VĂN HÓA ONLINE - DIỄN ĐÀN ĐA NGUYÊN 3 - THỨ BA 17 SEP 2024
HOA BINH CULTURE FROM A WISDOM PERSPECTIVE
Ha Van Thuy
In just three years, in 2027, it will be the 100th anniversary of the Hoa Binh Culture. On that day, there will certainly be a ceremony with the sound of gongs and drums and, thick or thin, there will be a few trays of food placed on the altar to worship the ancestors... From the food set up for the 60th anniversary and the homegrown items collected over the years, it can be seen that this time the ceremony to worship the ancestors is also poor! How sad, a century in which scholarship has not gone much further than the achievements of the French woman a hundred years ago! Perhaps today, famous scholars are still arguing about the terms "Hoa Binh Culture" or "Hoa Binh Stone Technical Complex"... But certainly, no one has told us the essential things: "Who are the Hoa Binh people?" “What is the role of Hoabinhian in Vietnamese history, culture and humanity…”
We, a Biology Bachelor who quit his job to become a writer, who at the end of his life could not stop searching for his roots, and became an amateur historian, have some thoughts on “THE CULTURE OF PEACE FROM A WISDOM PERSPECTIVE.”
In this paper, we would like to present three issues:
1. The Culture of Hoa Binh from an archaeological perspective.
2. The Culture of Hoa Binh from a genetic perspective.
3. The Culture of Hoa Binh from a wisdom perspective.
I. Hoa Binh culture from an archaeological perspective.
In the report of the Vietnam Museum of History on 100 years of discovering and researching Hoa Binh culture, presented by Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Khac Su, there is a passage: “145 Hoa Binh culture sites have been discovered, created by a specific population group, possibly of the same ethnicity. Hoa Binh culture dates from 20,000 to 7,000 BP, with 3 stages of development: Pre-Hoa Binh (20,000 - 11,000 BP), typical Hoa Binh (11,000 - 9,000 BP) and developed Hoa Binh (9,000 - 7,000 BP). This was also the time when the concept of Hoabinhian culture was expanded in space (common to Southeast Asia), in time (from Pleistocene to Holocene, from 50,000 to 5,000 BP) and new terms were introduced (a Hoabinhian culture, Hoabinhian cultures, Hoabinhian tradition or Hoabinhian-Technocomplex) (Solheim 1970: 145 - 162; Solheim 1972: 34 - 41; Gorman 1971).”(1)
That is the classic summary of the masters of Vietnamese archaeology. But somehow I feel that it is just dead numbers... It is completely lifeless, without the sacred soul of the largest archaeological culture in Vietnam that I hoped for. It is true that I and many others once had hope, a great hope but I myself do not understand what I hoped for. I became even more discouraged when reading some statements of international scholars at the "THE HOABINHIAN 60 YEARS AFTER MADELEINE COLANI: ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE" held at the end of 1993 in Hanoi.
-1. “Hoabinhian artifacts are also present in locations as far north as Japan, or as far south as Australia, although they share the same "Hoabinhian cultural core", the inhabitants of these different locations have their own traditions (for example, tools with relatively different quantities and types). One can say that these inhabitants have the same origin, but it cannot be said that ancient people in different regions all came from the Hoabinhian region. In other words, Hoabinhian is not the "navel" or "cradle" of ancient Southeast Asia. Therefore, they propose to use the term "Hoabinhian culture" in the sense of techno-complex, a collection of tools with the same technique, without implying an origin in Hoabinhian.
- 2. Because most of the tools of Hoa Binh culture were only chiseled on one side, the other side still had the pebble shell intact. However, in some locations in North Vietnam and on the Malay peninsula, there are more elaborately chiseled pebble tools on both sides. These stone tools called choppers have a much more primitive appearance than the sophisticated chiseling tools of Western Homo sapiens of the same period. From this point, some scientists, such as the American Mr. Movius, have put forward the theory that "Southeast Asia is backward and stagnant, and ancient Southeast Asian people are less evolved than ancient people in the West."
