Civilization is fragile. What do we often mean by "social complexity"? It certainly means material abundance, cultural development, social order, and a high level of management, but at the same time, it also means the concentration of wealth, the concentration of power, the differentiation between the rich and the poor, and the great social conflict. The higher the complexity of a society, the higher the cost of maintaining stability.
Historically, what is the reason for the decline of civilization? It may be said that natural disasters, or plagues, or conquests, but the most fundamental reason is probably still man-made disasters, that is, contradictions within society. "Lost" is the norm, but "not lost" is rare.
Nowadays, Chinese archaeology, like our country, can not only be invited in, but also go out, which is very remarkable, but many ancient civilizations are still suffering from disasters.
Tomb of Prince Zhang Huai "Polo Picture"
Where do we come from?
Archaeology, from the first day of its existence, is a worldwide body of knowledge. It is set against the backdrop of great geographical discoveries and global colonization. The world of archaeological discoveries is a "world of findings".
Where do we come from? This is a big question that human beings have been thinking about over and over again. To answer these kinds of questions, archaeology is the first choice.
The discovery of antiquity is not only the discovery of a lost world, but also a great spiritual return that allows us to find a way home.
There is a story of "Paradise Lost" in the West, where Eve ate the forbidden fruit, had fellowship with Adam, and was expelled from the Garden of Eden by God.
David Leonard Clarke (1937-1976), a master of British analytical archaeology, wrote "Archaeology: The Loss of Innocence" (Antiquity, XIV:11, 1973). The title of the article is the story of this "Paradise Lost". Archaeology, he said, has developed at the cost of "losing virginity." The so-called "loss of virginity", in the words of Chinese Taoism, is "simple and scattered as a tool", "the day chisel a trick of chaos and death", this is a problem that any discipline will encounter.
Goethe wrote Faust, which stands for "insatiable". "Never satisfied" is a point of no return. If you can't go back, you'll miss the past.
A long, long time ago, the Aryans traveled from the northern shore of the Caspian Sea, along the Central Asian corridor, south to Afghanistan, Iran and India. "Avesta" mentions a "nomadic paradise". In the historical memory of many ethnic groups, there is such a lost paradise: the father's grassland, the mother's river, the blue sky and white clouds, and the cattle and sheep everywhere.
The world is very big, as early as the Paleolithic Age, human beings have been scattered all over the world, the ends of the earth, and there are human footprints everywhere. Every place has a self-centered world.
"World" is a Buddhist term, and the Chinese word is "Tianxia". Everyone has the same blue sky above their heads. Only enemies and enemies are "incompatible."
"The Great World Civilization" was filmed
Recently, Blacksmith Lee translated the famous Greek book, Strabo (Blacksmith Lee as "Strabo") "Geography", two large volumes, very thick. The book best represents the traditional Western view of the world.
The book only talks about the eastern hemisphere, not the western hemisphere, and the Americas are not yet known; the eastern hemisphere, but only the northern hemisphere, not the southern hemisphere, and Oceania, and the northern hemisphere, only the western part of Eurasia (Europe, West Asia, and Central Asia), not the eastern part of Eurasia, East Asia, North Asia, Northeast Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, and he does not know. Africa straddles the northern and southern hemispheres, with the exception of Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya, which he also does not know.
Strabo divided the "inhabited world" into two boundaries, with Europe to the west and Asia to the east. He has two different perspectives, Europe from west to east, and Asia from east to west, symmetrical to each other, the so-called "antipodes". In fact, when he said "opposite", he was only symmetrical between Europe and the Near East.
Asia in the classical era, in fact, was the Persian Empire during the Achaemenid period, which used to be called the "Near East" and is now called the "Middle East" or "West Asia". Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya in North Africa were also counted as Asia at that time.
There was a French archaeologist named Roman Ghirshman (1895-1979). The Persian Empire, he said, was a "central empire."
