Why do some traitors always say that the Xia Dynasty did not exist and that the history of China is only 3500 years?

Some people doubted whether the Xia and Shang Dynasties in China really existed. Later, after the discovery of Yin Ruins, there was no doubt in Shang Dynasty. However, doubts about the existence of the Xia Dynasty still exist. This suspicion comes from a very simple western theory: there is no archaeological evidence and it cannot be clearly proved. This theory did not exist in the west since ancient times, but only appeared after the formation of modern western archaeology. A series of archaeological discoveries in modern Europe have greatly strengthened the foundation of this theory.

In addition to written records, there are also archaeological discoveries when talking about Greek civilization in the West. The most obvious example is Troy. For a long period of history, people have always doubted whether Troy in Homer's epic really exists. In the past, people often regarded Troy war stories in Homer's epic as a literary work rather than a real history. However, a German named Sherman firmly believes that Homer's epic is not literature, but real history. So he spent a lot of money and began to look for the ruins of Troy. Finally found it, and now it is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Turkey. Besides Troy, Greece has the remains of Athens, Crete and Mycenae. These sites are also called "Crete Civilization" and "Mycenae Civilization" respectively. This series of achievements in modern western archaeology makes people more and more insist that archaeological evidence is necessary to prove an ancient civilization. More interestingly, these archaeological evidences basically refer to precious metal objects such as gold wares and bronzes.

In my opinion, this argument about the relationship between archaeology and civilization in the West is applicable in Europe and the Mediterranean, but not necessarily in China or other parts of the world. In the Mediterranean region, a small city has a lot of gold and silver treasures for special reasons to prove the existence of a "civilization". Whether Crete, Mycenae, Athens or Troy, they can obviously be regarded as a city, but their areas are not large. According to modern archaeology, the total population of Troy site at that time was about 2000 people. The French scholar Kurange said that the average Greek city-state has about 200-350 citizens. In other words, an ancient Greek city-state, even if there were people without citizenship, had a small population, some said thousands, some said tens of thousands. According to the description of Troy in Homer's epic, it was more like a clan than a country that ruled Troy. However, in today's small city, a large number of gold and silver treasures have been discovered by archaeology. Why? Because all the "civilizations" in ancient Greece were dominated by trade economy.

Even if a small city like Troy is surrounded by agricultural population, it is difficult to create a large number of gold and silver treasures discovered by archaeology. In other words, it is impossible for Troy to have so much wealth by his own ability to create wealth. Troy's source of wealth was trade, which occupied the throat of Europe, Asia and Africa at that time. The main source of wealth was the taxation of past goods. In China's words, "If you want to live from now on, stay and buy the passage". The reason why the Greek Coalition forces spared no expense to capture Troy was not because of the simple reason that Helen was kidnapped. The kidnapping of Helen may be true, but it is probably just an excuse for the Greek Coalition forces to attack Troy, just like the United States said that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The fundamental purpose of the Greek Coalition forces attacking Troy is to occupy the throat of the wealth channel.

Besides Troy, other archaeological discoveries in ancient Greece, including Crete civilization and Mycenae civilization, were the result of trade and economy. Otherwise, there is no gold mine and rich products on a small island in the Mediterranean. Where can there be so many gold and silver treasures? Moreover, the means of trade and economic exchange forced the Greeks without a unified currency to turn to precious metals such as gold and silver, which also formed the tradition of western civilization attaching importance to precious metals such as gold.

For China, trade has never occupied the main position of economic activities, and farmers' fair trade is mainly a small-scale exchange of daily necessities. The main source of China's ancient wealth was not trade, but land. Therefore, cities were not very important in ancient China society, especially in the early Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. These two different sources of wealth first cause different attitudes towards precious metals such as gold and silver. At that time, China people paid more attention to jade than to gold and silver, and jade was not used as a trade intermediary. Secondly, without developed trade, there will naturally be a lack of cities as trade centers, and naturally there will be no large amount of gold and silver wealth gathered in cities. Therefore, it is not very applicable to judge the ancient civilization of China by the standard of the amount of gold and silver treasures owned by a small town. Even the Yin ruins, bronzes and other items appeared not in a city, but in a tomb.