- 3. Many Homo sapiens cultures followed each other in Northern Vietnam during prehistoric times: before Hoa Binh culture there was Son Vi culture, and after that there was Bac Son culture. Bac Son culture existed almost parallel to the late stage of Hoa Binh culture, and was discovered before Hoa Binh culture (early twentieth century) in the northernmost region of Vietnam (Lang Son region). Mrs. Colani and Mr. Mansuy (the discoverers) considered Bac Son culture as a culture formed by the mixture of ancient local culture with higher culture brought into North Vietnam by immigrants from other places.
-4. From the research of excavation documents of Ma cave in Thailand, American archaeologist C.F. Gorman repeatedly rejected the concept of Hoabinhian culture and replaced it with the term "Hoabinhian Technocomplex" [24]. The spirit of this viewpoint had a great influence on scholars of the generation after C.F. Gorman, including Thai archaeologist Rasmi Shoocongdej. After the excavations in Lang Kamnan cave in western Thailand, this archaeologist recommended that archaeologists abandon the concept of "Hoabinhian" because it did not adapt to the Southeast Asian landscape [26]. Like C.F. Gorman, archaeologist Danny Tan attached the Hoabinhian Technocomplex to some pebble collections in Australia and New Guinea [29, p.74]. Or like W.Solheim II did not consider Hoa Binh as a culture but viewed it as a technical complex when examining some pebble relics in Japan [27, pp.19-26]. (2)
After a century of discovery and research, such a result is disappointing. Hoa Binh culture researchers still owe the people and science big questions.
i. About time: is it true that Hoa Binh culture only dates back 20,000 to 7,000 years? In excavation reports, there are traces of Hoa Binh culture at a time depth of 50,000 or 70,000 years. Why has there been no explanation for this event?
ii. Everyone knows that in an archaeological project, determining its owner is the most important, deciding the meaning of an entire culture. Yet nearly a century of research has only produced the answer "maybe there are the same ethnic group?" Is this an admission that the research has failed? According to Professor Nguyen Dinh Khoa, Vietnam currently has a large collection of ancient skulls with 35 Stone Age skulls and 35 Bronze Age skulls (3). Are those skulls not the owners of Hoa Binh culture?
iii. About the name.
The frustrating thing is that after 100 years of research, even the name of the site has not been established. There are still hypothetical names: a Hoabinhian culture; Hoabinhian cultures; Hoabinhian tradition or Hoabinhian-Technocomplex. The ancients said: if the name is correct, the words will be smooth. When a culture, after 100 years, has not even finished naming, what can people hope for in deeper things?
iv. The conclusion that Hoabinhian people do not know how to cultivate is also questionable! Could it be that a land once considered the cradle of Eastern agriculture is so bad?!
v. On the meaning of Hoa Binh Culture. A question has been raised: after a hundred years of research, researchers have not said anything about the meaning of Hoa Binh in the history of Vietnamese culture as well as the world? How sad!
From the above comments, it can be concluded that, after 100 years of excavating and researching a great culture with 145 sites, covering Southeast Asia to South China; collecting a large amount of artifacts, from crudely chiseled stone tools to sophisticated polished stones and rich pottery and especially a collection of up to 70 skulls... but not being able to identify the owner of the culture, not being able to name that culture, proves that the archaeological work has failed.
II. Hoa Binh Culture from a Genetic Perspective
But only 5 years after the world's archaeologists celebrated the 60th anniversary of Hoa Binh culture, in 1998, geneticist Y. Chu and 13 of his colleagues at the University of Texas published an article Genetic Relationships of the Chinese Population.(4) The article stated that Homo sapiens first appeared in East Africa 200,000 years ago. 70,000 years ago, Africans migrated to Hoa Binh Vietnam, creating humanity outside of Africa... An incident that shocked the capital of Washington, USA, opened a new era of exploring human history.
One night in August 2004, while searching online for materials for the novel Trieu Vu De was writing, I came across a news item in the Vietnamese newspaper Dai Chung published in Cali. After devouring the article, I sat there silently, goosebumps rising from the sacred feeling. A brilliant thought appeared: “This event not only led to the rewriting of Vietnamese history but also changed the fate of the Vietnamese people.” After that night, I stopped my literary work to search for the roots of the nation. I did not expect this to change my own life.
