The Birth of China - The Dawn of Inequality (5000 to 3000 BCE)
Vložit
- čas přidán 22. 06. 2024
- In the third episode of our series examining China's earliest societies, we explore the increasingly complex societies of the Middle Neolithic. Over the course of 2000 years we see the emergence of early rulers and religious figures throughout the cultures of Northern and Southern China, along with the appearance of ritual architecture and prestigous burials on an unprecedented scale.
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @thehistocrat
Help support us elsewhere at:
/ thehistocrat
/ the_histocrat
bsky.app/profile/thehistocrat...
You can find more of Ettore's excellent artwork below:
/ ettore.mazza
/ ettoremazza
Big shout and thanks to @ARTiculations for helping me out with some of the Chinese name pronunciations! You can find her channel here:
/ @articulations
Another shout and thanks to @Embracehistoria for his work on this video's map graphics! You can find his channel here:
/ @embracehistoria
#ancientchina #history #neolithic
The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Temple Of Heaven by Rafael Krux
(orchestralis.net)
Creative Commons 4.0 License.
Hey folks, I had too many sources for this episode for the comment word count so I've put them on a google document linked below:
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BP9kZ9y4dtdB0yy-qXrNzWcVjAYCv6-a?usp=sharing
Thank you for listing openly your sources, both outside and in the videos themselves (including for each cited moment with a little footnote number)
Thank you!!!
FINALLY! THANK YOU!
How could someone be so stupid choosing a title for their video? You can see that coherence and study are not the focus of the "historian", what a waste
Just one more video before I start studying
I vaguely remember saying the same thing a few years ago. Now I have a doctorate in CZcams
@@Exit311 You’re me….but from the future :0
studying is so much more fun if you actually care about the topic :D
@@LiftandCoa I dunno man, Histocrat dropping a video covering 2000 years of history…..versus looking at some teeth….y’know what…. The video’s better haha
Good luck!
Oh I am so stoked to listen to this later when I'm off doing chores
This is amazing! Would be pretty cool if eventually there was a playlist for each of the cradles of civilization, which I’m addition to Mesopotamia and China would include Egypt, the Indus Valley, the Olmec, and the Norte Chico.
Would be cool to learn about my Olmec ancestors, though it would probably be best if it were left for last, along with Norte Chico, so by the time you get to it there will be a bit more information known about these relatively poorly understood civilizations.
China has a fascinating history. I am enjoying this series of videos.
It's very nice to see Fushanzhuang being mentioned! My dad is from there, and it is nowadays a village of not more than a couple thousand people. Never thought I'd hear it mentioned in any kind of interesting context.
cool but you need to stop eating dogs.
@@HOXHOXHOX don't confuse it with the fringes of the fringes in Vietnam and what does it have to do with being proud of seing his dad village mentionned?
@@HOXHOXHOXyou have to stop racist
@@HOXHOXHOXstop being a silly racist
@@HOXHOXHOX He's sounds several magnitudes more honorable and educated than you.
A new Histocrat, this has turned into a great Sunday.
51:26 Good bear boi taking a nice bath🐻
This channel has quickly become one of my favorites ever
Cant wait to listen to this later today man im looking forward to it
Perfect for my Sunday night chilldown -- thanks man!
This is one of the most useful videos I've ever watched. Thank you for sharing!
I LOVE THIS SERIES!
Thank you, cant wait for the next video
Incredibly detailed, hats off to all the research and work done!
Extraordinary contribution to what we currently know about early pre-Chinese culture.
Really appreciate the various sources you quote, including Chinese archeologists.
I'm always surprised when I start comparing dates between proto-China & the world's other river cultures. I need to remind myself that the climatic conditions in the Far East are NOT conducive to preservation of materials. The Nile Valley & even the land between 2 rivers with their unpredictable flooding are much drier -- bordering on desert.
So knowing, for example that Egyptian Dynasties had come & gone long before what could be called "China" existed, or other aspects of the timeline have to be viewed in that context.
We'll have a HUGE amount of re-evaluation to do as more evidence arises -- from Paleolithic to some of the well-known eras.
