The authenticity of European history

?The authenticity of European history

China has specialized historians, but Europe does not. Most historical records are written by poets and religious figures.

Some people think that Western history was produced by YY before rigorous archaeological research. So is Western history credible?

How reliable are China’s official records?

When I read European historical works, I am often confused and touched because, based on the scale and format standards of China’s more than 2,000 years of historical knowledge, Western historical knowledge has The following are the obvious characteristics:

1. I believe that most Western historical works are fake

Chinese history has always been divided into trustworthy history and unofficial history. The so-called "History" refers to historical works that are often written by well-trained historians or folk historians in accordance with the strict popular order of time and space, and "frank" records of people, events, and words in the historical process. China's "faith history" often has three major characteristics: first, detailed information, second, clear time, and third, emphasis on speaking the truth. This kind of "faithful history" is directly related to the long-standing system of full-time historians and heavenly officials in Chinese history, and is also related to the calendar bred by China's intensive agricultural society. Only those nations that have established a clear concept of time and space rhythms, Only then can we truly generate corresponding historical knowledge and concepts. Of course, there are also some mysterious concepts created by the times in Chinese history books. However, such mysterious and official records are in line with the level of understanding of that historical era, and have nothing to do with the "faithful history" nature of Chinese historical works. This is should be distinguished.

In contrast, Western history before the 17th century was like a vast mist, or a mess. Not only was it difficult for the Chinese to understand the Western history clearly before the 17th century, I am afraid that even the Westerners themselves You can never tell your history clearly before the 17th century! I often wonder how the chapters on Western history in the "World History" compiled by China in recent decades are so logically organized, and how come these "Western histories" are the same as those in Chinese historical books. The context of space, characters and events is so clear and "real". Is this because Western history is as clear and credible as Chinese history, or is it because current Chinese historians have fallen into some trap? Are they using Chinese historical stereotypes and thinking frameworks to make up Western history?

The fact is that all historical works in the West often have two situations when describing their own history. Either they are like the British historian Edward in the late 18th century? Like Gibbon (1737? 1793), he could almost fabricate several thick "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" out of thin air without citing any archaeological data and historical documents; or, like the 18th-century French The historian and thinker Voltaire (1694-1776), in his "On Customs", only gave a very vague and brief introduction to the history of Europe before the Middle Ages. So, who is more rigorous in their respective historical works, Voltaire or Gibbon? It should be said that Voltaire was more rigorous! Because, in the 18th century, the libraries of various Western nation-states either only had historical fragments in Chinese and Latin (this situation, the American historian Thompson (1869? 1941) from a rigorous perspective, in his own His book "History of Historical Works" has examined and introduced various historical works in Western history. According to his research, most of the historical works in Western history are fragments or fragments of Western history. (fabricated versions of the Society), either there were only "gods" like the Bible and Homer's epics, or there were only various obviously fabricated historical documents from the Communist Party. Therefore, Western history was basically limited at that time. There is no real credibility in the preaching of *** and folk legends.

Western society began to conduct "faith history" research only in the 19th century, which is directly related to the technological advancement of Western archaeological methods. This is just as Thompson said: "In the more than two thousand years before the 19th century , nothing new was known about pre-Hellenic world history until the early 19th century. The Russell Tower stone carvings provide a key to identifying ancient Egypt and hieroglyphics.

