The discovery of the Hemudu site (Zhejiang) in 1973 was a great event for Chinese archaelologists because the site traced back to more than 7000 years the most ancient civilization of rice found on earth.  Also found there  were remnants of  lacustrine wooden housing built on piles, the type of construction quite different from the earthen houses in Northern China.  The people who lived there possessed traits characterized Mongoloid as well as Australo-Negroid. Because Zhejiang is part of the most beautiful provinces in Southern China for a long time,  that famous civilization has been attributed to the Chinese people even though the cradle of their civilization was known to be narrowly tied to the basin of the Yellow River ( or Huang He ) ( Hoàng Hà ) where Anyang is its ancient heart.  One cannot deny that their civilization has found all its quintessence in the neolithic cultures of Yang-Shao ( Henan Province ) ( 5000 years BC) and Longshan ( Shandong Province ) ( 2500 years BC ) respectively identified by the Swedish Johan G. Andersson in 1921 and the father of Chinese archaeology Li Ji a few years later.

Bronze vase decorated with anthropomorphic faces Melanesian

Thanks to phylogenetic works done by the American team led by professor J.Y.Chu of the University of Texas, which was published in the American Review of Sciences Academy under the title "Genetic Relationship of Population in China" (1),  an accurate idea about the origin of the Chinese people began to emerge.  Three points were raised from these works:

In Search of the Origin of the Vietnamese People

1) It is clear that genetic evidence does not support that Homo-sapiens in China has an independent origin.  The ancestors of the populations presently living in the East of China came from South East Asia.

2) Thereafter, it is probably safe to conclude that "modern" folks native of Africa constitute largely the genetic capital found presently in East Asia.

At her birth a person possesses her genoptype (collection of genes) that is a gem capable of making itself an infinity of copies transmitted from generation to generation.  These genes, which are made of immense molecules in the form of double-helix DNA (3) are the basis of heredity.  It is  possible that the tiny biochemical computers made of DNA portions in our body make radical changes in a specific context where all essential factors combine to allow them to do so.  It is at the point of spontaneous mutation in response to climatic changes or solar radiation or a genetic drift that the genotype of one species can be completely modified to become the genotype of another species as the years go by.  That mutation can take place at snail pace (theory of gradualism of Ernst Mayr or by giant's leaps (theory of punctuated equilibrium put forth by two American paleontologists Nils Elredge and Stephen Jay Gould. That better facilitated the understanding of the human race evolution (from Homo-Erectus to Homo-sapiens sapiens ) and of the phenotype that the latter can acquire in an encountered environment (skin color, size, blood system, different behavior etc...).

Map inthe Spring and Autumn period

In his conclusion, professor J.Y. Chu recognized that it is probable the ancestors of the populations speaking Altaic languages (or the Han) were issues of the population of South East Asia and the tribes coming from Central Asia and Europe

That discovery did not call into question what has been proposed some few years before by anthropology professor Wilhelm G. Solheim II of the University of Hawaii in his book "A New Light in a Forgotten Past" (2).  For this anthropologist, there is no doubts that the Hoa Binh culture (15,000 years B.C.) discovered in 1922 by the French archaeologist Madeleine Colani in a village near Hoà Bình province in Vietnam was the birth place of future evolution of Neolithic cultures of Yang Shao and Longshan found in Northern China.  British physicist Stephen Oppenheimer has gone far beyond what was thought at that time by showing in logical and scientific processes that the cradle of civilization of humanity was in South-East Asia in his work "Eden in the East: the Drowned Continent of South-East Asia".(4)  He concluded basing on geological evidence found at the bottom of the China sea and carbon-14 dating methods on foodstuff (yam, taro, rice, cereals etc...) found in South-East Asia (Non Sok Tha, Sakai (Thailand), Phùng Nguyên,  Ðồng Ðậu (Vietnam), Indonesia), that a huge flood took place and forced the people in the region who,  unlike what western archaeologists had described as folks living on fishing, hunting and gathering, were the first to know how to perfectly master rice growing and farming  to migrate all over the place (either southward in Oceania, or eastward in the Pacific, or westward in India, or northward in China) for their survival.  Those folks had become the seeds of great and brilliant civilizations found later in India, Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Mediterranean.

