13:04 I'd like to dissent a little to this theory about a Turkic origin for the Zhou. The state of Zhou, from which the Zhou Dynasty emerged, was one of the Shang Dynasty's Westernmost marches against the 狄 [Pīnyīn: dì; Yale: dihk], a semi-settled mixed pastorialist-agricultural people inhabiting the Southern Loess Plateau, and the 戎 [Pīnyīn: ròng; Yale: yùhng], a Tibetic mountain-dwelling raiding people, so while there probably was some degree of intermarriage in the Zhou population, it was much less likely to have been with the Turks, who were more prevalent north of the Taihang Mountains, rather than with Dì and Ròng, who were actually substantively present in the regions surrounding Zhou territory. In addition, the Zhou elite are known to have spoken a Sino-Tibetan language, related to that of the Shang. It seems probable then, that the people of Zhou were predominantly a sinitic 華 [Pīnyīn: huá; Yale: wàah] settler population, with significant Dì and Ròng intermixing from the frontier, rather than of Turkic origin. I take it the White people who Rudyard mentions refer to the Tocharians, who were mostly confined, at least as far as large-scale settlement is concerned, to the Tarim Basin, which, though today part of modern China, is isolated from the regions of China proper which we're referring to during this time period, so it's unlikely that they constituted any non-negligible portion of the Zhou population, although, there is evidence of cultural contact, likely through trade, between the Huá people and the Tocharians, such as the loan word, 蜜 [[Pīnyīn: mì; Yale: maht], honey, borrowed from the Tocharian 'mit', which happens to be cognate with English 'mead'.
The major myth of China is that Chinese civilization was devoid of foreign influences, unlike the Middle East and Europe, but this is not the case. China's size is as big as Europe. Since the beginning of written records, Chinese texts have recorded many non-Han ethnic groups that come and go, just like Europe and the Middle East. The only difference is that they all became Chinese eventually.
Yes. For example the most formal version of the East Asian clothing called "circular collar robe" 圓領袍 is actually derived from clothing worn by Caucasoid steppe horsemen like the Sogdians etc
I love the lessons! Erik, my brother, it would be awesome if you took a more dynamic role as co-host for this and asked questions that people who didn't pass History 101 would ask! Thanks, gentlemen!
The intro bit about the Zhou is probably not true -- they weren't a foreign tribe, the Shang just described it that way to lend themselves more legitimacy. The Zhou had the same culture and language as the Shang, so it was likely just another class of people in the central plains
They were the first ones to worship the sky in china, Shang didn’t do that, it’s the typical step thing. Even a millennia later, mongols still worshiped the sky, basically nearly the same way. They were probably some kind of ancestors to mongols.
@@starover1 A lot of cultures had some sort of sky worship, so by this logic they would all likely be steppe nomads. The Zhou concept of 天 (Tian) is still quite different from Tengri, as Tengri if I'm not mistaken has an image of an actual sky god being, whereas 天 is inherently a person-less concept.
@@acobb7961 religion evolves through time. It’s literally been more than 2 millennium between early zhou and 13 century mongols. It took people like Egyptians and Greeks much less to go from worshiping single tribal gods to making a pantheon of them with much more complex concepts. And you are right, worshiping of the sky in the form zhou and Mongols did is clearly a step thing, but not Indo-Iranian step thing, Scythians didnt have that. Only guys like mongers and Turks did
45:50 The first guy who got captured by the Xiongnu was Zhang Qian, the second one you mentioned who tried to go to Rome is called Ban chao. They are not the same one.
Whatifalthist, please do a video on "What the world would be like if The Republic of China won the Civil War"! Im not sure if you ever have made a video on the topic but i could see some interesting scenarios that would've played out on the world stage. Not sure if you read these suggestions but hey, I gotta try as a fellow history buff!
I see so many parallels between Qin and Russian. Both grew in strength because of nomadic people besides them. Both became super authoritarian and centralized.
Not a single historian would call the Zhou turks, indeed I have yet to see an actual author claim this. It is easier to find theories of the Chinese being from Babylon than of a turkic people. Turks as a group first appear millennium later. Zhou were a frontier vassals of the Shang, and spoke Sino-tibetian as shown by their poetry and bronze casting. . . Other than that, pretty good video.
Wolfram Eberhard was the historian that popularized the Turkic theory for the origins of the Zhou. I recommend reading his works on China to get more info on his theory, although as far as i know it has never been the consensus view amongst historians of Chinese history
@@zgramzhnisk3036 Thanks. I read it, one cannot say he popularized it given it is a fringe-theory at best. He gives no evidence or proof for his claim.
There is a theory that claims sumer ppl were turks because of the language. Sumer language is not semitic or indo-european, and it resembles turk agglutinative language. This theory makes turks precede Zhou by a millennium. Ancient history is a mystery and you cannot be 100% sure of anything. Zhou could have learned sino-tibetian language just like the Manchu people of Qing dynasty.
