it very easy to create a narrative around its histories that it is episodic in nature. After all, your identity is a collective imagination, it is your belief. It is not an easy sale to German/French people that are bounded by blood because they share some ancient Rome heritage. In China's case it is an easy sale. The history is written in this way already
austincheney 7y ago
Continuous civilization only means the defining characteristics of civilization remain unbroken through regime change. Only China and India have had continuous civilization from the ancient to the present. That remains true even though the Yuan dynasty were foreign invaders. Contrast that to the Saxon invasion of Britain or the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs or the gothic conquest of Italy.
- ginko 7y ago
  What about Persia/Iran? Or Ethiopia.
- oblio 7y ago
  India has had multiple competing civilizations at the same time for centuries. Saying that India was a single civilization for thousands of years is incorrect.
- svaigsq 7y ago
  Oh, come on... maybe get some interest in history and dig through at least some of the things that you are touching. Paper is written in 1944. None of that was true for that time and does not apply to modern days at all. It seems to be influenced by pre-war mystical New Ageish movements in Europe, that claimed many things... like, that Europeans came from Tibet... I'm really confused about definitions here. What we define as Western, Chinese, Indian civilization and what we define as civilization at all. You can like it or hate it, but modern Chinese nowadays belong to Western civilization - they use Western inventions(and they still steal them - no offense, but I think, it is a right thing to do for them to get into better economical position and you should do the same) - phones, computers, mechanisms, medicine, sanitation, building, use western clothing and even Mao spread western ideas... At this point Chinese civilization as such certainly does not exist and it is a myth. Same applies to others. Let's clarify some things about Western civilization: Western civilization does not apply exclusively to Western Europe. Roman Empire, that was melting pot of nations and cultures was spread in northern Africa and for most of what is considered world of Islam. Not bothering with colonies, core lands of ancient Greeks were in what is now called west of modern Turkey. Most of the world still does not know about great Chinese works, but they too don't predate works of ancient Greeks(as they were written more recently). There certainly existed even more ancient literature works in ancient China, but so did in civilization, what we consider western. What you are talking about continuity of Chinese applies the same to Europeans as well, as they stem from steppe people, that were initially located in Eastern Europe and they even more efficiently than Chinese replaced local population. Heck, those steppe people even invaded civilization of Indus valley, eventually destroying it and replacing male population for most of northern India. Talk about continuity of ancient India - did you meant Tamil people or Harappans? Because if Harappans(Indus valley civilization) is considered Indian, then Tamil ancestors are thought to come from somewhere west of India and are not really native to India... unlike Veddas in Sri Lanka or Sentinelese of Andaman islands. Now some nitpicks: Goths did not left any traces of Gothic civilization in Italy - besides, how do you even dear to consider Goths not belonging to Roman Empire, as they were employed by Romans! As far as I know, Goths did not invade only Italy, but also invaded Spain and settled in most fertile part of Roman Empire - Africa, so they walked over whole Roman Empire. There was no specific civilization of Britain during Saxon invasions. What did they even replace? And how do you differ them from Normans, Angles or even earlier Viking invasions? For all I know - all of them might belong to the same culture. Because of Spanish conquest, Americas are now considered part of Western civilization. Aztecs came from deserts of modern USA and were rulers over natives, so what's your point? And even then Aztecs were not unique civilization, but only part of civilization region of what we call Mesoamerica. Isn't is a hypocrisy to consider multiple states of China, that fought among themselves as continuous civilization(even today there are 2 Chinese states)... while looking on different European countries, who share the same civilization not consider them as continuous...

by Iv 7y ago

brailsafe 7y ago

It depends on how you define civilization I suppose, but there is definitely a difference between nation and civ, as well as sub-civs, and those can be reasonably estimated to date back ~12000 years. Edit: 12k would be the origin of the yellow river and Yangtze river delta civilizations, if memory serves. These would grow into the overarching Ancient China and then into China as a nation.

