Why question the origins of Western civilization?

Q: Why do some Chinese scholars question the origins of Western civilization?

A:

This is mainly caused by the differences in archaeological standards between China and the West.

Among all the ancient civilizations in the world, the Chinese civilization may not be the oldest, but it is the most special one.

Chinese civilization has a very "narcissistic" temperament, and they like to record their own history very much. Just like a careful girl, she writes her experiences and thoughts in a diary every day.

Other civilizations in the world do not have this habit. They do not care much about yesterday's things every day. Even if some records are left, they are accidental and passive.

When the timeline stretches to 2000, 3000, 4000 years later. This difference in personality shows up.

The Chinese have clear records of the development of their civilization, from 5,000 years ago, to 4,000 years ago, to 1,000 years ago, to 500 years ago. What happened every year, including wars, disasters, diplomacy, etiquette, and even astronomical phenomena, were completely recorded by the Chinese in each era. They have tens of millions of words of historical records, accurate to every year, every day, every historical celebrity and important event.

There are so many of these historical books, and they reference and cross each other, making them difficult to forge and tamper with. This makes China’s historical records very credible and accurate.

Therefore, when Chinese scholars study the origin and development of Chinese civilization, they attach great importance to "documents". Archaeological excavations and cultural relic discoveries often only exist as "documentary evidence".

Chinese scholars have their own set of rules of the game: binary arguments.

Explanation: To determine that a historical event is real, two conditions are required. 1. There are historical documents recording this period of history (poems, scriptures, stories and novels are not included here). 2. Discover a certain historical artifact and prove it with historical documents.

When only one of the two conditions is met, that part of history is considered doubtful.

But this set of rules of the game played by Chinese scholars is too harsh for European and American scholars.

Ancient civilizations that have been studied more by European and American scholars include ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, Mesopotamia civilization, ancient Rome, etc. These civilizations are not as continuous as the Chinese civilization. They basically ended or moved halfway. In addition, the people of these civilizations rarely like records as much as the Chinese.

Therefore, the documents they left behind are very sparse and unsystematic.

Most of the written information comes from stone monuments, myths and legends, and even things like the Bible. These things are fragmented, there is no strict timeline and index, there is a lack of mutual reference and mutual confirmation, and the reliability is very low.

This makes European and American scholars rely more on archaeological discoveries, that is, cultural relics, when studying ancient history.

For example, European archaeologists discovered a Palermo stele, which was clearly engraved with the names of many pharaohs of ancient Egypt and the time of their rule. So archaeologists celebrated, wow! We uncover history.

But something like the Palermo Stone, if discovered in China, would be far from celebrated. Chinese scholars will check their historical archives to see if the content written on this stone tablet is consistent with the historical records, and how different it is.

I'm sorry if they find out that the content on this stone tablet is not in the historical record at all. It proves nothing and can only be stored as an artifact until new evidence is provided to support the discovery.

If a Chinese scholar tries to draw a historical conclusion based on this stone tablet, he will immediately be laughed at by other colleagues: Idiot, have you ever thought that maby this stone tablet was forged by the ancients for some purpose?

In fact, there are massive archaeological discoveries in China that do not exist in historical records. For example, the huge ancient city of Liangzhu and the Sanxingdui Civilization, where tens of thousands of bronzes were discovered, have been classified by the Chinese as "unknown prehistoric civilizations" due to the lack of clear enough historical records.

At present, many urban ruins and cultural relics dating back 8,000 years have been discovered in China, but Chinese scholars have always believed that China’s civilization is only 5,000 years old. Some more rigorous Chinese scholars insist that Chinese history can only be counted from 2070 BC. , only 4000 years so far. The most demanding scholars believe that the calculation can only start from 841 BC, because since that year, there are accurate and reliable records for every year, which means that Chinese civilization is only 2800 years old.

Therefore, although many cultural relics and ruins have been discovered in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome or the Mesopotamian civilization. But in the view of Chinese scholars, these discoveries can only prove that these civilizations did exist. But relying on these discoveries to prove and write accurate history is not enough. Due to the lack of binary argumentation, the research conclusions can easily be affected by forged artifacts, which does not meet their academic standards.

Ancient documents that play an important role in the history of Western civilization, such as the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", can only be regarded as "epics" rather than "history books" according to the standards of Chinese scholars. This is because these documents lack a rigorous timeline, most of them are only partial stories, and the writing time is too far away from the actual time of history.

Therefore, according to the standards of Chinese scholars, the history of Western civilization is a mixture of myths and legends, religious scriptures and archaeological speculations, and cannot be called history at all.

Due to inconsistent standards, there will naturally be deviations in understanding between the two parties. Chinese scholars believe that their Western counterparts are counterfeiters, while Western scholars believe that their Chinese counterparts are paranoid.

For ordinary people, controversy is a good thing.