The traditional Chinese historical texts suggest that there existed a hereditary relationship from Emperors Yan and Huang to the Three Dynasties. During the 1920s, under the banner of rectifying the inaccurate histori...The traditional Chinese historical texts suggest that there existed a hereditary relationship from Emperors Yan and Huang to the Three Dynasties. During the 1920s, under the banner of rectifying the inaccurate historical records, the skeptical school of ancient history demolished the Chinese history system, and undermined the ideas of an unilineal nation and a unified territory. The Xia and Shang were partitioned into two camps. Under the influence of the imperial colonists, hypothesis of western origin of Chinese culture, the Yangshao Culture discovered in 1921 was interpreted as a culture diffused from the West. Some patriotic Chinese scholars worked hard to uncover the indigenous root of Chinese culture. Their effort brought the Longshan Culture in the east to light. They argued that Longshan was the forerunner of the Shang Culture of the East Yi family which competed with and hostile to the Xia people of the Yangshao Culture. The impact of the hypothesis of" East Yi and West Xia " was both deep and broad. Nevertheless, excavations at the archaeology sites of Miaodigou, Wangwan and Erlitou between the late fifties and early sixties linked the Yangshao, Longshan and Yingxu cultures into a single cultural entity. The archaeology support the Xia-Shang dualism hypothesis was thus eroded. It is time to abandon skepticism and dualism in the study of early China.展开更多
文摘The traditional Chinese historical texts suggest that there existed a hereditary relationship from Emperors Yan and Huang to the Three Dynasties. During the 1920s, under the banner of rectifying the inaccurate historical records, the skeptical school of ancient history demolished the Chinese history system, and undermined the ideas of an unilineal nation and a unified territory. The Xia and Shang were partitioned into two camps. Under the influence of the imperial colonists, hypothesis of western origin of Chinese culture, the Yangshao Culture discovered in 1921 was interpreted as a culture diffused from the West. Some patriotic Chinese scholars worked hard to uncover the indigenous root of Chinese culture. Their effort brought the Longshan Culture in the east to light. They argued that Longshan was the forerunner of the Shang Culture of the East Yi family which competed with and hostile to the Xia people of the Yangshao Culture. The impact of the hypothesis of" East Yi and West Xia " was both deep and broad. Nevertheless, excavations at the archaeology sites of Miaodigou, Wangwan and Erlitou between the late fifties and early sixties linked the Yangshao, Longshan and Yingxu cultures into a single cultural entity. The archaeology support the Xia-Shang dualism hypothesis was thus eroded. It is time to abandon skepticism and dualism in the study of early China.
