Remember that I always put my sources in the description section. You can't use my video for your school or university essays, but you can speed up your research by looking into the books in the list.
Hi history bros. Thanks so much for this video. I will share this out. Cos right now is a turning point for Chinese history. Becos of the current narrative by the ahem.... CCP. As you ended up, we must correct our mistakes not just by the west but also by our own.
Kings and Generals represent the western historical point of view and as such serve as propaganda service, most notably with recent anti russian sentiment.
You doing a good job in correcting historians (especially Eurocentrics) who usually just give Asians history just " general second glance" type and doesn't go exact detail why it happen instead of it just happen
K&G has reached a level of mass production that I just watch their stuff for entertainment and take in the information with a pinch of salt now. They are a whole enterprise with a bunch of people(not sure as contractors or in-house team) researching and writing for them, so the accuracy can vary from video/subject to video/subject.
If you watch K&G, you will find that K&G already put Ukraine - Russia war as history. The war is far from ended. And K&G remind us of what ancient historian would be. Ancient historian wrote history from the master point of view. And Modern historians suppose to be neutral.
The end road of where they are now is basically the History Channel we joke about, for showing no history documentaries and focusing entirely on entertainment/'reality' tv programming.
Kings & Generals is only really historically accurate on European subjects (for the most part), but the channel is a hit or miss when it comes to non-European history (East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, South America, etc). K&G's 2020 video on "Nanman" was also highly inaccurate as they confused the Nanman with Baiyue along with various other people of Southern China. Contrary to what that video says, the Nanman and Baiyue were separate people (with entirely different levels of technology and lifestyles) that assimilated and became a part of the Chinese identity in different periods (over a different process), rather than simply "wiped out" by the Han people whose use is again anachronistic, which altogether seems more like a re-interpretation of events inspired by the European treatment of Native Americans. By contrast, the Wu, Yue, Chu (Central Plains aristocrat), Ba-Shu, Nanyue (Central Plains aristocrat), Changsha Kingdom, and many more other states and polities were already multi-ethnic, who adopted Chinese culture and often had a Sinitic aristocratic class. These states functioned as primary actors in the politics of China, with their own historical dynamics unique to their period.
Didn't they take the video down? At least where I am in Vietnam I can no longer watch the video. I assumed at first it was because of Vietnamese government censorship because the video did touch on the origin of the Vietnamese people and I assumed that the video might have been taken down here for being inaccurate
@@callanadamwilliams8200 The video is blocked in Vietnam. It says "This content is not available on this country domain due to a legal complaint from the government."
I love history youtube because of this right here. One channel says a thing and if it's actually bad someone from a specialized channel like History Bros corrects it. This is so much better than schools where there is only one voice.
I agree for the most part. I noticed errors with the video on the foundation of Carthage as well, such as him using a Greek framework of the Levante or stuff like only giving us 2 Phoenician city names ("Sur" and "Qart Hadasht", but not for example translate Byblos into "Gebal" etc...). Here is one problem: On youtube even though you got many voices, how big your voice is depends on how many followers & how much money you have, not how correct you are.
@@Argacyan For real history, and not the PG Disneyesque mainstream stories of the past, see my series proving that the British Empire was not the biggest. I prove that Jews rule the world. They programmed us to dismiss such claims by slandering me as an anti-Semite, but I worship a Jew, so I love his race.
This is the problem with education on RU-vid in general, most people can say anything and the general viewer consuming it doesn’t know if the person has a degree in the area or specializes in it. Then they take what they hear as the literal word of god.
Extra History in a nutshell. They often use fringe sources, highly criticized sources, or just straight illegitimate sources, to get the specific biases they want, especially if its to do with someone who was non-white/non-Asian or female. Even some of the videos where they don't display serious cultural bias, they show seriously poor research, such as with their Sengoku Jidai videos, which is full of Imperialist Japan propaganda, outright shit they made up, or historical events they completely misunderstood despite being super damn obvious. (ie. acting like Sunomata castle was built effectively right in front of Gifu castle even tho you can visit the damn thing now, or another castle built on it, and its like 10km away from the fucking castle)
Awesome work! Orientalism is sadly alive and well, so it's always refreshing to see corrective pushback. There are gaps in archaeological records the world over. That doesn't have to mean we're completely in the dark, but there's a danger of perpetuating misconceptions when we let a colonial gaze infer and narrate the history.
