The lessons begin!
Mar. 13th, 2002 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynHi, folks. Welcome to Basic Lessons in Chinese History from someone who doesn't speak the language, doesn't come from the culture, and doesn't hold a degree in it. Consider this your disclaimer: this is what I"ve read, not what I've studied or written about. Do not use this as a substitute for anything that actually affects your future. I take no responsibility for your grades going blooey if you use this.
That being said, on with our story. We begin with REALLY early Chinese history...
1.36 million years ago.
That's right. Humanity has been in the Middle Kingdom for a VERY long time. According to scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, stone tools have been found at a site in northern China. This isn't a big surprise; human ancestors' bones have been found in China for ages. One of the varieties of our ancestor species Homo erectus was dubbed 'Peking Man', after all. The tools aer a relatively new find, though. This particular settlement of early human ancestors was well north of China's famous Yellow River, at a site called Xiaochangliang, forty degrees north. Either our ancestors were a lot better at adapting to changes of temperature physically than previously thought, or they learned to make shelters and wear clothing well ahead of our previous timetable for such events. No evidence yet of fire or shelters at the Xiaochangliang site, though. Oh well.
Fast-forward half a million years (let's face it, things don't exactly happen quickly when we're talking about Homo erectus). Human ancestors have spread south some six hundred kilometers and established a settlement in an area that will one day be named Zhou Kou Dian, not far from the future site of the city of Beijing. This settlement is inhabited for several hundred thousand years, if the layer of bones and other detritus is anything to go by. There was a time when we thought the inhabitants of Zhoukoudian used fire, but lately studies of the bones have been called into question. Anyway, this merry band of Homo erectus is dubbed Peking Man by Canadian palaeontologist Davidson Black. They're hunters, they're gatherers, and they're in every physical anthropology textbook I've ever seen. Good for them.
They don't go away, either. Fast forward again, but keep your finger on the button. Twenty-five thousand years BCE (Before the Common Era), humans were still living in the area around Zhoukoudian. The archaeological evidence indicates that these folks had a pretty good grasp on things like carving and knot-tying, and seemed to have a chief and some kind of tribal structure. Fast forward through about twenty thousand more years, though, and we're starting to move into something like recognizable time... it's 5000 or so BCE, seven thousand years before the present, and at a place called Yangshao there's a good little culture going. There's evidence of people growing rice and of the weaving of cloth, and somewhere in all of this, the Yangshao people get the hang of pottery. I've seen some of these Neolithic pots in museums. They make me want to scream - the designs look so much like American Southwestern Natives' designs that it isn't even funny. Good-looking pots, though. These folks are also steaming their food - the archaeologists have found three-legged contraptions that served as boilers, and pots that were set on the top to use the moist heat. Just to put this in perspective, this is the time frame in which agriculture was starting to spread southwards out of Egypt's Nile Delta, and the beginnings of the Minoan civilization in Crete. (It's a two thousand year time span, gimme a break.)
At this point we start moving out of the realm of archaeology and into the realm of legends. More importantly, into the realm of legendary names. Chinese history and legend credits a handful of people with the dawn of civilization and all the advances that go along with it. I should note that it's more than a little hard to separate the deities from the individuals, and that much of this is pure legend anyway, but it's the best I can do. It's not like Europe was exactly keeping records worth being proud of, yanno. We're up to 3000 BCE and Egypt's just got its first dynasty under its belt, and just figured out that Bricks are Good for Building, so cut me some slack on the legendary founders of it all, m'kay?
This period is known as the San Huang period - the time of the Three Emperors. First on our list is Sui Ren, or Sui Jen, depending on which romanization you're using. I have to admit I'm a little unclear as to exactly when he's supposed to be; I've seen timelines placing him at the start of the period, as well as at the end... oh, well. Sorry about that. The legends say he was the one to bring fire down from Heaven and use it to cook meat for the first time. The idea here was to prevent disease transmission.
Let's all stop for a moment and thank the nice prehistoric emperor for coming up with an idea that still manages to elude most major restaurant chains throughout the United States of America, shall we?
