Trace the Nature of the Continuity of Chinese Culture Over Time

February 26, 2010,12:21 PM

As library of congress summarizes, "THE HISTORY OF CHINA, as documented in ancient writings, dates back some 3,300 years. Modern archaeological studies provide evidence of still more ancient origins in a culture that flourished between 2500 and 2000 B.C. in what is now central China and the lower Huang He (Yellow River) Valley of north China. Centuries of migration, amalgamation, and development brought about a distinctive system of writing, philosophy, art, and political organization that came to be recognizable as Chinese civilization. What makes the civilization unique in world history is its continuity through over 4,000 years to the present century."

This thread (a slimmed and more focused version from the previous thread) is devoted to discussing the continuity of Chinese civilization in various aspects (listed above) and perhaps what is unique in this continuity (comparative analysis with other civilizations is welcomed).

Some other academic sources:

The Rise and the Fall of the Great Powers, Kennedy, P.

"Of all the civilizations of premodern times, non appeared more advanced, none felt more superior, than that of China. Its considerable population, 100-130 million compared with Europe's 50-55 million in the fifteenth century; its remarkable culture; its exceedingly fertile and irrigated plains, linked by a splendid canal system since the eleventh century; its unified, hierarchical administration run by a well-educated Confucian bureaucracy had given a coherence and sophistication to Chinese society which was the envy of foreign visitors.

Book: History of the World, J. Roberts, page 132-141 (excerpts)

The most striking fact of China�s History is that it has gone for so long. For about 2500 years there has been a Chinese nation using a Chinese language

�China has had a continuous experience of civilization and this is the key to Chinese historical identity. China�s nationhood is much cultural as political.
Culture made unified government easier. Somehow, at a very early date, it crystallized certain institutions and attitudes which were to endure because they suited its circumstances. Some of them seem even to transcend the revolution of the twentieth century.

�..Nevertheless, two basic processes were going on for most of this time �The first was a continuing diffusion of culture outwards from the Yellow River�.

��The second phase of these fundamental and continuous processes under both Shang and Chou was the establishment of landmarks and institutions which were to survive until the modern times�.
The language
�the Chinese language grew and evolved, but remained essentially within the pictographic framework. Already under the Shang, moreover, the structure of the language was that of the modern Chinese � monosyllabic and depending on word order, not on the inflection of words, to convey meaning. The Shang, in fact, already used a form of Chinese.
�It was if enormous importance as a unifying and stabilizing force because written Chinese became a language of government and culture transcending divisions of dialect, religion and region. Its use by the �lite tied the country together .

"Civilizations", page 200

"Civilizations have to open to a range of influences ot they wither or become inert.... Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations dwindled, and what survived of their heritage was transmitted via successor civilizations : that of the Greece and Rome in the Egyptian case, and Persia in the Mesopotamian...The Harappan (India) sites look like thay had been obliterated. The sense of utter devastation with which one beholds their ruins is unrelieved by the sight of any other wreckage of the past. In China, on the other side, the lands where civilization started are inabited still; not only has occupation been continuous, but the civilization has never flagged....the continuities of Chinese history have been traditionally overestimated in some aspects, but the general claim to a uniquely enduring achievement commands assents."

The Indus Valley and The Genesis Of South Asian Civilization World History Project

. ..When irrigated by the massive spring floods of the Yellow River, the rich soil of the North China plain proved a superb basis for what has been the largest and most enduring civilization in human history.
..In contrast to the civilization of the Indus valley, the original civilization of China has survived nomadic incursions and natural catastrophes and profoundly influenced the course of all Chinese history.
�The Shang and Zhou worship of Heaven and their ancestral veneration have remained central to Chinese religious belief and practice for thousands of years. The concept of the Mandate of Heaven has been pivotal in Chinese political thinking and organization�
In contrast to India, many of the key ingredients of China's early civilizations have remained central throughout Chinese history. This persistence has made for a continuity of identity that is unique to the Chinese people.