This famous stone carving was discovered by French scholars who followed Napoleon to Egypt in 1798. ? (Thompson: "History of Historical Writings" Volume 1 P 3 Commercial Press). It can be seen that the real historical research on European history before the Middle Ages in Western countries began after the archaeological work of the Napoleonic era. Therefore, like Gibbon in England in the 18th century, there was no empirical historical data. Then he fabricated several thick "masterpieces" on Roman history, which is really unbelievable! This point seems to have not been fully noticed by Chinese historical circles at present! The author found that even modern Western rigorous historians and their works, such as Stavrianos' "Global History" in the United States, Williston? Erke's "History of the Communist Party" and Russell's "History of Western Philosophy". When describing the history and intellectual history of the West before the 17th century, most of them used fictitious methods. It is rare for them to cite in their own writings those ancient Western "historical masterpieces" before the 19th century, which of course also include those "masterpieces" of so-called Greek thinkers, because they all know that these works are almost "storytellers" (Thompson) language, he repeatedly described various Western historical works before the 19th century as "storytellers"), or that they already had conclusive evidence at the time that they clearly knew these historical classics and intellectual history works (Russell in his "Western Philosophy" The unreliability of the philosophical works of ancient Greece and Rome has been mentioned many times in "History"), which were all fabricated by the "universities" under the rule of the Christian Church and the Communist Society in the Middle Ages. However, what is very bad is that the author has noticed that when compiling the history of the West and the history of Western thought in the Chinese historical and philosophical circles, most of them regard Western history books or intellectual history works before the 19th century as "faithful history", especially The Chinese philosophical community also generally attaches great importance to some "masterpieces" of thought from the ancient Greek era (such as a series of "masterpieces" by Aristotle and Plato). This has resulted in the "Western history" compiled by the Chinese. And "history of Western thought" is often more "credible" than history books and monographs on the history of thought compiled by some rigorous Western historians and intellectual history experts. This is simply a bit baffling!

Why do such problems arise in the circles of Chinese history and intellectual history? I think this is mainly due to three reasons: First, when some Chinese historians study Western history, they often read very narrow historical books. Most of them are accustomed to Chinese academic habits and combine Western religious history, intellectual history and The history of civilization should be examined separately. In this way, it is easy for them to not understand Western historical works clearly because of the "pseudo" problem of the Communist Church's involvement in fabrication; secondly, the Chinese people have become accustomed to their own "faith history" situation, so , many Chinese people, including of course some Chinese historians and philosophers, often look at Western history and intellectual history with a gentleman's heart. They preconceptions that those Western works are very rigorous. Among them, Many people may have never thought that the conditions for the production of Western historical works and Western intellectual history works and Chinese historical works and ideological and cultural works are completely different. The third reason is that the Chinese are too accustomed to the concept of calendar time and space. When Chinese people talk about their own history, they often have a sense of time order. Things like "Zhang Fei killed Yue Fei" are a joke in Chinese social life; however, Chinese people rarely think of the fact that in Western history The political organizations of China have not set up full-time heavenly officials and historians. Therefore, whether they are Western historians, Western political bureaucrats, or even scholars in the Communist Party, they often do not have such a clear awareness of the past as the Chinese. In the West, In historical books, the incident of "Zhang Fei killing Yue Fei" and the mixing of humans and gods have become common to the point where people are accustomed to it. This is just as Thompson said. In the 19th century, Western society was still accustomed to citing fabrications from the Bible. This is why Western historical works often have a "storytelling" flavor.

Of course, it is undeniable that with the development of modern Western science and technology, Western historical circles have begun to use the principle of carbon decay to determine the age of some cultural relics in Western history. However, it needs to be pointed out here that regardless of What kind of scientific and technological methods are used to theoretically speculate on the historical status of cultural relics are subject to conditional limitations, and cannot be casually and boldly guessed. That is to say, if these cultural relics do not have corresponding historical documents to confirm, such It is very unreliable to rely purely on scientific and technological means to determine the historical dating of cultural relics and to infer historical circumstances. In other words, it cannot be regarded as reliable history. As for the literature and materials in Western history, as mentioned above, the nature of "storytelling" is much more than "historiography". So, some of the "chronicles" in Western historical works now, such as the "Chronicle of Tacitus", especially the German Werner? It is best not for us Chinese to believe all the records in Schnein's "Chronicles of Human Civilization" that accurately date many historical events to the year and month, because these calendar years and chronicles are not completely reliable, and the author is not entirely reliable. There is often no corresponding empirical data to speak of, and you can never expect such "historians" to provide you with very real historical evidence.

