>appears in the middle of ancient China with bulging eyeballs
>refuses to give context
>vanishes without a trace
This shit was in the middle of China millennia ago and looks Mesopotamian or ancient American. Nobody has any explanation for it and the Chinese government doesn't like talking about it because they know the '3000 years of continuous history' is a lie with obviously foreign cultures like this lying around.
Historians will NEVER convince me ancient people weren't travelling across the seas in much greater distances when we have styles this similar appearing all over the planet.
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I know what this one means and where it comes from based on the shared symbolic language.
>make a bronze three
>woah they clearly meant this to make this other symbol!
They share a common root symbolic language about the creation of the people and their relation from divinity.
No they don't
are you somehow not aware of the dragon bloodline from which the Chinese imperial families claimed descent and right to rule?
this
is literally a family tree
>it's a family tree because I say it is
> also this tree represents snakes
You are just making pareidolia speak
Another artefact which would fit better in Mesopotamia or the Americas, again in central China.
And China had pyramids too. Same as in both of those locations.
At the time these were made, Mesoamerican civilization didn't even really exist yet and pre-columbian Mexico was still over 2000 years away from having even basic copper metallurgy, something that kinda undermines your claim of old world contact.
Not if China spread to the Americas rather than the other way around.
Except by the time civilization pops up in Mesoamerica, this stuff was already on the way out artistically in China, and the earliest populart Mesoamerican styles such as Olmec art don't really resemble this
The Maya art which does, doesn't take off till even later, like 400-200BC
that if the official chronology is right but what if it isn't ?
Then you'd still have to explain shit like a bronze age civilization suddenly giving up on metallurgy entirely for the next couple thousand years.
obviously a cosmic scale catastrophe
also its not like chronology is only wrong locally
its wrong in all places
We would have plenty of evidence for that, aside from some bronze masks that "kinda look similar". It's simply a not strong enough evidence.
>Another artefact which would fit better in Mesopotamia or the Americas, again in central China.
>convergent isolated culture
Jealous much kang?
so what are you saying? china was injuns and shiet and the CCP is hiding it?
Yes. I made a mistake in my earlier post.
The idea of 3000 years of unbroken Chinese history is a myth which the government likes for propaganda reasons but it falls apart almost everywhere you look because there's evidence for unknown ancient cultures all over China.
>pyramids in Northern China
>mummies in Western China
>weird Mesopotamian-like statues in central China
and nobody has any explanation for it which doesn't imply a foreign culture existing in China which we can't account for. And they were obviously advanced, because this stuff demonstrates pretty clearly a high level of civilization.
It's almost impossible to believe all of this appeared in China without ancient people being far better at long-distance travel than we thought.
That's a fascinating timeline. So when do you think "han culture" in particular came into being?
in Northern China
in Western China
Mesopotamian-like statues in central China
None of thi is really indicative of anything in particulat though
Serbia, Java and Yamato have pyramid too
>It's almost impossible to believe all of this appeared in China without ancient people being far better at long-distance travel than we thought
This is a moronic take. The only thing that proves is what anyone thought: China is such a big country, and the chinese narrative that the Yellow River Civilization was the only civilization around and that all of China historically belongs to them is false.
It's too big of a region with a lot of fertile lands to not have other advanced cultures emerging. The Sanxingdui or the Tocharian are just some of many.
But there's nothing there that makes them so much more advanced than Yellow River Civ itself or any other civilization at that time. They could have emerged on their own easily.
>But the Mesoamerican similarities
This is just a very superficial look into them. The only similarities are the fact those statues are green and have geometric spirals. Even the materials are different, after all the Sanxingdui statues are made of bronze, which took millennia to appear in Mesoamerica.
Go look for actual mesoamerican artifacts. You will see they aren't that similar.
>Go look for actual mesoamerican artifacts. You will see they aren't that similar.
They are similar to Mesoamerican artifacts. Many instinctually note the similarities between primordial Chinese and Mesopotamian art. A reasonable conclusion is that the styles were transmitted by historical contact. It's quite plausible that a Shang dynasty fleet reached the Americas by natural currents that also brought Japanese pottery fragments to the Americas. See these links:
>The time of the rise of the Olmec civilization coincides with the fall of the Shang dynasty, and there are a number of similarities between the two cultures. On this basis, Xu boldly infers that some 5000 people of Shang sailed across the Pacific on bamboo rafts and landed in western Mexico; later, they gradually spread to the central highlands and the Gulf Coast, and built up a civilization of art, religion, architecture, agriculture and trade. Xu has even written a historical drama, Fallen Grace, which describes how the lost people of Shang may have crossed the sea.