Great video! The spring and autumn and warring states period are an absolutely intriguing and enigmatic time in Chinese history. Almost comparable to medieval Europe
I think there's a great deal of wrong information in your presentation. The Chinese foundation story, as set out in the Records of the historian Sima Qian, states that one of the founding sovereigns of China was the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), not a "yellow dragon". There were other great sovereigns, such as Shen Nong, and the legend of Yao, Shun and Yu. None of them were gods or dragons or any nonsense like that. They were all human beings. I think you need to get basic facts right. You posit the theory that Chinese civilisation began with the Shang dynasty. Again, that is not correct. The Shang dynasty is the earliest Chinese dynasty from which Chinese writing on a large scale was found. The Chinese do not have an alphabet - Chinese writing was first based on pictograms, such that one character represented a certain thing, but by the time of the Shang, the writing had developed to include characters which represented more complex concepts like "divinity", "heaven", "sovereignty", "wife", "good", "bad" and so on. You mentioned the "turtle shells" on which divination was made. These were actually not the shells, but the plastrons, at the bottom part of tortoises (not turtles), because the plastrons were flat, not like the actual top parts of the tortoise shells, and words could be carved on them. Even the earliest found Shang writing was well developed, and I think that archaeologists have deciphered about 1,900 characters, although there are many more that have not yet been figured out. On average, the educated Chinese today needs to know only about 3,000 to 3,500 characters to read a newspaper or book. So, even with just 1,900 characters deciphered, we have a pretty good idea of what most of the Shang texts say. The scapula of cattle was also used for divination. The priest or shaman would pick a scapula, carve questions onto it, then make incisions into which heated metal rods would be inserted to cause the bone to crack where heat was applied. The cracks were "read" to arrive at an answer from the ancestors in relation to the questions. Almost always, the answers were then carved back onto the same bone in written characters. The oracle bones that have been excavated were found carefully gathered together in pits and constituted actual historical records, because they did not just have records of divinations and prophecies, they also recorded family lineages of the kings and notable deeds. These were actual libraries or archives. So, it is correct that Chinese "written history" is traced as far back as the Shang. But Chinese "civilisation" is older than that - written records have not been found in excavated sites like Shimao (which dates back to 2,200 to 1,500 BC) - a bronze age culture which (very unusually for the Chinese) built using stones. The stone citadel in Shimao was huge for its time. Then there was Liangzhu in the south, which had an extremely sophisticated water control system with locks and dams to prevent flooding and to aid agriculture with irrigation channels. Liangzhu was dated roughly contemporaneous with Shimao, about 2,000 BC, but was in the south, along the Yangtze river valley. It is situated almost 1,000 kilometres away from major Shang sites, and has yielded evidence of the largest-scale water control system in the ancient world. Archaeologists believe that the immediate predecessor of the Shang was the Liangzhu culture, and have developed a hypothesis that this was the foundation of the Xia dynasty which the Shang overthrew. The Liangzhu culture had very developed ceramic pottery and worked bronze on a big scale. Then there was the Shu civilisation unearthed in Sanxingdui in Sichuan, which lasted from about 2,500 BC to the Shang times. So, while the written records of Chinese history can be traced back only as far as the Shang dynasty, the archaeological evidence of Chinese civilisation goes back far longer to around 2,000 BC.
As a Chinese,i must correct you :The yellow emperor is a god who rode a dragon into the heaven ,then become the father of all Chinese progenies.His descendants such as Yao、Yu created the Han nation.The yellow emperor is not just a human being in Chinese creation history myth.
And also The main Chinese dialects and minority languages Tibetan, Manchurian, Mongolian, Ugyr Arabic also the main Chinese dialects Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin, Peking Mandarin, Jianshunese, Hunanese, Siquanese and Siquan Mandarin and Taishanese and Donguanese.
`Zhou` is not pronounced like `Jo` - J is a voiced CH sound, and you were pronouncing it that way. However, ZH is pronounced as a voiced SH sound; a fricative consonant, not a stop. It's a sound that doesn't appear in English.
Commenting as a Chinese immigrant to Australia. 11:02 The way Chinese nationalism logic works is that whoever rules the Chinese heartland becomes Chinese. When a new barbarian tribe conquers the agricultural kingdom, intellectuals re-invent the definition and concept of Chinese-ness. It may sound absurd, but when you have enough people believing in it, it hits critical mass and makes it not worth it for the new ruler to change the entire culture so they just play along with it, and the strength of the myth manifests reality. So in a sense, the "unhinged" Chinese nationalists as a collective might be the reason why China is the longest surviving continuous civilisation. Maybe these types go way back to the Shang Dynasty. Who knows? 😂
I think Chinese nationalism is recent phenomenon. Han nation was intellectually formulated by early 20th century thinkers. Before that common Chinese people identified themselves by city/town/village/clan. The main unifying force was the dialect(which is actually a language). Shanghainese people were Shanghainese 100 years ago and they did not really know that they had "Han" nationality.
Confucianism is not as effective and important as people usually think in my opinion.Chinese usually more worship the strongest warlord than other nations because they don’t require some kind of equality between the ruler and the ruled ,just enough envy driving them to hate a wealthier neighbor to compensate the inequality.I think Chinese are not religious enough to have a creation God below him everyone is equal .Even Indian demands more equality between the ruler and the ruled than Chinese.The top class Brahmin in India is not as same sacred as Chinese kings .They Brahmins just are the part of a creation God as other classes in India.
I am sorry sir. Let me correct you on a few points as a Chinese. 1. Chinese history, outside of the few recorded conquest by foreign forces, is filled with waves of unity and collapse, the Chinese population before communism always was rebellious against unjust leaders. 2. Chinese religion and spirituality is depraved since communism but I would argue that China will not take the abrahamic route and find daoism and buddhism insufficient to implement into the larger chinese software. Yes it has looked bad since communism, but the current youth is learning a lot and free minds are starting to blossom. 3. The Chinese govt is known to be under consistent pressure of rebellion from the population, which keeps its behaviour in check.
@@r3fus32d13 I don’t think that the rebel is strong enough to keep the ancient Chinese government in check.because Extreme starvation to push the farmer bite each other is basically the only cause to catalyze the ruled farmer to insurrection,not out of the unwise or unrighteous behavior of the gov,plus the main rebel being the minority ,not the ethnic Han farmer.The only true supervision by normal people is the vicissitude of dynasties of ancient China,however I don’t think it is a legitimate and legislative supervision by people.
Rudyard does a pretty good job with his recall on these but he does have a tendency to say this very important event happened, this is why it was happening then skip to the next section of the history without actually explaining what the very important thing entailed. I understand why he does it but it's not the best way to teach the history. I would suggest 2 things to improve the quality of these History102 podcasts and correct that tendency, one would be to develop a general outline on what events to cover and an at least approximate order to cover them to make it make sense (not necessarily completely chronological) and it doesn't need to be much more than dot points and short notes (it'd also probably help Erik develop some questions to interject with as well if he had an outline). The second thing looking at the time limit you're devoting to huge spans of time, maybe look into making the podcasts longer than an hour or have multi-episode topics that allow you to not gloss over as much of the history as is needed to fit centuries into minutes.
