PRE-HISTORY

For details on when the east met with the west, see my recent discussions on the Huns, the Yuezhi, the Tarim Mummies, the Yuezhi-Yushi misnomer, the Mongoloid-Caucasoid admixture, the fallacy of the Aryan bearing of the Chinese civilization, the fallacy of the Yuezhi jade trade, the Yuezhi migration timeline, as well as the location of the Kunlun Mountain, Queen Mother of the West the proto-Tibetan Qiangic jade trade with the Sinitic Chinese, and the Qiang's possible routes of passages into Chinese Turkestan at http://www.imperialchina.org/Barbarians.htm which was embedded within the Huns.html and Turks_Uygurs.html pages. (Also see my discussion on the ethnic nature of ancient Huns belonging to part of the epic Jiang-rong human migration of the Jiang-surnamed San-miao people and Yun-surnamed Xianyun people.)   To expound the myth of the Koreans and the Altaic-speaking people, most recent DNA analyses need to be taken into account. Doctorate Li Hui from Fudan University of China had analyzed the DNA of Asians to derive a conclusion that the ancestors of Mongoloid Asians possessed a distinctive Mark M89 by the time they arrived in Southeast Asia. About 30,000 years ago, from the launching pad of Southeast Asia, the early Mongoloids went through a genetic mutation to Marker M122. Li Hui claimed that the early migrants to the Chinese continent took three routes via two entries of today's Yunnan and Guangxi-Guangdong provinces. The interesting theory adopted by Li Hui would be the migration of one Mongoloid branch of people who, at about 20,000 years, continued to travel non-stop along the Chinese coastline to reach the Liao-he River area of Manchuria where they developed into Altaic-speaking peoples, i.e., ancestors of the Turks and the Mongols. Though, there was not enough evidence in-between today's Vietnam and today's Manchuria to corroborate this speculation. More, the early Mongoloid people who arrived in Manchuria 20,000 years ago must have moved on to reach the American continent in-between two latest glaciations.   Combining Li Hui's study with the pottery excavation, we could see a clear path going north extending from around 15,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago. Refer to Yaroslav V. Kuzmin's discourse on potteries to see the path of migration of proto-Mongoloids from southwestern China (approx. 15,120±500 BP) to Northeast Asia (Manchuria [13,000 BP, or c. 14,000 - 13,600 cal BC] and Japan [c. 11,800–10,500 cal BC (c. 13,800 - 12,500 cal BP)]) to Siberia (11,000 BP, or 11,200 - 10,900 cal BC).   In the timeframe of about 10,000 years and developing a genetic mutation to marker M134, one more branch of people who went direct north, per Li Hui, would penetrate the snowy Hengduan Mountains of the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau to arrive at the area next to the Yellow River bends. Owning to the cold weather environment, big noses, heavy lips and longer faces developed among this group of people, i.e., ancestors of the Sino-Tibetans. Splitting out of this northbound migrants would be those who went to the east with a new genetic marker M117, i.e., ancestors of modern Han Chinese. We could say that our Sino-Tibetan ancestors forgot that they had penetrated northward the Hengduan Mountains from the Indo-China "CORRIDOR" in today's Burma-Vietnam. "Walking down Mt Kunlun", i.e., the "collective memory of ethnic Han Chinese" throughout China and Southeast Asian Chinese communities, that was echoed in Guo Xiaochuan's philharmonic-agitated epic, would become the starting point of the eastward migration which our Chinese ancestors remembered. (Li Hui grouped the 3000-year-old Chu and Qi people in the same category as the Han Chinese, albeit meeting the ancient classics' records as to the Qi statelet's lineage from the Qiangic-Tibetan Fiery Lord.) The rest of the north-bound group of people would develop into ancestors of today's Tibetans. This seems to corroborate with Scholar Luo Xianglin's claim that early Sino-Tibetan peoples originated from the Mt Minshan and upperstream River Min-jiang areas of today's Sichuan-Gansu provincial borderline and then split into two groups, with one going north to reach the Wei-shui River and upperstream Han-shui River of Shenxi Prov and then eastward to Shanxi Prov by crossing the Yellow River.   One more branch of early Mongoloids, about 10,000 years ago, were commented to have entered China's southeastern coastline with genetic marker M119. Li Hui, claiming the same ancestry as the Dai-zu and Shui-zu minorities of Southwestern China, firmly believed that his ancestors had dwelled in the Hangzhou Bay and the Yangtze Delta for 7-8 thousand years. The people with M119 marker would be the historical "Hundred Yue Peoples". Li Hui then pointed out that the ancient Wu people, with M7 genetic marker, came to the lower Yangtze area about 3000 years ago. While Li Hui claimed that the M7 Wu people had split away from the northbound M134 Sino-Tibetan people, historical classics pointed out that the Wu Statelet was established by two uncles of Zhou Dynasty King Wenwang, i.e., migrants from the Yellow River area.   As to today's Koreans, this webmaster believed that at most they had a tiny ingredient of this group of early proto-Mongoloid who moved north from 20,000 years ago, just as the Homo sapiens had taken in a portion of the DNA from the Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. Li Hui's claim that today's Koreans were the mixtures of the early migrants to Manchuria and the later Yi migrants from Eastern China, did corroborate with this webmaster's historical analysis of the Huns, Turks and Mongols -- which yielded the conclusion i) that there was no chance for an east-west through traffic across the Gobi (Dazi, Tengri & Liusha [Kumtag]) in prehistory; ii) that the Mongoloid had a pattern of raiding to the west, not the other way around by the Indo-Europeans. This certainly dealt a blow to the Korean nationalists' claim of a "Siberian origin" as well as the Tangun myth --which in my opinion was a 13th century A.D. forgery on basis of ancient Chinese scholars' statements that the Sushen-shi people at the Japan Sea submitted the tributes (i.e., stone arrows) to China at the time of Lords Yao-Shun-Yu. (See Assertions By Wang Zhonghan for clues as to the relationship between/among the Qiangic Proto-Tibetan, the Sino-Tibetan Jiang-rong (Proto-Hun), and the Altaic Xianbei/Mongols: "the northern barbarians and the western barbarians were similar [i.e., Qiangs] at the Spring-Autumn time period, but by the time of the late Warring States time period, the Chinese began to see the northern barbarians as different from the western barbarians". Namely, the ancient Huns were offsprings of the ancient Sino-Tibetan Jiang-rong people at the Yellow River bends while the Xianbei, the Khitan, the Mongol, the Jurchen and the Manchu people were all related to the Tungusic people from today's Northeastern China.)

* In Commemoration of China's Fall under the Alien Conquests in A.D. 1279, A.D. 1644 & A.D. 1949 * Korean/Chinese Communists & the 1931 Japanese Invasion of Manchuria * Stay tuned for "Republican China 1911-1955: A Complete Untold History" *

China's earliest substantiated year would be the fourteen year "interregnum" (commonly known as 'gong he' or modern-sense republican administrative period but alternatively known as the collective leadership by 'gong' and 'he' royal court uncles) of Western Zhou Dynasty, beginning from year 841 B.C.E. (This could be a mis-construed point since scholars pointed out that the two words for 'republican' could be two uncles of the King.)   There is a reason for the ambiguity of early Chinese dates. China's cultural heritage suffered a severe setback as a result of Qin Emperor Shihuangdi's book burning in the 3rd century B.C.E. 150 years after book burning, scholars were still having difficulties re-compiling the lost classics. It was recorded that some surviving books hidden by the 8th grandson of Confucius (Kong Zixiang) inside of the walls in Confucius' house were discovered during Han Emperor Wudi's reign in the 1st century B.C.E., when King Lugong-wang was demolishing Confucius' former residence for expanding his palace. This tranche of rediscovered texts enabled scholars to make comparisons between the authentic rotten bamboo books and those books which were re-compiled via oral recitation from memories of old scholars. Because of the damages from Qin Shihuangdi's book burning and General Xiang Yu's arson of the Qin imperial palaces [and imperial library], important history books were forever destroyed. More, Kong An'guo, the 11th generation grandson of Confucius, who used senior scholar Fu-sheng's recital texts to compare againt the tadpole fonts, recorded in parallel as much the ancient tadpole-font texts as he could interpret in transcribing the texts found in Kong Zixiang's residence. After Kong An'guo, the ancient Chinese lost the sense of properly interpreting the tadpole languages -- such as inscribed on the Gou-lou-bei Monument -- which were today commonly perceived to be the original language used by the Xia Dynasty people. (Per Kong An'guo, those books with texts that could not be deciphered were surrendered to the government for safe-keeping so that some future capable person could study them.)
 
