Hi Jeff:

Sorry for the delay in replying to your post, but up until today I had lost anyway to communicate with this newsgroup because of Google's takeover of Deja.com. Due to the takeover I had no way to read the latest post to the news group.

It is clear from this posting that much of your interpretation of Chinese prehistory, writing and civilization is influenced more by cultural nationalism than, objectivity and the "factual truth" according to Chinese textual material and archaeology.

You present three major arguments 1) the Chinese language has not changed and that there is no Chinese texual material supporting an African presence in ancient China, 2) the Xia and Shang writing was like the Jia Gu Wen inscriptions, and 3) the archaeologists of China have not found any Negroid skeletal remains in ancient China. All of these arguments are without foundation and have no support at all from the evidence.

First of all the Xia and Shang did not write in fanciful signs like the Jia Gu Wen script. The guwenzi or 'ancient script' of the Shang and Xia was called jiaguwen 'the oracular and divinatory' writing. It was incised on hard material like bone and shells. The writing of these people was a phonetic script. I present a copy of the Oracle bone writing at the following web site:

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/contraolmec.html

This proves that your discussion of fanciful signs existing in the Shang and Xia writing is false. You said that you would like to see an article on the development of writing in Middle Africa, I present such a discussion at the following web site:

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/anwrite.htm

Enjoy the site.

Secondly, archaeological research makes it clear that Negroids were very common to ancient China. F. Weidenreich ( in Bull. Nat. Hist. Soc. Peiping 13, (1938-30) noted that the one of the earliest skulls from north China found in the Upper Cave of Chou-k'ou-tien, was of a Oceanic Negroid/Melanesoid " (p.163).

These blacks were the dominant group in South China. Kwang-chih Chang, writing in the 4^th edition of Archaeology of ancient China (1986) wrote that:" by the beginning of the Recent (Holocene) period the population in North China and that in the southwest and in Indochina had become sufficiently differentiated to be designated as Mongoloid and OCEANIC NEGROID races respectively…."(p.64). By the Upper Pleistocene the Negroid type was typified by the Liu-chiang skulls from Yunnan (Chang, 1986, p.69).

Many researchers believe that the Yi of Southern China were the ancestors of the

Polynesian and Melanesian people.

Negroid skeletons dating to the early periods of Southern Chinese history have been found in Shangdong, Jiantung, Sichuan, Yunnan, Pearl River delta and Jiangxi especially at the initial sites of Chingliengang (Ch'ing-lien-kang) and Mazhiabang (Ma chia-pang) phases ( see: K.C. Chang, The archaeology of ancient China, (Yale University Press:New Haven,1977) p.76) . The Chingliengang culture is often referred to as the Ta-wen-k'ou (Dawenkou) culture of North China. The presence of Negroid skeletal remains at Dawenkou sites make it clear that Negroes were still in the North in addition to South China. The Dawenkou culture predates the Lung-shan culture which is associated with the Xia civilization.

The founder of the Xia civilization was Yu. The Great Yu was the regulator of the waters and the builder of canals. He is also alleged to be the inventor of wetfield adriculture. Wolfram Eberhard, in The Local culture of South and East China (Leiden,1968), maintained that Yu came from the south and established the Xia dynasty in Shansi.

Archaeological evidence supports this view. The foreunner of the Xia civilization was the Lung-shan (Longshan) culture. The Taosi ruins , a Longshan between the Fenhe and Chongshan ranges is considered a middle and late Xia period site. Another important Longshanoid site is Qingliangang. The Qingliangang culture is a decendant of the Hemudu culture and dates to the fifth millennium B.C.(K.C. Chang, "In search of China's beginnings new light on an old civilization", American Scientist, 69 (1981) pp.148-160:154).

The oldest neolithic culture in China is the Hemudu culture in northern Zhejiang province. This culture group had incised and cord-impressed pottery, rice and domesticated water buffalo, dog and pig (Chang, 1981: p.152). The Hemudu pottery is reminiscent of pottery found along the coastal areas of southeastern China and Taiwan (Chang, 1981: p.154). This indicates that southern Chinese, who were predominantly Black early settled those parts of China associated with the Xia and Shang civilizations.

In the Chinese literature the Blacks were called li-min, Kunlung, Ch'iang (Qiang), Yi and Yueh. The founders of the Xia Dynasty and the Shang Dynasties were blacks. These blacks were called Yueh and Qiang. The modern Chinese are descendants of the Zhou. The second Shang Dynasty ( situated at Anyang) was founded by the Yin. As a result this dynasty is called Shang-Yin. The Yin or Oceanic Mongoloid type is associated with the Austronesian speakers ( Kwang-chih Chang, "Prehistoric and early historic culture horizons and traditions in South China", Current Anthropology, 5 (1964) pp.359-375 :375). The Austronesian or Oceanic Mongoloid type were called Yin, Feng, Yen, Zhiu Yi and Lun Yi.

During the Anyang-Shang period, the Qiang lived in Ch'iang Fang, a country to the west of Yin-Shang . The Qiang people were often referred to as the Ta Qiang "many Qiang", they were used as agricultural workers, and used in Yin-Shang ancestral rites as sacrifice victims.

