History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII

[JohannaK]

Well, if we talk about China in 2,000 BC we must be talking about the region rather than any polity that there may or may not have been (I believe the semi-legendary Xia dynasty supposedly emerged at around that time in the Yellow River Valley) alongside a myriad of another polities or somewhat organised societiesin the larger region of present-day China.

 

[Agent327]

I don't know any region called China. But if you transpose present day China (which, among others also includes Tibetans, Turks and Mongols) onto 'China' in 2,000 BC you'll find that relatively there were less Chinese in 'China' than there are today. Which goes a long way to explain why demographic historical statistical comparison for a large part are educated guesses, not based on hard overall data. Modern statistics really is very much modern.

 

[JohannaK]

Bad phrasing on my part, I guess. Yet it is evident that I mean we should consider 'China proper' (present-day minus Tibet, Manchuria, Qinghai, Xinjiang, most of Gansu) as a region rather than a polity.

In any case, I am interested in Chinese history, so I went check the Cambridge History of Ancient China (I should read more about th era, of course, but that's my reference for less deep probes) and found no population or ethnicity estimates, though it indicated that some of the main cultures of the 'Chinese region' (both in the Yellow River and Yangtze valleys), although distinct, had common traits already at, iirc, 5,000 BC. These grew closer still in successive millennia. This brings me to my question: What makes someone or something 'Chinese' back in 2,000 BC? In short, what is it that we are talking about here? I understood hobbs' question as referring to the Chinese region more or less as I defined it here rather than to the polity, which on the other hand seems to be most of everyone else's assumption.

 

[Flying Pig]

Bad phrasing on my part, I guess. Yet it is evident that I mean we should consider 'China proper' (present-day minus Tibet, Manchuria, Qinghai, Xinjiang, most of Gansu) as a region rather than a polity.

I think it's worth setting out that its definition as a region is soley that it represents the area lived in by mostly Han people in 2015. Definitions of regions that 'naturally' belong in a particular country are eternally slippery - people insisted, not that long ago, that Malta was obvious part of Italy, and the Netherlands obviously part of Germany.

 

[JohannaK]

Well in the case of Europe I'm more reluctant to use country names as region names, preferring "Western Europe", "Central Europe" or "Scandinavia" instead. I think that using country names as regions should only really occur for large countries such as China, India and Russia. Even then it's use is perfectly disputable.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

To clarify my previous questions -

I actually don't care if we are estimating ethnic Chinese populations or any other group. I actually only care about the total population of the geographic region we now call 'China' as it seems (and again, i understand this may actually not be the case) that the region always boasted a large population - regardless of who they were ethnically at a given time.

 

[Agent327]

Not prior to agriculture, no.

 

[JohannaK]

Not prior to mankind, no. What I mean is, prior to agriculture a large population wasn't really possible afaik. Forgive my harshness, I am in a bad mood for rl reasons.

 

[Cutlass]

To clarify my previous questions -

I actually don't care if we are estimating ethnic Chinese populations or any other group. I actually only care about the total population of the geographic region we now call 'China' as it seems (and again, i understand this may actually not be the case) that the region always boasted a large population - regardless of who they were ethnically at a given time.

I think it's as simple as the fact that once civilizations began to grow there, they never truly collapsed. While what we call 'China', for lack of a better term, has gone through many changes and many governments over the ages, there has been a civilization there pretty much unbroken for some 6000 years. Early cultivation of wheat and other grains and those vegetables available in the West simply did not have the output per acre and labor as rice. So the rice plus the continued settlement and civilization allowed 'China' to be ahead of most places in population. Egypt and the Mid East simply would not support those levels of population. Rome would only when the Empire was strong. Which wasn't most of the time. The political fracturing caused population decline. And before scientifically bred crops, the carrying capacity of the crops Europe had simply would not feed as many people.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yet North/Central America boasted maize which is the most productive crop by a wide margin (IIRC), had sedentary agricultural, city-building cultures but I don't think its population ever got nearly as large as China's.

Though I could be wrong and that could entirely be a misconception caused by lack of records and biased history channel narratives.

 

[Tee Kay]

Yet North/Central America boasted maize which is the most productive crop by a wide margin (IIRC), had sedentary agricultural, city-building cultures but I don't think its population ever got nearly as large as China's.

Though I could be wrong and that could entirely be a misconception caused by lack of records and biased history channel narratives.

Estimates for pre-Columbian population vary wildly but the usual estimate is a peak of 25 million in central Mexico alone. I suppose you could compare that to one of the more densely populated regions of China at the time eg Lower Yangtze.

Anyway, after maize was introduced to China the population there increased quite, quite rapidly. Though I understands this is 'cause maize grows better in marginal lands where wheat/rice wasn't viable.

 

[Agent327]

Maize was primarily Central-American. Which, also given the population estimates just mentioned, doesn't quite compare to North-China.

Not prior to mankind, no. What I mean is, prior to agriculture a large population wasn't really possible afaik.

Which is what I said.

