Remarkable how rapidly politics comes into the discussion of Chinese history. Putting that aside, the theory is interesting and plausible for a few reasons, yet probably wrong. I like it because of the weird connections, like the ancient ores and the "nine rivers". This is numerology, not science: searching for support rather than nullification.
The theory is IMO wrong for a much simpler reason. It assumes (as many theories of history do) that the vastness of our planet means that we used to live in disconnected communities, islands of humanity spread out and yet not talking to each other.
You can walk around the globe in 10-20 years. It is unimaginable that trade routes such as the Silk Road did not carry knowledge such as how to smelt bronze, like those African ores, and any other precious good. Wherever there were people, they were innovating and trading goods and knowledge with their neighbors. Only exceptionally were pockets of humanity actually isolated.
You don't need an emperor and his navy to carry knowledge halfway across the globe. One or two people, on foot, will do it, and did it, and so, this nullifies the theory that Chinese civilization somehow sprang from Egyptian civilization. The two co-developed together with the entire connected world at the time.
This is an important footnote that many historians seem to overlook.
However a similar argument makes the seaborne theory plausible too, as it took less than three years to sail or row around the globe, probably ever since the invention of the sailboat (~4000BC?).
Yes, navigable water has always been the crucible of trade. Hence the economy and culture of the Mediterranean even from the early bronze age. And coastal trade is compelling, you don't need sea-faring ships, just dinghies capable of sailing to the next beach. So we can, reasonably, argue that there was a global human economy and civilisation (albeit one that operated really slowly) as early as 5,000 BCE (date that Wikipedia quotes for earliest depiction of a sailboat).
I disagree. Supposed evidence cited in this English summary:
(1) Northwards the stream is divided and becomes the nine rivers. What the original Chinese is saying is that a river to the north of the current location divides and rejoins. This is normal for many rivers, particularly in silted plains such as that of the Yellow River, the dominant river north of the centers of early Chinese civilization. The Yellow river is known to have flooded and changed course many times over history.
(2) Chemical composition more closely resembled those of ancient Egyptian bronzes than native Chinese ores. Tin was traded by many early civilizations, even if you have direct evidence that tin came from the other side of the world it doesn't mean much at all.
(3) Hyksos possessed at an earlier date almost all the same remarkable technology — bronze metallurgy, chariots, literacy, domesticated plants and animals — that archaeologists discovered at the ancient city of Yin, the capital of China’s second dynasty, the Shang. Well, none are hard to invent if you live on a flood-plain with horses, and Chinese civilizations definitely had all of those (in the case of literacy, to some extent) in the Xia (ie. prior to Shang).
(4) Since the Hyksos are known to have developed ships for war and trade that enabled them to sail the Red and Mediterranean seas, Sun speculates that a small population escaped their collapsing dynasty using seafaring technology that eventually brought them and their Bronze Age culture to the coast of China. Oh yeah... so they skipped major cultural centers like the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia's seafaring kingdoms on the way and came all the way to China for no apparent reason? Without needing repairs? Sounds likely. I'd wager local sailors familiar with local conditions were far more likely to trade information and goods in a chain fashion than for a far-flung ship to make it all the way with no particular purpose or direction.
In any event, back then 'China' did not exist, instead you had a few settled peoples in what is now northern coastal China and adjacent areas intermingling. Recent research shows, IIRC, that the genetics of peoples as far north as Shanghai derive in part from Southeast Asian Negrito and Austronesian populations.
Also, the article ignores the fact that at the same time as the Xia and Shang Dynasties you had very developed, independent bronze culture complexes in Sichuan[0] and north Vietnam/Yunnan/Guangxi[1][2], the latter spreading across much of mainland and island Southeast Asia. Central Asia no doubt also had well developed bronze at this stage. Furthermore, if the claims were true there would be genetic evidence, but the real kicker is that the Bronze Age in South Asia began around 3000 BCE. Why would China need to reference Egypt? Archaeology shows they already had bronze, chariots, writing, animal raising and agriculture themselves.
It's plausible in the sense of believable. I did not say it was solid or well-argued. You raise excellent counter arguments. However the point of my comment was there is no need to even go that far, the whole notion of civilizations being carried by shiploads of newcomers is flawed.
