We begin with REALLY early Chinese history...
1.36 million years ago.
That's right. Humanity has been in the Middle Kingdom for a VERY long
time. According to scientists
at the Smithsonian Institution, stone tools have been found at a site in
northern China. This isn't a big surprise; human ancestors' bones have been
found in China for ages. One of the varieties of our ancestor species Homo erectus
was dubbed 'Peking Man', after all. The tools aer a relatively new find, though.
This particular settlement of early human ancestors was well north of China's
famous Yellow River, at a site called Xiaochangliang, forty degrees north. Either
our ancestors were a lot better at adapting to changes of temperature physically
than previously thought, or they learned to make shelters and wear clothing
well ahead of our previous timetable for such events. No evidence yet of fire
or shelters at the Xiaochangliang site, though. Oh well.
Fast-forward half a million years (let's face it, things don't exactly happen
quickly when we're talking about Homo erectus). Human ancestors have spread
south some six hundred kilometers and established a settlement in an area that
will one day be named Zhou Kou Dian, not far from the future site of the city
of Beijing. This settlement is inhabited for several hundred thousand years,
if the layer of bones and other detritus is anything to go by. There was a time
when we thought the inhabitants of Zhoukoudian used fire, but lately studies
of the bones have been called
into question. Anyway, this merry band of Homo erectus is dubbed Peking
Man by Canadian
palaeontologist Davidson Black. They're hunters, they're gatherers, and
they're in every physical anthropology textbook I've ever seen. Good for them.
They don't go away, either. Fast forward again, but keep your finger on the
button. Twenty-five thousand years BCE (Before the Common Era), humans were
still living in the area around Zhoukoudian. The archaeological evidence indicates
that these folks had a pretty good grasp on things like carving and knot-tying,
and seemed to have a chief and some kind of tribal structure. Fast forward through
about twenty thousand more years, though, and we're starting to move into something
like recognizable time... it's 5000 or so BCE, seven thousand years before the
present, and at a place called Yangshao there's a good little culture going.
There's evidence of people growing rice and of the weaving of cloth, and somewhere
in all of this, the Yangshao people get the hang of pottery. I've seen some
of these Neolithic pots in museums. They make me want to scream - the designs
look so much like American Southwestern Natives' designs that it isn't
even funny. Good-looking pots, though. These folks are also steaming their food
- the archaeologists have found three-legged contraptions that served as boilers,
and pots that were set on the top to use the moist heat. Just to put this in
perspective, this is the time frame in which agriculture was starting to spread
southwards out of Egypt's Nile Delta, and the beginnings of the Minoan civilization
in Crete. (It's a two thousand year time span, gimme a break.)
At this point we start moving out of the realm of archaeology and into the realm
of legends. More importantly, into the realm of legendary names. Chinese
history and legend credits a handful of people with the dawn of civilization
and all the advances that go along with it. I should note that it's more than
a little hard to separate the deities from the individuals, and that much of
this is pure legend anyway, but it's the best I can do. It's not like Europe
was exactly keeping records worth being proud of, yanno. We're up to 3000 BCE
and Egypt's just got its first dynasty under its belt, and just figured out
that Bricks are Good for Building, so cut me some slack on the legendary founders
of it all, m'kay?
This period is known as the San Huang period - the time of the Three Emperors.
First on our list is Sui Ren, or Sui Jen, depending on which romanization you're
using. I have to admit I'm a little unclear as to exactly when he's supposed
to be; I've seen timelines placing him at the start of the period, as well as
at the end... oh, well. Sorry about that. The legends say he was the one to
bring fire down from Heaven and use it to cook meat for the first time. The
idea here was to prevent disease transmission.
Let's all stop for a moment and thank the nice prehistoric emperor for coming
up with an idea that still manages to elude most major restaurant chains throughout
the United States of America, shall we?
Right, so, anyway. After him was a chap by the name of Fu Xi, aka Fuxi and Fu
Hsi. Fu Xi was said to have seen the future in the patterns on a tortoise shell,
and has gone down in legend as the inventor of all kinds of things. Music, for
one thing. Domestication of animals, for another. Painting, fishing with nets,
the trigrams, you name it. (The trigrams being those sets of long and/or short
lines stacked on top of each other. They're part of tai chi, bagua, feng shui
arrangements, and I Ching-based divination.) He also invented the patriarchy,
more or less - it was his idea that marriage should be banned among those who
shared parentage or close ancestors. If you've read Barry Hughart's The
Story of the Stone, you've met his wife... Fu Xi was married to Nu Huo,
also rendered into English as Nu Kua. Yes, the one who mended the sky, or patched
the Wall of Heaven, or whatever legend you're thinking of. I warned you it's
hard to keep the gods and mortals separate.
After Fu Xi - a lonnnnnnnnng way after Fu Xi - comes a fella name of Shen Nong.
I like him. Shen Nong is also known as Yan Di, I dunno if you'll ever have heard
either of the names. He's said to have invented the wooden plough, which is
a good thing, and he's considered the father of agriculture, which is also good.
Shen Nong just kinda got into the whole plants-as-servants-of-man thing all
around, because he's considered the inventor of Chinese herbal medicine... and
the originator of tea. Apparently, in addition to the part where he was busy
tasting every herb he could get his hands on and writing down the effects they
had, he at one point set a pot of water up to boil under a bush. Some leaves
fell in, unnoticed. WOW did he like what the water tasted like afterwards. Next
thing you know - bam. Tea cultivation left and right. Compared to this, the
part where they say he introduced concepts like 'marketplaces' and 'trade' seems
almost tame. The man was declared to be God of Agriculture at some point. I
don't know if this was in honor of his achievements, or if he was supposed to
be the god from the start, or what. Given the track record of fantastically
overachieving people in Chinese early history, it's quite possibly both.
That brings us to the very edge of historicity. I'm gonna stop here for now.
Our next stop will be the Three Model Emperors, one of whom was credited with
being a Gou'ald in the Stargate:
SG1 episode "Fair Game". I'm serious.