China's civilization is dated later than the Sumer Civilization of 3500 B.C.E., the Ancient Egyptian Civilization of 3100 B.C.E., the Minoan Civilization of 2000 B.C.E., and the Indus Civilization of 2500 B.C.E.  The excavations, however, had produced refined potteries going back as much as 5000 B.C.E. Six bone flutes dating from 7000-5700 B.C at site of Jiahu in central Henan Province certainly pointed to the existence of an advanced human civilization. In the same area, tortoise shells with the pictograms were found buried with human remains in 24 graves unearthed at Jiahu. The notable thing about the Chinese Civilization is that it is not disrupted ever since, even under the barbarian rule in between. Both the Mongols and the Manchus, who had ruled an integral China, had adopted the Chinese language for its governance, for example. (Also see Robert Murowchick's grumbling about the Jiahu discovery from the 7th to 6th millennia B.C.; however, the problem with the Chinese side is that people like Li Xueqin, to make archaeology a political task, had very likely mixed in forgeries with true artifacts, making the world archaeology community suspicious of even genuine excavation from China.)
 

• 5000 B.C.E.?: The Hemudu Culture established a presence along the lower Yangtze River delta. There is evidence of rice cultivation, fishing, and wood frame houses etc. The Hemudu Culture was validated to have excavated articles bearing the bird-sun totem, a heritage observed in the later Yangshao Culture and Longshan Culture;
   
  
• 4000 - 3000 B.C.E.: The Yangshao Culture in the Yellow River area. There is evidence of round structures built from mud-brick with a thatched roof and a central peak and agriculture to clear the land to plant crops of millet, wheat, barley, and some rice. Excavations from Quanhu-chun Village, Liuzi-zhen Town, Hua-xian County, Shenxi Prov had produced colored pottery depicting a bird totem with the sun in the wing.
   
  Tian Changwu stated that around 4000 B.C.E., the Yangshao Culture began to exhibit the sign of clan communes which would progress to 'patria potestas' clan from 'matria potestas' clan by 3500 B.C.E. approx.
   
  Tian Changwu also stated that the Dawenkou Culture, near the Wen-shui River of Shandong Prov, had entered the phase of clan commune and then split into non-promiscuity marriage relationship and 'patria potestas' clan earlier than Yangshao Culture.
   
  Corresponding stages of cultures in other parts of China would include: the Songze Culture and the Qingliangang Culture in the lower Yangtze River, Qujialing Culture in the middle Yangtze River, and the Majiayao Culture in the upper Yellow River.
   
  
• 2500-1900 B.C.E.: The Longshan Culture across the North China Plain and the hills of the Shandong Peninsula. The early Chinese cultivated millet and rice, raised pigs, sheep, goats, cattle and water buffalo, possessed permanent villages surrounded by mud walls, and utlized wells for irrigating fields. (The Chinese character for home was a cap on top of pig.)
   
  The Longshan Culture possessed i) potteries and china, ii) bronze articles, iii) lacquered wood utensils (which was also in popular usage in ancient American continents), iv) hardened mud and plaster, and v) jade, bone and musical articles. The Longshan Culture excavations had produced potteries with similar bird totems as the Yangshao Culture. Dragon totem was also found in the same area: Scholar Gao Wei pointed out that the colored Pottery from Taosi Excavations of the Longshan Culture in Xiangfen of Shanxi Prov had shown a winding dragon [on basis of snake-prototype per Liu Zhixiong & Yang Jingrong].

                                       ---------------------------------------------------------
                                          Yangshao Culture (4000-3000 BC)
                                       ---------------------------------------------------------

                     Banpo Type --> Dongzhuangcun Type --> Miaodigou Type --...--> Xiwangcun Type

       --------------------------------------------------------             --------------------------------------------------------------
        Miaodigou Culture II (3000-2500 BC)                 Longshan Culture Taosi Type (2500-1900 BC)
       --------------------------------------------------------             -------------------------------------------------------------

           Early Stage --> Middle Stage --> Late Stage                          Early Stage --> Middle Stage --> Late Stage

                                                                                           Taosi (2400-1800 BC)                     Dongxiafeng Type (2200-1700 BC)     

                                       ---------------------------------------------------------
                                                         Erlitou Culture
                                       ---------------------------------------------------------

                    Dongxiafeng Type Of Erlitou Culture (2200-1700 BC)         Yanshi Type of Erlitou Culture (1900-1500 BC)

         Sui-ren-shi
            |
            |
        You-chao-shi 
            |
            |
     Pao-xi-shi (Fu-xi-shi)
            |
           ...
    (a dozen of bird-totem clans)
           ...
            |
       Shen-nong-shi (Yandi)
            |
            |
       You-xiong-shi (Huangdi, aka Xuanyuan-shi or Xuan-yuan-shi)

Two proto groups of peoples, Hua People (also denoted Huaxia or Xia where the character 'hua' was said to have derived from the Huashan Mountain near Xi'an city, a name that was more likely to have been appropriated from across the Yellow River, or derived from the name of the He-xu/Hua-xu tribe) vs the Yi People, would come into play in this prehistoric time period. Scholar Liu Qiyu pointed out that 'hua' and 'xia', pronounced the same way as [hwer] in today's Yangtze Delta dialects, would mean for the original land of the Xia people under Lord Huangdi and later Lord Yu, a place validated to be southern Shanxi Prov, with three ancient bends of the Yellow River forming a U-shape loop. (In ancient times, the Western Bend would be today's Eastern Bend.) Liu Qiyu located the ancient Hua-shui River in southern Shanxi Prov and claimed that Huashan Mountain of Shenxi Prov was a name that was later appropriated.
 
At the very beginning, there was no 'east' connotation to the Yi people as the people living in the eastern Chinese coast, i.e., the offsprings from the two clans of Tai-hao-shi and Shao-hao-shi, were categorically called by 'Yi', a word that semantically meant the people carrying bows, not to do with the later denotation as the 'Eastern Barbarians". During Zhou Dynasty, as a result of confrontation between the Zhou people who were from the west [but might have migrated to the west from the east as the Qin people did --as corroborated by the Hunnic usurper Liu Yuan who made the claim during the time period of Five Nomadic Groups Ravaging China], and the remnant Shang people who were the natives dwelling in the middle China and along the eastern coast, the records began to carry passages after passages of fightings between the pretentious 'Central Kingdom' Zhou people and the so-called barbarians (i.e., rebels) in the originally Shang Dynasty land to the east.

 
The classification of early Chinese into two groups would be an over-simplication. Since issues still exist as to the sub-components that had comprised the two major groups of people, it would be a good generalization for the time being. The issues would be: i) how to explain the relationship of Chiyou vs Huangdi vs Yandi tribal groups; ii) how to explain the fact that dragon-totem Huangdi tribal group shared the same bird-totem as all those a) people from the former cultures, b) the original Yi people, and b) the latter Dong-yi [Eastern Yi] people; iii) how to explain the fact that Chiyou's Jiu-li (Nine Li2) tribal group could have shared the ox-embodiment as Yandi tribal group; iv) how to dispute the claim that the Huangdi tribal group might have origin in the [nomadic] Kalgan area (i.e., the Hongshan Culture land in today's Inner Mongolia, versus the wild claim as to the link with the Altaic-speaking people on the possibly non-existent ancient steppe of today's Outer Mongolia; v) how to refute Scholar Wang Guowei's claim that the dragon-totem Xia people dispersed to the north and the west as two respective branches of the Huns and the Yuezhi (i.e., an apparent fallacious extrapolation of the ancient Yu-shi tribe to the Yuezhi using soundex) after Shang Dynasty overthrew the Xia rule in Henan Prov; and vi) how to explain southern barbarians' adoption of dogs as a possible totem.
 
There had been speculation by someone called Qin Yanzhou in regards to Yandi, Huangdi and Chiyou. Qin Yanzhou claimed that the ox-totem Yandi tribal group had evolved from the proto-Xi-Rong people in northwestern China and that the bird-totem (? simultaneously dragon-totem) Huangdi tribal group had evolved from the proto-Bei-Di people in northern China. Qin Yanzhou also claimed that after the mix-up of Yandi/Huangdi tribal groups, they adopted 'dragon' as the totem (??? very speculative). Qin Yanzhou's wild speculation also claimed a direct relationship of those proto peoples to the excavated homo erectus in different areas of China, a physiological fallacy in light of the common knowledge that human beings came from the homo sapien sapien instead. Qin Yanzhou had another flaw as far as reconciling the timing and history of the San-Miao relocation to today's Gansu Province during Lord Shun's reign is concerned.
 
Common-sense historians agreed that the Proto-Xi-Rong people in northwestern China would be later Qiang[1] and Di[1] (i.e., ancestors of the Tibetan people) while the proto-Bei-Di people in northern China would be later steppe people like the Huns and Turks, which was another fallacy in light of the discovery by Wang Zhonghan showing that the northern barbarians and the western barbarians appeared to be the same during the early part of Zhou Dynasty, i.e., the ancient Jiang-rong people. The Proto-Bei-Di people had been linked to the later Altaic-language speaking people like the Huns and the Turks, and inclusively, the Tungunsic people of today's northeastern Mongolia and western Manchuria, while the proto-Xi-Rong people would be Qiangic ancestors of today's Tibetans. The important thing to bear in mind is that at the very early stage of the human development, the human migration was diverging to the perimeters, not converging to the center. Hence, the proto barbarians at the perimeter could have only evolved from one origin at the center. Wang Zhonghan's point was that the northern barbarians and the western barbarians appeared to be different during the later part of Zhou Dynasty: namely, while the western barbarians remained to be the ancient Jiang-rong people, the northern barbarians had the traits of the Tungusic-speaking people from today's Manchuria, or the Xianbei people. (This conincided with Lv Simian's research to show that the later known Huns and the Donghu people, at the time of Mote the first Hunnic chanyu, lived just 1000-li distance apart on the two opposite edge of a vacant land somewhere north of today's Kalgan.)
 
