In 1900, Liang Qichao first proposed the concept of "four ancient civilizations" in his "Pacific Song of the Twentieth Century". In his book "History of World Civilization", the international American scholar William McGothy said that "ancient Babylon, ancient Egypt, ancient India, China, and ancient Greece are the birthplaces of the world's five major civilizations." Stavrianos' General History of the Globe states: "The fertile valleys and plains of the Middle East, India, China, and Europe gave birth to the greatest civilizations in history." In the documentary "Four Civilizations of the World" by Japan's NHK television station, China, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and ancient India are defined as the four ancient civilizations in the world.
The only one of the world's four major original ancient civilizations that continues to this day is the Chinese civilization. Most Egyptians today are not direct descendants of the ancient Egyptian natives who built the pyramids, and the main ethnic group in India today is not a direct descendant of the indigenous peoples who pioneered the Indus Valley civilization, and the civilizations of the two river basins in the Middle East have long been lost under the yellow sand. The demise of these three ancient civilizations is related to a group called "Aryan" in human history. Many people may know that the Aryan community is due to the racist propaganda of Nazi Germany, but the real Aryans in history are not really what the Nazis say. Nazi Germany once claimed to be of noble Aryan race, but shouldn't Germany be Germanic?
In fact, the Aryans do not refer to a specific ethnic group, but to the peoples who speak The Indo-European language. This group is one of the three largest ancient nomadic groups in the world, the other two nomadic families are the Mongol (Altai) and Semitic. The Mongols included the Huns, Mongols, Turks, and other ethnic groups; the Semitic groups included Arabs, Jews, Phoenicians, and other ethnic groups. Under the concept of "Aryans" also covers a number of different ethnic branches. The Aryans first lived in the steppes of the southern Ural Mountains in Russia. There is a legend about the origin of this group: once upon a time there was a king named Ferridon. The king had three sons: the eldest son, Tur, the second son, Salem, and the younger aryan.
In his old age, Ferridon divided his empire into three parts: the eldest son, Tur, ruled the east, and his descendants evolved into the Turks (Turans), the ancestors of the Turks; the second son Salem, who ruled the west and was the ancestor of the Romans; and the younger son aryan, who ruled the south-central region, was the ancestor of the Aryans. From about 2000 BC onwards, the Aryans, located on the plains of Eastern Europe, began to migrate around Eurasia. At this time, the Hittites of the Indo-European language family began to pour into Asia Minor on a large scale. In the mid-19th century BC, the Hittites united with the local peoples of Asia Minor to establish an empire that included most of Asia Minor and Syria. The Kassitians and Hurians, who also spoke Indo-European languages, followed the Hittites into the Middle East.
In 1595 BC, the Hittite army captured the city of Babylon, defeated the ancient Babylonian kingdom, and entered the two river valleys of the Arabian Peninsula, ending the First Babylonian Dynasty. By 1500 BC, the Middle East had formed a three-legged pattern: the Hittite Empire from the Aryan lineage in the north, the Ancient Egyptian Empire in the south, and the Semitic Assyrian Empire in the east. During the reign of King Supi Nuriumash, the Hittites destroyed the Kingdom of Mitanni, founded by the Hurits, briefly controlled eastern Asia Minor and Syria, entered Palestine and began seizing Egyptian territory. In 1270 BC, Egypt and the Hittites concluded a peace treaty after a long war for hegemony.
The Hittites broke out shortly after signing a peace treaty with Egypt, and at the same time began to be invaded by "sea peoples" from the Mediterranean. By the 8th century BC, the Hittites were no longer an empire, but were fragmented into small states, all of which were eventually annexed by the Semitic Assyrian Empire. The Aryans, who lived in their homeland in the eastern European plains about 200 years after the Hittites migrated to Asia Minor, were divided into two groups: one that crossed the Ural Mountains eastward into Asia, and the other that moved west into the heartland of Europe. The Aryans, who migrated to Asia, later further evolved into two branches: one that entered the Indian peninsula south to become the ancestors of today's Indian dominant ethnic group, and the other that went west into today's Iranian region to become the ancestors of the Persians.
A Doric group of Aryans who migrated to Europe around the 12th century BC entered the Balkans and destroyed the Mycenaean civilization of ancient Greece. Among the four ancient civilizations of mankind, ancient Egypt, ancient Babylon and ancient India were all destroyed by the Aryans, and the earliest ancient civilizations in Europe that originated in the Aegean Sea also died out because of the Aryans. Therefore, the Aryans are also known as the destroyers of the ancient civilization of Eurasia and the creators of the new civilization. However, the same ancient Chinese civilization in the eastern part of Eurasia has been endless for five thousand years. Why was China the only exception in eurasia's ancient civilization that was not conquered by the Aryans?