Right, so, anyway. After him was a chap by the name of Fu Xi, aka Fuxi and Fu Hsi. Fu Xi was said to have seen the future in the patterns on a tortoise shell, and has gone down in legend as the inventor of all kinds of things. Music, for one thing. Domestication of animals, for another. Painting, fishing with nets, the trigrams, you name it. (The trigrams being those sets of long and/or short lines stacked on top of each other. They're part of tai chi, bagua, feng shui arrangements, and I Ching-based divination.) He also invented the patriarchy, more or less - it was his idea that marriage should be banned among those who shared parentage or close ancestors. If you've read Barry Hughart's The Story of the Stone, you've met his wife... Fu Xi was married to Nu Huo, also rendered into English as Nu Kua. Yes, the one who mended the sky, or patched the Wall of Heaven, or whatever legend you're thinking of. I warned you it's hard to keep the gods and mortals separate.
After Fu Xi - a lonnnnnnnnng way after Fu Xi - comes a fella name of Shen Nong. I like him. Shen Nong is also known as Yan Di, I dunno if you'll ever have heard either of the names. He's said to have invented the wooden plough, which is a good thing, and he's considered the father of agriculture, which is also good. Shen Nong just kinda got into the whole plants-as-servants-of-man thing all around, because he's considered the inventor of Chinese herbal medicine... and the originator of tea. Apparently, in addition to the part where he was busy tasting every herb he could get his hands on and writing down the effects they had, he at one point set a pot of water up to boil under a bush. Some leaves fell in, unnoticed. WOW did he like what the water tasted like afterwards. Next thing you know - bam. Tea cultivation left and right. Compared to this, the part where they say he introduced concepts like 'marketplaces' and 'trade' seems almost tame. The man was declared to be God of Agriculture at some point. I don't know if this was in honor of his achievements, or if he was supposed to be the god from the start, or what.
That brings us to the very edge of historicity. I'm gonna stop here for now. Our next stop will be the Three Model Emperors, one of whom was credited with being a Gou'ald in Stargate: SG1. I'm serious.
That being said, on with our story. We begin with REALLY early Chinese history...
1.36 million years ago.
That's right. Humanity has been in the Middle Kingdom for a VERY long time. According to scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, stone tools have been found at a site in northern China. This isn't a big surprise; human ancestors' bones have been found in China for ages. One of the varieties of our ancestor species Homo erectus was dubbed 'Peking Man', after all. The tools aer a relatively new find, though. This particular settlement of early human ancestors was well north of China's famous Yellow River, at a site called Xiaochangliang, forty degrees north. Either our ancestors were a lot better at adapting to changes of temperature physically than previously thought, or they learned to make shelters and wear clothing well ahead of our previous timetable for such events. No evidence yet of fire or shelters at the Xiaochangliang site, though. Oh well.
Fast-forward half a million years (let's face it, things don't exactly happen quickly when we're talking about Homo erectus). Human ancestors have spread south some six hundred kilometers and established a settlement in an area that will one day be named Zhou Kou Dian, not far from the future site of the city of Beijing. This settlement is inhabited for several hundred thousand years, if the layer of bones and other detritus is anything to go by. There was a time when we thought the inhabitants of Zhoukoudian used fire, but lately studies of the bones have been called into question. Anyway, this merry band of Homo erectus is dubbed Peking Man by Canadian palaeontologist Davidson Black. They're hunters, they're gatherers, and they're in every physical anthropology textbook I've ever seen. Good for them.
They don't go away, either. Fast forward again, but keep your finger on the button. Twenty-five thousand years BCE (Before the Common Era), humans were still living in the area around Zhoukoudian. The archaeological evidence indicates that these folks had a pretty good grasp on things like carving and knot-tying, and seemed to have a chief and some kind of tribal structure. Fast forward through about twenty thousand more years, though, and we're starting to move into something like recognizable time... it's 5000 or so BCE, seven thousand years before the present, and at a place called Yangshao there's a good little culture going. There's evidence of people growing rice and of the weaving of cloth, and somewhere in all of this, the Yangshao people get the hang of pottery. I've seen some of these Neolithic pots in museums. They make me want to scream - the designs look so much like American Southwestern Natives' designs that it isn't even funny. Good-looking pots, though. These folks are also steaming their food - the archaeologists have found three-legged contraptions that served as boilers, and pots that were set on the top to use the moist heat. Just to put this in perspective, this is the time frame in which agriculture was starting to spread southwards out of Egypt's Nile Delta, and the beginnings of the Minoan civilization in Crete. (It's a two thousand year time span, gimme a break.)