2. The problem of inaccurate dating in Western history.

Before Western scientific and technological means were introduced into the Chinese historical academic circles, China’s historical records mainly relied on documentary materials, epigraphy, and cultural relics and bamboo slips discovered underground. However, even so, the reason why history is called history must be based on the chronology of time as its basic condition for existence. Therefore, before China had modern scientific and technological means, China’s trustworthy history was based on the Taichu Calendar from the era of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. The calendar is the basic condition for the existence of "faithful history".

Because before the era of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, China did not have a unified calendar, so rigorous historical scholars in ancient China often ignored most of the things before the Qin and Han Dynasties. This has formed a phenomenon in the Chinese history circle. A basic academic principle. Because China is a unified agricultural country with a tradition of intensive farming, the calendar after the "Taichu Calendar" is very strict because it involves issues of national unity and national stability. Therefore, although the Chinese dynasties after Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty changed from time to time, culture (mainly referring to texts and classic works in the field of national ideology) was inherited uniformly, especially the calendar. Each dynasty must continue the time of the previous dynasty. It is formulated according to the order, so the chronology of Chinese history is often very reliable.

However, in comparison, the chronological situation in Western history is very confusing. The West is not the birthplace of astronomy. The calendar used in Western history came from ancient Babylon. Most of the astronomers in the ancient Greek era were wizards and philosophers. Most of them had nothing to do with politics. Therefore, the grand and chaotic times of ancient Greece , the concept and order of time in astronomy have not been truly closely connected with history, which belongs to the political and social category. Before the 16th century, various dynasties in the West changed rapidly. When they established a new dynasty, they often destroyed the culture of the previous dynasty, and even burned the previous dynasty's libraries and killed heretics. The reason why such a situation occurred in Western history is that during the Greek and Roman dynasties, the West had not established a cultural system that had the same writing style and the same practice as China's Qin Shihuang did. Centuries ago, the continuous transformation of culture and the historical disorder of eradicating heresy made it difficult in Western history to establish a "history of faith" with unified language and unified time order as the basic conditions for existence.

The West had been using the Julian calendar before the 16th century. Because of the annihilation of the culture of the previous dynasty during the dynasty change mentioned above, the Julian calendar was used in various dynasties in Western history. Very confusing. The establishment of a more rigorous calendar in Western history was mainly due to the thousands of years of efforts of the Christian Church. To be precise, it was after the 12th century that the Western Catholic Church began to introduce and absorb Greek culture and Christian culture. After the results, they began to notice that a unified calendar was very useful for the measurement of agricultural seasons and for papal management. In this way, in the late 16th century, Pope Gregory officially ordered and organized scholars in the church to conduct It established a more accurate and unified calendar calculation and measurement, and in 1582, it was the first time in Western history that a unified calendar time was officially stipulated in all dioceses of Japan.

It can be seen that the Western concept of calendar order came into being very late, which we Chinese should pay great attention to.

As we all know, the key to why history is called history lies in "calendar", which lies in the accuracy of time order. Therefore, the true historiography in the West did not have the conditions before the 16th century. In the 16th century, it was established Only with the accurate calendar can we have certain conditions for trusting history. Since the dynastic changes in Western history mentioned earlier have the practice of destroying the culture of the previous dynasty, modern Western history is basically based on archaeological and anthropological investigations that rely on modern scientific and technological means. Therefore, the real Western history The "trust history" can only be calculated from the 19th century onwards. Moreover, since the cultural relics I mentioned above must be corroborated by historical documents as the basic premise, it is better for us Chinese not to believe them all when reading Western historical works and Western ideological history works! In other words, we must discount it, otherwise, we will make the mistake of "imagining" the history and intellectual history of the West.

3. Problems with the text and carrier of Western intellectual history works and political history.

Since modern times, when Chinese people discuss the cultural relationship between Chinese and Western civilizations, they often refer to Greek philosophy. However, due to the reasons mentioned above, the so-called Greek era we see now The philosophical works are not true! These ideological and cultural masterpieces are almost the masterpieces of the Christian Church in the Western Middle Ages!