Thanks for giving such detail & I'm eager to see what's next.
Great work man. I've been waiting for this for a long time.
loved it! thanks for the great work, as per usual :D
So excited for this one!
I've been curious since the last video in this series, but this title makes me even more so. Have you read David Graeber and David Wengrow's 'the dawn of everything: A new history of humanity'? I'd love to get your perspective on it. I found it a fascinating and uplifting read, but I don't really have the background to judge the validity of it's arguments as a law student.
Thank you for the new vid! Glad to see more East Asian history out there.
Im really loving this birth of china series! I hope it continues for a long time to come.
Curious about 2 main things, A) how much "traditional historiography" will be covered going forward. Im hoping very little personally. I hope/expect this video series to stick purely to the archaeology.
And B) how the next video(s) will be divided in terms of years covered. Will this next video cover the pre-erlitou culture or cover it itself? Personally, I think an entire video on the 3000BC-2000BC period is very possible, so I hope it takes that narrower focus. Leave the Erlitou culture for a video further down.
The Dawn of Heirarchy might have been a better tagline.
Yea. Inequality implies a negative value. Hierarchy is a good thing and the only reason humans progressed from primate to astronaut.
Indeed. It is poor anthropology to ignore that fact that we are hierarchical beings. It has been the role of higher religion to introduce and press the case for the values of accountability and social responsibility as obligations for those with power. Of course human pagan tendencies keep raising the ugly head of the will power in order to try to corrupt religion for self-serving ends. Hence, demagogues from Robespierre to Hitler to Mao to Trump all promote idolatry.
@@Svevsky cool story, still inequality.
Speaking less jokingly, do you not see how these are just inverse views on the same thing? You should not take it as a personal attack, but it's undeniable that the societies examined in this video are showing clearer and clearer signs of having haves and have-nots.
Neolithic history is the best and the music is just plain amazing!
The more things changes, the more they've stayed the same...a fantastic video as ever!
SO very good!
Guess I know what I'm going to do for the next hour five mins and 39 secs
Thank the old gods and new for a new histocrat documentary❤
Perfect timing
prehistoric celts: chalcolothic shenanignans
prehistoric asians: sociological stratification, dawn of inequality
looool nice video dude
Histocrat = the cure for insomnia. In a good way!!
Farming makes valuable places and piles of stored energy. These places can be attacked, raided and occupied with the locals enslaved and killed. The enslaved can be put to work on agriculture. This drives the emergence of a warrior class who tend to be male and who tend to take over. If women are used as warriors, the side thauses them will have more warriors at first, but as reproductive rates fall, there are less warriors. He male warriors form alliances with shamens to control the underlings better with fantastic narratives. And so here are today.
Man finally i thought you somehow decide to discontinued the series😅
Awesome
How did they use those tools with the hole? Seems very modern like it locks into a wooden handle, but idk.
Chinese history is becoming my Roman Empire
It is a shame it isn't more accessible, because there is tons of good stuff in there.
Also the politics don't help, the comments here will be spicy.
Contemplating human nature, one is forced to conclude, that inequality appeared with the appearance of more than on person in one place.
Is there anywhere where people could purchase some of the illustrations?
We're not worthy we're not worthy❤❤❤❤
We are tho
Ayoooooo HISTOCRAT DROPPED 🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥
The accent is fine. The chant-like delivery could use some variation.
Whats with this video being unavailable to download?
Probably because it just got uploaded.
Wow weird thing flying in the sky starting around 18:30. Looks like a plane?
Amazing how many things in this video can be applied to modern "developed" societies
they are the same homo sapiens than in our contemporary societies
It's a shame there are words like developed that can't be detached from their value judgement connotations. There's almost no way to refer to the less developed world that isn't insulting and confusing.
fantastically high quality video, but please invest in a better mic. a lot of words just fade into nothing and it makes it really hard to follow along! good job tho on everything else
Walter! This isn't a guy who built the railroads here...
I am the walrus?
After you finish this series, you should go on to mesoamerica, after a well deserved break of course
I don't disagree with what's being said, but other prehistoric societies are never framed this way.