The Huns descendants live in Hungary as the children of Attila The Hun settled there after his Invasion of The Roman Empire in the 1st century C.E. and his passing.
No, the people who settled in the area which is now called Hungary are the Magyars -- a different steppe people from the Huns, and their migration occurred many centuries later. They have no actual relation to the Huns of Atila except in their cultural likeness from the perspective of the peoples of Europe whose land they migrated in to
I really enjoyed this video but there are some clarifications 1) I think you mis equate indo-european with white people. The indo-europeans originated in the Caucuses and some of them would go west to become the Europeans we know today, others would become the indo-iranian peoples, and indo-europeans that would go east would later become known as the Afanasievo who would live in southern siberia around where the western part of Mongolia and China meet. The Afanasievo likely introduced horses and by extension chariots to the eastern world. (they did not directly introduce it to the early chinese but they would introduce it to others peoples in the area and those people would introduce it to china) 2) Though the afanasievo did live in and around the modern borders of China in the west, they did not penetrate East enough to live closely with the early chinese and likely had not direct contact with the Zhou. The Zhou were a tribe in the western part of the Shang dynasty's control and would rebel and take over. How the Shang dynasty functioned was that it was similar to feudal europe in that there were "dukes" for a lack of a better term that would govern regions of the shang dynasty. It was typical for a bordering tribe to be absorbed whether coercively or peacefully and a regional lord would be headed in that area. From a genetic point of view, the zhou would be indistinguishable from other chinese tribes (other northern han people, there are several differences to the southern han). The degree to which the Shang would consider the Zhou barbarians is similar to how the early Romans would look upon the other Latin city states i.e not fully one of us but under our control and similar culture and language etc. Think almost like us but not entirely. 3) The Tarim Basin was populated by peoples who were related to other Northern Asians such as Mongols. I can see why there's some confusion about indo-europeans living there as the aforementioned afanasievo frequently interacted with the people's of the Tarim Basin. Another group that interacted with these peoples are Saka who are an indo-iranian people group. The Tarim basin especially in the centuries before Chinese conquest was actually a pretty diverse place. So there was indo-european influences certainly but the vast majority of the people and culture of the Tarim Basin are actually independent from them. So I guess white people were in the Tarim lol. 4) The Xiongnu's relationship to the Huns is largely disputed due to the lack of evidence, but most scholars suggest that as the Xiongnu pushed west they intermingled with the peoples of Central Asia (one of these groups being the indo-iranian Saka) so it is likely that the Huns are an admixture with elements from Indo-Europeans, Northeast Asians, and proto-Turks.
Yea. White people does not equal indo-european. Original greeks and romans were not white, they were mediterranean black eyes, black curly hair but white skin. The blue eyes and yellow hair became prevalent because of the slavery of the slav people and barbarian invasions of germanic tribes.
37:36 According to an unearthed legal code during the time, apparently the penalty for being late was merely paying some goods. And we still don't know if that applies here. The story might have been fabricated.
Egypt existed 5000 years ago and it is most likely that these 5 not 4 civilizations, were connected by sea trade. It also seems that 5000 years ago civilization existed in meso-america by way of Olmecs, and raises argument that the Olmecs traded by sea, with Egypt 5000 years ago.
31:40 To be more accurate, the etymology of "China" is not universally agreed upon. 秦 is a good option, but there are many other plausible choices. One of which is 晋 (jìn), which was the most successful state during the spring and autumn period. Interestingly, the state of jìn was split into 3 different kingdoms, and the three were still some of the most powerful ones during the warring states periods. Which is a parallel of the Frankish empire, of course.
24:00 I think it’s a mistake to attribute society wide deeply held philosophical beliefs to the work of a singular person. I don’t think Confucius’ work imposed itself upon the chinese character I think it’s much more likely that Confuscius himself was the most articulate finely distilled example of the chinese and merely codified in concrete what was already inborn within his and his coethnics psychology. What I mean by this is that you said “Rome doesn’t exist today because they didn’t have a system like Confucius” what I think though is that Rome could not have a system like that because it’s contrary to the vast majority of Romans’ pre disposed behavioral psychology. If say Confucius were never born I believe another autistic chinese middle manager would of codified the same philosophical system.
The capitols of China were Changan now, Xian until Ghengis Khan and Kublai Khan conquered China in 1242 C.E. Then Emperor Kublai Khan had moved the Capitol of established in Nanjing, to Beijing to be closer to Mongolia. However I don't know who moved the Capitol from Changan to Nanjing Rudyard, I'm sorry.
24:45 so what happens in the future when everyone only has one kid or no kid in China 26:31 daoism seems more individualistic, and also has similarities to classic liberalism? and i agree confucius seems to be more left 36:35 there's a lot of Chinese history that even Chinese people don't know. sooner or later, probably another farmer will discover another ancient unknown tomb 48:25 this probably explains why China stopped inventing in the Ming and Qing, because it became too bureaucratic and top-down heavy...I really want to an alternate history vid, where China became more influenced by Daoism than Confucianism 👍👍👍
@@WhatifAltHist thats right im a big fan but the one part of history of the world you havent touched on extensively as chinas is iran as foreigner greeks called it persia but im betting if you do non modern history or modern history of iran im betting that you will get it wrong based on your political views and nationality even though im a conservative i wish you guys understood us as we understand you guys i can help you get great resources and we debate about various historical things and even about prehistoric and our steppe history and belifs shaping abrahamic religions i guess i can get in touch via email or something let me know if you are intrested
If they were it’s likely they held the attitude of them just being barbarians and not civilised. Even during the opium wars China still believed everyone but them was a barbarian
Rudyard? What about China establishing The Silk Road in the Han Dynasty in 200 B.C.E.? Or the Tang Emperor going to the Persian Empire to buy Lions? Or Zhang Hu the imperial eunic whom sailed to Madagascar and Tanzania and brought back a giraffe or The Roman Republic envoy to Win Dynasty China as Depicted in Roman Vases of the time from the ruins of Pompei? Or the Battles with the Okinawan pirates in the Tang Dynasty? Or the two Mongolian invasions during the Yuan Dynasty in 1242 and 1343? Or the Qing Dynasty emigration of the Boat people and Fujianese to Indochina now Vietnam and Singapore and Siam now Thailand and The Khymer Empire or now Cambodia or Java now Indonesia? Or The Mughul Empire now India in the Han Dynasty in 200 C.E.?
