Are the ancestors of Chinese people from ancient Egypt?

According to Foreign Policy, on a cool Sunday evening in March, Sun Weidong, a geochemist, gave a public presentation of out-of-field, students and professors at the University of Science. and Technology in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, Eastern China.

But Professor Sun not only talks about geochemistry. He also cited a number of classical Chinese works and cited the description of historian Sima Qian on the land of the Xia dynasty - which is considered the founding dynasty of China, dating from 2070 to 1600 BC.

"The stream to the north is divided into nine rivers," Tu Ma Thien wrote in his first-century history book entitled Thai historical Cong ty. "When converging, it forms the opposite river and flows into the sea."

In other words, the "river" mentioned here is not the famous Chinese Yellow River, because the Yellow River flows from west to east. " Only a large river on the earth flows north. Which river is it?" the professor asked . "Nile River" , someone answered.

At that time, Sun showed a map of the famous Egyptian river and its delta - with nine rivers branching into the Mediterranean Sea.

In the past year, Sun, a reputable scientist, has sparked a heated debate online when claiming that the founders of Chinese civilization are not Chinese, but people. immigration from Egypt.

He thought of this connection in the 1990s while carrying out the radiological determination of Chinese bronze and surprisingly, the chemical components of these artifacts have many similarities. with Egyptian antique bronze rather than Chinese native ore.

Sun's idea as well as the controversy surrounding it is the result of a long-standing Chinese archaeological problem, which has existed for more than a century to find the answer to a science-based question. The song is heavily political: Where do Chinese people come from?

The founder of Chinese civilization is not Chinese, but immigrants from Egypt?

Sun argues that China's bronze age technology, which scholars have thought was introduced to the northwest through the Silk Road, was actually introduced by sea.

According to him, the holders of these technologies were Hyksos, the West Asians who ruled the northern part of Egypt as foreigners from the 17th to 16th centuries BC, until they were expelled here. He said that the Hyksos also possessed remarkable technologies such as copper metallurgy, horse-drawn carriage, writing, and domesticated plants and animals - at a time earlier than the date of the artifacts of archaeologists. excavated in the ancient city of An Khuy, the capital of the An dynasty, the second dynasty of China, from 1300 to 1046 BC.

Since the Hyksos were known to be the ones who developed warships and merchant ships, the means that allowed them to travel through the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, Sun suggested that a small group of Hyksos who had fled from the empire was collapsing. their by sea technology. These technologies eventually brought them and their Bronze Age culture to the coast of China.

Sun's essay caused much controversy when posted on the Kooniao travel website in the form of a 93,000-character essay in September 2015.

According to Caixin magazine's comment: "The bold title and simple language have attracted the attention of many readers." The title is "Discovering the Breakthrough Archeology: The Ancestors of Chinese People from Egypt" , and the essay has been rewritten and discussed online, specifically on portals such as Sohu or actors. Popular flocks like Zhihu or Tiexue.

Kooniao also set up a website that attracts many readers with content specifically for this topic on Weibo, along with the "Chinese from Egypt" hashtag . Since then, the reaction of a part of the public has been shown. Some people only express their angry feelings, and most are not focused on: "That expert's irrational hypothesis harasses all our ancestral peoples," one writer wrote . "This shows inferiority psychology that is deeply rooted in human psychology!" Another question asked, "Why did the descendants of the Emperor run to Egypt? This topic is really too bullshit. The important thing is to live in the present!"

Others are more thoughtful. If they weren't convinced, at least they were willing to listen to Sun's idea.

In fact, the number of comments from those who are curious seems to be 1.5 times larger than the number of comments merely stated above. One user wrote: "I support. We have to look at this problem scientifically. Whether this hypothesis is right or wrong is worth investigating." Another person said: "We can't just assume it's wrong and don't acknowledge the evidence. The exchanges between cultures can be rooted very deep, very old."

In a way, it can be said that Sun's current hypothesis is an unforeseen outcome of the Chronicle Project. When the project was launched in 1996, Sun was a master's graduate student in a radioactivity laboratory at the University of Science and Technology. Among more than 200 bronze artifacts belonging to Sun's analytical responsibility, there are a number of artifacts excavated from the city of An Khuy.

He found that the radioactivity of the Indo-Chinese objects was almost exactly the same as that of ancient Egypt, suggesting that copper ore making them all came from the same source: mines in Africa.

Perhaps because he anticipated strong arguments surrounding this issue, Sun's instructor did not allow him to report on his findings at the time.

Sun was asked to hand over his data and move on to a new project. Twenty years after starting the project and now a professor, Sun is ready to talk about everything he knows about Chinese culture and China.

Although the public largely embraces Sun's hypothesis with an open mind, this hypothesis is still beyond the formal academic issues. Since the 1990s, most Chinese archaeologists have accepted that most of the country's bronze-era technology originated in lands outside China.

However, it is still not considered to come directly from the Middle East thanks to large-scale migration. The most common consensus is that these technologies are transferred to China from Central Asia through a slow cultural exchange process (trade, tribute and dowry) across China's northern border, with intermediaries are Eurasian steers producers who have contact with indigenous groups in both regions.