Should we buy Wang Zhonghan's research showing the early Huns were the Sino-Tibetan Jiang-rong, then the Hunnic language [or its successor Turkic language] could not be Altaic as was that of the later Mongols and the Jurchens/Manchus, i.e., all later predatory tribes from today's northern Xing'an Ridge and the Amur River area. In separate sections, we touched on the hair style of the barbarians, including the pigtail style of Tuoba, the cut hair style of the Xianbei and Wuhuan, and the cut hair and pigtail style of the Jurchens and Manchus, to state that both the Huns and the later Turks had in fact shared a similar hair style as the Sinitic Chinese, namely, no hair cut plus the bundling of hair. The difference between the Huns and the Sinitic Chinese was "hu2 [Huns] fu2 [clothing] ZHUI1 [back of the head] jie2 [bundling the hair]", while the Sinitic Chinese bundled the hair at the top of the head. As commented by historian Huang Wenbi, the Qiangic people in western China, who had been exiled there from the east as this webmaster had repeatedly said, shared the same customs as the ancient Yi people along the eastern Chinese coast, namely, they did not bundle hair and further had an opposite direction as far as wrapping the clothing was concerned, namely, "bei4? pi1?[dangling] fa1 [hair] zuo3 [left] REN4 [overlapping part of Chinese gown]".
 
Scholar Luo Xianglin's Assertions
Scholar Luo Xianglin, in "History of Chinese Nationalities" (Chinese Culture Publishing Enterprise Co, Taipei, Taiwan, May 1953 edition), stated that ancient China possessed five tribal groups: Xia, Qiang, Di[1], Yi, and Man[2]. Per Luo Xianglin, Xia people first originated in Mt Minshan and upperstream River Min-jiang areas of Sichuan-Gansu provincial borderline. Xia people then split into two groups, with one going north to reach Wei-shui River and upperstream Han-shui River of Shenxi Prov and then east to Shanxi Prov by crossing the Yellow River.
 
The second group, per Luo Xianglin, went south to populate southern Chinese provinces as the 'Yue' people. Luo Xianglin's linking Yue people to Xia people was based on the common lexicon 'yue' which meant for excavated ancient "stone axe".
 
Luo Xianglin stated that five tribal groups of Xia, Qiang, Di[1], Yi, and Man[2] shared the same origin.
 
Discussions In Anthology "Hua Xia Civilization"
Scholar Gao Wei pointed out that the colored Pottery from Taosi Excavations of Longshan Culture in Xiangfen of Shanxi Prov, dated 2400-2500 B.C.E. approx, had shown a winding dragon. Should we use the dragon totem as a guide, then this place of excavation (i.e., southern Shanxi Prov) would be the original site of the early Xia people. (Chinese classics had mentioned two dragon-related clans, i.e., the Huan-long-shi clan during Lord Shun's reign and the Yu-long-shi clan during Xia Dynasty. Here, 'huan' meant for raising or husbandry, 'yu4' meant for driving or controlling, while 'long' meant for dragon.) As explained earlier, Longshan Culture excavations, like the preceding Yangshao Culture, had produced potteries with mostly bird totems, including a bird totem with the sun in the wing.
 
The Longshan Culture, having interactions with bird-totem Dong-yi people to the southeast, could pose an academic challenge as to the nature of ethnicity. Consensus would be to treat the Longshan Culture as equivalent to Xia Dynasty and to equate the Longshan Culture people to the dragon-totem tribe under former Huangdi the Yellow Lord and consecutively Lord Yu. Should we deem the dragon-totem component as an outsider, then we could still claim the nativity of bird-totem component as the first-stage and accept the emergence of dragon-totem as the second-stage of the culture in this area. The safest bet would be to treat both bird-totem Yi people and dragon-totem Xia people as merely two parallel developing tribal groups that shared the same Sino-Tibetan origin, with the former migrating to the east one step ahead of the latter. The Xia people, per Liu Qiyu, later moved from today's Shanxi to Henan Prov to establish the dynasty of Xia, and Liu Qiyu validated the demise of Xia in Henan Prov by citing the ancient statement that 'Xia Dynasty ended when the Yi-shui and Luo-shui rivers ran dry'. The Xia people certainly brought with them the important dragon totem, a mark that was later observed among the Huns of Mongolia and the Tungus of Manchuria for the thousands of years to come. This important totem also denote their continuous blood or tribal relationship.
 
Ancient records claimed that early legendary lords of Yao [Yao-di], Shun [Shun-di] and Yu [Yu-di] had prospered in different locations of central China at different stages: first Lord Yao (Tao-tang-shi) in southern Shanxi Prov, then Lord Shun (You-yu-shi) in Henan-Shandong provinces, and lastly Lord Yu (Xia-hou-shi) in western Henan Prov. Hence, Tian Changwu compromised different views by stating that the Xia people might have two tribes, with 1) father Gun developing in southern Shanxi Prov where they were previously subordinate to Lord Yao and 2) son Lord Yu developing in western Henan Prov by means of an alliance with descendants of Lord Zhuanxu's tribe. Lord Yu, per Tian Changwu, adopted 'xuan yu' (i.e., black fish) as the totem while his father Gun continued with the dragon totem and Lord Yu's tribe would later absorb his father's native Xia people in southern Shanxi Prov. (The character 'Gun' was a combination of two words: black and fish. Senior scholar Wei Chu-Hsien pointed out that ancient Gun legends in "Shan Hai Jing" implied a possible migration of Gun's people to the American continents since Gun's body turned into 'huang xiong' [American Brown Bear] in the water.)
 
The Burial Difference Among Dragon-totem People & Bird-totem People
What could be confidently validated would be the burial difference in dragon-totem and bird-totem peoples. Studies of tomb burials from Yangshao and Longshan excavations, per Liu Qiyu, had disclosed two drastically different cultures, with the eastern China containing male-female joint burials while those in western China merely single male burials. Liu Qiyu pointed out that the Xia people to the west had adopted the ancient 'concubine inheritance system', i.e., the successors of nobles or lords would take over the concubines and wives of their fathers and brothers instead of forcing those women to be buried alive with their late husbands. Here, one more linkage, i.e., the 'concubine inheritance system', exists to point to the Huns and Turks as the descendants of the Xia people.
 
Reconciliation for Different Totems
Qin Yanzhou speculated that proto-Dong-Yi shared similar ancestry as proto-Bei-Di, while proto-Nan-Man shared similar ancestry as proto-Xi-Rong. Qin Yanzhou claimed that proto-Dong-Yi had come to eastern China from the steppe earlier than Huangdi's proto-Bei-Di people's relocation to northern China from the steppe (??? highly speculative !!! Read Shi-zi's statement in regards to deep eyesocket barbarians to the north of Huangdi for clarification). Qin Yanzhou's claim in regards to proto-Nan-Man's relationship to proto-Xi-Rong is close to related studies in regards to the relationship between Nü-wa (Nü-wa-shi) and Fu-xi (Fu-xi-shi), but both approaches had violated the historical claim that Nü-wa and Fu-xi had adopted the bird-totem the same way as the Yi (misnomer Eastern Yi) people, i.e., the original inhabitants of China in the central plains and along the Shandong coast.
 
As a result of conversion and diversion of the said five tribal groups, any allusion to a pure totem distinction would be futile. Should any tribal group possess a totem from another tribal group, it would doubtless be the result of conversion. http://www.xslx.com/htm/shgc/zgls/2004-02-17-16092.htm, in discussion of the ancient overlords Huangdi, Yandi & Chiyou and their wars, had attempted to sort out the tribal groups to no effect. (The merit of this discussion, in my viewpoint, would be the tracing of the origin of a common erroreous claim in regards to "nomadic" or "mobile" nature of Huangdi the Yellow Overlord, hence refuting derivative claim that Huangdi's people had link to the Altaic steppe people. Author Wang Xiansheng, in pointing out that Shang Dynasty's ancestor, i.e., King Wang-hai, was killed in the You-yi-guo territory while herding sheep and buffalo, with no mention of "horse raising" or "horseback warrior" whatsoever, concluded that Huangdi, who was hundred years earlier than Shang King Wang-hai, would not have anything to do with "horse raising" or "horseback warrior" of the steppe people.)
 