At this point we start moving out of the realm of archaeology and into the realm of legends. More importantly, into the realm of legendary names. Chinese history and legend credits a handful of people with the dawn of civilization and all the advances that go along with it. I should note that it's more than a little hard to separate the deities from the individuals, and that much of this is pure legend anyway, but it's the best I can do. It's not like Europe was exactly keeping records worth being proud of, yanno. We're up to 3000 BCE and Egypt's just got its first dynasty under its belt, and just figured out that Bricks are Good for Building, so cut me some slack on the legendary founders of it all, m'kay?
This period is known as the San Huang period - the time of the Three Emperors. First on our list is Sui Ren, or Sui Jen, depending on which romanization you're using. I have to admit I'm a little unclear as to exactly when he's supposed to be; I've seen timelines placing him at the start of the period, as well as at the end... oh, well. Sorry about that. The legends say he was the one to bring fire down from Heaven and use it to cook meat for the first time. The idea here was to prevent disease transmission.
Let's all stop for a moment and thank the nice prehistoric emperor for coming up with an idea that still manages to elude most major restaurant chains throughout the United States of America, shall we?
Right, so, anyway. After him was a chap by the name of Fu Xi, aka Fuxi and Fu Hsi. Fu Xi was said to have seen the future in the patterns on a tortoise shell, and has gone down in legend as the inventor of all kinds of things. Music, for one thing. Domestication of animals, for another. Painting, fishing with nets, the trigrams, you name it. (The trigrams being those sets of long and/or short lines stacked on top of each other. They're part of tai chi, bagua, feng shui arrangements, and I Ching-based divination.) He also invented the patriarchy, more or less - it was his idea that marriage should be banned among those who shared parentage or close ancestors. If you've read Barry Hughart's The Story of the Stone, you've met his wife... Fu Xi was married to Nu Huo, also rendered into English as Nu Kua. Yes, the one who mended the sky, or patched the Wall of Heaven, or whatever legend you're thinking of. I warned you it's hard to keep the gods and mortals separate.
After Fu Xi - a lonnnnnnnnng way after Fu Xi - comes a fella name of Shen Nong. I like him. Shen Nong is also known as Yan Di, I dunno if you'll ever have heard either of the names. He's said to have invented the wooden plough, which is a good thing, and he's considered the father of agriculture, which is also good. Shen Nong just kinda got into the whole plants-as-servants-of-man thing all around, because he's considered the inventor of Chinese herbal medicine... and the originator of tea. Apparently, in addition to the part where he was busy tasting every herb he could get his hands on and writing down the effects they had, he at one point set a pot of water up to boil under a bush. Some leaves fell in, unnoticed. WOW did he like what the water tasted like afterwards. Next thing you know - bam. Tea cultivation left and right. Compared to this, the part where they say he introduced concepts like 'marketplaces' and 'trade' seems almost tame. The man was declared to be God of Agriculture at some point. I don't know if this was in honor of his achievements, or if he was supposed to be the god from the start, or what.
That brings us to the very edge of historicity. I'm gonna stop here for now. Our next stop will be the Three Model Emperors, one of whom was credited with being a Gou'ald in Stargate: SG1. I'm serious.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-03-12 09:48 pm (UTC)Anyway, countless stories arose about him, his incorruptibility, his detective ability and so on, and after his death, he was worshipped (and still is) as the god of Justice - other accounts have him sitting in judgment in one of the Courts of Hell. Mystical details even crept into his mortal life, like the fact he was born with black skin, and had a crescent moon on his forehead as a birthmark signifying his divine nature.
So the answer as to whether Shen Nong became the God of Agriculture or was always a god is... both, probably.
no subject
Date: 2002-03-12 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-03-13 11:24 am (UTC)*GIGGGGGGLES*