Let's Dispense With this "China Is 5,000 Years Old" Myth, Shall We?
I agreed with
I compare the two civilizations because I think they have similar birth dates for ancient Greek and Chinese civilizations.
Actually, I think the two civilizations have many similarities.
Fun Fact: China has Almost Never Actually Been Called "China."
One of the biggest surprises for early students of Mandarin (or expats struggling to get a survival grasp on the language) is that no word even vaguely resembling "China" has ever existed in the Mandarin Language. The Mandarin word for the country, at least in its shortened form, is Zhong Guo (中国), which literally translates as "Central Nation," though the Chinese like to dress it up in a more palatable Tolkien-esque style as "Middle Kingdom" for Western listeners, and it is also worthy of note that this term never existed as a name prior to Sun Zhongshan's 1911 revolution. Prior to that, the nation we call "China" never even had a name other than the name of the ruling Dynasty, a fact much lamented by the 19th century reformer Liang QiChao (Lee, p. 46). Since the 1911 revolution was not only the first official use of the country's current name, but also a paradigm shift in its mode of government (from an imperial monarchy to at-least-nominally a republic), one might make a case for this being the beginning of "China as we know it," making the country a spry 108 years old, but considering that there was very little cultural discontinuity between pre-1911 and post-1911, that seems a bridge too far. However, an examination of where the Western name "China" came from does give us some clues as to the country's actual genesis. From about 475 B.C to 271 B.C., during what is known as the "Warring States Period (Metropolitan Museum of Art)," the plains of what is today called "China" were home to a collection of warring kingdoms that had nothing in common except the Han ethnicity and languages which were all derived from the same cave-drawings (Han J., p. 15 - 21). These kingdoms had different customs, laws, languages (2), religions and ways of life, and completely separate political agendas (Cao, 55). They even -quite frequently-fought wars against one another. Essentially, think of the Greek City-States, except more separate since the Greek city-states all spoke the same language and had the same pantheon of gods.
These states could most accurately be referred to as "Proto-Chinese," since calling them “Chinese” makes only slightly more historical sense than calling the Iroquois "Americans," or the Aztecs "Mexicans." But eventually, one of them conquered all the rest. In 221 B.C, one of these states known as "Qin (pronounced 'Chin')" conquered all the others (Lum, p. 62) and molded them into a single, unified nation. This nation was given the name Qin Diguo (literally "Qin God-State," though "Diguo" is usually given the less-than-literal treatment and rendered as "empire") by the Qin monarch who subjugated the other states, Qin Shihuang (often referred to as Shi Huangdi or Shih Huangti, a name roughly translating to "First Universal Emperor," though the character of 'di' translates as 'god' rather than 'emperor' in earlier texts). Chinese legends from earlier times notwithstanding, this, 221 B.C., is the earliest point in history where both archaeological evidence and recorded evidence show that the Han core of present-day China was a single, unified entity. Peter Lum sums it up best.
The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo), also historically known as the Yin dynasty (殷代; Yīndài), was a Chinese dynasty that ruled in the Lower Yellow River Valley in the second millennium BC, succeeding the semi-mythical Xia dynasty and followed by the Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from texts such as the Book of Documents, Bamboo Annals and Records of the Grand Historian. According to the traditional chronology based on calculations made approximately 2,000 years ago by Liu Xin, the Shang ruled from 1766 to 1122 BC, but according to the chronology based upon the "current text" of Bamboo Annals, they ruled from 1556 to 1046 BC. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project dated them from c. 1600 to 1046 BC based on the carbon 14 dates of the Erligang site.< p >< center > < img src="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_dynasty" > < /center >< /p > < p >< center >< sub > < a href="
" target="_blank" >Image Source< /a > < /sub >< /center >< /p >
The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo 1600 BC ~ 1046 BC ) is the earliest dynasty of traditional Chinese history firmly supported by archaeological evidence. Excavation at the Ruins of Yin (near modern-day Anyang), which has been identified as the last Shang capital, uncovered eleven major royal tombs and the foundations of palaces and ritual sites, containing weapons of war and remains from both animal and human sacrifices. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, stone, bone, and ceramic artifacts have been found.
The Anyang site has yielded the earliest known body of Chinese writing, mostly divinations inscribed on oracle bones – turtle shells, ox scapulae, or other bones. More than 20,000 were discovered in the initial scientific excavations during the 1920s and 1930s, and over four times as many have been found since. The inscriptions provide critical insight into many topics from the politics, economy, and religious practices to the art and medicine of this early stage of Chinese civilization.[2]
The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo 1600 BC ~ 1046 BC ) is the first Chinese civilization according to modern archaeological and literary evidence.
The reason why The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo 1600 BC ~ 1046 BC ) was recognized as the first civilization in Chinese history was because it left behind Bronze relics and characters.
The Chinese Communist Party claims that The Xia 夏 dynasty ( 2070 BC ~ 1600 BC) is the first civilization in Chinese history, but there is no archaeological or literary evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xia_dynasty
The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo) was recognized as the first civilization in Chinese history because of the Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文).
The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo 1600 BC ~ 1046 BC) invented the first Chinese character, the Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文).