The issue here is not Orientalism. The script writer for this video was Leo Stone, who is Taiwanese. He doesn't have a colonial gaze. The real problem, as Cool History Bros rightly points out, is people uncritically following the Chinese government's propagandist narrative of what it represents as "Chnese history", just like other nations have invented their own "very long" histories. So this is not a case of a Westerner getting Chinese history wrong by applying Orientalism, it's a case of a Taiwanese getting Chinese history wrong because they didn't do critical historical research.
One thing I find impressive is the sheer amount of ancient records that survive to this day, and that is despite most of the ancient records being now lost. The Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han are both 100 volumes long, both describing events that took place in BC times. Whereas with topics like Greek and Roman history we are stuck trying to piece together so many events from incomplete records. (Not that Qin Shihuang's book burnings didn't leave behind big gaps too)
the Chinese people were always very meticulous, each dynasty preserved all the royal records of the previous one, and that continuity helped keep everything alive, that's how we still know what happened in the Shang and Zhou dynasties for example, Rome never had that and the writers left biased or incomplete records, that is the difference
Kings and generals is at best a simple overview of any of its subjects, it always has something wrong in its videos but its a decent start channel. Really its mainly just visually pleasant for a history channel.
@@wheediesmanchild5229 probably the wrong video to try saying they give top level information. They aren't bad, but they aren't the most accurate either.
@@neonnexs1239 I think he means with the "top level" that it's only the "basics", "the crust", "the surface level", they go into. Top level doesn't mean "best" or "good" here. 'They consider the surface level, but won't go into the bottom of things' would be the idea, which I can relate to, also.
I watch K&G, although i am not Asian i quite enjoy reading, watching stuff and playing things about Asian History. One particular gross mistake i was able to "spot" was on their video, was the one about Warrior Monks in the Sengoku Jidai. They make a point how the great Ishiyama-Honganji was able to defend against the Oda Clan for 10 years, but conveniently forgot to mention that they only lasted that long because they were being supplied via sea by the Mori Clan's navy, and that they surrendered in the end because the Oda had defeated the Mori fleet at Kizugawaguchi.
I could feel the second hand frustration from Cool Bros. Man, how can they get it so wrong? Were they trying to discredit Chinese civilization just because?
I don't think they were trying to do that. Their Channel seems to be more of an outlook on history from a macro perspective so as a result details will be missing, misinterpreted, or may be plain wrong. That's why there exist channels that focus on the micro aspect. We're human beings and even the most knowledgeable of us can make wrong statements. No one knows everything and that's the beauty of history in general.
They're pretty much doing an overview of complex stories shown to an audience who largely may not know much about the topic to begin with. Also, Kings and Generals started off as a side project to showcase the background of games based on some historical stories. People got interested and they wanted to know more, so the channel provided...then later on evolved to be much more than the original purpose. It's not gonna be an authority or monopoly of any knowledge, it's just one avenue out of many to explore these topics.
im glad you pointed out how good of a channel they are and that they were just mis guided in knowledge you really are one of my favorite history teachers ;)
Great video!! They are rarely accurate on anything...they mix facts and fiction and create misconception for long run purposes.... no one serious takes for granted what they say.
Fun fact: The art-work at 11:12 "Yellow Peril," was created in the mid 19th century in Australia for the Bulletin newspaper - a very racist group that desperately feared primarily Chinese people moving to Australia during the gold rush and bringing with them all of the 'issues' in the artwork. The Bulletin continued up until the late 20th century I believe and continued to promote socially regressive ideals.
You just dropped a dis-track on Kings and General with nothing but facts and research. This is why I love RU-vid's history channels. Still love K&Gs too, that channel specialize more on battles so understand the mistakes.
I remember that video, and thought it was very flawed and disappointing as well. It felt more like a purposeful attempt to diminish China than an actual historical view.
