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Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

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Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

#71

Post by riffraff »

Onavo wrote: post #54
nuc1e0n wrote: post #45

Travellers from Asia journeyed to the Greco-Bactrian kingdom of Ghandara (whose name is a corruption of Alexandria) and took Buddhism back with them to the east. This is fictionalised in the story 'Journey to the West'. Nippon TV in Japan did a cool TV series adaption of this story that was dubbed into English and shown on kids TV in the UK as 'Monkey', which was quite popular back in the day. If you spend enough tim…

> Nippon TV in Japan did a cool TV series adaption of this story that was dubbed into English and shown on kids TV in the UK as 'Monkey', which was quite popular back in the day. Nah, HN readers might be more familiar with its anime adaptation, "Dragon Ball".

Or Starzinger, Saiyuki, The Monkey... there's a zillion anime adaptations (or rather, vaguely inspired stories).

It's kinda like Pinocchio, which you may find in Ergo Proxy or a thousand other stories.

Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

#72

Post by bugbuddy »

soufron wrote: post #69
bugbuddy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an alternate timeline, the whole world population look like some mixture of Chinese.

Well the mongols weren't "chinese" to begin with. So...

They became Chinese pretty quickly…

Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

#73

Post by Spivak »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #40
Spivak wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The West really isn't winning this one if that's your standard. The Mongol empire which amassed all the wealth, technology and military prowess of China during their expansion destroyed the Arabic world (arguably the most advanced civilization at the time), Russia, and the West they encountered like a bulldozer through wet cardboard. And did so with armies 1/3-1/5 the size of their opponents. We don't really acknowle…

There were structural, geographic, and ecological, reasons for why mongol invasions stopped before they reached western Europe (aside from some relatively short-lived attempts at imperiogenesis in eastern Europe). The same reasons were present for Arab "invasions" up from Iberia. Walter Scheidel has written a fascinating book that takes a very hard historical look at possible historical counterfactuals comparing post…

Fascinating, the takes I've seen from most historians was that polycentrism was actually likely to be Europe's undoing because the Mongols were the best to ever do it at recognizing that armies weren't as united as they first seemed and, before the fight, made deals with fractions to get them to stand down (and then kill them later) and, during battle, taking advantage of split command and breaking ranks.

I don't think that there was really anything that could stop the Mongols at that time because they had Chinese siege engineers to deal with fortifications and plenty in the way of "normal" soldiers but I'm happy to read the argument. The strongest case I've heard against them was that away from the steppe the conditions that produced hardy soldiers with their talent for shooting started to fall off.

Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

#74

Post by JumpCrisscross »

coldtea wrote: post #26
wtcactus wrote: post #4

[flagged]

[flagged]

> Roman Empire, at its time, meant nothing to those parts of the world, no influence, economic, cultural, or otherwise

Rome, China and the North Indian kingdoms traded.

> They had their own empires, and often far greater development and refinement

This is as silly as claiming Rome was the centre of the world.

Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

#75

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hollerith wrote: post #67
meiraleal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every place has millenias of history. The countries in the American continent start to count from when they were invaded by Europeans, that's their (our) loss.

>The countries in the American continent start to count from when they were invaded by Europeans That's because it is hard to learn about pre-Columbian America because we have very little writing from that period -- mainly because they didn't write much down compared to for example how much was recorded in writing by people in China 3,000 years ago.

> mainly because they didn't write much down compared to for example how much was recorded in writing by people in China 3,000 years ago

Civilisation in the Americas started later than in the Old World. Columbus also arrived in the wake of wide-ranging ecological disasters in Meso-America and the ancient Pueblan territories.

Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

#76

Post by khuey »

hollerith wrote: post #67
meiraleal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every place has millenias of history. The countries in the American continent start to count from when they were invaded by Europeans, that's their (our) loss.

>The countries in the American continent start to count from when they were invaded by Europeans That's because it is hard to learn about pre-Columbian America because we have very little writing from that period -- mainly because they didn't write much down compared to for example how much was recorded in writing by people in China 3,000 years ago.

Also because the colonial period that followed intentionally destroyed much of the written record.

Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

#77

Post by dredmorbius »

tm-guimaraes wrote: post #58
77pt77 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true, when the Portuguese and Spaniards got to tne new world 90% of the people would have died recently of disease. Those chinese ships were small floating cities and disease would have spread throughout the continent.

That did happen to the big Central American civilizations. Killing by a mix of inter conflicts and mass desease

If I'm interpreting parent correctly, they're arguing that had the Chinese recently visited the Americas, the Portuguese and Spanish would have encountered native populations which were already decimated by disease. As this isn't the case, the epidemiological argument against shortly prior Chinese encounters with American populations is strong.

That post Portuguese/Spanish contact native American populations were annihilated by disease is now well established fact. That again argues against earlier Chinese contact.

Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

#78

Post by BurningFrog »

peterfirefly wrote: post #64
beloch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archaeology does not take place in a vacuum. It has always been a product of political human beings. Archaeologists are keenly aware of this. Mussolini excavated Pompeii with bulldozers to reveal the past greatness of Italy on a schedule compatible with his ambitions. British archaeologists conducted digs around the globe through the lens of empire. Natives in the Americas, to this day, hesitate to trust archaeologis…

> hesitate to trust archaeologists because they have, far too often, ignored the culture and concerns of descendants while digging up their ancestors. Or more likely: because they have, far too often, proved the natives wrong and also shown that the people the natives called ancestors weren't... or, if they were, they were also the ancestors of those terrible people from the Evil Enemy Tribe that Nobody Likes. Native…

Part of recognizing the full and equal humanity of indigenous peoples is to accept that they're just as greedy, deceitful, and chauvinistic as the rest of us.

Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

#79

Post by dredmorbius »

77pt77 wrote: post #44
slater wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that book when it came out. Really liked it, but, from that link: "The reasoning of 1421 is inexorably circular, its evidence spurious, its research derisory, its borrowings unacknowledged, its citations slipshod, and its assertions preposterous ... Examination of the book's central claims reveals they are uniformly without substance." Whelp!

If that were true, when the Portuguese and Spaniards got to tne new world 90% of the people would have died recently of disease. Those chinese ships were small floating cities and disease would have spread throughout the continent.

You seem to be arguing against your first comment to this thread.

Why take an account from an author of dubious qualifications and veracity seriously if the most significant evidence of such an encounter is entirely lacking?

Re: Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road

#80

Post by SubiculumCode »

hollerith wrote: post #67
meiraleal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every place has millenias of history. The countries in the American continent start to count from when they were invaded by Europeans, that's their (our) loss.

>The countries in the American continent start to count from when they were invaded by Europeans That's because it is hard to learn about pre-Columbian America because we have very little writing from that period -- mainly because they didn't write much down compared to for example how much was recorded in writing by people in China 3,000 years ago.

That there is history in the region is not really in contention, but rather that the concept of single "China" has endured millenia as a single civilization, and not the multi-cultural, multi-national, mileau that it was.
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