@@KaiHung-wv3ul The silk route probably dates to 2000 BC or even earlier, except it was copper, tin and food that was being traded. Check out the Andronovo culture and how metalurgy and the 'bronze age' spread via the steppes. My guess would be that genetics and better archeology in Eastern Asian will show a far more globalised world than we presumed. Like these contacts were probably not "direct", but a network via intermediairy trade seems very likely.
@@thisistoofunny3454 I think you could almost see it like different planets that are connected through sporadic trade and passage of ideas, but good luck getting an army to invade it.
Lost me when he said the Zhou dynasty was not Chinese, or does he mean indigenous Han? Was he trying to insinuate that since the Zhou were not Chinese therefore today's Chinese aren't Chinese? That's like saying since the people who descended from the Mayflower were not American so today's Americans aren't Americans?
I'm watching this video because I couldn't make it through the Indian video; I knew early on I wouldn't be able to tolerate much of that. You know nothing of Vedanta.
Also the minority tribes are The Mongols, The Manchus, The Tibetans, The Urgyrs, And the different kingdoms of the Warring States period The Wu, Min, Chu, Zhao, Qin and Yue Empire. With 8 different cuisines Cantonese, Sichuanese, Hunanese, Henanese, Shanghainese, Beijing, Jiangshu and Fujianese.
I can summarize Chinese history in a sentence: Chang Wang gains Mandate of Heaven, Wang-Dong disagreement ensues, 700 million perish and 4 animals species go extinct, repeat ad infinium
@@diponic3344 As a man with no jaw and chubby cheeks, you can create the illusion of a jawline with stubble, it does not have to be a sage rabbi or Orthodox bro beard.
"What I remember about the rise of the Empire is... is how quiet it was. During the waning hours of the Clone Wars, the 501st Legion was discreetly transferred back to Coruscant. It was a silent trip. We all knew what was about to happen, what we were about to do. Did we have any doubts? Any private, traitorous thoughts? Perhaps, but no one said a word. Not on the flight to Coruscant, not when Order 66 came down, and not when we marched into the Jedi Temple. Not a word." - Operation: Knightfall "Knightfall" - Star Wars Battlefront II (2005)
13:04 I'd like to dissent a little to this theory about a Turkic origin for the Zhou. The state of Zhou, from which the Zhou Dynasty emerged, was one of the Shang Dynasty's Westernmost marches against the 狄 [Pīnyīn: dì; Yale: dihk], a semi-settled mixed pastorialist-agricultural people inhabiting the Southern Loess Plateau, and the 戎 [Pīnyīn: ròng; Yale: yùhng], a Tibetic mountain-dwelling raiding people, so while there probably was some degree of intermarriage in the Zhou population, it was much less likely to have been with the Turks, who were more prevalent north of the Taihang Mountains, rather than with Dì and Ròng, who were actually substantively present in the regions surrounding Zhou territory. In addition, the Zhou elite are known to have spoken a Sino-Tibetan language, related to that of the Shang. It seems probable then, that the people of Zhou were predominantly a sinitic 華 [Pīnyīn: huá; Yale: wàah] settler population, with significant Dì and Ròng intermixing from the frontier, rather than of Turkic origin.
I take it the White people who Rudyard mentions refer to the Tocharians, who were mostly confined, at least as far as large-scale settlement is concerned, to the Tarim Basin, which, though today part of modern China, is isolated from the regions of China proper which we're referring to during this time period, so it's unlikely that they constituted any non-negligible portion of the Zhou population, although, there is evidence of cultural contact, likely through trade, between the Huá people and the Tocharians, such as the loan word, 蜜 [[Pīnyīn: mì; Yale: maht], honey, borrowed from the Tocharian 'mit', which happens to be cognate with English 'mead'.
Erm what the sigma new intro?
That intro is lit 🔥
The major myth of China is that Chinese civilization was devoid of foreign influences, unlike the Middle East and Europe, but this is not the case. China's size is as big as Europe. Since the beginning of written records, Chinese texts have recorded many non-Han ethnic groups that come and go, just like Europe and the Middle East. The only difference is that they all became Chinese eventually.
Yes. For example the most formal version of the East Asian clothing called "circular collar robe" 圓領袍 is actually derived from clothing worn by Caucasoid steppe horsemen like the Sogdians etc
Can we get a video explaining Finno-Korean hyperwar??? Thanks
this one
I love the lessons! Erik, my brother, it would be awesome if you took a more dynamic role as co-host for this and asked questions that people who didn't pass History 101 would ask! Thanks, gentlemen!
The intro bit about the Zhou is probably not true -- they weren't a foreign tribe, the Shang just described it that way to lend themselves more legitimacy. The Zhou had the same culture and language as the Shang, so it was likely just another class of people in the central plains
They were the first ones to worship the sky in china, Shang didn’t do that, it’s the typical step thing. Even a millennia later, mongols still worshiped the sky, basically nearly the same way. They were probably some kind of ancestors to mongols.
@@starover1 A lot of cultures had some sort of sky worship, so by this logic they would all likely be steppe nomads.
