Li Moran: Why did the Chinese civilization with similarities and the Maya civilization go differently?

China News Service, Beijing, September 10 Title: Why are Chinese civilizations with similarities and Maya civilizations going differently?

Author Li Moran (Assistant Researcher, Foreign Archaeology Research Office, Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Beginning around 300 BC, the ancient Indian Maya created the world's only ancient civilization, the Maya, which was born in the tropical jungle rather than the Great River Basin. The concern of some Chinese historians and enthusiasts about the Maya civilization is largely due to its similarity with Chinese civilization in many ways. Under careful analysis of archaeological context and cultural context, these similarities may be rooted in some deep-seated notions of religious rituals.

The similarity between Chinese civilization and Maya civilization

The similarities between Chinese civilization and Maya civilization are presented in many aspects, such as: the admiration and use of jade; the worship of turtles and the granting of meaning; the cosmology that includes factors such as four squares, multi-layers, and world trees; the use and dependence on animals in religion or ritual; the emphasis on the transformation and deformation of people.

Mesoamerica has used jade extensively from the Olmec civilization in the early Formative Period (circa 1200-900 BC). They are often found in places of worship, depicting the transformation of gods, rulers, animals, and shamans, showing a close connection to religious rituals. The Hongshan and Liangzhu cultures, where China's prehistoric jade culture is developed, also show a strong religious atmosphere. Researcher Li Xinwei, director of the Prehistoric and Foreign Research Office of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the jade objects unearthed by the Hongshan culture such as pig dragons, birds, cicadas, and gouyun-shaped pendants may show the religious ability of the upper echelons of society to "transform" and "feather"; the jade objects found in the Liangzhu culture depicting animal faces, gods and birds show the combination and transformation of people, birds and beasts.

The Maya divided the universe into the celestial, human, and underworld. Between heaven and earth there is the World Tree of the Divine Bird, which is both a support and a passage to communicate with heaven and earth, while the waters and the stadium are the entrances and exits of the human world and the underworld. In China, the four-sided cosmology is most evident in the Lingjiatan Jade Edition and the Liangzhu Jade Chun, while the painting from the Mawangdui Han Tomb is a clear expression of the triple universe, although the origin of this concept must have been earlier.

In addition, similar to ritual items such as tortoiseshell sounders, human deformation and transformation into animals in a hallucinogenic state are also common features of early Chinese civilization and Maya civilization. In prehistoric Chinese cultures such as Banpo, Hongshan and Liangzhu, there are artistic themes of people transforming into animals such as fish, birds, and cicadas, while the stone carvings and faience of the Maya tirelessly depict the transformation of rulers into magical animals such as jaguars and macaws.

All of the above point to shamanistic-like concepts and rituals.

From "Asian Shamanism" to "Mayan-Chinese Continuum"

Shamanic Tunguska originally referred to a religious phenomenon popular in Siberia and north America near the Arctic. In the 1960s, the historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, used "fascination" as a defining criterion to extend shamanic phenomena to a global scale. Influenced by this, scholars began to study the manifestations of shamanism in archaeological remains extensively. Anthropologist Peter T. Furst discussed the commonalities of shamanistic forms between Asia and the Americas, and proposed the "Asian Shamanism" model, including eight characteristics such as body deformation and transformation, triple universe, world tree, animal assistant, and skeleton experience.

The famous archaeologist Zhang Guangzhi cited these definitions and combined some archaeological data from prehistory to the Shang Dynasty in China to propose the hypothesis of the "Mayan-Chinese continuum". That is to say, the two are the products of the descendants of the same ancestor in different times and in different places, and they have formed a relatively developed art, ideology and ideology at that time.

Of course, this kind of "pan-shamanic" research has also been criticized by the academic community. David N. Keightley, a well-known American sinologist, believes that there was no shamanic politics in the Shang Dynasty in China, that the Shang kings were not shamans, and that shamanic rituals such as divination are actually rationalized, bureaucratic, and civilized system manifestations, with the aim of artificially turning deceased ancestors into intermediaries to communicate with gods ("making ancestors").

Religious Ritual VS Kinship The two civilizations developed for different reasons

Despite the similarities in the early days, the Maya civilization and the Chinese civilization developed in a very different path. The former established large and small city-states around 2300 years ago, and has since developed relatively closed and steady until it collapses. Although there were the same systems of writing, calendar, religion, and art, and there were frequent wars and alliances between them, a unified nation was never formed. However, Chinese civilization experienced the cultural evolution of the prehistoric "full of stars and buckets", the political integration of Xia, Shang and Zhou, and finally the unification was completed by the Qin and Han Dynasties. Since then, with the scope of roughly today's China as the venue, the struggle and integration between various groups of people and cultures has been staged continuously, but it has always maintained a pattern of pluralism and integration, and continues to this day.