Wove twu wove
China number one!
18:00 I thought dragons were mythical, but this made me curious so I looked it up. It turns out there is a real animal called a Chinese dragon, it is a local alligator species. It is endangered now, but at that time it would have been common. Look up Chinese alligator to see pictures of the real thing. They get to be about 5 to 7 feet in length and up to 80 to 100 lb. Not mythical after all! No wonder dragons are considered water animals. They are real live alligators. LOL
At the end of every sentence you raise the pitch of your voice.
Was the title written by US state department?
Certainly inequality did not start in China, or better it would be impossible to know but we can guess it started in tbe first human community. Did China have the first human community?
The name makes more sense if you watched the previous video. He is saying that in the context of the more egalitarian culture that this culture supplanted.
@@SarahTheRebelOfficial that makes more sense. thanks for the reply
whos gonna win, NATO or china?
What about the vast amount of ancient pyramids all over China? No mention?
Bit too early. Those would most likely be in the next episode.
No...agriculture has not too much to do with it. When a tribe grows too large and so ruling/solving problems becomes more difficult and time-consuming and demanding different skills, then a 'prime leader/premier/prime-minister/king/chef=sheriff=shariff-chief/boss, etc.. first chosen but soon (the family is used to special treatments and wealth) became a heriditary lucrative job. Working/fighting was no longer needed. 24hours protection was requiered. In no time an 'elite-group' with special treatment and beneficials was established. In my opinion, an automatic irreversable mechanisme. Also...after wars, the captured 'non-humans' served as dispensable slaves. The lowest 'class', the 'dalith's', the deplorables.
The reason for growth might have been 1)fertile population 2)fertile soil and nature 3)an agressive attitude and hunger for wealth and power 4)'sharing' goods and food was not a cherished lifestyle, certainly not with foreigners. Anything changed in our attitude?
Which one of Abraham's sons founded China?
none, go back to your semitic cousins,
They sure held on to their roots.
Inequality is a function of economic growth. That's why the US is both richer and more unequal than China.
Inequality is a modern concept. Things were family or clan based. You got what you put in. Your family would gain the benefits of your aniline.
To jump forward a couple millenia in this video, do you think the family of the Emperor put as much effort in as relative to their position in society?
@@ahumpierrogue137 pretty risky job being emperor in China. But no, he was thinking which noble or relative was gonna kill him for his throne. And being too crazy, not supporting ppl through famines etc would often lead to uprising of peasants, but universal equality of individuals was not a concept.
Dawn of inequality...is that a dei requirement ?
It only makes sense that if you invent raising pigs or growing rice you get buried better..that sounds reasonable to me
One thing I'd like to understand is how the very initial inequality begins in human history. Is it that one farmer has a slightly more productive plot of land or a significantly more productive plot of land? Is it that some families engage in violence against others to secure larger plots of land for themselves? As I understand it, plots tended to both become subdivided for inheritance as well as families growing as large as the plot could support. How then did the initial wealthier farmers manage to have larger plots and less family members per area? Did they simply refuse to subdivide at inheritance or refuse to have more children? What about sedentary foragers who developed inequality, how was that process similar or different? Was it partially a social thing where socially influential people due to charisma, skill or connections were able to extract more gifts and loyalty to amass wealth?
There is both the question of what the process of initial accumulation was and also the question of how it was preserved, as in why didn't others through pressure or violence maintain a more equal society in reaction to the threat of another gaining an advantage.
I imagine they were more sophisticated than we would assume. Many of the things they had to do to be successful are more impressive than what a modern person does.
The violent and ambitious acquire more land and pay people to be in their circle and defend them
This is essentially unanswerable. Since all people have already natural variation in ability and capacity, to add also that one's own children and relatives are a kind of property and capital in primitive societies insofar as they can perform labour. Also, gratitude in modern sensibilities is nearly non-existent: gift giving and acts of kindness always carried the weight of moral obligation and debt in small tight-knit groups, making "the generous" people sort of wealthy by being able to expect help in the future. This is not even to add religious-shaman minorities, otherwise "worthless", except for service remembrance of past generations and epic poetic recitations, making them prestigious in the group. These don't map well at all with modern quantitative analyses of wealth per capita at all. Good question, but I think it's basically impossible to answer.