In Southeast Asia and southern China, ancient skeletal remains represented the earliest inhabitants as identical to the Oceanic type ( Kwang-chih Chang, The archareology of ancient China, (New Haven,1977) p.42; G.H.R. von Koenigswald, A giant fossil hominoid from the pleistocene of Southern China, Anthropology Pap. Am Museum of Natural History, no.43, 1952, pp.301-309). Although Negritos were also established in north and southern China by the beginning of the Recent (Holocene) period the populations in North China and that in southern China and IndoChina had become sufficiently differentiated to be designated as Mongoloid and Negroid-Oceanic respectively, both having evolved out of a common Upper Plestocene substratum as represented by the Tzu-yang and Liu-Chiang skulls.

In addition to Oceanic Blacks in Southeast Asia and southern China shortly before the Christian era Africoids of the Mediterranean type entered these areas by way of India. Much of the archaeology in southern China is related to the Southeast Asian patterns, with numerous finds of chipped stone of the type found in Szechewan,Kwangsi .Yunan and in the western part of Kwangtung as far as the Pearl River delta.( Chang, 1977, p.76. ) Neolithic culture of southern China as the people were parallel to southeastern development. It seems from the evidence that in China there were several major areas where the Neolithic way of life characterized by farming for food, use of pottery and the making of stone instruments.

In Southern China the most well known early cultures were the Ta-p'enK'eng culture of the southeastern coast, cultures dating to the 5th millenium. The Ta-p'en-K'eng sites have a chracteristic cord-marked pottery dating to before theird millennium. A radio-carbon date is available for this culture of 4450-4350 BC. The color of the pottery ranges from buff to dark brown, the principal shapes of the vessels are large globular jars and bowls. The people of this culture also made many stone sinkers and dugout canoes.There is believed to have been an early horticultural revolution in the tropical regions of southeast Asia, with the domestication of several cultigens. As in Africa this culture was Aqualithic with most of the people living on mounds and pilled houses. These horticulturalist ate aqualtic animals such as fish and shellfish, and grew root crops such as yam and taro .The Ta-p'en-K'eng site has provided much insight into their agricultural origins as indicated by the great variety of cord marks on the pottery demonstrates. The habi tat of the ancient people who made this ware at Ta-p'en-K' eng, was widespread in IndoChina and even in southern China and Japan. The Hoabinhian culture of Vietnam and that of Ta-p' en-K'eng, were characterized by cord-marked pottery which is identical in both places , and it is possible that the Yang -shao site at Huang Ho basin in North China may have also been founded by blacks in southern China who probably been the cultivation of rice . In the southeast southerners began at Hupeh and Kuangsi the cultivation of means of artificial irrigation and by terracing of the mountain slopes. These same Austronesians were already using bronze before the Chinese. The women's standing was high, she participated in the worship which consisted of a mountain and snake cults.There is evidence from the physical anthropologist that skeletons from Shantung and Kiangsu show resemblances to the Negroid type of southern Chinese rather than Mongoloid, especially at the intial Ch'ing-lien -Kang and Ma chia-pang phases. As a resultt of this evidence it seems that

agriculture was widely practiced in Southeast Asia and China long before the full impact of farming was felt in the North among the Chinese.

Neolithic technology in south China is typified by hunting with the bow and arrow. The stone inventories include shoulder axes, as those found at Ya-an in Sikang, and the island of Hainan. The ceremics are characterized by the long persistence of corded red ware. There was also painted pottery,black pottery, stone knives and sickles and pottery tripods , styles that later were duplicated in bronze. The people practiced single burials the appearence of decapitated heads at many sites in China suggest war and the expansion of the Chinese southward.

In ancient times due to the Chinese being a nomadic group, they probably cremated their dead and learned to bury their dead from the Blacks. The southern Chinese probably had their own writing system at an early date considering the - fact that they were well known traders and most trader-groups developed a script to keep records, yet we can not be sure of this fact. Moreover, the appearance of similar pottery signs on South Chinese pottery and North Chinese pottery indicate a common ideology for both groups.

Many of the elements of southern Chinese cultures and the impliments found in this area and Southeast Asia show an interrelationship. The people who live in Southeast Asia today speak the Austro-Asiatic languages, which are closely related to the Austronesian group. As indicated by the languages of the aborigines Ta-p'en-K'eng sites are found spoke Austronesian languages, the cultures of these groups were also Austronesian according to Dr. Shun-sheng Ling .

As in the African aqualithic, an extensive mound culture existed in China, an area strectching from i ts plateau in the west to the Western coast of the Pacific ocean, it includes the Huang-Huai(the Yellow River and the Huai River) plain of North China and the plain of the lower valley of the Yangtze River of central China, these mounds lie in the Ancient line of the Austronesian habitation. In accordance with oral tradi tion and Chinese proto-history mounds were in existence during the time of Huangti, and Fu-Hsi as reflected in the legendary narrative of the burial of Tai-Hao at Wan Chiul - chiu.

The mound culture began around 3,000 BC in China 7,000 years after a similar cul ture had developed in central and North Africa, which moved step by step to the lower valley of the Yangtze River, starting originally from the lower valley of the Yellow River. By about 1200 BC, the people practiced agriculture and ate aquatic animals.At the Kiangsu Province mound site called the Hu Shu culture,the mounds were man-made knolls called 'terraced sites '. The mounds are flat on the top, here the people placed their dwellings. These mounds served three purposes i) burial mounds, ii) religious places (i.e.,high ground) and iii) habitation. The mounds are believed to have been introduced by the people to China from the Euphrates-Tigris valley who are believed to have introduced the arts .