I really appreciate these videos. You've really opened my eyes as to just how badly distorted my previous understanding of Chinese history was*. I'm sure it's still distorted, but now I can at least try to replace the incorrect info with more accurate info. I've always found Chinese and Japanese history and culture fascinating. I'm not sure what it is about East Asia that intrigues me so much more than other areas of the world. Now my mind is wandering down the path of what that reason might be. The rest of the world isn't lacking in interesting history, culture, and folk lore. *The video about "honor" exposed some weak spots in my understanding even though I had dropped the honor/shame model before I saw the video.
because there is so much more than just dynasty and war, very little has been truly explained to people in the West, Asian history was long ignored and downplayed, there's only been a renewed interest in the past 15 years or so, China and Japan are so immersed in history that people feel drawn to know more and more about them, there are very few civilizations that can compare at that kind of level and depth
@@danielzhang1916 While that seems to be an accurate description of how the history of China and Japan has been treated in the West, I'm not sure that's why I find it fascinating. There seems to be some quality I can't pin down that draws me back to studying history, mythology, etc. in the region. There are other places with very rich history but none appeal to me on the same level.
Love if you made a video on Indian China relationship in ancient times. Almost all Indian kingdoms had diplomatic relationship with China vice versa.❤️
Wait, they consider Hammurabi to be part of western civilisation??? Hammurabi was an Amorite who were originally nomadic people from what Is now Syria and we have many Amorite DNA samples from Ebla and Alalakh and they were very similar to modern day Syrians and Lebanese and were unrelated to any western population
Maybe as in philosophical influence? It may have influenced the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, or it has of the same source which also influences the Hebrew Bible. The Bible influences Christianity, and Christianity influences Western Civilization.
It makes since honestly; The Greeks and Romans, the founders of western civilization, got most of their ideas from the Persians, who got most of their ideas from the Babylonians, Hebrews, Akkadians, Sumerians, Egyptians, etc. When the Arabs conquered the area, their middle eastern civilization was built from the ground up mostly from ideas expressed in the Quran, which did have influences from the Babylonians and others, but not as much as the Greeks and Romans. So, of all of the recent civilizations, they fit the most with the west.
Well western civilization pretty connect with pre islamic middle East civilization, most people in Europe descendants from farmers from Anatolian and greeks pretty much get influence by near east civilization and before islam middle East and North Africa pretty connect to Southern Europe and made Mediterranean civilization who dominate Romans and Persians and Anatolian genetically and Linguistic related in Europe, if you compare far East and middle East from past and now still feel separate universe and only connect East Asia and India is Buddhism even Buddhism is died out in Subcontinent
An excellent video! I think the problem lies in the Western historiography rule that "everything must be proven" a.k.a. "pics or it didn't happen". That idea is pushed everywhere. For example, we, the Balkan Slavs, can trace our roots 6000+ years back to the founders of the first discovered cities in Europe (dated to at least 4k B.C., if not older) and the basis of the majority of the European writing systems. We have the same DNA as those people, the same customs and traditions (incorporated into Christianity), very similar language (4000-6000 exact and somewhat 20000-40000 similar words that all Slavs share with modern Sanskrt and very similar grammar), our writing system still uses some letters and symbols found only in those ancient towns (they were discovered in the 20th century, so no cheating here) - but "No-no-no, do you have any evidence? We don't accept non-scientific methods (because we decide what's science)!" I love "Kings and Generals" but they've made too many mistakes over the course of years, they are making large mistakes even in their "Russia vs. Ukraine" video-series - which is a contemporary event, no interpretation required whatsoever - so I simply cannot trust them anymore on anything. Which is sad, because I've been following them for some 5 years now.
@@yeetman4953 No, because there's no such thing as "Indo-Europeans". Europe, in the ancient era, was what is now the Balkan Peninsula +/- the Apennine Peninsula. Indo-Europeans are basically Aryans, who were proto-Slavs, originating in the Balkans and than moving back and forth to India through both Russia and the Middle East. Evidence: language, mythology, religion, poetry, artifacts, folk-ware, DNA. The Western culture (except maybe on the British Isles) is very different to that culture. Latin culture mixed early on with the Rasenian (Etruscan) and Sabinian cultures so it also has some elements of it. I'd add examples but I don't wanna sound like those Quora guys droning on and on for hours. :)
To add a little. The story of Dawu is actually have evident about where he actually work to change the water current, how he did it since he would need to cut mountain of hard rock . He did it by taking lots of lots of Tree trunk as fuel. Then burn it. While build a damn to stop water from flowing. After the stone hot enough he release water and the cold water immediately drop the surface temperature create thermal expansion cracking the stone. So yeah. They not saying he is some giant who can cleave mountain or open river. But they show he is a very smart and genius character. Who know. After all Egyptian by that time is also building the Pyramid. Maybe Chinese know how to use temperature to cut mountain
Despite that I believe people underestimate the amount of effort that goes into dredging irrigation canals. The Panama Canal is one of the deadliest engineering projects in modern history spanning multiple generations despite modern technology. So while the story of Yu the Great might have fall within the realm of possibility, the Herculean effort required to actually dig the canals push it into the realm of legend and myths.