By citing the sentence of "relocating various groups of people and zoning the territories of the nation" inside the "Section On Xia Lord Yu" in Sima Qian's "Historian's Records", Scholar Luo Xianglin attributed the i) flooding at the end of Stone Age and ii) Xia people's "quelling floods" activities to the initial migration and diaspora of five ancient tribal groups. That is how the ancient designations like "zhong [central] xia", "hua [flowery] xia", "zhu [various] xia" and "qu [different?] xia" came about. In Luo Xianglin's viewpoint, four other tribal groups of Qiang, Di[1], Yi, and Man[2] went through a process of conversion and diversion with Xia people. In the west, Qiangic people spread across Tibet-Qinghai-Sichuan-Gansu-Shenxi provinces to become Xi-Rong & Xi-Qiang; in the east, Yi [meaning the people with bows semantically] spread across Jiangsu-Anhui-Shandong-Henan-Hebei-Manchuria to become Dong-Yi; in the south, Man[2] spread across Hubei-Hunan-Jiangxi-Guizhou-Guangxi-Fujian-Zhejiang to become Nan-Man; and in the north, Di[1] spread across Xinjiang-Ningxia-Mongolia-Shanxi-Hebei provinces to become Bei-Di. Here, Xi-Rong or Western Rong meant for later Rong people (Sino-Tibetan speaking Qiangic people) in northwestern China, Bei-Di or Northern Di meant for later northern Di[2] people, Dong-Yi or Eastern Yi people meant for later Yi people in the east, and Nan-Man or Southern Man2 meant for the southern barbarians.
 
Note that Scholar Wang Zhonghan cited "Guan-zi" in stating that it would be around the middle of Warring States time period that Qi Principality editors adopted the terms of four barbarians as might have existed at the time of Guan-zi [Guan Zhong] of the Spring & Autumn time period. Any four directional designations earlier than the Warring States time period of Eastern Zhou Dynasty would be merely for sake of differentiating among proto barbarians.
 
 

The orthodox order in Sima Qian's Shi-ji

 HUANGDI
   |-Changyi---Gaoyang---Qiongyi-Jingkang-Juwang-Qiaoniu-Gusou-SHUN
   |             (ZHUANXU)|
   |                              |
   |                              |------------------------Gun-------------------YU
   |
   |-Xuanxiao--Qiaoji---Gaoxin----YAO
    (SHAOHAO)           (DIKU)

Huangdi (l. B.C.E. 2697 - 2599 ?) married a woman from Xiling (western mountain) Statelet who bore two sons, Xuanxiao and Changyi. His grandson, Lord Zhuanxu (l. B.C.E. 2514 - 2437 ?) succeeded him. Zhuangxu died at age 98. There was a dispute as to whether Xuanxiao (i.e., Shaohao) was ever enthroned. Ancient historians commented that Shaohao possessed the virture of 'gold' or 'metal', one of five metaphysical materials of China. (Five forms include wood, mud, water, metal and fire.) Alternative account would treat Shaohao (Jintian-shi, l. B.C.E. 2598 - 2515 ?) as a ruler with a reign of 84 years, between Lord Huangdi (Xuanyuan-shi) and Lord Zhuanxu (Gaoyang-shi). Shao-hao-shi (junior 'Hao' clan), said to be offsprings of earlier Tai-hao-shi (senior 'Hao' clan), had included various bird-totem sub-clans such as Feng-niao-shi (phoenix), Xuan-niao-shi (black bird clan, i.e., Shang people), Qing-niao-shi (green bird), Zhu-jiu-shi, and Shuang-jiu-shi etc. Lord Zhuanxu's nephew, Diku or Di Ku (Gaoxin-shi, l. B.C.E. 2436 - 2367 ?), was next. Diku had his capital in Bo, later Shang capital and today's Yanshi, Henan Province. Diku, at age 15, began to assist Lord Zhuanxu. Diku got enthroned at age 30 and died at age 105. Diku married a woman from Chen-feng-shi and born Fangxun, i.e., later Lord Yao (l. B.C.E. 2357 - 2258 ?).
 
After the death of Diku, his elder son, Zhi (Gaoxin-shi), got enthroned, but Lord Yao took over the post after 9 years' weak rule by Zhi (reign 2366-2358 B.C.E. ?). Zhi earlier conferred the title of Marquis Tanghou on Yao. Hence Yao(3) was called Tang-yao (reign 2357-2258 B.C.E. ?) or Tao-tang. Alternatively speaking, Yao, per Shi Ji, was originally conferred the land of Tang (Tangxian county of Hebei Prov) in the east; moreover, Yao, per Han Shu, was buried in Jiyin-jun commandary (i.e., Dingdao of Shandong Prov) in the east. Han Shu mentioned a place called Tao-qiu in Dingtao of Shandong. Scholar Liu Qiyu, citing his teacher Gu Xiegang, stated that both Lord Yao and Lord Shun were appropriated to the land of 'Xia' after Xia people's eastward expansion into the bird-totem Eastern Yi barbarian land. (Gu Xiegang cited ancient classics Zu Zhuan in stating that nowhere in Zu Zhuan could find reference that Lord Shun was surnamed 'Yao' or Lord surnamed 'Tang' and that Zu Zhuan did not have any reference about Yu-shi clan of Xia people being the descendant of Lord Shun or Tao-tang-shi of Xia people being the descendant of Lord Yao.)
 
Lord Shun (reign 2257-2208 B.C.E. ?), aka Yu-shun, was called Chonghua or Yao Chonghua for his double apples in his eyes. Alternative history records stated that Lord Shun was more of 'Yi' nature, which would be to say that Lord Shun, of Yao(2) surname, was born near Mount Yaoqiu, near Yuyao of Zhejiang Province in Yangtze Delta. (Ancient records of Kuaiji Commandary stated that Lord Shun was from Shangyu county and that Yaoqiu was 30 Chinese li away from Shangyu; Zhou Chu's Feng Tu Ji [Records of Winds and Soils] stated that Lord Shun was a Dongyi. Zhou Chu could be right in extrapolating the locality if Yao-xu to Zhejiang Province.) Alternatively speaking, Meng-zi stated that Shun was born in Zhufeng of Shandong Prov, relocated to Fuxia (i.e., Puyang of northeastern Henan Prov) and died in Miaotiao (near Kaifeng of Henan Prov) and Mo-zi stated that Shun had tilled fields in Lishan (Heze county of Shandong Prov) and fished in Leize (same area as Heze or Weishanhu Lake area).
 
For five generations before Shun, the family were civilians. Lord Shun was the 6th generation grandson of Lord Zhuanxu. At the age of 20, he was recommended to Lord Yao for his filiality to parents and love for his evil brother. Lord Yao married two daughters, Nu-ying (who bore Shangjun) and Erhuang (E'huang), to Shun. Shun succeeded Yao as the overlord three years after mourning Yao's death. Legalist Han-fei-zi and ancient classics "Zhu Shu Ji Nian" (i.e., "Bamboo Annals" that was excavated from Wei King Xiangwang's tomb) claimed that Lord Shun banished Lord Yao to the south and imprisoned Danzhu (Lord Yao's son). Shun would later quell Danzhu rebellion. Shun would select many saints for managing the country, and this would include Yu (father of Xia Dynasty founder), Xie (Shang Dynasty ancestor), Houji (Zhou Dynasty ancestor), Bo-Yi (Qin Dynasty ancestor) etc. At the suggestion of Yu, Lord Shun further divided the northeastern prefectures to make a total of 12 prefectures. Lord Shun died in the vicinity of Cangwu in southern China, and he was buried in later Lingling Commandary [Mount Qiuyishan, Ningyuan County of Hunan Province, the same place where tens of thousands of landlords and their family members were murdered during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution of 1960s]. (As to the death of Lord Shun in southern China, "Bamboo Annals" claimed that it was Lord Yu who usurped the power and exiled Lord Shun to southern China. However, Chu Bosi pointed out that Lord Shun had died in southern expedition against 'Miao' barbarians.)
 
Yu (r. B.C.E. 2204-2195 ?) would master the flooding which his father failed to control, and Yu rezoned the country into 9 prefectures and made nine bronze 'ding' or cauldrons as embodiment of the nine prefectures called 'jiu zhou'. Yu had his footsteps reaching Dunhuang in the west and Jiaozhi in the south. Lord Yu was recommended to Lord Shun for succession, and he was conferred the title of Count Xia, with land at today's Yangdi. Ban Gu of Latter Han Dynasty disputed the generation gap between Lord Zhuanxu and Lord Yu, claiming that Gun was the fifth generation grandson of Lord Zhuanxu and that Lord Yu would be six generations away from Lord Zhuanxu.
 
Lord Yu was the grandson of Lord Zhuanxu. (There is a dispute here as to Lord Yu. Sima Qian thought that Lord Yu was born in today's Yuxian County, Henan Province, but other people had claimed that Lord Yu came from the Western Rong tribe as Lord Yu was also named 'Rong-yu'. Huangfu Mi said that Mencius also believed that Lord Yu was born in Shiniu, a land where the Western Qiangs lived. Liu Qiyu validated the location of 'xi' or west as nothing other than the areas to the west of today's Tongguan Pass of eastern Shenxi Prov.) Scholar Liu Qiyu, citing his teacher Gu Xiegang, stated that in both Xia people and Chu people's legends, the common gods happened to be Gun and Yu, not Yao and Shun. Liu Qiyu stated that both Lord Yao and Lord Shun were appropriated to the land of 'Xia' after Xia people's eastward expansion into the bird-totem Eastern Yi barbarian land.
 