Historical records must take text symbols and the carrier of text symbols as their two basic prerequisites for existence. Since the emergence of systematic oracle bone inscriptions around 1500 BC, Chinese characters have varied in various dynasties and in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. However, the characters of the Qin Dynasty have been relatively stable and unified for 500 years. This is why later The reason why the Chinese characters in seal script and official script will be based on the Qin script is also the reason why Qin Shihuang was able to realize the common script and the same text in a short period of time. According to the Qingchuan wooden casket characters in Sichuan (this wooden casket is now preserved in the Sichuan Museum), it can be proved that in the time interval of 500 BC, the prototype of square Chinese characters had already appeared in Shu, and there were It is a record carrier that can withstand the test of time. By the Qin Dynasty and the early Han Dynasty, the writing had been completely standardized in official script, which was basically the same as today's Chinese, and the record carriers were also diversified, including silk scripts. However, despite this, the development of Chinese historiography came after the Eastern Han Dynasty, that is, after Cai Lun created paper in 105 AD and invented movable type printing in China around 1000 AD. At the same time, it also passed the "Xiping Stone Classic" with the Eastern Han Dynasty. It has something to do with the unification of the Five Classics texts. Today's paper books in China can be traced back to the Song Dynasty, which means it has a history of thousands of years. Because paper can record a large amount of text, detailed history books should have been produced after the use of paper and the adoption of movable type printing. This is a matter of common sense. That is to say, the Chinese classical masterpieces we are looking at today were produced before paper was produced in the Eastern Han Dynasty, including "Historical Records" with more than 500,000 words, "Guanzi", "Xunzi" and "Mencius" with more than 150,000 words. , "Spring and Autumn", and "Three Rites" are probably not works before the Qin Dynasty or the Western Han Dynasty. Therefore, this is the reason why there has always been a dispute between modern and ancient texts in the field of Chinese history. That is to say, in fact, many scholars in Chinese history have realized that in the early and late Western Han Dynasty, as well as in the Tang Dynasty, there were large-scale falsification activities organized by the government and using a lot of manpower and material resources. In fact, this is also the case. Among the cultural relics discovered before the Qin Dynasty, except for the classic "Laozi", there are no "masterpieces" said to be from the Warring States Period. Therefore, even many of China's "masterpieces" are very rare. It may have only been formed during the Han Dynasty. Of course, it is undeniable that China is the only country in the world today that has the most, most practical and ancient traditions. This is unmatched by any other civilization.

Let’s take a look at the very obvious false problems in Western historical classics. Even according to the records of German historian Schnein, Chinese papermaking was only spread to Spain in 1150 AD, to Italy in 1276 AD, to France in 1350 AD, to Nuremberg in 1390 AD, to England in 1494 AD, and in 1576 AD It spread to Moscow and to North America in 1690. Block printing appeared in the West after 1450.

The first publication of paper books in the West was after 1472. Full-time paper printing houses did not appear in the West until 1499, and movable type printing in the West came even later (for the above records, see "Chronicles of Human Civilization? Science and Technology Volume" Chinese Foreign Translation publishing company). Previously, the writing carriers used in the West were parchment, papyrus (a kind of broad-leafed plant), clay tablets and copper inscriptions. Such writing carriers and methods, firstly, will not be preserved for a long time, and secondly, the recorded content It can't be much.

In addition, most Western European scholars tend to avoid talking about the historical issues of their own nation’s languages ??and characters, because once this issue is traced back, it will often embarrass some Western scholars, as the American Bloomfield said :? The Germanic peoples accepted the Hellenistic Latin alphabet. We don’t know when and where it was, and the specific image of the letters was somewhat different from the ordinary Greek or Latin characters. ? ("Language Theory" P365 Commercial Press).