A. The Hoa Binh people are the ancestors of mankind outside of Africa
Acquiring the genius article of scholar Stephen Oppenheimer (5)….. combined with my own research, I discovered that, 83,000 years ago, about 15,000 African migrants of two major races Mongoloid and Australoid crossed the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula. They stayed here for 7,000 years, 76,000 years ago the migration group split into two. About 3,000 Mongoloid people stayed in Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. The group going to the East consisted of 13,000 people, including 11,000 Australoid people. 70,000 years ago, about 6,000 people reached Hoa Binh Vietnam, including 5,000 Australoid people and 1,000 Mongoloid people. Hoa Binh is a hot and humid tropical region convenient for humans to live. The two major races Australoid and Mongoloid met and mixed blood, giving birth to four ancient Vietnamese races: Indonesian, Melanesian, Mongoloid and Negritos. That was the initial situation. But then, due to the large number of Australoid people, there was a natural conflict over gene sources, causing the already small number of Mongoloid people to decrease more and more. Perhaps because they felt the danger of disappearing, a group of Mongoloid people left Hoa Binh, went to the Northwest of Vietnam, which was very cold at that time, and lived isolated there.
About 50,000 years ago, due to the warming climate, there was a population explosion. About 100,000 ancient Vietnamese people from Hoa Binh went to the Sundaland continent, down to the South Pacific and Australia. One line went west, through Laos, Myanmar, across the Bengal Sea to occupy India, replacing the people destroyed by the Toba volcano, creating the first inhabitants of South Asia. 40,000 years ago, the temperature in the North warmed up, about 40,000 people from Hoa Binh went up to occupy mainland China, from Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Yunnan... One line went up to Tianyuan Cave in the North, giving birth to the ancestors of the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. One line went up to Northeast Asia to live in the ice and 30,000 years ago, crossed the Bering Strait to occupy America, creating the ancestors of the Native Americans.
About 10,000 people from the West of mainland China, through Central Asia to Turkey and Greece. About 52,000 years ago, due to warming weather, Mongoloids from Yemen entered the Middle East. 40,000 years ago, about 4000 Europids from the Middle East crossed the Bosphorus Strait to Greece and Turkey. In Southern Europe, the two streams of people mixed blood to give birth to the Europeans, the ancestors of Europeans. Meanwhile, the Mongoloid community from Northwest Vietnam followed the Bashu corridor across the Yellow River to occupy Mongolia, becoming the North Asian Mongoloids. (6)
As if by magic, when genetic technology was applied to explore the past, it quickly clarified many things that hundreds of years of archaeology were powerless to:
i. Not 20,000 years as archaeology suggests, the age of Hoa Binh Culture lasted from 70,000 to 4000 years ago.
ii. The owners of Hoa Binh Culture were Viet people who migrated from Africa, with four races: Indonesian, Melanesian, Mongoloid and Negritos. Hoa Binh people with the highest biodiversity, are the ancestors of humanity outside of Africa
- Reality shows that, while archaeology was powerless, today genetics confirms that 100 years ago, the wise French woman who named Hoa Binh culture Hoabinhien was completely correct. Hoa Binh is not only the "navel" or cradle of Southeast Asia but more importantly, the cradle of all humanity!
- Only genetics can show that: Hoa Binh is the only place where the ancient Viet people were born with four ethnic groups: Indonesian, Melanesian, Mongoloid and Negritos. Even though they are called Son Vi, Hoa Binh, Bac Son, Dong Son… cultures, they are just different stages of Hoa Binh culture whose sole owners are the Vietnamese. Only genetics can convincingly prove that “Bac Son culture is not a culture formed by the mixing of ancient local culture with a higher culture brought to North Vietnam by immigrants from other places;” but Bac Son is the high stage of the Hoa Binh population.
- Genetics has also shown the naivety of some scientists with a heavy colonial mindset, such as the American Mr. Movius, who proposed the theory that “Southeast Asia is backward and stagnant, and ancient Southeast Asian people are less evolved than ancient people in the West.” The fact that Southeast Asian stone tools are inferior to Western choppers is not because Southeast Asians are less evolved, but because Southeast Asians were 30,000 years ahead and gave birth to the ancestors of those who made Western choppers.