Lord Yu, in mastering the floods, had travelled across the country. In today's Zhejiang Province, near the east coast, people could still find his monument at which site Qin Emperor Shi Huangdi had once revered 2200 years ago. Though the Xia people led by Lord Yu had originated in northwestern and central China, the Xia descendants had apparently been linked to the rice culture in the Yangtze Delta, namely, today's Taihu Lake, Jiangsu Province. Recent excavations had provided further support to this claim. Chen Shou's San Guo Zhi, written almost 1800 years ago, had even linked the similarity of tattoos on fishermen in Zhejiang to the rice culture people living on the western coast of Japan around the 2nd-3rd centuries. The Wa people of Japan were recorded to have tattoos all over their body, in a similar fashion to the Zhejiang people in Yangtze Delta where the descendants of King Shaokang of Xia Dynasty (21-16th c. BC) had lived.
 
Historian Luu Simian cited Li Ji: Jifa Zhengyi's preface from Cunqiu Minli in stating that Lord Yandi [Da-ting-shi] had 8 generations or 520 years; Lord Huangdi [Xuan-yuan-shi] had 10 generations; Lord Di-xuan [Shaohao or Jin-tian-shi] had 8 generations or 500 years; Lord Zhuanxu [Gao-yang-shi] had 20 generations or 350 years; and Lord Di-ku [Gao-xin-shi] had 10 generations or 400 years. Luu Simian also gave multiple statements from different classics, and concluded that one don't have to thread the years or generations of ancient lords to make it contiguous but roughly understood how ancient Chinese rule had continued.
 
 
The Chinese vs the Barbarians - the Mongols vs Non-Mongols
 
Largely due to the double destructions to the ancient Chinese literature at the time of First Qin Emperor Shihuangdi's book burning and consecutive arson in the hands of General Xiang Yu, the prehistoric contexts of the Chinese are very much blurred. The references to non-Chinese nomadic groups of people are limited and scarce.
 
Two ancient categorical designation of barbarians would be 'Rong(2)' and 'Di(2)'. The word 'Rong' was used mostly with the word 'Xi' for west, while 'Di' with the word 'Bei' for north. According to Sima Qian, among the northern nomads would be 'Shanrong' (Mountain Rong) or Xunyu or Xianyun at times of Lord Yao and Lord Shun, Chunwei tribe at times of Xia Dynasty, Guifang (ghost domain) at times of Shang Dynasty, again Xianyun at times of Zhou Dynasty, and Xiongnu (Huns) at times of Han Dynasty. Also on record would be several nomadic states in the very heart of China, Henan and Shaanxi-Shanxi provinces, with such names as Di and Rong. Inter-marriages between the Rong/Di & Chinese were common. The Rongdi Rongs (ancestors of later Huns) had their daughter married to Zhou King Xiangwang. Prince Chong'Er of Jin Principality, during his long years of exile, had travelled across the whole China domain of the time. He lived for many years in the state of Di where his mother-in-law was from and later married with a woman of Chi Di (Red Di) State, a woman captured by the lord of Di State. According to Xin Tang Shi, the junior son of Changyi (son of Huangdi the Yellow Lord), by the name of An, had relocated to the Western Rong area and designated his state as 'Anxi', a name that later would be used for Persia or Parthia. The later Xianbei nomads also cited that their ancestor was another son of Changyi.
 
Non-Mongolian Physiques
To clarify Chinese ethnic continuity, I had cited Prof Wei Chu-Hsien's interpretation of ancient classics "Shi-zi" in authenticating the record of the deep eye socket people to the north of Huangdi as corrobaration that Huangdi's people were not of deep-socket eyes at all. In the paragraph on the origin of Huns, I had also expounded the ethnic nature of various Rong people as mainly Sino-Tibetan speaking Qiangic people. Today's Chinese are direct descendants of the ancient Chinese. To dispell any speculation, I will list the following sentence as a proof that ancient Chinese took pride in hair's density and blackness as beauty and health: In classics Zuo Zhuan, during the 28th year reign of Lu Lord Zhaogong, a statement was made to infer that in the old times, a You-reng-shi woman bored a beautiful daughter, with 'zhen[3] hei[1]' (i.e., dense and black) hair.
 
Conventional history claimed that the Chinese were monotonous ethnically. A perusal of China's 24 Histories (25 or 26 Histories using a different account), however, showed that the ancient Chinese might not be that monotonous at all. Non-Mongolian physiques did exist among the Chinese as a result of the Chinese interaction with Hunnish, Turkic and Mongol peoples during the course of history. In combination with the Loulan mummies, we could not dismiss the possible exchanges between the ancient Chinese and the Euroasian nomads. As history had recorded, various steppe peoples, at certain points, had been recorded to be people carrying different features as to hair, nose, eye and skin. The Hunnish, Turkic and Mongol peoples, however, should be considered more Mongoloid peoples than else, and they had acted as a kind of buffer in between the Mongoloid and Caucasoid peoples since prehistory. To get a glimpse of ancient Mongoloid, we just need to take a look at terracotta soldiers dug out of Qin Emperor Shihuangdi's tomb.
 
My unchanged belief is that the Sino-Tibetan-speaking Qiangic SanMiao people first reached the He-xi (west of the Yellow River) Corridor of today's Gansu Province 4000 years ago and onward to the Khotan area of southern Chinese Turkistan [as well as crossed the Kumtag Desert to arrive at the Tianshan Mountain Range via today's Loulan]. The Tokharai, possibly related to the Indo-Scythians, reached the areas of the Lake Koko Nor later or at the same time as the Khams proto-Tibetan Qiangs about 2000 B.C.E. [and might had never reached the Tunhuang Grotto at all]. In the Hun section, I had cited descriptions of Non-Mongolian Physiques among the various groups of nomadic peoples who had co-existed and commingled with Chinese. The Huns, who controlled the northern steppe, extending from the Altai Mountains/Lake Balkash to Manchuria, had defeated the Yueh-chih (Yuezhi) and drove them towards Central Asia. In the 2nd century B.C.E., the Hun Chanyu ordered that his "rightside virtuous king" attack the Yuezhi as punishment for the king's disturbing peace at the Chinese border. In 175-174 B.C.E., Hunnic Chanyu's letter to Chinese emperor mentioned that they defeated the Yueh-chih (Yuezhi) people by conquering Loulan, Wusun and Hujie etc, altogether 26 statelets in Chinese Turkistan. The majority Yuezhi people fled west to the region of Amu Daria river, and some [i.e., the Lesser Yuezhi, consisting of the sick, elderly and young] fled across the [Qianlian] mountains [later-named Qianlian Mountain of Gansu or more likely the Tianshan or Heavenly Mountain of Chinese Turkestan --also known as the Bei-shan or the Northern Mountain in contrast with the Nan-shan or Southern Mountain that separated Tibet from Chinese Turkestan] to live among the Qiangic people in the south [i.e., the Khotan area per Yu Taishan rather than the central Qiangic nation's land south of the Qilian-shan of Gansu]. The Huns, after raiding to the West, had tacked on the non-Mongolian physique. Though, the original Huns shared the same origin as the Xia Chinese. The successors of the Huns, led by Helian Bobo of the Tie-fu Huns, established a Hunnic Xia Dynasty lasting through A.D. 407-431. Helian Bobo's acknowledgement and tracing of his ancestry in a common origin as the Chinese clearly spelled out the fact that it was the Mongoloid who had first raided to the west rather than the other way around. After the decline of the Huns, the Xianbei moved back to northern China, took over the Hunnic land as far west as the Western Corridor and the Wu-sun Statelet, and possibly tacked on the same non-Mongolian features as well. Five nomadic groups ravaged China in the 4th century A.D. When an Eastern Jinn minister (Wang Dun) rebelled against Emperor Mingdi in A.D. 322-325, he called the emperor by a derogatory name of "Huangxu-nu of the Xianbei", meaning a "yellow-haired slave of the Xianbei". (See Non-Mongolian Physiques for more details on explanations on the minority tribe of the Huangtou Xianbei, the Huangtou Shiwei and the Huangtou Jurchen among the steppe nomadic federation. This webmaster believes that you could not bundle the two epithets of 'huang xu' [yellow hair] and 'bai lu' [white enemy] to make a case, but to interprete the two epithets separately; otherwise, a wrong conclusion could be reached to make it a case of one plus one equals two. Also see my research into non-existent sacking of the Jinn capital city of Luoyang by Huangtou Xianbei that was carried by Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Ji [or by Song Dynasty poet Su Shi] hundreds of years later in regards to the misguided speculation on the nature of the Xianbei.) Shi Min, an adopted son of Jiehu's Posterior Zhao (AD 319-352), had at one time killed about 200,000 Jie-hu. History said that Shi Min's armies killed those people who looked like the Jie-hu because of the high nose bridge and the hairiness. The Jiehu, according to Monk Fotucheng's admonition to Shi Hu, had the past of the Jie-hu king [? Shi Hu or his ancestors] being a merchant who previously attended a gathering in today's Afghanistan, on which occasion some priest claimed that the Jie-hu merchant would one day rule the land of Jinn China. The Jie-hu appeared to possess the "Hu Tian [heaven]" temple, which was speculated to be of a Zoroastrian temple.
 