The Zhou concept of 天 (Tian) is still quite different from Tengri, as Tengri if I'm not mistaken has an image of an actual sky god being, whereas 天 is inherently a person-less concept.
@@acobb7961 religion evolves through time. It’s literally been more than 2 millennium between early zhou and 13 century mongols. It took people like Egyptians and Greeks much less to go from worshiping single tribal gods to making a pantheon of them with much more complex concepts. And you are right, worshiping of the sky in the form zhou and Mongols did is clearly a step thing, but not Indo-Iranian step thing, Scythians didnt have that. Only guys like mongers and Turks did
33:40 The Great Wall had its proto-type(s) before China was unified, the Qing Empire connected and expanded the separated walls.
Even though I know most of this already, I decided to put time into this mini-course. The "Handy Nasty" gave a smile to my face.
I hope they do the Italian Unification Wars~
45:50 The first guy who got captured by the Xiongnu was Zhang Qian, the second one you mentioned who tried to go to Rome is called Ban chao. They are not the same one.
this show goated
lol
Whatifalthist, please do a video on "What the world would be like if The Republic of China won the Civil War"! Im not sure if you ever have made a video on the topic but i could see some interesting scenarios that would've played out on the world stage. Not sure if you read these suggestions but hey, I gotta try as a fellow history buff!
Bro "Handy Nasty" is so immature and stupid, I love it lmao
I see so many parallels between Qin and Russian. Both grew in strength because of nomadic people besides them. Both became super authoritarian and centralized.
Can you do the Gauls next?
I second this motion.
Maybe just call it "the ancient Celts"? Gauls might be too specific of a topic.
Honestly, incredible work!
Cool into but the old one matches the video better.
dsadsa
Genius description Rudyard 🙏
Kinda miss the old intro
Agreed, the former felt more historical and sophisticated.
Not a single historian would call the Zhou turks, indeed I have yet to see an actual author claim this. It is easier to find theories of the Chinese being from Babylon than of a turkic people. Turks as a group first appear millennium later. Zhou were a frontier vassals of the Shang, and spoke Sino-tibetian as shown by their poetry and bronze casting. . .
Other than that, pretty good video.
Wolfram Eberhard was the historian that popularized the Turkic theory for the origins of the Zhou. I recommend reading his works on China to get more info on his theory, although as far as i know it has never been the consensus view amongst historians of Chinese history
@@zgramzhnisk3036 Thanks. I read it, one cannot say he popularized it given it is a fringe-theory at best. He gives no evidence or proof for his claim.
Maybe they were proto turkic
There is a theory that claims sumer ppl were turks because of the language. Sumer language is not semitic or indo-european, and it resembles turk agglutinative language. This theory makes turks precede Zhou by a millennium.
Ancient history is a mystery and you cannot be 100% sure of anything. Zhou could have learned sino-tibetian language just like the Manchu people of Qing dynasty.
@@dehaman_4_144 Not a very good take, it contradict itself.
The Gu Gu Cup should be the name of an Indy rock band.
Confucius: I like old thing
Can you guys do a Greece history video on General Bophades ? Eric would love it cheers 🫡
Great video! The spring and autumn and warring states period are an absolutely intriguing and enigmatic time in Chinese history. Almost comparable to medieval Europe
this channel is life
Rip goo goo cup
It was a good cup. Gone before it's prime.
Ooh yeah loving the intro!
Youre my favorite nerd Rud. I want to give you a swirlie but later order your fave pizza and play goldeneye. 😄
China is the most impressive cultural and society in human history. It’s wild.
You must be joking
@@willbaker8505 fr it's obviously America
the most metal i would say, the wars were just so ridiculous lol
What is the main channel?
Could you go through the History of Central Banking🤔
I think there's a great deal of wrong information in your presentation. The Chinese foundation story, as set out in the Records of the historian Sima Qian, states that one of the founding sovereigns of China was the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), not a "yellow dragon". There were other great sovereigns, such as Shen Nong, and the legend of Yao, Shun and Yu. None of them were gods or dragons or any nonsense like that. They were all human beings.
I think you need to get basic facts right. You posit the theory that Chinese civilisation began with the Shang dynasty. Again, that is not correct. The Shang dynasty is the earliest Chinese dynasty from which Chinese writing on a large scale was found. The Chinese do not have an alphabet - Chinese writing was first based on pictograms, such that one character represented a certain thing, but by the time of the Shang, the writing had developed to include characters which represented more complex concepts like "divinity", "heaven", "sovereignty", "wife", "good", "bad" and so on. You mentioned the "turtle shells" on which divination was made. These were actually not the shells, but the plastrons, at the bottom part of tortoises (not turtles), because the plastrons were flat, not like the actual top parts of the tortoise shells, and words could be carved on them. Even the earliest found Shang writing was well developed, and I think that archaeologists have deciphered about 1,900 characters, although there are many more that have not yet been figured out. On average, the educated Chinese today needs to know only about 3,000 to 3,500 characters to read a newspaper or book. So, even with just 1,900 characters deciphered, we have a pretty good idea of what most of the Shang texts say. The scapula of cattle was also used for divination. The priest or shaman would pick a scapula, carve questions onto it, then make incisions into which heated metal rods would be inserted to cause the bone to crack where heat was applied. The cracks were "read" to arrive at an answer from the ancestors in relation to the questions. Almost always, the answers were then carved back onto the same bone in written characters. The oracle bones that have been excavated were found carefully gathered together in pits and constituted actual historical records, because they did not just have records of divinations and prophecies, they also recorded family lineages of the kings and notable deeds. These were actual libraries or archives. So, it is correct that Chinese "written history" is traced as far back as the Shang.
