#文章首发挑战赛#
Indians are usually one of the most active in the world's netizens.
On Quora, the "American version of Zhihu", an Indian netizen once asked: China is only 3,700 years old, why does it always exaggerate to 5,000 years?
In the Chinese network, Indians are ridiculed by us as "Ah San", or "honorific" as "third brother".
As for the obviously "provocative" question of the "third brother", before the Chinese could answer, there were "mouth substitutes" from other countries.
There are many professional answers, such as the inscriptions engraved on the bronzes have Chinese historical records, and so on.
As for this serious question about the length of China's history and civilization, it is appropriate for our Chinese people to answer it positively and seriously.
01 Self-confidence, this point should be learned from Indians
First of all, we should praise the self-confidence of the Indian "third brother" without quotation marks.
As one of the four great ancient civilizations in the world, the history of ancient India's civilization can be traced back to 5,500 years ago, which is on a par with China, so they have reason to be confident, especially from the perspective of history.
But what is special about contemporary Indians is that they are not only very confident, but often show "delusional confidence".
In the online world, "India will surely become the number one in the world", "India has the best army in the world", "India can defeat China in the event of a large-scale war", and other similar "mythical statements".
Of course, it was released by the Indians themselves, and it is flooded with the world's major online platforms.
Although these remarks are often "besieged", "ridiculed", ridiculed, and even "humiliated" by netizens from all over the world, Indians are still "very confident".
Leaving aside the "mystery" part, we can Chinese learn Xi confident side of Indians, and it is without quotation marks.
We can confidently say that China is a country and a civilization with a history of 5,000 years.
China is not "confused", and there is no need to "fight a war of words", because we can give scientific answers from multiple perspectives such as literature and archaeology.
Below, let's open up the long history of China to dispel the world's doubts about the length of China's history.
02 The most coherent history of letters, the only one in China, never the only two
China has a tradition that no other country or civilization can match, that is, the record of history, strictly speaking, the tradition of faith history.
The history of faith, in layman's terms, is a well-documented, true and credible history.
In terms of social form, the tradition of belief history or the era of faith history that the mainland has basically run through from the slave society and feudal society to the present.
China's Shang Dynasty has a history of letters, which is widely recognized by the world and there is no doubt, because we have the oracle bone inscriptions of the Yin Shang and the ruins of Yin Ruins to confirm.
As the first general history of China, Sima Qian's "Records of the Historians" records the history of China from ancient legends to the first four years of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.
At present, about 150,000 pieces of oracle bone inscriptions have been unearthed, among which the deciphered texts about the Shang Dynasty can basically correspond to the Shang Dynasty content recorded in the "Historical Records", such as the name of the emperor and the lineage.
This not only affirms the authenticity and historical value of the "Records of the Historians" as a historical book, but also proves the authenticity of the existence of the Shang Dynasty.
Therefore, the history of Chinese letters can be determined at least in 1600 BC, that is, more than 3000 years to the present, and there are documents and cultural relics in every dynasty and generation since then.
At this time, the same question as the Indian who asked the question is coming - doesn't it say that China has a history of 5,000 years, and this is still more than 1,000 years away, where is it?
Don't worry, listen to the author slowly.
03 "The Controversy of Faith and History"
Whether it is netizens such as the "Third Brother" or some professionals in the field of historiography, their doubts about the pre-Shang history of China mainly focus on whether the Xia and antiquity really existed.
In response to this question, China is not South Korea, which likes to exaggerate and steal the culture of other countries in order to achieve self-aggrandizement, and China pays attention to science and empirical evidence.
First of all, although the history of letters, which can be examined by written texts and classics, is the best evidence for the existence of a "fixed" history, it is by no means the "only".
Tracing history, in addition to the history of faith, archaeology is also a very important basis. In many cases, the two were born at the same time, as exemplified by the excavation of the oracle bone inscriptions and Yin Ruins in China.
The historical palaces, villages, dwellings, and living objects contained in the archaeology are all proof of the history of this period.
In this regard, although China cannot say that "a shovel goes down, there will be a thousand-year-old cultural relic," but the archaeological relics found in the territory of major archaeological provinces such as Henan, Shaanxi, and Zhejiang are clear evidence of China's long history.
The Yuanmou people, Lantian people and Beijing people in our junior high school history textbooks, these ancient human excavations, can be used as the ancestors of modern Chinese.
If it is used as a proof of "5,000 years of Chinese civilization", it may be too "ancient", but we who "have goods at home" still have some content to prove.
First of all, from the Xia above the Shang Dynasty, there are many records in the ancient books of the mainland about the Xia Dynasty and its founder Dayu in the literature, such as "Book of Songs", "Shangshu", "Shiben", "Zuo Chuan" and so on.
In the Western Han Dynasty, Sima Qian also set aside a chapter in the "Historical Records" as "Xia Benji", and "Xia Benji" also became the first dynastic history of the Xia Dynasty, and Dayu's exploits were also engraved on the ritual vessels.
Later, with the word of mouth of later generations, it inevitably added exaggerated and mythological colors.
As a result, a real historical figure has become a myth and legend, and the history of the Xia Dynasty has become what some people call "non-belief history".
Of course, this phenomenon can be found in the early historical development and evolution of various countries.
However, with the advent of a series of archaeological discoveries about the Xia Dynasty, the "mythology" "attached" to Xia can be stripped away.