The other conclusion that could be construed from the following records about the Khirgiz would be that the Huns, who first raided today's Chinese Turkistan and Jiankun (i.e., today's Tuva area) to the west and northwest, respectively, had tacked on the non-Mongolian feature. Partial ingredients of the Turks had merely carried on this physique. The Turks, who were recorded to have dwelled to the south of Mt. Jinshan (i.e., the Altaic Mountain), apparently mixed up with the Central Asians after expanding to the west, carrying the Zoroastrian religion in the burial customs.
 
The story of General Li Ling would be another corroboration of the racial interaction. In 100 B.C.E., Han Emperor Wudi sent a mission of Su Wu and over 100 people to the Huns, but the mission was detained by the Huns. Emperor Wudi dispatched an army to punish the Huns. One contingent of 5,000 archers (arrow soldiers) from southern China, led by General Li Ling (grandson of Li Guang), was encircled by the Huns numbering 30,000. General Li Ling surrendered to the Huns after engaging half a dozen rounds of retreating fights and exhausting all the arrows. Li Ling was assigned by the Huns to the ancient Jiankun statelet in northwest Siberia. Later, during Tang Emperor Suzong's reign of A.D. 758-760, the Huihu (Uygur) conquered the Jiankun Statelet of the Kirghiz [Kyrgyz]. The Kirghis allied themselves with the Tibetans, the Arabs and the Karlaks. The Kirghiz expelled the Huihu (Uygur) from Mongolia and killed the Huihu khan around A.D. 840s. Tang records stated that the Kirghiz claimed that they shared the same last name as Tang emperor 'Li'. Why? Because Han General Li Ling was assigned to the ancient Jiankun statelet by the Huns in the west after he surrendered to the Huns 800 years before. Tang records stated that the Kirghiz disliked BLACK hair and took it as BAD OMEN. Tang records said those Kirghiz who carried black hair must be the descendants of Li Ling.
 
For further discussions on the Barbarians & the Chinese, please refer to

The Common Origin For the Di1-Qiang1 Barbarians & the Xia Chinese
Relationship Between Shang Dynasty, Succeeding Zhou Dynasty & Barbarians
Difference Between Rong and Chinese In 'Culture', Not 'Blood-line'
Merging and Subjugating Barbarians By Zhou Dynasty & Principalities
Assertions By Luo Xianglin & Wang Zhonghan
Continuing Zigzags With Barbarians
Where Were Yuezhi, Wusun & Sai-ren [Scythians]?
 

The Barbarians vs the Chinese Exiles
There long appeared four designations of barbarian groups, namely, Man-of-the-South, Di-of-the-North, Yi-of-the-East (i.e., misnomer --since the Yi people living at the coast were the original inhabitants and carried no directional denotation till the confrontation of the Zhou Dynasty conquest of the Shang remnants) and Rong-of-the-West.  Man, Di(2), Yi & Rong, in fact, all mean one word, barbarians. The Man-of-the-South will be the natives called Sanmiao (i.e., the Three Miao Tribes), Man(2) and Lao barbarians, and the Zangke, Qiongdu, Yelang and Tian-Yue peoples in southern and southwestern China. Rong-of-the-West are the nomadic peoples in China's northwest and west, including Xirong, Quanrong, Rongdi and Jiangrong. In southern Manchuria, there existed the so-called Shanrong or Mountain Rong (aka: Beirong or Northern Rong and one more name called 'Wu Zhong' to mean Wuzhongshan Mountain in southern Manchuria, with its capital at Yuyang County, Beijing).   Di-of-the-North would be specifically denoting the Huns and Turks. Their forerunners would include Rongdi which split into Chidi and Baidi, and Jiangrong around Taiyuan in Shenxi [not Shanxi]. Baidi (White Di) dwelled in ancient Yanzhou (today's Yan'an), Suizhou (today's Suide) and Yinzhou (today's Ningxia on west Yellow River Bend). Zuo Shi Chunjiu stated Jinn defeated Baidi and remnants were know as Bai-bu-hu later. Chidi (Red Di) dwelled in a place called Lu(4), near today's Shangdang. Zuo Shi Chunjiu stated that Jinn Principality destroyed the Lu(4) tribe of the Chidi, and the remnants were know as Chi-she-hu nomads later.
 
Yi-of-the-East later included the peoples living in Manchuria, Korea and Japan. In early times, the Yi was associated with the word 'niao' for bird, and there were eight to nine different 'niao-yi' people in the east. Shang Dynasty people were recorded to have treated 'Xuan Niao' (i.e., Black bird, possibly sparrow) as the totem. Manchurian legends as to the birth of their founder had something to do with swallowing the red fruit dropped by a bird. In later times, the Yi designation would be associated with a word 'dao' for island, pointing to the barbarian peoples in East China Seas. (Both the character 'niao' and 'dao' looked quite close and might have corrupted consecutively during the course of history.) Yi is more an inclusive word to mean aliens, and the Qiangs and Di(1) people could be called Xi Yi, i.e., Yi in the west, while some southern barbarians would be called Xi-Nan Yi, namely, southwestern Yi. Quanrong or Doggy Rong of the west were also named Quan-yi-shi (Doggy alien tribe) or Hunyi / Kunyi (Kunlun Mountain aliens?, but was commented to be the same as character 'hun4' for the meaning of mixing-up). Shan Hai Jing stated that Huangdi bore Miao-long, Miaolong bore Nong-ming, Nongming bore Bai-quan (White dog) which was the ancestors of Quanrong. Shan Hai Jing also stated that Quan-yi had a human face but the beast-like body. An ancient scholar called Jia Kui stated that Quan-yi was one of the varieties of Rong people. In the West Yellow River Bend area could also be found Yuezhi people. The relationship of the Yuezhi to Rong people is not clear. Gua Di Zhi stated that Yuezhi country included ancient Liangzhou, Ganzhou, Suzhou, Yanzhou and Shazhou, i.e., today's Gansu and Shenxi Provinces. (The Yi people mentioned to have first lived at the coast and then in the west could be the result of the epic migration of the original inhabitants of China from the coast to the mid-Yangtze during the wars of the Yellow Overlord and the Fiery Lord/Chiyou, and then the San-Miao exile towards the west from the Mid-Yangtze area.)
 
It is difficult to differentiate between the true barbarians and those ancient Chinese who were exiled to the borders. Lord Shun suggested to Lord Yao to have four evil tribes exiled to the borders. This would include Hundun, Gonggong (Qiongqi), Gun and SanMiao. (Shan Hai Jing had good description of the myths about Gonggong breaking the pillar of the skies and causing floods, Gun stealing 'Yi Rang' or Growing Soil from heaven to stop the waters, and Yu being born from the dead body of Gun etc.) The reason for exiling the four tribes would be their mistakes: Hundun's fault was his recommendation of Gonggong for flood-control job; Gun's fault was his failure to control the flooding. (Gun was the father of Yu the Great.) Gonggong was exiled to the northern post of today's Beijing to counter the northern Di(2) nomads; Hundun was exiled to southern mountains to counter the southern barbarians; SanMiao people were exiled to San-Wei-Shan Mountain in Gansu's Dunhuang to counter the Xirong or Western Rong people; and Gun was killed on Mountain Yushan (Feather mountain) to detente the Eastern Yi people.
 
Kong An'guo of Han Dynasty claimed that Hundun wan an infilial descendant of Huangdi the Yellow Lord. Gun was an infilial son of Lord Zhuanxu. The 'Sanmiao' people were said to be infilial descendants of Yandi the Fiery Lord. (Wu Qi claimed that the San Miao country was located between Lake Dongtinghu and Lake Pengli.) Hence, those four tribes should be considered members of the big family. The book 'Xu Hou Han Shu', i.e., 'Continuum To Hou Han Shu', stated that the Qiangs were an alternative race of the Jiang surname tribes of San Miao. Hence, it should be safe to claim that the 'Sanmiao' people were the descendants of the big family of Yandi and Huangdi. In the Hun section, a tentative exploration into the nature of Rong & Di Peoples, Qiang, Sanmiao & Yuezhi was given. Borrowing Shan Hai Jing, Quan-yi or Quan-rong, one of the varieties of the Rong people, could have derived from Huangdi (Yellow Lord) since Huangdi bore Miao-long, Miaolong bore Nong-ming, Nongming bore Bai-quan (White dog) which was the ancestor of Quanrong.
 
