Minorities in the Past

The different languages of the peoples of China’s vast territories contested for supremacy as far back as the Archaic era when the legendary Yellow Emperor (2697–2597 BC), brought together the tribes of the fertile agricultural basin of the Yellow River, expanding their territory to the south and east. The great dynasties of the Xia, Shang and Zhou wanted to locate their imperial court and sovereign territories at the center of a universe. Beyond the fringes and kept out by the building of the monumental Great Wall were the people of the steppes and other savages who inhabited “the submissive wastes” (Dikötter, 1992, p. 4). The Xia people of the central plains named these non-Han people the Siyi (the barbarians of the four quarters), each quarter being branded with the characteristics of an animal figure. The Beidi (Northern Barbarians), were associated with the dog; the Nanman (Southern Barbarians) shared the attributes of reptiles; the Qiang (Eastern Barbarians) were associated with sheep; and the Xirong (Western Barbarians) were likened to birds and beasts (Dikötter, 1992, p. 4). As recorded in Liji (The Book of Rites), the four groups spoke different languages and had different customs from the Xia (Legge, 1967b, p. 229), and their language tools were considered inferior to the great cultural achievement of the script and vocabulary of the Han. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Ancient history · Archaeology · China · Emperor · Ethnology · Geography · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Chinese history and philosophy · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History