Tip: Henan should be our earliest "hometown", but we can't exclude other places because of this. Just as if the Erlitou site was not the capital of the Xia Dynasty, we can also go to other places in the Erlitou cultural range to find it, and the current "not found" or "not" does not mean that the Xia Dynasty does not exist.
First, our hometown is not exactly Henan
In fact, many netizens have mistaken the concept of taking the Erlitou site as the whole of the Erlitou culture.
Erlitou culture refers to a type of archaeological cultural relics represented by the first to fourth phases of the Yanshi Erlitou Site in Luoyang City, Henan Province, which is an archaeological culture between the Longshan culture and the Erligang culture in the Central Plains. This archaeological culture is mainly concentrated in western Henan and central Henan, north to central Jinzhong, west to Shaanxi County and the Shangzhou area in the upper reaches of Danjiang, south to northern Hubei, and east to Kaifeng and Lankao.
The Erlitou culture includes the culture of the Erlitou site and the cultural outlook reflected in hundreds of sites outside the Erlitou site that have the cultural characteristics of the Erlitou site. The Erlitou site and the Erlitou culture have become recognized as key research objects for exploring the Xia culture. It is a Chinese Bronze Age culture named after the Yanshi Erlitou found in Luoyang, Henan Province. About the 21st century BC to the 17th century BC.
All the controversy is based on a misconception, because the archaeological community has not yet determined whether the Erlitou site is the capital of the Xia Dynasty, so those who have misunderstood the concept say that the Xia Dynasty may not exist. This "conclusion" is obviously somewhat arbitrary, because they did not know that the earliest Xia should include western Henan and central Henan, north to jinzhong, west to Shaanxi County and the Shangzhou region in the upper reaches of the Danjiang River, south to northern Hubei, and east to kaifeng and Lankao. Therefore, Henan should be our earliest "hometown", but other places cannot be excluded because of this. Just as if the Erlitou site was not the capital of the Xia Dynasty, we can also go to other places in the Erlitou cultural range to find it, and the current "not found" or "not" does not mean that the Xia Dynasty does not exist.
Xu Hong is a researcher and archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Since 1999, he has served as the leader of the Erlitou Task Force, presiding over the drilling and excavation of the Erlitou site in Yanshi, Henan, and the archaeological survey of the Luoyang Basin area. Here we quote a passage from his "Discovering the Earliest China":
"Erlitou is the 'earliest China'—the earliest wide-area monarchy in the East Asian continent—which in itself is already very meaningful, and its importance is not whether it is the capital of Xia. The entire East Asian continent has transitioned from no center and no core culture to a highly developed core culture, and Erlitou is at this node. The value of erlitou is not in the earliest nor in the largest, but at this turning point in history from pluralism to unity. Here we found the earliest palace city in China - the earliest 'Forbidden City', the earliest 'well' shaped avenue in China, that is, the main road network of the city, the earliest palace building complex in China with the central axis layout, the earliest rut in China, the earliest official handicraft workshop area in China, the earliest copper casting workshop and turquoise manufacturing workshop in China, and the earliest bronze ceremonial vessel group in China. From the perspective of archaeology, these are enough, and not knowing whether Erlitou's 'surname Xia' or 'surname Shang' does not prevent us from understanding the historical status and significance of the Erlitou site in the history of Chinese civilization. (China Social Science Daily, July 3, 2015)
Obviously, Xu Hong is not looking at the "Xia Capital", but the cultural unity of Xia as a dynasty, which is the "meaning" of the historical turning point he wants to talk about. In this sense, the "summer capital" is no longer very important, and in our words today, as long as a country has achieved unity at the cultural and ideological level, it is not very important where its capital is located. Therefore, the "Xia Capital" cannot be limited to the Erlitou site, it can be anywhere in the Erlitou cultural area, in Hubei, Shaanxi and Shaanxi outside Henan, and these places can also become our earliest "hometown".
Second, the Central Plains and the Central Plains people are both cultural concepts
The unity of culture will, of course, lead to the formation of nations. On the basis of extensively absorbing cultural factors from various places, the Erlitou culture exerted a large cultural influence on the surrounding areas, becoming the "core culture" of the East Asian continent that first entered the Bronze Age, laying the foundation for the future "Chinese" world, and of course promoting the formation of the Chinese nation.
