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Условные сокращения

ОГК — Научная конференция «Общество и государство в Китае». М.

BMFEA — Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. Stockholm

Abstract. L.S. Vasiliev. Ancient China

This book is the second volume (Ch'un-Ch'iu China) of a three-volume publication about the history and culture of Ancient China. The first volume (Prehistory, Shang history and Western Chou history) was published in Moscow in 1995. The third one is being prepared and will be published in several years. This abstract contains a brief review of the contents and the range of problems of the first two volumes. The main purpose of this work is to give a more or less comprehensive characteristic of the ancient Chinese society and its history, the process of sociogenesis and politogenesis, formation of the basis of ideology and culture and establishing traditions. Special attention is given to the genetic links and outside influence that took place during this complex process. The presentation starts with the prehistory of China and finishes with the composition of the empire. The first two volumes are dedicated to the period before the 5th century ВС.

The first volume starts with the presentation of prehistory problems. Chinese archaeology has achieved considerable successes. Since they are well-known it spares us the need to represent them in detail. Interpretation of data obtained by archaeologists and anthropologists is another thing. Personal positions of various specialists may sometimes be completely the opposite. The contents of the first volume are not fully identical to the notions which the majority of specialists tend to adhere to, especially in the CPR. In particular, there are serious grounds to think that a sinantrop was a dead-end branch of the gominid line, although its descendants could have played an important role in the process of miscegenation with migrants from the West. The latter moved along the steppe line and reached America via Bering Isthmus, which is a well-known fact. The finds of the first sapient people on the territory of northern China (the three skulls from the grotto Shangt'ingt'ung) testify the lack of racial distinction or any resemblance to Mongoloid characteristics in each of them. As far as Neolith is concerned, there are no traces of Neolithic revolution on the territory of China. Despite its considerable specifics, the earliest of Neolithic cultures, Yangshao, which ascends to approximately the 6th-5th millennia ВС, belongs to a series of Eurasian cultures of painted ceramics that are well-known to archaeologists according to a number of important enthnogenetic characteristics (paintings on ceramics and their main motifs). The second Neolithic culture, Lungshan, which superceded the first one at the end of the 3rd millennium ВС, was already familiar with the potter's wheel, cattle and cereals (wheat, barley), which were domesticated in the Middle East. This serves as a rather convincing proof of its origin.

The question is not that proto-Chinese did not contribute anything to the development of Neolithic cultures on their territory. On the contrary, they did a lot and ultimately created their own neolithic foundations for further development. But it is out of the question to consider the basis as a fully indigenous one. Bronze Age culture started to develop in Ancient China from the beginning of the 2nd millennium ВС on the basis of Yangshao-Lungshan Neolithic Age, first as an early stage (Erlitou-Erligang) and later as a late one (Anyang). It is possible to pose the question of north-western influence already with reference to the period of the early Bronze Age (18th-14th centuries ВС) which is represented by bronze arms and vessels. For decades experts wrote a lot about it. Approximately at the same time the first centers of still very primitive urban culture emerged, which were developed on the Ancient Chinese Neolithic basis. On the other hand, findings dating to the late Bronze Age from the excavations in Anyang amazed archaeologists. In late 20-s and early 30-s over a dozen of so-called royal tombs with plenty of bronze and other magnificently elaborated items, chariots with domesticated horses harnessed to them and a huge number of co-buried people were found on that territory. Also an archive was found, which consisted of hundreds of thousands of inscriptions written on scapula bones of ox and on turtle plastrons (about 1000 various drawing signs similar to pictograms altogether). Horses domesticated by Indo-Europeans, chariots with a lot of spokes invented by them and many other things leave no doubt that the origin of the Shang civilization was connected with at least some external influence. At the same time there is a doubtless Chinese component in this process, suffice it to say about silk, which had been already known in the Shang China.