Locking the Red Sea: The Suspected Connections Between the Xia, Shang, Zhou Dynasties and the Red Sea, Mediterranean

Author: Su San
Publisher:
Publishing Date: Not available
Features: Since October 23, 2003, I have been driven by the desire to explore the origins of civilization after accidentally reading a book about the Sanxingdui culture. This has been going on for a year. In this year, I wrote three books, and at the beginning of the following year, I wrote this fourth book. Over the past year, although there were minor setbacks and fluctuations, overall, it went very smoothly, even more smoothly than I expected. At the same time, I received support from Chinese people around the world, and some regions have already contacted me about publishing outside mainland China. This also prompted me to reflect: How should I classify my work? What kind of work is it? Even, what discipline does it belong to? I am very satisfied with my work, of course, with many flaws and errors. I even don’t want to republish this book in other regions, as I feel that discussing this book makes me look foolish due to its immaturity. However, that was my first step, though crooked, it reflects my initial thoughts. If I want to show my entire thought process, I am still willing to take the courage to show the flaws of this book to everyone, which itself is a good "raw manuscript." What slightly restores my dignity is that this book shows that my initial macro-understanding was correct: directly linking the origin of the "Western Theory" to the southern part of the Middle East, firmly pointing to the Egyptian civilization, and directly connecting it with the Jewish people. This book is immature, but it lays out the correct direction. The Egyptian civilization and Jewish culture are the two main threads that run through my entire research. Previous "Western Theories" often deviated from these main threads and stopped at the Tigris-Euphrates region, which led to the "disaster" of the "Western Theory" and the complete collapse. This book miraculously avoided this pitfall because it did not reference the old system at all. I plan to keep all the original text in the second edition and add explanations for the errors, so that the entire development of my thoughts can be fully seen. The reason for doing this is also because the errors, as of now, have not damaged the framework. The most valuable clue in this book is the proposal that each major civilization plate spreads outward in phases every thousand years, which is reflected in the "civilization list" after "The Great Guesswork of the Sanxingdui Culture." Another important assumption in this book is that human civilization became a turning point around 2,500 years ago: before this period was the primitive and romantic era of human free migration, when human civilization had been widely and sufficiently spread and exchanged in ancient times; after this, the development of nations and states led to a closed pattern, and the emergence of anti-migration factors led to relatively stagnant warfare and cultural exchange. Without this division, it would be impossible to grasp the general spread pattern of human civilization, and failing to recognize this would mean not being able to uncover the secrets of early human civilization transmission, leaving many historical mysteries unsolved, and of course, the "Western Theory" would not exist. The second book, "Eastward, Eastward, and Eastward," also seemed like an accident. Because I needed too much biblical material as a supplement before publishing this book, an increasing amount of information flooded me, and eventually, I said, "Fine, I’ll give up this 'supplement' work and just write another book, taking the Bible as the blueprint to interpret the origins of Chinese civilization." During this process, many astonishing discoveries were made, and if it shocked the world, it first shocked myself, as many of the discoveries were unknown to me beforehand. Some people said this book established my legendary status, which may not be entirely accurate, but it can at least show its great significance to this system. It more "standardly" proposed my system framework: the origins of Chinese Xia, Shang, and Zhou civilizations came from the Middle East. Considering that Chinese people are not familiar with the Bible, for the convenience of mainland readers, I quoted a lot of biblical passages, and to help ordinary people understand the specific history and general social structure of the Jews, and more importantly, to maintain the relative continuity of the Bible in "Eastward," I compressed and selected some parts of the Bible as transitions. This approach was not understood by some readers, who criticized it as plagiarism to make money. In fact, I had spent a lot of effort on these biblical excerpts and compressions, and it was not "direct plagiarism" as some people said, unless these people did not have the Bible themselves. In fact, a book as thick as that is very unfavorable to the market, not to mention making more money. Before publishing, I painfully cut out over 30 pages of compressed biblical material. To this feedback, especially considering that most Hong Kong readers have the Bible for reference, I asked the publisher in Hong Kong whether they might consider cutting some of the biblical citations in the book, but they refused outright. So it seems I will have to continue to bear the names of "plagiarism" and "making money on the cheap." The second book, as of now, is also not very mature, mainly because of its rigidity. It focused all its attention on the Jews, although the continued study of Egyptian civilization also helped, if I continued to persist, it would lead to a rigid situation and make it impossible to carry the "Western Theory" to its conclusion. This rigidity mainly lies in the excessive unification of race and culture, but in reality, race and culture may have spread separately and should not be rigidly adhered to. The third book, "History Is Crazy," is not a framework-based text but rather my reading notes and travel sketches, but this book was a significant turning point for me. Due to a event in my life, I developed a special connection with the Silk Road in China’s northwest. A month-long