- Genetics, through surveys of East Asian populations, has also confirmed that the Hoa Binh Vietnamese population created all of humanity outside of Africa. Thus, genetics, like a miracle, reveals the truth: Hoa Binh Vietnam is the origin of humanity!
B. Vietnamese language gives birth to human language
Science shows that when humans went out of Africa, they had matured in anatomy and language. This means that when they went out into the world, humans were genetically stable, forming human races from two haplogroups M and N. In Hoa Binh, initially, humans mixed blood to give birth to four ancient Vietnamese races: Indonesian, Melanesian, Mongoloid and Negritos. In which, the Indonesian people, called Lac Viet, played the leading role in race and language (Nguyen Dinh Khoa). (7)
From Hoa Binh, ancient Vietnamese people went out into the world to create humanity. Therefore, the Vietnamese language naturally became the ancestor of human languages outside of Africa. At the end of the 19th century, French scholar Henri Frey discovered this truth through his work L’annamite mere des languages. (8) As a Navy Admiral who worked in West Africa, when he came to Vietnam, he realized that the West African language was very close to Vietnamese, so he proposed the idea: "Vietnamese is the mother of all languages in the world." His idea was partly based on the "continental drift" theory that was popular at that time, which believed that due to continental drift, Africa separated from Asia, making Vietnamese the mother of all languages in the world. Although the continental drift theory was wrong, the discovery that "Vietnamese is close to African languages" was still correct because Vietnamese people migrated from Africa to the world.
Meanwhile, Western scholars, due to not understanding the origin of the world's population, have put forward wrong concepts. Until now, the historical linguistics discipline, which was formed in the 19th century, has had many academic problems. There needs to be a revolution in this work, which we have initiated with the article Reflecting on historical linguistics through the case of the Chinese language (9).
C. Hoa Binh people create material culture
As the first modern people to appear outside of Africa, the Vietnamese people made their own history and, invisibly, those were also the first pages of human history.
1. Hoa Binh stone tool creation.
23,000 years ago, the Hoa Binh people created stone tools by chiseling part of the surface of river or stream pebbles into a light chopping, cutting tool with a sharp edge, called an axe, hammer or viet (戈). When fitted with a handle, the axe, hammer, and “viet” became an effective tool for chopping food, breaking soil, cutting trees, and fighting. Proud of their invention, the Hoa Binh people were called the people carrying axes, people carrying hammers, and Viet. From there, the ethnic name of the Vietnamese people was born. From the beginning, only chiseled on the edge and blade, the axe was improved into a tool that was chiseled along the entire circumference of the pebble and polished in the Bac Son culture. That was essentially the first new stone tool of mankind. A question arises as to why the Hoa Binh stone tools are not called Neolithic? In my opinion, it is possible that the Hoa Binh tools were discovered late, when Western archaeology had matured, considered the standard, and most of the terminology of archaeology had been confirmed. The West is considered the starting point of world civilization, with the first Neolithic tools. Therefore, according to the Eurocentric concept, no one raises the issue. It is time to rewrite history to put the Hoa Binh stone tools back in their rightful place.
2. Creation of pottery.
With the development of life, tools used to hold water and cook became urgent requirements. From there, pottery was born, bringing the Vietnamese people into the period of eating cooked food and drinking boiled water. Archaeology discovered that at the Xianren Cave site in Jiangxi province, 25,000 years ago, the Vietnamese people created the first cultural relic. Here 20,000 years ago the world's first ceramic tools were created, bringing humanity into the era of cooked food and boiled water. From here ceramics spread throughout the world, from crude low-fired ceramics to today's artistic black ceramics and wonderful porcelain.
III. Hoa Binh Culture from a wisdom Perspective
From an archaeological and genetic perspective, humans have discovered important features of Hoa Binh culture. However, only from a wisdom perspective, a perspective with synthetic intelligence, can we fully explore Hoa Binh culture.
