[blam]

"So, yes, this article is talking about probable events. But the "big" story involves a larger timeframe and more of the world's population."

Great overview, you do get it. There is a connection between the language of the Olmecs (Mexico) and the Chinese of the Shang Dynasty. It is written in Chinese records that at the time of the Shang Dynasty collapse (coinciding with a worldwide catastrophe recorded in the tree-rings in 1150's BC) that 250,000 Shang Chinese 'took to the sea.'

[Tax Government]

This is a fascinating subject; thank you for posting the article.

Another article on FR recently discussed the ethnic evolution of China from a Chinese writer's perspective. The conclusions I remember are: 1) several thousand years BC there were Nordic Europeans in large numbers in China, and African-descended people also; 2) today's north Chinese population is a mostly a fusion of European and Mongol populations, and remains ethnically distinguishable from other populations in China.

The migrations could have been driven by climate change.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to spend 10 days in Beijing. I concluded their country is remarkably like the U.S. -- ethnically diverse, with remnants of the European and African contributions to the population still visible. The shared culture -- in the form of a wall, a border and a writing system, created unity. Like it does for U.S.

Thanks again for posting.

[Little Bill]

That is streching it. The Chinese had a devloped culture at the time of the Shang Dynasty, don't look Olmec to me.

[Light Speed]

Hi Blam

You are becoming quite the resource data base : )

Am reminded of the USGS data for the Pacific ocean level rise.

12/11,500- 9,500 BP....hundreds of feet.

For sure a migration event..World wide.

To the Haida first Nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest the Raven is both helper and trickster.

An intersting story carried forward in their Mythology is when the Raven helped bring back the Moon and the Sun.

The Myth begins with a rather bizarre statement..

"In the beginning their was a time when the sky was gloom and shrouded in cloud....when Old man had taken the Moon away and put it in a box."

Raven eventually outwits Old Man and free's the Moon from the box..and lifts it up into the Sky...then the Sun appears.

Haida Gwaii.

After watching a documentary on the Haida was captivated by the regional name the Haida used..

Gwaii.

Hawaii comes to mind quickly here...the distance between Hawaii and the Queen Charolette's is staggering...and yet..the language hints of a connection.

Was there a common tounge long ago?

Are the Haida related to the Polynesians?

In a past post on Jade and its history of trade in the Pacific..one ponders if such commerce reality existed..and if so..was there a commerce language for transactions and record keeping.

When the Ocean levels rose...were many of these native peoples cut off from each other..the knowledge of connectiveness lost over millenia?

Unless habitations were fashioned in stone...the proof of their existence say circa 10,000 BP might not appear...ebbing away as the wood of their habitations decayed..their tools buried in the soil..or subducted below the rising Ocean.

Study of Pacific native legends are steeped in Moon lore....for a peoples who knew their sky intimately..why then the theme of a *Dissapearing Moon?

Certainly they understood cloud cover and fog..and seasonally periods of dense cloud do shroud the Pacific Northwesy coastlines and inland some...so why forward this bizarre theme..and match it to their Hero..the Raven? In a post many moons ago here at Grahams..forwarded a thread on Tiahuanaco.."The City of the Falling Moon"...the testimony of the Ancient ones who pre-ceeded the Inca.

Many of the Temples in Central America are connected to the Moon.... The Natives of the Continental U.S. still return to Ancient rock circles which go back thousands of years..to observe Lunar phases.

We know from USGS data that the Pacific ocean was hundreds of feet lower in the 12,000-9,500 bp period....places near Yonaguni in the Okinawan waters have caves with stalactites which drip from above ground ..or above water. These caves are now at great depths below the current Ocean levels..and a mystery...a hint that either the land fell..or the Ocean rose..or both.

Haida art has paralell theme designs to the Mayans..as seen in their Totem poles and other artwork.

The Haida also Tatooed themselves..some paralell seen in Polynesian cultures.

Several constructs exist for how the Ice age cycle was broken..and the rise of the Pacific ocean.

Native Mythology has kept many theme's connected to the Moon alive...

are we overlooking the Prime mover of the Ice age ending period... could this be the reason for the Global flood Mythology.

The Hebrew account states that vaults were opened below the Earth..and water errupted out in great volumes.

Could a Moon which had been drawn near the Earth and fragmented in the Gravity energy exchange....cause the Earths crust to fracture..and release water as per the Hebrew account.

The survival testimonies abound in Mythology...the Ancestors who escaped by climbing high mountains. A time when there was no Moon.

Just stories?

