To all Chinese members, what is your favorite Chinese Dynasty?

[no_name]

Xiongnu activity at one time covered a widespread area. Among the people they subjugate and bought back as serfs there are people with caucasian features (blond hair, blue eyes etc.).

At one stage when china was unstable there were a series of short lived regimes set up in northern china by non-chinese rulers.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

Scythians were the native folks from the Kurgan culture in the Volga basin. Proto-Scythians were Slavic-like East Europeans who moved toward the Eastern steppe and mixed with the local people. Some Scythians in the East has been absorbed into the Xiongnu/Turkic tribes.

Tocharians were closely related to Proto-Celts who was likely migrated from Anatolia, and they formed various kingdoms in Xinjiang, and they had a peaceful relationship with the Han Dynasty, and existed until the Tang Dynasty.

 

[CardSharp]

Xiongnu activity at one time covered a widespread area. Among the people they subjugate and bought back as serfs there are people with caucasian features (blond hair, blue eyes etc.).

At one stage when china was unstable there were a series of short lived regimes set up in northern china by non-chinese rulers.

Yeah that is always a part of Chinese history I've wanted to know more about, but it is hard to do so without being able to read Chinese since western scholarship is just so sparse on the subject.

 

[Water Car Engineer]

At one stage when china was unstable there were a series of short lived regimes set up in northern china by non-chinese rulers.

Examples??

 

[CardSharp]

Examples??

Liao Dynasty

Who was then overthrown by the Jurchens a former vessel of their's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Dynasty_(1115-1234)

But all eventually assimilated into the Chinese population.

 

[no_name]

Yeah that is always a part of Chinese history I've wanted to know more about, but it is hard to do so without being able to read Chinese since western scholarship is just so sparse on the subject.

There are interesting little details of civilizations from around the world.
For example, did you know that Egypt 7th cent. BC was conquered by a Nubian ruler who made himself the first black Pharaoh and extablished the 25th Egyptian dynasty?

 

[CardSharp]

There are interesting little details of civilizations from around the world.
For example, did you know that Egypt 7th cent. BC was conquered by a Nubian ruler who made himself the first black Pharaoh and extablished the 25th Egyptian dynasty?

That I did know. Another interest Pharaoh is Akhenaten who abolished all of the old Gods, declared monotheistic worship of the god Aten and started to built a city in the middle of the desert in honour of him.

Many people trace the roots of the monotheist Judeo/Christian God to him.

 

[no_name]

I wonder which modern ethnicity were the ancient egyptian most closely related to, or maybe they were a group of people all by their own.

 

[Andross]

I wonder which modern ethnicity were the ancient egyptian most closely related to, or maybe they were a group of people all by their own.

Wasen't Cleopatra Nubian or something?

 

[no_name]

Wasen't Cleopatra Nubian or something?

Apparently she may be Greek

"She was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Greek[2][3][4][5][6][7] royal family which ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great's death during the Hellenistic period. The Ptolemies, throughout their dynasty, spoke Greek[8] and refused to learn Egyptian, which is the reason that Greek as well as Egyptian languages were used on official court documents like the Rosetta Stone.[9] By contrast, Cleopatra did learn Egyptian and represented herself as the reincarnation of an Egyptian goddess, Isis."

 

[CardSharp]

Apparently she may be Greek

"She was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Greek[2][3][4][5][6][7] royal family which ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great's death during the Hellenistic period. The Ptolemies, throughout their dynasty, spoke Greek[8] and refused to learn Egyptian, which is the reason that Greek as well as Egyptian languages were used on official court documents like the Rosetta Stone.[9] By contrast, Cleopatra did learn Egyptian and represented herself as the reincarnation of an Egyptian goddess, Isis."

Yeah Ptolemy was an able general of Alexanders and after he died with a weak heir, his generals divied up his empire and Ptolemy got the sweetest part, Egypt. But by the time Cleopatra rolled around, the Ptolemy dynasty was long long in decline and was pretty a vassal of Rome.

