Among the many hypotheses of human origin, the African origin hypothesis, the earliest African Homo sapiens originated neither in the Nile River Basin, where civilizations were later formed, nor from the south-central region of Africa, where climate and geography were more advantageous, but from the Congo River Basin, where the climate was relatively harsh. A 2008 article by the German archaeologist Gilbert in the journal Fossils pointed out: "Carbon isotope dating tests on african black fecal fossils have determined that the earliest African Homo sapiens appeared about 210,000 years ago, and compared with human DNA in other parts of Africa, it was found that people living in the Congo River Basin have the most overlapping features." Of course, this black tribe does not seem to have burst out of civilization, and it is not known whether their migration is related to the formation of ancient Egyptian civilization. As one of the four ancient civilizations, Egypt carries the word "civilization", but the origin problem has little to do with the Nile.
Geographically, the African continent has the closest relationship with West Asia, followed by Europe. The first large-scale ethnic integration between the African continent and the West Asian continent, which is certain in paleo-Egyptology, took place during the reign of Ramses II, the Shang Dynasty of China. The Battle of Ancient Egypt and the Kardis says: "The war between Ramses II and the Hittites over the east bank of the Jordan River had a huge positive effect, and these two continents, which were isolated only by the Sinai Peninsula, began the first large-scale collision of civilizations." Ancient Egypt brought their great cylindrical architecture (the architecture that later erupted in Greek temples) and the god Horus, while the Hittites brought with them their codes (The Hittite Codes) and clay relief techniques. "After the collision of African civilizations with the civilizations of West Asia, then with the whole of Europe. First there is the twinkling African phantom in the Cretan civilization, then the collision of linear writing A and ancient Greek civilization, and finally the rise of the Ptolemaic dynasty and the lamentations of Cleopatra VII.
In the 1930s, the Swedish archaeologist Bergman discovered a batch of Han Dynasty Jian Mu in the Juyan ruins area of Inner Mongolia. More than 10,000 pieces were unearthed, mainly recording the archives and documents from the time of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty to the Guangwu Emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, several of which are written as follows:
The original text of Jian Mu (the original text has no punctuation):
[1] Zi Da Nanfu, aged nineteen. His wife, Nanlai, was fifteen years old. All black with curly hair. Seven feet to seven feet seven inches tall.
[2] Wife and eldest daughter, aged 32. Zi Xiao male Guangzong, so twelve years old. Zi Xiao Girls' Soccer, nine years old. All black with curly hair. Seven feet to seven feet seven inches tall.
Translation of Jian Mu:
[1] The man's eldest son, named Fu, was nineteen years old. Fu's wife was named Nanlai and was fifteen years old. All are black skin and curly hair. They are all between seven feet and seven feet and seven inches tall (168 cm to 178 cm high in the Han Dynasty).
[2] Wife's eldest daughter, thirty-two years old. The man's youngest son was named Guangzong, twelve years old. The man's youngest daughter, named Women's Soccer, was nine years old. All are black skin and curly hair. They are all between seven feet and seven feet seven inches tall.
Height and skin color were the main characteristics that distinguished this dark-skinned person from the Asian race at that time. In terms of height, the higher the latitude, the higher the average height. Therefore, northerners are generally taller than southerners. During the Han Dynasty, Chinese had the highest average height, mainly distributed in the northwest and northeast regions at that time. The "Shoulder Water Jinguan Hanjian" records the common height of people in the northwest region at that time, such as:
Original text:
[1] Juyan Pavilion Changping Mingli is not more Extensive, twenty-three years old, six feet and four inches long.
[2] Chen Wufang, at the age of thirty-five, was six feet three inches long.
[1] Juyan's pavilion chief (official name), Pingmingli (place name) and Zhang Guang (personal name), 23 years old, 6 feet 4 inches tall (between 150 cm and 155 cm).
[2] Chen Wufang (personal name) of Xidaoli (place name) in Juyan, thirty-five years old, is six feet three inches long (between 150 cm and 155 cm).
There are countless records like this. The two people in the example, Zhang Guang and Chen Wufang, one twenty-three years old and one thirty-five years old, are both adults and are also representative. These heights reflect that the general height of Han Chinese at that time was at the level of 160 centimeters, and some Han people who were seven feet or even more than eight feet tall in historical records were quite rare at that time. Then, the black race with an average height of between 168 cm and 178 cm in Juyan Hanjian is obviously not Han Chinese.