>Chen Hanping interprets the markings on the left-hand [Olmec] celt as reading: "The ruler and his chieftains establish the foundation for a kingdom."
https://www.bxscience.edu/ourpages/auto/2008/4/2/1207163548071/Olmecs.pdf
https://www.taiwan-panorama.com/Articles/Details?Guid=4b9af7c2-a97e-4307-bd45-f879f998f128&langId=3&CatId=7
All that crank theories are refuted by genetics.
If the chinese have arrived in Central America 3000 years ago we would see it's genetic footprint, which we don't.
Extraordinary hypothesis require extraordinary evidences. The only evidence of a supposed interoceanic contact is the similarity of some of the art, and even that similarity is merely superficial and could be explained by mere convergence of styles (aka. coincidence).
So no.
>If the chinese have arrived in Central America 3000 years ago we would see it's genetic footprint, which we don't.
That's long enough to have blurred unique traces. There are barely traces of my DNA's Persian genes from 1500 years ago. Another plausible explanation is extermination, or the transmittance of civilization but succumbing to local disease.
They were smart enough to potentially develop the 0 on their own, but having civilization transplanted would certainly accelerate them centuries ahead, which could explain why they reached it so soon, compared to the collective intelligence of three continents.
>mere convergence of styles (aka. coincidence).
Obviously but you saying the conclusion is no is blatantly incorrect. You haven't disproven it.
>That's long enough to have blurred unique traces
Genotype =/= phenotype.
And Modern genetic analysis could have easily identified Chinese genes from 3000 years ago.
They found unique genes from a ghost population that is extinct for at least 14,000 years ago in modern day native south americans, what make you think they can't find the 3,000 year old chinese genetic trace? Genetic tech is way more advanced today than you think.
Yes but diseases, warfare and migration may explain why. Didn’t the Romans leave a negligible genetic trace on Britain despite being there for centuries? Who’s to say there isn’t a few thousand latinos with ancient Chinese dna
Mesoamerican civilization began in the caribbean coast, not in the pacific. And as stated earlier in the thread, the chinese artefacts posted in this thread do not resemble the famous naturalistic style of the Olmecs at all, and your hypothesis ignores the fact that there was no metallurgy whatsoever in Mesoamerica until the 9th century AD, something that probably wouldn't be the case if they really had any major influence from the bronze age chinese.
>Many instinctually note the similarities
You mean amateurs with extremely limited exposure to and knowledge of either Sinitic or Precolumbian antiquities?
Disclosure, I'm one of them, I had that instinct, and I know damn well better than to draw any big conclusions from my superficial glance at material I haven't learned how to look at. Look closer and you'll find that they're unique.
Those aren't foreign and it's not "covered up." Chinese historiography literally talks about the "ten thousand states" of antiquity. Xia, Shang, and Zhou were all acknowledged to be overlords over a confederation of a massive number of smaller states with variation in culture. It's in the fricking Shiji.
The Xia dynasty is a myth China loves to attach to literally anything.
Kind of beside the point. Or even strengthens it, if even those who take the Xia mythology at face value agree that the land that becomes "China" was culturally and politically diverse.
Regardless. It still not proof of ancient intercontinental contact, which is the point of this discussion.
China itself has accounts of travels like the famous treasure ship, they also had a thousand tongues wich speaks of radical cultural differences, is obvious what they did in 3000 thousand years was assimilate and unify
i don't get guys like this, there's always guys can see objectively weird shit and be like "nah this means nothing because (no actual reason given)"
if they assimilated you'd expect influences of this culture to survive and influence the dominant culture, not to suddenly stop and look completely alien
Because looking at something and calling it weird then creating fanfiction around those speculations doesn't mean much
you claim that these mystical peoples were assimilated and that chink culture isn't 3000 years old
so what's your claim then? 2000 years old?
>2 people having somewhat similar relics means that AKSHUALLY they were one and the same
When will you homosexuals learn?
It's not obvious at all. If it were obvious, Chinese historians would have a working theory of how sanxingdui was brought into the mainstream Han culture. They don't. So clearly it's not obvious.
The most people can say is "maybe the bulging eyes represent Cancong, an ancient king of Shu," but one problem is that a lot of this is myth and we don't have much evidence for it.
We also don't have any explanation of where the influences for the artistic style came from and why it was so similar to foreign cultures. Also, we don't have any later records of this. It's only this one isolated discovery. Almost no other records of this culture's impact or artefacts exist. So it's not obvious how to answer that either.
One problem I think is here is that this is dated to a time we are supposed to have been able to trace Chinese history. This is often said to come from the Shu kingdom (as mentioned). But the current understanding of history claims we can trace Chinese history back at least that far. Yet here is a clearly foreign inspired cultural art style which we cannot explain.