In accordance with Luu Simian's dissertation, San-Miao, with 'miao' meaning descendants, could point to three ancient clans and tribes of Dihong-shi, Jinyun-shi, Shaohao-shi as their ancestors. The Miao-zu people, numerbing 5 million per 1982 census, are said to be descendants of ancient Lord Chiyou who headed the Nine Li[2] tribes, i.e., ancestors of the SanMiao people. Miao-zu's epic talked about a "westward migration", which pointed to the fact that they had probably dwelled more to the center and east of China in ancient times. (In today's China, numerous DNA analysis clearly showed that the male genes were predominantly that from North China, i.e., the Sino-Tibetan people from the Yellow River line, while the female genes were varied or contained elements of ancient females from both North Chin and South China.)
 
Speculations As To the Timeframe of the San-Miao Exile vs the Yuezhi Migration
Lord Yao or Tangyao (reign 2357-2258 B.C.E. ?) took over the overlord post after 9 year's weak rule by Zhi (reign 2366-2358 B.C.E. ?). Zhi was the son of Lord Diku, and Lord Zhi earlier conferred the title of Marquis Tanghou on Yao. According to Sima Qian, the 'SanMiao' people, who resided in the land where the later Chu Statelet was, were mostly relocated to western China to guard against the western nomads. Lord Shun relocated them to western China as a punishment for their aiding the son of Lord Yao (Dan Zhu) in rebellion. To the west of today's Dunhuang of Gansu Prov was a mountain named 'San Wei Shan' where the Three Miao peoples were exiled. This could lead to a sound speculation that Sino-Tibetan speaking San Miao people had dwelled in Gansu much earlier than the later misnomer 'Indo-European' Yuezhi people. The approximate date would be about 2258 B.C.E. for the San-miao relocation, and this webmaster's belief was that the Yuezhi was part of the five Rongs as noted in history -- which could be the origin for the misnomer 'Indo-European' Yuezhi. This webmaster tried to reconcile Sima Qian's statement in regards to the migration of the Lesser Yeuzhi, in the aftermath of the Huns' attack in the last years of the 3rd century B.C.E., to give the Yuezhi people some credit of living a bit further to the east, i.e., staying somewhere near the Blackwater Lake [i.e., the Ejina Lake]. By making this assumption, this webmaster assumed that the Lesser Yuezhi people, namely, the sick, the elderly and the young, climbed the Qilian-shan Mountain [today's Qilian-shan, not what Yu Taishan et al had postulated to be the Tianshan or the Heavenly Mountain Range in Turkestan] to live among the Qiangs --unless Sima Qian actually meant that the Huns had raided deep into the Chinese Turkestan in the first place, driving the Greater Yuezhi into a flee towards the Ili area to the west and the Lesser Yuezhi into a move across today's Tianshan or the Heavenly Mountain Range to live with the Qiangs in Khotan, at the southeastern rim of the Taklamakan Desert, a historical dwelling place of the Qiangs since the mid-3rd millennium B.C.E.. (Also refer to the 3rd century B.C.E. Hunnic-Yuezhi War for the possible locality of the Yuezhi.)
 
Nova, in its TV series,    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/chinamum/taklamakan.html shows the excavations of mysterious 3000-year-old mummies in China's western desert, inside today's New Dominions Province. This shows that Indo-European people in Chinese Turkestan came much later than the San Miao people at the Western Corridor, about 800 years. (http://homepages.utoledo.edu/nlight/uyghhst.htm had a good exposition of the "remarkably racialized ideas" and approaches built on basis of the mummies. See my recent discussions on the Yuezhi migration timeline for details on the possible routes of the Jiang-rong migration into Chinese Turkistan.) More, further diggings in Loulan area, i.e., the ancient Salty Lake and Salty River (Peacock Rover), led to a site called by Xiaohe or the Little River, next to the Salty River (Peacock Rover), where Mongoloid Mummies were discovered. It appears to me there was indeed good carbon dating on Xiaohe excavation, saying "The entire necropolis can be divided, based on the archeological materials, into earlier and later layers. Radiocarbon measurement (14C) dates the lowest layer of occupation to around 3980 ± 40 BP (personal communications; calibrated and measured by Wu Xiaohong, Head of the Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Peking University), which is older than that of the Gumugou cemetery (dated to 3800)." The article claimed that the 'Mongoloid' mtDNA had similarity to some present South Siberian population. (For details, check http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/15 for the full article "Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age".) The linking of this certain mtDNA in Xiaohe/Loulan area to a modern Siberian population could be said to be circumvential at best since a lot of things had happened in the past 2-3000 years. It kind of had the same timing as the Mongoloid mummies that were discovered to the north and east of the Tianshan Mountain. More than what was found about the mtDNA at Xiaohe/Loulan, there were mummies of the Khams Tibetan type found to the further north, at the Tianshan-Altaic mountain areas, which presented a much more convincing point that the proto-Tibetan Qiangs had indeed crossed over the strip of the sand desert near Loulan to reach the north side of Tianshan. Possibly, the Khams [proto-]Tibetan, after reaching Tianshan Mountain Range, moved towards Hami (Qumul) to the east as well, where there were the Hami (Qumul) Mongoloid mummies excavated.
 
The Xia Chinese vs the Huns, and the Qiangic Tibetans vs the 'Tokharai' Yuezhi: http://www.taklamakan.org/allied_comm/commonv-1-8.html carried an article by Takla entitled "The Origins of Relations Between Tibet and Other Countries in Central Asia", stating that "according to the researches of Sir Aurel Stein [i.e., the arch thief of China's Dunhuang Grotto treasures] on the origins of the people of Khotan, most were the descendants of the Aryans. They also had in them Turkic and Tibetan blood, though the Tibetan blood was more pronounced. He discovered ancient documents at a place called Nye-yar in Khotan and he has stated that the script of these documents contained no Pali, Arabic (Muslim) or Turkic terminology. All were Tibetan terms and phrases." Tibetans, clearly descendants of the Sino-Tibetan-speaking Qiangic SanMiao people, had their influences reaching the southern Chinese Turkistan in addition to the He-xi Corridor. P.T. Takla stated further that "according to Wu Hriu(2), the facial features of the people of Khotan were dissimilar to those of the rest of the Horpa nomads of Drugu (Uighurs belonging to the Turkic people) and similar, to an extent, to the Chinese. Khotan in the north-west was called Li-yul by the ancient Tibetans. Since Khotan was territorially contiguous with Tibet, there are reasons to believe that the inhabitants of Khotan had originated from Tibet."
 
Concluding this episode, my unchanged belief is still that the Sino-Tibetan-speaking Qiangic SanMiao people first reached the He-xi Corridor of Gansu Prov 4000 years ago and onward to Khotan area of southern Chinese Turkistan. It is never an accident that early Chinese legends were full of events about the west, including Mt Kunlun, Queen Mother of the West, Khotan jade, and Mt Kunwu Diamond Ore etc. Tokharai, possibly related to the Indo-Scythians, reached Lake Koko Nor thereafter. In the 3rd century B.C.E., the Hun Chanyu ordered that his king attack the Yuezhi as a punishment for disturbing peace at the Chinese border. Majority of the Yuezhi fled to the region of Amu Daria river, and some fled across the mountains to live among Qiangic people in the south. Successors of the Huns, led by Helian Bobo of Tie-fu Huns, established a Xia Dynasty lasting through A.D. 407-431. Helian Bobo's acknowledgement and tracing of ancestry in a common origin as Chinese clearly spelled out the fact that it was the Mongoloid who had first raided to the west rathern than the other way around.
 
 
Tibetans - The Fiery Lord Tribe
 
In my opinion, the peoples who share the same origin and history as today's Chinese will be 1) Tibetans, and 2) Koreans. The Tibetans, according to a Chinese linguist, would be the descendants of the Xi Qiang people active as mercenaries of emperors in Latter Han Dynasty (25 A.D. - 220 A.D) and Three States (220 A.D. - 280 AD). Beginning from late 1st century, the Qiangs began to rebel against Chinese frequently. As a result of the urgency to cope with the Qiangic threats, the Han Court had very much given up early efforts in controlling Chinese Turkistan. The Qiangs would have wars with Han China for dozens of years. At one time, the Qiangs split into two groups, Xi Qiang (Western Qiang) and Dong Qiang (Eastern Qiang). By the end of the Han Dynasty, Qiangs were controlled by warlord governors in the northwestern part of China. Dong Zuo, who hand-picked last Han Emperor Xiandi, might have some heritage of the nomads in this Qiangic area. During the Three Kingdom time period, the Qiangs had participated in the wars as mercenaries. After the fall of Western Jin China, the Qiangs as well as the Di nomads would play their part in the later landslide campaigns in northern China, 'Five Nomadic Groups Ravaging China' of 4-5th centuries. Posterior Qin Dynasty (AD 384-417), established in today's Shenxi Province, was of Qiangic nature.
 
The Qiangs, in turn, would be the descendants of the Yandi (Fiery Lord or Fiery Emperor) tribal group carrying the tribal name "Jiang". Xin Tang Shu (New History Of Tang Dynasty) said the Tibetans belonged to the Xi Qiang, namely, the western Qiangic peoples. There were 150 different groups of Qiangic peoples, widely dispersed among Sichuan, Ganshu, Qinhai and Shenxi Provinces. Ancient classics stated that the word 'qiang' means the shepards in the west. The book 'Continuum To Hou Han Shu' stated that the Qiangs were alternative race of the Jiang surname tribes of San Miao. Yu the Great was said to have been born in the land of the Xi Qiang.
 