@@Ivan-td7kb Same as the Pyramids mate. Same as that. I mean who could have thought the Pyramid were built 5000 years ago? So it might require a lot of labor but China never lack that. Look at the Great Wall. So I kinda believe somewhat. But who know. It all for good fun of guessing.
It sounds like whoever wrote the script was trying to turn Yu into a Chinese cognate of John Henry (an American folkloric hero) dreging canals instead of building a railroad.
While I do appreciate K&G for not focusing on just European history which so many history YT channels already do, perhaps they should just stick to Western history after all. However, that is the beauty of the study of history: There is no one perspective that must be believed above all others, but more than one perspective from all sides. For a long time I had always believed that "history is written by the victors", but now I know that this is not the case, history is written by those who could write, not just the winners. Otherwise, how come most of the records about the Mongols were from the nations they have conquered? With that, I have become more interested in not just history from the winners' perspective but also from the losing side and other neutral parties.
the translation of god （shangdi）is NOT the god of the shang dynasty, （上帝not商帝）. The word 上帝 or冥冥上帝/上天 refers to the heavens/the higher being that rules all and was eventually given a human appearance as 玉皇大帝, the jade emperor. Christian missionaries used the vague notion of a single higher being that was agreed upon by taoist and confucianist alike to draw similarities with Christianity where the being, god, is also shangdi
shangdi was the principal deity of the shang imperial clan, and the subsequent zhou imperial clan who worshipped tian/heaven then justified their rule by identifying tian and shangdi as one and the same entity, so now shangdi/tiandi/tian/haotianshangdi/etc etc almost always refer to the same deity in a general sense
Have you seen the comments section on Kings and Generals, particularly that video? Some of it is sickening... his viewers are not interested in understanding other cultures and civilizations :\
We need more channels like yours, with Chinese people posting videos about Chinese history in the English language for Western audiences. Chinese history is a very niche topic in the west, there isnt much available. I tried searching for non-fiction English language books about the yellow turban/three kingdoms period and there was almost nothing. All i could find was a couple of books by Rafe de Crespigny which were long out of print and cost a small fortune to buy. There are lots of channels out there dedicated to European history, we desperately need more that cover Chinese history!
because Chinese history was long ignored and downplayed by the West, there is so much more than just the basics, there has only been a renewed interest the past 15 years or so, very little has been published in the English world, because they think that not many people are really interested in learning about it
@@danielzhang1916 Would the Chinese people want Western institutions interpreting their history for a global audience on their behalf? Im not sure they would. The West focuses on the west because that is their history. They are the worlds authority on that subject, as they have access to all the relevant historical documents and data and archaeological sites. They are not an authority on Chinese or Japanese history and they should not behave like they are. If the Chinese people wanted their history to be available to a global audience then Im sure that they would do that themselves.
@@signoguns8501 it's not about the interpretation of the history, of course it's not their expertise but that's besides the point, people want to know more about the history but it's a niche subject area, you're not doing it just on behalf of the people, that's not the way to look at it
Thanks for pointing out the difference between 華裔 and 華僑.I learned Chinese for a very long time and still didn't know how to distinguish these 2 words until now. Also, I would like to see more content about the Shang dynasty on this channel:)
Really love your vids and how well researched they are. Some day I wish to be able to make one as good as yours, like how do you go through so many books to do your reading?
In AP World History one of the intial things we learned was that history is full of "change and continuity" and at this point I just don't agree that continuity exists as a purposeful measure of our progress. Continutity more often than not is enacted as convenience during a major regime change, or as a way to connect locals to their surroundings, usually at the cost of real continuity with indigenous custom. Moreover, change never happens just because of nature. It's almost always a reaction to a major stress which can be war, disease, natural disaster or sustained struggle over several generations. Culture stagnates if its gardens are ignored and flourishes as it comes up against other cultures or natural barriers that demand restructure.
