Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1537 New Ideas

"Brainstorming, no delay." Minister Liu said, "Anyway, I have time on the weekend."

After finishing speaking, he said to Zhou Zhi in a profound way: "You probably know that the Western archaeological community believes that our civilization only started from the Shang Dynasty, and does not admit that we have the Xia Dynasty?"

Zhou Zhi understood immediately.

In fact, this issue is not monolithic in the international academic community. First of all, Sinology is not a prominent subject overseas. In fact, there are far fewer experts who study Sinology than those who study ancient Greece or even ancient Egypt. According to the current understanding of Chinese people, plus The word "international" should represent a huge elite group of intellectuals, but in fact it is not the same thing.

This circle is not only not big, on the contrary, it is extremely small, so small that almost every expert is an "orphan", such as Western Zhou Dynasty bronze inscriptions, "Bamboo Book Annals", just one Ni Dewei, such as "Zhouyi", Confucian classics, just one Xia Hanyi , almost only three or two people work in one line at most, or even one person in some lines.

Nowadays, when China holds conferences, it especially looks forward to international scholars. As long as a "god" is invited, they will always be treated as guests of honor. Because of this person, the conference can be called an "international conference with global impact."

The views of these people are very different. If one person says "there is no Xia Dynasty in China", then he will become "a considerable number of Western scholars believe that there is no Xia Dynasty in China", which is really funny.

But in fact, many overseas scholars have a lot of debates about the existence of the Xia Dynasty. There is also a directional difference in academic research.

Those who hold a positive attitude generally belong to the "historical believers" group. This group of people believe that the written records and classics circulated in China are credible, or at least worthy of study, and can find the main context of history and culture. This group of people Looking for evidence of the existence of the Xia Dynasty from the rich ancient Chinese classics, the most famous one is Ni Dewei, an emeritus professor at Stanford University.

When Ni Dewei was preparing a lesson plan on a Sunday night, he discovered that there were significant similarities between the "Bamboo Chronicles" and the bronzes of the Wei family unearthed in Fufeng, Shaanxi that he had studied. From this, he believed that the "Bamboo Chronicles" was not a forgery, but a forgery. Priceless historical material.

Starting from believing in the authenticity of "Bamboo Chronicles", Ni Dewei not only firmly believed in the existence of the Xia Dynasty, but also determined that he could accurately reconstruct the ancient Chinese chronology starting from the Xia Dynasty through "Bamboo Chronicles". Influenced by this, his research career for the next thirty-five years was all related to the historiography and chronology of ancient China.

Corresponding to Ni Dewei, there is another school of "suspicious antiquity".

This group believes that it is too absurd to believe in the ancient legends recorded in Chinese classics, so they are more inclined to look for evidence and traces from archaeological results.

If you can't find it, you'd rather have doubts than jump to conclusions easily.

That's all, but in the end it turned into a non-academic rumor like "Western scholars do not recognize the existence of the Xia Dynasty".

However, what is ironic is that this rumor is actually more influenced by the domestic academic style.

The debate over the Xia Dynasty began with Gu Jiegang's antiquity movement during the Republic of China. Xia Nai, one of the founders of modern Chinese archeology, also held this view and was quite cautious about the existence of "Xia culture". In Yudu In his concluding speech at the on-site excavation meeting of the Gaocheng site in Yangcheng, Xia Nai pointed out that Xia culture "should refer to the culture of the Xia nation during the Xia Dynasty", and "the identification of Xia Dynasty culture must have strong evidence. There is no Until strong evidence is found, various opinions about Xia Dynasty culture are just inferences."

But similarly, if there are "schools that doubt the past" in China, there are also "schools that believe in history" in China.

This school believes that it is unlikely that any new archaeological culture will be discovered within the activities of the Xia and Shang tribes recorded in ancient documents, that is, in the Central Plains region of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. Therefore, the Xia culture in archeology must be included in the various stages of various cultural types that have been discovered in this space and at this time.

But even among those scholars who believe that "Xia" exists, there are very different expressions of "Xia". Some people say "Xia culture", some say "Xia Dynasty", and some say "Xia Kingdom". However, there are actually huge differences between these three concepts in history.

These chaos also gave the historians an opportunity to counterattack. Some people advocated that only underground materials should be used to study ancient history, and that some so-called "documents" that cannot be proven to be authentic should not be used to make false claims about archeology. Moreover, superstitious documents should be misused. Chinese scholars of the literature criticized it, believing that it not only deviated from Western archaeological methods, but also ruined Chinese archaeological data.

However, since Wang Guowei proposed the "double evidence method", this research paradigm that combines above-ground materials with underground materials has almost become an unquestionable truth in the field of Chinese history.

Therefore, after so many years of quarreling, the basic contradiction, that is, the key point of the debate, has finally been summarized relatively concentratedly and clearly, that is, whether the existing archaeological discoveries about the Xia Dynasty can provide strong evidence for historical documents. Come up at one point.

Therefore, even if Xia Hanyi is considered by the international academic community to have too much faith in Chinese documents, according to the relatively narrow definition of history determined by the West - non-written materials do not believe in history, the existence of the Xia Dynasty does need to be discussed.

For example, "Yu Gong" and "Yao Dian", are they written materials from the Xia Dynasty? Now the academic circles have proven that this is not the case, so "Shang Shu" cannot be regarded as a trustworthy history.

The West believes that the real historical written data begins with oracle bone inscriptions, but there is no proof in the oracle bone inscriptions.

However, the History Believing School soon encountered events that could make them happy, namely the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions in 1899 and the excavation of the Yin Ruins in Anyang in 1928, which confirmed the existence of the Yin Shang Dynasty.

The most important thing is that the lineage of kings was found in the oracle bone inscriptions, which is completely consistent with Sima Qian's record of the lineage of kings in "Historical Records: Yin Benji"!

This major discovery immediately greatly increased the concentration of historical trust in "Historical Records", which in turn led to people's thinking about "Historical Records·Xia Benji" - since "Yin Benji" has been proven to be trustworthy history, then it should be listed in the same history book What about the "Xia Benji" in it?

However, the ancient cultural relics currently related to "Xia" all come from the Zhou Dynasty, including the Shuyi Bell, which is a bronze ware from around 550 BC. There is a narrative in it that "there are nine states in Xian, and they are in the mood of Yu."

The second is Qin Gong Gui, which contains the four characters "Nai Zhai Yu Responsibility (Ji)".

Although there is a Shang Dynasty in between, it at least shows that during the Western Zhou Dynasty, people were already convinced of Dayu's flood control.

Although these evidences have opened up the topic of re-exploring Xia culture in the archaeological community, they are also not conclusive evidence. Therefore, the matter still exists in a kind of myth. In the end, everyone has to admit that the only things that can be proven with certainty are from Xia history Only contemporaneous data can make "Xia" a reliable history.

This evidence can ultimately only be based on cultural relics.

However, Zhou Zhi proposed a new definition of civilization, allowing sensitive people to immediately discover its value and find a new way to break through this myth.

That is this conclusive evidence, which does not necessarily have to be texts or cultural relics. It can also be a concrete manifestation of civilization - large-scale ruins.

(End of this chapter)