Before Scandinavia: These Could Be The First Skiers (China)

BEIJING – Move over Bode. You may have competition you don't know about - among a sturdy skiing clan in northwest China. They are central Asians, Mongols, and Kazaks, living in the remote Altay mountains of Xinjiang province, where some claim skiing was first conceived.

Using curved planks whose design dates back 2,000 years, the Altaic peoples are formidable skiers. They might not win a medal on perfectly groomed Olympic trails. But they can break their own paths, track elk for days in deep snow, and capture them live.

They don't zig-zag through slalom courses or bump down moguls. But using a single pole, they plunge straight down mountainsides in a blaze of efficiency, and climb hills with a speed and grace that has wowed the few Western experts who have witnessed their prowess.

"These skiers wouldn't do well in the Olympics," says pro skier Nils Larsen. "But the Olympians from Turin couldn't make their skis do what the Altaic skiers can.

"The Altaics learn at age three, and by seven they are really good. They saw us skiing, swerving and turning, and they thought it was the funniest thing," Mr. Larsen adds. "For them, going straight down the mountain is the manly thing. They think it is silly to turn, unless you have to."

In fact, until a few years ago, no one in the West's serious ski community was aware of the Altaic skiers, and no one knew that "ancient" skis were in use anywhere on the planet. Archeologists have long known about long skis with animal-skin bottoms preserved in Swedish bogs and depicted in old cave paintings.

But Larsen, a telemark-skiing expert from Washington state, heard a few years ago from friends on a scholarly expedition in the Altay region who saw locals using what had been identified as aboriginal skis.

For ski buffs, the discovery was exciting, spawning informal visits by foreigners desiring more information about how old skis were made, and how locals used them. This January, some 40 Altay herdsmen took part in what was billed as an "ancient-skiing contest" (except it wasn't "ancient" for the locals).

"My father told me about these older skis," says J.Suhee, a Mongolian diplomat raised in the Altaic region and now in Beijing. "But they were for survival, not for sports."

The skis used today in Altay are not unlike the 4,500-year-old skis found preserved in bogs near Hoting, Sweden. Local Altays hack them out of a single piece of lightweight wood - spruce or white pine - and wrap them with hairy, brittle horse-shank skin.

The skins are permanently attached to the bottom of the ski, providing a "grip" going uphill, and a natural "brake" going down. (The skins stay tight on the frame since they are soaked and stretched over the form, and then shrink as they dry.)

The skier's foot is kept in place using what is known in the West as an "arctic binding." Four holes are drilled through the ski, with rawhide binding threaded through in the shape of an "X." The foot is slid into that X, and it keeps the foot relatively stable.

"The skis have a distinctive shape, and the designs we saw are fairly uniform. But they seem more like cousins of our [modern] skis, than brothers and sisters," says Larsen, whose business card reads, "minister of ski culture."

Differences in ski styles are major. The Altay skis are at least twice as wide as even the latest hourglass-shaped alpine skis. And unlike modern skis, which have the boot clamped into place, these skis require much more maneuvering with foot and pole to steer the skis.

Balance is completely different. Altay skiers do not lean forward in a knee-intensive crouch. Rather, going down the mountain, they lean far back and use the pole as ballast. The pole tends to get used on one side or the other - not on both sides, as a kayaker would use a paddle.

Larsen, who videotaped the making and use of the Altay skis, says he was impressed with the local talent: "I've taught skiing 25 years, so I know when someone has good balance and .... they are naturals. The ski is like an extension of their body. You can tell they are totally confident on the ride."

Altay snows are so deep that cross-country skis are ineffective. But with their "ancient" skis and highly developed stamina, many Altaic skiers go for 12 hours at a time. They hunt for days, following deer, elk, bear, wolves, and other game through deep snows. Eventually the game tires, and often local Altays will tie them up. "They have scads of captured elk, which they use for antlers," Larsen says.

The origins of skiing are disputed. Research of ancient skiing methods is not highly funded. But anthropologists and ski-history buffs debate two main origins: Scandinavia, where the oldest preserved skis are found, and the Altaic area. Of late,a consensus has been forming among scholars and ski enthusiasts that it was the Altaic area.

Civilization developed earlier there. Altaic peoples may have brought skis to Sweden or Norway. Or the common-sense concept of skiing may have arisen independently in each place.

On Jan. 25, days before the ancient-skiing contest, China's state-run news service Xinhua announced that China had essentially invented skiing.

Citing newly discovered Altaic regional cave paintings of four hunters on boards with poles in their hands, chasing cattle and horses - the Xinhua story proposed that "Chinese were adept skiers in the Old Stone Age," and that skiing originated there 100 to 200 centuries ago.

