Richard, over at The Peking Duck, has a post today that asks: "A serious question: How many years does Chinese civilization go back,
and what criteria are applied to come up with the famous claim of
"5,000 years"?" I think about this question a fair bit and will add my two cents here.
In the comments to Richard’s post, David Li, points out:
One of the oldest history book in China is ShiJi edited by Shi Ma Qian
around 100 BC which put the history of China starting from Yellow
Emperor and dated him 3000 years before Han Dynasty. The book has since
been used as the base of the official history of China. That’s the
origin of 5000.
The Yellow Emperor is, of course, a mythic figure, rather like the Greek gods, so attaching a precise historical date to him is rather dubious. But David is probably right about this being the origin of the "5000" year thing.
Jeremiah also makes a good point in the comments section of Richard’s post:
There are clearly recognizable elements of contemporary Chinese society
that date back to at least the second dynasty (Shang) for which we have
written records in the form of the "oracle bones." These include the
prototypes for certain Chinese characters and indication that ancestor
worship was part of the religious practice of the ruling clan.
The Shang dynasty runs from about 1766-1050 BCE, an impressive amount of time, during which there were extraordinary cultural accomplishments (think bronze), but, as Jeremiah points out, when you do the math it doesn’t quite get you to 5000 years. But this brings us to the most interesting question: there were obviously human communities in the geographic area that is now China going back further then 5000 years, but at what point was there a critical mass of cultural practices that approximate what we think of as "Chinese"? In other words, at what point in time did the people there take on something like "Chinese" culture?
As Jeremiah points out, there are elements of Chinese-ness in the Shang, but there are also elements of non-Chinese-ness. For example, the Shang did human sacrifices fairly regularly, and this is something that was generally not done in what we understand to be "Chinese culture." It was, I believe, banned by the Shang’s successor dynasty, the Zhou. Another non-Chinese element of Shang culture was its embrace of something pretty close to a singular, transcendent, anthropomorphic God. In the Shang this was Shang-di, the father of fathers. But in the Zhou, this quasi-personified God figure is supplanted by a more general notion of "Heaven" – Tian. And from then on Chinese thought does not really invoke or rely upon a singular God-like figure. Frederick Mote points out that there was no God external to the cosmos (or a discrete creator of the cosmos) in the "Chinese world view." Thus:
If no supergod could be granted such a function [of creator], then the prime impulse toward monotheism was lacking. (17)
Shang-di of the Shang might have developed into a monotheism, but Chinese culture did not move in that direction.
So, bottom line, I think the Shang are not yet fully "Chinese". That, then, would move things to the Zhou dynasty, which begins about 1050 BCE, which would give us only about 3150 years or so of "Chinese civilization."
But we have to press a bit further. Can we imagine any definition of "Chinese culture" that does not include Confucius? If we want to place him in the center of Chinese-ness, then we would have to postpone the date of the emergence of a fully formed Chinese culture to at least the year of his birth, 551 BCE.
And could we really accept a definition of Chinese civilization that did not include its most important political manifestation, the centralized bureaucratic state? If that is important to us, the the Qin dynasty, 221-206 BCE, becomes crucial for our dating exercise.
Ultimately, answering the question "when does Chinese civilization begin?" will depend upon what we understand "Chinese" to be. For me, the Shang are precursors, not wholly Chinese. I would also hesitate to accept a sense of consolidation of Chinese culture that predates Confucius. Perhaps we do not have to wait until Qin, but the most reasonable response might be the Warring States period. That is when the key elements of Chinese-ness have taken shape and are merging into something like "Chinese civilization."
Although it may not be polite to say in the presence of Chinese nationalists (who want to fuel the myth of 5000 years), 3000 years is more like it.
The Useless Tree 
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