We are in the midst of a Golden Age of Chinese archaeology, because we have
the opportunity to witness the creation of a completely new body of
knowledge concerning the prehistory of a quarter of all humanity.
Kwang-chih Chang 1986a: 412Throughout this book we have noted marked diversities among regional cultural
traditions in China. If viewed from a global perspective, however, are there any
unique characteristics that distinguish early Chinese cultures from those in
other regions? In this final chapter we will broaden our scope, while attempting
to understand ancient Chinese civilization in comparison with civilizations in
other parts of the world.
INTERPRETING CHINESENESS
Scholars from various intellectual backgrounds have been fascinated by questions
like the following: How was Chinese civilization different from other
civilizations in the world?What made Chinese “Chinese”?What held
Chinese society together for so many centuries? These broad issues have been
addressed by anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, who often have
used various analytical methods and reached different conclusions.
It is commonly acknowledged that some features characteristic of many
civilizations in the world were also developed in ancient China by the second
millennium BC. These features include urbanization, palatial structures,
temples, metallurgy, a writing system, and institutionalized social
stratification. Some of these traits, however, are only superficially similar
among civilizations. When investigating each attribute in detail, marked
differences are observable. As outlined by K. C. Chang (1983, 1984, 1986a) in
several publications, in ancient China bronze metallurgy was applied to
politics, in the form of ritual vessels and weapons, rather than to food
production, whereas stone tools for agriculture remained the same from the
Neolithic to the Bronze Age; the earliest surviving Chinese written records,
dated to the late Shang, appear in oracle-bone inscriptions and are mainly
concerned with divination; and the earliest cities were built as political
centers rather than as economic foci.