Does Chinese Civilization Come From Ancient Egypt?

Foreign Policy ^ | 02 September 2016 | Ricardo Lewis

[Theoria]

A new study has energized a century-long debate at the heart of China's national identity.

On a cool Sunday evening in March, a geochemist named Sun Weidong gave a public lecture to an audience of laymen, students, and professors at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, the capital city of the landlocked province of Anhui in eastern China. But the professor didn’t just talk about geochemistry. He also cited several ancient Chinese classics, at one point quoting historian Sima Qian’s description of the topography of the Xia empire — traditionally regarded as China’s founding dynasty, dating from 2070 to 1600 B.C. “Northwards the stream is divided and becomes the nine rivers,” wrote Sima Qian in his first century historiography, the Records of the Grand Historian. “Reunited, it forms the opposing river and flows into the sea.”

In other words, “the stream” in question wasn’t China’s famed Yellow River, which flows from west to east. “There is only one major river in the world which flows northwards. Which one is it?” the professor asked. “The Nile,” someone replied. Sun then showed a map of the famed Egyptian river and its delta — with nine of its distributaries flowing into the Mediterranean. This author, a researcher at the same institute, watched as audience members broke into smiles and murmurs, intrigued that these ancient Chinese texts seemed to better agree with the geography of Egypt than that of China.

In the past year, Sun, a highly decorated scientist, has ignited a passionate online debate with claims that the founders of Chinese civilization were not in any sense Chinese but actually migrants from Egypt.

[Redcitizen]

“Does Chinese Civilization Come From Ancient Egypt?”

It’s an ancient Chinese secret.”

[Dr.Deth]

Ancient Astronaut theorists say yes!

[GingisK]

It may have been the other way around. China’s written history goes a lot further back than Egypt’s.

[publius911]

Does Chinese Civilization Come From Ancient Egypt?

No no no no!

Sub-Saharan Africa!

Space travel, higher mathematics, Space Travel, Radio, TV and manned flight.
Even interstellar travel.

Unforunately leaving behing ZERO evidence of even the slightest sign of its existence. Not even a scrap of a human higher language, until the invasion of Koranimals...

OK.
Maybe a dribble of that great explosion of human knowledge escaped and kick started the great Egysptian dynasties. Maybe.

[Redcitizen]

Lol!

[blueplum]

Depends on which Chinese is being talked about. I’m still very much an amateur, but it seems to me the northern Chinese are more closely associated with Turk, Tibet, Siberia, Mongolia, North Caucasus. Whereas the southern Chinese were more closely associated with Southeast Asia and Polynesian islanders.

Egyptians are more associated with Eurasia and the South Caucasus regions, the association with Sub-Sahara increasing the further south geographically.

Other rivers to consider are (in Russia) the Lena and the Yenisei Rivers.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0125676

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC21714/

[drpix]

Those Egyptian elites, either brought the Egyptian soldiers required to depose the Chinese elite and subjugate the Chinese population - in which case the Egyptian soldiers would have done what soldiers have always done: fornicate with the conquered woman.

Or, they enticed the Chinese elite into becoming some part of the Egyptian ruling court - in which case the Egyptian nobility would have done what nobility have always done: fornicate with the Chinese beauties brought to court.

In either case, conquering societies/cultures never fail to leave their DNA markets somewhere in the population of the conquered.

[Arene]

It was a real pleasure to read about Qin dynasty legalism, as it helped me to understand the interesting facts about history and culture of China.