Although the Roman Empire was established in the first century BC, before 500 AD, the local dialects in Europe were divided into separate groups, and the Latin script was far from being popularized. This was because the European ethnic composition was too complex and The historical reason for the isolation of national groups from each other is also directly related to the imperfection of the Greek and Latin scripts at that time. From the 5th century to the 15th century, Latin writing was slowly perfected under the study of the Christian Church. During the Renaissance, the Christian Church studied Greek and Latin writing while organizing ancient Greek and ancient texts through Christian books. Some of the fragmentary works of Rome also study the writing of each nation-state based on the nation-states that emerged during that period. This means that the writing of various Western European countries is what Bloomfield calls the writings of the Germanic nations. The writing cannot be older than the 14th century. Well, since Latin, the systematic writing system in Western Europe, was only formed between the 5th and 15th centuries, and the writing systems of various Western European nation-states would not be older than the 14th century. In addition, the use of paper in Western Europe was also very late, so people naturally have to doubt , how were those masterpieces of history, thought and culture from the Roman era and the ancient Greek era concocted? ! Is there any strange thing in this world where cultural buildings can be built even with incomplete cultural materials? !

Looking at the situation of "Western masterpieces" that were translated from the West by some modern Chinese scholars and have a great influence on today's Chinese ideological and cultural fields, we can find that now, Chinese people can read There are many masterpieces on Western history and ideological culture before the 16th century. In terms of intellectual history, they include Aristotle's "Metaphysics", "Ethics", "Poetics", and "Physics" in the ancient Greek era. "Politics", "Animalia" and Plato's "Utopia", etc., Augustine's "City of God" and "Confessions" of ancient Rome before the 4th century AD, etc. In terms of history, it includes the "History of Herodotus" of ancient Greece and the "History of Tacitus" and "Gaul Wars" of the ancient Roman era, as well as Appian's "History of Rome" and Gray of the Frankish Empire in the 6th century. Gorey's "History of the Franks" and so on, these "masterpieces" of Western history and philosophical thought before the 16th century are all hundreds of thousands of words thick, especially the "masterpiece" of Aristotle. There are actually more than a million words. So, we can't help but ask, what kind of inheritance carrier did they rely on to inherit these classics? ! If these works are true, then why do some Western historians repeatedly mention that many historical works are fragments. Moreover, there is a practice in Western history of rejecting heretical thoughts and cultures. Theocratic regimes in Western history not only burned heretics to death, but also destroyed their writings and texts. This transition from destroying heretical bodies to heretical ideas Cultural affairs have been throughout the history of the West, and their brutality is far incomparable to China's Qin Shihuang, who was always known for "burning books and humiliating Confucians." In this case, how did they produce these masterpieces? ! In particular, many of Aristotle's "great works" were still works that were different from the Bible before the Middle Ages. It was impossible to preserve them for a long time in libraries in the era of theocracy. This was too Make it clear what is going on.

This means that it is the Western Christian Church that created the entire Western civilization and culture we see now!

Can we expect rigorous Western historians to self-develop the mysteries of these Western historical classics? ! I think this is unlikely! A nation and civilization, just like a person, also have their own privacy of inferiority. It is too difficult for us to expect Westerners who have established an image of "a long civilization tradition" in the world to expose the falsehoods in their own civilization and culture. ! It should be admitted that it is not easy for Western wise men like Toynbee and Russell to admit that the direct source of Western civilization comes from European barbarians. Why should we ask too much of others! To apply ourselves to others, we should save some face for the Western historical academic and ideological circles. However, as researchers of Chinese history, we should be aware of these problems in Western history, even if we do not have to pierce the privacy of Western historical circles. Otherwise, we will make mistakes when studying world history.

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After the author has demonstrated the forgery problem of Western history and intellectual history, once he thinks of Gu Jiegang in China, ancient history is created layer by layer, and the order of occurrence is The system of arrangement and arrangement is exactly the same as the famous assertion of "Ancient History Debate" ("Ancient History Debate? Preface"). I have the feeling of admiring him and despising him at the same time. The reason why I admire him is that Mr. Gu summarized it in very popular language. Ancient Chinese people have always believed that the further back history goes, the more people summarize and describe the previous history. However, what the author despises Mr. Gu is that his conclusion is not very suitable for Chinese historiography, but is very suitable for Western historiography. However, it is very regrettable that Mr. Gu’s conclusion is just to severely criticize Chinese historiography. He said that, but he never mentioned the problem of forgery in Western historiography! This is too lax! It also shows that Gu’s historical vision is too narrow.