From archaeology, the early East-West cultural exchanges

Jagged swirl pot, Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture Museum collection (source: "Guo Bojun" WeChat public account)

As early as before the emergence of the "Silk Road" in the Han Dynasty, there were already extensive and deep exchanges and mutual influences between the Eastern and Western cultural circles, and we could only turn to the advent of archaeological materials due to the lack of literature.

In the first volume of his "General History of the World", Mr. Zhou Gucheng mentioned that there are 6 ancient cultural zones, namely the Nile River Basin, the West Asian Cultural Area, the Aegean Cultural Area, the Chinese Cultural Area, the Indus River Basin, and the Sino-American Cultural Zone, which have divisions and are juxtaposed, and their opposites must be cross-cutting. At that time, people migrated due to climate, water, war and other factors, and the cultural dissemination and integration that followed became reasonable, but cultural exchanges have always been two-way interaction. Some studies focus only on their own cultural development without considering external influences, and some research overemphasizes cultural transmission and despises local inheritance, both of which are obviously biased.

As early as the 17th and 18th centuries, Western scholars claimed that Chinese civilization came from Egypt and Babylon, and until the 1920s, under the influence of Western archaeological ideas, the first generation of Chinese archaeologists also began to explore the origin of Chinese civilization. At that time, the door of the country had just been opened, the decaying Qing government had no time to pay attention to what cultural origins, and the Western archaeological community asserted that "China has no prehistoric culture", and the ancient Eastern civilization was at best a variant or remnant of Western civilization, so Anderson's "Yangshao culture in the West" rose with the trend. Although many domestic scholars disagree, this theory was completely denied in 1928 at the site of Zhangqiu Chengziya, a culture characterized by black pottery, which is completely different from the faience culture discovered by An Shi before. This discovery provides conclusive evidence for the indigenous origin of Chinese civilization, but this does not mean that there is no exchange between Eastern and Western cultures.

The exact cultural exchange between the East and the West as we know it should have begun around 3500 BC, corresponding to the Three Emperors period in our literature. In Qinghai, many pieces of faience decorated with serrated diamond patterns and dance patterns have been found in Qinghai, and similar ornaments are more common in Central Asia, West Asia and Southeast Europe. In addition, some of the burial styles and burial tools found in Ganqing and Xinjiang are identical to the Avanachevo culture of the Yenisei River. In the excavated ruins, we also found the bones of cattle and sheep, as well as carbonized wheat and barley, most likely imported from West Asia, Central Asia and other places. However, the cultural exchanges between the East and the West in this period were still in the initial stage, and the mutual influence between them was quite limited.

Around 2500 BC, equivalent to the Five Emperors period in our literature, cultural exchanges between the East and the West began to accelerate. The culture of southern Central Asia has had a great influence on the mainland's Ganqing and Xinjiang regions, which are embodied in zigzag faience pottery, pointed crown symbols, human sculptures, adobe and so on. In the Ruins of Shenmu Stone Cave in Shaanxi, there are bas-relief human face stone carvings unearthed, and this kind of themed stone carving is precisely prevalent in the Okunev culture and Karakul culture in the Altai region. In addition, wheat originating in West Asia appeared in the Hexi Corridor and the lower reaches of the Yellow River in the mainland around 2500 BC. At the same time, mainland-derived machetes have also been found at the Begass site in eastern Kazakhstan and the Ajikuy site in southern Turkmenistan.

Around 1500 BC, the mainland had entered the reign of the Shang Dynasty, when the Seima-Turbino culture of the Eurasian steppe rose strongly, producing unprecedented radiation to the outside world. The influence of this culture on China was mainly reflected in the introduction of copper spears with barbs, copper axes with empty heads, copper knives with ring heads, scepter heads, and carriages. In particular, it is worth mentioning that the use of horse-drawn carriages in war has greatly accelerated the historical process of the Central Plains, but for the origin of horse-drawn carriages, some Chinese scholars represented by Mr. Sun Ji are mostly inclined to have their own independent origins for Chinese carriages.