After experiencing the development of Yangshao culture and Longshan culture for 3,000 years to the end of The Longshan culture, many clan tribes in the Yellow River Basin have successively entered a period of larger-scale military alliances, forming a number of military groups that have been very influential in ancient history and legends, and producing some representative and deified chiefs, such as the Gao Tao clan and The Boyi clan in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, the Zhao clan and the Di Clan in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, the Yandi Shennong clan in the Weishui River Basin, the Tai Hao clan in the Huai River Basin, and so on. After centuries of exchange and integration, these large military groups became military chiefdoms of city-states before about the 22nd century BC. The six huge tribal alliances under the command of the Yellow Emperor tribal group on the Loess Plateau became the most powerful force active in the border areas of Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan, and established the first dynasty in Chinese history, the Xia Dynasty.
We want to say that just as some people have mistaken the Erlitou site and the cultural connotation of Erlitou, the concept of the Yellow Emperor has also been mistaken by some people here. The Yellow Emperor was first a person, considered the "ancestor of Huaxia", and then became the name of a tribal alliance, which according to the Spring and Autumn Fate Calendar, was passed down for 10 generations. Because the Yellow Emperor contributed greatly to the development of the Yellow Emperor's tribal alliance, the image of his deification as a generation of emperors was long-lived in later generations. That is to say, the emperor can be a person or a tribal confederation.
Historically, it was the Yellow Emperor and the Yellow Emperor's tribal alliance that won the war to unify the Central Plains and established the Xia Dynasty. In the Central Plains, the Yellow Emperor tribe fought about two battles, the historical Battle of Jizhou and the Battle of Zhuolu. Most historians today have this to say:
After the Zhuolu War, China entered a new historical period, especially for today's Han nationality, which is of more groundbreaking significance. Today, the Han nationality accounts for 94% of the country's population and about 1/5 of the world's population, which cannot but be said to have a certain relationship with the exploits of the Yellow Emperor, the ancestor of the Huaxia ethnic group. The Han nationality originally developed from the Chinese, and the Chinese were gradually developed by the Xia for thousands of years by assimilating other ethnic groups.
However, what we want to say is that it may be biased to link the Chinese nation directly with the Han nationality. Because from the very beginning, the Chinese nation has been a cultural concept, not an ethnic concept. The outbreak of the Battle of Jizhou and the Battle of Zhuolu also had factors that people believed in differently at that time.
According to ancient legends, the Battle of Jizhou and the Battle of Zhuolu may have been waged by the Yellow Emperor's tribe against Jiuli and Sanmiao. Jiuli was a powerful tribal confederation that lived in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, with a total of nine tribes, each with 9 clans, with Xuanyou being their chieftain. In ancient legends, the Emperor Fuxi of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, the Emperor Of the Earth, and the Emperor Shennong all came out of Dongyi Jiuli. Mythological systems such as Houyi, Dijun, and Xihe also originated from Dongyi Jiuli.
Jiuli believes in witchcraft, worships ghosts and gods, and has a criminal code, and those who master the culture are called "witches". The war with the Yellow Emperor's tribe ended in the defeat of Jiuli. After a long struggle, some of them remained in the north and established the state of Li, which was later destroyed in the Zhou Dynasty (Xi Bo Li); some joined the Huangyan tribal alliance, possibly the "Li People", and gradually merged with the Huaxia people; the other part retreated to the southern Jianghan Valley.
Sanmiao is the name of the ancient tribe from the Time of the Yellow Emperor to Yao Shunyu, and there is a saying that they were "after the Nine Lis", and after being defeated by the Emperor's tribe, they established the Sanmiao Tribal Alliance in the Jianghan River Valley. Legend has it that in Yao's time, the Sanmiao people rebelled, and then moved by Yao to the Sanwei Mountain (Dunhuang) in the Hexi Corridor of Gansu Province, Yu Shi, Sanmiao disobeyed, Yu and Sanmiao fought a great war that lasted 70 days, and since then disappeared from historical records. Since then, sanmiao's activities have no longer been seen in the history books. In modern times, a small number of scholars believe that the modern Miao are the descendants of The Three Miao, but Zhang Taiyan, Lu Simian, and others have different views from this, believing that the modern Miao have nothing to do with the Three Miao.
Whether Sanmiao is a modern Miao ancestor is not the focus of our discussion here today. We have to say that both Sanmiao and Jiuli are Chinese systems, and the war waged by the Yellow Emperor tribe against them eventually achieved unity in terms of cultural beliefs, that is to say, the earliest Chinese were composed of many tribes or tribal alliances with different beliefs, and the rise of the Yellow Emperor tribe not only conquered them militarily, but also allowed them to achieve relative unity with the emperor tribe in terms of cultural beliefs. The establishment of Xia is the crystallization of this two-way unification.