This "central empire" is another "China" other than China. Its central area was the valley of the two rivers (present-day Iraq and Syria). The Asia Minor Peninsula (present-day Turkey) was to the north, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Libya to the south, and Iran and Afghanistan, the five Central Asian countries, and Pakistan to the east. Europe (present-day Greece, Italy, and Spain and north of it) was only one region outside its western borders.
From east to west, Greece, Italy, and Spain belong to the "other side of the sea", and the "Pillar of Hercules" (the Strait of Gibraltar) is the end of the sky.
Alexander's crusade to the east, crossing the Zagros Mountains, advancing eastward, and finally ending in the Indus Valley, the true East is still far out of sight.
"The Great World Civilization" was filmed
The Chinese geographical classics are "Yu Gong" and "Classic of Mountains and Seas". "Yugong" Kyushu is the "China" in the minds of the ancients. The mountains and seas of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", the five mountains live in it, and the surrounding Yinghai is large.
Zou Yan said that China's Kyushu is only a state of the Great Kyushu ("Historical Records: Mencius Xunqing's Biography"), which is really a mountain outside the mountain, and a sky outside the sky, "looking at Qizhou nine cigarettes from afar" (Li He's "Mengtian").
Archaeological map of the world
In Eurasia, Europe, the Near East, and Central Asia are the western sector, and East Asia, North Asia, Northeast Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia are the eastern segment.
We live in the eastern part of Eurasia. "Huainanzi Qiangxing" uses the Gonggong to touch the Buzhou Mountain and describes this sloping land for us. China, bordered by mountains in the northwest and the sea in the southeast, is the opposite of the western part of Eurasia. Qiu Jin has a poem, "Poetry and thinking are a sail and the sea is wide, and the dream soul is exquisite in the moon of the three islands" ("Japanese Ishii Junsuo and the original rhyme of immediate use"), the Japanese three islands and the British three islands are just opposite. The two sides are so symmetrical.
Inside page of "The Great World Civilization".
In the Qing Dynasty, China had the study of the history and geography of the South China Sea in the Western Regions, which is now called the "Belt and Road" study. This kind of "peerless learning" has attracted many first-class scholars to devote themselves to it, such as the historian Wang Guowei.
Wang Guowei is known all over the world for his contributions to oracle bones, golden inscriptions and the ancient history of the three dynasties. In fact, another aspect of his academic contributions is the history of frontiers and ethnic groups, especially the history of Mongolia and Yuan. This kind of research is to look at the four ethnic groups from China and the world from the four ethnic groups. European and Japanese scholars value him and this contribution even more.
In the 20th century, before World War II, European sinology was dominated by Sha Wan and his three major disciples (Bo Xihe, Ma Bole, and Gu Lanyan). They started from the history of the South China Sea in the Western Regions and studied China from the periphery of China. Japanese scholars too.
Chinese studies and French studies go hand in hand, so there is sympathy for each other.
European archaeology, centered on Europe, extends outward, starting with classical archaeology, digging for Greece and Rome, followed by archaeology for the Near East, digging for Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya.
Inside page of "The Great World Civilization".
The archaeology of Africa, Australia, and the Americas belongs to colonial archaeology, which focuses on indigenous cultures and is inseparable from ethnography and anthropology. American archaeology falls into this category.
Inside page of "The Great World Civilization".
Russian archaeology, centered on Russia, extends outward, first in Siberian archaeology, followed by Mongolian archaeology and Central Asian archaeology. The Xiongnu, Dingling, Jiankun, Huangjiasi, Tiele, and Turks are the old neighbors of northern China, and the five Central Asian countries are the western regions of ancient China. This type of archaeology is most closely related to China.
Inside page of "The Great World Civilization".
Chinese archaeology is also closely related to Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
How does Chinese archaeology talk to the world?
Chinese archaeology began in the 20th century and has developed to the present day in less than 100 years.
