Archaeological Interpretation of the Continuity of Chinese Civilization over Five Thousand Years

Abstract

Chinese civilization has unique characteristics in the world civilization history. Its most prominent characteristic is the continuity of the “5,000-year” civilization. Over 5,000 years ago, different civilizations appeared in different regions of China and the civilizations mainly included their different early-stage theocracy and reign modes. Among these civilizations, the civilization that was handed on from generation to generation was the states with a reign mode that originated in the Longshan culture of Central China and its successors such as the Xia Dynasty, the Shang Dynasty, the Zhou Dynasty, the Qin Dynasty, the Han Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty. This can be illustrated by the 5,000-year continuous inheritance of the country, people, and territory of China, proved by the 5,000-year inheritance and development of capitals, royal tombs, ritual and ceremonial buildings and vessels, and characters as the national culture (or major tradition) and resurrected by the capital’s centralization,“OneGate Three-Passage” pattern,“centralization of the main hall of the court” and the“Left Ancestral Temple and Right Altar” pattern, and the central axis of the capital, the four doors on four sides of the capital and court, etc. as the materialized forms of the core ideas of center and moderation. These materialized forms of the unbroken civilization became more and more in the past 5,000 years, which indicates that the ideas of center and moderation became stronger and stronger and were constantly deepened. The ideological roots of the 5,000-year unbroken Chinese civilization are the ideas of center and moderation, which are the ideological basis for the state identity and the core value of the Chinese national history.

Keywords

5,000-year civilization, unbroken, archaeology, center, moderation, state identity

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2022 Higher Education Press