The Study Of Childe’s Historical Thought

V.Gordon Childe is a famous archaeologist and historian in the 20 th Century.He has very profound theoretical understanding of archaeology,prehistory and history.He uses Marxism as the guiding ideology,carries on the exploration of history laws,and always emphasizes the historical connotation of dialectical materialism.The historical thoughts of Childe,especially his interpretation of historical phenomena,are always Marxist.His prehistory study is a supplement to Marx and Engels’ s theory of the origin of nations.In terms of the personal experience,Childe is a faithful communist who has consistently practice Marxism.His deeds and his contribution to human knowledge deserve our deep analysis,learning and reflection.This thesis mainly discusses Childe’s historical ontology,historical epistemology,cultural historical view,progressive historical view,and the origin of his European civilization and the origin of urban civilization.These explorations are not isolated,but always have a main line of Marxist thought.It will provide some support for us to adhere to the guiding position of historical materialism and explore the path of Chinese historical theory construction by studying Childe’s historical thoughts.Childe’s history and historiography mainly involves two issues: historical ontology and historical epistemology.The historical ontology of Childe is the real history itself.The material reality of history is manifested in all traces of material that has been handed down by human beings.Childe emphasizes the historical progress and the regularity of history.He believes that human history not only presents the attributes of material evolution,but also the attributes of spiritual evolution.Historical events are accidental,but historical trends are inevitable.The Childe’ s understanding of thought history contains two meanings,one is the history of the development of consciousness,and the other is the history that has been processed by historians in the field of historiography.Childe believes that the measure of scientific history is first of all materialistic,without the participation of God;the second is objective and not subject to subjective prejudice;the third is practice that the subjects of historical cognition act on the object of historical epistemology,then apply to the action ofhistorical subject.Childe pointed out the limitations of hero history,elite history,and military history,and advocated the people to create history.Childe sees language as the carrier of historical records,thus revealing the conditions under which history is produced.Childe recognized that the historical time contains relativity.Old stone tools,Neolithic tools,coppers,bronzes,iron ages,and,barbaric,civilization,feudal,and capitalist eras are relative historical times.The cultural concept of Childe stems from archaeological and anthropological traditions.On the basis of Gustav Kossinna,Childe perfected the concept of culture.Culture introduces a new spatial dynamic into the classification and interpretation of material remains.Culture is here an association of things that can be perceived,not something spiritual.He combines the same recurring objects into a unified "class",where culture is a complex of artifacts.Childe established a correspondence between culture and peoples.There is no hierarchy or affiliation between race and people,they are a set of parallel concepts.One division based on human biological characteristics,one division based on human cultural characteristics,but this division can not completely distinguish between race and ethnicity.In fact,when human beings leave the animal world,human beings are no longer a pure species,and races often present the characteristics of the nation,that is the spiritual characteristics.Childe’s cultural history is close to the history of cultural morphology.Childe does not describe wars and political events,but explores social conditions.Comparison and synthesis are the two main methods of Childe’s historical research.Cultural progress and cultural diffusion are the two main lines of Childe’s historical narrative.Childe’s progressive concept is mainly influenced by the evolution of anthropological culture,the evolution of Darwin,the staging of archaeological times,and the social revolutionary theory of Marx and Engels.Childe’s progress is practiced and generated.Progress follows the laws of materialist dialectics and transforms each other in a kind of becoming and coming.Childe believes that progress is a process in which human beings gradually move from a natural state to a social state.In this process,human beings move from obscurity to civilization,and society gradually develops into the capitalist through the Stone Age.About the origin of European civilization,there are two kinds of arguments namely,the diffusion of the East and the independent development of the West.Childe synthesizes the two arguments,he advocated that the origin of European including oriental elements as well as the elements of occidental self-determination.During this period,the Paleolithic culture of Europe did not transition to the Neolithic Age.The first agricultural cultivators in Europe migrated from the East,and they gradually differentiated into various local cultures in the process of adapting to the European environment.Temperate Europe did not enter civilization first.The first place in Europe to enter civilization was the Aegean basin in the southeast.During this period,Minos and Mycenae civilization created their own unique civilization by absorbing the surplus of the East.It laid the foundation of European classical civilization.The origin of the city discusses the process of human beings from the collecting and hunting economy to the farming economy,from the nomadic living state to the settled living state,and the village society gradually transitions to urban society.