introduction
As we all know, there have been many unsolved mysteries in history, or many historical events that have not been accurately recorded. Wang Anshi described it in the "Journey to the Zen Mountains": "The deeper you enter, the more difficult it is to enter, and the more strange it is to see." "When exploring the mysteries of history, we often feel this way, and whenever new evidence and phenomena are discovered, we will feel the breadth and magic of history."
01
When it comes to the exchanges and communication between China and the West in ancient times, we can think of the Silk Road opened by Zhang Qian, Zheng He's seven voyages to the West, and Marco Polo, who came to China from afar during the Yuan Dynasty. Among them, Marco Polo's "Marco Polo's Travels" written after his return to China showed the Western world the prosperity of ancient China, coupled with the improvement of transportation by the European Industrial Revolution, so more and more missionaries came to China during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
▲ Marco Polo statue
It should be pointed out that the western region to which Zhang Qian originally went referred to the area west of present-day Yumen Pass, whether it was the "western people" referred to in the Book of Poetry or the "Xiyu to the Western Pole" mentioned in the "Departure from the Sorrows" referring to this area, that is, the current Xinjiang region. Later, it gradually generalized into places that could only be reached through Xinjiang, such as West Asia and Eastern Europe. During the Qin and Han dynasties, there were "Thirty-six Kingdoms in the Western Regions", which gradually split into more than fifty.
▲Zhang Qiantong's itinerary to the Western Regions
Before the Han Dynasty, and even before the Tang Dynasty, the two continents of Asia and Europe seemed to be isolated. Neither the Chinese dynasties nor the Former Roman Empire and the Persian Empire in the West have ever crossed the mountain range in the middle to explore the scenery on the other side. However, the official absence does not mean that the people do not have, in recent years more and more archaeological data show that as early as more than two thousand years ago during the Qin Dynasty, China and the European continent have reached each other's territory.
02
In 2016, a British archaeological team discovered an ancient Roman tomb next to the River Thames. In fact, this is not unusual, after all, ancient Rome once expanded its territory to this point. Surprisingly, two of the skeletons were identified as Chinese. According to experts, the mausoleum was built between the 2nd and 4th centuries, when the Roman Empire had just established its first city in London, called "Lendinium".
▲ Ancient Roman ruins
This date corresponds to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the end of the Eastern Jin Dynasty in China, but the history books have no record of any communication between China and the Roman Empire during this period, why the two ancient Chinese were buried here, and what their identities were at that time cannot be speculated. Maybe it was the Chinese who fled here during the war, or it could be the people who came here along the Han Dynasty Silk Road to settle here. Since there are 20 other skeletons in the tomb, including 4 skeletons of African germlines, it is also possible that they were slaves at that time. Experts speculate that if this mystery is successfully solved, the history of the world could change as a result.
▲Mausoleum of The First Qin Emperor
Coincidentally, archaeologists have also found the remains of Europeans who came to China two thousand years ago in China. In 2003, during the excavation of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, archaeologists found a pit in which 120 corpses were buried, which experts speculated should have been the hard work of building the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang at that time. One of the 120 bodies turned out to be a 20- to 35-year-old European man. According to experts, this person is likely to come to the Eastern Empire to pan for gold, but unfortunately met Qin Shi Huang, who liked to build a large number of civil engineering, was used as a coolie by local officials under the strict policies of the Qin Dynasty, and eventually died of exhaustion, becoming one of the funerary items of Qin Shi Huang like other hard laborers.
▲ Europeans
The appearance of this person is long before the Silk Road, and it is not known how he came to China, whether he was alone or had a companion. Foreign media once had a vision: during the Spring and Autumn Period of China, King Alexander of Macedon marched all the way to Asia to introduce the Greek sculpture style to the Qin State, and some people said that Europeans brought sculpture culture to China, and even some people said that the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang were built with the help of Europeans. This conclusion is also somewhat arbitrary, after all, there is no evidence of a large number of Europeans entering China, only the remains of a male body that has been proved to be a laborer.
▲The tomb of Qin Shi Huang was sealed
Of course, there is another explanation for the corpse, which is not a European but a Hu person living in Xinjiang. After all, some Europeans now have parts of China's surrounding nomads. It is also possible that when the Qin Empire expanded, some Hu tribes were incorporated as hard labor, and after the empire fell apart, these tribes migrated westward all the way into Europe. Of course, these are all speculations, and we look forward to the experts finding more evidence in the future.
epilogue
Lu Xun once warned people in the "Preface" that in terms of history, "words must be based on evidence." As for the history of the Qin Dynasty, except for major events, we do not know much about it, and it is irresponsible to make any judgment based on only one skeleton. Final conclusions can only be drawn after more definitive archaeological evidence is available.
Resources:
"Journey to Zen Mountain"
"Preface"