In addition to their height, another thing that was clearly distinguished from the Han chinese and the Xiongnu and Xirong in northern and western China at that time was their skin color. As mentioned above, the period of relatively widespread black people in Chinese history was the Tang Dynasty period, and the black people at that time were mainly from South Asia, and only a very small number were from Africa. The Zizhi Tongjian contains: "(Tang) Zhenguan Ten Years, Peng Yin, Zhu Jubo, gantang sent envoys to pay tribute", and the New Book of Tang states: "Gantang, the southern kingdom of the sea", referring to the countries of India, Nepal and Southeast Asia in present-day South Asia. However, the so-called "negroes" in these places are mainly primitive Australians, Mongolians, and Dravidians, i.e. ethnically secondary. Geographical distribution, light and sun, is the main reason for their dark skin. Moreover, how could these dark-skinned people living in South Asia appear in large numbers in the Northwest Region?
What bothers historians and archaeologists the most is not the emergence of black Africans in East Asia, but how they came to East Asia. From ancient times to the present, there are only two land routes from Africa to East Asia. From Africa into the Sinai Peninsula, north along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, through Israel, Syria, bypassing the Arabian Desert, to the Two Rivers Valley. It then travels east to the south of the Black Sea and then across Iran to the border between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. At this time, directly to the east were the Kunlun Mountains and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, with the north of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau being the first line into China and the south directly entering Tianzhu. To enter China from the southern front, it is necessary to cross all of India and Bangladesh, reach Myanmar, and then go north through Myanmar, so it is very difficult. Some black Africans who came to China during the Tang Dynasty did come to China via this route, but during the Han Dynasty, the possibility of coming to China through this was very small, and it is certain that they entered China from the north to the east.
Two thousand years ago, when productivity was extremely backward, black Africans naturally did not come to China because of adventure or expeditions. In fact, the vast majority of them came to China by chance because of the slave trade. Contrary to what is often thought, the African slave trade was not simply a product of the development of Western capitalism. More than two thousand years ago, Africa, like the Roman Empire at the time, and everywhere else in the world, went through the stage of slavery. However, slavery in Africa itself was different from the slavery of the "civilized world" at that time, and Africa was more of a "tribal slavery", which was far less than that of the Roman Empire in terms of institutional profundity and social scale. The American historian Reynolds wrote in the History of Africa: "Slavery in early Africa was a simple internal tribal slavery based on the worship of nature. Due to the distance between the tribes, these slaves often never stepped out of the tribal boundaries in their entire lives, and were only driven within the tribe by elders and sacrificial classes. ”
These slaves in Africa were brought out of Africa by external forces. Engels once said: "The early slaves in Africa left the african continent mainly through the hands of Arab traders." These Arab merchants, who may initially have simply needed Africans as their free labour-power, enslaved them in a manner similar to private slavery. For example, let them carry goods, drive horse-drawn carriages, and sometimes let them wrestle with each other. "Gladiatorial fighting" was an important step in the transformation of black Africans from purely free labor to commodities. Because some fighting slaves were so powerful that they became rare among gladiators, attracting the attention of gladiators, the trade was born. Once the slave trade arose, the trade between merchants distributed in different regions immediately accelerated the circulation of blacks, and it is very likely that the first blacks who came to the Han Dynasty were achieved through the continuous slave trade.
Black Africans in ancient China were valued for being good at one thing. "Pingzhou Can Talk" said: "The ghost slave is absolutely powerful, and can bear hundreds of pounds." Speech is not comprehensible, and sexual purity does not escape. "Their biggest advantage is that they are physically large and their strength is infinite." What is the concept of "negative hundreds of pounds" is self-evident. These black people who came to China were mainly used by the people of the times in terms of official and private affairs. Because of its ability to bear weight, it played a great role in the construction of the border plug project and the border plug tun field at that time. The Book of Han and the Biography of the Western Regions says: "In the second year of the Di Festival (68 BC), there were those who dared to migrate... All black,...... Fifteen hundred soldiers and soldiers from the canal ploughed the field" shows that these black people were used in the western tun tian at that time. At the same time, according to the "Pingzhou Negotiable", black people "have a simple personality and are 'non-fugitives'", which is also a reason why they are valued, and it is conceivable that they are not less useful in terms of private drives. Of course, they have nowhere to run.
After these blacks came to the Han Dynasty, they gradually settled and multiplied, and their descendants were gradually assimilated in the land of the Western Regions. "The African Origins of Modern Races in East Africa" writes: "Regarding the African ancestry of East Asians, after a comparative study of 12,000 chromosomes, it was found that genetic markers unique to Africans were found in East Asians." Of course, some of these genetic markers are caused by the migration of early Africans to the world, and the descendants of these blacks during the Han Dynasty also continued to live in gansu province and Xinjiang in western China.