WI: China stays Divided?

[Russian]

Way oversimplifying and very insulting that you're basically saying the Russians were ignorant of basic European history. I'm insulted. And think I and Russians everywhere deserve an apology.

If I was somewhat insulting to you - please, except my apologies, I mean it.
Sometimes I might be insulting without any intention from my part, English is not my first language, as you might have guessed.

 

[Timaeus]

Way oversimplifying and very insulting that you're basically saying the Russians were ignorant of basic European history. I'm insulted. And think I and Russians everywhere deserve an apology. Your comment was the biggest load of BS. Ivan III married the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor and was the legal heir of the Roman Empire by Roman/Byzantine law. Russians knew Rome.

well, it's complicated. and honestly, like a vast majority of people in those days neither knew nor cared about the glories of their kings and emperors. whether in Spain or in Russia, in Scotland or in Italy.

Russia. I love its history and culture. The Third Rome thing is about as good a claim as the Holy Roman Empire had on the title of the Western Roman Empire, though.

Like, the descent of the HRE's claim comes from the Catholic Church in the broken remnants of Rome itself, while that of the Russians comes from the Orthodox Church in the half of the Roman Empire which survived, however changed. And both cultures that claimed descent from Rome were changed.

In any case, both HRE and Russia are completely different beasts from the original Rome.

Such is less the case when it comes to China, which has occupied their area for untold centuries. There's a better and clearer sense of continuity between the Chinese dynasties than there is between the Romans and the early modern empires of Europe.

 

[Napoleonrules]

well, it's complicated. and honestly, like a vast majority of people in those days neither knew nor cared about the glories of their kings and emperors. whether in Spain or in Russia, in Scotland or in Italy.

Russia. I love its history and culture. The Third Rome thing is about as good a claim as the Holy Roman Empire had on the title of the Western Roman Empire, though.

Like, the descent of the HRE's claim comes from the Catholic Church in the broken remnants of Rome itself, while that of the Russians comes from the Orthodox Church in the half of the Roman Empire which survived, however changed. And both cultures that claimed descent from Rome were changed.

In any case, both HRE and Russia are completely different beasts from the original Rome.

Such is less the case when it comes to China, which has occupied their area for untold centuries. There's a better and clearer sense of continuity between the Chinese dynasties than there is between the Romans and the early modern empires of Europe.

But see, that's the part of the mythos the Han Chinese have fostered on to the world, on to themselves, onto those that have conquered them. Just because the Europeans didn't think of doing that doesn't mean the Chinese are CORRECT in the historical propaganda. The Ming Dynasty is no more a continuity or in any way connected to the Tang or Han than the HRE is connected to the Western Roman Empire or the Russians are to the Byzantine. Yes, there are "cultural" or "religious" or "intermarriage" of dynasties that creates legitimacy, and yet the Chinese are no stronger than the HRE or Russia's. Whereas Bulgaria is made up of Slavic speaking people who have a mixed ethnogenesis of Dacians, Romans, Greeks, Thracians, Turks, Bulgars, and Slavs and yet has an official "history" of Eurasian Turkic khanates that migrated into the country. Talk to a Czech and he/she will tell you that Czechs and Slavs have always lived in Bohemia, and yet we do know that Germans were in fact there first and before them non-Indo-European peoples. And conversely Germans will say Berlin is a German city, and yet the word "Berlin" is from West Slavic and not Germanic. Africans of Bantu ancestry in South Africa will claim that whites are intruders, and yet Bantus came to South Africa at the same time (or later) than the Dutch ancestors of Boers; both are guilty of genocide on the true first inhabitants of South Africa- the Khoisan related natives who don't exist anymore and are genetically more different from the Bantu than the Bantu are from White Europeans.