Most social mammals are hierarchical. We were too, before the start of "history", before homo sapiens was sapiens.
@@erlinacobrado7947You are correct. One was "wealthy" in tribal economies by the amount of respect he had by the others in the tribe. Naturally, leadership tended to go hand in hand with wealth in the form of reciprocity.
Oh wow they used Native American pottery
Nope. Native American inspired by prehistoric Chinese state
Poverty lore
Just like medieval Europe. Or America right now.
@@SECONDQUEST Poverty is when you can't afford to live. Inequality is when someone has more than you.
inequality is a proud tradition that the chinese have kept at and perfected until this very day
so funny to hear what probally is an american saying this
@@daniloalves1139American or not, china is inequal.
@@daniloalves1139whether their American or not, social inequality has existed as long as humanity.
If this is a dig at Chinese society and some sense of Western superiority not only has inequality been a problem in social systems throughout world history, but Western societies have always struggle with equality just the same and to this day classism is still a thing. And let’s be real social issues are still prevalent with a focus on traditional hierarchies that were never truly divested
Inequality is a feature of all societies above the hunter-gatherer level.
The dawn of inequality? You can see inequality on the cosmic microwave background. Inequality is where energy comes from.
Lmao throwing shade on China right from the title.
Pretty brave, the little pinks will turn up soon crying foul.
Nope. It's just the viewers having a variety of political and persucatory delusions.
@@JeffBilkins who?
No, it's literally just describing what's happening.
Why this narrator sound like a baby
Waiting to see how this series is gonna turn into anti-PRC propaganda
It is only propaganda if it hurts your feelings.
@@JeffBilkinsno matter what side one is on, thats not how that works
You can't be a regular viewer of this channel and still have that misguided of an expectation.
How much of a deranged tankie are you that you’re worried about how a series about China 5,000 years ago will touch on the modern Chinese government of the last 70 years
Uhm actually the first chinese were African American
😂
China invented Capitalism?
You're not really so ignorant to think social stratification is unique to capitalism, are you?
Commie not bring up commie gobbledygook challenge: impossible
@@khester7397you're really not so ignorant as to think social stratification was invented by China are you?
The title of this video is either bait or really dumb.
They invented gunpowder and rudimentary guns copied and finnesed by the west, they had a great trade route that in some ways they still dominate today.
Touché but no that was a Western systemic social construct due to industrialization and the relations that were formulated from that. Capitalism is a particular mode of organizing production and distribution relations
Kind of a weird title. I'm sure you know this, I just hope the title wasn't made to bait engagement. That's not what I look for in my history.
Anyway. I won't watch it because of this.
Exactly. It's such a disgusting title to be honest.
100% clickbait title, still 100% true. China, like its counterparts in Sumeria and Egypt, all created a system of institutionalized inequality among its citizens. It remained prevalent in China from the time the video encompases (hence the title) up until the fall of the Qing.
Blaming youtubers for clickbait is a bit unecessary in this day and age when youtube sends those who don't clickbait into the shadow realm.
To be fair I found nothing wrong with it as the title to me suggest the dawn of inequality in Chinese social history as that is the period being covered. Some folks are reading it like China invented global inequality but there’s nothing to suggest that. I will say that adding a “in China” afterwards would have cleared up the meaning. The title does little in suggesting anything negative other than what will be discussed is the rise of social inequality in China. Just about every civilization has a dawn of inequality period where social strata became rigid and hierarchic
Don't be hurt, there is a google doc full of sources to rub on it.
@@aradhya6654 fully sourced historical reality of social stratification and inequality as it started to appear in lots of cultures around the world is "disgusting"?
summary:
ling ling ling
The use of BCE and CE is a sign of historical dishonesty.
No it's not
It's BC.
very poor narration! The voice modulates and annoys the listeners. Pass!
They are going back to the ancient time soon by their CCP leaders 🤔🤔🤔