One opinion also said that the ancient Tibetans possibly derived from the Sanmiao (Three Miao) tribes who, being in constant battles with the Hua and Yi tribes, had once occupied today's upper and middle Yangtze River areas. At the times of Lords Yao-Shun-Yu, the 'Sanmiao' (Three Miao) people had taken Lake Dongting as their very homeland. According to Sima Qian, the 'Sanmiao' people, who resided in the land where the later Chu State was, were mostly relocated to western China to guard against the western nomads. Lord Shun relocated them to western China as a punishment for their aiding the son of Lord Yao (Dan Zhu) in rebellion. To the west of today's Dunhuang was a mountain named 'San Wei Shan' where the Three Miao peoples were exiled. As further explained in the Tibetans section, the name Tibet could be from the Xianbei element. New History Of Tang Dynasty cited a mutation of pronunciation for the name of founder of Southern Liang (Xianbei Statelet, A.D. 397-414), Tufa Lilugu. What it said is that the Southern Liang's last name, Tufa, had mutated into Tubo in Chinese pronunciation or English Tibet.
 
The Yangtze area would remain marshlands and lakes till the time of the Chu State during the Warring States period (403-221 BC). The State of Chu, 1500 years after Xia Dynasty was first established, would still belong to an alien ethnical group, and they were the first group of people to reject the overlordship of the Zhou Dynasty and called themselves Chu kings. San-Miao people were not considered 'Chinese' at the times of Yao-Shun-Yu, and they belonged to the barbarian groups in ancient Chinese classics.
 
San-Miao, Qiangs, Xianbei, Tuoba, & Tanguts
San-Miao people, the Qiang people and the Di nomads etc long dwelled in the Gansu-Qinghai and northwestern Sichuan areas. (The Di nomads had been suspected to be responsible for the so-called 'Sanxingdui Excavations' in today's Sichuan Province. In the section on Sixteen Nations, we had traced the Di statelets.) I will speculate as one linguist did about the possibility of the Qiangic people being pressured into a movement towards Tibet (called 'Zhang' in Mandarin, a mutation of Qiang). Existing Chinese history did not make a distinction between Qiangs and San-Miao at all, and the only reference to San-Miao would be the San Wei Shan Mountain, a mountain to the west of Dunhuang, Gansu Province. In one account, there was a saying that the Qiangs were descended from San-Miao people. What I found difficult was the timeframe inconsistency: The Qiangs, if having origin from Yandi the Fiery Lord, should precede the San-Miao people because Lord Shun's relocation of San-Miao came later - unless you are to adopt this webmaster's epic human migration theory to state that the San Miao people, part of the two groups of exiles together with the Yun-surnamed Xianyun people, had originally dwelled along the eastern coast and then migrated to Northwest China around the 23rd century B.C.E.
 
In late Han times, the Qiangs had been mercenaries of Han emperors in numerous wars, and one family of generals had joined the Shu Han against the Wei kingom during Three Kingdoms Period (AD 220-280). The Qiangs as well as the Di nomad would play their part in the later land-slide campaigns in northern China, 'Five Nomadic Groups Ravaging China' during the 4th century. They joined hands with a branch of Xianbei and created a lasting kindom called 'Tuyuhun', and 'Tuyuhun' competed against the Tibetans proper well into the 7th century. 'Tuyuhun' had lasted for about 350 years in history, from the end of Yongjia years (AD 310s) of Jin Dynasty to the 3rd year of Longsuo (AD 663) of Tang Dynasty. The Qiang people are the same people who set up the Posterior Qin Dynasty (AD 384-417) during the South-North Dynasties, prior to the founding of the Tibetan Kingdom during China's Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907).
 
'Tuyuhun', with Xianbei nomadic elements, would mix up with the Qiangic peoples (which possessed at one time eight tribes, with one tribe carrying the Toba last name) and evolve into the later Xixia Kingdom (AD 1038-1227) of the Tanguts (i.e., Dangxiang).
 
 
Ethnogenesis of Early Stages
 
With the defeat of i) the Yi People under Chi-you and ii) the "Qiangic" people under Fiery Lord, we could speculate that the Yellow Lord Tribe finally dominated the Shandong peninsula, the central plans, and the Yellow River area. Should we reinterpret the ancient classics to conclude that it was true that Chi-you and Yandi (i.e., the Fiery Lord) were the same person, then we could say that the people from the lineage of Huangdi (i.e., the Yellow Overlord), which were mostly likely from today's Kalgan area, had re-established an order among the more agricultural people of ancient China. In any case, the change of order with Huangdi's rise to power was a significant event that re-shaped China's prehistory for thousands of years to come, as all future dynasties hence cited Huangdi, not Yandi, as the progenitor of the Chinese nation. Though the Chinese today called themselves by the descendants of Yandi and Huangdi, there was always a delimiter as to who was exactly the true descendant of Yandi, with a strict definition using the "jiang" surname and its offspring clans. After the Yandi-Huangdi War (or the Chiyou-Huangdi War), you have the history repeating the statements that some of the defeated were exiled to the countryland of the north, with an inference to mean those exiles to be ancestors of future barbarians, such as the Khitans et al. While part of those people who were defeated could have migrated towards the Manchurian and Korean areas, in a similar parallel to Shang Prince Ji-zi's relocation after the Zhou-Shang dynastic war, more [native or agricultural] people, after successive conflicts with the successors from the Huangdi lineage, were exiled to southern and western China, such as the migration of the San-miao people to today's Gansu-Qinhai Provinces (called Inner Tibet [against Frontal Tibet or Outer Tibet] in contrast with Tibet Proper, the "Hind Tibet"). The ancestors of today's Koreans would remain in the area of today's southern Manchuria and the areas around the Beijing city till the Warring States period of Zhou Dynasty, as borderline statelets, such as Guzhu (lonely bamboo), a Shang vassal, continued existence next to the Yan Principality of Zhou Dynasty till the Qi Principality Lord Huan'gong led an expedition to the Yan Principality to defeat them in the 9th century B.C. The conflicts with the barbarians in southern Manchuria would resurface time and again during Han Dynasty and Sui-Tang Dynasties. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~korea/Old_1.html states that , in 311 B.C.E., invasion of Qin-kai of Yen Principality (Warring States Period, 403-221 BC ) caused ancient Korea a loss of 2000-li territory; 108 B.C.E. invasion by Emperor Wudi of Han Dynasty established four commandaries in today's Liaoning Province and northern Korea. In Sui Dynasty, Chinese were defeated by the Koreans and Sui Emperor Yangdi hence lost his empire due to internal revolts, and in Tang Dynasty, Chinese intervened in Korean civil wars and helped one Korean kingdom (Silla) defend against the Japanese who were invited by a rival.
 
1 li = 435 meters. See http://www.os.xaxon.ne.jp/~sinkodai/efuruta/esss.html where the author stated that 'San-kuo-shih or Three Country Record does not use the distance unit of "li" to be 435 meters as used during the Chin or Han dynasty Period. but rather it uses the unit adopted by the Wei and Western Chin dynasties, which is that one "li" is approximately 77 meters.'
 
The struggles between the dragon-totem Xia people and the bird-totem Yi people never settled for next 1400 years, till Zhou Dynasty's Duke Zhougong campaigned against Ren-fang-guo on the Shandong Peninsula and quelled the remaining Shang people after 1122 B.C.E. Among the Yi People of the east would be Lord Shun and later Shang Dynasty ancestors. During the famous tribal power successions of lords Yao, Shun and Yu, prior to the founding of the first dynasty of Xia by Yu's son, we had Lord Shun of comparatively Yi nature succeeding Lord Yao. After Lord Shun would be Lord Yu who represented the Xia or Huaxia people of the west. Lord Yu's son set up the Xia Dynasty in Henan Prov, and Xia people must have close relations with the natives to the west of Henan Prov, i.e., Qiangs and Xirong (Western Rong People). (Today's term Huaxia would be the combination of hua and xia, with "hua" said to be from Shenxi Prov's Huashan Mountain, a name appropriated from southern Shanxi Prov across the Yellow River Bend, or more likely an alternate word for "xia", while "xia" from the Duke Xia title of Lord Yu, a title possibly made up to backtrack the actual victory of Lord Yu's Xia people over the Dong-yi people.)
 
The establishment of the first dynasty of Xia would be the first important recognizable Chinese ethnogenesis, i.e., the formation of an ethnic group.  (According to Obayashi Taryo, 'The Crucial Time in the Formation of the Japanese People,' Minzokugaku Kenkyu , Vol 48, No 4, 1984, pp. 401-405, linked by John Rach at http://www2.gol.com/users/johnrach/, ethnic formation "is a process which extends over a long time, often over centuries". In John Rach's words, "at a certain point in time, migration decreased, and both populations went through a period of settled evolution".) For the Chinese, at some point in time one group emerged to identify themselves as the Huaxia people and the first stage in this process, 'ethnogenesis', is now complete.