Europeans in Ancient China

[Morphius]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350522856_Indo-Europeans_in_the_Ancient_Yellow_River_Valley
 

Would you agree with this paper?

[Lu]

Hi Morphius, welcome to the forums! Can you briefly explain what's in the paper, so we know whether it sounds interesting enough to go and read it? And what do you think of it?

[杰.克]

"This paper was designed with two purposes in mind. The first is to convey the idea that there may have been a tribe of Indo-Europeans that conquered the Shang of the Yin dynasty, resulting in the establishment of China’s longest lasting and possibly most influential dynasty, the Zhou. The second purpose is to investigate, if this is the case, whether the myths and legends of China are in fact those of this Indo-European conquering tribe, and to suggest also that their systems of science and philosophy heavily influenced the ancient Chinese"

 

Overall thoughts: its difficult to offer any opinion of worth as a layman, you need to research and study and analyze sources. Me agreeing or not agreeing with it, well what do know aside from base level gut feelings. That being said - here's whether I agree

 

1st point - It too far back in history to have an authorative answer. So my answer would be I don't know

2nd point - disagree. Chinese myths and legends are Chinese

[Jim]

Funnily enough skimmed a paper the other day that suggested Indo-European origins for the the names of the trigrams: http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp324_yi_jing_trigram_names.pdf

Populations at the time were far more mobile that we perhaps commonly imagine now, e.g. the later example of the Visigothic kingdoms in Iberia and Africa would sound pretty far out if we didn't know it was true, so who knows really, but tend to be suspicious about suggestions of conquest when contact seems more likely.