From those archaeological and scientific findings, one is led to pose questions on what has been reported and falsified by history in this region of the world and taught until then to the Vietnamese.  Could one ignore any longer those scientific discoveries?  Could one continue to believe any longer in Chinese writings (Hậu Hán Thư for example) where Chinese prefects such as Tích Quang ( Si Kouang ), Khâm Diên were imputed the care of teaching the ancestors of the Vietnamese how to dress and use the plow that they did not know at the first century of our era?.  How could they not know rice growing, the legitimate descendants of king Shennong ( Thần Nông )(4),  when one knows that the latter was a specialist in agrarian domain?  No one dares to pick out this contradiction.  One does not even raise questions on what the people from the North have given to this devine hero the nickname  Yandi (  Viêm Ðế )(king of hot country of Bai Yue).  Is it about the way to refer to the king of the region of the South, because at the Zhou era,  the Yue territory was known as Viêm Bang?  Is it possible for nomad folks from the North whose origin is Turco-Mongol, the ancestors of the Han and of the Southern folks, the Yue to have the same ancestors?  Is it the matter of a pure making up stories at the glory of the conquerors in order to justify their policy of assimilation?

All the traces of the other peoples, the "Barbarians" have been wiped off at the time of their passage.  The conquest of the Chinese continent began at the borders of the loess and the Great Plain and hard to please for almost four millennia.  That has been noted by the French scholar René Grousset  in his work "History of China" when speaking of the expansion of a Chinese rude  pioneer race of the Great Plain

Facing their brilliant civilization, very few people including the Europeans when they first arrived in Asia dared to raise any doubts about what has been said in Chinese and Vietnamese annals and think of the existence of even another civilization that the dominators succeeded in monopolizing and erasing on the  submissive land of the Bai Yue people.  The name Indochina has already reflected a great deal this attitude because for a large number of folks, there are only two civilizations in the world worth mentioning in Asia:  That of India and of China.  It is also regrettable to note the same mistake made by some Vietnamese historians influenced by by the Chinese culture in their history works.  By dint of being indoctrinated by the Northern folks' policy of colonization, a certain number of Vietnamese continue to forget our origin and to think nowadays that we are issues of the Chinese who will not hesitate to set going their policy of assimilation and annexation in territories they have succeeded in conquering since the creation of their nation.  The success of "Sinisation" of the Han was visible as the centuries went by at the time of contact with other "barbarian" peoples.  The process would not be different from the one that marked their footsteps on the Mongolian "land of grass" in 19th century and in the Manchurian forest in 20th century.

One does not refute their brilliant civilization having an undeniable impact on the development of the Vietnamese culture during their long domination, but one cannot forget to recognize that the ancestors of the Vietnamese, the Luo Yue ( ou Lạc Việt ) >have had their own culture, that of Bai Yue.  The Vietnamese were the sole survivors of this people for not to be "sinied" in the turmoil of history.  They were the legitimate heirs of the Bai Yue people and of their agricultural civilization.  The bronze drums of  Ðồng Sơn have witnessed their legitimacy because on these objects were found patterns of decoration recounting their agricultural and maritime activities of this brilliant era before the arrival of the Chinese on their territory (Kiao Tche or Giao Chỉ in Vietnamese).

La hache des Yue

and served as the model of representation in Chinese writing by the pictogram . This pictogram also appears in the word Yue where is found the root word mễ () or rice or gạo in Vietnamese to mean the folks who practice farming at the era of Confucius. Nowadays, the word Yue (), besides the radical "(Tẩu) (pass or vượt in Vietnamese), the picture of the axe continues to be represented by the pictogram endlessly modified as time goes by.

Perhaps the word Yue phonetically comes from the sound Yit used by the Muong tribe to call the axe.  It is important to remember that the Muong tribe has the same origins as the Luo Yue ( ou Lạc Việt ) tribe whose the Vietnamese are issues.  ( The  famous Vietnamese kings Lê Ðại Hành, Lê Lợi  being Muong people). Recently, archaeologist and researcher of CNRS of humans or animals in her work titled "The Rediscovery of Ancient China" (Editeur Gallimard, 1998).  The sage Confucius had the opportunity to talk about the Bai Yue people in conversations with his disciples

The Bai Yue people living south of the Yang Tse river ( Dương Tử Giang) has a life style, a language, traditions, moral standards and a specific foodstuff... They devote themselves to rice growing, which makes them different from our people who grow millet and wheat.  They drink water coming from a kind of plant plucked from the forest known as "tea".  They like dancing,  working while singing and alternate their reply in the songs.  They often disguise themselves in the dance with leaves and plants.  We should not imitate them.( Xướng ca vô loại ).

