If you want to say which country in the world has the most recognizable script, it must be Chinese! Whether it is the ancient large and small seals, affiliated books or kaishu, people can recognize this as Chinese at a glance.
A few years ago, the United Kingdom, across two oceans from us, excavated an ancient stone engraved with Chinese characters for Chinese. According to archaeologists, it was found that this was actually a cultural relic from the ancient Roman period 1,600 years ago.
The most incredible thing is that instead of ancient Chinese characters, the stone blocks are engraved with five modern simplified Chinese characters: "Jim is here".
After this incident was posted on the Internet, many Chinese netizens exclaimed: "There may be a traverser in our ancestors?"
1. British cultural relics are shocked to find Chinese characters
In 2019, British archaeologists excavated in a village in West Berkshire, England, which contains a large area of historical sites from the fourth century AD.
In fact, ancient Roman ruins are very common in the United Kingdom, and everyone just followed the usual work at first, but with the exclamation of a staff member, they found that this archaeological work really dug up a "treasure".
What kind of "treasure" is it? It is an extremely rare fresco from the Roman period!
This giant mural made of stones of various colors has been determined to be at least 1,600 years old through preliminary testing. This is the first time that a precious mosaic mural has been excavated outside of Turkey and Italy!
This discovery made the staff present excited, and they were full of enthusiasm at once, and many cultural relics were excavated one after another.
Several of the inconspicuous small stone slabs caught everyone's attention, and one of the stone slabs actually had Chinese characters written "Jim is here" in Chinese!
In a site from the ancient Roman period, there are traces of Chinese civilization that have nothing to do with them. The staff in the room all had a question in their minds: "Who is Jim? Is this a prank of later generations or is it a real thing in ancient times?"
Could it be that as early as the fourth century A.D., there was an intersection between ancient Chinese civilization and ancient Roman civilization?
Is there an exchange between ancient China and ancient Rome, which is separated by thousands of mountains and seas, that has been neglected?
2. The cultural collision of the two ancient countries
In fact, as early as the Eastern Han Dynasty, China's Silk Road had already taken shape, and many merchants traveled all the way to the west through the Silk Road. Many historians have speculated that it may be for this reason that there were imprints of Chinese characters in ancient Roman civilization.
You must know that as early as 100 A.D., historical records record that merchants from the Roman Empire came to Luoyang, the capital of the Eastern Han Dynasty. In the following 50 years, this unnamed "Roman warrior" came to China every ten years, becoming the "first person" to interact with Rome and China!
As more and more merchants entered China via the Silk Road, many subjects of the Roman Empire also became interested in China.
The most detailed historical data is the official history of the Eastern Han Dynasty, during the period of the Han and Emperor (100 AD), two subject states under the Roman Empire reached Luoyang and presented rare treasures to the Han and Emperor. According to historical records, Emperor He of the Han Dynasty not only received the envoys, but also gave the king a gold seal purple ribbon, symbolizing the establishment of diplomatic envoys between the two countries.
The Roman Empire sent envoys to China five times, spanning three centuries. It not only witnessed the prosperity of the Eastern Han Dynasty on the mainland, but also experienced the pride of the Three Kingdoms dividing the world, and finally gradually lost contact between the Northern and Southern Dynasties.
The historical record of this cultural exchange does not only appear in our Chinese history books, but also in the ancient Roman literature.
However, for the situation that there are simplified Chinese characters in the cultural relics unearthed this time, historians still need to study the mysteries in depth, which can also enable many people in the world who focus on this matter to understand more historical knowledge.
Third, cultural relics from many countries have appeared in Chinese
In fact, many countries have found traces of Chinese characters in Chinese when conducting archaeological work.
Whether it is a large inscription recorded on the cliffs of Mongolia, or the appearance of Chinese characters in Iran, or even in the distant North America, the United States has found an oracle bone inscription from the Shang Dynasty 3,000 years ago!
American archaeologists discovered ancient Chinese oracle bone inscriptions during archaeological work three years ago, and this large piece of Yin Shang period text recorded on the rock wall shows that Columbus was not the first person to discover the American continent.
There are also historical facts in China that at the end of the Shang Dynasty, more than 200,000 Yin merchants sailed all the way west and finally landed on the American continent.
These cultural precipitations that have been sealed in history have made many scholars and netizens very curious. This not only stimulates everyone's desire to explore history, but also reminds us that culture will never be annihilated, they are just sleeping in the corners of history, waiting to be excavated and discovered, looking forward to being reinterpreted and given new meaning by future generations!
epilogue
In any case, whether this artifact engraved with Chinese characters is a prank by tourists or a hypothetical "supernatural time-traveling" pushes this history of the collision of two ancient civilizations to everyone's eyes.
I hope that with the in-depth research of archaeologists, we can answer this doubt and unveil the mystery of this "Jim" in the near future.