Thirdly, in your last posting you continue to maintain that the Chinese language has not changed over the past 4000 years. This is false. Chinese scholars have long recognized that the phonology of Chinese has changed over time. The Fukienese scholar Chen Di ( 1541-1617) recognized the discrepancies in the rhymes of vesrses from different ages and observed that "It is a natural principle that the script and the sounds of [the Chinese] language differ according to time and place" (Jerry Norman, Chinese, (Cambridge university Press,1988) p.42). We also find changes between early written Chinese wenyan "written language" of Confucius time and modern written Chinese. The wenyan illustrates a terseness in the use of words as illustrated below a sentence written in wenyan:

you pengzi yuan-fang lai bu yi le hu

have friend from far-palce come not also joy

"If you have friends coming from far away, isn't it also a Joy?"

Here we present the same sentence in modern Chinese:

ruguo you pengyou cong yuan-fang lai bu shiye hen kuaile ma

if have friend from far-place come not be also very joy

"If you have friends coming from far away, isn't it also a joy?" (San Duanmu, The phonology of standard Chinese (Oxford University Press,2000) p.4).

Finally, the Chinese classics make it clear that the Min Li, meant "Black people" not young Chinese or peasant Chinese. James Legge's, The Chinese Classics (London, 1865) supports this view. In reading Legge's translation of the "Shu King", we read that "In the Canon of Yao, we discover that Yu "…regulated and polished the people of his domain, who all became brightly intelligent. Finally, he united and harmonized the myriad States of the empire; and lo! The black haired people were transformed" (Legge, 1865, p.17). In this passage "min li is used to describe all the people in the Empire, not just the peasants or the young people. In Book II, Chapter It was written that Kao yao "…with vigorous activity sowing abroad his virtue, which has decended on the black haired people, till they cherish him in their hearts" (Legge, 1865, pp.55-58). Again the term li min was applied to the people of the empire and not just a particular group.

The term li min means "black people". The term for peasant had nothing to do with li min. The term for peasant comes from the tsung-jen character which is formed by a group of three men usually placed under a sun, signifying that they are working on the farm in the sun. In later periods many Chinese writers began to called the tsung-jen character li min, so as to associate this sign with the ancient designation of the Shang and Xia people who were "black or Oceanic/African people", not yellow people "browned by the sun".

In your post you maintain that the Xia and Shang mention of serpents, black bird etc., was meant to relate to sunspots. This is wrong. The Xia and Shang belonged to totemic groups which associated different animals with particular clans, especially the serpent/ dragon clan of the Xia and the bird clan of the Qiang-Shang (First Shang Dynasty). It is interesting to note that at the Xia site of Taosi, archaeologist have found numerous painted dragons on the pottery plates. The dragon motif at Taosi may have been the totem of the Xia people at Taosi. This would correspond to Chinese legends of the Long (Dragon) Tribe, Huan Long (Dragon Breeding) Clan and the Yu Long (Defend the Dragon) Clan. The dragon legends are associated with the Chinese sages Yan, Yao, Shun and Yu the Great. According to Chinese traditions the banner of Yu the Great, was emblazoned with a dragon.

The Xia and Shang people referred to themselves as li min because they were black people, not because sunspots were referred to as black. The Mande people of Africa clan they belong to the Siu clan. The term Si, corresponds to the name Zi, applied to the Xia founders.

In summary the archaeological and textual evidence do not support your thesis that the Xia and Shang were not Africans. The evidence indicates that the Xia and Shang referred to themselves as li min because they were black people. Moreover, skeletal remains from China make it clear that Blacks did exist in ancient China.

Clyde A. Winters

Below is the post of Jeff

his is a reply to the posting of C A Winters.

>This view of the Chinese language suggests

>that the pronunciation of Chinese has not changed in over 3000 years.

That is not what I claimed. See my postings.

> It is clear that Xia and Shang spoke their own variety of Chinese.

Again, what they spoke may be permanently lost to a large extent (except

that later Chinese language survived as a direct descendent of the archaic

one).

What they wrote survived.

In

>school we learn the myth that Chinese writing developed from

>pictorial signs and pictures. The shell-and-bone characters were not

pictures.

I did not claim that they were.

>These characters which first appear on prehistoric pottery in Middle Africa,

>and throughout China,

Hold on there. I would be very interested in knowing more about what has

been

found in Africa (What is the definition of Middle Africa?), but you have a

lot of

explanations to do before you can relate them, given the fact that they are

so far

apart geologically.

Pls provide the age of the pottery, and when did historic age begin, and

before when

is prehistoric in Africa.

>were abstract signs/symbols used to represent a word,

>not an idea or object.

Let's look at the Jia Gu Wen inscription of the character Gu. Gu is

still popularly used in modern Chinese in phrases like Hui

Gu (Review), Gu Pan (looking back and forth), Gu Tou Bu Gu Wei (watching the

head while forgetting watching the tail), etc.. The Jia Gu Wen version

of this character is a man looking back.

This is a picture.

Let's check the Jia Gu Wen character of si (think). It is a skull and a

heart,

representing a dispute on which organ is the organ of thinking: head or

heart.

This is an idea.

Look the word Qiu (prison). It is a man in a circle.

This is an picture plus an idea.

Pictorial representation of an object, such as the word man, warrior, moon,

ding

(large or huge bronze utensil for cooking), water, horse, chariot etc can be

found.

None of them is straight painting, but with understanding of the object to

some depth.

A good example is the character for man. It is a being walking with two

legs. This

represents the definition of human in their view. (And when our

archaeologists look

for the archaic humanoid fossils, they actually look for fossils that

satisfy this

definition.)

>It was the Zhou and Han who gave fanciful

>interpretations of the shell-and-bone writing.