�Contrasting cultures and ways of life enhanced the sense of identity of the cultivating peoples...
Constant interaction with the nomads led the Shang peoples to develop a culture that was malleable and receptive to outside influences, social structures, and political systems. Nomadic energies reinvigorated and enriched the kingdom of the Shang and Zhou, in contrast to India where they proved catastrophic for the relatively isolated and unprepared peoples of Harappa.
�Perhaps as a result, the Chinese proved the most adept at absorbing and assimilating outside invaders while preserving their own sense of identity and their basic beliefs and institutions. The Chinese both originated and perpetuated these key ingredients for thousands of years.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of China

Chinese History has often been seen as a mirror image of the history of the West.
After the unification of China under the Qin (221-206BC) and the Han (201 BC-AD220), successors regimes were overwhelmed, like Rome, by nomadic people of the northern frontiers and by infusion of a foreign religion.

But China, unlike Rome, was to rise again into a centralized, universal empire under the Tang (618-906). Many of the Han imperial institutions were revived. The aristocracy, powerful since the late Han, still retained its influence, but it recognized a universal sovereign with real authority... �..with the spread of lineage organizations during the Ming and Qing, Confucian social ethics grew to be recognized as norms on which the government of China depended.
There are more than a billion Han Chinese � more than the entire population of Eastern and Western Europe and North America put together. How can so many people see themselves as sharing a common culture? Why haven�t differences in dialect, religion, or way of life led them to divide up into mutually suspicious groups the way so much of the rest of the world�s population has? How can a single government cope with ruling so many people?
China is an extraordinarily complex society that has been in the making for several thousand years.
It is essentially accidental that the Shang developed a logographic script rather than a phonetic script like most of those that became dominant elsewhere in Eurasia. This accident, however, had momentous consequences for the way Chinese civilization developed . It shaped the nature of the elite: the difficulty of mastering this script made those expert in it an elite possessed of rare but essential skills.
Because the Chinese logographic script did not change to reflect differences in pronunciation, the literate elite easily identified with others whose writings they could read, including predecessors who lived many centuries earlier and contemporaries whose spoken languages they could not comprehend.

Just as crucially

,

this script also affected the processes of cultural expansion and assimilation. People on the fringes of Chinese culture who learned to read Chinese for pragmatic reasons of advancing or defending their interests were more effectively drawn into Chinese culture than they would have if China had a phonetic script. Reading and writing for them could not be easily detached from the body of Chinese texts imbued with Chinese values, making it difficult for them to use their literacy to articulate the vision of a local population defined in opposition to China �

February 26, 2010,12:38 PM

The Sumerian/Babylonian hybrid culture spans more than 4,000 years as well, though it is now gone. Sumerian culture started around 4,000BC or even earlier and remained a cultural and religious factor in the Middle East until the times of the Sassanids around 600AD. With the coming of the Muslims the culture was finally completely lost, but it's culture still influences Western and Middle Eastern culture until today. For example the division of an hour in 60 minutes, minutes in 60 seconds. 60 was the standard amount of calculation of the Sumerians. Sumerian astrology supposedly influenced the Abrahamic religions to some extent as well.

February 26, 2010,12:49 PM

Quote Originally Posted by Lysimachos11 View Post

The Sumerian/Babylonian hybrid culture spans more than 4,000 years as well, though it is now gone. Sumerian culture started around 4,000BC or even earlier and remained a cultural and religious factor in the Middle East until the times of the Sassanids around 600AD. With the coming of the Muslims the culture was finally completely lost, but it's culture still influences Western and Middle Eastern culture until today. For example the division of an hour in 60 minutes, minutes in 60 seconds. 60 was the standard amount of calculation of the Sumerians. Sumerian astrology supposedly influenced the Abrahamic religions to some extent as well.

I think maybe the cause behind that is partially geography. China was the sole civilization (grew into that size) in East area and was protected initially from other great civilizations. In middle-east and later on Europe civilizations clashed more and mixed more together, inevitably some would fell and became assimilated.

this might also have to do with the pictographic characteristic of chinese writings, which forced more conformity than other types of writing system, making it harder for outsider to change china.

White Caughly

Trace the Nature of the Continuity of Chinese Culture Over Time

continuity of the Chinese civilization (mk2)

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Re: continuity of the Chinese civilization (mk2)

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