History is all about propaganda and the winners. The Chinese have simply been the winners for so long even when they were the losers, it is only natural that their history reflects such nationalistic, jingoistic, chauvenistic ideas such as a Chinese culture "more continuous and older than any other in the world". Which I think Jews, Australian Aborigines, Amazon natives, Ethiopians, Iranians and lots of other cultures would disagree with. Not to mention that the Middle East is still just as much a continuity of the Sumerian culture as the PRC and RoC are a continuation of the Han dynasty; just because the Middle East had progress and moving forward technologically doesn't take away continuity.

 

[WhatIsAUserName]

But see, that's the part of the mythos the Han Chinese have fostered on to the world, on to themselves, onto those that have conquered them. Just because the Europeans didn't think of doing that doesn't mean the Chinese are CORRECT in the historical propaganda. The Ming Dynasty is no more a continuity or in any way connected to the Tang or Han than the HRE is connected to the Western Roman Empire or the Russians are to the Byzantine. Yes, there are "cultural" or "religious" or "intermarriage" of dynasties that creates legitimacy, and yet the Chinese are no stronger than the HRE or Russia's. Whereas Bulgaria is made up of Slavic speaking people who have a mixed ethnogenesis of Dacians, Romans, Greeks, Thracians, Turks, Bulgars, and Slavs and yet has an official "history" of Eurasian Turkic khanates that migrated into the country. Talk to a Czech and he/she will tell you that Czechs and Slavs have always lived in Bohemia, and yet we do know that Germans were in fact there first and before them non-Indo-European peoples. And conversely Germans will say Berlin is a German city, and yet the word "Berlin" is from West Slavic and not Germanic. Africans of Bantu ancestry in South Africa will claim that whites are intruders, and yet Bantus came to South Africa at the same time (or later) than the Dutch ancestors of Boers; both are guilty of genocide on the true first inhabitants of South Africa- the Khoisan related natives who don't exist anymore and are genetically more different from the Bantu than the Bantu are from White Europeans.

History is all about propaganda and the winners. The Chinese have simply been the winners for so long even when they were the losers, it is only natural that their history reflects such nationalistic, jingoistic, chauvenistic ideas such as a Chinese culture "more continuous and older than any other in the world". Which I think Jews, Australian Aborigines, Amazon natives, Ethiopians, Iranians and lots of other cultures would disagree with. Not to mention that the Middle East is still just as much a continuity of the Sumerian culture as the PRC and RoC are a continuation of the Han dynasty; just because the Middle East had progress and moving forward technologically doesn't take away continuity.

How are Ming and Tang or Han and Qing not continuous? Throughout the dynasties, China's majority population consisted of people of the same ethnicity, the people of that ethnicity wrote in the exact same language (and that language, Classical Chinese, experienced little change in that whole period), the people of that ethnicity all spoke related languages, with government bureaucracies that all showed parallel with previous dynasties, all the while identifying themselves as the same cultural group. China as a nation of course changed over the last two thousand years, but so did every other culture you just named. Change doesn't destroy continuity.

 

[Napoleonrules]

How are Ming and Tang or Han and Qing not continuous? Throughout the dynasties, China's majority population consisted of people of the same ethnicity, the people of that ethnicity wrote in the exact same language (and that language, Classical Chinese, experienced little change in that whole period), the people of that ethnicity all spoke related languages, with government bureaucracies that all showed parallel with previous dynasties, all the while identifying themselves as the same cultural group. China as a nation of course changed over the last two thousand years, but so did every other culture you just named. Change doesn't destroy continuity.

"Han" Chinese are majority only because they've assimiliated so many minorities. Southern Chinese are about as GENETICALLY ethnic Han as Romanians are genetically descended from actual Romans. When talking about true ethnicity you have to talk about genetics, otherwise you're talking about the term ethnicity in the way you talk about confederacy tribes like the Khazars or Bulgars. Again, falling into the trap of Chinese nationalistic mythos. And it's not a bash on Chinese, all nations do this over all time, today Hindi Indians claim that the Brahmi script is indigenous to India and descended from the Indus Valley script when in reality the Brahmi script was brought about from the semitic alphabet of the Middle East. Several places (including China) claim to be independent originators of agriculture when in reality 99% of all agriculture in Eurasia and Africa is based on learning from the Middle East, just because you domesticated something that wasn't in the Middle East doesn't mean you came up with the idea of domesticating that animal or plant on your own, you still took the idea of domesticating from some place else. I'm just looking for some historical accuracy and not the trap of nationalistic history made for the sake of national unity (and the degredation of minorities).