YESS this is actually rlly good content, cuz there's no objective truth in the world. only by seeing the same concept through different perspectives can we be less biased and better informed!! thx mate
People at kings & generals couldn't even be bothered with pronouncing chinese name properly. They should stick with their alexander history instead of playing historian with east asian history
I used to follow king&generals, but after there were some videos that personally i feel those are kinda misleading/influence viewers rather being neutral , i have finally unsubscribed them long before this video was made.
I unfollow K&G too because K&G is not neutral as a modern historian. Some of K&G's videos about ukraine war, you cant say those videos as history videos since the war is still happening until right now. That is biased
I like the term neo-confucianism because it works better with how these thinkers were received in Japan and Korea. The important thing is that Wang Yang-ming for example was interested in slightly different things than what are the main issues tackled in Analects for example. Thus it is good idea to make some kind of a cut but of course, even song and ming confucians are part of the same confucian tradition as earlier thinkers. There are many ways how to put things into boxes and none is necessarilly better than another but it is of course good to know that your particular tradition or periodisation is not the be-all-end-all of things. And this is why a philologist needs the language knowledge to read scholarly works made both within and without of his object of interest.
definitely felt the same when they left out the Tao. And most civilizations felt using writing destroyed language and human memory, so oral tradition, chanted, was key to maintaining all existence. "when existence becomes conscious, intelligence, become intelligent" MMY
This is one thing great about history, it reveals much about the past and also equally much about the present. If you know the storyteller you can learn about the past through the stories they tell, if you know about the past, you can learn about the storyteller through the stories they tell.
When it comes to the sort of "positive orientalism" thing I find myself quite conflicted on harshly criticizing people like Voltaire for it. On the one hand I will concede it does have a tendency to oversimplify, which is always pretty negative, as more detail and more nuance is always better. This can especially be a problem as we tend to look at things from our own particular culture's perspective and might be blind to the implicit flaws or issues in other cultures that may manifest in different ways in our own. On the other hand, learning from other civilizations and using examples from their history and culture to critique the problems with our own culture or to find solutions to our problems just seems to me like a very healthy thing to do. That kind of "he is wrong for positively misrepresenting us!" criticism smacks of "this is ours, you aren't allowed to learn from it". I, personally find that to be quite distressing, as I love to learn Chinese and Buddhist philosophy, and find that they elegantly solve so many problems that I have with many western philosophies and religions.
see i personally would like to see K&G cover more asian topics as well too, even if its accuracy isnt going to be on par with their european vids. but vids like this may really dissuade other eurocentric channels from trying to tackle asian topics.
I find it problematic since its an absurd Western habit to do so while non-Western cultures don't even bother. It leads to situations where Westerners have to bend themselves into pretzels while non-Westerners can continue to be ignorant about other cultures.
You sir made interesting point about European Christians calling philosophies and religions after it's founders like Christianity from Christ. Followers of Islam were until recently called Muhammadens instead of Muslim or Musulmaan (plural) Keep up the good work!
@Cool History Bros - 7:08 I would like to hear more about this point here about Historical Narrative and Evidental History. After all the misconception is cleared up, I think this leads to one of the more honest differences in perception, although even 'earnest' perceptions can be colored the student's cultural context. Perhaps you can point out the limits of evidential history or the lack of evidence need not lead to the presumption that a continuous cultural tradition did not exist. Or show where scholars of the western canon treat 'western' historical narrative with less skepticism than when they approach other cultures. Regardless, I do think this general approach to history can lead to earnest differences in understanding and it's worth further discussion. Overall great video, 10/10 - thanks
I think there is a bias when looking at Asian history, they think that just because there is not enough evidence, that means that it did not exist, they immediately brush it off as mythology and hearsay, that is what a lot of Asian people immediately object to, because they want to ignore and downplay what they can't find
You and Carl Zha should get together..... Carl Zha has no youtube presence, but has a ton of passion and knowledge..... he runs "Silk and Steel" podcast somewhere on the internet, he recently did an exhaustive 3hr runthrough of SinoRussian history on New Atlas with Mark Sleboda and Brian Berletic.... and that was him being quick..... i feel you 2 have good info and overall Chinese history, real Chinese history can do with a visual update that you give.... with western subtitles or such..... Carl Zha might need a good editor though lol, he goes into thorough thorough detail..... anyway just a thing that popped into my head......