At present, ten cultural sites related to Xia, such as the Erlitou ruins and the Yuzhuang ruins in Yexian County, which have been unearthed in Henan Province, can fully prove the existence of the Xia Dynasty.
In these archaeological excavations, the Erlitou site has a regular layout including palaces, roads, and city walls, indicating that there was a class division at that time, and the symbols of "country" and "dynasty" appeared.
The burial pottery products unearthed from the Yuzhuang site in Yexian County show the color of the ritual system.
It can be seen that the history of the Xia Dynasty for nearly 500 years (2070-1600 BC) is also credible.
In just one summer, China's history has reached more than 4,000 years.
04 Final word
For the exploration of Chinese civilization and history, especially the origin of China, we Chinese are more concerned and rigorous than people from other countries.
As early as 2001, China officially proposed the "Chinese Civilization Exploration Project", which is a special study on the historical source of Chinese civilization and is implemented as a major national scientific research project.
After more than 20 years of the project, we have achieved tangible and fruitful results in tracing the origin of our own culture.
First of all, the "dry goods" that must be talked about are the first to recommend - Liangzhu culture.
At present, archaeology and research have found that the Liangzhu ruins (ancient city), about 4,800 years ago, are representative cultural sites in the Yangtze River basin of China, especially in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
Since its discovery in 1932, the cultural relics represented by black pottery and jade unearthed in the ancient city of Liangzhu, especially a large number of jade artifacts as burial objects, have been unveiled, allowing the world to see the advanced degree of Chinese cultural development around 5,000 years ago.
The jade represented by jade, jade bracelet, jade jade, etc., is not only rich in shape, but also beautifully made.
Archaeologists also found a huge warehouse at the site, which is estimated to store 200,000 catties of rice. This is also a typical proof of the ancient Chinese city-states.
Based on archaeological discoveries and combined with ancient books such as Han Feizi Xianxue, some scholars believe that the Liangzhu culture is the remains of the Yu Dynasty (a dynasty before the Xia), and some scholars believe that the Liangzhu culture is the source of the Xia culture.
However, in any case, as one of the early cultural sites of mankind, the discovery and archaeological success of the Liangzhu site has proved that China is a country with a history of more than 5,000 years of civilization, and has also been recognized by the international archaeological community.
We not only have the ancient city of Liangzhu, but also the ruins of Shijiahe in Tianmen, Hubei Province and the Lingjiatan ruins in Anhui Province.
One of the most exciting is the "Lingjiatan Ruins", which is located in Tongzha Town, Hanshan County, Ma'anshan City, Anhui Province, and is another representative archaeological achievement of China's Neolithic central settlement sites.
In the ruins, archaeologists found altars used for sacrifices, as well as clan cemeteries, etc., and unearthed a number of exquisite pottery, stone and jade ritual vessels and other cultural relics.
According to scientific tests, the site is about 5,300-5,500 years old, which "nails the nail" of more than 5,000 years of Chinese culture.
The discovery and archaeology of the Lingjiatan site has also been selected as one of the "Top 100 Archaeological Discoveries in a Hundred Years" in China, which also shows its historical value and significance.
With these archaeological discoveries, the early social form of the country 5,000 years ago in China has not only been revealed, but also "discarded" the "mythological color" and become the "empirical evidence" of the history of Chinese civilization.
Perhaps in the future, more relics or monuments may be discovered, and the evolution of Chinese civilization will have more proof, and the historical context will be clearer.
But at this point, it is an indisputable fact that the history of Chinese civilization has "crossed" the threshold of 5,000 years, whether it is the "history of letters" or the ruins.
05 World "Mouth Substitute" VS Indian "Third Brother"
Regarding the controversy over China's 5,000-year history, even the American media, which has always been "unfriendly" to China, the New York Daily News, once said: "Ancient inscriptions are the oldest writing system in China, and they are generally engraved on bronze objects such as tripods and guis, and have been verified to have a history of 5,000 years." ”
Our "Chinese Civilization Exploration Project" project has made a rigorous and systematic scientific response.
Here I still can't help but complain about the Indian "third brother", in terms of rigor, China and India are like "regular script" and "cursive script".
China focuses on a "stroke by stroke", while India is a "scribble", even in areas such as lunar exploration.
I don't know if the Indian who asked the question still remembers the "Chandrayaan-3" probe launched by India on July 14 this year.
After more than a month of arduous flight, Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed on the moon on August 23.
Its success also made India the first country in the world to land on the south pole of the moon and one of the four countries in the world to successfully land on the moon, the others being China, the United States and Russia.
This is undoubtedly good news for human exploration of space, and India has done it on the basis of the absence of large launch vehicles.
In this regard, people all over the world have sent "congratulatory messages", and at this time, the self-confidence of the "third brother" is even more "bursting", and some directly said on the Internet: In the field of lunar exploration, India will crush all countries in the world.
However, just a few days later, on September 2, the news came that the "Chandrayaan-3" was lying in the nest, and the lander and the lunar rover could not start.
According to the video, even when it first landed on the moon, India's lunar rover could not even cross a crater of 4 meters.
However, just when a group of scientists and melon-eating people thought that "Chandrayaan-3" might become a permanent memorial on the moon, in early December, there was news from India that "Chandrayaan-3" had been "woken up" and had returned to Earth's orbit.
As for the future of Chandrayaan-3, we can only wait and see.
However, the authenticity of China's 5,000-year history has been proved by a large number of historical materials and archaeological evidence, and there is no need to wait.