Hell, they've found Chinese silk in Bronze-Age Egyptian tombs, and tin from Cornwall in Cyprus during the same era. The world has had global trading routes and communications since almost the first people settled down in agricultural villages, if not before. See 1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed[1] for a great illustration of this early interconnectedness.
Since the article doesn't have too much information this seems as just as based on anecdotal evidence as the "theory" that Japanese culture and specifically Shinto has evolved from biblical Hebrews/Israelites:
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~remnant/isracame.htm
“There is only one major river in the world which flows northwards. Which one is it?” the professor asked.
Ob', Yenisej, Lena. All great Siberian rivers flow northwards. I don't intend to explain that ancient Chinese text. The only thing I want to say is that the article is complete BS.
So, foreignpolicy.com is a less-trustworthy source.
This is false. The Chinese writing system and Mythos have no connection at all with Egypt. Descriptions of rivers predominate in ancient myths and there is no reason to construct a hypothesis that has little explanatory power and even less plausibility.
I am not at all a linguist and not at all an expert on either writing system, but as a layman looking at both the Chinese and Ancient Egyptian writing systems, one similarity seemed really striking - the notion that a typical word is composed of a 2 parts - a semantic, pictographic "root", combined with another part that indicates pronunciation.
It's not uncommon but not typical either in Chinese. My impression is that those kinds of characters were easier to form through improvisation, and became standardized without actually fitting usual norms of character creation. Slang, regional synonyms, loanwords, and the like would be likely candidates for this process.
It is typical -- now. (Wikipedia provides an estimate of "over 90% of all characters".) Chinese linguistics traditionally distinguishes six different classes of character[1], of which one is the semantophore-phonophore pair. That class is the most numerous now, because most new characters have always gone into it, because it's easy to devise new characters in that system. (It's even easier to "devise" characters in the fourth class, but those characters are by definition not new; see below.)
But when the writing system was new, other classes were a lot more common than they are now.
- Direct pictorial representation of a physical object, as 水 is just a picture of water, or 马 is just a picture of a horse. (Both are ridiculous now, but recognizable in their original forms.)
- "Pictorial" representation of an abstract idea, as 上 depicts "up", 下 depicts "down", and 三 depicts "three". (These still work!)
- Semantic compounds, formed from several more basic characters all of which are used for the meaning. Apparently the subject of much debate, but examples in the spirit of the category are 森 "forest" = 木 tree + tree + tree; 好 "good" = 女 woman + 子 child; 尖 "sharp" depicting something which is 小 (small) at one end and 大 (big) at the other; 歪 "crooked" = 不 not + 正 straight; etc.
- "Loans", characters which are used solely for their phonetic content. For example, the character 英 which means "Eng"land is identical with the character 英, pronounced ying but meaning "hero". A lot of characters which were originally loans like this have subsequently developed distinctions, as 来 and 麦 have.
- Phono-semantic compounds. The topic of discussion here. As 切 qie "cut" sounds similar to 七 qi "seven", but means similarly to 刀 dao "knife", or 到 dao "to" sounds similar to 刀 dao "knife", but means similarly to 至 zhi "to", or 打 da "strike" sounds similar to 丁 ding "fourth in a sequence", but means similarly to 手 shou "hand".
- A mystery category, involving pairs of related characters, that we no longer understand. Example: 考 / 老.
This pretty well covers all the logical possibilities: direct representations, compounds involving only meaning, characters used only for sound (a compound would be superfluous there), and compounds involving meaning and sound together.
Thanks for the figures reference. I was making a guess based on my limited vocabulary. But, having a core vocabulary + knowledge of history is still effective.
If you go back far enough, my assessment could still be correct. That is, the original standardization (oracle bones -> Qin dynasty) of Chinese characters probably had less words constructed with a sound indicator.
At the Qin dynasty, China became an empire and incorporated many new ethnic groups. It then had multiple words used in different regions (like he and jiang for river).
Pictorial and semantic characters take more thought to construct, with pictorial probably more difficult and historical. Later on, it became possible to build upon these to quickly form characters, perhaps even as a shorthand.