It has two main backgrounds:
The first background is exploration and excavation. World archaeology, expedition is the universal background. Wang Guowei said that in the 20th century, there were "five major discoveries": the oracle bones of Yinxu, the Han Simplified Characters of the Western Regions, the Dunhuang scrolls, the archives of the Great Cabinet Library, and the "relics of ancient foreign tribes in China". Except for the oracle bones of Yinxu, which are related to the excavation of Yinxu, which led to fifteen excavations in Yinxu, the archives of the cabinet treasury are related to the abdication of the Qing dynasty and belong to the study of Qing history, and the other three are related to the Western Silk Road expedition, which led to the famous Northwest Expedition (1927-1933, 1944-1945).
The second background is prospecting. Johan Gunnar Andersson (1874-1960), Emile Licent (1876-1952), and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) were pioneers of Chinese prehistoric archaeology. They all came to China to prospect for minerals and piggyback on archaeology.
Archaeology was imported from the West. Archaeology in China has had a difficult start. At the beginning, there were only a few people who went to the west to learn scriptures, and many people learned from Xi doing, and explored by doing.
In 1941, Xia Nai, just after returning from the University of London, introduced world archaeology to the Institute of Liberal Arts of Peking University in Kunming.
In 1952, 1953 and 1955, he lectured on archaeology at Peking University, and each time he introduced world archaeology. He has made great contributions to the education and training of archaeology in China, especially in the standardization of fieldwork methods and field archaeological methods.
In 1984 and 1985, at the end of his life, he again gave us a general picture of world archaeology.
In June 1985, Xia Nai's last reception of foreign archaeologists (from left: An Zhimin, Kiyozu Tsuboi, Wang Shimin, Xia Nai, Yang Hong, Huang Zhanyue, Wang Zhongshu)
These introductions are fascinating, but they sound far away.
Xia Nai, who studied in the United Kingdom, received education and training mainly in British archaeology in the first half of the 20th century, the so-called cultural and historical archaeology. This archaeology is exemplified by Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957).
At that time, Xia Nai had two choices, one was to study prehistoric archaeology with Child at the University of Edinburgh, and the other was to stay at the University of London to study Egyptian archaeology with Flinders Petrie (1853-1842). He chose the latter.
In the second half of the 20th century, process archaeology emerged in the United States, represented by Lewis R. Binford (1930-2011). Xia Nai met Binford and read his books in his later years. He has been far more critical than positive about process archaeology.
Although he himself often travels abroad, visits museums, looks at relics and relics, participates in academic conferences, and always maintains close contact with the international archaeological community, Chinese archaeology stops at the national gate, and few people set foot in archaeological research abroad.
In modern times, all the ancient civilizations in the world have suffered great disasters, and China has also been bullied.
At the end of 1937, Xia Nai's excavations in Egypt, the head of the British expedition repeatedly insulted the Egyptians, which once deeply stung him. He said, "After hearing this, I can't help but feel sorry for the people of Egypt, and when I think of the situation in my country, I am fortunate that foreigners are not allowed to come in and dig up antiquities, otherwise I will not be reviled, and the insults of missionaries and merchants to the mainland are enough, and I hope that no more foreign archaeologists will be added" (Xia Nai's Diary, East China Normal University Press, 2011, vol. 2, p. 142). After 1949, China's cultural relics and archaeology were under the unified leadership of the state, and it was strictly forbidden to excavate and sell them. Xia Nai has always advocated that the Chinese archaeology office should not be done by outsiders. Since the reform and opening up, China has faced a comprehensive impact of privatization, marketization and internationalization. Xia Nai worries that the situation in Chinese archaeology will get out of control.
In 1938, Xia Nai visited Egypt while studying abroad
In 1981, Tong Enzheng and Zhang Guangzhi planned an archaeological collaboration (Sichuan University and Harvard University) that was stopped by Xia Nai. Xia Nai told Tong Enzheng: "Archaeological work cannot be carried out in cooperation with foreigners, and the right to research cannot be handed over to others" (see Xia Nai's Diary, vol. 9, p. 73). In order to stop such cooperation, he mobilized senior leaders of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Central Propaganda Department, and the Ministry of Education to intervene.
