As the only ancient civilization that has survived to this day, China's thousands of years of history have made every Chinese feel deeply proud on the one hand, because, looking at the world, in terms of history and national heritage, there is absolutely no country that can be compared with China.
However, the long history has also brought a lot of trouble to the later ones, that is, the task of proving historical materials and verifying historical facts is too onerous.
After all, compared with the history of the West, which is only a few hundred years old, the history of China for thousands of years is so difficult to sort out that it is simply difficult to go to the sky.
No, even though China has a tradition of historians and has gone through a lot of sorting work, there is still a gap in China's history for 1,500 years, so what is going on?
First of all, we can confirm that the history of China is definitely more than 5,000 years, and can even go back to 6,000 years. This can be proved from the Sanxingdui culture of Bashu.
In the history books, as the Xia Dynasty began in China, although people have not found the exact ruins of the Xia Dynasty until today, they have found a lot of similar existence to the Xia Dynasty.
For example, the ruins of the ancient city located in Yanshi Erlitou, Henan Province, should have been produced in the Xia Dynasty, and in terms of specifications, it should be a top capital similar to the capital in that era.
It's just that because people have not yet found obvious cultural signs of the Xia Dynasty in this site, it has not been able to be judged as the site of the Xia Dynasty for a long time, but its age is beyond doubt.
However, before the Xia Dynasty, there was still a 1,500-year gap in China's history, that is, the legendary antiquity. So, when did antiquity originate? The answer is no.
Today's Chinese always regard themselves as the descendants of Yan and Huang, but may I ask, are the Yan Emperor and the Yellow Emperor really the oldest ancestors of the Chinese? Of course not.
Before Yanhuang, there were Fuxi, Nuwa, and even more ancient Huaxu.
Hua Xu is recorded in history, almost a passing mention, this tribe lives in the Leize region, according to records, Hua Xu should be the mother of Fuxi and Nuwa.
Fuxi and Nuwa have a very high status in Chinese history and mythology. Fuxi is known as the first of the hundred kings, and it is said that Fuxi taught people to use fire to barbecue food, set nets to fish, and derived innate gossip according to the Hetuluo book.
If Fuxi really existed, then he was definitely the originator of Chinese history.
As for Nuwa, not to mention it, the mythical Nuwa made people from the soil and made up for the heavens and disaster relief. In history, Nuwa also has a high status, and it is said that it was Nuwa who created the marriage system.
It stands to reason that Fuxi, Nuwa and Huaxu should be regarded as the origin of Chinese culture, right?
But it is a pity that before Fuxi Nuwa, it seems that there were more ancient ancestors in China, that is, there are Chao clan, Suiren clan, and Tieyi clan, the contribution of these three ancestors, from their titles, we can know that there is Chao Clan to help people build houses in imitation of Bird's Nest, Suiren Clan brought fire to people, and Tieyi Clan taught people to make clothes.
So, is Fuxi Nuwa in front, or are these three in front?
The answer is that I don't know, because their history is too long, so old that there is almost no evidence to verify, especially the legends about the three ancestors of the Youchao clan, the Suiren clan, and the Yuyi clan are even more pitiful.
After all, Fuxi still has a river Tuluo book, and Nuwa also has a Lishan that refines stones to make up for the sky, although it may not be accurate, but there are still some sources to be found.
But there are Chao Clan, Suiren Clan, and Tieyi Clan, and these three really don't know where to find it. Therefore, it is still inconclusive who should have been the origin of Chinese history.
After talking about Fuxi, Nuwa and Youchao, Suiren, and Yuyi, this is almost the history of mythology, and then let's talk about the legendary era that is somewhat reliable, but not completely reliable, that is, the era of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors.
The three emperors have different opinions so far, and the more reliable ones are, Suiren, Fuxi and Shennong. The statement of the five emperors is relatively better, according to the historical records, they are the Yellow Emperor, Zhuan, Emperor Yu, Yao, and Shun.
Let's talk about the Three Emperors era, Suiren and Fuxi are too mysterious and have nowhere to study, but the last Shennong can find some traces.
There are many legends of Shennong's clan, it is said that Shennong is a bull-headed human deity, he tastes herbs for human beings, spreads grains, is the god of medicine and agriculture in China, and it is precisely because of this kind of contribution that the Shennong tribe became the leader supported by many tribes at that time, and named the name of Emperor Yan.
According to ancient records, from the first generation of Shennong became the master of the world, the inheritance of the Shennong tribe continued for more than 500 years, and its historical inheritance is roughly, Shennong gave birth to Emperor Kui, Kuisheng Emperor Cheng, Chengsheng Emperor Ming, Ming Sheng Emperor Zhi, Zhisheng Emperor Yak, Yak Emperor Mourning, Mourning Emperor Ke, Kesheng Emperor Yu, after that, Emperor Yan was defeated by the emperor, Yan and Huang merged, and the world changed hands.