1:05 It does. It's worth pointing out, though, that Roman culture of the Bronze Age civilisation is not the same civilisation as Roman culture from the period of the Classical civilisation, which is not the same as the modern Western civilisation (which has its roots in the early medieval period of Western European history). The civilisation of our ancestor or forebear is not necessarily our civilisation.
This is a problem I have with RU-vid history content: there is very little feedback to correct errors. In academia, there is peer review process that checks and validates new content. So errors are caught in various stages of the life of the content: before publication, post publication, citation, and curation. Mistake/disinformation is caught before it goes public. Then conclusions are debated in public. As time passes, the number of citations by following publications also serve as another check on validity. The much later whether the content is included in summary articles or textbooks is yet another hurdle an article has to pass through to be a part of canon. Not only that, errors are associated with the authors and reputation (or infamy) follows them around forever. On RU-vid, there is only self check before going public, and then occasional dispute like on this video or comments from people who know mixed in with random comments. And there is hardly any downside for creators who get things incorrect. We should all be weary of trusting the accuracy of RU-vid history content.
That's because most viewers don't always know if the videos are watching are being truthful or not. Imagine if someone uploads a video about "The Great Green King of the african kingdom of Zamzibawitatusi" and made it look like a real history lesson people who simply never heard of it might think is true just because they just where looking for african History with no previous knowledge about the matter. Like some say "the easiest way to spread misinformation is by just by telling a lie directly".
First of all, there have been a lot of scandals in academia where people have been caught faking data, and this fraud has been discovered long after the studies those data became foundational knowledge and received mass citations. There is also a replication crisis where many studies cannot be replicated when reattempted. Perhaps worst of all, there is a self reinforcing ideological bias in academia that undermines its ability to objectively analyze evidence or hypothesis that challenge said ideology. So, while I will say there are good things about academia, like the practice of citing of sources or having the facilities needed to do certain experiments, the peer review process isn't really one of them. The peer review process does very little to assist in finding the truth, and is more of a popularity contest in which reviewers will apply very high or very low levels of scrutiny due to ideological reasons. Second of all, most of the criticisms in this video are more nitpicks than substantial criticisms. Kings and Generals wanted to plant the flag at corroborated history, and the Shang dynasty is decent place. If you push it back to Xia you enter into much more disputed territory. Kings and Generals are appealing to some objective standard they're upfront about, whereas Cool History Bros comes off as wanting to go back as far as possible.
Can Voltaire's and the Enlightenment's appreciation of Confucian rationalism help us in explaining the greater compatibility with the West and greater facility in modernization that is shown by Confucian-based societies in East Asia, compared to the non-Confucian societies in most other societies around the world?
By 700 BC I would think that the Latins were familiar with Iron technology. "Civilization" was usually referring to cities, for obvious reasons. And Historians hung out in cities -- so the original bias. Nice presentation BTW.
Pardon me CJ, i wonder if you had seen Useful Charts channel, it provides a great overview of the world history.. It might be how they label it as 'continuous' history of a country.. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-__BaaMfiD0Q.html
Honestly, Kings and Generals should go back to what they actually know- Classical history, instead of making fools out of themselves shallowly failing at other cultures and histories.
I think the most tragic part of that video is that it has provided a “justification” for misinformed/racist people to hate on chinese history and chinese people in general.
Tho this video does point out one very important concept that will probably grow ever more popular. It's that, in today's globalized world, and way more peaceful world (compared to the past), people of different cultural backgrounds actually have time and the will to try to understand each other, whether for personal benefits or ideals. And so there's a very important notion to keep in mind when learning about others, it's that Human Nature tends to relate new information to old ones to facilitate understanding. Just like how AuburnTiger6 said, North American Western ppl learning about Chinese culture often might think China "wiped out" other cultures rather than integrating them, exactly because the go-to reference might be the Native Americans. And it's probably the same vice-versa, so no need to feel targeted lol. So the message is to just be conscious of our own cognitive biases when learning new things and to stay the most open we can. Anyway, I definitely also have my own biases, but I just hope this little comment can contribute to the greater concept of Human Understanding. Maybe make some other fellows realize newer understandings! :)
Didn't chinese dynasty invaded and impose their culture on that land though? Sure the process may be slow but hey there were also indians who became christian and spoke English and started getting into English culture during British raj too and no western power didn't wiped out the natives, the diseases did, there were massacres yes but I don't think they were in 10s of thousands like the Wing invasion of turkestan.
