China's proven history does not exceed 3,700 years. Why does China state that their history exceeds 5,000 years?

中国有记录的历史不超过3700年。为何中国总说他们拥有5000年的历史？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Qi Chen

Question: China's proven history does not exceed 3,700 years. Why does China state that their history exceeds 5,000 years?

Answer:

Nowadays the proof is actually quite simple, because they did dig up proof that China’s proven history exceed 5000 years:

Of course, they know that previously as well. Duh, by the time oracle bones (where the 3700 years comment comes from) are around, the Chinese culture were a full-fledged feudal level civilization complete with culture custom and technology in all fields.

问：中国已证实的历史不超过3700年。为什么中国总说他们的历史超过5000年?

答：现在要证明其实很简单，因为他们已经挖掘出了能证实中国历史超过5000年的证据：

当然，他们之前也很清楚自己拥有5000多年的历史。甲骨文（中国历史只有3700年这个说法的出处）出现的时候，中国已经拥有了成熟的封建文明，在各个领域都已拥有完整的文化习俗和技术。

So unless you think aliens made the Chinese and skipped from stone/early bronze age straight to late bronze age/early iron age, then it is safe to assume the Chinese, like everyone else, spent considerable amount of time in those early age before advancing to the point where they found the oracle bones.

The fact they picked perishable material for record is a shame and made the later archeological work harder, but even very basic and simple logic should be able to tell you that fully developed civilization doesn’t just pop out of thin air and the previous archeologists are certainly capable of simple logic.

所以除非你认为是外星人创造了中国人，中国人直接从石器时代和青铜时代早期跃至了青铜时代晚期和铁器时代早期，那么你应该可以理解中国人和其他人一样，在甲骨文出现之前还经历了相当长的早期发展时间。

很可惜，当时中国人选择了极易腐烂的材料作为记录的载体，这让后代的考古工作变得十分困难，但这种基本和简单的逻辑足够令人信服，高度发达的文明不会凭空出现，历代考古学家当然能够进行简单的逻辑推演。

 Jian Gang Peng

何尊(He Zun, wine instrument), built in 1038 BC, 3058 years from today. It is a sacrifice container made by a Western Zhou clan nobleman He in the early Western Zhou Dynasty. Unearthed in Jiacun Town, Baoji City, Shaanx Province，China, in 1963. The inside of the statue is engraved with 122 words, of which "Zhaizi Zhongguo(宅玆中國)", meaning the kingdom living in the center of the world, is the earliest written record of the word "China(中國)", describing Cheng Wang King(成王) Inherited the inheritance of Wu Wang King(武王)and completed the construction of “East Capital (東都)".

何尊(酒器)，建于公元前1038年，距今3058年。这是西周初期，西周氏族贵族何氏制作的祭祀容器。1963年出土于中国陕西省宝鸡市嘉村镇。尊内刻有122个文字，其中“宅兹中国”，意为处于世界中心的王国，是“中国”一词最早的文字记录，记录成王接替武王，完成了“东都”的建设。

Word Wan

On May 7th, Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology announced the staged major archaeological achievements of the Duyi site in the ancient country of Shuanghuaishu in Zhengzhou, Henan

Experts suggest naming it as "Heluo Ancient Country"-Shuanghuaishu site proves that the golden stage of the origin of Chinese civilization around 5300 The discovery has filled the key materials in the critical period and key regions of the origin of Chinese civilization

The discovery of the ancient Heluo Kingdom may change the perception that the central position of the Central Plains only began in the ia Dynasty

5月7日，郑州市文物考古研究院在河南郑州公布了双槐树古国时代都邑遗址阶段性重大考古成果。

专家建议将其命名为“河洛古国”——双槐树遗址实证了在5300年前后，中华文明起源的黄金阶段，河洛地区是当时最具代表性和影响力的文明中心。

双槐树遗址的发现，是填补了中华文明起源关键时期、关键地区的关键材料。

河洛古国的发现，也许将改变“中原的中心地位是从夏代才开始的”这一历史观点。

Simo Hyvarinen

Here.

It depends on how you define civilization. (Begng of written characters/alphabets, metallurgy, raise sophisticated religion etc.)

看看这个图。

这取决于你如何定义文明，书写文字/字母、冶金学、宗教体系等开始出现

This is the ancient city of Shiqi, which was built in China 4300 years ago. It has just shocked the world and is also the largest stone city in the world at the same time.