Confucian influence is not unfamiliar to the bias that Vietnamese parents still hold today when their children devote themselves a bit too much to musical or theatrical activities.  it is in this spirit that they are seen with a negative view.  But it is also the attitude adopted by Chinese governors in forbidding the Vietnamese to manifest musical expressions in their ceremonies and festivities during their long domination

Historian Si Ma Qian ( Tư Mã Thiên ) had the opportunity to talk about the Yue in his Memoires historiques ( Sử Ký Tư Mã Thiên ) when he recounts the life of the famous lord , Gou Jian ( Câu Tiễn ),prince of the Yue for his incommensurable patience facing the ennemy governor Fu Chai  ( Phù Sai ), king of principality Wu (Ngô) at the war time of Srpings and Autumns.   After his death, his kingdom was absorbed completely in 332 B.C. by the kingdom of Chou ( Sở Quốc ) which was in its turn annexed later by Qin Shi Huang Di during the unification of China.  It is important to stress that the Hemudu site is located in the kingdom Yue of Gou Jian.( Zhejiang )

Who are those Bai Yue?  How do they live?  In what region are they located?  The following characteristics are attributed to the Bai Yue:

1)  The practice of cutting hair short and tattooing.
2)  The construction of houses on piles ( construction Ganlan  ).
3)  Dress in loincloth and turban.
4)  Blackening or grinding front teeth ( canine teeth )
5)  Eating clams and amphibians in diet.
6)  Bronze casting and using bronze drums in rituals.
7)  Foretelling future using bird bones
8)  Totemic cult (birds, reptiles and amphibians)
9)  Practice burying on cliffs
10)  A highly developed technology of weaving
11)  Intensive use of small boats and expertise in the art of maritime warfare.

As for the groups sharing the same culture of Bai Yue,  one finds the Yang Yue, Nan Yue ( Nam Việt), Lu Yue, Xi Ou, Ou Yue, Luo Yue (Lạc Việt), Gan Yue, Min Yue (Mân Việt), Yi Yue, Yue Shang etc... They lived north of the basin of the blue river, from Zhejiang( Triết Giang ) to Jiaozhi (Giao Chỉ) (the North of Vietnam today).  It is found in this area of distribution the current provinces of Southern China: Foujian (Phúc Kiến), Hunan(Hồ Nam), Guizhou (Qúi Châu), Guangdong (Quảng  Ðông), Jiangxi, Guangxi ( Quảng Tây) and Yunnan (Vân Nam).

They have the custom of tattooing their bodies to protect themselves from attacks of water dragons.  Relying on the support of Si Ma Qian's Memoires Historiques the scholar   Léonard Aurousseau evoked the Goujian (king of the East Yue) ancestors' custom to paint their bodies with dragons or other aquatic beasts similar to the ones found on the South Yue.

They wore long hair in chignon held by a turban.  According to some Vietnamese texts, they cut their hair short to facilitate their walk in the mountain forests.  Their clothes were made of vegetal fibers.  Their houses were elevated to avoid being attacked by wild animals.  They used bronze drums as ritual objects in their ceremonies for invocation of rain or as an emblem of power in case there is the need to call warriors for combat.  The Giao Chi possessed a sacred instrument: The bronze drum.  In listening to the drum, they were so enthusiastic during the war...", that is what we found in the first volume of Hậu Hán Thư (Late Hán Book).   Their warriors wore a simple loincloth and armed with long spears decorated with feathers.  They were also bold navigators who, in their long pirogues traveled all over China sea and beyond in part of southern seas.  In spite of their high technicity and perfect mastering of farming and rice growing, they were a very peaceful people.