But Chinese "civilisation" is older than that - written records have not been found in excavated sites like Shimao (which dates back to 2,200 to 1,500 BC) - a bronze age culture which (very unusually for the Chinese) built using stones. The stone citadel in Shimao was huge for its time. Then there was Liangzhu in the south, which had an extremely sophisticated water control system with locks and dams to prevent flooding and to aid agriculture with irrigation channels. Liangzhu was dated roughly contemporaneous with Shimao, about 2,000 BC, but was in the south, along the Yangtze river valley. It is situated almost 1,000 kilometres away from major Shang sites, and has yielded evidence of the largest-scale water control system in the ancient world. Archaeologists believe that the immediate predecessor of the Shang was the Liangzhu culture, and have developed a hypothesis that this was the foundation of the Xia dynasty which the Shang overthrew. The Liangzhu culture had very developed ceramic pottery and worked bronze on a big scale. Then there was the Shu civilisation unearthed in Sanxingdui in Sichuan, which lasted from about 2,500 BC to the Shang times. So, while the written records of Chinese history can be traced back only as far as the Shang dynasty, the archaeological evidence of Chinese civilisation goes back far longer to around 2,000 BC.
As a Chinese,i must correct you :The yellow emperor is a god who rode a dragon into the heaven ,then become the father of all Chinese progenies.His descendants such as Yao、Yu created the Han nation.The yellow emperor is not just a human being in Chinese creation history myth.
What is this new intro??? Bring the old one back
Can you explain Albanian civilization next pls thanks
And also The main Chinese dialects and minority languages Tibetan, Manchurian, Mongolian, Ugyr Arabic also the main Chinese dialects Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin, Peking Mandarin, Jianshunese, Hunanese, Siquanese and Siquan Mandarin and Taishanese and Donguanese.
its yellow river, huai river, and yangtze(long) river before qin/han dynasty expand to pearl river region
But should I pursue Lu Bu?
The word is pronounce "ah-su-AEJD"
Really interesting. Maybe I missed it but what was the corrupted interest of eunuch 49:54 ?
power, and them being high servants meant they listened to everything that was spoken in court (they were like spies)
Power and money. After a while the eunuchs would have more authority than the emperor themselves.
Yeahhhhh baby let's geeet it!
`Zhou` is not pronounced like `Jo` - J is a voiced CH sound, and you were pronouncing it that way. However, ZH is pronounced as a voiced SH sound; a fricative consonant, not a stop. It's a sound that doesn't appear in English.
Love the video
Commenting as a Chinese immigrant to Australia.
11:02 The way Chinese nationalism logic works is that whoever rules the Chinese heartland becomes Chinese. When a new barbarian tribe conquers the agricultural kingdom, intellectuals re-invent the definition and concept of Chinese-ness. It may sound absurd, but when you have enough people believing in it, it hits critical mass and makes it not worth it for the new ruler to change the entire culture so they just play along with it, and the strength of the myth manifests reality.
So in a sense, the "unhinged" Chinese nationalists as a collective might be the reason why China is the longest surviving continuous civilisation. Maybe these types go way back to the Shang Dynasty. Who knows? 😂
I think Chinese nationalism is recent phenomenon. Han nation was intellectually formulated by early 20th century thinkers. Before that common Chinese people identified themselves by city/town/village/clan. The main unifying force was the dialect(which is actually a language). Shanghainese people were Shanghainese 100 years ago and they did not really know that they had "Han" nationality.
Confucianism is not as effective and important as people usually think in my opinion.Chinese usually more worship the strongest warlord than other nations because they don’t require some kind of equality between the ruler and the ruled ,just enough envy driving them to hate a wealthier neighbor to compensate the inequality.I think Chinese are not religious enough to have a creation God below him everyone is equal .Even Indian demands more equality between the ruler and the ruled than Chinese.The top class Brahmin in India is not as same sacred as Chinese kings .They Brahmins just are the part of a creation God as other classes in India.
I am sorry sir. Let me correct you on a few points as a Chinese.
1. Chinese history, outside of the few recorded conquest by foreign forces, is filled with waves of unity and collapse, the Chinese population before communism always was rebellious against unjust leaders.
2. Chinese religion and spirituality is depraved since communism but I would argue that China will not take the abrahamic route and find daoism and buddhism insufficient to implement into the larger chinese software. Yes it has looked bad since communism, but the current youth is learning a lot and free minds are starting to blossom.
3. The Chinese govt is known to be under consistent pressure of rebellion from the population, which keeps its behaviour in check.
@@r3fus32d13 I don’t think that the rebel is strong enough to keep the ancient Chinese government in check.because Extreme starvation to push the farmer bite each other is basically the only cause to catalyze the ruled farmer to insurrection,not out of the unwise or unrighteous behavior of the gov,plus the main rebel being the minority ,not the ethnic Han farmer.The only true supervision by normal people is the vicissitude of dynasties of ancient China,however I don’t think it is a legitimate and legislative supervision by people.
Rudyard also oracle bones were used for fortune telling not religion.
Rudyard does a pretty good job with his recall on these but he does have a tendency to say this very important event happened, this is why it was happening then skip to the next section of the history without actually explaining what the very important thing entailed. I understand why he does it but it's not the best way to teach the history.
I would suggest 2 things to improve the quality of these History102 podcasts and correct that tendency, one would be to develop a general outline on what events to cover and an at least approximate order to cover them to make it make sense (not necessarily completely chronological) and it doesn't need to be much more than dot points and short notes (it'd also probably help Erik develop some questions to interject with as well if he had an outline). The second thing looking at the time limit you're devoting to huge spans of time, maybe look into making the podcasts longer than an hour or have multi-episode topics that allow you to not gloss over as much of the history as is needed to fit centuries into minutes.
Rockin' music with a ship!!!
The Huns descendants live in Hungary as the children of Attila The Hun settled there after his Invasion of The Roman Empire in the 1st century C.E. and his passing.
They should've invaded Turkey if they were so Hungary! Hahahahaha!