This is a strange remark. First of all, I do not think Han people had any

idea of

the existence of Jia Gu Wen on turtle shells and bufflo bones, and the

interpreation

now we have are from contemporary researchers, instead of Han (200 BC)

people.

Second of all, I donot think Zhou people had any need to give fanciful

interpretations of Shang writing system. Zhou's writing system is obviously

derived and based on Shang's, and Shang people, with their culture,

survived almost entire Zhou dynasty. If a Zhou person had any curiosity

regarding the ritual or culture of Shang, he would simply go visit Shang

people

and find answers (Yes, there was at least one man did and we have

very good records about when he did, why he did.

That person's name is Confucius).

Shang people, their ritual, their upper class people, their culture,

did not just disappear after their defeat by Zhou. The first King of Zhou

accepted the surrender of Shang, and then Shang's royal family members were

made into the

principality of Song state, and could keep their ritual formality (Shang

Li), their

culture, and at least a part of their slaves and treasure.

See http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndydb/2000/11/d9-wu.b10.html for the exact

year

that Shang ended, and at the same time, read:

http://www.huaren.org/heritage/id/111100-01.html

The son of the last King of Shang was made a duke of Zhou dynasty and lived

into

Zhou. He plotted a conspiracy with the younger brothers of the King of

Zhou, and was finally killed. His feudom, the land promised by the King of

Zhou,

was given to his uncle, an elder (half) brother of the last King of Shang.

His rank

was archduke ('Shang Gong', namely, higher ranking duke). Duke Shang's

ranking was secondary probably only to the crown prince of Zhou.

With the endorsement from Shang's royal family, the King of Zhou avoided

voilent

takeover of each of the feudal lords of Shang by force. Zhou's efforts

turned

out to be very successful, and Shang was actually absorbed into Zhou dynasty

smoothly with minimal violence.

Therefore a large portion of Shang's upper class people survived the change

of power. Another person ichow in this newsgroup pointed out the same

fact in his postings, but it seems that you did not pay attention to his

points.

The lower class people of Shang was not touched, and they simply became the

lower

class people of Zhou dynasty. At least a branch of Shang troops stayed

defiant

and refused to surrender to the King of Zhou, and they escaped to the east

seashore

and took off there, according to some historians, and no one knew where

they'd gone.

Zhou took over the culture of Shang, and made itself more Shang than

Shang itself. As a result, Shang's culture spreaded to the south of Yangtze

river.

Yes, Shang rulers continued the oracle bone inscriptions and divine telling,

and

there have been 15000 pieces of oracle bones discovered that belong to Zhou.

Later on,

Zhou developed a more mathematicallised way to do fortune telling, and

the theory is summarized in I Jing (Book of Variations).

However, Zhou stopped the terriable custom of human sacrifice of Shang which

should

be somewhat similar to that of ancient American Indian culture. It is

obvious

that Confucius was not even aware of human sacrifice of Shang, and this

indicates

that Shang custom had been completely forgotten then.

The adaptibility of Zhou made Zhou the longest dynasty in Chinese history:

900 years.

The reason that we are very sure Shang noble people and their descendents,

with

their legacy of culture, actually survived almost the

entire Zhou dynasty, is from the records of Confucius.

Confucius had Song ancestry (and therefore some people suggested that he

might also be a descendent of noble people of Shang), though he was born in

Lu,

instead of Song. He had a dream of going back to Song when he was young, and

study

the ritual, as well as social structures of Shang, in search for a solution

to the

violent social disturbances in his time. He said:

"The Shang based its propriety on that of the Yin, and what it

added and subtracted is knowable. The Zhou has based its propriety on that

of

the Shang and what it added and subtracted is knowable. In this way, what

continues from the Zhou, even if 100 generations hence, is knowable."

Obviously, 500 years after the takeover by Zhou, Shang's legacy was still

reserved

in Song, and the above witness of Confucius means that the civilization of

Zhou,

at least as it appears to Confucius, was based on that of Shang, with what

was added

and subtracted. Amusingly, he was actually talking about *us* - 100

generations after his

time (Assume 25 years per generation, and we are 2500 years after him.)

The last time that Shang family offered sacrifices to their ancestors was

probably 286 BC

in the state of Song according to records.

In 221 BC, the state Qin finally reunited these run-away Zhou feudal states,

largely by

force. The First Emperor of Qin built his tomb with several thousand

terracotta warriors. Each warrior sculpture has a unique face, and very

likely

shaped after a unique human model. None of them looks African, and everyone

of them

looks just like present day Chinese.

Several thousand human skeletals have been found in Shang tombs, and the

huge royal

tombs of the 11 kings ruled in Anyang have also been located, with over a

thousand

noble tombs surrounded, and numerous human skeletals. None of the skeletals

is

Negroid. Claiming any of these kings to be Negroid has serious a problem of

denying

what you can see with your eyes.

There is a lot of records about state Song - its rulers, upper class

as well as lower class people, its ritual, its arts, its military, its

traditions,

the relationships and communications between Song and its fellow states,

etc. To tie these people to black race, you have to make an awful lot of

denials of evidents as well as research studies, archaelogical discoveries,

and a

lot of misinterpretation.

As Chinese has been a nation that worships ancestors, a Chinese surname

means a lot

than more than just a name. A lot of historical information can be found in

the origins

of the surnames, distribution and migration of the people with the surnames.

Modern Chinese with the following surnames may be descendents of Shang royal

and

noble families.