In 1982, Article 21 of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Cultural Relics, which was formulated by him, stipulates that "no foreigner or foreign organization shall conduct archaeological investigation or excavation within the territory of the People's Republic of China without the special permission of the State Administration for Culture and the State Council." ”
At that time, not only the United States, but also Italy, France, Germany, and Japan put forward cooperation proposals, but they were also rejected by Xia Nai.
The international cooperation of Chinese archaeology all took place after his death.
Recently, Chinese archaeology has dramatically changed our understanding of Chinese civilization. In the past, many archaeological cultures that scholars carefully called "the dawn of civilization" now seem to have reached the level of "civilization" compared with other civilizations in the world, and the 5,000 years of Chinese civilization may not be an exaggeration. We not only have a good material foundation for dialogue with world archaeology, but also have a certain amount of spiritual preparation.
"Lost Civilization"
Almost all the major civilizations in the world are "lost civilizations".
Civilization is fragile. What do we often mean by "social complexity"? It certainly means material abundance, cultural development, social order, and a high level of management, but at the same time, it also means the concentration of wealth, the concentration of power, the differentiation between the rich and the poor, and the great social conflict.
The higher the complexity of a society, the higher the cost of maintaining stability. Without a strong state apparatus (military, police, genderic), it is absolutely impossible to suppress. This string can easily be broken, and breaking is anarchy.
Historically, what is the reason for the decline of civilization? It may be said that natural disasters, or plagues, or conquests, but the most fundamental reason is probably still man-made disasters, that is, contradictions within society. "Lost" is the norm, but "not lost" is rare.
When I say "finding the world back", I am referring to these "lost civilizations".
Without comparison, how do you understand why the continuity of Chinese civilization is so strong that it feels "extraordinarily stable".
Nowadays, Chinese archaeology, like our country, can not only be invited in, but also go out, which is very remarkable, but many ancient civilizations are still suffering from disasters.
There is a film, "Iraqi Odyssey" (Iraqi Odyssey), the family is doing well, but the US military invasion has caused the wife to be separated. In fact, such a course of suffering can be found everywhere in the Middle East.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, how many civilians have been displaced, how many monuments have been destroyed, how many archaeology has been suspended.
Do you know that when the US military invaded Iraq, it actually used the ancient city of Babylon as a military base. Tanks and helicopters were parked in the ancient city, despite protests from archaeologists.
The United States, which is invincible all over the world, is planted in the reckless use of force.
The inscription on the Statue of Liberty in New York says:
Leave you to me! Those weary and poor people who yearn to breathe freedom, the poor people who are abandoned and oppressed on the other side, those who have no place to return and have suffered from the weather, hand you over to me, and I stand at the door of freedom, holding high the lamp of freedom, lighting your way home!
However, when a large number of homeless people whose homes were destroyed by the United States and its allies really wanted to "go to freedom", Trump locked up the Great Wall.
Studying world history, I am a layman. I found that Greece represented freedom and Persia represented autocracy, a classical opposition that has always influenced Western values. I believe that rereading Persia and rereading Greece is the best antidote.
Persian Notes (top and bottom)
Li Ling
Life, Reading, New Knowledge Joint Bookstore 2019-10
China is the eastern end of the Silk Road, and Iran is the western end of the Silk Road. Historically, the lion and the good horse spread to China, and the six major religions (Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) spread to China, all of which were related to Iran. I have been to Iran three times to see the ruins and see the artifacts. I bought a lot of books related to Iranian archaeology, and I looked around and compared China with Iran. I've already learned a lot from the first reading.
Today's Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria are all crushed by the United States and its allies.
Iran, I hope, is not next.
It was not only a humanitarian catastrophe, but also a catastrophe for world archaeology.
*The article is the "Introduction" of "The Great World Civilization: In Search of the World's Top 10 Archaeological Sites" (Joint Publishing Co., Ltd., 2023-11)