< p >< center > < img src="
" > < /center >< /p > < p >< center >< sub > < a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_dynasty" target="_blank" >Image Source< /a > < /sub >< /center >< /p >
Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文) was the form of Chinese characters used on oracle bones—animal bones or turtle plastrons used in pyromantic divination—in the late 2nd millennium BC, and is the earliest known form of Chinese writing. The vast majority,[a] amounting to over 50,000 inscribed items, were found at the Yinxu site (in Xiaotun, near modern Anyang, Henan Province). They record pyromantic divinations of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty, beginning with Wu Ding, whose accession is dated by different scholars at 1250 BC or 1200 BC.[1][2] After the Shang were overthrown by the Zhou dynasty in c. 1046 BC, divining with milfoil became more common, and a much smaller corpus of oracle bone writings date from the Western Zhou.[3] Thus far, no Zhou sites have been found with a cache of inscriptions on the same scale as that at Yinxu, although inscribed oracle bones appear to be more widespread, being found near most major population centers of the time, and new sites continue to be discovered after 2000.[4]
Chinese characters are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese.[2][3][4] They have been adapted to write a number of other Asian languages. They remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as kanji. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world.[5] By virtue of their widespread current use in East Asia, and historic use throughout the Sinosphere, Chinese characters are among the most widely adopted writing systems in the world by number of users. Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Unlike an alphabet, a character-based writing system associates each logogram with an entire sound and thus may be compared in some aspects to a syllabary.Functional literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters.[6] In Japan, 2,136 are taught through secondary school (the Jōyō kanji); hundreds more are in everyday use. Due to post-WWII simplifications of characters in Japan as well as in China, the Chinese characters used in Japan today are distinct from those used in China in several respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, and pronunciations. Simplified forms of certain characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia; the corresponding traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and to a limited extent in South Korea. In Japan, common characters are written in post-WWII Japan-specific simplified forms, while uncommon characters are written in Japanese traditional forms, which are virtually identical to Chinese traditional forms.
The origin of the modern Chinese character漢字 is internationally recognized as the Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文).
Although divided into various peoples, nations, and civilizations on the mainland of China, a single Chinese civilization was born because Chinese characters were commonly used.
Chinese civilization was eventually born on the basis of a common character called Chinese character 漢字.
By the way, I compared this to ancient Greek civilization.
Perhaps Protestant 
They may laugh at Koreans' poor interpretation of Greek civilization.😄
Still, to prove the probability of my claim, I compared Greek civilization to China.
< p >< center > < img src="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization" > < /center >< /p > < p >< center >< sub > < a href="
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, flourishing from c. 2700 to c. 1450 BC until a late period of decline, finally ending around 1100 BC. It represents the first advanced civilization in Europe, leaving behind massive building complexes, tools, stunning artwork, writing systems, and a massive network of trade.[1] The civilization was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. The name "Minoan" derives from the mythical King Minos and was coined by Evans, who identified the site at Knossos with the labyrinth and the Minotaur. The Minoan civilization has been described as the earliest of its kind in Europe,[2] and historian Will Durant called the Minoans "the first link in the European chain".[3]
The Minoan civilization (c. 2700 BC – c. 1100 BC) is recognized as the first European civilization in history.
I compared The Minoan civilization (c. 2700 BC – c. 1100 BC) to The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo 1600 BC ~ 1046 BC).
However, surprisingly, The Minoan civilization (c. 2700 BC – c. 1100 BC) was born 1000 years earlier than The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo 1600 BC ~ 1046 BC).
The current Chinese Communist Party regime claims China's history is 5000 years old, but the birth of Chinese civilization was later than that of European civilization.
However, The Minoan civilization (c. 2700 BC – c. 1100 BC) and The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo 1600 BC ~ 1046 BC) have many similar parts.
- The first civilized countries
- Built by aother ethnic groups
- .Created the first character... The Minoan civilization invented Linear A, the prototype of modern Alphabet. The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo 1600 BC ~ 1046 BC) invented the first Chinese character, the Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文).
The Minoan civilization (c. 2700 BC – c. 1100 BC) was the Mycenaean civilization(1600–1100 BC ) and other foreigners.
The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo 1600 BC ~ 1046 BC) was a different race from the later The Zhou dynasty (Chinese: 周; pinyin: Zhōu [ʈʂo ́u] 1046BC –314 BC).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_dynasty
The Zhou dynasty (Chinese: 周; pinyin: Zhōu [ʈʂóu]) was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history (790 years). The military control of China by the royal house, surnamed Ji, lasted initially from 1046 until 771 BC for a period known as the Western Zhou and the political sphere of influence it created continued well into the Eastern Zhou period for another 500 years.
Linear A is a writing system used by the Minoans (Cretans) from 1800 to 1450 BCE to write the hypothesized Minoan language. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civilization. It was discovered by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. It was succeeded by Linear B, which was used by the Mycenaeans to write an early form of Greek. No texts in Linear A have been deciphered.Linear A belongs to a group of scripts that evolved independently of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian systems. During the second millennium BCE, there were four major branches: Linear A, Linear B, Cypro-Minoan, and Cretan hieroglyphic.[3] In the 1950s, Linear B was deciphered as Mycenaean Greek. Linear B shares many symbols with Linear A, and they may notate similar syllabic values. But neither those nor any other proposed readings lead to a language that scholars can read.
Comparing the two civilizations that created the foundations of European and Chinese civilizations, I concluded that the Chinese civilization was 3,000 years old.
Because I'm not good at English, please understand my thoughts, claims, and the fact that I have incompletely expressed the source.
I need your help to improve my deficiency in the future.