How can the continuation of a civilization be proven? Is it the maintenance of the city-state, the multiplication of the people, or the compilation of historical books? Neither. Throughout the ages, there are many examples of the destruction of the city-state and the dispersion of the country, the history of the change of dynasties of the people is also vivid, and even the historical relics of ancient Egypt have been proved to be the technological falsification of the industrial age. However, only the Chinese civilization is an exception, although China is only 75 years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, but the history of Chinese civilization is a full 5,000 years. Why does China's thousand-year-old history need no self-proof?
How many definitions of Chinese history can you hear abroad? Some people say that China is a new country with a history of only 75 years, because since the founding of the People's Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949, it has only a history of 75 years. It is also said that China has a history of about 3,700 years, because in 1600 BC, the Shang Dynasty first appeared oracle bone inscriptions, and writing is the beginning of civilization; It is also said that Chinese history never existed. After all, the ancient country, known as the four major civilizations, has long been renewed. Since people and things are no longer what they used to be, history should be recalculated at the beginning, so as to show the fairness of world history.
Admittedly, these statements have their place. However, without seeing the overall situation, just a cubic meter of land wants to say that the world is big, even if it is conclusive, the conclusion is like a leopard in the tube. If we want to figure out the longevity of Chinese civilization, we must first figure out what is a symbol of civilization.
To put it simply, for a civilization to exist, it cannot exist without the following prerequisites: writing, city-states, uninterrupted history, and a sense of historical identity of the people with their own culture.
In many people's minds, civilization is infinitely closer to history. As long as history exists, it proves that civilization exists. This idea is, of course, wrong. If you understand historical nihilism, you probably understand the fragility of history. To give a simple example, if you are a native of Sichuan, and you are chatting with someone one day, and you say that you went to Liangguang in your childhood, and it turns out that there is no grass there, which is far worse than Sichuan—no one will doubt the authenticity of this sentence, after all, this is your history, and in the past with individual randomness, any situation may have happened; But if you claim that you haven't seen the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Guangdong in the 90s, every Chinese will jump up and refute it, because the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall was built in Yuexiu, Guangzhou, in 1931. Authentic architectural evidence is not tolerated with any tampering or denial.
This is one of the differences between history and civilization. In other words, if you want to prove that civilization does exist, you should use universally accepted history to support it. Under such prerequisites, words are undoubtedly the most convincing representatives.
As for the origin of Chinese characters, there are many arguments in ancient Chinese literature. There are knotted ropes, gossip said, and even more book deeds, but the more representative ones are the appearance of oracle bone inscriptions during the Shang Dynasty. As a relatively mature script, oracle bone inscription was originally carved on tortoise shells or animal bones as a tool for divination, but with the long evolution, this script later became independent from divination and began to be widely used as an independent written communication tool. Although for various reasons, the oracle bone inscription did not complete the popularization of the whole era, it is undeniable that its appearance changed the way of life of the people at that time, and also became a direct argument to prove the real existence of that period of history.
This alone is enough to push Chinese civilization forward by a thousand years, giving it a time span of 3,700 years. Of course, in the long years of evolution, Yin Shang was not a complete unified era of royal power, in the following thousand years, the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, these once glorious and dazzling feudal dynasties, in order to unify the royal power, the people have carried out physical and even spiritual hegemony.
So in the following period, we can see that the merchants' clothes changed from the top and bottom of the shirt and the right side of the hair to the Tang Dynasty skirt and shawl, and the soap was folded into a scarf. Even the makeup that was popular in the upper and lower classes of society at that time also underwent a huge change - the Song people changed the Changqing blood smudge makeup that was popular in the Tang Dynasty, and they all "inserted golden clouds and golden warps", and painted "distant mountain eyebrows" with rouge and light powder. Even, after the Manchurians entered the customs, the Qing Dynasty also changed the values of the predecessors of "parents of the body's hair and skin", shaved all the hair around, and left a "money rat tail" with a handful of hair the size of a copper coin in the middle.
In a sense, the change in people's hair and makeup symbolizes the end of one period of history. However, compared with the Western society that completed autocratic rule through ethnic division, the annihilation of ancient Chinese dynasties does not mean the decline of civilization. Because since Qin Shi Huang unified the six countries, "the book is the same text, the car is the same track" has been written into the national decree. It was also from this time that Chinese characters had a more solid development route and began to follow the writing preferences of the king, and a variety of fonts including Jinwen, Lishu, Cursive, and Xingshu were derived. However, no matter how the glyph changes, the people's judgment and understanding of the character has never changed.