[SunkenCiv]

Chinatown, 1000 B.C.
by Jocelyn Selim

Mike Xu, a linguist at Texas Christian University... has spent years analyzing jade, stone, and pottery relics from the Olmec, an ancient people that inhabited the American Southwest and Central America 3,000 years ago. He was struck by how closely the symbols on the artifacts resembled Chinese inscriptions from the Shang dynasty in China. "There are hundreds of these symbols that occur again and again, throughout the entire Olmec territory," Xu says. The Shang writings date from 1600 to 1100 b.c. Traces of the Olmec civilization abruptly appear during this span, around 1200 to 1100 B.C. Olmec and Shang artistic styles look much alike, and the two cultures followed related religious practices. For instance, both used cinnabar, a red pigment, to decorate ceremonial objects, and both put jade beads in the mouths of the dead to ward off evil. "The similarities are just too striking to be a coincidence," he says.

A tale of two cultures
by Charles Fenyvesi

The Smithsonian's Meggers says that Chen's analysis of the colors "makes sense. But his reading of the text is the clincher. Writing systems are too arbitrary and complex. They cannot be independently reinvented."

2,500 Years Before Columbus
by Patrick Huyghe

[W]hen the last Shang king was defeated and killed by rivals in 1122 B.C., his loyalists were forced to flee to the "East Ocean" or Pacific, notes Xu in his new book, Origin of the Olmec Civilization (University of Central Oklahoma Press, 1996)... Numerous notable Chinese scholars have confirmed Xu's readings of the Olmec inscriptions, including Han Ping Chen, a scholar of ancient Chinese from the Historical Research Institute at the China Social Science Academy. After examining 146 characters and symbols from the Olmec culture, Chen reported: "These symbols, if found or excavated in China (except rock art and carving), would certainly be regarded as prehistoric Chinese characters or symbols. Of 146 symbols, many are 100 percent identical to ancient Chinese characters. Some, I am afraid, can be easily recognized by Chinese first graders in elementary schools..." ...William Boltz of the University of Washington and Robert Bagley of Princeton dismissed as "rubbish" the notion that the characters could be Chinese. The criticism infuriates Xu -- and rightly so, we might add. "Most experts in Olmec studies do not have any idea about ancient Chinese writings and Asian cultures or tradition," says Xu, who was educated in both China and the United States. "How on Earth could they comment on top Chinese scholars reading Chinese as 'rubbish'?"

The Olmec and the Shang
by Claire Liu
tr. by Robert Taylor

Last year, in a book entitled Origin of the Olmec Civilization, Professor Mike Xu, a Chinese who teaches in the foreign languages department at the University of Central Oklahoma, proposed a hypothesis which aroused a storm of controversy in archeological circles. In Xu's view, the first complex culture in Mesoamerica may have come into existence with the help of a group of Chinese who fled across the seas as refugees at the end of the Shang dynasty. The Olmec civilization arose around 1200 BC, which coincides with the time when King Wu of Zhou attacked and defeated King Zhou, the last Shang ruler, bringing his dynasty to a close.

America's earliest written language uncovered
Friday 6th December 2002

Carvings believed to be the earliest form of written language in the Americas have been found in Mexico. Symbols dating back to 650BC were found by archaeologists in the San Andreas region of Tabasco state, near the Gulf of Mexico. They were found on chips from a stone plaque and on a cylinder stone used for printing that were unearthed in a dig at the site of an ancient Olmec city near La Venta. The symbols are 350 years older than the oldest previously discovered American writings... The carvings were interpreted to mean "king" and "3 Ajaw", which researchers believe was the name of a ruler. The Olmec's system of carvings for dates and names was adopted by the Mayas, who then developed it into a highly sophisticated language over the next 1,000 years.

'Earliest writing' found in China
by Paul Rincon

Signs carved into 8,600-year-old tortoise shells found in China may be the earliest written words, say archaeologists... They predate the earliest recorded writings from Mesopotamia - in what is now Iraq - by more than 2,000 years. The archaeologists say they bear similarities to written characters used thousands of years later during the Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1700-1100 BC... The archaeologists have identified 11 separate symbols inscribed on the tortoise shells. The shells were found buried with human remains in 24 Neolithic graves unearthed at Jiahu in Henan province, western China. The site has been radiocarbon dated to between 6,600 and 6,200 BC. The research was carried out by Dr Garman Harbottle, of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, US, and a team of archaeologists at the University of Science and Technology of China, in Anhui province... Dr Harbottle points to the persistence of sign use at different sites along the Yellow River throughout the Neolithic and up to the Shang period, when a complex writing system appears. He emphasised that he was not suggesting the Neolithic symbols had the same meanings as Shang characters they resembled... The shells come from graves where, in 1999, the researchers unearthed ancient bone flutes. These flutes are the earliest musical instruments known to date.

Origin of the Olmec civilization by H. Mike Xu