Did people in Feudal Japan know about ancient European figures like Leonidas and Sparta? Like did Oda Nobunaga ever mention some ancient European historical figures in his writings? In the same vein, did ancient Chinese have any writings about the Greek or the Romans of the times? Final question, does China or Japan have any writings about the Vikings that's older than let's say 300 years ago?Random questions I know
>>18223146>Did people in Feudal Japan know about ancient European figures like Leonidas and Sparta?No.>Like did Oda Nobunaga ever mention some ancient European historical figures in his writings? No. >In the same vein, did ancient Chinese have any writings about the Greek or the Romans of the times?Yes, actually, the Chinese were vaguely aware of the Roman Empire back during the Han dynasty. They referred to it as Daqin. Their envoys never actually made it all the way to Rome, but they reached Parthia, and learned about Rome through them. So their information is spotty. They described Daqin as a great empire, equivalent to China itself, which ruled over hundreds of massive walled cities, which I suppose was the metric the Han Chinese used to measure the greatness of a state. >Final question, does China or Japan have any writings about the Vikings that's older than let's say 300 years ago?No.
Asia in general didn't know much about the west before colonization times so arround 1600. Even the stuff they knew, like the roman empire was vague.
>>18223146Yes. They were Aryans via the Saka.
>>18223165>Yes, actually, the Chinese were vaguely aware of the Roman Empire back during the Han dynasty. They referred to it as Daqin. Their envoys never actually made it all the way to Rome, but they reached Parthia, and learned about Rome through them. So their information is spotty. They described Daqin as a great empire, equivalent to China itself, which ruled over hundreds of massive walled cities, which I suppose was the metric the Han Chinese used to measure the greatness of a state.This is cool, can you go more in depth about the descriptions of the Daqins?
>>18223218You can read it or watch for yourself, there's lots of pop history about it. Voices of the Past did a nice reading of a primary source in translation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XdPodNwSGU
>>18223218>>18223232Some of it actually comes off bizarrely like Swiftian social commentary because of the Chinaman’s inability to understand Roman culture. For example, they say in one place “it is customary to change the emperor every two years” or “two months” iirc - because the emperor changed so frequently they assumed it was actually a custom of some kind
>>18223271It likely would've seemed like madness to the Chinese, to have an empire without an official succession system for deciding the next emperor.
>>18223284“It is their custom to kill the emperor and replace him every other year” is like something ironic that Swift would come up with. Lol
>>18223146>vikings >relevant No
>>18223288it would often just be a literal baby that was just a placeholder that they would kill/swap out as needed.
>>18223271It makes it somewhat entertaining. I wish we had more writings from cultures with these very "alien" mentalities about western culture. I wonder what the romans would have thought of the chinese and their bureaucracy.
They also didn't know the earth was round, or about the idea of heliocentrism. Until they met European explorers that literally sailed around a round earth, and could tell them about it. Which I think is interesting.
>>18224031The thing is you're looking at it from the wrong perspective.East Asian "geographers" figured out the Earth was round, they just had no reason to care to share that knowledge with the others.Ultimately it's an extreme case of a non-question with no real applications outside mapmaking. So in a society that doesn't compose of 99% bumfuck peasants and 1% that sucks itself off over knowing "the shit", it's normal they had no reason to spread the knowledge. It didn't matter.Romans would have been the same as Chinese in this matter. You'd have a select few people who knew if it became relevant to them and the typical person, whether a farmer or someone with practical education would just as easily go "I guess it's flat/turtle/whatever, sounds reasonable enough to me."It's the destruction of anything between the inbred hick and nepobaby with pristine education where showing off was put on a pedastal (since it secured and verified their position in society) that you'd eventually get a society where if you were given any education at all, you'd have to learn every piece of useless (at the time) trivia there ever was.For that matter, modern society is back to the Roman/Chinese system. I'm sure neither you, nor your neighbors know how to create the apparatus for a quantum mechanics experiment. And yet this shit is at the forefront of physics research and has tons of practical applications. But if I quizzed you, your answers about these things wouldn't be much better than someone who'd tell the Spanish sailors that the Earth is likely a flat square with a circle sky. That knowledge is simple trivia to you as long as the GPS works and tissue scans show your insides on a screen, just like as long as the accurate maps were decently accurate and mariners could get where they wanted to, the educated East Asians didn't really need to care what sort of things the map maker had to account for.
>>18224061Yeah I get this, your average person wouldn't care about the earth being round because it had literally zero relevance to their life. Anyone smarter than a nigger would probably just go "huh, yeah that kinda makes sense" to the earth being round, and then never mention it again for the rest of their life
yes. they called them dayuan or the great ionians
>>18224061>they just had no reason to care to share that knowledge with the others>non-questionpeople have always cared deeply about cosmology. what they didn't know, they would make up. and they would share their fantasies eagerly and widely>>18224283I have a hard time believing that the shape of the world you live in would be a triviality you wouldn't give a shit about"that kinda makes sense" is such a sedated response to the sudden realization of living in a fucking sphere hurling around through space. it doesn't make sense. it's insane. but it is what it is
>>18224429Da is mandarin for Great and Yunan is an Arabic loan word meaning Greek/ Ionia.T. Amateur linguist
>>18224061I want to point out that China both lacked a scientific method (so people rarely did experiments to confirm things) and lacked the scientific culture of spreading your knowledge. knowledge was to be hoarded so even if Li found out it was round he would just keep the knowledge to himself while smugly berating Xi for not knowing the true shape of the world