field study in the northwest region strengthened my beliefs and broadened my horizons. At the same time, the confirmation that the language of the Xia culture and the Banpo culture was early Phoenician script was a crucial part of this book and the entire system. It was also in this book that I began to pay attention to the clear concepts of "Eastern" and "Western" in ancient Chinese culture within China, which could also be described as "Northern" (Western) and "Southern" (Eastern), revealing the two main threads of the "Western Theory" in China. This specification process is of great significance. Starting from the third book, the connection between Arabs and Chinese, starting from Xia Jia, once again caught my attention. My "Western Theory" began to precisely adjust its direction, moving from the general Middle East to specific countries and regions. The attention to language was quite accidental, but it was the most important gain during this period. At the same time, I began to notice the separation of culture and race, and the complex relationship between writing, language, and race began to be considered. After the third book, the comparison between classical southern Arabic script and oracle bone script was the most exciting discovery for me. This laid an important foundation for the fourth book. "Locking the Red Sea" is still very rushed. Many questions that had long puzzled me were unexpectedly solved in a hasty manner in this book, and I had no idea I would make these discoveries before starting to write. During my busiest period, my health was not good, and I even regretted that if I suddenly passed away, it would be very difficult for others to continue this work. Now, at last, I can sigh with relief. Although the system is disorganized and the writing is sloppy, the main threads that the entire system needs to touch upon have been pointed out, and roughly speaking, it has taken shape, and anyone can see the origin and development of my thoughts. At this point, I can finally sigh with relief. The main religious systems, languages, races, myths, and literatures of China are very specifically linked to the "West." This book may partially deviate from the previous focus—the eastern coast of the Mediterranean—but this was only possible within the previous framework, and for this reason, I do not plan to revise the minor differences in the previous three books in the second edition, only to explain them. The four books show the true traces of exploration rather than a declaration of correct truth. I think this approach is good, but I also need to remind everyone that if contradictions are found while reading, the later book should be taken as the correct one. The fourth book locks the "Western Theory" in the "Sabah Kingdom" at the southern end of the Red Sea, but the influence of Greek and Persian cultures in the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean on the northwest of China is becoming increasingly significant through the exploration of religion and mythology. Increasing evidence shows that these two different ancient civilizations advanced into the eastern and western parts of China, that is, the southern and northern parts, and eventually merged in the Central Plains to form the cultural foundation of China. Speaking calmly, my work is just the preliminary collection of materials for a gigantic project. This positioning is quite accurate. Recognizing this, I plan to publish the fourth book with minimal embellishment in its "rough" form, as this will preserve the "materials" to a large extent. Many pieces of information, if I followed standard academic conventions, I would have to remove, but considering the difficulty and importance of collecting materials, I am willing to give up "academic" considerations and preserve the fullness of the original materials to the greatest extent possible. However, I can consider special formatting in the layout to make reading convenient and acceptable. After a year of haphazardly collecting materials, these words of mine probably belong to which discipline, or which discipline are they closest to? I seem to have asked myself this question before. In reality, I’m not entirely sure. Many people might think it belongs to history, some say it belongs to archaeology, and others say it’s related to the Chinese Department. A careful examination of my work actually belongs to the discipline of "cultural anthropology," which is not very familiar to Chinese people. Its other names are "ethnology" and "social anthropology." However, the names of these disciplines are understood very differently in different countries and regions, and even the understandings can be vastly different, so the safest approach is to identify it as "cultural anthropology." If you want to be even more cautious, simply calling it "anthropology" would be even better. "Cultural anthropology" (cultural anthropology) is the science of analyzing and comparing human cultures, such as social structures, languages, religions, and sciences and technologies; the main task of anthropology is to study humans, including ethnic origin research, human physical characteristics, and their geographical distribution and mobility, so it is not difficult to see that this is exactly the work I have done, although I have not done it systematically or professionally. As for the previously mentioned history, archaeology, or even Chinese linguistics, none of them can encompass the research scope of "cultural anthropology," and they can only be used as tools for a certain aspect of "cultural anthropology." However, it is a pity that "cultural anthropology" in China is definitely not developed enough, which is also why the study of prehistoric Chinese culture is not sufficient, why the origin of Chinese civilization has not been well clarified, and why an outsider suddenly reason. This field is basically empty, or there are people who are busy with other things, and there has always been a lack of specialized cultural anthropology focused on the origin of Chinese civilization. "The world lacks heroes, so a fool becomes famous" might be quite suitable here. The materials I collected are very rough, and I still hope to throw a brick to attract jade to the whole society.