The "Conceptual Revolution" And The Origins Of The Chinese State

The conceptual revolution is one of the important driving forces for cultural evolution and a good medium for linking archaeology,anthropology and ancient historical documents.China’s ancient history reconstruction work faces two difficulties:First,it has failed to establish a terminology system that can be discussed with international scholarship,and localized terms are difficult to connect with international academic circles;The second is the question of how to deal with the relationship between documents and archaeological data,which has been controversial in the past by specifically corresponding to a site and ancient historical records,but the call for archaeology and documentation to be separated from documents is also not advisable because of choking.The conceptual revolution can leave relatively clear and objective evidence in both archaeological data and documents,and clarifying the situation of the conceptual revolution is not only conducive to establishing a more scientific combination point for archaeological data and documents,but also reducing the arbitrariness of archaeological data and document interpretation,and is conducive to further clarifying the essential laws of cultural evolution to establish a general evolutionary sequence,so that Chinese materials can make due contributions to the study of the origin of world countries.This paper attempts to explain the dynamic mechanism of the origin of the Chinese state with the theoretical model of the two conceptual revolutions.First of all,this theoretical model uses the concept of legitimacy as a yardstick for observing power forms and positioning the stages of cultural development.There are three types of forces that are sufficient to make people obey,one is the extraordinary charm of the leader,the second is the authority of the gods and the spiritual power in the underworld,and the third is the power of jurisprudence and matter.Power is based on the use of these three forces.Based on this idea,Weber’s theory of legitimacy can be slightly revised to change the charismatic domination,traditional domination and jurisprudential domination to charismatic legitimacy,theocratic legitimacy and juridical legitimacy,and these three legitimacys correspond to the political system of equal society,chiefdom society and the state.At the same time,these three legitimacys can also be classified according to Polybia’s classification to democracy,aristocracy and monarchy.It should be noted that this classification does not mean that the legitimacy of the previous stage is invalidated once the next stage of society is entered,in fact,even the chiefs of the chiefdoms may be very dependent on charisma,and the king may be very dependent on or even held hostage by theocracy.The political ecology of the early days of human society is as complex as it is today,and the societies belonging to the same chiefdom have both charismatic legitimacy and theocratic legitimacy,but the specific historical causes are different,and the proportion of the two may be very different,and although the ancient countries have charm,theocracy and jurisprudence,the integration of theocracy and jurisprudence is different,so the proportion of democracy,aristocracy and royal power in ancient countries is also very different.Therefore,the criterion for determining the social stage should not look at the general appearance of the society in general,but at whether a new type of legitimacy has emerged,that is,the emergence of theocracy as a sign of the beginning of the era of the chiefdom,and the emergence of jurisprudence as a sign of the emergence of the early state.In those chiefdom societies where charismatic legitimacy is more important,democracy may even occupy a more important position in the system than theocracy,and the theocracy of the chieftain may not bring about the wealth differentiation between the chieftain and the people,and even cause the poverty of the chieftain himself after leaving office,and only when the law and the monarchy emerge will there be a significant wealth differentiation between the ruler and the people.If the differentiation of wealth is used as a criterion for judging the evolution of an egalitarian society as a chiefdom,then such a society is easily mistaken for an egalitarian society.In those early states where theocracy was more important,although juridical legitimacy had emerged,the royal power did not integrate theocracy,or was even suppressed or even subverted by theocracy and aristocratic groups from time to time,so such societies were easily mistaken for chiefdom societies on the surface.Second,this paper uses the transformation of the relationship between heaven and man to explain the dynamic mechanism of the emergence of religion-theocracy and law-kingship.The relationship between heaven and man in this article refers to the relationship between man and the mysterious spiritual forces of ancestors or nature.In an egalitarian society,because there is no concept of personified gods,the relationship between heaven and man is decentralized,everyone may be designated as a wizard,no one can monopolize the authority of the gods,and naturally there is no stable centralized leadership.But with the first conceptual revolution,the idea of personified gods emerged,and patriarchs and shamans stood out because of their close relationship with ancestral spirits or natural gods.After the first conceptual revolution,theocratic legitimacy emerged,chiefs representing the authority of the gods,and society evolved into the era of chiefdoms.The emergence of law and royal power is also the result of changes in the relationship between heaven and man.At the end of the Emirate era,the further estrangement of the relationship between heaven and man greatly weakened the binding power of divine authority on the individual,and secular affairs were separated from religious affairs,so the maintenance of social order had to introduce the power of law and material,which was the second conceptual revolution.The royal power,the military clique,and the secular bureaucracy represent the law and have juridical legitimacy.In short,the process of China’s national origins can be divided into several phases by using legitimacy as a yardstick:the first is the higher stage of an egalitarian society.There should be a higher stage of egalitarian society similar to the Aranda society between the early egalitarian society and the later egalit society of Pei Ligang culture,at which theocracy has been created but not monopolized by a certain settlement or certain families,and some preliminary humanistic systems have been created.The second phase is the chiefdom society.After about 6000 BC,religion and theocracy began to appear in China,so there was also theocratic aristocracy and aristocracy.According to the nature of theocracy,the emirate era in China is divided into two types,namely the chiefdom state with the ancestral spirit religion as the main religion and the chiefdom with the natural supernatural god religion as the mainstay.However,the theocracy was not particularly strong in the emirate society of Yangshao culture,and the legitimacy of charisma and democratic politics were still very important,which caused no particularly significant wealth differentiation in the early Yangshao culture.The third phase is the early states.After about 4000 BC,the emphasis on material power indicated the separation of secular and religious affairs and the emergence of juridical legitimacy,which led to a long period of large-scale wars and the emergence of a series of kingdoms in the middle of the fourth millennium BC,which in turn were integrated into several larger and more powerful regional states in the middle of the third millennium BC.Eventually,the long war of unification gave birth to a relatively stable empire,the Xia Dynasty or the so-called Erlitou Wide-Area Monarchy.