D. Hoa Binh people create agriculture
From two centuries ago, people considered the discovery of ancient culture to be the exclusive work of archaeology. But in reality, there are many issues whose depth exceeds the scope of the archaeological ruler. With Hoa Binh culture, its existence time is not 20 or 50 thousand but up to 70,000 years, so what tools do humans use to measure the events that may have occurred during that hidden and distant period? In reality, humans do not give up! Not only with intelligence but also with intuition, humans have used all their abilities to open up the secrets of the past. That is in general, but with Hoa Binh Culture, a big question must be answered: Did Hoa Binh Culture have agriculture? After 100 years of research, archaeology has been helpless before this question.
The impotence is due to the harmful influence of Western realism, created by analytical thinking. There must be sufficient evidence to believe in the mantra of realism. But how can there be evidence of ancient people sowing the first seeds and planting the first seedlings? All archaeological sites are only formed when people live in large enough numbers and for long enough periods on a land for the waste products from their activities to accumulate enough to become archaeological sites. But most of the time people are nomadic and shift cultivation, so how can there be archaeological sites? From the folk story of the Star of the Sky suckling a pig of the Bahna people of the Central Highlands of Vietnam and of the Bunun people on Taiwan, as well as the legend of the last millet tree in the Bible, those with ears and eyes understand that millet was grown by Southeast Asian people thousands of years before the last flood, that is, 8,000 to 9,000 years ago! I admire two of the most perceptive people in the world: C. Sauer and W.G. Solheim
In 1952, American geographer C. Sauer wrote in his book Agricultural Origins and Dispersals: “I have shown that Southeast Asia is the cradle of the oldest agriculture. And I have also shown that agricultural culture originated in association with net fishing in this country. I have also shown that the earliest domestic animals originated in Southeast Asia, and that this is the world's important center of cultivation techniques and the domestication of plants by vegetative reproduction."(1) In 1967, in his book Southeast Asia and the West, Professor W.G. Solheim II of the University of Hawaii wrote:
"I think that when we re-examine many of the data in mainland Southeast Asia, we can definitely discover that the first plant domestication in the world was carried out by the Hoa Binh people (Vietnam) around 10,000 years BC..." "That the Hoa Binh culture was an indigenous culture without any outside influence, leading to the Bac Son culture." "That the northern and central regions of mainland Southeast Asia had advanced cultures in which there was the development of the first polished stone tools in Asia, if not the first in the world, and pottery was invented..." "I think that the earliest edged stone tools found in northern Australia 20,000 years BC are of Hoa Binh origin." "I agree with Sauer that the Hoabinhian people were the first people in the world to domesticate plants somewhere in Southeast Asia. It would not surprise me if this domestication began as early as 15,000 BC."
"That not only was the domestication of plants the first, as Sauer has suggested and demonstrated, but that it went further, that this place provided the West with agricultural ideas. And that some plants were later transmitted to India and Africa. And that Southeast Asia continued to be an advanced region in the Far East until China replaced this impulse in the first half of the second millennium BC, that is, about 1500 BC."(11)
Four years later, in March 1971, this professor of the University of Hawaii published an important work from his surveys in Thailand under the title New Light on the Forgotten Past:
"The theory that prehistoric Southeast Asia moved down from the North brought with it important developments in art. I found that the Proto-Neolithic culture of Northern China, called the Yangshao civilization, was developed from a low level of Hoabinhian culture from Northern South Asia around the 6th or 5th century BC."
"I believe that the later culture known as Lungshan, which has traditionally been thought to have originated in Yangshao in northern China and then spread to the east and southeast, actually developed from a Hoabinhian base." "The use of dugout canoes was probably already in use on the small rivers of Southeast Asia long before the fifth century BC. I believe that sea travel by boat began around 4000 BC, incidentally reaching Taiwan and Japan, bringing with it the cultivation of taro and perhaps other crops." "The Southeast Asian peoples also moved west, reaching Madagascar perhaps around 2000 BC. They probably contributed some domesticated plants to the economy of East Africa." "Around that time there was the first contact between Vietnam and the Mediterranean, probably by sea. Some uncommon bronze objects proving Mediterranean origin were also found at the Dong Son site."(12)
At the time of its publication, Solheim II's announcement shocked the scientific community. He was dubbed "Mr. Southeast Asia." But later, because the age of the artifacts found in Thailand was determined later than the original number, his opinion was denied and fell into oblivion.
