The famous scholar Qian Mu wrote in the book "The Spirit of Chinese History": "China is a country with open doors, which has nothing to do with it, the southeast is the sea, the west is a lofty mountain, and the north is a vast grassland." On this long frontier, China not only opened its doors, but also withdrew its barriers. This exposition forcefully refutes the statement that "Chinese civilization has been passed down by geographical advantages.".
Although the Qin and Han Xiongnu, the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the North and South Korea, the Song and Ming Khitan Mongols and the Jurchens, always threatened the Central Plains Dynasty, let the inheritance of Chinese civilization suffer hardships, and once again confirmed how arduous China's foreign defense was in history, on the other hand, it brought a question: from the Qin and Han Dynasties to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, in more than 2,000 years, why did the nomadic society change almost nothing?
According to the four Western criteria for civilization, namely the city, the script, the bronze, the temple and the altar!
This criterion is a Western product, and although it is not accurate, it is also illustrative to some extent. If you look at it from this point of view, apart from temples and altars, what is the situation of the northern nomads?
First look at the city, according to the literature and archaeological findings, until the Wei and Jin dynasties, the first city appeared on the northern steppe, before we know the Xiongnu "Dragon City", in fact, the accurate should be "Dragon Garden", can be relocated and moved at any time, equivalent to a capital city composed of tents. Therefore, the so-called "Dragon Garden" is only the residence of a very small number of nobles in the tribe, and does not fully have the meaning of the city as we know it.
Secondly, look at the script, the writing of the northern nomads, which first appeared in the Turkic era. But much of the Turkic language is derived from the Aramaic alphabet, some from the Turkic clan or tribal symbols, and some from ideographic symbols. In fact, the concept of northern nomadic writing is very small, and it will not be hastily created until after the rise, such as Genghis Khan ordered people to create writing in the early 13th century, especially the Northern Song Dynasty Jurchen and the Ming Dynasty Jurchen, the middle Jurchen after the decline of the Jurchen script was also lost, and nurhaci only created the Jurchen script again after the rise.
The third look at bronze, at the time of the Han and Tang Dynasties, bronze has been eliminated, and the world has opened the Iron Age, so it focuses on the iron situation. According to archaeological findings, the Xiongnu have been able to smelt iron, but mainly supply nobles or a small number of elite use, the vast majority of Huns still use bone arrows and so on. More than 2,000 years later, the northern nomads are still like this, for example, the Ming Dynasty listed iron as a trade contraindication, reflecting the fact that the nomads at that time were seriously short of iron. Nurhaci's rise is associated with traitorous merchants who do not have the ability to mass-produce iron.
Objectively speaking, whether it is the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Turks, or Khitans, Mongols, Jurchens, etc., in terms of social system, production methods, scientific and technological inventions, cultural prosperity, urban construction and other progress, more than 2,000 years are almost worth mentioning, and almost no civilization worth mentioning has evolved.
The Jurchen society during the Ming Dynasty was almost the same as the solemnity of 2,000 years ago, and nothing had changed much.
There is even a phenomenon worth pondering, the Jurchens once destroyed the Liao State and the Northern Song Dynasty, and once Sinicized had a good civilization, but after the Mongols destroyed the Jin, the Jurchens quickly degenerated. Like the Jurchens, the Mongols, who had built the largest empire in ancient human history, degenerated immediately after the fall of the Yuan Dynasty.
So why have you been stagnant for more than 2,000 years? It should be noted that the stagnation of the Central Plains Dynasty is related to its own more developed relative to other regions, in other words, compared with the surrounding areas, the Central Plains are almost the "most developed" society, while the northern nomads are obviously backward compared with the Central Plains Dynasty, why did they not think about changing and catching up?
In my opinion, there are four main reasons for consideration!
First, the lack of heritage and historical inheritance, China has a tradition of recording history, the so-called "history as a mirror, you can know the rise and fall", you can find the reason from history, but the northern nomads lack history, often under the leadership of one or two Haojie suddenly rise, but soon decline, as the ancients summed up "its rise is also bold, its death is also sudden", the root lies in the lack of summary of lessons learned. This is also true if we personally do not summarize.
Second, the problems of lifestyle, the northern nomads live in the grass, constantly looking for grazing places, it is difficult to form cities and urban civilizations. For herders, cattle and sheep are their fields and the basis for survival, so for cattle and sheep, they have to live in the grass, it is difficult to fix, so for more than 2,000 years, it has not been possible to change this way of life.
Third, the living environment is extremely harsh, because of the northern environmental problems, resulting in very little output, even barely able to do it, under this way of life, can only be reluctantly continued from generation to generation, can only keep "fighting with the sky, fighting with the earth", it is difficult to think about the problem of social progress. The so-called "barn will know the etiquette", which requires an economic foundation.
Fourth, the problems in the development of ideas, because the living environment is poor, and it is temporarily impossible to change the way of life, so in order to survive, it is believed that there is only one way: to go south and rob. From the Xiongnu to the Jurchens, it has become an inherent idea to do this, rather than trying to find a way to rely on itself. When there is such a simplest way, why bother with self-reliance?
Western scholars have a view that Russia was once also a "barbarian", but after indoctrination, it believed in Christianity, at least making this barbarian less barbaric, thus changing the situation in Europe and allowing Europe to develop peacefully.
Although the views are debatable, they are worth pondering, because if the northern nomads had embraced Confucianism, would there have been so many tragic events in history? Once there are no nomadic invasions in the south many times, the Central Plains Dynasty may embark on another glorious road. But unfortunately, ancient Confucian scholars lacked this grand ambition, and only fought in the Central Plains, but did not dare to really use Confucianism to educate the "barbarians"!