Mediterranean civilization takes trade as the main economic source, which makes some small city-states suddenly emerge in the trade competition, forming a large concentration of wealth in a short time, but at the same time it also arouses the envy of people around, so wars continue. This caused a sudden interruption of civilization in a once prosperous small city-state. This phenomenon makes it possible for modern archaeology to find a small city-state site, which contains a lot of gold and silver treasures. In China, the existence of a civilization rarely disappears because of the disappearance of a city. The wealth of ancient China society was not mainly concentrated in cities because of trade, but more dispersed in rural areas because of agriculture. Therefore, in China, it is probably futile to try to prove the existence of a civilization with the treasure of a city site.

For the trade economy in the Mediterranean region, cities embody all the contents of civilization, and the difference between cities and villages is the difference between civilization and barbarism. In China's agricultural civilization, the city mainly embodies the management function, not the full value of civilization. In agricultural civilization, the difference between cities and rural areas is not the difference between civilization and barbarism. On the contrary, it is normal for the essence of agricultural civilization to stay in the countryside. For example, the Ming and Qing residential villages that we can still see are as exquisite and elegant as those in Beijing at the same time.

The Zhou dynasty should be regarded as an era of trusting history, but the capital and tomb site of the Zhou dynasty have not been determined so far, and the treasures of the Zhou dynasty are rarely found. But this does not prevent us from acknowledging that the Zhou Dynasty had a complete system civilization. Yin Ruins in Shang Dynasty are not city sites, but tombs. For the earlier Xia dynasty, if we still use the concept of western archaeology to measure and judge a civilization with the treasure of a small town site, it will probably never have a result. Because the conclusion of the relationship between archaeology and civilization based on Mediterranean civilization in the west may not be applicable to Xia Dynasty.

Among the archaeological discoveries in China, Yanshi has a "Erlitou culture". Chronologically, Erlitou culture belongs to Xia Dynasty. Compared with various "civilizations" in the Mediterranean, China people only refer to Erlitou as "culture". However, the population of each "civilization" site in the Mediterranean is only a few thousand people, and the scale of "Erlitou Culture" is estimated to accommodate about150,000 people, and some estimates are higher. Compared with the ancient Greek "city-state civilization", "Erlitou culture" is like a real city or capital. Archaeologists and historians in China have not yet declared Erlitou culture as the capital of Xia Dynasty, mainly because of the influence of modern western archaeology-Erlitou has not found a large number of precious metals.

In my opinion, to judge the nature of Erlitou culture, we should abandon the conclusion that western archaeology was formed in Mediterranean archaeology. Otherwise, for the historical evidence of ancient China, we can only rely on the appearance of tyrants such as Qin Shihuang, which may lead to a highly unreasonable concentration of wealth, and may also be accepted by western archaeological theories today. As for "sages" like Yao Shun, those ancient "sages" who didn't extort money from others, we may never get archaeological confirmation from western archaeological theories. But in fact, rice has been cultivated artificially in China for 1000 years, and the earliest silk products have a history of 7000 years. Moreover, we don't know when China began to pay attention to precious metals such as gold and silver. Maybe people in the Xia Dynasty really "treated gold and silver like dirt"?

In a word, some conclusions of western archaeological theory are based on the trade economy of Mediterranean city-states, which did not exist in ancient China. Therefore, this conclusion should not be simply applied to ancient archaeology in China. In other words, to find or confirm the capital of Xia Dynasty, we can't rely entirely on western archaeological theories. As for whether Erlitou culture can be judged as the capital of Xia Dynasty, let real archaeologists and historians come to a conclusion.

The information comes from:/s/blog _ 4134ba9001000c5i.html.