Chapter 35 (1/2)

Those Strong Men (Part 1)

F**k, this girl deserved to be XX by others. Zhou Jian’s heart cursed. He didn’t bother to pay any more attention to Linda but went to consult the manager on the jewelry auction matter. The answer he received was that in half an hour later, the manager in charge of underground exchange would come over.

At this time, Linda began to pester Zhou Jian with a problem. She’d read various history books on China, but she still couldn’t figure out how China calculated that it had 5000 years of brilliant civilization history.

For this issue, Zhou Jian had a little headache. To the impatient Linda, he just bite the bullet and said: “The Xia dynasty was more than 4000 years ago. In addition to that, from Emperor Huang until Da Yu, there’s also several hundred years. Added together and rounded up should be almost 5000 years.”

“Rounding up? My G.o.d. History is very strict.”

“Come on. At that time, there wasn’t any text handed down. It’s all speculation. If you want to be strict about it, you also can’t. Even the ancient Egyptian civilization 3500BC was just a ceiling projection.” In any case, there’s nothing to do for the next half an hour. So, Zhou Jian continued to discuss this with Linda for a very long time in the rental car.”

“Alright. But you didn’t say clearly. From Emperor Huang up till Da Yu, how many hundred of years was it?”

“Er….Probably more than 400 years.”

“From what I know, the Xia Dynasty was more than 2000 years. Adding these 400 years together, at most is just 2500 years. Moreover, from Emperor Huang all the way up to Da Yu, there’s altogether only seven generations of emperors. How did they live that long for 400 years? As far as I know, the average reigning time of your country’s Qing dynasty emperor was only more than 20 years. Furthermore, this is because the Qing dynasty had Qianlong and Kangxi these two monarchs who reigned the longest. This is in the modern time. In fact, the ancient people usually died young in comparison.”

Zhou Jian was speechless, this girl knew too much. She did indeed study archeology.

Furthermore, as far as I know, China didn’t unearth any bronzeware earlier than the Shang Dynasty. From the texts and city ruins, there’s none earlier than 1600BC of civilization relics left behind. Then, how can Xia Dynasty existence be proved? In the writing records that certain Shang Dynasty scholars left behind, they didn’t expressly mention about knowing an earlier dynasty. For records and books about the Shang civilization, I’d looked into books like the “Book of History of Xia”, as well as the “Bamboo Annals” that’s already in during the Warring States time. Of course, what I read was the translated version.”

Zhou Jian retorted: “Who told you that the Xia Dynasty’s earliest historical record was from the Warring States. There was a record on an oracle bone that Tang, who’s also the Shang Dynasty founding monarch, appointed someone who was of slave background to gather intelligence to progressively attack an old dynasty city. The dynasty that he overthrew was probably not the Xia Dynasty.” (tl: Chinese history is not my forte. I might get some facts mixed up here.)

“Alright, even if it’s a sign of the Xia dynasty. But the universally recognized symbol of civilization was: writings, bronzeware, city. Are you going to oppose this?”