rsj_hn 7y ago
As of what is known today, the earliest Chinese writing dates to ~ 2K BC, or about a thousand years later than earliest written languages in Mesopotamia. The Chinese Bronze Age starts at 1600 BC, whereas you have the Bronze Age starting around 3000 BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia. All evidence points to Chinese civilization being about 1000-2000 years "younger" than Mesopotamia or Egypt, and also younger than India.
- brailsafe 7y ago
  Those may be true, but it seems like you're just defining civilization as the point at which a given group of people developed a writing system, and also pointing to a lot non-mutually exclusive events. That's far from "all evidence" and you're just describing multiple civilizations occurring at different times. You also had the Indus Valley Civ around the same time. Likewise, even if one is younger than the other, obviously doesn't mean it's considered to have the same longevity.
  - rsj_hn 7y ago
    I did not invent the criteria. When we talk about "civilization", we mean a writing system, public buildings, centralized government with some formalized structure. If you are just talking about tribes of people with some arts and crafts, then you can find cave paintings in Spain dating back 35,000 years (https://www.oldest.org/artliterature/cave-paintings/ https://www.oldest.org/artliterature/cave-paintings/), a structured society living in caves in Sri Lanka 35,000 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archaeological_sites_by_continent_and_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archaeological_sites_b...) or the Gobekle Teple (the world's oldest temple) in Turkey 11,000 years ago -- and they even had "scripts" there. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worl... The point is, humans migrated out of Africa a _long_ time ago and there is a long history of things like tool making, cooking, art, making structures, making symbols in proto languages, which is scattered all across the world from Latin America to Europe to Asia. But none of these by themselves constitute what is traditionally considered a "civilization", although of course this is just a long standing convention. Having a written language and organized public buildings is required for that.
    - cygx 7y ago
      There is a bit of a case insofar that we have a (limited) form of macro-organization along songlines.

INTPenis 7y ago

I was thinking the same thing, but not the Romans, rather the egyptians would be the oldest civilizations still there. I mean this measuring stick is basically determining if an area has been continuously civilized. Chinese civilizations have gone through many changes, including being overrun by Mongols and having their entire government replaced by mongo officials. Just like the Egyptians have been overrun by Nubians from Sudan.

tsimionescu 7y ago

The difference I've heard mentioned is that current Chinese civilization has much more in common with the ancient Chinese living in the same area than Italy has with the Roman empire, or even than Greece has with Ancient Greek civilizations. The examples I heard were that Ancient Chinese poetry is still understandable and taught to Chinese school-children, that Chinese cuisine in most areas has not changed dramatically, and that many Chinese religious traditions are practiced very similarly. Even the Mongol invasion of China has apparently had more of an effect of making the Mongols adopt Chinese customs than the other way around. Please note that I may well have fallen for state propaganda on any or all of the above. I am not claiming to know any of these from direct scholarship.

beerandt 7y ago
I get that culture is valuable, but it's weird to me that part of a claim of modern superiority relies on bragging about doing things the same way you were doing them hundreds or thousands of years ago. That's what makes it seem like a propaganda spin to me. That or hipster.

tanilama 7y ago

I think so. It is through self-identification however. The Chinese people keep their history record consecutive for about 3000 years, if discounted Xia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-Four_Histories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-Four_Histories Several key factors: 1. Chinese characters have been used in China ever since Qin, and never been successfully replaced by external conquerers. The character itself is pretty much recognizable by today's Chinese citizens. 2. China's dominating philosophy/religion, the Confucianism, is pretty much alive and never been replaced either. This top-down, parental style state-over-individual system is still a key element in operation of Chinese society on micro/macro level. 3. The dynasty model. One after another, never changes. All in all, it is still due to self-identification.

