WORLD HISTORY
BIBLE and CHINESE CHRONOLOGY
PART LII
Well all my fine friends! How have you been? I am very busy but blessed. Last night my husband and I faced-timed (apple’s skype) with our son in New Zealand. All is well and his career in film-making is taking off like a rocket. How wonderful to hear from him in such a far away land!
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| REMAINS OF ANCIENT VILLAGE ON YELLOW RIVER |
And speaking of far away lands, we are now going to move on to China’s ancient chronology and see how that fits in with the earth’s real human history. The world's four oldest civilizations are known as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus and China's Yellow River. We know that Mesopotamia is indeed the oldest for it is where our ancient relatives scattered from after the confusion of languages at the tower of Babel. And we just did a review of Egyptian chronology (see previous blogs for more info), and we briefly touched on the ancient Indus culture in even earlier blogs on advanced technology. So let’s see where China fits into all of this.
In my research I could not find a definite secular date for the earliest Chinese culture. They ranged from 5000 to 10,000 years ago. What I did find of interest was the connections between early Chinese and Mesopotamia civilizations.
For example, the website Ducksters has everything but the date correct when they stated that, “8000 - 2205 BC: Early Chinese settlers build small villages and farm along the major rivers including the Yellow River and the Yangtze River.”1
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| PLAIN OF SHINAR |
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| PLAIN OF YELLOW RIVER |
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| PLAIN OF THE NILE |
Paul Stonehill mentions in his website article Mysteries of the Yellow Empire, that “Around the 4th or 3rd millennium BC, in the New Stone Age, great changes occurred in the lives of the ancient Chinese. Larger numbers of people began living together at settled places, cultivating land, and domesticating animals. These people made polished stone tools and built shelters in pit dwellings and beehive huts that were covered with reed roofs. Such villages were found mostly in the area of the great bend of the Huang He on the North China Plain. Despite its severe winters, this area was well suited to agriculture. In fact, it closely resembled the other cradles of ancient civilizations, such as the valley of the Nile in Egypt. As we will see, this is an important fact, because there are other striking similarities between the ancient civilizations.” I would like to add here that the area Paul mentions is also very similar to the Plain of Shinar. Stonehill goes on to say, “Like other ancient peoples, the Chinese developed unique attributes. Their form of writing, developed by 2000 BC, was a complex system of picture writing using forms called ideograms, pictograms, and phonograms….(and later in history) The Shang Dynasty (1766-1122 BC) is the first documented era of ancient China. The highly developed hierarchy consisted of a king, nobles, commoners, and slaves. The capital city was Anyang, in north Henan Province. Some scholars have suggested that travelers from Mesopotamia and from Southeast Asia brought agricultural methods to China, which stimulated the growth of ancient Chinese civilization. If so, there may be a direct connection with Sumer.”2 (emphasis mine). Again the dates are off but the information is valid.
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| THE YELLOW EMPEROR |
The Bible and The Post-Flood Origins of Chinese History written by Roy, L. Hales in his website relates, “Genesis 11:2 states that after the flood mankind found a plain in the land of Shinar (Sumeria) and settled there. There are evidences in China's culture that indicate a Sumerian origin. The term "black-headed people" for their own race, and an emphasis on astronomy and mathematics in early times are common to both cultures.
“Furthermore, the identity of a great body of astronomical lore and astrological superstitions, the use of methods of measurement, the cycle of sixty and decimal system, the belief in interrelation and correspondence of five elements, of five colors and the harmony of numbers, together with a multitude of other customs on the part of both the Chinese and Chaldeans cannot be explained as merely co-incidences.
“A Biblical interpretation of China's village culture must necessarily cut 3,000 years off the current reconstruction of that nation's Neolithic era. The vast bulk of early cultures, the Yang Shao and Lung Shan among them, would be incorporated as components of Hsia (Xia) dynasty times (2205 B.C. to 1766 B.C.). The earliest villages would not have been more than a few hundred years earlier.”3
This leaves us with the Yellow Emperor. “Back in the earliest mists of recorded history, over four thousand years ago, (again the dates are off), China was ruled by its very first dynasties: the mythical Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. These names and reigns are legendary more than strictly historical. For example, the claim that both the Yellow Emperor and Emperor Yao ruled for exactly 100 years raises questions immediately.
Nonetheless, it is fascinating to think that China has some sort of historical record from about 2700 BCE - almost five thousand years ago.
