Sino-Babylonianism

Albert Terrien de Lacouperie (1845–1894) first proposed that a massive migration brought the basic elements of early civilization to China, but in this original form the theory was largely discredited.

In the late 20th and early 21st century, scholars have used newly excavated archeological evidence to argue that some particular elements of ancient Chinese civilization were carried from western or central Asia into China and that there are linguistic ties between the two sides of the Asian continent.

[1] He wrote: Lacouperie claimed that the Yellow Emperor was an historical Mesopotamian tribal leader who led a massive migration of his people into China around 2300 BC and founded what later became Chinese civilization.

But the final blow to Lacouperie's comparativist theories came when the University of Leiden sinologist, Gustav Schlegel dismissed his claims and insisted on the independent origin and autonoumous growth of Chinese civilisation.

Scholars such as Gu Jiegang successfully attacked Lacouperie's theories and their Chinese supporters, but the Yellow Emperor retained his appeal as the progenitor of the Han race.

[5] Scholars remained skeptical of Sino-Babylonianism in its original or narrow form but continued to explore the idea of the mixture of indigenous and pan-Eurasian elements in early Chinese culture.

They concede that scholars argue whether the earliest bronze technology in China was stimulated by contacts with western steppe cultures, but they conclude that the evidence favours the hypothesis.

Sun went on to argue that the technology of Bronze Age widely thought to have come across Central Asia by land had in fact been brought by the Hyksos, a Levantine people who settled in the Nile Valley in the 17th and 16th centuries B.C.