这是石岐古城，建于4300年前的中国。它刚刚震惊了世界，是世界上最大的石城。

China's ancient city of Liaohe 4,000 years ago, a cylindrical stone castle building

The prehistoric castle in the Liaohe River Basin, with round houses in the castle. In some of the castle's tombs, fine bronzes and the earliest metal currency of the Middle Ages were found. There are horse structures outside the walls of these castles. There are hundreds of such prehistoric castles in the Daling River and the Yingin River.

中国辽河古城建于4000年前，有一座圆柱形的石砌城堡建筑。

辽河流域的史前古堡，古堡内有圆形房屋。在城堡内的一些古墓中发现了精美的青铜器和中世纪最早的金属货币。这些城堡的墙外有马形结构。在大陵河和英金河中有数百座这样的史前城堡。

In these ancient architectural wonders, the Chinese knew little about it.

Erdaozizi Fortress, 4,000 years ago, the prehistoric giant city, the ruins of the “Liangzhu Ancient City” dating back 5,000 years ago was the largest city in the world at the time.

Shocked the world, known as "the dawn of Chinese civilization"

Liangzhu ancient city sculpture, from 4500 to 5000 years ago, each line inside is thinner than hair

中国人对这些古老的建筑奇迹知之甚少。

四千年前的二道井子遗址，这座史前巨型城市，距今5000年前的“良渚古城”遗址，是当时世界上最大的城市，震惊了世界，被誉为“中华文明的曙光”。

良渚古城雕塑，距今4500年至5000年前，里面的每一根线条都比头发细

C. Z.

Have you heard of the Pharoh Narmer?

They’re literally not sure when he lived, nor what exactly he did during his life, nor where his body is buried. Yet he is considered part of Egyptian history.

Why?

because some ancient Egyptians wrote something down!

你听说过纳尔迈法老吗？

人们根本不知道他究竟生活在什么年代，也不知道他一生中究竟做过什么，更不知道他去世后埋在哪里。可人们就把他当做一位埃及历史人物。

为什么？

因为一些古埃及人写下了一些东西！

That’s the basis of “history” in a nutshell. There are times when you can, via archaeology, find things that date back to a certain time and thus know for sure X has exsted by Y. Most of the time, however, you have to rely on written records.

简而言之，这就是“历史”的基础。

有些时候，你能通过考古找到可以追溯到某一特定时间的文物证据来确定X在y之前就存在过。但大多数时候，你只能依靠文字记录。

In Mesopotamia, we have the King Gilgamesh.

在美索不达米亚，我们有吉尔伽美什国王。

Again, we don’t know when he lived exactly. We’ve never found the body, and all we have are myths of his time on Earth.

同样的，我们也不知道他具体生活在什么时候，也一直没找到他的尸体，我们只知道关于他的传说。

Doesn’t stop anybody from considering him as historical and for Mesopotamian history to stretch back at least 4500 years, if not more.

这并不妨碍大家将他当做一位历史人物，也把美索不达米亚的历史至少追溯到4500年前。

Only China is subject to this higher standard of “Oh we don’t have hard archaeological evidence, must mean that stuff prior to the Shang Dynasty is fake”!

只有中国必须遵从这个更高的标准，“哦，我们没有确凿的考古证据，所以商朝之前的历史就是假的！”

The Irony of it all is, this was instigated by Chinese deniers of the late Qing Dyansty-early Republican era, a school known as Doubting Antiquity School

讽刺的是，这还是清末民初的反对派煽动的，这一学派被称为疑古派。

If China couldn’t claim that its history stretches back before Western civilization was a thing, then there’s no reason why China should hold onto those traditions instead of embracing Western ones. That was the aim of this school, to try to drag China into the modern era by force.

如果中国无法证明其历史可以追溯到西方文明出现之前，那么中国就没有理由坚持这些文化传统，从而可以拥抱西方文明。这就是这个学派的目的，试图强行将中国拖入现代世界。

The funny thing is. At the inception of this school, they tried to argue that the Shang Dynasty itself was fake (or at least grossly exaggerated). The discovery of oracle bones and other archaeological evidence that closely matched the historical narrative that they so blithely dismissed only made them dig their heel in deeper. They argued that even if the Shang was real, the preceding ia Dynasty must be made up. For the most part, archaeology has not yet caught up to that point.