In addition, experts speculate based on the image of the bull head of the Yan Emperor that the Yan Emperor tribe should use the cow as a totem, and as for the Chiyou tribe, it is very likely to be a branch of the Yan Emperor tribe.
And after the defeat of the Yandi tribe, the Yellow Emperor became the new co-ruler of the world.
Compared with the three emperors who became the co-masters of the world by merit, and the five emperors after that, the inheritance standards of the Yellow Emperor, Zhuan Xuan, Emperor Yu, Yao, and Shun actually mainly rely on blood, and I really don't understand what is going on with those Confucians.
On the one hand, they admired the ancient rule of Yao Shun Chan, but on the other hand, they deliberately ignored a very important point.
That is the so-called Five Emperors Chan Rang, after all, it is still inherited by the internal members of the emperor's family, in a word, the meat is still rotten in his own pot. And as early as the time of the Yellow Emperor, there should have been a system of succession for sons-in-law in China.
According to historical records, the Yellow Emperor had more than 20 sons, including two sons-in-law, one for Shaohao, one for Changyi, several famous emperors after the Yellow Emperor are their descendants, including Dayu is also the descendants of the Yellow Emperor.
Therefore, it is somewhat untenable to think that the Xia Dynasty was the beginning of the world, because these emperors before the Xia Dynasty were all descendants of the Yellow Emperor family.
However, due to the limited records of ancient history before the Xia Dynasty, the cultural relics left behind are really scarce, although there are also Longshan jade and other items that can prove the long history of China.
However, due to the immaturity of writing at that time, we really can't find too much relevant information on these cultural relics, so that the record of ancient history can only rely on expert speculation and those folk legends in many cases, which is why people will default to the Xia Dynasty as the beginning of the Chinese world.
Speaking of this, some people may ask, why does China obviously have the most complete historian system in the world, but there are still so many confusing historical gaps?
In this regard, I can only say that it is too difficult to record history.
First of all, there is the difficulty of preserving the relevant history books.
It is not necessarily true that history is written by the victors, but it is undeniable that when the new king defeats the old queen, he will always choose to tamper with history, or even destroy history books and historians.
This kind of thing has been common in Chinese history, not to mention, the historians of Qi who were killed after Cui Zhu killed the monarch in the Spring and Autumn Period, and the super ** who slaughtered thousands of historians in the Northern Wei Dynasty.
Even historians can be arbitrarily **, not to mention those history books, in history, China's cultural books have suffered an unknown number of large-scale destruction.
Although Qin Shi Huang burned books and pit Confucianism, he still backed up all the books of the Six Kingdoms in the Qin Palace, but he was burned clean by Xiang Yu.
After that, whether it was the replacement of the New Han Dynasty, or the revival of the Eastern Han Dynasty, or the Dong Zhuo Rebellion, or the Wuhu Rebellion, after each major chaos, a large number of historical documents would be burned.
Even in the so-called prosperous period, these books are often deliberately used by the rulers, for example, when the Qing Dynasty revised the "Siku Quanshu", more than 60,000 volumes of books were tragically altered or even destroyed, which is really a cultural catastrophe, which is really deplorable.
Therefore, every ancient book can be preserved, I really don't know how many hardships and ups and downs it has to go through, which is why, although China is said to have had a Cangjie to create characters during the Yellow Emperor's period, but the ancient documents are still very few and pitiful.
The second point is the issue of the chronology of Chinese history.
If you have some understanding of the oracle bone inscription, you should notice that when the oracle bone inscription involves time, it will be said that it is a certain year of the emperor, and this kind of chronology is the same as the chronology of the era of later generations, how many years of Kangxi, how many years of Qianlong, and the title of the emperor represents the process of time.
As a result, which emperor in antiquity has a lack of historical documents? Then, there will be a blank in the time period of the historical axis.
This is quite a headache for historians, and the exact time point in time for China to have an exact date will not be until the Western Zhou period in 841 BC.
In that year, there was a famous Chinese riot King Zhou Li was driven away by the Chinese people, and people were disgusted with the title of King Zhou Li, so they changed the traditional historical chronology, so that the subsequent Chinese history has an accurate year to examine.
And the historical years before that. I'm sorry, but it's up to archaeologists to figure it out.
But even so, China's historical research is already the most complete in the world, because China's archaeologists when talking about China's ancient history are not like the West just holding a few celebrities and making up the numbers there, our history is proved by one after another unearthed cultural relics.