Re: A China-Sumer connection?

phippsmartin_at_hotmail.com
Date: 03/05/05 

Date: 5 Mar 2005 09:16:26 -0800

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> phippsmartin@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> This seems to have been before you-all started crossposting to
sci.lang.
> First assumption: that China and Sumer "developed in parallel."

It isn't really an assumption. The Chinese and Sumerian civilizations
developed over the same period of time. Sumerian writing dates back,
presumably, to 5500 years ago and we can, supposedly, trace back
Sumerian writing to its very beginning. The Chinese believe that their
system of writing and their calendars were both invented some 4700
years ago, but in order to invent calendars they must have developed a
writing system first, what with them not having had a separate
mathematical notation (one->1, two->2, plus->+). It's true they had
the abacus to do calculations but they must have been able to writing
things down. So the earliest Chinese writing must date back a few more
hundred years and, therefore, about the same time that writing
developed in Sumer.

> Why name
> those two in particular? Is there anything about them that makes them
a
> natural class, such that the same development isn't seen anywhere
else?

I think it is fairly clear that the Egyptians borrowed a lot from the
Sumerians, with Egyptian hieroglyphics being similar to Sumerian
writing and the story of Isis and Osirus being similar to that of
Inanna and Dumuzi. The Sumerians also, presumably, had contact with
the Indians by sea and with other neighbouring cultures by land. It is
doubtful that the Sumerians had direct contact with China and yet Sumer
and China both developed phonetic ideographs, a twelve hour day, a
twelve month solar calendar and similar beliefs in astrology with
astrological symbols typically represented by animals and associated
with the months of the year and the constellations in the sky. It is
reasonable to ask why that would be. No assumption is being made at
that point.

> simultaneous? what's your evidence for simultaneous?

I'm talking about development over a long period of time. While the
Sumerians were developing writing, etc. so were the Chinese. It was
simultaneous in the sense that it was happening at the same time.

> Neither of them ever quoted a single Sumerian text (myth or
otherwise).

They have now.

> "Claims of links" are not persuasive.

Except that I am here sitting in front of a computer in Taiwan. I'm
not going to go to a library or a museum and wade through Chinese
texts. The evidence that one might need might be locked in a room in
the Smithsonian for all we know. For 99.9% of the world, it might as
well not exist. This is the 21st century. If information isn't
available online then for most people in the world it simply isn't
accessable.

> The fact that some Indus seals
> have been excavated in Mesopotamia shows that there was some sort of
> contact between the Indus Valley and the Euphrates Valley in Sumerian
> times, but it does not show that there was direct contact; the tiny,
> valuable objects could have passed from hand to hand to hand just as
> easily, and more plausibly, than been carried by single merchants
making
> the entire trip across the Iranian Plateau.

Just as physical objects can be passed from person to person, so can
ideas. If people can communicate with neighbouring cultures then ideas
can diffuse outward (or in this case around), the only limitation being
the extent to which these ideas continue to be understood by the people
who would be passing them on.

> Once again, what is the _evidence_ for contact?

The evidence would be the Chinese and Sumerian stories that their
Emperors or "fishmen", respectively, handed down their knowledge, that
their knowledge was not developed over time as you would expect to have
been the case. It does seem as though both people aren't giving
themselves enough credit for developing writing, agriculture and
calendars by themselves. If you want to dismiss any lunacy about
aliens or Gods or demons or time travellers then any myth about
knowledge comming from somewhere else must be refering to contact with
other cultures.

I should point out that the Incans had similar myths about agriculture
and irrigation having been provided them by a God-like ruler. This
could also refer to contact with another culture that would have had to
have travelled by sea, although this might have been a one time event
that would be very difficult to find any actual evidence for.

> What peoples are you
> talking about? You cannot put modern names to them; the best you can
do
> is identify archeological horizons that might be associated with the
> ancestors of this or that group.

PKM actually refered to "Austranesians" from "Indonesia". I didn't
want to be pretentious and start using the same terminology, although I
suppose I could have said "ancesters of modern Malays (and Turks)".

Hypothetically, we could argue for the following contacts.

Chinese - Austranesian - Sumerian/Indian - Turk/Azeri - Chinese

Rice was cultivated in East Asia as far back as 10 000 years ago (based
on cooked rice being found in pots dated to that time). Some Chinese
ideas could have been passed on to the Sumerians as a result of
seafaring traders, as their own stories about themselves seem to
suggest. If we assume now that the Sumerians developed a twelve month
solar calendar and the idea of astrology all by themselves then these
ideas could have been passed back to the Chinese by the Austranesians
or, more likely, through mutual contact with Turkish/Azeri traders. I
say the latter is more likely because the Yellow Emperor's kingdom was
located in Western China along the banks of the Yellow River so to
assume that knowledge was passed on to them by Turkish/Azeri traders is
in-keeping, again, with what the Chinese had to say about themselves.

> Why do you automatically assume that all those Asians weren't smart
> enough to come up with things themselves, but had to be "sharing"
among
> each other?

Where is the assumption here? How is this any different from the idea
that Indo-European language and culture diffused outward from the
Caucasus mountains? It doesn't seem to be giving a lot of credit to
other people in the region for developing their own ideas. A more
complete theory of development in Europe would acknowledge the
possibility of the influences of Turkish and Semetic peoples. While
the concept of Indo-European language and culture doesn't automatically
lead to white supreacy, I can see why some people would argue that
there's a connection.

> How is that different, basically, from postulating aliens or
> Atlanteans or gods or demons?

Because the Asian people are developing these ideas themselves,
although not necessarily independently. If you assume that everything
was provided to them by aliens or
Atlanteans or gods or demons then you are presuming everybody to have
been too stupid to have developed these ideas themselves. I consider
that to be not only implausible but borderline rascist. Note that the
idea that knowledge was passed between civilizations requires that the
traders, be they Austranesians or Turks, need to be intelligent enough
to understand the ideas they would have to be passing on. There might
very well have been some basic knowledge of agriculture, using symbolic
writing, keeping time and setting dates that was common to most people
in Asia 5000-6000 years ago.

The issue here is plausibility. It isn't just a question of relying on
evidence that you can see, hear or touch but of putting together a
theory that one can believe. Do you believe that the sun is a massive
fusion reactor? And yet if you look at it with your eyes all you see
is a big ball of fire. Developing a plausible theory requires more
that simply relying on what you can see, hear and touch. Otherwise you
would just go on believing that the sun is a big ball of fire and be
done with it.

Martin

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: A China-Sumer connection?
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  • Re: A China-Sumer connection?
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