 

[Tee Kay]

Maize was primarily Central-American. Which, also given the population estimates just mentioned, doesn't quite compare to North-China.

It started in Central America, but soon spreads to other regions of the continent in short order. So no, not primarily Central America at all.

Also comparisons need to be made between actually comparable regions and time periods. North China where, and when, Central America where, and when, and so on.

It was domesticated later than most Old World crops IIRC, 'cause "wild maize" was kinda pathetic as a food source. Took a few centuries of selective breeding to get modern varieties of maize.

 

[Flying Pig]

Wheat was exactly the same, though - the original product is a rather unpromising bit of grass. Might it not have been domesticated later simply because people arrived in Central America much later than they arrived in Anatolia and the Indus Valley?

 

[Louis XXIV]

Wheat still required far less work to domesticate. If you compare the ancestor of wheat to the ancestor of corn, it's clear that corn changed significantly in the domestication process.

 

[Agent327]

It started in Central America, but soon spreads to other regions of the continent in short order.

Domestication did never spread in short order. It took hundreds of years.

 

[Arakhor]

Given the hundreds of thousands of years that passed between the various stages of the Palaeolithic, that's pretty prompt.

 

[daft]

Face it people, your HISTORY reaches accurately only as far as about 2500 years ago. Further than that and. amongst some solid evidence, a lot of guessing starts. And do not give me this 'WE KNOW FOR SURE", crap-because- YOU KNOW NOT!
Hate listening to all those so-called ancient history experts feeding me all these lies: This is how it was, it's the only way it could have been... It's a bunch of baloney they're feeding us all, based solely on assumptions of how they think it must have gone down-rather than scientific fact. Worst of all, they are feeding you'll this crap and you believe them! Basically, wherever they lack evidence they will come up with the "way it must have been" and demand you take it as the one and only possible truth! - don't be brainless!
Think for yourself!, do not accept all that the so-called "Scientists" or "Historians" tell you to be the only possible truth.
Check out this site:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...&mid=A80DCDACB1144EEA7222A80DCDACB1144EEA7222

Stuff they don't want you to know
The bunch of YouTube video's you can check out under this name will make you wonder...

 

[schlaufuchs]

Face it people, your HISTORY reaches accurately only as far as about 2500 years ago. Further than that and. amongst some solid evidence, a lot of guessing starts. And do not give me this 'WE KNOW FOR SURE", crap-because- YOU KNOW NOT!
Hate listening to all those so-called ancient history experts feeding me all these lies: This is how it was, it's the only way it could have been... It's a bunch of baloney they're feeding us all, based solely on assumptions of how they think it must have gone down-rather than scientific fact. Worst of all, they are feeding you'll this crap and you believe them! Basically, wherever they lack evidence they will come up with the "way it must have been" and demand you take it as the one and only possible truth! - don't be brainless!
Think for yourself!, do not accept all that the so-called "Scientists" or "Historians" tell you to be the only possible truth.
Check out this site:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...&mid=A80DCDACB1144EEA7222A80DCDACB1144EEA7222

Stuff they don't want you to know
The bunch of YouTube video's you can check out under this name will make you wonder...

Ultimately most of history is also conjecture. But conjecture can be quite exceptionally accurate given enough reference points to compare against. For example say you have two manuscripts: A and B both copying a certain document. Manuscript A says eorum (of his/its [pl.]) while Manuscript B says earum (of her [pl.]). With just these two manuscripts we have no way of knowing which is "correct"; what the original said. However say we found Manuscripts CDEFG and manuscripts CDE and F have eorum while only manuscript G also has earum. Given the larger body of evidence it seems far more likely now that the original text had eorum and B and G were either mistakes in copying or an attempt by the copyists of B and G to correct a perceived mistake in their source texts. Now - we have no way of knowing for sure that ACDE and F are correct while B and G are incorrect (in representing an authentic reproduction of the source text). For all we know eorum is an error in A which was incorrectly copied into CDEF, but given the evidence we have at hand, the supposition that eorum is correct is the most likely scenario. Subject to change, granted, but the most likely postulate we have given current evidence.

This isn't to say history, or archaeology, or manuscript analysis are irrefutably correct and representative of the absolute truth. The fact that historiography exists is a testament to that. However there is very very little (if anything at all) which is irrefutably correct in this world. Distance (in time) from the event in question only weakens our ability to approach the truth in that the number of data points likely to have survived for us to read and interpret now is smaller. Just because topic A has a surviving written chronicle while topic B has no recorded primary sources (but an absolute butt-ton of archaeological findings) doesn't mean that topic A is in ipsi more factual, reputable, or accurate.

 

[Agent327]

Given the hundreds of thousands of years that passed between the various stages of the Palaeolithic, that's pretty prompt.

Not quite. Most of the Palaeolithic passed with no domestication whatsoever. It's only around 10,000 BC we can see the first traces of it. It's not for nothing it was termed the Agricultural Revolution. But it certainly didn't spread at the speed of the French revolution.