With the development of mankind, all countries in the world have given birth to a very prosperous culture, and the same is true of Chinese civilization, if you go back to the Yandi Yellow Emperor period, there have been four or five thousand years of time, but there is the only dynasty that is not recognized by the West, which lasted for 471 years, and the country name has become synonymous with China, which is the Xia Dynasty, what is the specific thing?
As the first dynasty of ancient China, in 1990, a summer seminar was held in Los Angeles, usa, which is worth mentioning that this is the first time in the world to organize relevant academic exchanges on Xia culture, and many Chinese scholars also participated during the period.
However, what puzzles archaeologists such as Zou Heng is that the focus of foreign scholars' discussion is not what kind of culture the Xia Dynasty had, but whether this dynasty existed or not.
In fact, people often say that China has been up and down for five thousand years, but the Xia Dynasty has long been questioned by some people at home and abroad, and domestic scholars, including Guo Moruo, Hu Shi and Gu Jiegang, have denied the existence of the Xia Dynasty.
Some Western history books believe that the history of China should be 3,500 years, while the Cambridge History of China directly starts from the Qin Dynasty and tells the history of 2100 years.
Of course, some claims were put forward at the beginning of the last century, when the Erlitou site of the Xia Dynasty had not yet been discovered, but until now, the Xia Dynasty is still not recognized by the West.
According to the standards of international historiography, a true civilization should meet the following conditions:
1. Large urban buildings, such as the capital of a regime or a royal city, can only determine whether a civilization has the form of a "state".
2. Metal tools, metal smelting technology determines the degree of development of civilization
3. Text
In fact, in the past century, large urban buildings and metal tools have been found in many prehistoric sites, including the 6,000-year-old "Liangzhu Ruins", Sanxingdui Ruins, and Erlitou Sites.
Only in the text, there is a great controversy, in all the archaeological discoveries today, there is no text that can prove that it is handed down from the Xia Dynasty, archaeologists can only understand the kings, officials, armies and prisons of the Xia Dynasty through some ancient documents, such as the classics of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods.
In addition, whether the Erlitou cultural site belongs to the Xia Dynasty, many people also have the same doubts, because it is not far from the capital of the Shang Dynasty, and the customs of the Shang Dynasty are also roughly the same, so some people suspect that this may be a relic of the "early Shang" period.
It is worth mentioning that the earliest systematic form of writing found in China is the oracle bone of the Shang Dynasty, but after translation by historians, the existence of the Xia Dynasty is not mentioned above, but in the later Zhou Dynasty, it has recorded the historical materials about the Xia Dynasty many times, so some people speculate that the Xia Dynasty Zhou Dynasty was written in order to overthrow the Shang Dynasty.
Of course, there are also some large numbers of studies that prove the flourishing culture of the Xia Dynasty, according to the Bamboo Book Chronicle, the Xia Dynasty experienced 14 generations, 17 kings, a total of 471 years, and the Book of Shang mentions that "Only Erzhi, only Yin Ancestors, there are canons and books, Yin Ge Xia Life." In contrast, its territorial scope, also identified as most of Henan, Shaanxi and Shandong, is at the center of Chinese civilization, which is the origin of today's Huaxia people.
It is certain that Xia is an indisputable fact, but whether it is the "Xia Dynasty" or the "Xia Dynasty", people's attention is mainly concentrated here, and I hope that more evidence can be obtained in the future to analyze this clearly.