Looking at the river of history, we see patterns in the flow. Ancient Greece and Ancient China, both civilizations have the longest histories in their own geographic areas and affected other countries in the last thousands of years. And when you put them side by side, you can find several “coincidences”, or Historical Associations between them. Drachma, one of the earliest coins in the world, came up in about the mid-6th century BC in Ancient Greece. At almost the same era, knife money was used in part of Ancient China as currency. Throughout the time period of 800 BC to 200 BC, the two civilizations were both tremendously prosperous in political and academic aspects, laying out the foundations for their respective cultures for the next thousands of years.
Were there communications between the two civilizations, or was it pure coincidence? It remains to be a question. We know that they were not geographically adjacent. In Herodotus’s (484–425 BC) famous The Histories, he wrote that (4.40.2) “Asia is inhabited as far as India, but the territory east of India is uninhabited, and no one can say what sort of land exists there”, which concluded a “known unknown” of the territory east of India, including ancient China (Barker, Bouzarovski, Pelling, & Isaksen 2016). Yet, it is still hard to claim that there was no communication between the Mediterranean Sea and the Yellow River. Through this article, however, we two non-professional history and visualization amateurs, would like to write down and visualize some of the the similarities and differences between these two civilizations’ cultures and territories from 800 BC to 200 BC, which was from the first recorded Olympic games to the Macedonian Wars in Ancient Europe, and also from Quanrong’s attack on Western Zhou Dynasty to the establishment of the Han Dynasty in Ancient China.
1. Lifespans of Selected Ancient Greek and Chinese Philosophers
From cultural perspective, both ancient Greece and China had numerous philosophers and scholars from 800 BC to 200 BC, which includes the golden age of Athenian culture and the Hundred Schools of Thought 诸子百家. The life spans of 12 selected most famous philosophers from ancient Greece and China were selected to show the overlapping of their lifetime (Figure 1). It is unbelievable that these great names were actually around the same time. Pythagoras (570–495 BC) who greatly influenced the western philosophy was only 19 years older than Confucius 孔子 (551–479 BC), whose philosophy has formed the basis of East Asian culture. Besides, Laozi 老子 (571–6th century BC), Socrates (470–399 BC), Mozi 墨子 (470–391 BC), Plato (428–348 BC), Shang Yang 商鞅 (390–338 BC), Aristotle (384–322 BC), Mencius 孟子 (372–289 BC), Zhuang Zhou 庄子 (369–286 BC), Euclid (326–265 BC), Xun Kuang 荀子 (310–235 BC), and Archimedes (287–212 BC) have been listed to show this tremendous era in human history with so many famous names coming up together. Meanwhile, schools had been established to share and teach philosophy, mathematics, music, and other subjects. In about 380 BC, the philosopher Plato, student of Socrates, founded the Academy in Athens. On the other side of the continent, Confucius 孔子 has been called Model Teacher for Ten Thousand Ages 万世师表. The most famous academy during the Warring States period in China was the Jixia Academy, located not far away from Confucius’s hometown. While Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were teachers and students, there were more systems of thoughts existing in ancient China. Shown in Figure 1, Confucius 孔子 and Mencius 孟子 studied Ruism, Mozi 墨子 studied Mohism, Laozi 老子 and Zhuang Zhou 庄子 studied Taoism, Shang Yang 商鞅 studied Legalism, and Xun Kuang 荀子 was recognized for both Ruism and Legalism.
2. Changes of the Ancient Greek and Chinese Civilization Territories
Aside from culture, Ancient Greece and China also shared similarities in the change of their territories. Given the vast elevated plateau in Central Asia, Eastern Asia is more isolated than the Aegean Sea area. This made the border of Chinese civilization more consistent than that of the ancient Greek civilization. In the 500–200 BC time period, both territories of the two civilizations experienced partition and union as shown roughly in Figure 2. After the first Persian war (490 BC), there used to exist numerous city-states such as Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Delphi, and so on. Ancient Greece was never unified under one ruler until the League of Corinth being controlled by Macedon after the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC). Similarly, from the Spring and Autumn period to the Warring States period, there were a bunch of states though they nominally followed the leadership of Zhou Dynasty. Qin, Qi, Chu, Yan, Zhao, Wei, and Han were the most powerful among them. This partition was ended by Qin Shi Huang who became the first emperor of China in 221 BC.
Looking at the river of history, we see a few tributaries outpouring and intertwining each other. The similarities and differences between the two ancient civilizations, not limited to what has been covered in this article, give us a lot to think about. What made the golden age of Athenian academy versus the hundred schools of thought? Is partition-and-union an inevitable tendency of history? Figuring out the answers may be helpful to guide us today and in future.
Reference: [1] Barker, E. T. E., Bouzarovski, S., Pelling, C. B. R., & Isaksen, L. (Eds.). (2016). New Worlds from Old Texts: Revisiting Ancient Space and Place. Oxford University Press.