有趣的是，在这个学派成立之初，他们还试图证明商朝本身并不存在(或者至少被严重夸大了)。甲骨文和其他考古证据的发现与被他们轻率摒弃的历史非常吻合，让他们更加固执己见，拒不承认。他们认为，就算商朝真实存在，商朝之前的夏朝也一定是人为杜撰的。在很大程度上，考古学还没能证明这一点。

Again, however, parallel civilizations elsewhere in the world have about just as good of an archaeological record as China, but we don’t go around doubting their claims to their years of history as we do China.

但同样的，世界上其他文明的考古记录和中国一样，但我们不会像中国这样质疑自己的历史。

The reason for that? Western Sinologists all subscribe to the Doubting antiquity school to a certain degree. And those ideas get distilled into the public via poorly-researched and written textbooks and world history curriculum meant to give students a taste without making their brains melt and ooze out of their ears about how big the world actually is.

原因是什么？西方汉学家都在一定程度上认同疑古派。这些想法通过未深入研究和校验的教科书和世界史课程传播给了大众，这些课程并不想让学生们获得渊博的学识，只想让学生们做只井底之蛙。

Hugues Talbot

There is no doubt that people lived in what is now mainland China more than 5000 years ago, and that the people who lived there and then probably looked a great deal like modern Chinese people.

毋庸置疑，5000多年前就有人类生活在如今的中国大陆，当时的人类很可能长得和当代中国人十分相似。

History is the period associated with writing, from the earliest known written document to modern days. There is no universal agreement regarding what constitutes a written artifact, however most historians agree that the Kish tablet - Wikipedia is among the oldest known written artifacts. It is dated from 3500BC, but it is essentially pictographic but with some elements that are proto-cuneiform. If we agree that proto-cuneiform is a form of writing, then the Kish tablet is the first historical document. Anything before that belongs by definition to pre-history.

历史是与文字有关的时期，从最早的出土书面文件一直到现代。对书面文物的定义并没有普遍的共识，但大多数历史学家都认为基什碑是已知的最古老的书面文物之一。它可以追溯到公元前3500年，但它基本上是象形文字，也有一些原始楔形文字。如果我们认可原始楔形文字也是一种书写形式，那么基什石碑就是第一份历史文献。根据定义，在那之前的任何东西都属于史前。

There is a consensus among historians that drawings or painting do not constitute script. The oldest known paintings were non-figurative and made by Neanderthals more than 60,000 years ago in Spain. The earliest figurative paintings (animals, etc) were made by modern humans around 40,000BCE.

历史学家一致认为，图画或绘画不算文字。现在已知最古老的绘画是抽象的，由尼安德特人在6万多年前的西班牙创作。最早的具象画(动物等)是由公元前40000年左右的现代人类创作。

In between these two dates, some markings were found on tortoise shells dating from neolithic China: the Jiahu symbols. Some of these date from 6600BC. Some of these symbols strikingly resemble modern-day ideograms, like those for the Sun. There is no consensus that these symbols constitute a script and as such they are typically classified as pre-historical artifacts.

在这两个时间点之间，人们在中国新石器时代的龟甲上发现了一些符号：甲骨文。其中一些可以追溯到公元前6600年。其中一些符号与现代的表意文字惊人地相似，比如表示太阳的符号。对于这些符号是否构成某种文字，人们还没有达成共识，所以它们通常被归类为史前文物。

Basically if we could find more of these and decode them, then they would become a written artifact and indeed the oldest form of known script. This would settle the debate.

如果我们能找到更多这样的文字并成功解读，那么它们就会成为一种书面的历史文物，实际上也就成为已知的最古老的文字形式。这样就可以结束这个争论了。

Yevgeniy Leto

The problem is in defining “proven”. The written history goes back to 3000+ years. That merely meant that they 1. discovered language, 2. found the means to write it down in a form that can be preserved/copied over 3000+years. 3. that they thought it important to actually do this.

Then there are excavations of graves with carbon dating.

问题在于如何定义“经过证实”。有文字记载的历史可以追溯到3000多年前。但这仅仅意味着他们：1、发现了语言；2、找到了将文字以一种可以保存3000多年的方式记录下来；3、他们认为这样做十分重要。

还有用碳定年法发掘古墓。

It is well understood by everyone that the further back one goes in history, the muddier “facts” become. This is true with all recorded history and through out the world.

Then there is this one amazing fact: The Chinese civilization is obsessed with history and record kee, resulting in a more complete record than others.

众所周知，历史越久远，“事实”就越模糊。所有有记载的历史和全世界都是如此。

还有一个惊人的事实：中国文明对历史和记录的痴迷，使得中国拥有比其他文明更为完整的记录。