1. Tang (Tung) (Taken from the founder of Shang dynasty: Shang Tang)

2. Song (or Sung)

3. Wen

4. Kong (Kung, Hung, surname of Confucius)

5. Fu (Foo)

6. Zhong (Chong)

7. Qiu (Khu, Kau)

8. Xu (Hsu)

9. Lu (Loh, Low)

10. Ding (Ting)

11. Pan (Poon)

12. Li (Lai)

13. Li (Lee)

14. Luo (Law)

15. Kang (Hong)

16. Mao (Mo)

17. Guo (Kuo, Kuok, Kwok)

18. Du (Tu, Do)

19. Wang (Wong, Ong, Heng)

20. Gu (ku)

21. Xue

22. Lu

23. Ji (Also the surname of the royal family of Zhou dyansty)

24. Dai (Tai)

25. Peng (pang)

26. Huang (Wong, Hwang, Oei, Ooi)

27. Xia (Hsia, Ha)

There are several hundred surnames survived. The study of origins of Chinese

surnames is an interesting science. For more, see:

http://www.yutopian.com/names/.

>It was during this period

>that we also see the introduction of some ideographic signs to the Chinese

>syllabary.

Define "this period"

> The pronunciation of language changes over time. There is no way

>the Chinese spoken today by Chinese is the same pronunciation of Chinese

>in Xia and Shang times.

I do not think anyone would disagree with that.

>The Qieyun fanqie date back to the 6th century AD. This was 2000 years

>after the fall of Xia.

> When Lu Fayan compiled the Qieyun he used many sources of the Chinese

>language spoken throughout China. This means that when the Qieyun was

>written, it was already a complex compilation of Chinese speech. The rhymed

>tables simply allow Chinese speakers to read Chinese characters in the

>Mandarin ( or any other Chinese dialect), not the dialect of the Xia and

>Shang Chinese.

I do not use any tables when I read poems as old as those in Book of

Songs to those written in Tang and Song dynasties (the times Hakkas made

their

exodus) and later ones.

> As you note above, when two words in The Book of Odes was written

>with characters possessing the same phonetic element, they probably once

>sounded alike. Yet, it does not tell us what phonological features the

>sign shared, so we don't really know the actual synchronic phonetic values

>for the characters in The Book of Odes, when it was written.

What I claim is that the fact that the likely sounded characters are still

sounded alike contributes to the proof that modern Chinese is a direct

descendent

of the archaic one.

>We know that

>the pronunciation of Chinese in The Book of Odes differ from Middle Chinese

>and the modern dialects.

> For example, the character used to write tsuet 'soldier' , with a

>final /-t/ was the phonetic for tswi' 'drunk', which fails to have a

>final /-t/ in The Book of Odes. This indicates that at some point in

>the history of the Chinese language the final /-t/ was dropped in tswi'.

You are wrong double. First of all, you are reading the version of Ode in a

certain

romanization system, that was invented quite recently (later than 1880), and

can in no way reflect anything older than that. Second of all, you are

confused

by different romanization/pronounciation systems.

Here are the Mandarin ones;

tsuet: Zu

tswi : Zui

I believe that your example with an "t" is from a certain Cantonese

romanization system. The "t" simply means that you should pronouce a short

vowal

instead of a long one, the "t" is silent and should not be pronouced. You

can

still find a lot of "t" in Hong Kong. All these "t" are silent without

exception.

(Sometimes, and "h" is attached, simply to mean that the vowal should be a

long vowal.)

Here is my example. The Hong Kong movie star Jo Yun-Fat is the actor that

played

Siamese King in the recent Holliwood movie Anna and King. His name is

pronouced as

Zhou Run-Fa in Mandarin. The fancy "t" in Fat is silent.

Remember, these pronounciation/romanization systems:

(1) are pretty recent, e.g., the Wade-Giles system first appeared in late

1880.

(2) are based on some European alphabets such as those of Italian, English,

Purtugese

or German

(3) favour a certain Chinese dialect, such as Cantonese, Fujianese, or

Mandarin.

(4) used different ways to represent those consonants that are missing from

any European language

(5) map vowals in Chinese to different vowals in their system, simply

because

those vowals are not any of them.

When you hear someone whose first language is Chinese speaks English, you

may

notice that he or she can not even make vowals correct. This is due to a

simple fact that Chinese vowals, such as a, e, ae, ai, i, u should all have

two dots.

Similar things may happen when an English speaking person tries to learn to

speak

Chinese. He may mistake a with two dots to be a or e, though it is neither.

Mr. Winters, you can not find any truth in the discrepancies between

different

pronounciation / romanization systems other than this one:

they are so messed up.

>The loss of the /-t/ shows a change in the language, evethough you maintain

>that Chinese pronunciation have not changed.

(1) There has never been a vocal "t", as I explained in the above.

(2) The documents with pronounciation recorded are dated very recent.

(3) I do not maintain that the pronounciation of Chinese never changed,

what I claim is that the fact that likely-sounded characters still sound

alike

contributes to the proof that modern Chinese is a direct descendent of the

archaic one. see my previous postings more carefully.

The European documents that may possibly have pronounciations with "t"

recorded can not be older than Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644) and most likely

in

Qing dynasty (A.D. 1644-1911). Before 1880, there was virtually no

consistent

systems to record Chinese pronounciations except some ad hoc and sporadic

trials of

non-specialists, and after 1880, there were several pretty messed up

systems.