 

[scholar]

But see, that's the part of the mythos the Han Chinese have fostered on to the world, on to themselves, onto those that have conquered them. Just because the Europeans didn't think of doing that doesn't mean the Chinese are CORRECT in the historical propaganda. The Ming Dynasty is no more a continuity or in any way connected to the Tang or Han than the HRE is connected to the Western Roman Empire or the Russians are to the Byzantine. Yes, there are "cultural" or "religious" or "intermarriage" of dynasties that creates legitimacy, and yet the Chinese are no stronger than the HRE or Russia's. Whereas Bulgaria is made up of Slavic speaking people who have a mixed ethnogenesis of Dacians, Romans, Greeks, Thracians, Turks, Bulgars, and Slavs and yet has an official "history" of Eurasian Turkic khanates that migrated into the country. Talk to a Czech and he/she will tell you that Czechs and Slavs have always lived in Bohemia, and yet we do know that Germans were in fact there first and before them non-Indo-European peoples. And conversely Germans will say Berlin is a German city, and yet the word "Berlin" is from West Slavic and not Germanic. Africans of Bantu ancestry in South Africa will claim that whites are intruders, and yet Bantus came to South Africa at the same time (or later) than the Dutch ancestors of Boers; both are guilty of genocide on the true first inhabitants of South Africa- the Khoisan related natives who don't exist anymore and are genetically more different from the Bantu than the Bantu are from White Europeans.

History is all about propaganda and the winners. The Chinese have simply been the winners for so long even when they were the losers, it is only natural that their history reflects such nationalistic, jingoistic, chauvenistic ideas such as a Chinese culture "more continuous and older than any other in the world". Which I think Jews, Australian Aborigines, Amazon natives, Ethiopians, Iranians and lots of other cultures would disagree with. Not to mention that the Middle East is still just as much a continuity of the Sumerian culture as the PRC and RoC are a continuation of the Han dynasty; just because the Middle East had progress and moving forward technologically doesn't take away continuity.

Since you didn't answer the first time.

You'll note a declining example of usefulness in your examples. The Byzantines were Romans, I would agree to that example without reservation. However, there's a strong point of difference between the Byzantines and the Chinese. The Eastern Roman Empire was a latin overlay on Greek structures, and even though the Western Empire had its heart captured by the Greeks, the Eastern Empire really was Greek and instead had its heart be Roman. Though there is a clear, unbroken line of Roman institution until 1204, by that point they could rightly have claimed to have given up on most of what it meant to be Roman by that time. The others are, frankly, wrong. Charlemagne comes close-ish, but its more of an alternate history scenario to use him rather than a real example.

China's Byzantine equivalent was the Eastern Jin. Jin was formed by a palace coup when Sima Yan deposed Cao Huan, after he and his family had risen and killed off a number of Wei Emperors. Cao Huan was the last imperial descendant of Cao Pi who was the son of Cao Cao, the Prime Minister of the State and the Prince of Wei, and founder of the dynasty when he deposed Liu Xie who was his brother-in-law. Liu Xie, likewise, was the last imperial son of the Han Dynasty after it was restored by the Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu. The Guangwu Emperor restored the dynasty after a non-Liu relative the the throne, Wang Xian, formed the short lived Xin dynasty after deposing Guangwu's cousin. Eastern Jin continued with this tradition. The argument that the Eastern Jin is only holding the myth of being China is frankly bizarre. The Southern Dynasties were brought to an end by the Sui, a man named Yang Jian. He rose to power in a way that mirrored the above, and took power when his son in law, the last emperor of Northern Zhou, died. Unlike his son in law, who was a sinicized descendant of northern martial migrants who conquered part of that land, Yang Jian was actually what we would call Han Chinese. However, the Northern Dynasties had become Chinese in the Byzantine sense of being Roman a long, long, time ago. Only instead of using Greek, they used the Imperial Script. Rather than becoming more and more into their own, like the Byzantines did, they became more and more like what was there before.