In recent years, the world has been amazed by the artifacts unearthed at the Guanghan Sanxingdui site in Sichuan, and some of the bronze human faces have almost similar characteristics: a tall nose bridge, deep eyes, protruding cheekbones, a mouth that occupies most of the face, wide perforated ears, and some even protruding large eyeballs. Although there is still controversy in the academic community about the ethnicity of the Sanxingdui culture, there is no doubt that this vanished civilization has been influenced by foreign cultures. But not only, through the determination of the lead isotope ratio of the bronze samples in the tomb of The Lady of Henan, scholars found that the copper and lead ore materials of the bronzes in the Central Plains of the Late Shang Dynasty may have come in whole or part from Yongshan Jinsha and other places in Yunnan, which shows that there was already a smooth road between the two places at that time, so that the cultural exchanges between the Central Plains and the southwest and Southeast Asia, West Asia and other places can be imagined.

American scholar Berry once made a comprehensive study of the relatively complete zibu armor excavated from the Yin Ruins before 1937, and he found that some of the turtle species actually originated from Korea, Japan, Vietnam and even Southeast Asia. In addition, according to the textiles adhered to the YH127 pit bujia, Mr. Rao Zongyi believes that the textile is equivalent to the Tuluo cotton of the Pange rata country, and in addition, cotton cloth has also been unearthed from the Wuyishan ship coffin, which proves that Indian goods have shown signs of exchange in the Yin Dynasty. Mr. Yang Ximei analyzed the human skulls unearthed in the northwest gang, including black and Caucasian races.

After entering the Western Zhou Dynasty, a series of cultures with strong animal husbandry colors that were quite similar to each other were formed in the Eurasian steppe, and all of them began to be popular with mushroom-headed short swords, horsebits, spoon-shaped copper horse mows and other utensils, especially the xiajiadian upper culture in the northern and southern regions of yanshan in the mainland and the culture exchanges between the mongolian plateau and the southern Siberian region were the closest. In Shaanxi Fufeng Zhaochen site, two late Western Zhou carved human head hats have even been found, and the extremely precious thing is that the hairpin hats are clearly carved with the morphological characteristics of the deep eyes and high nose of Central Asia, which shows that as late as the Western Zhou Dynasty, Central Asians and the Western Zhou Dynasty had established exchanges. During the Spring and Autumn Period, a large number of bronzes such as double bird looking back swords, beast head swords, animal ornaments, and crane-billed axes were unearthed along the Great Wall in the north of the mainland, which are similar to the Tagar culture of the same period in southern Siberia, showing the close connection between the two.

In the subsequent Warring States period, most of the Eurasian steppe areas and northern China have been integrated into a large nomadic cultural belt, and the animal patterns, winged sacred beasts, and sledded mirrors popular in the Bazelek culture in the Altai region are common in the nomadic cultures along the Great Wall of China and in Xinjiang, and even spread to the Yanqi region. The silver box in the tomb of King Wen of Nanyue, Guangdong, has been confirmed to be a relic of the Persian Xerxes I period. In addition, Mr. Duan Qingbo also cited the possibility that the Qin Terracotta Warriors, cocoon-shaped pots, county systems, and chi dao were also influenced by Achaemenid culture. Conversely, in the Bazerek culture, silk fabrics, lacquerware, bronze mirrors with mountain patterns and other artifacts produced in the hinterland of the mainland can be found.

Looking at the cultural exchanges between the East and the West in the early days of Chinese civilization, it is precisely because of the continuous interaction and collision between the Eastern and Western cultures in different periods that new blood has been continuously injected into the ancient Oriental civilization, thus shaping the unique Chinese civilization that continues to last. Although the early long-distance cultural exchanges between the East and the West did not fundamentally shake the different directions of the Eastern and Western civilizations later, they reflected and complemented each other, and also made important contributions to the progress of human civilization. "All things breed together without harming each other, and the Tao parallels without contradicting each other." We must respect the diversity of civilizations and promote exchanges and dialogues among different civilizations, peaceful coexistence and harmonious coexistence. We believe that civilizations will be colorful because of exchanges and enriched by mutual learning, and we must actively build bridges for different civilizations to learn from each other, so as to form a pattern of people-to-people exchanges with diversified interactions.

Source: Learning Times (7th edition, March 25, 2022)