Re: Hakka, Chinese and mesoAmerica

["Dylan Sung" <dylanwhs@ukgateway.net>]

Dear Siu Leung,

Thank you for the prompt reply. My comments are below.

From: S. L . Lee <sllee@asiawind.com> on Saturday, January 06, 2001 4:36 AM
::Dear Dylan,
:
:I have emphasized in the talk and in this narrative that this part of the
:presentation contains some very controversial observations. Ancient Chinese
:and native Americans may be totally unassociated and their cultures
:developed totally independently.

This I agree with whole heartedly.

:But comparing the two, would you see the
:similarities are much higher than compared with other cultures?

One should note that culture changes over time. Languages change over time. Any
similarity between the two may be happy coincidence.

:While there
:are certainly differences between Chinese culture and mesoAmerican culture,
:it is easily seen that they also evolve on different pathways after
:separation for a long time.

This last phrase "after separation for a long time" makes an unsubstantiated
assumption that the two were once one. This I have to say is an unprovable
standpoint. No written records of that occuring exists, and although it is true
that the Americas were once uninhabited by humans, it does not necessary follow
that the humans that arrived in the Americas were of the same stock as Chinese.

: One important fact that few could deny is the
:genetic makeup of mesoAmericans is very close to Asians.


By 'asian' you mean mongoloid, I think. This may be just happenstance once
again. I note that Tiger Woods is not only proud of his colour, but his genetic
makeup as well, which includes part asian. However, visually he is not asian in
appearance. I put it again that one cannot use surface similarity to equate
things.

:Many of the theories (or hypotheses) about the origin of Hakka are
:debatable. My talk was mainly to draw attention to Chinese culture, rather
:than Hakka culture alone. I beileve Hakka culture reflects many facets of
:Chinese culture our ancestors picked up on the migration routes.  If we
:believe our ancestors have migrated throughout the greater part of China,
:then we should recognize that our culture is not derived from just one
:location.  Another fact I would like to bring out is Chinese culture has a
:much longer history and was more advanced than previously thought.

That I do agree with. However, outside the Chinese culture per se, you are on
shaky ground making connections where they are at best tenous and at worst
bunkum. I am trying to say that you leave yourself open to ridicule because of
fanciful ideas.

:You mentioned about the mama baba as coincidental. It is exactly what
:scientists are based on in the taxonomy of world language evolution.

I would like to point out yet another example, the German word Glockenspiel, an
instrument for playing music on. In Chinese, (Hakka), 'ngok6', as you can see
there is some similarity is the sound of the first syllable in German (Glock
meaning a bell or chime). However, if you take Old Chinese (the ancestor of
modern Chinese languages) linguists have reconstructed /*gl@k/ which derives two
possible readings, ngok and lok (Mandarin yue and le) for music and joy. However
if you try to say there is a link between the two, you'd be laughed off the
stage.

Linguists can show you using tried and tested means how two languages are
related. Even links between Korean and Japanese have been shown, though the
latter is a language isolate. To prove any link between two languages, linguist
compare the words of change resistant words, such as those for hands, eye,
mouth, man, woman, etc. But first, they recreate the proto languages and then
try to link them by such means. One cannot simply take the modern languages and
say look, here are two occurences of similarity, therefore they must be related.

:You may look up about Zhongzhou and Hakka. I think it is something you
:should be interested in.

I have tried, and have no results. Perhaps you can give me a documented quote of
some kind from a book.

:I will not elaborate the other points to defend these hypotheses. What I
:presented are ***more questions than answers***. Many of the recent
:archaeological findings have revealed striking facts that nobody would have
:believed years ago. Let's wait for more evidence before we try to prove or
:disapprove these hypotheses.


I agree with the last statement. One should not jump to conclusions before there
are firm and conclusive scientific evidence.

Cheers,
Dylan.