Yang Jian's Sui was shortlived, but a relative of his founded the Tang under the Li family. This was the second Golden Age of Civilization. Later transition zones were less complicated and less destructive, and overall never really threatened the existence of China. The Song emerged rather rapidly from the ashes of the Tang, as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period was something of a free for all, and saw the emergence of some people trying to restore earlier dynasties that had ended with their ancestors. The Song Dynasty had only one major rival at a time (Xi Xia was small and weak, Western Liao could only generously be called Chinese-ish), the Liao Dynasty and later the Jinn Dynasty. These were Northern Dynasties, though a little more tangential to China and thus a little less drawn into its orbit. At least, until the Jinn captured Kaifang. The Song only recognized the Jinn when defeated in war, and often sought opportunity to expand North and reclaim the northern district which they saw as Chinese, and were Chinese. The Song allied with the Mongols to eliminate the Jinn, but the Song misjudged the Mongols by thinking they would just be another Northern Dynasty that could be dealt with, and maybe even pushed out of China entirely.

The Yuan Dynasty presents the first actual break in Chinese history, and they were overthrown by the Ming. However, the Yuan kept most of the Chinese government in place, along with much of the scholar gentry. This is why the actual Chinese powers sided with the Yuan Dynasty against the rebellions by lower classes, and only made the switch when they were powerful enough. Once the gentry turned on the Yuan, they were pushed entirely out of China. The Northern Yuan remained a substantial threat, but the Ming continually played on tribal politics and it was kept relatively weak. It was finally destroyed by the Manchurians, who were in the process of becoming the Qing Dynasty and had originally claimed the be the Jinn Dyansty restored. Manchurians either are or were related to the Jurchens who had founded the Jinn. The Qing Dynasty was invited into China by Wu Sangui following another dynastic transition period where peasant rebellions and new dynasties were coming to power and in conflict with the Ming state. The original intention behind the new Jinn State is unknown, but as high ranking and influential Chinese generals and civil officials defected en masse to avoid Li Zicheng and his Shun Dynasty. Famine was killing millions, and many were desperate for steady leadership and peace. The Manchu's discarded the Jinn name a few generations in to exchange it for the Qing, and proceeded to conquer the entirety of China rather than the northernmost part. And the Qing kept Chinese in power, and were far more Chinese than the Yuan. Eventually the Qing feared that the Manchurians would die out completely, and took measures to keep the Manchurians separate. Less than a generation after the Qing Dynasty fell, Manchurian language nearly disappeared and is now a dead language and the Manchurians have largely become indistinguishable from Han Chinese.

Now, I don't meant to say that the Chinese did not engage in historical propaganda. They did. But you may have it backwards. The Chinese were not fabricating links to the past, they were trying to make the connections more overt and justify the formation of a new dynasty or conquest. Famines and rebellions were in almost every dynastic transition by conquest, while incompetent, weak, or evil rulers tended to precede every dynastic transition by coup. That this was so common and appeared so often in the historical record, it is believed that the historians from the scholar gentry were basing their histories on what they believed had to happen for Heaven's Mandate to be passed on to another family, and exaggerated other events. At the same time, that there were bloody transition zones is readily apparent, and the Age of Fragmentation remains a conflict that was more bloody than almost any other conflict in world history and did very nearly break China if not for my first paragraph.