This remark has been confirmed by what was discovered in the tombs at the  Guigi site of Jiangxi: The weapons found bore a symbolic characteristic because they were all made of wood.  They did not have an important place in people's life or after-live.  This led to the conclusion that contrary to the society of the folks from the North, that of the Yue was rather more peaceful.  That is why they were not able to resist better every time there was an encroachment by the neighbors from the North, the Yi who did not stop at nibbling away their territory and pushing them a little farther south at each confrontation.  The Yi  distinguished themselves by their art of making bows and arrows.  They were formidable warriors talented in arching and horse riding.  Hardened by the roughness of nature, they were used to wrestling with wild animals and other tribes.  That gave them at the start a gene of a conqueror and a fighter in their blood.

It was not the case of the folks from the South, the Bai Yue.  The wise Confucius had the occasion to compare the forces that the folks from the North and from the South possessed respectively: Courage and power  (Dũng) for the former and kindness and generosity ( Nhân Từ ) for the latter.  Again,  the word having for origin the picture of a man holding a bow gives us a pretty good idea on the particularity of the folks from the North.  Under the direction of Houang Di ( Hoàng Ðế ) they have succeeded in pushing back the first tribes of Bai Yue in the territory delimited by the yellow river Huang He and the YangTse river led by Chiyou( Xi Bưu ) (or Ðế Lai in Vietnamese ) in alliance with king Lôc Tục ( ou Kinh Dương Vương ) who reigned south of the blue River on a vast  country of Xích Qủi (Country of red demons). According to a Chinese legend, this confrontation took place at Trác Lộc(Zhuolu) in the presently province of Hebei and has permitted the folks from the North to start progressively their expansion to the Blue River.  The death of Chiyou marked the first victory of the folks from the North over the Bai Yue people some 3000 years B.C.

At the Shang period,  none of the Chinese or Vietnamese historic documents talked about the relationship between the Bai Yue and the Shang besides the Vietnamese legend about "Phù Ðổng Thiên Vương (or the heavenly hero Phù Ðổng village) which reported a confrontation between the Shang and the Văn Lang kingdom of the Luo Yue.  However it was noted that contact was established later between the  Zhou dynasty and the king of the Luo Yue ( Hùng Vương).  A silver pheasant ( bach trĩ) was offered by the latter to the king of Zhou according to the book Linh Nam Chích Quái.  At the time of Spring and Autumn, a state of East Yue was known in the Mé>moires Historiques by the historiographer of Han empire Si Ma Qian ( Tư Mã Thiên ).  It was the kingdom of the famous lord Gou Jian ( Câu Tiễn ).  At the death of this one, his descendants did not succeed in maintaining hegemony. At the middle course of the Blue River, another kingdom, founded also by one of the Bai Yue tribes (Bộc Lão) and known as Chou (Sở Quốc), took over at the time of Fighting Kingdoms and became one of the seven rival principalities (Han, Zhao, Wei, Chu, Yan, Qi, Qin and Chou).

  www.vietnammonpaysnatal.fr

Warriors of Qin's army Before being defeated by the army of Qin, the Chu kingdom has indirectly brought its undeniable contribution in favor of the future formation and unity of the Chinese nation that the Yi had begun to put in place by eliminating in 332 the state of East Yue of Goujian and starting to give a new impulsion to the development of a large state with the reforms of Wu Qi.

The Gou Yue (or East Yue) began to take refuge in the southern territory of Bai Yue after the annexation of their land by the Chou kingdom.  According to Léonnard Aurousseau after their defeat, The Gou Yue or Ðông Âu (or Esat Âu) found asylum in large number in the following regions: Foujian (Phúc Kiến), Guangdon (Quảng  Ðông), Guangxi (Quảng Tây ) and Jiaozhi (Giao Chỉ) and thus became the Man Yue (Foujian), Nan Yue (Jiangsu, Jiangxi) and Luo Yue (Quangxi, Jiaozhi).  All were "siniized" as centuries went by except the Luo Yue who were the legitimes descendants of Gou Yue at the Au branch and were known often as Tây Âu  (Xi Ou or West Âu).