No, the people who settled in the area which is now called Hungary are the Magyars -- a different steppe people from the Huns, and their migration occurred many centuries later. They have no actual relation to the Huns of Atila except in their cultural likeness from the perspective of the peoples of Europe whose land they migrated in to
I really enjoyed this video but there are some clarifications
1) I think you mis equate indo-european with white people. The indo-europeans originated in the Caucuses and some of them would go west to become the Europeans we know today, others would become the indo-iranian peoples, and indo-europeans that would go east would later become known as the Afanasievo who would live in southern siberia around where the western part of Mongolia and China meet. The Afanasievo likely introduced horses and by extension chariots to the eastern world. (they did not directly introduce it to the early chinese but they would introduce it to others peoples in the area and those people would introduce it to china)
2) Though the afanasievo did live in and around the modern borders of China in the west, they did not penetrate East enough to live closely with the early chinese and likely had not direct contact with the Zhou. The Zhou were a tribe in the western part of the Shang dynasty's control and would rebel and take over. How the Shang dynasty functioned was that it was similar to feudal europe in that there were "dukes" for a lack of a better term that would govern regions of the shang dynasty. It was typical for a bordering tribe to be absorbed whether coercively or peacefully and a regional lord would be headed in that area. From a genetic point of view, the zhou would be indistinguishable from other chinese tribes (other northern han people, there are several differences to the southern han). The degree to which the Shang would consider the Zhou barbarians is similar to how the early Romans would look upon the other Latin city states i.e not fully one of us but under our control and similar culture and language etc. Think almost like us but not entirely.
3) The Tarim Basin was populated by peoples who were related to other Northern Asians such as Mongols. I can see why there's some confusion about indo-europeans living there as the aforementioned afanasievo frequently interacted with the people's of the Tarim Basin. Another group that interacted with these peoples are Saka who are an indo-iranian people group. The Tarim basin especially in the centuries before Chinese conquest was actually a pretty diverse place. So there was indo-european influences certainly but the vast majority of the people and culture of the Tarim Basin are actually independent from them. So I guess white people were in the Tarim lol.
4) The Xiongnu's relationship to the Huns is largely disputed due to the lack of evidence, but most scholars suggest that as the Xiongnu pushed west they intermingled with the peoples of Central Asia (one of these groups being the indo-iranian Saka) so it is likely that the Huns are an admixture with elements from Indo-Europeans, Northeast Asians, and proto-Turks.
Yea. White people does not equal indo-european. Original greeks and romans were not white, they were mediterranean black eyes, black curly hair but white skin. The blue eyes and yellow hair became prevalent because of the slavery of the slav people and barbarian invasions of germanic tribes.
37:36 According to an unearthed legal code during the time, apparently the penalty for being late was merely paying some goods. And we still don't know if that applies here. The story might have been fabricated.
Egypt existed 5000 years ago and it is most likely that these 5 not 4 civilizations, were connected by sea trade. It also seems that 5000 years ago civilization existed in meso-america by way of Olmecs, and raises argument that the Olmecs traded by sea, with Egypt 5000 years ago.
Nice intro 👏
The Zhao were more likely Huns or Manchus or Siberians or Mongols maybe?
Do the Sikh Anglo Wars
31:40 To be more accurate, the etymology of "China" is not universally agreed upon. 秦 is a good option, but there are many other plausible choices. One of which is 晋 (jìn), which was the most successful state during the spring and autumn period.
Interestingly, the state of jìn was split into 3 different kingdoms, and the three were still some of the most powerful ones during the warring states periods. Which is a parallel of the Frankish empire, of course.
theres no way you didnt mention general tso and his chicken
Dude you gotta fix the delay it’s terrible
Laughed out loud when I saw it
4:00 I've always said they have the originality of a toaster. Interesting to find out their culture has been stagnant since 10,000 BC.😂
Zh is read as J in French.
24:00 I think it’s a mistake to attribute society wide deeply held philosophical beliefs to the work of a singular person. I don’t think Confucius’ work imposed itself upon the chinese character I think it’s much more likely that Confuscius himself was the most articulate finely distilled example of the chinese and merely codified in concrete what was already inborn within his and his coethnics psychology. What I mean by this is that you said “Rome doesn’t exist today because they didn’t have a system like Confucius” what I think though is that Rome could not have a system like that because it’s contrary to the vast majority of Romans’ pre disposed behavioral psychology. If say Confucius were never born I believe another autistic chinese middle manager would of codified the same philosophical system.
It’s kind of depressing that all the convo in the comments has nothing to do with the history discussed
U sound like they just invented coins or something 😳😄
The capitols of China were Changan now, Xian until Ghengis Khan and Kublai Khan conquered China in 1242 C.E. Then Emperor Kublai Khan had moved the Capitol of established in Nanjing, to Beijing to be closer to Mongolia. However I don't know who moved the Capitol from Changan to Nanjing Rudyard, I'm sorry.
24:45 so what happens in the future when everyone only has one kid or no kid in China
26:31 daoism seems more individualistic, and also has similarities to classic liberalism? and i agree confucius seems to be more left
36:35 there's a lot of Chinese history that even Chinese people don't know. sooner or later, probably another farmer will discover another ancient unknown tomb
48:25 this probably explains why China stopped inventing in the Ming and Qing, because it became too bureaucratic and top-down heavy...I really want to an alternate history vid, where China became more influenced by Daoism than Confucianism
👍👍👍
2:30 im sorry where is achemenid persian empires complete map in 500bc this is a diffrent era map
It's a civilizational map, not political. The Achaemenids did not change the civilizational structure of their subjects
@@WhatifAltHist thats right im a big fan but the one part of history of the world you havent touched
on extensively as chinas is iran as foreigner greeks called it persia but im betting if you do non modern history or modern history of iran im betting that you will get it wrong based on your political views and nationality even though im a conservative i wish you guys understood us as we understand you guys i can help you get great resources and we debate about various historical things and even about prehistoric and our steppe history and belifs shaping abrahamic religions i guess i can get in touch via email or something let me know if you are intrested
let me state a fact if founding fathers were iranian during 1979 benjamin franklin wouldve been ruholah khomeini
Oh god western dudes who don’t read Chinese claiming the Zhou weren’t even Chinese.