Not to mention that states that failed to actually recapture the entirety of China went into propaganda overdrive in order to justify their existence when it was clear that heaven's mandate was neither one nor the other. This is particularly true amongst states like Eastern Wu or Shu Han. Its also no doubt that this national myth was a key part of their identity. Chinese call themselves Hanren, because they see themselves as the people of the Han Dynasty. China may not have been a term yet, but People of the Han Dynasty was in use for almost two thousand years. Hanren also call themselves Tangren, because they are people of the Tang Dynasty. Minority groups, particularly in the south, have a preference for Tangren over Hanren, particularly when Hanren became the name for the main ethnic group of China.

I recommend learning about the foundations for China's Byzantine Empire by reading Professor Rafe de Crespigny's Generals of the South, and then explore more about China and its history.

I also recommend Foundations of Eastern Civilization, for a more general timeline of China in the context of Eastern Asia. Two points were corrected earlier by another user, but the overall narrative is works just as fine.

 

[Vingilótë]

Way oversimplifying and very insulting that you're basically saying the Russians were ignorant of basic European history. I'm insulted. And think I and Russians everywhere deserve an apology. Your comment was the biggest load of BS. Ivan III married the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor and was the legal heir of the Roman Empire by Roman/Byzantine law. Russians knew Rome.

Firstly, I think you might want to look at Russian's location, not to mention his comment, which sounds like the exact opposite of what you're implying he's said.

But see, that's the part of the mythos the Han Chinese have fostered on to the world, on to themselves, onto those that have conquered them. Just because the Europeans didn't think of doing that doesn't mean the Chinese are CORRECT in the historical propaganda. The Ming Dynasty is no more a continuity or in any way connected to the Tang or Han than the HRE is connected to the Western Roman Empire or the Russians are to the Byzantine. Yes, there are "cultural" or "religious" or "intermarriage" of dynasties that creates legitimacy, and yet the Chinese are no stronger than the HRE or Russia's. Whereas Bulgaria is made up of Slavic speaking people who have a mixed ethnogenesis of Dacians, Romans, Greeks, Thracians, Turks, Bulgars, and Slavs and yet has an official "history" of Eurasian Turkic khanates that migrated into the country. Talk to a Czech and he/she will tell you that Czechs and Slavs have always lived in Bohemia, and yet we do know that Germans were in fact there first and before them non-Indo-European peoples. And conversely Germans will say Berlin is a German city, and yet the word "Berlin" is from West Slavic and not Germanic. Africans of Bantu ancestry in South Africa will claim that whites are intruders, and yet Bantus came to South Africa at the same time (or later) than the Dutch ancestors of Boers; both are guilty of genocide on the true first inhabitants of South Africa- the Khoisan related natives who don't exist anymore and are genetically more different from the Bantu than the Bantu are from White Europeans.

History is all about propaganda and the winners. The Chinese have simply been the winners for so long even when they were the losers, it is only natural that their history reflects such nationalistic, jingoistic, chauvenistic ideas such as a Chinese culture "more continuous and older than any other in the world". Which I think Jews, Australian Aborigines, Amazon natives, Ethiopians, Iranians and lots of other cultures would disagree with. Not to mention that the Middle East is still just as much a continuity of the Sumerian culture as the PRC and RoC are a continuation of the Han dynasty; just because the Middle East had progress and moving forward technologically doesn't take away continuity.

And your point still doesn't seem particularly convincing; a lot of it flies straight in the face of common sense in fact. At what point are you arguing that a state or society can no longer claim to possess a lineage from a pre-existing state or society?

If it were geographical (which makes little sense in this situation since the geographical location of various Chinese states has occupied more or less the same general area for the past 2500 years or so), then this would imply that people of the United States could not honestly claim to have any cultural lineage from Britain (notwithstanding their inheritance of the British legal system, language, and sharing a very considerable portion of their ancestors), by virtue of being entirely geographically dislocated from the country they claim to inherit this lineage from.

