Chapter 1537 New Ideas
"Brainstorming, don't delay." Minister Liu said: "Anyway, I have time on the weekend."
After that, he said to Zhou Zhi meaningfully: " 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.
This issue is actually 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 today’s The 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, international scholars are especially expected. As long as they invite a "god", 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 it 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 another academic directional research difference.
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 worth studying, and they can find the main historical and cultural information. These people look 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". Inspired by this Influenced by the fanatical historical school of thought, his research career for the next thirty-five years was all related to the compilation and chronology of ancient Chinese history.
Corresponding to Ni Dewei 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” attitude, at the excavation site of Gaocheng site in Yangcheng, Yudu In the concluding speech of the meeting, 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. Before strong evidence is found, the relevant Various opinions on Xia Dynasty culture are just inferences."
But similarly, if there is a "school of doubting the past" in China, there is also a "school of believing in history".
This school of thought 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 archaeological Xia culture 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 not some so-called "documents" that cannot prove their authenticity at all. Chinese scholars who have come to attach great importance to archaeology, and also criticize superstitious documents and abuse documents, believe that it not only deviates from Western archaeological methods, but also ruins 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.
So 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 be analyzed Historical documents have produced strong evidence for this.
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 Code", are they written materials of 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.
But the Shishi Sect soon ushered in events that made 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 they are both listed in the same history book What about the "Xia Benji" in it?
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. thread".
The second is Qin Gong Gui, which has the four characters "Naizhai 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 only those who can prove it are certain. Only when it comes from the same period of Xia history can "Xia" become 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 the conclusive evidence. It does not have to be words or cultural relics. It can also be the specific expression of civilization-large-scale ruins.
(End of this chapter)