【作者】 王明珂；

【机构】 台湾中研院历史语言研究所；

【摘要】 <正>近三十年来长江下游的良渚文化﹐中上游的广汉三星堆文化﹐以及辽河流域的红山文化等考古发现﹐都曾震惊中国考古与历史学界。这些精致的青铜或玉器制造及复杂的宗教仪式﹐皆象征阶序化社会与中央化王权在商周﹐或更早﹐已存在于远离中原的各方边陲地区。这些考古发现改变了从前学者们以黄河流域为中国文明唯一中心的想法﹐也因此它们为中国学术界带来相当大的震惊与讶异。更多还原

【Abstract】 Few areas of the world can boast archaeological findings equal to that of China in recent half century. Following the great excavation of ancient remains of the Shang dynasty in the 1930s, more ancient civilizations have been found after 1960s; among them, the Sanxingdui culture in the upper Yangtze River valley, the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze River valley, and the Hungshan culture in the Liao River valley, have drew most scholars’ attentions. Unlike the Shang civilization that was in the Central Plain of China and was described in ancient documents, all above mentioned cultures found after 1960s were located on China’s peripheral regions, and they were almost unknown to Chinese literatures. Therefore, while these archaeological findings unveiled, the most common response of archaeologists, historians and even common people who have basic knowledge to Chinese history were astonishing or surprising. After that, many archaeological and historical explanations were composed to interpret their existing, fruitfulness and decline.In this article, I try to ask a simple but being ignored question: why the true past unearthed are surprising? People felt surprise to these archaeological findings because there is a discrepancy between "the past" as a common knowledge in their mind and the true past unearthed in peripheral China. Therefore, we shall ask when and how this historical knowledge toward peripheral regions and its peoples had formed, and when and how the true past had been forgotten. This article argues that the peripheral histories which ancient and modern Chinese believed are meanly products of "the historical mentality of heroic ancestor." Under this historical mentality, ancient Chinese literati created "hero-went-to-frontier narratives" of vary kinds to delineate the spatial and blood borders of the Huaxia people (ancient Chinese). It is in this historical scenario, and the concomitant political activities, that the "centers" of many civilizations beyond the Central Plain became "peripheries," and the past of these peripheral lands and peoples before the coming of Huaxia heroic ancestors became primitive and barbaric in the Chinese mind’s eyes.更多还原