The Three Sovereigns: The Five Emperors
The Heavenly Sovereign (Fuxi) Huang-di (The Yellow Emperor), c. 2697 – c. 2597 BCE
The Earthly Sovereign (Nuwa) Zhuanxu, c. 2514 – c. 2436 BCE
The Human Sovereign (Shennong) Emperor Ku, c. 2436 – c. 2366 BCE
Emperor Yao, c. 2358 – c. 2258 BCE
Emperor Shun, c. 2255 – c. 2195 BCE”4
Another chart shows only the Yellow Emperor as the first ruler over China, “2696 BC: Rule of the legendary Yellow Emperor. His wife Leizu invented the process of making silk cloth. (then in) 2205 - 1575 BC: The Chinese learn how to make bronze. The Xia Dynasty becomes the first dynasty in China. (and finally) 1570 - 1045 BC: Shang Dynasty (rules).”2
The more one delves into research the more the dates change. But the basic information is still relevant. If one absorbs the pre-Babel dated (the confusion of languages occur around 2255 BC) regimes within the first ruling faction, the dates line up with the Biblical chronology. It is reasonable to do this for most of these early systems are in geologically different areas. Thus, as in the ancient Egyptian chronology, it is only logical to place these as overlapping regimes during the same time period.
The rest of China’s history correlates very well with Biblical chronology. And that, as Paul Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story.
Until next time, God bless and take care!
Willow Dressel
This week in the night skies; For the northern hemisphere; “The biggest and brightest asteroids, 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta respectively, are only about 4° apart in eastern Virgo in the early morning hours. They're magnitude 8.1 and 7.1, respectively….The wheel of the year is turning, and spring is only a little more than a month away. So by 9 or 10 p.m. (depending on your location), you'll find the Big Dipper already standing on its handle in the northeast as high as Cassiopeia has descended in the northwest. And then the full Moon pairs up with Regulus on Valentine's Day. Such a pretty couple, if a bit mismatched.”5
For the Southern skies: “In the early evening it is above the north-eastern horizon near the bright stars Castor and Pollux, the twins of Gemini. Jupiter is quite easy to see as the brightest object in the entire sky. Jupiter's Moons are readily visible in binoculars. February 11 has an interesting patten of Jovian Moons, with all the Moons lined up on one side of Jupiter. On February 14, at 12:30 am AEDST, midnight ACDST and 9:00 pm on the 13th AWST Europa and its shadow are on the face of Jupiter.”6
References:
4http://asianhistory.about.com/od/chinatimelines/a/threesovandfiveemperors.htm
6http://astroblogger.blogspot.com
The African or the Egyptian civilization, The Chines and people of the Hindus valley predates the tower of babel by at least 80,000 years. The story of the tower of Babel is just allegory of metaphor. Babylon invaded Judea and took some Israelites captive in Shinar which is just another name for Babylon and they planed a revolt and it was crusted by their captors. How can you build a city while you are imprisoned by your enemies. the Babylonian commonly build towers called Ziggurats that are 300 ft. tall, we now fly in airplanes and travel to the moon and beyond Mars. Now tell me did heaven some place else ?
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DeleteI understand where you have gotten your facts from and how your belief systems came about. This is what you were taught and you took it all in most likely without question as did I in my college years. So now you believe in the theory of evolution just as I used to; Man kind came from apes, who in turn came from some lower form of mammal, who in turn came from reptiles, etc., etc., all the way to life coming from non-living chemicals. And all of this came from a very small, dense dot. That exploded. And you and I believed it! Without question! But as I established my career as a scientist, so many things kept changing and I began to question the reliability of the “facts” I had been taught. About this time I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Shortly after I discovered a whole other scientific realm. One that wasn’t afraid to ask questions. Like were did all the things (atoms, chemicals etc) inside the dense dot come from—how did something come from nothing? And what about the space that this dense dot was floating around in…where did that come from? And why is there a scientific law that states life cannot come from non-life (the law of biogenesis), yet the theory of evolution depends on life coming from non-life. And many, many more questions including those about human civilization and the time line. So I started researching to see if the Bible is indeed a valid scientific and historical book. The more I looked into it, the more facts I found that back it up. Good, solid, logical facts. And I am not the only one. Please note many a skeptic scientist has taken it under their wing to disprove the Bible but in turn have realized its truth (Sir William Ramsay [1852-1939], archaeologist; Peter Stoner- [1888-1980], mathematician and astronomer; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [1918-2008], historian; George R. Price [1922-1975], geneticist, physical chemist and science journalist; Dr. Rick Oliver [1947- ], microbiologist; Francis Collins [1950- ], physician and geneticist; to name a few). Thank you for your dialogue. I believe your correspondence comes from a heart that cares about the truth, especially for human civilization.
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