Study finds Chinese civilization older than thought

By CHARLES HUTZLER, Associated Press

BEIJING (November 9, 2000 2:44 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - China's ancient civilization has just gotten a little older -- officially at least.

A government-funded study released Thursday pushed back the dates of China's earliest dynasties, shedding light on the origins of Chinese civilization and adding fuel to a controversy over the influence of politics on scholarship.

The fruit of the biggest research project China has conducted into its early civilization, the findings could be significant, if they are accepted.

They document the emergence of early Chinese kingdoms from the prehistoric New Stone Age and edge China's verifiable history to more than 4,000 years ago - a 1,200-year jump.

"The results solve a batch of knotty questions long left uncertain in our country's historical chronology and fill in the blank spaces in our country's ancient annals," project director Li Xueqin said, unveiling the report at a news conference.

But the project's origins immediately raised questions about its likely findings among scholars in China and abroad - even before the research began.

Dubbed the "history project," the study was commissioned in 1995 by Cabinet member Song Jian, a physicist by training. The government made it a national priority in its five-year plan that ends this year.

The project's stated mission was to fix dates for three dynasties: the half-documented Zhou, the shadowy Shang and the myth-shrouded Xia.

But critics said Song pressured the researchers to prove China has a 5,000-year history, to equal claims made by other ancient civilizations.

"There are factors of national prestige involved," said David Nivison, a retired Stanford University scholar who has made dating China's early dynasties a 30-year preoccupation. "Establishing the Xia as history, not legend, gives China a validated, authenticated history that rivals Babylonia or Egypt."

Still, "I think they're all wrong," said Nivison, in a telephone interview.

"I've seen their chronology and maybe they've got two dates right," said Nivison, who has his calculated his own set of dates for events in ancient Chinese history dating to 2026 B.C.

History has long been an instrument of pride and power in China.

Dynastic historians rewrote records to glorify patrons and demonize enemies.

In the last 51 years, the communists have cited peasant uprisings against corrupt rulers to justify their revolution.

More recently, they have urged scientists to prove early humans developed in China, not in Africa as commonly held.

Politics aside, the history project focused serious science on questions debated for 2,000 years.

It brought together 200 Chinese historians, archaeologists, astronomers and specialists in seven other fields -- an unprecedented marriage of the natural and social sciences for China, project director Li said.

They used fast-spinning electrical fields to shave atoms off tortoise shells and ox shoulder blades -- ancient tools for divination -- to date them more accurately.

They used computers to calculate the dates of eclipses mentioned in inscriptions on 3,000-year-old bones and bronzes and in texts disputed for centuries.

In the end, Li said, the project pushed past the last accepted definite date in Chinese history - the death of a Zhou king in 841 B.C.

It fixed the dates for earlier Zhou kings and the last Shang rulers going back to 1300 B.C. and broadly outlined the earlier period, setting the Xia's origins to 2070 B.C. -- the middle of the well-excavated prehistoric Longshan culture.

"This work not only furthers a good foundation for accurately dating the Xia, Shang and Zhou. It more importantly gives a basic point of origin for tracing back the origins of Chinese civilization," said Li, an expert on early Chinese history with the government's Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

But Nivison said the project's attempts to put a definite dates to events still unknowable could further cloud the debate.

"Once the dates get into museums and textbooks throughout the world, it will be a mess," he said.