Western Why Recognizes Only The History of China 3300 Years of Civilization

 

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China has always been a country that focuses on recording history, with systematic and rich historical materials. According to legend, there were historians in the Yellow Emperor era. Of the world's civilizations, only China has basically recorded its 5,000-year history. According to Chinese history books, China has a history of 5,000 years of civilization and is one of the four ancient civilizations in the world.

The Western Jin Dynasty Huangfu Mi comprehensively handed down historical materials, recorded in the "Emperor Century": Huangdi reigned 100 years, Shaohao Jintians 84 years, Zhuanxu 78, Emperor Gaoxin 70 years, Emperor Zhi 9 years, "from Yu to Jie , Including 432 years", "From Tang Chuanzhi to Zhou, Fan 629 years"... so that later generations calculated that the first year of the Yellow Emperor was 2698 BC. Therefore, it is not wrong to say that China has a history of 5,000 years of civilization.

However, according to their standards, Western scholars have always believed that China has only a history of more than 3,300 years of civilization. Although Chinese scholars have objections, they have not been able to completely prove the error of this view. The reason why Western scholars think so is that although there are the arrogance and prejudice of "Western superiority", there are actually three little-known reasons.

Western scholars deny Chinese historical materials

We all know that Western historical records are very short, and there is no history until after the Middle Ages. The previous historical records are full of myths and legends, which is unbelievable. Therefore, the West pays special attention to archaeological methods to discover ancient history, instead of opening history books to understand ancient history like the Chinese.

Due to this objective situation in the West, when Western scholars look at Chinese ancient history, they often deny China's historical records and believe that Chinese historical records are not reliable. Even, just because there are some records full of mythology in "Historical Records", Western scholars deny "Historical Records". The ancestor of the Shang Dynasty was "three-person bathing, seeing a black bird fall into its egg, Jiandi swallowing it, and giving birth to a contract because of pregnancy. Xin Ran said, "if you want to practice it,practice it and move like a pregnant person", stepping on the footprints of giants to get pregnant.

"Historical Records" has a total of more than 500,000 words, and it was completely overthrown just because of some unreliable records. This is undoubtedly a wonderful logic of God. However, many Western scholars believe it. The historical record, which is the "sweet sing of Chinese historians", is supreme among Chinese historians, but it is not worth mentioning in the eyes of many Western scholars. More importantly, after the "Historical Records" as a systematic record of ancient history was rejected, the ancient Chinese history was not reliable, so the five-thousand-year history of civilization in the history books was not valid.

Therefore, in the opinion of Western scholars, only archaeology can prove China's 5000-year civilization history. Before the oracle bone inscriptions of Yin Ruins came out, the West only recognized that the history of Chinese civilization began in the Zhou Dynasty, which was about 3000 years. After the oracle bone inscriptions came out, but because almost all the history recorded after Pan Geng moved to Yin, Western scholars barely admitted that China has a history of 3,300 years of civilization.

Chinese scholars are excessively suspicious of ancient times

In 1921, when Hu Shi advocated the "reorganization of national heritage", he put forward the thesis that "there is no faith in history above the Eastern Zhou Dynasty". The so-called Eastern Zhou Dynasty began in 770 BC. Hu Shi believed that the Western Zhou, Shang, Xia, and Five Emperors eras in the history books were unreliable, and even some of the historical figures and historical events that we know well may be fabricated.

After Hu Shi, the Ancient History Discrimination School represented by Gu Jiegang put forward the "constructed theories in layers", from doubting ancient classics, to doubting ancient characters, to doubting the entire ancient history system. "Most of Xia's history is based on Eastern and Western myths," said Yang Kuan, an antiquities historian. ” Chen Mengjia believed that “Xia history was completely different from the history of business”. If even the Xia Dynasty is fictitious, then the history before the Xia Dynasty is undoubtedly even less credible.

Because of the prevalence of antiquity sects, it had a great impact on Chinese ancient history, and even "destructed" it greatly, allowing Western scholars to "grab the handle": since top Chinese scholars themselves deny Chinese ancient history and believe that the Xia Dynasty does not exist, they believe the era of the Five Emperors does not even exist. Doesn't it prove that China has only 3000 years of history?

To this day, many historical books of western countries have based on this the belief that China had no country before the Shang Dynasty, and civilization had not yet formed. It was only in the ancient tribal society or in the age of myths and legends. China has only more than 3,300 years of civilization history.

In fact, even in China today, there are many scholars who "belittle" themselves. For example, Yi Zhongtian believes that China has only 3,700 years of civilization.

Western scholars do not understand Chinese characters

Western scholars’ four standards for civilization are: city, writing, bronze, temple, and altar. However, in terms of writing, Western scholars believe that the earliest Chinese writing is Oracle, and thus believe that China is naturally only 3,300 years old.

Regardless of whether Western scholars’ standards of civilization are objective or not, and whether they conform to Eastern civilization, Western scholars may not understand the formation and development of Chinese characters. We all know that Oracle is a very mature script. According to the law of objective development of things, Oracle has undergone at least hundreds, thousands of years, or even longer evolution to form Oracle. So, are the words before Oracle count as words? Western scholars believe that it is not. There is no civilization at all.

At present, the earliest relic of "writing" unearthed in China is the Jiahu site, more than 9,000 years ago, and there are countless after that. Among them, groups of ligatures were unearthed at the Zhuangqiao Tomb site in Zhejiang Province more than 6,000 years ago. "Text Engraved Symbols". Around 5000 years ago, there were more "character engraved symbols" unearthed, such as bone engraved inscriptions (a huge number, much like a prelude to the oracle bone inscriptions), the Zhu Wen of Shanxi Taosi, and the water books of the Xia Dynasty at the Erlitou site. Many of them are very similar to Oracle bone inscriptions, so many Chinese scholars think these are words.

However, Western scholars have always disapproved of these Chinese characters unearthed in archaeology, and even thought it was "pure nonsense", Zhang Juzhong, director of the National Archaeological Society pointed out sharply!

In other words, the reason why Western scholars deny, apart from arrogance and prejudice, is that they do not understand Chinese characters. In fact, the basis of Western writing is letters. After it is formed, the form will not change much, but the Chinese square characters are constantly evolving. There are constant changes in ancient characters, oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, traditional characters, and simplified characters. Although the forms of expression are different, they probably express the same meaning.

It is worth mentioning that in recent years, as the ancient Chinese civilization sites continue to "come forward", especially the shocking civilization facts of the Liangzhu site in Zhejiang, many Western scholars have had to implicitly recognize that China has 5000 years. History of civilization. However, there is still a long way to go before the Western academic community can fully recognize it.