There was no doubts on the origin of the Luo Yue", wrote the French scholar Leonard Aurousseau in his work "Notes sur les origines du peuple annamite ( Ghi chép nguồn gốc dân tộc An Nam)" (BEFEO, T XXIII, 1923, p.254).  The other Yue peoples, particularly those living in the Chou kingdom were fast to follow them at the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang Di.  This one did not hesitate to banish whoever dare resist his policy of assimilation, particularly the Yue and the Miao to forced labor on the construction of the Great Wall, to burn not only all the works of learned confucianists but also those of other unsubdued people and to maintain his policy of aggression against the Bai Yue as far as Ling Nan (Linh Nam).  The conquest of the Xi Ou and Luo Yue (Tay Au) territory of Thục An Dương Vương that marked the second confrontation between the Chinese and the Bai Yue, was achieved in 207 with the nomination of two famous governors to the conquered territory: Nhâm Hiếu  ( Jen Hiao ) and his assistant Triệu Ðà. ( Zhao Tuo ).

But that did not upset the will and ardor for independence of the Luo Yue (the Viet).  They decided to consolidate the pillar by throwing a piece of earth around it when they went by, which progressively helped in building up a mound and made disappear the mythical pillar. To deal with any eventuality of revolt, there was also an order from empress Kao< in 179 B.C. providing a ban on delivery of not only plowing and metal instruments but also horses, oxen and sheep to the Barbarians and the Yue. This has been reported by E. Gaspardone in his work titled " Matériaux pour servir à l'histoire de l'Annam " (BEFEO, 1929).  Because of this policy, it is not surprising to discover recently a large number of bronze drums burried in Vietnam and in neighboring areas (Yunnan, Hunan).  The Ðồng Sơn civilization came to an end during the Chinese occupation.

Forced enlistment of the Yue into the army of the conquerors and the contacts they had with the Chinese as the years went by allowed them to know more about warfare technique ( Sunzi for example ) and to improve their weapons in the struggle against the invaders in the years to come.  On the other hand, the Chinese appropriated what belonged to the Yue during their long occupation. The Yue continued to be treated as barbarians despite their undeniable contribution to the radiance of Chinese culture.  Those folks from the North could pretend from then on to be the legitimate holders of the Writing of Luo,  the theory of Ying and Yang and the 5 elements, even though there exists a large number of incoherence in their mythical made up stories.

Except the Luo Yue, other peoples of Bai Yue continued to be "sinized" in a way that at the end of 10th century, on their land there were only two peoples face to face, a conquering people (the Han) and the people (the Viet) looking for independence.  The states of Gou Yue, Nan Yue, Man Yue etc...thereafter took part in Southern China.  Taking advantage of the breaking up of the Tang empire, the Luo Yue declared independence with Ngô Quyền.  The Vietnamese nation began to see the day.  One should not believe that everything went really smoothly and harmoniously.  It cost such sacrifices in order for the folks from the North to accept the reality.  That  is how the history page of the Bai Yue was mixed up with that of the Luo Yue.

Have recent scientific discoveries radically changed the view about the Bai Yue and particularly their history?  They have called into question he idea of cultural diffusionism originated from the North.  More ancient vestiges than those at Hemudu have been discovered recently in the middle Blue river at Pentoushan (Hunan).  Could one continue to consider the Miao, the Bai Yue as "barbarian" folks?  Nevertheless the word Miao which is made of a ricefield ( Ðiền ) added on its top the pictogram   Thảo" (cỏ) (  herb )

provides evidence how the Chinese depict in their languane people knowing how to grow rice.  Could we continue to maintain a traditional and obsolete version written by the conquerors to the detriment of the search for historic truth? It turns out indispensable to put the train back on the tracks knowing for sure that the Chinese civilization does not need made up stories because it deserved to appear for a long time among the great civilizations of humanity.

 It is the ancestors of the Luo Yue that taught the folks from the North the culture of rice and not the other way around as has been written in a large number of Chinese and Vietnamese historic documents.  The time has come to give the homage to our ancestors, the Yue, who because of their peaceful nature were forced to be wiped off in front of the use of force in the turmoil of history.  Heirs of a glorious past, tangled up successively in fraticide and colonial wars and deep in corruption, Vietnam of the Luo Yue needs to recover because it does not deserve to be part of the poorest countries in the world.  The time has come for it to follow the path drawn by its ancestors and do better than them....

(1)  Volume 95, issue 20, 1763-1768, 29 Juillet, 1998
(2)   National Geographic, Vol 139, no 3
(3)   Deoxyribosenucleic acid
(4)   Kinh Dương Vương, being the father of the ancestor of the Viet, Lạc Long Quân  and the great grand child of king Shen Nong

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