Critical Perspectives on Research on the Origins of Chinese Civilization: Foundations, Key Elements, Characteristics, and Insights

Abstract

A lofty ideal of the Chinese archaeological field is to develop a Marxist Chinese archaeological system that incorporates Marxism into the Chinese archaeological praxis. An important aim for contemporary Chinese archaeological research and knowledge production on the origins of Chinese civilization is to explore and provide insights on the historical logic and cultural genealogy of modernization using a Chinese-style, in-depth view. This paper discusses the foundation and key-points of research on the origins of Chinese civilization through Su’s five archaeological cultural pedigrees, which are derived from the main Chinese Neolithic archaeological cultural areas: Huawei 华渭, Taiyi 泰沂, the region North and South of the Yanshan Mountains 燕山南北, the Jianghan Plain 江汉平原, and the lower reaches of the Yangtze River长江下游地区. This approach can show us how the civilization with Chinese characteristics originated. We compare the economic and social development within the Chinese Neolithic archaeological cultures, which are studied from a Marxist perspective, with the origins of civilizations in Mesopotamia and the Nile River Valley. This comparison supports the idea that the progress that occurs in the origins of Chinese civilization corresponds with a common pattern of human social development but that Chinese civilization also manifested its traditional cultural characteristics which formed along a unique Chinese pathway.