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[Piecake]

On a cool Sunday evening in March, a geochemist named Sun Weidong gave a public lecture to an audience of laymen, students, and professors at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, the capital city of the landlocked province of Anhui in eastern China. But the professor didn’t just talk about geochemistry. He also cited several ancient Chinese classics, at one point quoting historian Sima Qian’s description of the topography of the Xia empire — traditionally regarded as China’s founding dynasty, dating from 2070 to 1600 B.C. “Northwards the stream is divided and becomes the nine rivers,” wrote Sima Qian in his first century historiography, the Records of the Grand Historian. “Reunited, it forms the opposing river and flows into the sea.”

In other words, “the stream” in question wasn’t China’s famed Yellow River, which flows from west to east. “There is only one major river in the world which flows northwards. Which one is it?” the professor asked. “The Nile,” someone replied. Sun then showed a map of the famed Egyptian river and its delta — with nine of its distributaries flowing into the Mediterranean. This author, a researcher at the same institute, watched as audience members broke into smiles and murmurs, intrigued that these ancient Chinese texts seemed to better agree with the geography of Egypt than that of China.

In the past year, Sun, a highly decorated scientist, has ignited a passionate online debate with claims that the founders of Chinese civilization were not in any sense Chinese but actually migrants from Egypt. He conceived of this connection in the 1990s while performing radiometric dating of ancient Chinese bronzes; to his surprise, their chemical composition more closely resembled those of ancient Egyptian bronzes than native Chinese ores. Both Sun’s ideas and the controversy surrounding them flow out of a much older tradition of nationalist archaeology in China, which for more than a century has sought to answer a basic scientific question that has always been heavily politicized: Where do the Chinese people come from?

Sun argues that China’s Bronze Age technology, widely thought by scholars to have first entered the northwest of the country through the prehistoric Silk Road, actually came by sea. According to him, its bearers were the Hyksos, the Western Asian people who ruled parts of northern Egypt as foreigners between the 17th and 16th centuries B.C., until their eventual expulsion. He notes that the Hyksos possessed at an earlier date almost all the same remarkable technology — bronze metallurgy, chariots, literacy, domesticated plants and animals — that archaeologists discovered at the ancient city of Yin, the capital of China’s second dynasty, the Shang, between 1300 and 1046 B.C. Since the Hyksos are known to have developed ships for war and trade that enabled them to sail the Red and Mediterranean seas, Sun speculates that a small population escaped their collapsing dynasty using seafaring technology that eventually brought them and their Bronze Age culture to the coast of China.

Although the public has mostly received Sun’s theory with an open mind, it still lies outside the academic mainstream. Since the 1990s, most Chinese archaeologists have accepted that much of the nation’s Bronze Age technology came from regions outside of China. But it is not thought to have arrived directly from the Middle East in the course of an epic migration. The more prosaic consensus is that it was transmitted into China from Central Asia by a slow process of cultural exchange (trade, tribute, dowry) across the northern frontier, mediated by Eurasian steppe pastoralists who had contacts with indigenous groups in both regions.

Despite this, the fascination with ancient Egypt appears unlikely to go away soon. As the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology project demonstrated, the sentiment has deep, politically tinged roots. These were on display again during President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Egypt in January to commemorate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations. On arrival, Xi greeted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with an Egyptian proverb: “Once you drink from the Nile, you are destined to return.” They celebrated the antiquity of their two civilizations with a joint visit to the Luxor temple.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/02...l-debate-at-heart-of-china-national-identity/

 

[NCR Redslayer]

Possibly.
Does human life originate from ancient Mesopotamia?
Likely.
Was it all ancient aliens?
Of course.

 

[jph139]

His hypothesis seems more to be "an early Middle Eastern civilization briefly conquered Egypt, then collapsed, and some remnants spread culture/tech to early China."

Which I think is plausible if nothing else, albeit a lot less sensational.

 

[ebullientprism]

It really seems like desperate reaching to me.

 

[Sesha]

It does sound a bit farfetched, like Thor Heyerdahl's theories, or the "12 Tribes of Israel". But who knows. Might be true. Heracles turned into this guy, Vajrapani, through Greco-Buddhist syncretism:

Culture is a weird thing.

 

[sphagnum]

I was about to post that they got their metallurgy from Indo-European pastoral nomads (the Afanasevo) but it looks like the article already mentioned that without calling them by name.

It's an...interesting idea, but it seems pretty farfetched. They would need way more information to substantiate such a claim.

 

[Escape Goat]

I thought we all began with a settler and a warrior in various spots on the map. And those bitches Queen elizabeth and Genghis Khan would constantly try to go to war with everyone.

 

[Malreyn]

I thought we all began with a settler and a warrior in various spots on the map. And those bitches Queen elizabeth and Genghis Khan would constantly try to go to war with everyone.

But who did the "ruins of an ancient civilization" belong to though?

 

[LookAtMeGo]

I believe they both come from Mu/Lemuria.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I thought we all began with a settler and a warrior in various spots on the map. And those bitches Queen elizabeth and Genghis Khan would constantly try to go to war with everyone.

But would you like a trade agreement with England?

 

[ATOMICJORGE]

Possibly.
Does human life originate from ancient Mesopotamia?
Likely.
Was it all ancient aliens?
Of course.

 

[Iksenpets]

The river description seems... a stretch. The rest of it — people tangentially connected to Egypt showing up on boats and introducing some Egyptian tech — seems plausible, but kind of unnecessary/unprovable when there's already better established/more plausible theories around a land route for cultural exchange.