Dude, the ancient Chinese were fully aware of the Indian civilization
Interesting. Can you provide some details or sources? Thanks
If they were it’s likely they held the attitude of them just being barbarians and not civilised. Even during the opium wars China still believed everyone but them was a barbarian
@@K-Man-k5nhe made it up
@@K-Man-k5n
where do you think Buddhism came from? Even Chinese martial arts came from India.
@@didiermontagnier6114 That's a good point, but that's much later in the history, man.
whatifalthist trying to do a history podcast is peak comedy
Rudyard? What about China establishing The Silk Road in the Han Dynasty in 200 B.C.E.? Or the Tang Emperor going to the Persian Empire to buy Lions? Or Zhang Hu the imperial eunic whom sailed to Madagascar and Tanzania and brought back a giraffe or The Roman Republic envoy to Win Dynasty China as Depicted in Roman Vases of the time from the ruins of Pompei? Or the Battles with the Okinawan pirates in the Tang Dynasty? Or the two Mongolian invasions during the Yuan Dynasty in 1242 and 1343? Or the Qing Dynasty emigration of the Boat people and Fujianese to Indochina now Vietnam and Singapore and Siam now Thailand and The Khymer Empire or now Cambodia or Java now Indonesia? Or The Mughul Empire now India in the Han Dynasty in 200 C.E.?
Most of those are later than the time period discussed.
@@KaiHung-wv3ul The silk route probably dates to 2000 BC or even earlier, except it was copper, tin and food that was being traded. Check out the Andronovo culture and how metalurgy and the 'bronze age' spread via the steppes.
My guess would be that genetics and better archeology in Eastern Asian will show a far more globalised world than we presumed. Like these contacts were probably not "direct", but a network via intermediairy trade seems very likely.
@@thisistoofunny3454 I think you could almost see it like different planets that are connected through sporadic trade and passage of ideas, but good luck getting an army to invade it.
Love the new intro
Dna results emporer wu of Northern zhou 600 ad
6 % WHG😊
Celtics!
THE OLD INTRO WAS BETTER
34:00. Are you sure you are not talking about Joseph Stalin?
Bandits = 10000 soldiers sent by warlords. 😂
Based calling eastern nationalists unhinged (they're)
Check out the meaning of the word "alphabet". You're using it wrong. The Chinese writing system is not an alphabet.
Bro wtf is this intro u had the sickest music before wtf is this guitar bs being back the old intro music its far more ur vibe
Hey I like the boomer guitars.
@@notsocrates9529 thta joe rogan tht theme he has before was flawless for the show
Bro,徐福 founded japan is just a myth,correlation is not causation.
PLEASE CHANGE YOUR INTRO 🙏
Haha Handy-nasty instead of Han dynasty
52:55 No, not "cacao", pronounce the c as "ts", please
Lost me when he said the Zhou dynasty was not Chinese, or does he mean indigenous Han? Was he trying to insinuate that since the Zhou were not Chinese therefore today's Chinese aren't Chinese? That's like saying since the people who descended from the Mayflower were not American so today's Americans aren't Americans?
Is he a legit historian in the first place?
He meant the leaders of the Zhou dynasty were not Han Chinese which is true. Wu was literally present day Mongolian they tested his dna this year
@@lukesuds5002 u know Han came AFTER Zhou right? Han includes them, just like the term Chinese includes Manchus
@@lukesuds5002 Monkey, Northern Zhou existed 1000 years after Zhou!
I'm watching this video because I couldn't make it through the Indian video; I knew early on I wouldn't be able to tolerate much of that. You know nothing of Vedanta.
Also the minority tribes are The Mongols, The Manchus, The Tibetans, The Urgyrs, And the different kingdoms of the Warring States period The Wu, Min, Chu, Zhao, Qin and Yue Empire. With 8 different cuisines Cantonese, Sichuanese, Hunanese, Henanese, Shanghainese, Beijing, Jiangshu and Fujianese.
Isn't legalizm like an ancient left🤔
First comment let's go
Plz never use thisnintro agian i love u tho
I can summarize Chinese history in a sentence: Chang Wang gains Mandate of Heaven, Wang-Dong disagreement ensues, 700 million perish and 4 animals species go extinct, repeat ad infinium
The Shang were supposedly Ethiopian nobles.
total crock
Do ancient Israelite civilization
Shave the beard
Oy vey!
You sound like my grandma
He’s kinda chubby lol that would look bad
@@diponic3344 As a man with no jaw and chubby cheeks, you can create the illusion of a jawline with stubble, it does not have to be a sage rabbi or Orthodox bro beard.
Rudyard seriously needs to hit the gym and improve his style
"What I remember about the rise of the Empire is... is how quiet it was. During the waning hours of the Clone Wars, the 501st Legion was discreetly transferred back to Coruscant. It was a silent trip. We all knew what was about to happen, what we were about to do. Did we have any doubts? Any private, traitorous thoughts? Perhaps, but no one said a word. Not on the flight to Coruscant, not when Order 66 came down, and not when we marched into the Jedi Temple. Not a word." - Operation: Knightfall "Knightfall" - Star Wars Battlefront II (2005)
JuSt LiKe MuH HeCkIn MoViErInOs!!1!!
Master Skywalker there's too many of them. What are we going to do?
@@notsocrates9529 >no fun allowed
@@Menaceblue3 Darth Vader: "Don't worry. I won't let you die of old age."
Get out of here with this gay cape shit
This is cringe but I made a clan on clash of clans called whatifalthist for viewers of whatifalthist for discussions and playing
ass-WAGE… as it turns out but interesting vid