In the past, it was generally believed that the Aryans, let alone conquered China, were afraid that they had never been to China at all. Ancient China was geographically isolated. The China mentioned here does not refer to today's People's Republic of China, but to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, where Chinese civilization was first born. This is also the region where the term "China" first referred. In the east of this area is the vast sea, in the west is the endless desert and the majestic Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, bordering the grasslands to the north and rolling mountains to the south. The sea, desert, and mountains were all natural geographical barriers that were difficult to cross under the conditions at that time, but there was no natural geographical barrier between the grasslands in the north and the central plains.
Therefore, since ancient times, the biggest external trouble of the Central Plains Dynasty has been the nomadic peoples from the north, and in the three directions of the east, south and west, there was almost no great external trouble in most historical periods, and this situation was not changed until the modern Western powers invaded China from the sea. The Aryan migration route was from the plains of Eastern Europe all the way east to Central Asia and India, and if they wanted to continue eastward into China, they had to cross the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau or the deserts of Xinjiang. It is generally believed that China's contact with Western peoples began with Zhang Qian's passage to the Western Regions, which means that before that, China and the Aryans and other ethnic groups west of the desert belt of Xinjiang did not intersect.
However, an archaeological discovery in 1976 reversed the traditional perception: archaeologists found a Shang Dynasty tomb in Anyang, Henan Province, the only well-preserved Shang Dynasty royal tomb in Anyang Yin Ruins: a total of 1928 exquisite burial items were unearthed. Among them, there are 468 bronzes, 755 jades, 564 bone objects, 6800 sea shells, and even some jade and sea shells are from today's Hotan in Xinjiang and the Indian Ocean region. This proves that before Zhang Qian of the Han Dynasty carved out the Western Regions, Chinese civilization had had certain exchanges with the Western Regions. Among the excavated bronzes, 109 have the inscription "Women's Good" appear on them, thus confirming that the name of the tomb owner is "Women's Good".
In ancient Chinese history, wars have almost always been the preserve of men, and a considerable number of female generals are fictional: Hua Mulan, Mu Guiying, and others are not recorded in the canonical history. Of course, there are also female generals clearly recorded in the history: Lady Xian of Lingnan, Princess Zhao of Pingyang, Qin Liangyu and so on. At present, she is the first female general in Chinese history, and she is also the queen and high priest of wuding, the king of the Shang Dynasty. Wu Ding, the King of Shang, was the twenty-third monarch of the Shang Dynasty, and after his death, the temple name was Gaozong, and lived around 1200 BC. Legend has it that when Wu Ding was a teenager, he obeyed his father's orders to work with civilians outside the country, so he was able to understand the people's suffering and hardships.
After Wu Ding succeeded to the throne, he appointed Fu Shu, a craftsman, and ganpan, Zuji and other talented people to assist the government, thus enabling the political, economic, military, and cultural development of the Shang Dynasty to achieve unprecedented development. Around 1247 B.C., it is said that Wu Ding received a dream: to find a slave who built a wall in the folk and appointed him as prime minister. This person was the famous sage Fu Fu of the later Wuding Dynasty. During the Wuding dynasty, the Shang Dynasty began to form a huge bureaucracy, and also formed a relatively fixed and huge army. After the consolidation of internal affairs, Wu Ding began a large-scale conquest. The first was to force the surrounding small states that rebelled and obeyed completely, and then attacked the small states in present-day southern Shanxi and western Henan.
Wuding, who pushed the Shang Dynasty to its peak, was known as the "King of Zhongxing", and later generations also called him Wuding The Great. During Wu Ding's reign, he continued to carry out large-scale conquests against the Tiger Fang in the south, yi fang in the east, ghost fang in the north, and the Qiang and Zhou tribes. By the end of wuding, the Shang dynasty had become a great power of many tribes from Gansu in the west, to the coast in the east, to the desert in the north, and to the Jianghan in the south, including many tribes. This actually laid the foundation for the general territory of the Huaxia clan before Qin Shi Huang. In order to control the vast areas of the conquered territories, Wu Ding divided his wives, sons, heroes, and submissive ethnic minority chiefs in various places. Wu Ding's wife, Lady Hao, is also full of legend as the first female general in Chinese history that is well documented so far.
Now in the National Museum, houmu Pengding is the heaviest bronze in ancient times known (weighing 833 kg). With its complex technology, exquisite ornamentation and magnificent temperament, Houmu Pengding has become the most typical representative of the highly developed bronze culture and art of the Shang Dynasty. The stepmother Peng Ding was made by Wu Ding and the sons of Wu Ding and Zu Geng and Zu Jia to sacrifice their mother. In the era of King Wuding of the Shang Dynasty, almost all the military operations of the Woman can be seen: she has defeated more than twenty Fang states around the Shang Dynasty. When attacking Qiangfang, Shehao led more than 13,000 troops at a time. At that time, the scale of the war could not be compared with the later Great Unification Dynasty, and the fact that The Woman was able to take away more than 13,000 troops at a time was equivalent to one-tenth of the strength of the Shang Dynasty capital at that time.