> In addition to evidence from The Book of Odes, Westerners have recorded

>the pronunciation of Chinese lexical items for hundreds of years. The

>Western spellings of Chinese terms during this period also make it clear

>that the pronunciation of Chinese has changed over the years as indicated

>in Chinese placenames e.g.,

> Old New

>Peking Beijing

>Tientsin Tianjin

>Sian Xi'an

>The interesting think about these linguistic changes is that they have

>occurred in a relatively short period of time.

This is misleading. The early western documents on China by Europeans used

different pronounciation/romanization systems based on different Chinese

dialect and European language from which the alphabets were borrowed.

One of the most widespread pronounciation system was Wade-Giles system,

which gives romanization of the above names that you named Old chinese

pronounciation. The the column that you call New chinese pronounciation

is nothing but pin-yin.

W-G and pinyin give different romanization results simply because of

the fact the they are differenct romanization systems and different Chinese

dialects the systems were based, and does not reflect the changes of our

tongue over time.

The creator of Wade-Giles system was Thomas Wade, the first professor in

Chinese language of Cambridge University, he lived in China in mid 1800.

Wade created the earliest version of Wade system, which was modified by

Herbert Giles, who made the first English/Chinese dictionary.

Wade-Giles system is still popular outside Chinese mainland. Actually when

I was in junior high school in Tianjin (Tientsin in W-G) in 1976 to 1979,

while modern pin-yin was taught in Chinese courses, my name was still

spelled

in Wade-Giles system by my English teacher. So that instead of Yan, my

family

name is spelled Yen in W-G. It was in my senior high school that Wade-Giles

system was completely replaced by pin-yin system in English courses.

There are several Chinese consonants that are missing from European

languages,

not to mention tones. This makes it difficult to really map the Chinese

pronounciation to any European alphabets without inventing those missing

consonants. If I base my discussion on Mandarin, the following pin-yin

consonants are missing from English: j, q, r, x, zh, (y), z

PINYIN WADE-GILES PRONOUNCE AS-

b p b as in "be", aspirated

c ts', ts' ts as in "its"

ch ch' as in "church"

d t d as in "do"

g k g as in "go"

ian ien

j ch j as in "jeep"

k k' k as in "kind", aspirated

ong ung

p p' p as in "par", aspirated

q ch' ch as in "cheek"

r j approx like the "j" in French "je"

s s, ss, sz s as in "sister"

sh sh sh as in "shore"

si szu

t t' t as in top

x hs sh as in "she" - thinly sounded

yi I

you yu

z ts z as in "zero"

zh ch j as in "jump"

zi tzu

for a comparison on the romanization results for names of popular chinese

cities

by W-G and pinyin, see http://www.orientaided.com/wade.htm

In Wade-Giles system, x is spelled as s or hs in different situations, q is

spelled as ch', and j also ts, zh as ch'.

It is very strange to a Chinese speaking person, to see the sound

represented in pinyin

as x is represented as s, becaue there is another consonant that is close to

s,

and sounds very different from x, which is also denoted as s.

My Taiwanese colleague has a family name Hsu, which should be Xu in pin-yin.

In

case you do not know what dialect a Taiwanese speaks, it is mandarin.

This W-G system becomes worse when I see what seems to be a "B" is spelled

as

"P", "D" as "T", and Daoism becomes Taoism.

It might be interesting to mention that in Japanese, sh is actually

x in pin-yin and they do not have a English sh, and japanese ch is q in

pinyin,

and they do not have an English ch. It is Ok for Japanese romanization

system to

identify q as ch, x as sh, but it means a degenerated sound table in

chinese.

FYI:

Americans can not pronounce the following Japanese correctly:

sushi or sushu (Japanese food),

shiseito or shuseito(a Japanese cosmetics manufacturer)

To see more on the weak points of W-G system , see

http://dionysia.org/chinese/language/wade-giles.html

What might be more confusing is that W-G favours cantonese, and pin-yin

favours

Mandarin.

Pin-yin was created by Chinese students returned from overseas and got

support

from CCP. Before CCP took over China, they actually experimented in teaching

Pin-yin in their schools to completely replace Chinese characters, with the

encouragements from Russians.

The simplicity of pin-yin over other romanization systems is that it

does not pretend that the alphabets for q, x, zh, r etc are anything

that can be found from any European language. It simply invents them: q for

the consonant close to English ch but not, x for the consonant close to

English

sh but not, zh for the consonant close to English j or dg but not, and use j

simply for the other consonant that is close to ji or dge but not, r close

to French

j but not.

In both pin-yin and W-G systems, vowals are in-accurate when

compared to the vowals in English or Italian. As I mentioned earlier,

my name is Yan in pin-yin, and Yen in W-G. but what it really is is "a"

with two dots. But anyway, pin-yin does a much better job than W-G, if one

does

not try to link it to any European alphabetical systems.

To see a list of comparisons of pinyin and W-G, see

http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinlng3.html

and

http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinlng1.html

Your statements on the change of our spoken language during last couple of

centuries

based on the analysis of W-G system, pin-yin system and other more messed up

romanization/pronounciation systems is incorrect, and likely due to a lack

of

knowledge of Chinese language. If this is what you have been researching,

then, man, an old Chinese saying better describes it: searching for fish

on a tree ;).

Depending on early works by European researchers or second or even third

hand translation

works makes things difficult for you to see things clearly.

This kind of mistake would not happen to a sinologist with a proper

training.

> The are other phrases from Chinese literature, which indicates that,

>the Shang were black people. For example, Gu Jiegang (ed.), Gu shi bian,

>volume 1 (Peking: Pu She, 1926) we find in the Yao dian chapter of the

>Book of Documents, xuan niao "Black Bird",

Legend goes to legend, science goes to science. A black bird can not give

birth to a human. A black bird is not black race.

