Re: Division and Illusion (was Re: Qv2)

Have the Chinese really been civilized longer than westerners? Research
shows the Agricultural Revolution started in Southeast Asia and the
Middle East only 500 years apart (the west was first). Since different
plants were being used in each place, some mountains stood between the
two locations and the Silk Road was under developed about 8000 years
ago, experts are skeptical about the idea of Asia getting the idea from
the west. Early Asia had pigs, not big game. This never needed to be a
hunter's culture. But I'm not sure we were hunters of big game back
then either, at least not until we invented arrows, and I forget when
that happened.

Asian people who still live without agriculture ~ they mostly gather
since there isn't game to hunt ~ still show more equality in their
society. A modern woman in Mongolia suffering protein shortage can kill
just as effectively as a man, and the men know it. Ditto for tribes in
the south. The lack of protein here is still a contentious issue for
westerners who want to tell Asians what kinds of protein sources are
okay to eat.

An overview of western history (often misnamed "world history", but it
is the history of everywhere except Asia, Africa and Oceana) shows that
after agriculture came storage, division of labor, the need to protect
what's stored, and upper & lower classes. This is probably the
beginning of our military states, divisions between men and women, and
other social inequalities. The same overview of history shows simply
that the seat of western power migrated as land eroded and new
technology became available. From the Middle East our seat of power
travelled through Turkey, to Greece, to Italy, to Spain-France-Germany,
to England, to America. That's highly simplified; at some point
Austro-Hungry provided our leadership. Westerners who agree with the
Chinese that our history is only as old as America are playing into a
Chinese game.

China was blessed with rich land with borders contained by sea,
mountains and the frozen north, so their incentive to migrate was low.
Instead, they stayed in one place, became the most powerful nation in
the world (the whole planet) and exerted racial cleansing programs a
few thousand years ago. So, while the people who are now "Chinese"
(Asian, since what we call Chinese is the dominant race among many)
ultimately have the same origin as we do, they show different 'male'
and 'female' behaviour because their sense of being arises from
completely different history than what we learn in schools.

There are consistencies among "diverse" western cultures (such as Greek
and American) because these share the same origin of civilization. The
Asian origin was independent. Biological similarities remain, but few
cultural ones exist... except where there was cultural
cross-pollination along the Silk Road. For example, Cinderella is
originally Chinese, but the Chinese story is far more complex and it
has a different ending than the European simplified "original".

Where western biological theories are at a disadvantage is
(a) considering that the whole world is western (ie: doesn't include
Asia, Oceana, Africa and modern Middle East), and
(b) doing studies only on western people.

.

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