I don't think this makes sense. Either our ability to understand Chinese history is wrong, or somehow the dating of this is wrong (not likely), or there is some influence on a part of ancient Chinese culture we don't account for at all, which vanished shortly after this.
and this amounts to what, exactly? there were dozens of different cultures and sites at the time, some are conflated with a "han" culture, some aren't, the existence of outliers just proves that outliers existed
your arguments make no sense, china was never a cultural bastion to begin with
>the existence of outliers just proves that outliers existed
this is moronic, you have to be intentionally dense to refuse to find shit interesting when it's out of place
it is interesting, however it doesn't corroborate the claims being made
>or somehow the dating of this is wrong
most likely is this
I am pretty sure that mainstream chronology(both east and west) is mostly fan fiction with plenty of phantom time ''dark'' ages to fill up things we know
That schizo dones't know a fricking thing about Chinese history. It's literally recorded that dynasties would end up building new cities using an old city's name off to the side of the ruins of the old one instead of exactly on top of the old one. Even today modern day Luoyang is mostly off to the side of the ruins of ancient Luoyang. As for why they liked building off to the side, well, there's the fact that "prime quality locations" tend to move a little due to things like naturally shifting rivers or other geographical changes when you're talking about the time scales of centuries.
Reminder this is the same schizo who doesn't understand the concept of re-using old names for prestige and tried to claim that the existence of states that called themselves Han in the Five Dynasties Ten States era is somehow proof that all of recorded history between Han and the Five Dynasties era is fake, which is all the more ridiculous when you realize that there were literally two states in the Five Dynasties era that existed at the same time that tried to claim the prestigious old name Han.
nice cope
I love how this pic treats the Han and Tang as some nebulous stone age archaeological "cultures" and not just two political dynasties of an already fully-formed chinese civilization
what's this? gunnar heinsohn?
that's not how strata works
>what's this? gunnar heinsohn?
ye
I found his theories interesting even if on schizo side
China has such cool art. For me it looks like bamboo piercing his eyes. Maybe there was a ruler or myth of a god who had his eyes put out.
BOOBA
> WE
But since it looks like you want an actual explanation I'll effort post. While there seems to be mesoamerican elements in these artifacts, design motifs like these have been part of chinese(generalising populations) history/prehistory for a while. If you look at the longshan, erlitou, and shimao cultures that predate the sanxingdui we see common elements in all of them. It is very clear that the artistic tradition was started in prehistory. China didnt have their writing system proper until about 1350bc ish so we wonnt get proper context for them. I dont think anyone claims 1 distinct chinese civilization survived for 4000 years but certainly they had fewer gaps in literacy than any other civilization. The current chinese writing system is an evolution of shang oracle bone scripts which in turn were probably derived from jiagu/banpo symbols. In that regard the chinese were most certainly literate for that entire timeframe. But it would also be different peoples as the han ethnicity is most definitely an amalgm of many many different chinese groups as evidenced by chinese being a language family which encompasses 'dialects' that arent very mutually intelligable. Pyramids were mostly built later on closer to warring states/han. Pyramids are kind of everywhere so it is kind of a mute point unless you suspect that there was 1 precursor civilization that influenced all the pyramids in the entire world. The mummies in western china in the tarim basin are a completely seperate ethnicity and culture. People seem to forget that china historically was not as far reaching into the west until you get to the han. Those mummies are from a different peoples. No doubt there was cultural exchange much earlier than accepted. But its a reach to day that the exchange came from the americas. The burial practices we see in ancient northern china are similar to ancient steppe peoples and the technology of the chariot was most definitely transferred from the steppe.
Nice posts. Book recs on topics like Sanxingdui and Shimao? In English?
The Cambridge Ancient China is on my list already but I don't know how up to date the current edition is
Unfortunately thats the issue when going around and learning about ancient china. There are too few sources that are good and already translated. Joseph Needhams Science and Technology in China series is quite good for niche topics that i believe encompass all dynasties. Joseph Needham was one of the earliest proponents for the existence of the Shang which was a controversial topic at the time.While it does have a few embellishments it compiles a lot of primary accounts to corroborate with the information being given. These books explore a plethora of topics but it is more technology focused. Sadly research on sanxingdui and especially shimao are mostly going to be in chinese for the foreseeable future. They are relatively new and there is little information written about them on our sphere. If you care to tour around the chinese net I am sure you can find more sources on sites like zhihu, toutiao, and baidu. Id recommend using deepL as a translator its not perfect but good enough to get the general idea. I apologize that I cannot provide any solid readings for these topics in specific, as I myself am also on the journey to learn more about them. Good Luck.
Also if the song dynasty intrigues you (the primary documents make reference to much older dynasties because antiquarians were very prevalent during the time) id suggest The dream pool essays (Brush talks from dream brook in english). You will have to parse fact from myth as they were working with some truly ancient sources.
Ha! I have a book ABOUT Needham, but not his books. I happen to live in a nerdy area where I've found partial used sets of "Science and Technology," but regrettably I never sprang for them.