Historians did not rush to embrace the theory. The ethnic Han Chinese, let alone a corporate state called China, did not exist in this part of the world in stone-age days, 10,000 years ago, they note.

Thanks.

UniversityChinese Skiers and the Western Media Filter

Robert Marquand of the Christian Science Monitor has another article on “ancient Chinese skiers” in the Altay region of Xinjiang.
It’s a good article mainly focused on pro skier Nils Larsen who has gone out to the Altay region, which straddles Xinjiang and Mongolia, and checked out the herdsmens skis himself.
It also details the differences between Altaic skiing and Scandanavian skiing - wider skis with animal skin lining the bottom for grip which require far more boot and pole work to maneuver. But towards the end, Robert Marquand repeats what I can now confidently say is a bit of misinformation that has lodged itself firmly in the China narrative of Western media:

On Jan. 25, days before the ancient-skiing contest, China’s state-run news service Xinhua announced that China had essentially invented skiing.

Citing newly discovered Altaic regional cave paintings of four hunters on boards with poles in their hands, chasing cattle and horses - the Xinhua story proposed that “Chinese were adept skiers in the Old Stone Age,” and that skiing originated there 100 to 200 centuries ago.

In a previous post I addressed a Reuters article dated January 24th that began with “Cliff paintings of hunters of rugged remote northwestern China appear to prove that Chinese were adept skiers in the Old Stone Age, Xinhua News Agency said on Monday.”

Except on Monday, January 23rd, the only English language Chinese article I say was this one at People’s Daily Online which did not make any Chinese claim, but instead cautiously said ” Contents of ancient cliff paintings in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have been verified as human hunting while skiing and, therefore, archeologists prove the Altay region to be a place of skiing some 100 to 200 centuries ago.”
The next day, Reuters cast this as a “Chinese claim” even though the original Chinese English-language article didn’t refer to any skiing whatsoever as “Chinese”.

Now Robert Marquand is quoting a January 25th article from Xinhua, which was in fact this one which reprinted, as Chinese media often does, the Reuters article verbatim. Marquand says the article was printed “just days before the ancient skiing contest”, which is true, but it was another example of the Chinese media plagiarizing foreign media (as part of what I believe to be a silly plan to increase China’s internet English media presence by sheer volume of material) rather than an example of China promulgating some all encompassing nationalist view of history within its borders.

Marquand is a good journalist, but the job of informing the U.S. and Western public on China is still dominated by China Watchers, the gatekeeper experts of the press and academia.
It’s downright sloppy and counterproductive to rely on Chinese historical nationalism as a given - it starts down the slippery slope of stereotype, which in turn dangerously invites alliteration.
This was actually an example of a Chinese press article, the original, taking a neutral viewpoint on the questions of national borders, sovereignty and identity. But since we’re all so used to China making too much of these issues, those of us who write about China risk doing exactly what Reuters and the Christian Science Monitor have done here: being blind to when they actually got something right.
It’s a disservice to the Chinese journalists and politicians who do care about getting historical facts right more than plugging a nationalist agenda, and a failure to promote better cross-cultural communication.
I can sympathize a little more with Chinese who feel they are unfairly maligned in the Western press when I read things like this, and I wonder if Western journalists will ever throw off the stereotypical memes used about China (e.g. “This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Cultural Revolution!”, “Gosh, Shanghai is Really Modern!”, “Ohmigod, China is a Bird Flu/Andromeda Strain Breeding Petridish!”, and so on).
I also wonder if the Chinese media will ever get a handle on the idea that their foreign language media is supposed to have, theoretically, an audience whom they have to respond to (foreign correspondents might be a good place to start), and finally how many foreign correspondents in China really know Chinese.
Metanoiac recently got to ask some the media elite from both sides about these issues, and he was unimpressed.

It sometimes becomes a bad habit when living in China that you’ve heard the same tired lines from so many people about the same issues on which you disagree, and you begin to anticipate the words “China has 5000 years of history”, “Taiwan is a part of China”, “it hurts the feelings of the Chinese people”, and all those other stale cliches that make us roll our eyes and, in rare extreme cases, bitch all night about it while getting progressively more drunk.
And then invariably there comes a time when that kneejerk instinct kicks in and we don’t listen to a Chinese person because it sounded like they were about to deliver another old chestnut, when in fact they ended up saying something far more interesting.
But we don’t hear it, because we stopped listening before they even began, thanks to fatigue and cynicism wrought by China’s very real suppression of independent thought, particularly on issues such as history.
The repetition of this claim that Xinhua made another sweeping nationalist proclamation seems driven by that same set of assumptions, because China correspondents have to guard against that dulling of wits even more than your average expat.

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