So it's not surprising that phono-semantic took over. This process even continued as traditional characters became simplified in modern times.
Your discussion on what characters should sound like may be more complicated. Old Chinese pronunciation is much different from Mandarin, and today's simplified characters may or may not have followed the pattern (I don't know, I didn't learn simplified).
One more thing: having sound built into Chinese characters defeats one of its strongest reasons for being. Not only is Chinese monosyllabic and full of homonyms, historically there was no standard pronunciation so that you might not even understand the neighboring town. Having a character set solves both these problems.
IMO, those kinds of phono-characters were always lazy creations.
So what? 木 means wood now. (Well, no it doesn't. 木头 means wood now. 木 is not a word in modern Chinese.) It meant tree, which is relevant to the construction of 森, 本, 休, 树, etc.
It took me all of a few seconds to look up the proverb 独木不成林 "one tree alone is not a forest". What do you think the 木 means there?
Every time I get a link from this foreign policy site, I get the impression that this is, very well disguised but still strong, the good old "voice of the white West". It is obviously never explicit, but there a smell of "we know better" behind.
The article is just a reporting of a debate sparked by a native Chinese archaelogist's published theory. This seems like a weak attempt to smear them as Orientalist commentators. The article covered previous evolutions of origin theories and how nationalism and politics often get involved. Overall the article looks like a straightforward reporting of the context of this research.
He's a geochemist, not an archaeologist. Racial issues aside, there have been many instances where a scientist in one field tries to make sweeping statements about another field. In most cases they lack a deep understanding of the other field and are unaware of mountains of evidence that otherwise contradict what they say.
As far as I can tell, their is not much evidence either way on whether written language moved from Mesopotamia or Egypt to China, and there definitely isn't a prepondance of evidence. Heck, we still aren't sure if Egyptian language came from Mesopotamia or not. There is also the chance that the concept of written language came from the Middle East but was re-implemented independently (after knowing it was possible and useful) from whatever proto writing existed at the time (e.g. oracle bone script).
> the concept of written language came from the Middle East but was re-implemented independently from whatever proto writing existed at the time
This seems the most likely because it only takes one person in ancient times moving from one society to another to impart such knowledge. Anyone supporting that idea doesn't have to offer any evidence -- it's up to the person disagreeing to disprove it because their position is far less likely.
Given that both Chinese and hieroglyphs both have radicals (in Chinese, as part of a character, and in hieroglyphs, trailing the character), the concept of radicals may also have spread the same way.
That doesn't change critique of Foreign Policy mag, it's not their theory, they're just reporting a somewhat interesting discussion happening in another country, the Economist does this all the time.
The article notes a Chinese national anthem referring to a popular myth of [some] people coming to China from the far, far West.
This seems consistent with ideas of Africa as the crucible of human civilisation; you appear to think that idea is some sort of Western imperialism?
Can you explain further how a group of Egyptians traveling to China supports the notion of Western (ie West Europe + North America) notions of superiority?
Even if the whole concept had been born out of Western imperialism, that wouldn't of course make it wrong.
The river element as the article presents it seems to only be the disk that initiates the idea.
>'President Yuan Shikai referred to it obliquely, calling China “the famous descendant from Kunlun Peak,” which Chinese mythology locates in the far, far West' //
Is interesting enough IMO to warrant an initial investigation.
The radiographic data is another facet, that could be explained by getting the ores from Egypt.
>there is no reason to construct a hypothesis //
Surely there's always a reason to construct a hypothesis as that's the basis of the modern scientific method. One creates a hypothesis that can be falsified, the longevity of the hypothesis then indicates the verity of the claims.
Candelabras exist in many cultures but if you find a picture showing a 7 branched one (of the right form) there's a compelling reason to hypothesise that it's a menorah.
Do you real consider it implausible that people traveled from one part of the world to another and has a major influence on the other's cultural development.
Kunlun has about 10,000 meanings, also in Chinese. I recently added it to Wikipedia,[0] when reading a 1000 year old text I am translating[1] that seems to reference eastern Indonesia with the name.