Were it to be institutional, this would imply that citizens of the PRC could not claim any lineage from the ROC (notwithstanding the fact that they directly inherited a considerable proportion of their institutions directly from the ROC and a (sharply declining admittedly) portion of their people originated from there). On a similar note, most people would recognize that present-day Russia owes a considerable lineage to the USSR and the Russian Empire before it, though the state institutions for each are all extremely different. French culture, likewise, was turned entirely upside down in 1789 by the French Revolution, and to this day, French state and cultural institutions easily draw more from the side of French Republicanism than old French monarchies. This does not mean that the state and culture known currently as "France" and "French" did not come into existence until 1789, or ceased to exist in that same year.

How about linguistically? You seem particularly fond of this argument, since most of your arguments seem to be linguistic, but this argument actually makes almost the least amount of sense. It would imply that no state could possibly claim lineages to societies from more than a few hundred years ago, for example, owing to the fact that England in 1066 spoke a very different language from England in 2015, you would basically be implying that English people are guilty of fabricating history if they claim that Harold Godwinson was an English King or that he ruled over a state or society which most people would commonly define as "England." It's possible that you mean that the society would have to change language families before you reach a "break in lineage", a claim which would exclude China, as it happens, since the dominant culture in most historical states have usually spoken some kind of Sinitic language, but would imply that Ireland and the Irish people don't actually have any claim to traditional Irish culture, on account of the percentage of fluent Irish speakers in Ireland being somewhere in the single digits at present.

Possibly, one could define lineage by cultural practices, ie, if a society has similar cultural practices now than it did a five hundred or a thousand years ago, then it can claim to be an heir to that culture. The same argument also implies that all cultures which existed in 1000 or 1500 are extinct in the modern world, and that all modern cultures must only have come into existence very recently, within a hundred years at most, some as late as the late 80s or 90s, which one might recognize as being an exceptionally stupid claim to make.

The point that I'm trying to make here is that ultimately, most of the above factors have very little importance in qualifying or disqualifying a culture from claiming lineage to old cultures when the cultures have very clear and obvious lineages to these older cultures, particularly by inheriting in large portions their geography, language, culture, institutions, or some combination of all of them; ie, America to Britain, Republican France to the Kingdom of France, the PRC to the ROC, the modern Kingdom of England and Wales to the Saxon Kingdom of England, and yes, the PRC until at least the Ming Dynasty, if not earlier.

"Han" Chinese are majority only because they've assimiliated so many minorities. Southern Chinese are about as GENETICALLY ethnic Han as Romanians are genetically descended from actual Romans. When talking about true ethnicity you have to talk about genetics, otherwise you're talking about the term ethnicity in the way you talk about confederacy tribes like the Khazars or Bulgars. Again, falling into the trap of Chinese nationalistic mythos. And it's not a bash on Chinese, all nations do this over all time, today Hindi Indians claim that the Brahmi script is indigenous to India and descended from the Indus Valley script when in reality the Brahmi script was brought about from the semitic alphabet of the Middle East. Several places (including China) claim to be independent originators of agriculture when in reality 99% of all agriculture in Eurasia and Africa is based on learning from the Middle East, just because you domesticated something that wasn't in the Middle East doesn't mean you came up with the idea of domesticating that animal or plant on your own, you still took the idea of domesticating from some place else. I'm just looking for some historical accuracy and not the trap of nationalistic history made for the sake of national unity (and the degredation of minorities).

Genetic lineage is actually one of the single most nonsensical ways to assess lineage. Does the fact that the biggest proportion of American immigrants originate from Germany rather than Britain mean that America's cultural lineage to Germany is stronger than its ties to Britain? For that matter, one finds when looking at maps of English genetic lineage that Western England has considerably stronger similarities to Celtic areas than towards Central and Northern Europe, but this does not mean that the former has any less of a claim to English culture than the latter. Culture is transmitted through the mind, not the penis.

Also, most scholarly consensus is that agriculture did not exclusively develop in the Fertile Crescent, but developed independently and usually simultaneous in multiple early river valley civilizations, in not just the Fertile Crescent, but also also along the Nile, the Indus, the Yellow river, and certain other parts of the world.