 

[WaffleTaco]

This makes sense to me. I mean where else is Chinese civilization supposed to come from? Doesn't all human life come from Africa? The Chinese people didn't just appear there, they had to come from somewhere. Why not ancient Egypt?

 

[leroidys]

PRC claims of all territory that was part of the Egyptian empire incoming?

 

[PumpkinSpice]

This makes sense to me. I mean where else is Chinese civilization supposed to come from? Doesn't all human life come from Africa? The Chinese people didn't just appear there, they had to come from somewhere. Why not ancient Egypt?

We have very strong evidence that east asians migrated out of Africa far, far longer ago than 1800BC, more like 70,000 years ago.

This article / theory is dealing with how bronze age technology and structures of power came to China, which is thought to have been via trade but in this case is theorized to be an exodus of a short-ruling people (the Hyksos) from Egypt.

 

[darkhunger]

This makes sense to me. I mean where else is Chinese civilization supposed to come from? Doesn't all human life come from Africa? The Chinese people didn't just appear there, they had to come from somewhere. Why not ancient Egypt?

Because having a civilization is not the same as having humans around? There have been humans in China for tens of thousands of years. This is referring to the idea that the Xia Dynasty (traditionally China's first dynasty founded around 4,000 years ago) was actually located in Egypt.

 

[BigJonsson]

I thought we all began with a settler and a warrior in various spots on the map. And those bitches Queen elizabeth and Genghis Khan would constantly try to go to war with everyone.

LOL, well done

 

[WaffleTaco]

Thanks for the answers guy! Asian history is one of my blind spots.

 

[TheRealTalker]

But who did the "ruins of an ancient civilization" belong to though?

barbarians

 

[PantherLotus]

But who did the "ruins of an ancient civilization" belong to though?

 

[PantherLotus]

(I think every early civ deserves credit for its accomplishments, and we should acknowledge that advancements travel through war and through trade, but we should also be nervous about assuming one civ couldn't have come up with some set of technologies on their own. see: pyramids, etc.)

 

[PeskyToaster]

I'm pretty sure most modern historians doubt the very existence of the Xia Dynasty.

 

[PumpkinSpice]

FWIW this idea is cute but probably a load of crock.

 

[jehuty]

I thought we all began with a settler and a warrior in various spots on the map. And those bitches Queen elizabeth and Genghis Khan would constantly try to go to war with everyone.

You know, i've never had a problem with The Queen and Genghis Khan. It's almost always Ghandi and Isabella that always want to poke the bear. Also Montezuma, screw him.

 

[capitalCORN]

I'm pretty sure most modern historians doubt the very existence of the Xia Dynasty.

It's about as valid as counting ancient Egypt as 'Western civilization'.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

His hypothesis seems more to be "an early Middle Eastern civilization briefly conquered Egypt, then collapsed, and some remnants spread culture/tech to early China."

Which I think is plausible if nothing else, albeit a lot less sensational.

Yeah, a (fertile) cultural transplant is not unlikely, because they happen all the time.

Then again, why would generations later still value the imagery of the Nile? It would have to be a family treasure or heirloom of some kind to still be relevant to people living in a very different area.

 

[capitalCORN]

Yeah, a (fertile) cultural transplant is not unlikely, because they happen all the time.

Then again, why would generations later still value the imagery of the Nile? It would have to be a family treasure or heirloom of some kind to still be relevant to people living in a very different area.

Because it's part of their history? Specifically one that specifically treasures its homogenous identity?

 

[andythinkpad]

DNA analysis really don't support any of these.


It's more reaching the Zheng He discovered the Americans.

I will just throw something out since I am interested in both ancient Egyptian culture and Chinese culture

* Chinese writing has nothing to do with ancient Egyptian writing
* Ancient Egyptian civilization also had no concept of "philosophy" when ancient Chinese culture had vibrant philosophical discussions.

 

[BannedEpisode]

A lot of you aren't reading the excerpt. The idea is that an Asian culture that briefly conquered Egypt eventually went back to Asia with Egyptian tech and cultural developments.

I'd be highly skeptical until actual solid evidence was presented, but it's a plausible and if nothing else intriguing theory.

 

[JonnyDBrit]

Because of course, not only are ancient writers very precise in their geography over a continental area, and there's no such thing as changes to the landscape - especially rivers - in four thousand something years.

Really the biggest question would be final choice of location if the Hyksos really made a seafaring voyage in search of a new home. They would have passed the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, India, South East Asia, and then decided to settle after heading upstream somewhere in northern China, which I don't buy so much.

Edit:

A lot of you aren't reading the excerpt. The idea is that an Asian culture that briefly conquered Egypt eventually went back to Asia with Egyptian tech and cultural developments.

I'd be highly skeptical until actual solid evidence was presented, but it's a plausible and if nothing else intriguing theory.

The Hyksos were western Asian, which today we more commonly refer to as 'the middle east'. Where precisely they come from is unclear, but they likely would have been somewhere within the Fertile Crescent, given they followed the immigration of the Canaanites and immigration tends to follow existing trade routes and cultural connections.

 

[andythinkpad]

A lot of you aren't reading the excerpt. The idea is that an Asian culture that briefly conquered Egypt eventually went back to Asia with Egyptian tech and cultural developments.

I'd be highly skeptical until actual solid evidence was presented, but it's a plausible and if nothing else intriguing theory.

So I read the excerpt.

This is actually part of China's effort to prove the Xia dynasty exist.

Out of the 3 Chinese legendary dynasties, Xia-Shang-Zhou, both Shang and Zhou have pretty solid archaeological evidence. There is a whole cotton industry in Chinese academia trying to prove "Xia" dynasty exist.