It is under such circumstances that Sima Qian's "Book of History" can be called "the swan song of historians" by Lu Xun, and the "bronze mirror theory" of Tian Khan can be followed by the kings of all dynasties. This is the credit of writing, under the influence of the writing that has been passed down for thousands of years, all dynasties have written together along the same vein, and finally converged into the long river of Chinese civilization.
This is the essence of civilization as a civilization. In addition, the city-state, or the land, is a key element in helping civilization to stand. Looking back on history, we can find that in the evolution of the years hundreds of years ago, no matter how the times changed and how the artillery fires flew, our territory has always been stable. Although the territory was sometimes divided into large and small areas under the different political opinions of the rulers of previous dynasties, it was always one acre and three points of land on the border line that changed. As for the center's status as the capital, no other civilization has been declared a master for thousands of years. It is precisely because of this that there will be a history of the strong spread of oriental civilization to today's Japan and South Korea.
In other words, on the premise of having writing, the stability of the city-state is also evidence of the existence of a country's civilization. We all know that the United States of America today is not a glorious country. If it weren't for the discovery of the North American continent by white Europeans, the territory of the Indians, it would not have been labeled as a "United States of America". Although the Indians were well-deserved indigenous in terms of first coming and lasting, their fault was that they did not have time to establish the city-state, which later became the concept of the state. In the absence of a concept of land ownership, they met white Europeans, did not exclude dissidents with the vigilance of defending their homeland, and even the "Thanksgiving" that the United States is proud of was due to the kindness of these natives - because there was no sense of territory, interests and desires finally made these beneficiaries quickly turn their faces, complete the plundering of resources in an extremely cruel way, and successfully occupied the magpie's nest for the next few hundred years, and exterminated the original owners.
Even, nowadays, when we talk about the same land, we will unthinkingly answer that this is the inherent territory of the United States, but we subconsciously ignore that in the first few years of the founding of the United States, there were other people of different colors active here.
This is the tragedy of the absence of the concept of the city-state. However, if we take 10,000 steps back, what happened to the Indians cannot be counted as the annihilation of civilization. Because whether or not they met the white Europeans, they didn't give a proper place to the land under their feet. Therefore, in the case of only "residency", the pain of the Indians can only be counted as the loss of tribal culture.
Speaking of which, I believe many people will have such a question: if words and city-states are counted as proof of the existence of civilization, then why is it that among the "four ancient civilizations" today, only China does not need to add the prefix of the word "ancient"?
The answer is simple. This is what we are going to talk about next, the magical existence that allows civilization to continue to develop, which is called "cultural identity".
Looking at Chinese history, we will find that no matter how the dynasty changes, even if there is a blood feud between the two rulers, they will still support one point of view from the bottom of their hearts: everyone here is Chinese. This is something that no other civilization can do. After all, the first thing the new ruler had to do after completing the enthronement ceremony was to clear up dissent and maintain his feudal rule.
But for China, as long as you believe in courtesy, righteousness, benevolence, wisdom, faith and the golden mean, you can be regarded as a member of the same clan who has read poetry and books. This is the miraculous power of the Confucian Way. Since the rise of Confucianism during the period of Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty, the mottos of "government is in winning the people" and "being gentle and frugal" have been hidden in the underlying cognition of every Chinese, just like genetic bloodlines. Looking at today's French, even if history proves that they are descendants of Rome, if you take out a Frenchman, the probability that they will admit that the country originated in 50 BC is very small.
It is no exaggeration to say that the smooth operation of Chinese civilization is inseparable from the transmission of Confucian ideas of governing the world from generation to generation. Although as an idea, it inevitably has limitations, it is undeniable that under the influence of this thought, the broadness and inclusiveness of Chinese civilization have been greatly improved. Even the nomads who had scorned the civilization of the Central Plains were gradually assimilated after entering the Central Plains and became staunch Confucian fighters.
And this is the reason why Chinese civilization is based. As Chinese, we never doubt the historical context of the upper and lower 5,000 years, but it is not until these years that the opening of the Liangzhu site has truly proved to the world that China has a history of 5,000 years of civilization.
This is the best maintenance of the "5,000-year-old theory". Thinking about it from another angle, China's thousand-year-old history may never need to prove itself. Because every black-haired and yellow-skinned Chinese is a silent proof of that history.