I really appreciate the advice though. Maybe I will check out the Dream Pool. slim picking for monoglots, but more ways than ever to get around it I guess.
Thank you, I was about to complain about that. People are too focused on imperial/Han chinese culture and aesthetics, and don't realize that Bronze Age China had about as much in common with it as Mycenaean Greece with Late Antique Rome or Byzantium.
It's just more Steppechads, they also founded the megalithic cultures of the Americas. If it was actually Injuns the Chinese wouldn't be keeping the DNA samples a secret because they're virtually identical to the Chinese already, they're Indo-Europeans is the only way to explain it all. The eyes on the masks and giant ears are symbolic of being all-seeing and hearing, the tree is literally the tree of life from Indo-European mythology, and their kings wielded golden scepters and jade was more valuable than gold like in the steppe.
Is this supposed to be a joke? While I agree ancient steppe peoples definitely influenced chinese civilization through cultural exchange, the faces being depicted in sanxingdui and sites that predate it are not that of indo-europeans. Unless Indo-europeans had broad noses and epicanthic folds like picrel.
The masks features are not representitive of biological characteristics to their creators' because it's supposed to be abstract, they're all exaggerated to accentuate the wearer's god-like abilities.
There are naturalistic compositions made in bronze by the zhou. They retain the stylistic elements of their forebears while also having a fairly realistic depiction of the faces. The zhou were a pretty steppe influenced dynasty but it would be weird to claim that this depiction is not reflective of the population that produced it.
The masks literally depict elves anon, what do you think that's synonymous with?
> Elves
Ah schizo poster; based. Carry on.
I was referring to the Sanxingdui examples though
The sanxingdui were all abstract but even with being abstract they have racial characteristics consistent with the population that made them. The Shu and Ba were located in southern china so I very much doubt that extensive direct trade was made to them by indoeuropeans. I posit that if any cultural osmosis with indo europeans had occured it was through their interactions with northern chinese which they did have a trading relationship with;so plausible. That being said incorporating motifs from foreign religions isnt unheard of in chinese history (hercules,boreas). But there is too much in the sanxingdui that infers that it was a native production as precursor art that predated by a thousand years uses many of the same stylistic elements and their presence was ubiquitous. I would really doubt the stone age cultures of southern china were in any way influenced by steppe peoples. How old and which specific steppe groups are you referring to?
This will explain it better than I can
There are some interesting points made especially with the later sculptures featuring foreigners of the steppes and ear piercings. But the presenter makes some very glaring errors. First she says that the bronzes do not look like chinese people but that is a flat out erroneous claim. There are sculptures from sanxingdui that are naturalistic and depict very chinese looking peoples. Second she claims it is the earliest site of bronze working. The shimao culture predates the sanxingdui and they had bronze before any other part of china that we know of so far and they are located north. More than likely bronze was developed by different cultures in china at different times because the compositions of bronze vary wildly depending on where you are. Shimao most certainly learned bronze metallurgy from steppe peoples. Third mistake; she claims that they were referred to as the west but for china west almost always referred to xinjiang, gansu regions. Not sichuan. I would presume that the Liangzhu (non han chinese) probably had quite a bit of influence on the sanxingdui culture. They highly valued jade and their artistic conventions are much closer to the sanxingdui than anywhere else. They were also around in 3000 bc. I still have much to learn about and I thank you for giving me something interesting to think about regardless of whether we agree.
You should watch the rest of her video series on the subject, I think her presentation is very objective and articulate.
WE WUZ CHINKS AN SHIIET
> If it was actually Injuns the Chinese wouldn't be keeping the DNA samples a secret because they're virtually identical to the Chinese already, they're Indo-Europeans is the only way to explain it all.
Not Sanxingdui itself but the earliest DNA samples from Sichuan resemble modern day Tibeto-Burmans.
Good morning Sir
WE WUZ QINGS N SHEEEEIIT
This looks like the sort of shit you see as scenery inside of Zul-Gurub or Zul-Aman from WoW kek
whoever they were, they got kicked out to japan, china filtered out barbarian pigs like you couldn't believe
Shang schizo you are, as always, a blessing tot his board.
It's always 3.5k-2.5k years ago which means it's always Phoenicians. The boat people never show up until they do everywhere.
Nevermind the eyes, the most notable features of those heads/masks is that giant... branch? horn? growing out of the forehead.
It's missing on the one in the OP but you can see the hole in which it was slotted.
Wonder if perhaps in the absence of iron, cultures are more inclined to shape soft metals instead of rocks, and when iron finally does get discovered and stronger tools are made from it, they are then more inclined to work on carving stone.
>appears in the middle of ancient China with bulging eyeballs
... Steve
Looks like tiki statue or pacific islander stuffs than Mesopotamian to me