But now, a series of archaeological discoveries in China have shown that his statement half a century ago was completely correct. However, the scientific community has also forgotten, no one mentions his prediction anymore.
Sadly, until now, talented Vietnamese scientists, direct descendants of Hoa Binh Culture, still doubt the achievements of their ancestors!
E. Hoa Binh people create intangible culture.
i. Forming a synthetic way of thinking
Thanks to farming, Vietnamese people have a firm grasp of the organic relationship between crops and the environment, learned a lifestyle that values women and respects different elements of the environment equally. No element is only beneficial, nor is any element only harmful, but they are related to each other in a harmonious way. Farmers take advantage of this relationship to achieve optimal production results. From there, a synthetic way of thinking arises.
ii. Discovering Yin and Yang and the Five Elements.
Hoa Binh people discovered that in the universe there are two elements, Yin and Yang. These are two opposing sides of the universe, but they do not cancel each other out but coexist in all things and phenomena: in Yin there is Yang, in Yang there is Yin. Western analytical thinking goes into exploring the nature of the world, finding the four elements of the universe: Water, Fire, Earth and Air. Meanwhile, Eastern synthetic thinking does not seek the essence of the world but studies the operation of all things. Thanks to that, it discovered the universe with five elements: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth, which are five forms of matter that are always in motion. The five elements are related according to the mutual generation and mutual inhibition of the five elements, thereby mastering the laws of operation of the universe.
iii. Creation of Chinese characters. Chinese legend says that the Yellow Emperor ordered Cang Jie to create characters. But that is just a legend. Not only did the Yellow Emperor not have characters, but the Xia Dynasty did not have characters either. Hieroglyphics appeared earliest in Anyang, the capital of the Yin Dynasty about 1,400 years ago. But for a long time, no one knew where they came from. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of Oracle bone script were also found here, so it is believed that Oracle bone script is the origin of Chinese writing. Later, archaeologists found the earliest Oracle bone script in the Jiahu culture 9,000 years ago, stone inscriptions in Canxiang Tang, Guangxi about 6,000 years ago, and many other places. Because the earliest hieroglyphic characters were found on the Sa Pa stone carving site 10,000 years ago, and two ceramic plates engraved with the words Shang and Shi in the Hoa Binh culture 8,000 years ago, we believe that the ancient Vietnamese sketched the first hieroglyphics and brought them to China. In 1400 BC, when occupying the land of Anyang from the Vietnamese, King Ban Gang encountered Oracle bone script and used Vietnamese “artists” to produce many Oracle bone scripts. From here, hieroglyphics were born. It can be said that the Vietnamese people have persistently created hieroglyphics for tens of thousands of years and the Shang Dynasty was the descendant generation that completed this work.
iv. Creation of the Book of Changes
Archaeologists discovered a tomb in Puyang Town, Henan Province, 6,500 years ago, believed to be the tomb of Fu Xi. In the tomb, there were images of the Azure Dragon, the White Tiger, and the positions of the twenty-eight constellations, so scholars believe that the Book of Changes was completed at this time. At the 5,800-year-old Lingjiatan culture in Anhui Province, a jade turtle with the Bagua diagram was first discovered. Thus, the Book of Changes was certainly completed at this time. Meanwhile, the Chinese claim to be descendants of the Yellow Emperor, who fought in the Battle of Zhuolu in 2698 BC. Born 1,200 years after the Book of Changes was created, the Chinese could not was the owner of the I Ching. In fact, the Book of Changes was created by the Viet people, completed during the time of Fu Xi, a text without words and passed down to the time of the Yellow Emperor. During the Zhou Dynasty, King Wen and Confucius added the Xuanci, Haoci, etc. to form the Book of Changes.v. Creation of Vietnamese Confucian culture.
The crystallization of Vietnamese culture, spirit, and ideology during the Zhou Dynasty created the cosmology and philosophy of life of the Vietnamese people. Specifically:
- The concept of the universe involving three parts heaven and two parts earth.
