Throughout this book we have noted marked diversities among regional culturaltraditions in China. If viewed from a global perspective, however, are there anyunique characteristics that distinguish early Chinese cultures from those inother regions? In this final chapter we will broaden our scope, while attemptingto understand ancient Chinese civilization in comparison with civilizations inother parts of the world.

INTERPRETING CHINESENESS

Scholars from various intellectual backgrounds have been fascinated by questionslike the following: How was Chinese civilization different from othercivilizations in the world?What made Chinese “Chinese”?What heldChinese society together for so many centuries? These broad issues have beenaddressed by anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, who often haveused various analytical methods and reached different conclusions.

It is commonly acknowledged that some features characteristic of manycivilizations in the world were also developed in ancient China by the secondmillennium BC. These features include urbanization, palatial structures,temples, metallurgy, a writing system, and institutionalized socialstratification. Some of these traits, however, are only superficially similaramong civilizations. When investigating each attribute in detail, markeddifferences are observable. As outlined by K. C. Chang (1983, 1984, 1986a) inseveral publications, in ancient China bronze metallurgy was applied topolitics, in the form of ritual vessels and weapons, rather than to foodproduction, whereas stone tools for agriculture remained the same from theNeolithic to the Bronze Age; the earliest surviving Chinese written records,dated to the late Shang, appear in oracle-bone inscriptions and are mainlyconcerned with divination; and the earliest cities were built as politicalcenters rather than as economic foci.