Many people believe that the black bird worshipped in Shang, is nothing

but the Sun. The Shang god of the Sun was a black bird with tree legs on the

splendid disc. The character of Sun is also a disk with a black dot. It

seems that ancient Chinese observed sunspots, and they believed that the

definition

of Sun must include sunspots.

The sunspot observation by ancient Chinese may be surprising to some people.

The first dated records was in the year 28BC: "Heping reign period, 1st

year, 3rd month, day Guiwei, the rising sun was yellow; a black gas was

at the centre of the sun, like a coin". There are numerous sunspot

observations

that are believed to be earlier than this one, but not dated.

There were many other words used to describe the sunspots, and they are all

black:

melon, coin, gas, star, egg, but only black bird seems to have been

worshipped

as living being.

See

http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~pbrosche/iaucomm41/meetings/ga2000/as_li.html

and

http://crydee.sai.msu.ru/ftproot/pub/astronomy/sunspots/ANCIENT_DATA/Early_R

eports

Whatever that black bird was, I do not see why it means black race.

Must everything black be related to black race in your theory?

>the founder of the Shang

>Dynasty, he was also called Xuan Wang "Dark King". There is also mention

>of another Shang leader called xuan mu "Black Oxen".

This is a mistake of 1000 years.

King Xuan of Zhou was one thousand years after the foundation of Shang.

The founder of Shang was Tang. Xuan Wang was the title of one of the kings

of Zhou,

and the name of this king is Ji Jing (827BC to 782BC). As we know a lot

about the

royal family of Zhou, we should be very confident about who he was, what he

did.

Ji was the royal family name of Zhou and is still (an unpopular) Chinese

family name. Though 3000 years passed, I would not be surprised that some

nowadays

Chinese with this family could be descendents of royal family of Zhou.

I guess some Americans may have heard of a General Ji who

was believed to be involved in illegal donations to the Clinton's

presidential election.

Because the character Ji has a part that means female, some people suggest

that

this old family name means early matriachy history (passed from mother to

daughters

instead of father to sons), in its very early days (earlier than Zhou, of

course).

King Xuan of Zhou was 11th King of Zhou dynasty, 1000 years after the

foundation of Shang.

None of Zhou royal family was recorded to be a black race, and it is strange

to pick

the 11th one to be black without a comment of his forefathers.

The title of a kings of Zhou was given after his death (posthumus),

to reflect his legacy and virtue, with carefully political considerations by

the next king and his ministers. Chinese of Zhou dynasty had passed the

stage

of giving a name (not to mention an official title of a king) according to

his

body characteristics as American Indians often did.

>Moreover, in the

>Chunqui kong yan tu, it is reported that Confucius was born at Hollow

>Mulberry subsequent to his mother dreaming of Xuan Di the

>"Black Emperor".

If you believe in that, then the Japanese, who believe in the white crane

delivers

their babies, should all be whites.

Confucius may be a result of adultery, as some researchers suggested. His

father

was over 65 and his mother 17. I would not be surprised that his mother made

some

stories. Similar pattern can be found in many other countries, and may I

mention

the stories in the bible?

> In summary, the Chinese language as proven by the recording of the

>Chinese language by Westerners and The Book of Odes, suggest that the

>pronunciation of Chinese has changed over the years. The mention of

>the Xuan "Black" rulers of Shang

This is incorrect. You may have mistaken the period King Xuan of Zhou lived.

As I said, at least 11 kings of Shang have been found in a royal cemetary

near

Anyang, and they are not Negrod.

Xuan means a lot more than black, and it appears in the titles of many

Emperors

through out Chinese history. There is, for example, a King Xuan

Zong (founder) of Tang dynasty, whose tomb has just been found with several

hundred objects unearthed. There are numerous records, poems, archives about

this

Emperor, his wives, his father and grand father, his son and grandson, none

of

them has ever been described as a black race.

>and the use of Li min "Black people"

>to describe the Shang and Xia people by the Zhou, supports the view that

>the Xia and Shang were "Black People/ Li Min.

The proof to your black race claim is superficial, as I mentioned in the

above

the previous postings. The words were used to describe a variety of

different

things, including color of hair, clothes, ink powder, as well as

superstitions

and/or philosophies and birds, dreams, etc.

Again, Li Min is nothing but common people, as always, and min is almost

always used

in political terms, rather than one of a biological sense (which should be

ren, or man,

the word that is much older than min.)

The Xia becomes black Xia, when we still know so little about Xia? This is

bad research.

All I see from the evidents you showed me, is that you are confused by

Chinese ancient

superstitions, different pronounciation/romanization systems, strange

interpretation

of the meaning of different "black", mistaking legends as history,

misplacing the

time frame of historical figures, etc.

To reach your conclusion, you need more than just sporadic words appeared in

the ancient archives and misinterpret them. You are facing an awful lot of

facts, records,

archives, mainstream research conclusions, archaeological discoveries, as

well as

a modern Chinese language that is obviously a direct descendent of the

ancient one,

a modern writing system that is obviously a direct descendent of the archaic

one,

a modern Chinese culture that is an obvious direct descendent of the ancient

one,

and a modern Chinese nation that is an obvious direct descendent of the

ancient one.

You need an lot of denials against an awful lot of evidents that are against

your theory,

and a lot of misinterpretation of an awful lot of evidents that are not in

favour of

your theory. And most importantly, you have to ignore the mongoloid

skeletals found

in Shang's royal cemetery near Anyang.