“One Yin, One Yang is the Way”: Yin and Yang are the Way! That Way is the essence and also the operation of the universe. It is true that Yin and Yang create the Way. But how much Yin and how much Yang is circulating in the universe? If it is a static balance of one Yin (-1) + one Yang (+1), the universe will be eliminated and will not exist! In fact, the universe operates in an upward, positive direction, meaning that Yang is dominant. But to what extent is the dominance? The wise Eastern people have realized that Yin and Yang move in harmony within the range of the number 5: Yang + Yin = 5 = the number of the universe! But the question is, in that number of the universe, how much Yang and how much Yin? There are only 2 answers: either Yang 4, Yin 1 or Yang 3, Yin 2! Those are the two choices of human beings for development. Eastern philosophy recognizes that 3 Yang + 2 Yin is the golden number of the universe's operation. Life is going up, is growing, is Yang but in which the part of Yang, of Father, of Heaven is 3 and the part for Earth, for Mother is 2 to reach the highest harmony. Realizing this great secret of the universe, the East does not rigidly say "tam thien nhi dia" but records according to the philosophy of "tham thien luong dia": it is exactly 3/2 but it is not a fixed mathematical correlation but a dialectical correlation: sometimes 3 but sometimes it can be slightly larger or smaller than 3, ensuring the dynamism of development.
2. Concept of life: Humanity, Harmony, Spirituality.
From the culture of wet rice agriculture, contemplating human life and the universe, Eastern people see that the universe is composed of 3 elements: Heaven, Earth and Human, in which humans are the center of this relationship! As the subject of the universe, humans maintain a harmonious relationship with the universe and with their fellow human beings. And once humans have Humanity and Harmony like that, they are spiritual, sympathetic, and responsive to other supernatural worlds.
3. The Viet Tao “An vi”.
To live in such a relationship with the universe and their fellow human beings, humans need to practice the Way of Peace. In contrast to the active, all activities are for profit, so they compete and seize. In contrast to the passive, negative, dreamless, indifferent, and withdrawn from life... Peace is the way of living actively and wholeheartedly, but not because of the urge of self-interest but because of the necessity of the common good. While the West works and creates for personal gain, the East also works and creates wholeheartedly for the common good in the passion of joy and honor.
4. Equal production
The three nuclei above exist because they stand on the equal production mechanism. That is the mechanism that ensures a certain fairness in the distribution of income of the community. It is not egalitarianism because no one has the absolute right to distribute wealth, but it is equal production to achieve relative fairness in assets. In Eastern memory, there is still a recorded way of dividing assets in ancient times, which is the provincial field mechanism: The community joins hands to clear the field, people try to make the field square, then divide it into 9 equal parts. Eight families cultivate the surrounding 8 parts and join hands to take care of the middle field, called the provincial field. The harvest from the "provincial field" is submitted to the king. Later, the equal production mechanism was changed to the form of public fields. Before 1945, in Vietnam, there were still 20% of public fields, which were village fields, not under the state's control, and every three years the village divided them for the poor to cultivate.
4. Equal production
The three nuclei above exist because they stand on the equal production mechanism. That is the mechanism that ensures a certain fairness in the distribution of income of the community. It is not egalitarianism because no one has the absolute right to distribute wealth, but it is equal production to achieve relative fairness in assets. In Eastern memory, there is still a recorded way of dividing assets in ancient times, which is the provincial field mechanism: The community joins hands to clear the field, people try to make the field square, then divide it into 9 equal parts. Eight families cultivate the surrounding 8 parts and join hands to take care of the middle field, called the provincial field. The harvest from the "provincial field" is submitted to the king. Later, the equal production mechanism was changed to the form of public fields. Before 1945, in Vietnam, there were still 20% of public fields, which were village fields, not under the state's control, and every three years the village divided them for the poor to cultivate.
V. Celebrating 100 years of Hoa Binh culture.
Celebrating 100 years of discovering and researching Hoa Binh culture is an important occasion for science to evaluate the role of Hoa Binh culture in human history. Along with the above evaluation, we realize that, spiritually, Hoa Binh culture is the birthplace of human culture. Therefore, this is a place where human spirituality gathers, a place that connects people around the world to build a sacred temple of humanity, a place where people gather with the common goal of building a world of peace and friendship.
Therefore, PEACE CULTURE DAY should be considered a festival of all humanity turning to the origin. From here, a cultural tradition of turning to the origin is created.
Saigon, September 10, 2024
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