Iv 7y ago
Well through self-identification, we Europeans consider ourselves heirs of the ancient Greek culture. If this is really an old-dick contest, we can date it back to Mycenaean Greeks. 1. The Greek alphabet, a bit younger than Chinese characters (just 2900 years old, unless you want to claim the Phoenician alphabet, father of both the Greek and Latin one) is almost identical to modern Greek alphabet. Until recently, being literate in ancient Greek was seen as a mark of erudition and very common in the scientific community. 2. Around the time when Confucius was describing his system, Plato was writing "The Republic". 3. Dynastic rule a political invention? It is the natural system that emerges everywhere! There has been dynasties in Egypt for more than 5000 years!
- tanilama 7y ago
  So there is the thing. Knowing an alphabet isn't enough for anyone to read Greek or any European languages. Knowing Chinese character however, you would be able to at least make sense of ancient texts, knowing what roughly the underlying text is talking about. I think you have confused with my claim. It is about continuity. Chinese culture's strong consistency makes it very easy to create a narrative around its histories that it is episodic in nature. After all, your identity is a collective imagination, it is your belief. It is not an easy sale to German/French people that are bounded by blood because they share some ancient Rome heritage. In China's case it is an easy sale. The history is written in this way already

austincheney 7y ago

Continuous civilization only means the defining characteristics of civilization remain unbroken through regime change. Only China and India have had continuous civilization from the ancient to the present. That remains true even though the Yuan dynasty were foreign invaders. Contrast that to the Saxon invasion of Britain or the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs or the gothic conquest of Italy.

ginko 7y ago
What about Persia/Iran? Or Ethiopia.
oblio 7y ago
India has had multiple competing civilizations at the same time for centuries. Saying that India was a single civilization for thousands of years is incorrect.
svaigsq 7y ago
Oh, come on... maybe get some interest in history and dig through at least some of the things that you are touching. Paper is written in 1944. None of that was true for that time and does not apply to modern days at all. It seems to be influenced by pre-war mystical New Ageish movements in Europe, that claimed many things... like, that Europeans came from Tibet... I'm really confused about definitions here. What we define as Western, Chinese, Indian civilization and what we define as civilization at all. You can like it or hate it, but modern Chinese nowadays belong to Western civilization - they use Western inventions(and they still steal them - no offense, but I think, it is a right thing to do for them to get into better economical position and you should do the same) - phones, computers, mechanisms, medicine, sanitation, building, use western clothing and even Mao spread western ideas... At this point Chinese civilization as such certainly does not exist and it is a myth. Same applies to others. Let's clarify some things about Western civilization: Western civilization does not apply exclusively to Western Europe. Roman Empire, that was melting pot of nations and cultures was spread in northern Africa and for most of what is considered world of Islam. Not bothering with colonies, core lands of ancient Greeks were in what is now called west of modern Turkey. Most of the world still does not know about great Chinese works, but they too don't predate works of ancient Greeks(as they were written more recently). There certainly existed even more ancient literature works in ancient China, but so did in civilization, what we consider western. What you are talking about continuity of Chinese applies the same to Europeans as well, as they stem from steppe people, that were initially located in Eastern Europe and they even more efficiently than Chinese replaced local population. Heck, those steppe people even invaded civilization of Indus valley, eventually destroying it and replacing male population for most of northern India. Talk about continuity of ancient India - did you meant Tamil people or Harappans? Because if Harappans(Indus valley civilization) is considered Indian, then Tamil ancestors are thought to come from somewhere west of India and are not really native to India... unlike Veddas in Sri Lanka or Sentinelese of Andaman islands. Now some nitpicks: Goths did not left any traces of Gothic civilization in Italy - besides, how do you even dear to consider Goths not belonging to Roman Empire, as they were employed by Romans! As far as I know, Goths did not invade only Italy, but also invaded Spain and settled in most fertile part of Roman Empire - Africa, so they walked over whole Roman Empire. There was no specific civilization of Britain during Saxon invasions. What did they even replace? And how do you differ them from Normans, Angles or even earlier Viking invasions? For all I know - all of them might belong to the same culture. Because of Spanish conquest, Americas are now considered part of Western civilization. Aztecs came from deserts of modern USA and were rulers over natives, so what's your point? And even then Aztecs were not unique civilization, but only part of civilization region of what we call Mesoamerica. Isn't is a hypocrisy to consider multiple states of China, that fought among themselves as continuous civilization(even today there are 2 Chinese states)... while looking on different European countries, who share the same civilization not consider them as continuous...