Human remains that belong to pre-Shang, Shang, and Zhou periods have been

found,

and total numbers of individual human skeletals may be several thousand.

None of them

has been found to be a Negroid. In case you want to see know a few cases of

them, let me

start from Peking Man.

(0) There is considerable evidence of Homo erectus by the time of the Lower

Paleolithic

(the Paleolithic Period began c. 2,500,000 years ago and ended 10,000 years

ago)

at sites such as Lan-t'ien, Shensi; Ho-hsien, Anhwei; Yüan-mou, Yunnan; and,

the

most famous, that of so-called Peking man at Chou-k'ou-tien, Peking

Municipality.

The skulls found belonged to mongoloidals.

(1) Liang-Chu Culture burial (3500-2200 BC) at Ssu-tun

a young adult male

4 ceramic vessels, 14 stone and jade implements, 49 jade ornaments

24 jade rings and 33 jade ts'ung tubes

The skeletal is not a Negroid.

(2) Liang-Chu Culture burial (3500-2200 BC), a huge cemetery of T'ao-ssu,

over

1000 burials excavated, thousands more thought to remain . No Negroid found.

(3) Near the ancient Shang capital of Anyang is the site of Xibeigang.

Archaeologists

describe this site as the royal cemetery of the Shang monarchs. At the site

eleven very

large cruciform graves and 1,222 small graves were unearthed. It is possible

that these

are the graves of the eleven Shang kings recorded as having ruled from

Anyang over

a 273 year span. The evidence recovered from these grave sites have provided

the

most dramatic evidence of the nature of Shang kingship. The burials were

accompanied

by a large number of human sacrifices, the bodies, frequently with heads and

torsos

separated. Body parts were found around the central chamber and on the ramp

leading

down to it. Everything in and around these burial chambers suggests that the

deceased were people of power, wealth and honor. The tombs contained a rich

selection

of Shang art. In one particular tomb was found an outstanding collection of

stone

sculptures and bronze pieces.

No Negroid remains was found.

(4) The Shang burial at Sufuntun. Grave no. 1 at Sufuntun is the largest

Shang

tomb so far discovered outside Anyang. It consists of a rectangular burial

pit

with a sloping ramp in the middle of each side. In the center stood the

cruciform-plan

timber burial chamber, and below its floor a second pit containing a

sacrificial

dog and human victim. Five dogs and 47 further human victims were found in

different

parts of the tomb. Although the bulk of the grave-goods have been lost

through

tomb-robbing in antiquity, sufficient artifacts remain to indicate its

original

richness, including bronzes, carved objects of jade and other stone, fine

pottery,

and 3790 cowrie shells. Strings of cowrie shells, from the Pacific or Indian

Ocean, were used as a form of money in Shang China. At the northern end of

the burial pit were two large bronze axes with animal face designs. Battle

axes

were traditionally symbols of kingship, and together with the size of the

grave

suggest that the Sufutun tomb was the burial place of a local ruler.

Again, there was no Negroid remains found.

(5) In 1976, near Anyang, the last Shang capital, archaeologists uncovered a

Shang tomb, the only one that has been found intact. Tomb 5 contained the

burial of Fu Hao, referred to in the oracle bones as one of the consorts of

Wu Ding, twenty-first king of the Shang. The tomb, though modest in size,

contained more than fifteen hundred objects. In addition to Fu Hao's own

lacquered coffin were the skeletal remains of sixteen humans and six dogs.

Among the more than seven hundred jades were examples that date from the

Liangzhu culture, which must have been collected as

antiquities. Many bronze vessels were found, some of which were probably

used by Fu Hao during her life. Others, which bear her posthumous name

(Si Mu Xin), were probably cast as burial goods. Six or seven thousand

cowrie shells (which the Shang used as currency) had also been buried with

her.

No Negroid remains was found.

(6) Xiao Xuanqiao, archaeologists from Henan Province decided to recommence

excavations in this 4,000,000 square meter area. During the original

excavation

from 1995-1997, archaeologists located remnants of Shang Dynasty rammed

earth

walls and architecture. Among these remains, they uncovered over a hundred

sacrificial human bones, two burial pits, burnt stones, ten storage and ash

pits, which conatined pottery, bone and stone implements. Archaeologists

also

found what are believed to be mass sacrificial burials, concentrated

primarily

around the walls enclosing the site.

No Negroid remains was found.

(7) Archaeologists have found a 6,000-year-old tomb at a construction site

near the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, the official Xinhua news agency

reported Monday.

The 2.5-by-1.5-meter stone-age tomb holds the skeletal remains of one body

and pots, bowls, ceramic jars, a bone needle and other artifacts.

The tomb was found 2 meters below ground in Zhoukou prefecture of Hunan

Province

No Negroid remains was found.

I would stop here. Without skeletals and bones of ancient Negroids in all

these

human remains, the black Shang claim is not a subject of science.

I reject the your black Shang theory, which is claim-based rather than

evidents-based.

I care more about the evidents rather than the final conclusion. Your

remarks give

me an impression that you care more about your conclusion rather than the

evidents.

The conclusion you are trying to reach is like an African elephant

and you have to pull it through the hole on a quilting needle, and the room

left

by Chinese history for Negroid's existence is less than that.

rgds

Jeff

hong-yan@worldnet.att.net

jeffyan77@my-deja.com

Please send me a copy if you reply. I do not seem to find your postings in

my news server recently.