 

[scholar]

"Han" Chinese are majority only because they've assimiliated so many minorities. Southern Chinese are about as GENETICALLY ethnic Han as Romanians are genetically descended from actual Romans.

That is essentially meaningless. Genetics do not define anything about a culture or an ethnicity, unless you are trying to argue the color of their skin (which ranges from near White in the North, to a darker Thai like complexion in the far south) precludes them from being Chinese. Further, the genetic identity of China is shifted because of the series of political conquests and reconquests. Northern China was regularly involved in the movement of Mongolic peoples, and some Turkic peoples. They came in during the millions, and always had power following a substantial decline in the population. When the two were mixed, the dominant culture was the native Han Chinese. It changed, but not much more significantly than other racially and ethnically homogenous areas. Southern China was regularly involved with the movement of Han Chinese people south, and their intermarriage. Once again, the dominant culture that emerged was the Han Chinese. It is their culture, their common nationhood born from this principle, that makes them Chinese. This is why the descendants Peroz III and their retainers of Persia are said to have become Chinese after they fled to China and the former Shah was granted the name of Li. Now I have already provided Generals of the South, which provides a general framework for the beginning of their southward migration and assimilation and there are a number of other sources to bring up.

Han Chinese as a genetic identity does not exist, because it never did. That stopped during the time of the Shang being conquered by the Zhou and the disintegration into different warring states. Why the Chinese call themselves People of the Han (or Tang) is because those were the people who were culturally Chinese and representative of the native population of the geopolitical empires of the Han, and later Tang. The name endured because while politics changed, the people themselves kept the same culture and continually revived it no matter how often they were conquered. Stating that there is no China, is akin to stating there is no France or Armenia - that they are fictions birthed by modern propaganda, and a comparison of the two would actually put China more favorable for continuity than either of them.

 

[scholar]

Several places (including China) claim to be independent originators of agriculture when in reality 99% of all agriculture in Eurasia and Africa is based on learning from the Middle East, just because you domesticated something that wasn't in the Middle East doesn't mean you came up with the idea of domesticating that animal or plant on your own, you still took the idea of domesticating from some place else. I'm just looking for some historical accuracy and not the trap of nationalistic history made for the sake of national unity (and the degredation of minorities).

Ooh, this is quite the can of worms. Agriculture did not necessarily originate from the Middle East. We know this because there are a number of different cradles of agricultural civilization, some of which are impossible for the Middle East to have reached, even in a radial fashion: Mesoamerica and the Andes, along with one cradle in sub-saharan Africa. Another prime motivation for their independent development is either their foundation time being almost identical, or their crops being too different. Furthermore, agriculture in China is claimed to have started at around 7500 BC by Western Historians. This is a result of archaeological exploration, so there's not much disputing that.

This argument is normally coupled with the "One Civilization" hypothesis that civilization only formed once, and the only question is whether or not it was Egypt or Mesopotamia that started it all. However, this theory is highly criticized, particularly among circles studying sub-saharan Africa, the Americas, and East Asia. It is the domestication of animals, particularly the horse, that makes Central Asia hospitable enough to allow for the movements of people (though the first inhabitants came long before this), and it did not occur until well after the formation of agriculture in the far east. Therefore agriculture would have to had traveled by sea, skipping some areas entirely, before making their way to China, ignoring the fact that neolithic fishermen are only loosely connected to agriculture. Furthermore, horticulture exists almost everywhere before, or about the same time, agriculture proper started and that really damages this theory at its foundation, if the Mayans being a civilization didn't already.

Given that Japanese Ceramics are some of the oldest in the world, it makes the idea of independent agricultural development in the East an easy one to swallow.