I love how he debunked kings and generals without using the terms racism and ignorance. K&G have more posts with skewed perspectives. Thank you for this.
In some other episodes, they even messed up the map of ancient and medieval Asia. Not to mention how they even depicted pre-Qing dynasty Chinese horribly with those Manchu clothings and queue hairstyle that weren’t supposed to be there. It’s like they were watching John Wayne’s Genghis Khan and came up with those ideas like that
Yeah I noticed some mistakes in the kings and generals video and I was waiting for you to make a response video clearing things up, it’s important to amicably point out mistakes in academic matters as otherwise those mistakes can grow out of proportion and become scientific dogma which will attempt to protect itself causing potentially more mistakes and more problems…I’m short for academics and the study of all sciences(which I consider to be all areas of knowledge) it is important to constantly correct mistakes Both yours and that of other academics, this is both a matter of taking up responsibility for your own actions and taking responsibility for the science you practice, we know for a fact sciences and the scientific method are NOT dogmatic in nature, the very nature of how science is conducted means that it proves itself wrong over time and nothing discovered by any science can be absolute truth unless it is fully proven to be so(the basic theory of gravity for example), therefore being dogmatic about science and academics leads nowhere and as scholars we must always be challenging our own scientific beliefs and our own ideas for the very sake of the study of all knowledge which we all love.
As soon as you realize that history is about written records and not about speculation from archaeologists, the Chinese claim is one of the best . As for being intelligible, when all ancient languages have evolved over time and the modern evolutions are not identical to historical language.
I think most current Chinese and Minorities can trace their culture up to the earliest Mid-Late Tang and Song Dynasty period. I have more confidence in the Song Dynasty. Everything before then is kind of fuzzy. Due to so many diaspora ever since the collapse of Eastern Han Dynasty. The logic is because during these times it's when peasants or commoners have a shot at bureaucratic work and entrance exams. So its a lot easier for the commoner to pass down knowledge. Where earlier Dynasty are reserved to a select few of noble lineage. I am more a bit iffy on the Sui/Early Tang because of so many deaths. And late Tang due to so many civil wars and populace displacement. It wasn't until Song Dynasty there is a consolidation that a commoner Chinese descent can make an argument way way in the past.
First they thought Confucious never existed and then they thought Da Yu was Aquaman?! I can't even. Thanks CHB for getting angry with them because I'm laghing too hard to frown.🤣
Well, I don't think Romulus and Remus are true historical figures either. They are also at least partially mythical. Therefore, it's not hard to apply the same perspective to Yu and Xia, at least in the versions of the stories that we have received.
The mentioning of Hammurabi under Western History may seem dubious, but the whole point of that was to underline that Chinese civilisation has a longer history than that of Europe. Hammurabi is just a recognisable figure. And while Chaldean, Akkadian, Sumerian cultures are so distant from the current Iraqi one, that a continuous link is not seriously considered, there is likely a genetic legacy at least. And this sort of moves us to the example of Egypt, which is one of a continuous civilisation (be it with major shifts through time), and the oldest such example. It would have made sense to compare Chinese and Egyptian history closely, to point out similarities and differences - both have had their fair share of external rules, and cultural and linguistic shifts - but China's external ruling classes still ruled from within, while Egypt was part of Persian, Roman, caliphate empires; Egypt also saw more drastic religious and linguistic changes, but there is still genetic continuity, so even those changes would have happened smoothly and continuously. Point is that China presents a quite unique example in History, well worth our time to learn. But it is not a unicorn - it can still, in every regard, be compared with equivalent examples elsewhere. That, i hope, covers both extremes.
@@iamgreat1234 It's something every European knows. And there is this story of civilisation moving continuously from Iraq and Egypt, through Greece and Rome, to all of Europe.
@@iamgreat1234 That means nothing - neither did Charlemagne. You're missing the point - it is recognisable History for anyone in the West (unlike the Chinese History it is being compared to).
I feel like it would be more accurate to suggest that China is a continuous civilization, but not a singular continuous nation. Similar to how "Europe" isn't a nation
I like Kings and Generals, but the way they'll sacrifice and compromise on being historically accurate, for a channel that professes to emphasise historical accuracy, in the name of entertainment, is irksome sometimes.
5:25 "Myths are not stories that are untrue. Rather, they are tales that do not fit neatly into the historical record, which serve as a foundation to a culture." - Matt Krol, Extra Credits