昆侖國 ("The Country of Kunlun"), an ancient Chinese term apparently broadly used to refer to a general swathe of southerly island Southeast Asia circa the Moluccas, equivalent to period Sanskrit Dvipatala or Pali Dipattala (also Jipattala, Nipattala).
Russia has several rivers that flow south, and one of them, the Yenisei, does reach down close to Northern China. The Yenisei valley is also known to be a corridor for cultural migration in more recent times.
I'm sure most people have thought this through since the time they may have been lied to in elementary school, but rivers flow don't flow south, they flow downhill... and there are plenty that flow north.
What school do they teach that at? If we take the 2 most famous rivers then the Nile flows from south to north pretty much straight, and the Amazon flows from west to east by north east.
It might have been a long time since I was in elementary school but I never heard of "rivers flowing south", could be a US thing since most of the large rivers in the US do flow southish.
I have no idea where I heard that fact - only remember "trivia" from friends in elementary school telling me that the Nile is the only river that flows north, daddy-longlegs are the most poisonous spiders but their mouths are too small to bite humans, etc.
I'm not sure if the anecdote in the beginning is a true one but it says it takes place in Hefei, so I'm not sure it's a particularly American piece of misinformation.
Don't know never heard that fact, especially considering that rivers that flow north in Europe are quite common since the norther part of Europe is still rebounding from the last large ice age and it's overall at a lower elevation than southern Europe where you also get the large mountain ranges.
So famous rivers like the Sine, Elbe, Oder etc. all flow "north".
Aside: ages back I asked an arachnologist friend about the origin of this myth.
As far as he could determine, some researcher was once asked on some random TV interview what the most poisonous spider was, and responded that no one knew, and that it may well be the daddy long legs. From that an entire generation of internet consumers now believe they are.
Probably not at a North Dakota school since we have a north running river (The Red River) and the continental divide which gives a nice rivers going every which way demonstration.
Made for a whole mess with the flooding of Devils Lake which put a south town[1] in danger and forced the planners to deal with Canada because of overflow.
1) they literally had security while they built a concrete damn for fear someone would create their own outlet.
That was random thought lol. But, I thought they thought it flowed backwards because their direction was backwards. Similar to how electron charge is negative so it flows backwards cnceptually.
Looking at the Wikipedia list of longest rivers, the largest ones flowing northward are Yenisei, Ob, Lena, and Mackenzie. Then there's a bunch in central Europe, but they are smaller.
Any theory that uses the Hyksos (Sea Peoples) as an explanation is usually wrong. Crackpots use them because so little is known about who they were, and where they came from, hence any wild claims are harder to disprove.
This is when my mind links a particlar myth of both cultures and more about a fish man showing up and teaching people the ways of civilization. As I remember it was Mesopotamia, China, and the Indus valley, and maybe a few more?
I think its plausible that civilization itself spread via sea faring peoples, so perhaps it was some hyksos like people that brought not their genetics, but knowledge.
For ForeignPolicy to pick this up, it would be something with potential to cause trouble inside China.
The simplest explanation is that trade existed even in prehistoric times. It did not have to be the same person that took ore from African mines all the way to China.
While merchants traveled a lot, those in high ranks did not have a reason to travel much.
This story appears to be on par with Jesus Christ being from India.
Another possible corollary: any page 1 article with a question in the title will have a comment referencing Betteridge's law. This comment will either be the second most upvoted or the most downvoted comment.
The theory is IMO wrong for a much simpler reason. It assumes (as many theories of history do) that the vastness of our planet means that we used to live in disconnected communities, islands of humanity spread out and yet not talking to each other.
You can walk around the globe in 10-20 years. It is unimaginable that trade routes such as the Silk Road did not carry knowledge such as how to smelt bronze, like those African ores, and any other precious good. Wherever there were people, they were innovating and trading goods and knowledge with their neighbors. Only exceptionally were pockets of humanity actually isolated.
You don't need an emperor and his navy to carry knowledge halfway across the globe. One or two people, on foot, will do it, and did it, and so, this nullifies the theory that Chinese civilization somehow sprang from Egyptian civilization. The two co-developed together with the entire connected world at the time.