After the unification of the Qin Dynasty, the biggest external problem of the dynasties was the nomadic people from the northern grasslands, and the biggest external problem faced by the Shang Dynasty was from the ghost country on the northwest border. There is still controversy about the origin of this ghost kingdom: some people believe that the ghost country is the ancestor of the Huns, while others believe that they were ancient Indo-Europeans (Aryans) who migrated eastward. Roughly at the same time as the Shang King Wuding, the two major ancient civilizations of ancient India and ancient Babylon were invaded by ancient Indo-Europeans to varying degrees and eventually led to the decline of these two ancient civilizations. Lady Hao volunteered to lead her troops to the northern border, and under her planning, the Shang army finally won a great victory over the Ghost Fang army after three years of hard fighting.
If the ghost side is really an Aryan who moved east, then this battle enabled the Chinese civilization to avoid being conquered by the Aryans like several other ancient civilizations, so that the Chinese civilization can become the only one among the four ancient civilizations that continues to this day. According to Yin Xubu's record, after going out on a campaign against the Ghost Fang, Nü Hao personally led an army to conquer the Qiang Side. In addition to the "Qiang", there are many records of "obtaining Qiang" and "using Qiang" that capture The captives of the Qiang people and sacrifice them as human sacrifices are staggering. She was not only the wife and general of the Shang King Wuding, but she was also a feudal monarch who submitted to the Shang Dynasty. Nühao and Wuding did not always live together: Nühao sometimes lived with Wuding in the capital, and sometimes returned to her fiefdom to handle local affairs.
This phenomenon of women leading soldiers to govern the country was actually relatively common at that time. King Wuding of the Shang Dynasty had more than sixty wives in his lifetime. Three of them were made queens. She was the first queen of Wuding, and she also had her own fiefs and property. Several of Wuding's wives and concubines, in addition to women, were involved in state political and military activities: among them, there was also a female concubine who also led several expeditions, and at the same time she also managed agriculture and internal affairs for Wuding. Like Her Wife, Lady Hao was a prince with her own fiefdom: her fief was in Jingfang (present-day Xingtai, Hebei). This phenomenon of women leading wars and women receiving fiefdoms has never appeared in subsequent Chinese history.
At that time, the large number of male wives and concubines of the nobility was a common phenomenon. Wu Ding is not an exception in this regard, but as the original wife, she has a special position among Wu Ding's wives and concubines. Among the more than 10,000 pieces of oracle bones unearthed at the Yin Ruins in Anyang, there are more than 200 records of the deeds of Wu Ding and Wu Hao. In addition to the above-mentioned content about women's good assisting Wu Ding in governing the country and fighting wars, it also mentions Wu Ding's concern for women's good. In the oracle bones unearthed from the Yin Ruins, the question raised by Wu Ding during several sacrifices to the heavens is left: When will my wife have a child this time? My wife is good to have boys and girls? Is my wife a toothache? How is my wife's good health?
Wu Ding, the spoiled wife demon, may not realize that his concern for his wife has left us thousands of years later to crack the mysterious code of the Shang Dynasty. Among the deeds of the kings and queens of the Shang Dynasty, only they left the most written records, so the deeds of Wu Ding and the good wife and wife have become an important entry point for us to restore the history of the Shang Dynasty. After her death, her tomb was even more luxurious: a dazzling variety of bronze, ivory, and jade. People today feel that the dead are unconscious, so what's the point of you making the tomb better? The problem is that the Shang Dynasty people believed that people have souls after death. The reason why Wu Ding wants to use so many things to bury his wife is to make her life in Hades more comfortable.
Wu Ding felt that it was not enough to arrange a pile of burial items for his wife. Although these items were enough to enrich the material life of the woman over there, Wu Dingyu began to worry that his beloved wife's life in Hades was too lonely. So Wu Ding decided to arrange a meditative marriage for the woman: Wu Ding mated the woman three times according to the sacrifice ceremony of the Shang Dynasty. The three marriages of the woman were the sixth ancestor Zu Yi who married Wu Ding, the eleventh Zu Taijia, and the thirteenth Zu Chengtang. When the tomb of The Woman was first discovered, the experts once wondered how the Woman Hao could have married so many times. Later, as more and more cultural relics were unearthed, the truth of the incident was gradually restored: during her lifetime, she had actually been the wife of Wuding, the King of Shang, and after her death, her husband Wuding had arranged three secret marriages for her according to the customs of the time.