Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 288 The Most Natural Choice

Seeing that the two of them were about to fight again, Guo Kang hurriedly interjected.

"This matter is mainly due to the incomplete geographical knowledge of the ancients." He reminded: "Many times, our perceptual understanding of distance is actually a bit problematic."

"For example, anyone who has read the Han Shu should know about Li Guangli's conquest of Dawan. Dawan is in Fergana now, and its capital, Guishan City, is almost the same straight-line distance from Chang'an to Dadu. .”

"We all know that Alexander was the person who traveled the farthest to the east. But he passed through the rich hinterland of Persia, and there are still the roads maintained by the Persians throughout the ages. After leaving the Yumen Pass, before Dawan , apart from the wasteland along the way, there are only some city-states with ambiguous attitudes. Considering the environmental differences on the road, the difficulty for Alexander is actually much less difficult."

"But in fact, Li Guangli, who has surpassed Alexander's life in a single march, can only be regarded as a second-rate general in that era. Except for this time, there are not many deeds that can be said."

"So you see, everyone's understanding of distance is actually not the same thing at all. The Seres people think it's a war between 'neighbors', but here, it's as far away as the end of the world."

"Moreover, this kind of thing happened more than once. The Han, Tang, Liao, Yuan, and Ming all launched expeditions across the desert, chasing thousands of miles at every turn."

"With a few exceptions, this is a common phenomenon. Even the Yuan Dynasty, which was in chaos and did not last long, was able to cross the Orkhon River in the north and climb the Langjuxu Mountain; it attacked Central Asia in the west, and its troops reached Talas Hegu, fought back and forth with the Mongolian rebel king in Mobei and the Western Regions. So, this is actually not a rare thing, but a norm."

Hearing his explanation, Zhu Wenkui and little Rangna both nodded.

Guo Kang also breathed a sigh of relief.

The map of this world is still relatively crude. If you want to inquire about the specific distance, unless there are past cases that everyone is familiar with, it is indeed quite difficult.

Of course, even in the age of maps, many impressions are actually quite biased...

For example, everyone knows that Moscow is a very remote place compared to Europe.If a person starts from the Reichstag in Berlin in the future, he will have to walk nearly 1800 kilometers to the Red Square in Moscow.Many Europeans have spent their entire lives without being able to go anywhere.

Correspondingly, if you start from Chang'an City and walk 1800 kilometers, you still haven't left Yumen Pass.

Therefore, this kind of thing cannot be forced.

"Looking at it this way, the core area of ​​the Central Plains is really far away from the rest of the world." Zhu Wenkui also said with emotion: "If it weren't for the much developed sea routes now, I'm afraid it would be really difficult to have any communication."

"Rather than saying it's far away, it's better to say that the ones that are close are all gone." Guo Kang thought for a while, and changed the phrase: "There are actually many places that can be called 'crossroads of civilization'. Isn't Henan also a crossroad of this kind?"

"But if you hacked all the neighbors on several streets to death, and then declared that you are a 'lonely civilization', 'with no nearby civilizations to communicate with', then other people will only think that you are too cruel..."

He said that the civilization of the Central Plains is actually a collection, and he is not bragging.Four to five thousand years ago, this place was a large-scale testing ground for various forms of human society.

To put it simply, the form of secular patrilineal clan society chosen by later generations of Chinese people is not the only way, nor does it suddenly appear in various places.For quite a long time, there was everything on this land.

For more than 1000 years, secular patrilineal clans, matriarchal clans, small family societies dominated by religion, clan societies dominated by religion... a lot of different organizational methods coexisted, and frequent conflicts and even wars occurred.

For example, the matrilineal clan, through more in-depth research in later generations, has confirmed that this system is not a necessary stage of human development.Like other organizational methods, it is one of the options and coexists with other systems.

Contrary to the traditional impression, this is not a "matriarchal society", but a "uncle-right society", or a society of uncle-nephew inheritance.Nor is it the "peaceful and gentle" world dominated by women as some propaganda suggests.On the contrary, the matrilineal clan was also quite fierce and often expanded outwards—in other words, the clans that were not fierce could not survive in the Central Plains of that era.

In reality, some clans change from matrilineal to patrilineal, but there are also patrilineal and then matrilineal clans.Other clans, such as the Central Plains, never showed signs of matrilineal clans.It is estimated that the status of women there has nothing to do with the "matrilineal legacy". It may simply be that the war is too crazy, and all members must be organized, so this phenomenon has occurred.

And in the end, the patrilineal clan, which values ​​the present world and downplays religion, became the absolute mainstream of civilization, and the reason is actually very simple-in the end, he was the only one left.This kind of general experimentation and then playing a winner seems to have become a fixed routine since then, which can be seen until modern times.

The civilizations of the past dynasties are all ruthless people killed in the sea of ​​blood, and they will not stop until there is only one left.Elsewhere, there are few such drastic options.However, for these topics, he has not been able to give specific arguments to people for the time being.

The ancients actually had "archaeology".For example, the famous Bamboo Book Chronicles were compiled by Jin people from ancient tombs of the Warring States period by accident.

The history of the Central Plains is too long, and it is not an exception that the ancients archaeological ancestors, and later generations archaeological ancients.Counting textual research and exegesis, there are even more—in order to verify the authenticity of "Shangshu", this group of people fought from the Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty.It is equivalent to arguing for another 1000 years for the classics from 2000 years ago.This is the only place in the world where you can find something like this...

Guo Kang is here, using the name of Aristotle every day to fabricate reasons, which is relatively simple.Because the vast majority of European researchers have seen at least third-hand works of Aristotle, and it has long been impossible to verify the original text.

Even in Greece, the remains are very limited.Because at that time, the center of research on Aristotle was in Alexandria, Egypt.Therefore, Greek scholars are also very helpless, because they know that they only have a part of Yasheng's works in their hands.Guo Kang never overturned his car even though he was tossing around like this.

But on the other hand, although there are now literati who study epigraphy and even delve into ancient characters, the overall level there is still very primitive, and it is basically the nature of personal hobbies.For the current Ming Dynasty to systematically excavate ancient ruins, the requirements are still too high.

At present, Guo Kang is just trying to find a way to send a group of down-and-out old nobles to Crete for archaeology in the name of tracing the origin of civilization.Anyway, this place was dug by Western Europeans in history, and those early "archaeologists" who were extremely destructive may not be as good as the literati of the Song Dynasty...

Western Europeans did not show mercy to Greece.In his previous life, Greece and Egypt were the most active countries in condemning Britain and France for plundering cultural relics. Compared with them, Seris was the one who suffered less.

It is because he has seen so much that Guo Kang often wonders whether "Europeans claim to be the heirs of Greek culture" is the consensus of Western Europe, the views of some Western European scholars, or the views of Western Europeans that some Serisians themselves think.

Now, when he goes to Athens, he can still see the complete Parthenon, and there are still things in it—because it was not empty at first, and it was the British Elgin who later demolished all the good things in it. , the damaged parts were burned into lime and used to build new buildings.

For this matter, the Greeks and the British have been fighting back and forth.Some British people do not admit that this is looting, but say that these cultural relics can be better protected in the UK, so it is reasonable.This may also be a common statement.

Others denounced the robbery as "seemingly fatal to the representatives of our country in the plundering of objects consecrated by the Turks and other barbarians"--this other barbarian, of course, being the Greeks.

No matter how you say it, the old Greek nobles are relatively knowledgeable.At least it will not be worse than those Western Europeans in the original history.

(End of this chapter)