I wonder which modern ethnicity were the ancient egyptian most closely related to, or maybe they were a group of people all by their own.

I say more modern Arabs than anything else.

 

[Joe Shearer]

i am not presenting you alternate history, what i provided is the mainstream knowledge which indicates tocharians were not wiped out by xiongnu but turkic immigration in 9AD. i guessed you mixed up Yuezhi tribe with all tocharians. here is some rudimentary knowledge on tocharian history.
Tocharians - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LOL.

1. The term 'alternate' in my post did not refer to 'alternate history', but to a different account than I had submitted, an 'alternate'.
2. What you call 'mainstream' knowledge was not available to me, as I have studied these matters only as they have a bearing on Indian history. In Indian history, the only relevant part of all this was the migration of the Yueh-zhi, the 'Moon Sect', as the Kushan, 'Moon Sect' in Tocharian, to Ferghana, then into Afghanistan, then into North-west India, where they established a major kingdom of their own, and continued a characteristic north-western kind of empire which had started in that time with the Bactrian Greeks.
3. Thank you for the Wikipedia reference. Generally I try to avoid Wikipedia references as far as making authoritative references is concerned, but it is a very handy tool to get the highlights of a subject, and sometimes, a handy tool with which to prepare a bibliography on an unknown subject.

the knowledge i know about tocharians are primarily from chinese history and wikipedia, and i find English documents on tocharians (e.g. wikipedia) are basically literature review of chinese literature. i understand that because ancient china have intensive records of history event. thanks to them, we are able to know the detailed annual records of every county of china two thousand years ago. today 99.9% of the chinese people have no idea who tocharian is but if you give them the words "鄯善" "楼兰" "龟兹", they will say "i know them. they are ancient states in Xinjiang".

tang dyansty was time when silkway culminated with unprecedented prosperity in commerce and Buddhism achieved in central asia. tang empire came to xinjiang and built four prefectures in central asia (Kucha - 龟兹 , Kashgar - 疏勒 ,Kingdom_of_Khotan_于阗,Karasahr_焉耆), they are major tocharian states which chinese people are familiarized with since Han dynasty. even today many placenames in xinjiang we are using are neither from Chinese nor uyghur languages, they are old chinese transliteration of tocharian kingdom in tang dyansty (e.g. 焉耆, 轮台,库车,莎车,疏勒 ).

None of the existing turkic cultures are "pure blood" and turkeys are highly mixed up with Arabs and Greeks. as far as uyghur concerned, over 90% of looks basically like mongols but still some of them have tocharian and east iranic influnece in their appreance. when i was in Turpan, i saw blonde uyghur i thought they were russian chinese at that time.

Overall, I find your comments very helpful and illustrative, and am happy to get this additional information, to supplement what I already knew.

Fascinating stuff; thanks for the inputs.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Yeah that is always a part of Chinese history I've wanted to know more about, but it is hard to do so without being able to read Chinese since western scholarship is just so sparse on the subject.

This is a problem I face with both the general body of Chinese historical writing on subjects concerning east Asia, an enormous body of knowledge, and also of research in archaeology and anthropology conducted during the Soviet era.

Frustrating.

 

[CardSharp]

This is a problem I face with both the general body of Chinese historical writing on subjects concerning east Asia, an enormous body of knowledge, and also of research in archaeology and anthropology conducted during the Soviet era.

Frustrating.

Yep but the sad thing is I once was perfectly literate and lost the language through atrophy (damn English). The hope is I can pick it up quickly since I still speak the language.

 

[no_name]

China through out the ages has maintained very thorough dynastic historical record.

The formal historical record 正史, comprised of collected compositions by court historians of various dynasties. There are 25 different dynasties/eras covered. The shortest of these was 陳書, with about two houndred thousand characters. The longest was Qing dynasty record, with five million characters.

There are also unofficial records that were compiled by private authors, and these were referred to as 野史

The only part where these historical records were somewhat lacking is the period between Jin dynasty and northern/southern dynasties, when non-chinese were in power in some of the northern china states.