Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1829 Two major functional characteristics of text

"It's not an elbow. Is this as exaggerated as you say?" Liang Guangping was a little confused: "Can you tell us why the country attaches so much importance to this paper? The oracle bone script must have several thousand words, right? Why are these five words so important?"

"It's not these five words that are important." Zhou Zhi said with a smile, "It's the era in which these inscriptions were made."

"Everyone knows which dynasties our country's earliest dynasties were, right?"

Ah Zi raised her chopsticks: "Xia Shang and Western Zhou, the Eastern Zhou is divided into two periods!"

"Yes, in the general understanding of our people, Xia, Shang and Zhou are the earliest three dynasties."

"Yes, what's the matter?" Liu Hongtao asked.

"Do you know that Western scholars generally only recognize that our country started from the Shang Dynasty, and do not recognize the existence of the Xia Dynasty?"

"Why?" Wu Renzhong was immediately unhappy.

"Their reasoning is that a dynasty must exist in the sense of a civilization, and civilization is based on the three elements they defined: the emergence of metal, writing, cities and states."

"At first, they didn't even recognize the Shang Dynasty. It wasn't until we discovered Yinxu that they acknowledged that the Shang Dynasty recorded in our history books did exist."

"The Shang Dynasty was a dynasty more than 3,000 years ago. It has bronze artifacts, oracle bones, and city ruins, so it meets the three-element principle."

"Then do their own ruins meet the three elements?" Ah Zi asked, "They can't just ask us to do this, right?"

"It's a little funny to talk about this. The earliest record of the Aegean civilization, which is considered by Western countries to be the ancestor of their civilization, is a pottery cup found in Ischia in the Bay of Naples, the so-called Nestor Cup. Western scholars proudly call it the 'oldest example of written Greek', and it is only about 700 years BC."

"But the letter forms are clearly derived from the Phoenician alphabet."

"Let's not discuss whether this way of defining civilization is correct. Let's go back to the bone inscription that Grandpa Chi Ri deciphered. It came from the Jiahu ruins."

"The Jiahu site is a site of the Peiligang culture, dating back to 7,000 BC. The first bone flute in my country was unearthed there, which was made from the leg bones of a red-crowned crane. There are also a large number of Neolithic artifacts and pottery, many of which have inscribed symbols with written features."

"Wait a minute!" Liang Guangping asked, "How old is the oracle bone script you just mentioned?"

"It was more than 3,000 years before Christ."

"That's not...that's not..."

"Just what you think, say it boldly." Zhou Zhi said, "The runes before are called 'Jiahu Carvings'. In addition, there are many Neolithic sites that have similar carvings. These carvings are very similar to the Yi characters I saw after coming here, and the Yi language is also a very ancient language. On a whim, I took those carvings to Grandpa Chiri to see if he could interpret them in ancient Yi language." "As a result, Grandpa Chiri really interpreted them. In addition to the most meaningful 'Tianlei Gate Mo Bi', there are also meaningful carvings such as 'Bird', 'Fortune', and 'God's Throne'."

"The engravings have meaning, so they should be called writing. Although there is no clear evidence of proficient and widespread use, the Aegean civilization that Westerners are so proud of and the Nestor Cup are also like this."

"Since they can use contemporary Phoenician writing to prove that the Nestor Cup is evidence that the Aegean civilization originated in 800 BC, we can also use ancient Yi writing to prove that the Jiahu inscribed pottery fragments and oracle bones are evidence that the Chinese civilization originated in 7000 BC. We can't have double standards!"

"Yes, that's the truth!" Tu Liangzhi slapped his thigh and said, "We can't take advantage of others for nothing, but we can't suffer losses either!"

"So...Grandpa discovered the writing of the Xia Dynasty?"

"That's not necessarily true." Zhou Zhi smiled and said, "The previous dynasty of the Shang Dynasty was the Xia Dynasty. According to historical records, Dayu passed the throne to his son Qi, creating a hereditary monarchy. However, the Jiahu site may not be within the scope of the Xia Dynasty's activities as recorded in historical records."

"But before the Xia Dynasty, there are also Tang Dynasty founded by Yao and Yu Dynasty founded by Shun in history books. Anyway, the deciphering of Jiahu inscriptions at least proves that we already had evidence of the origin of writing 10,000 years ago."

"If that's the case, we now have two of the three elements. As long as we find metal, can we prove that our country's civilization is not three thousand years old, but ten thousand years old?" Ah Zi asked excitedly.

"If we follow this understanding, we will fall into the trap set for us by the Western literary and historical circles." Zhou Zhi said: "Words, metals, and cities, these three elements cannot be seen only on the surface, but we must look at the inner essence of what they represent."

"For a long time, people have defined the word 'language' as 'a tool unique to humans for expressing meaning and communicating ideas' or 'a symbol system unique to humans', believing that language is one of the fundamental characteristics that distinguishes humans from other animals."

"However, modern scientists have discovered that many animals, such as dolphins, whales, chimpanzees, canaries, bees, etc., also have broad languages, including those that humans can hear or cannot hear, and some of them are quite complex."

"So although in many ways, animal language is not comparable to human language, language can no longer be considered a human specialty."

"However, after humans reached a fairly advanced stage of development, they finally invented writing, which is a written language. With writing, people can finally get rid of the animals' language that must be passed on orally to convey information. Instead, they can use writing to send various information to distant places and pass it on to future generations."

"This way of preserving and disseminating information allows human experience to be preserved to the greatest extent possible and to be disseminated to the greatest extent possible. This is something that no other animal can match, and it is truly something that humans are proud of. This has formed something unique to humans - knowledge, not individual knowledge, but the collective knowledge of a society."

“And because of the invention of writing, human beings have acquired collective knowledge of society, thus ending the long period of barbarism and chaos and embarking on the road of civilization.”

Everyone nodded, indicating that there was nothing wrong with what Zhou Zhi said.

"Okay, now we understand the two major functions of writing - the preservation and inheritance of knowledge and information. And this preservation and inheritance is a necessary condition for building a large human society."

"After talking for so long, aren't you still trying to prove the inevitability of text as one of the three elements of writing, Brother Elbow?" Not to mention A Zi, even the two doctoral students Liang Guangping and Liu Hongtao were confused by Zhou Zhi.

“No, no, no, no…” Zhou Zhi raised his finger and shook it in front of his eyes: “The existence of writing can certainly prove the existence of civilization, but this is not the point I want to make.”