The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
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The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
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Re: The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
#2I was taught as a child in Australia that the Indigenous Australians were the world’s oldest living/surviving civilization.
Re: The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
#3Does it make sense to talk about the Chinese civilization like a single continuous civilization? That's a bit like saying Italy's civilization dates from the first Etruscan settlements or that French civilization is as old as the megaliths in Brittany.
I am a bit suspicious of these claims as they are central to Chinese nationalism. In order to hold them you have to disregard the several periods where the country was split in several parts and have to integrate somehow the mongol conquest.
To the best of my knowledge, the best claimants to the longest enduring and continuously existing organizations are the Holy See and when it comes to governing bodies, Iceland's Althing (founded in 930)
Re: The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
#4I was taught as a child in Australia that the Indigenous Australians were the world’s oldest living/surviving civilization.
They are probably excluded for not having any sort of symbolic communication system (writing, hieroglyphics, knot patterns, stuff like that).
Re: The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
#5To what extent did the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, and destruction of the "Four Olds" (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas) damage this extensive cultural and historical tradition? Was the damage mostly material e.g. temples razed and books burnt, or did China's early Communist period have significant cultural/behavioral impacts as well?
I've heard some commentators say that Taiwan preserves much of this "lost" Chinese culture and history, but outside of temples and dragon dancing, I don't really know what this means. Could anyone shine a light?
Re: The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
#6Does it make sense to talk about the Chinese civilization like a single continuous civilization? That's a bit like saying Italy's civilization dates from the first Etruscan settlements or that French civilization is as old as the megaliths in Brittany. I am a bit suspicious of these claims as they are central to Chinese nationalism. In order to hold them you have to disregard the several periods where the country was…
It depends on how you define civilization I suppose, but there is definitely a difference between nation and civ, as well as sub-civs, and those can be reasonably estimated to date back ~12000 years.
Edit: 12k would be the origin of the yellow river and Yangtze river delta civilizations, if memory serves. These would grow into the overarching Ancient China and then into China as a nation.
Re: The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
#7To what extent did the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, and destruction of the "Four Olds" (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas) damage this extensive cultural and historical tradition? Was the damage mostly material e.g. temples razed and books burnt, or did China's early Communist period have significant cultural/behavioral impacts as well? I've heard some commentators say that Taiwan preser…
> I've heard some commentators say that Taiwan preserves much of this "lost" Chinese culture and history, but outside of temples and dragon dancing, I don't really know what this means. Could anyone shine a light?
Also the writing script and literary tradition, as well as a general appreciation of erudition. Pre-revolutionary family and social values.
Re: The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
#8I was taught as a child in Australia that the Indigenous Australians were the world’s oldest living/surviving civilization.
They are probably excluded for not having any sort of symbolic communication system (writing, hieroglyphics, knot patterns, stuff like that).
Or cities, monumental architecture, or unified government. The term "civilization" in this context is an academic category for historical societies, and its absence does not imply the pejorative "uncivilized."
Re: The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
#9To what extent did the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, and destruction of the "Four Olds" (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas) damage this extensive cultural and historical tradition? Was the damage mostly material e.g. temples razed and books burnt, or did China's early Communist period have significant cultural/behavioral impacts as well? I've heard some commentators say that Taiwan preser…
My great grandfather was missionary in China and founded a university there. Some relatives visited the university a while ago and it was apparently a local technical college (still with the same name and even plaque honoring my great grand father). The photos made it look a lot like a typical American community colleges.
Which is to say that I suspect that, despite all the tumult of the cultural revolution, just modernization has likely been the largest force upending the previous culture order.
You see the thing about virtually all pre-industrial societies is that only a quite small minority of the population were at all educated in the intricacies of the culture - with most people having to work as farmers to simply support the society, few people could be educated, few people could read, etc. So most people educated today have been educated in the process of industrialization and so they have whatever knowledge was being handed out, and they got it in the way that modern people are educated.
Re: The Oldest Living Civilization (1944)
#10> Until the Japanese invasion her conquerors have been barbarians who looked up to the higher civilization of China and eagerly adopted it.
I always thought this is uniquely Chinese thing, but recently learnt that Athens had a similar history. Many of Athens architectures are actually built by its conquerors who admired its culture.