The fact is also this: the Chinese ancestors were divided into many tribes, large and small, active in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. Among the more famous leaders were Taihao (Fuxi), Shaohao (White Emperor), Emperor Huan (Black Emperor), Yellow Emperor, Yan Emperor (Red Emperor), Emperor Zhao (Gao Xin), Zhu Rong, Boyi, Shun, and Yao. Among them, the Yan Emperor and the Yellow Emperor were co-lords. Huaxia has left many civilization sites in the Yellow River Basin, and even archaeologists believe that Jiuli created the Liangzhu culture, and Sanmiao may be a branch of the Liangzhu culture going south, creating the Fanchengdui culture.
The establishment of the Xia Dynasty basically fixed the Huaxia tribes, and from 2070 BC to 256 BC, the Huaxia tribes in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River successively established the Xia Dynasty, the Shang Dynasty, and the Zhou Dynasty. It is worth noting that in the pre-Qin Dynasty, only the princely states belonging to the Zhou "Queen Mother's Brother and Nephew" were "Huaxia", and all others were "Barbarian Jing Rongdi". The "culture" that began during the Zhou Dynasty period had "Dongyi, Xirong, Nanman, and Beidi", collectively known as "Siyi".
This is not to say that the Central Plains is a nation, and the surrounding is another ethnic group or multiple ethnic groups, in fact, everyone is Chinese, but there are differences in culture; it is not that "Dongyi, Xirong, Nanman, And Beidi" is not Chinese, of course, there is no pejorative meaning, but just a geographical distinction.
The earliest China should be the concept of a country in the middle - the Chinese at that time believed that only the Central Plains region was the center of the dynasty, and all sides should be The territory of China, all should submit to the dynasty, maintaining a high degree of cultural consistency with the center of the dynasty. This is how the concept of great China and great culture was established under the premise of centering on the Central Plains. In the course of history's exhibition, those who are in the surrounding and remote areas, who have not been "kingized" or who have relatively maintained their own characteristics, are called "ethnic minorities" by us today, but they are also the Chinese nation.
Third, Xia culture has turned us into "dragon clans"
What is culture? For the ancient ancestors, there may have been only totem worship. At the Erlitou Cultural Site, archaeologists have found a large turquoise dragon-shaped vessel, which is at least 3700 years old, with a total length of 70.2 centimeters, composed of more than 2,000 pieces of turquoise pieces of various shapes, each turquoise is only 0.2 to 0.9 centimeters in size, and the thickness is only about 0.1 centimeters. Subsequently, it was named "Chinese Dragon" by scholars, believing that its excavation found the most direct and orthodox root for the dragon totem of the Han and even the Chinese nation.
Earlier than Erlitou was the Red Mountain Jade Dragon. The dragon is curved, with a long snout, a protruding nose, an upward ridge, a flattened end, two nostrils side by side, long hairs on the neck, and a tail tip that is curled up, resembling the word "dragon" in oracle bones. It not only allows Chinese to find the source of the dragon, but also fully confirms the long history of Chinese jade culture. It is even known as the "First Dragon of China", although archaeologists have since found earlier traces of dragon shapes, but the typical significance of the Hongshan Jade Dragon is still unquestionable.
The Chinese nation has always regarded itself as the "descendant of the dragon", and the origin of the dragon is closely related to the formation of our national history and culture and the beginning of the era of civilization. However, today's research has found that the Yellow Emperor tribe did not worship dragons at the earliest, they may have worshipped snakes and bears at the earliest, and the totem of the Yandi tribe may be cattle, and the "Imperial Century" said: "The Yandi people are bull heads and longer than jiang shui." The "Imperial Genealogy" double said: "Shennong bull head." Apparently, the worship of the "dragon" was the result of the conquest of the emperor's tribe at that time and the combination of various tribal cultures.
The Chinese nation has a history of 5,000 years of civilization, and this time node began after the "Battle of Zhuolu" of the Yellow Emperor of Xuanyuan, before that, the Yellow Emperor tribe, like the Yandi tribe, has already traveled a long way, and this period of time may be as long as three thousand years. Therefore, the final formation of the dragon culture should be a fairly long mileage, this long process is actually a process of cultural integration, before this, people can not see the nation and race. Therefore, it is very scientific for experts to call the dragon-shaped artifacts of the Erlitou cultural site "Chinese dragons", and it is clear that from that moment on, we not only have the title of "Xia", but also become the "Dragon Clan". (Text/Lu Sheng)