 

[WhatIsAUserName]

"Han" Chinese are majority only because they've assimiliated so many minorities. Southern Chinese are about as GENETICALLY ethnic Han as Romanians are genetically descended from actual Romans. When talking about true ethnicity you have to talk about genetics, otherwise you're talking about the term ethnicity in the way you talk about confederacy tribes like the Khazars or Bulgars. Again, falling into the trap of Chinese nationalistic mythos. And it's not a bash on Chinese, all nations do this over all time, today Hindi Indians claim that the Brahmi script is indigenous to India and descended from the Indus Valley script when in reality the Brahmi script was brought about from the semitic alphabet of the Middle East. Several places (including China) claim to be independent originators of agriculture when in reality 99% of all agriculture in Eurasia and Africa is based on learning from the Middle East, just because you domesticated something that wasn't in the Middle East doesn't mean you came up with the idea of domesticating that animal or plant on your own, you still took the idea of domesticating from some place else. I'm just looking for some historical accuracy and not the trap of nationalistic history made for the sake of national unity (and the degredation of minorities).

At the risk of saying what others have probably said, ethnicity is not genetics, but rather a combination of other factors such as shared culture and history, and in the Chinese case, related languages. While I hesitate to say shared descent is not related to ethnicity at all, a collective myth of shared descent generally binds an ethnic group together. In the Chinesae case, such a myth exists.

As such, the fact that Chinese in north and south China are often genetically distinct does not detract from the fact that cultural, linguistic, historic, geographic, religious, etc connections have created a shared identity that indicates an ethnic group.

 

[pa_dutch]

Ooh, this is quite the can of worms. Agriculture did not necessarily originate from the Middle East. We know this because there are a number of different cradles of agricultural civilization, some of which are impossible for the Middle East to have reached, even in a radial fashion: Mesoamerica and the Andes, along with one cradle in sub-saharan Africa. Another prime motivation for their independent development is either their foundation time being almost identical, or their crops being too different. Furthermore, agriculture in China is claimed to have started at around 7500 BC by Western Historians. This is a result of archaeological exploration, so there's not much disputing that.

This argument is normally coupled with the "One Civilization" hypothesis that civilization only formed once, and the only question is whether or not it was Egypt or Mesopotamia that started it all. However, this theory is highly criticized, particularly among circles studying sub-saharan Africa, the Americas, and East Asia. It is the domestication of animals, particularly the horse, that makes Central Asia hospitable enough to allow for the movements of people (though the first inhabitants came long before this), and it did not occur until well after the formation of agriculture in the far east. Therefore agriculture would have to had traveled by sea, skipping some areas entirely, before making their way to China, ignoring the fact that neolithic fishermen are only loosely connected to agriculture. Furthermore, horticulture exists almost everywhere before, or about the same time, agriculture proper started and that really damages this theory at its foundation, if the Mayans being a civilization didn't already.

Given that Japanese Ceramics are some of the oldest in the world, it makes the idea of independent agricultural development in the East an easy one to swallow.

To be fair, the OP was talking about agriculture in Eurasia and Africa, so the New World doesn't apply to his argument. However, I agree that it's highly unlikely that the Fertile Crescent agriculture was the only independent one in the Old World, and there are several locations of agricultural revolution where Middle Eastern influence couldn't plausibly have reached, most notably the Papua New Guinea highlands. As you said, the Chinese and Sub-Saharan African hubs were probably also independent innovations given the timing, distance, and differing climactic conditions.

 

[scholar]

To be fair, the OP was talking about agriculture in Eurasia and Africa, so the New World doesn't apply to his argument. However, I agree that it's highly unlikely that the Fertile Crescent agriculture was the only independent one in the Old World, and there are several locations of agricultural revolution where Middle Eastern influence couldn't plausibly have reached, most notably the Papua New Guinea highlands. As you said, the Chinese and Sub-Saharan African hubs were probably also independent innovations given the timing, distance, and differing climactic conditions.

That is true enough, but the argument that he was putting forward normally comes within the context of "one civilization, one discovery of agriculture, one animal root of animal husbandry, and one writing system" That he said 99% did little to persuade me that he was not speaking from that context, particularly when he brought up writing. The New World's existence makes arguing this point much, much easier since I can point to another example where independent development was nearly completely certain to give precedent for more than one origin.