The reasons for the two different outcomes are manifold, one of the most important of which may be the difference in the core dynamics that sustain the functioning of society, and thus the large difference in the basic structure of society. The development of the Mayan civilization has always been centered on religious ritual activities, and Chinese civilization has attached great importance to the role of blood relations (or imaginary blood relations) in the operation of society since the Neolithic Period.

Religious rituals have been the basis of Mayan society almost from the beginning, and recent archaeological discoveries have demonstrated that religion may have played a crucial role in the origins of the Mayan nation. At the site of Aguada Fénix in Guatemala, a team led by Japanese archaeologist Inomata Takeshi discovered several large structures dating back more than 3,000 years, all used for ceremonial events. Curiously, there were no city-states or settlements around it, and there was no indication of the presence of rulers, and these huge buildings appeared to have been built by people of equal status in cooperation. Inamata therefore proposes that these unsettled hunter-gatherers, in some form, have built a series of large altars for ritual activities.

This is quite different from what we usually think of as a society that only after the full accumulation of productive forces and the development of a certain level of complexity will there be a similar mode of operation of large sacrificial buildings. The murals found at the site of San Bartolo in Guatemala vividly depict a series of myths involving major themes such as the formation of the universe and the origin of civilization, such as "creation", "founding" and "domestication". The Maya constructed the most basic worldview through mythology and used it as a model for the legitimacy of the king's rule.

Due to the importance of religious rituals and the limitations of the agricultural environment and technology, the Maya society was not very motivated to grow in population and land, and even wars were aimed at capturing prisoners alive for sacrifice. Inscriptions and painted murals abound of inter-city-state wars and the sacrifice of high-ranking enemy captives after the war, but only rare records of annexation of enemy populations and lands are rare, and the vast majority of city-states that were defeated or even slaughtered by monarchs still retain their dynastic lineages.

Infographic: Dancers perform shamanic dances for tourists. Photo by Zhang Yao

In China, differences in the basic structure of society can lead to a shift in shamanic religion. Archaeological data have shown that the widespread existence of public cemeteries is an important feature of Prehistoric Chinese culture, and some studies have also shown that the integration of populations should be a low-level feature of social functioning, based on blood relations (or imaginary blood relations). This is the basic social structure of most prehistoric Chinese cultures. As Zhao Hui, a professor at Peking University and chief expert of the Chinese Civilization Exploration Project, said, blood organizations have always been the grass-roots units of Chinese society, never been dismantled and have been handed down.

This is very different from the Maya. The Maya never found large public cemeteries, and the tombs of aristocratic family members were mostly located under the houses where they lived, and there were not many of them. Excavations by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences at the No. 8N-11 aristocratic compound at the Panmayad site of Hondurasko show that during the period of about 300 years of residence, only 10 large single tombs of different periods have been found, the owner of the tomb should be the owner of the courtyard, and the rest of the family or family members are not yet known where they are buried.

In fact, Ji Dewei's criticism of Shang Dynasty shamanism also touches on this key issue. The social shift that organically integrated blood ties into the relatively private shamanic religious system and placed the latter under the political management of the state was already evident in the Shang Dynasty, and may even date back to the Yongsan period. The integration of people and politics during the Yongsan period was significantly accelerating, especially in the Central Plains, where blood-based social operations seemed to have an advantage in interregional competition, perhaps giving rise to a wide-ranging state regime such as the Erlitou culture.

In less productive prehistoric societies, collaboration within families or clans effectively ensured the survival and reproduction of groups, and also stimulated great incentives within groups for population and land expansion. The shocks and integrations produced in this process have continuously incorporated the "periphery" into the "core" area, and have fully absorbed the factors of foreign civilization and become an important means in the process of ancient Chinese civilization. This is particularly evident in the patriarchal system and the feudal system, and from this point of view, the Western Zhou Dynasty was a key node in the development of Chinese civilization.

In addition, Zhao Hui also believes that the etiquette system that is characteristic of Chinese society is not only a hierarchical system, but also a standard of conduct and moral norms for maintaining the relationships and positions of social members within the patriarchal system, and has risen to the level of the political system through the power of the state. After entering the Qin and Han Dynasties, official history books such as the "History" recorded important people or groups, as well as marginal ethnic groups, with the purpose of emphasizing blood relations (or imaginary blood relations), which may be one of the important cultural genes of Chinese civilization.

From this, we can see that although there are many similarities in the concept of religious rituals between the early Chinese civilization and the Maya civilization, different cultural genes have been formed and continuously strengthened in their respective development and evolution, resulting in different endings. The Maya civilization has always been centered on religious ritual activities, and has developed steadily in a relatively closed environment for thousands of years until it suddenly collapses; while Chinese civilization attaches great importance to blood relations (or imaginary blood relations), and has experienced collision and integration in a wider area, iterative inheritance, and still maintains a pattern of pluralism and integration. (End)

Source: China News Network