There are primary sources. There are archeological sites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianling_Mausoleum

There are also histories written just after the Tang Dynasty had fallen. It was considered good form for a new dynasty to write a historical review of the previous one, and there are two retrospectives on Tang, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Book_of_Tang

And there is ironclad evidence from foreign sources. Among others, Japanese histories detail the journeys of emissaries to the Tang Court: https://web.archive.org/web/20260315181529/https://japansoci...

So the theory is bait, and hard to take seriously.

But I'll give it credit for hijacking a genuinely interesting scholarly premise: What is taken quite seriously is the notion that China's first dynasty -- the Xia Dynasty -- never existed. It is of rather mythic proportions; later Chinese would speak of Xia the way Romans would speak of Troy. And there is very little evidence to support its existence. The Shang Dynasty is also supported by rather scant evidence -- and is also mythic, though obviously less so than the Xia.

Worth noting that both the Xia and Shang are exceedingly ancient -- roughly 2000 BC to 1000 BC between them -- unlike the Tang, which fell around 900 AD and is thus middle-of-the-pack by Chinese dynastic standards.

• brightball

  today at 10:22 PM

  There are times I’m convinced that promoting the Mandela Effect is to enable stuff like this.

• senderista

  today at 10:10 PM

  The Shang dynasty is also kind of a propaganda nightmare, with all the archeological evidence for mass human sacrifice.

  • A_D_E_P_T

    today at 10:23 PM

    Yeah. You're probably familiar with the "Hanfu" revival -- a sort of resurgence in people adopting traditional clothing and makeup styles from the Han and Tang dynasties. It's entirely on account of the fact that those two dynasties were remarkably stable, prosperous, and peaceful, so they lend themselves to historical romanticism -- like the Chinese equivalent of the Renaissance Faire. Good vibes. Even popular in Japan, with e.g. The Apothecary Diaries and similar fare.

    Shang, and all of the post-dynasty collapse centuries like The Spring and Autumn Period, were not great times to live in. Dismal and evil vibes, for the most part, unless you happen to be a mighty hero or bandit-lord who believes that he can conquer the age. Even so, most of them ended up in soup pots.

• suzzer99

  today at 10:09 PM

  The Aztecs had the same mythical reverence for the Toltecs.

• jmclnx

  today at 10:22 PM

  Everywhere in the Wikipedia articles is this phrase "had Han ethnic origins". Looks like China Editors are trying to change history. At least that is based upon what the CNN article is saying.

Its a Chinese equivalent of the phantom time theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory

Its just as silly as phantom time and covers almost exactly the same period. The motive is possibly racist which makes it more sinister.

• Tuna-Fish

  today at 10:02 PM

  The version I've had argued to me didn't change any chronology, they just insisted that the Song dynasty started earlier so the Tang shouldn't be counted.

  The context was weird, the person pushing it was very passionate about the subject, and since I certainly don't know all that much about Chinese history from the period, I just smiled and nodded. Apparently this is a bigger thing?

• guyzero

  today at 10:07 PM

  Back in the early 2000's, well before most social media sites existed, I had a coworker who shared with me a number of questionable theories, one of which was basically this. He also believed very passionately that plate tectonics was wrong. Unfortunately social media didn't invent brain worms.

• riffraff

  today at 10:18 PM

  I was going to say that it seems the equivalent of the "Belgium does not exist" meme (ante litteram) from a few decades ago.

• 1-more

  today at 9:52 PM

  Not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko) which I thought was the same as this but actually compresses a whole lot more time into less than 1000 years and does word magic to imply that King Solomon = Suleiman the Magnificent.

• culi

  today at 9:50 PM

  And it's taken about as seriously as "birds don't exist" or "the earth is flat". CNN is just doing straight up orientalism. Exoticizing a normal aspect of a culture that if you think hard enough happens in western cultures just as often if not more

  • tialaramex

    today at 10:16 PM

    AIUI the Conspiracy Theory isn't that birds don't exist, but that they are not real. All the birds you've seen were actually government spy cameras.

    This feels more plausible if you've only ever encountered pigeons and at some distance. If you've owned a parrot or some chickens, it is very apparent that this is not a spy camera. In fact the word I'd use for chickens is "saurian". They're clearly just lizards with feathers, if I didn't know their evolutionary story it would still scream at me when I see one laying on a rock in the sun that this is a lizard.

  • Apocryphon

    today at 10:25 PM

    Since it's popular among youth on social media, maybe this is like Helen Keller skepticism?

    https://www.perkins.org/qa-a-factual-look-at-helen-kellers-a...

  • reaperducer

    today at 10:24 PM

    CNN is just doing straight up orientalism

    If you actually read the article, you'd be directing your vitriol at the Nanjing Daily and "The Paper, a media outlet affiliated with the Shanghai government."

• today at 10:13 PM

• wongarsu

  today at 9:39 PM

  That wikipedia page lists four points speaking against the phantom time conspiracy, and in those four points relies on the Tang dynasty twice. Which doesn't exist. Checkmate /s

• doginasuit

  today at 10:11 PM

  Maybe it is healthy for society in the long run to have pockets of divergent belief. Most of the time it is groundless and fades away. Every so often it gains traction. If it is based in reality, we gain a better understanding. If it is misleading, it vitalizes a competing and more correct understanding.

  The more interesting phenomenon is that we are able to agree on anything at all, it's not exactly our strongest instinct. Reading through HN, for example, the longest comment chains are a series of disagreements. But we build resources like Wikipedia and science journals, which also use disagreement as an engine for generating a more correct understanding. Its a strange and hopeful aspect of human societies.

The same sort of arguments are playing out in the US, albeit on a shorter timescale. I couldn't say when it started, but it's extremely depressing that the history section in most general bookstores is just a locus for narrative warfare rather than scholarship.

Of course, this phenomenon is by no means unique to these two countries. I know a Japanese author who has a small but dedicated following for his argument that nuclear weapons don't exist: https://books.google.com/books/about/Death_Object.html?id=Mw...

• AlotOfReading

  today at 10:01 PM

  I get what you mean that pop hist. books aren't academic, but "narrative warfare" describes a huge proportion of historical scholarship. Whether or not you agree with it, that's the whole point of Metahistory and the linguistic turn.

A much better article about the phenomenon: https://open.substack.com/pub/ramble/p/the-tang-dynasty-was-...

• layer8

  today at 10:13 PM

  Aside from the poor choice of background color. ;)

> a history influencer named Qiao Yu

I assumed that any "influencer" could be easily googled, but I cannot find literally anything. Or Google censors their name?

• shakna

  today at 9:29 PM

  There's two characters missing from the middle of the name.

  Not sure how HN's symbol stripper handles them, but here's a try:

      qiao乔于yu

• curuinor

  today at 9:29 PM

  probably not their actual name. if you need a search term, qiao乔于yu is better than qiao yu. better read chinese. they've long deleted the actual video, of course

• deepsun

  today at 9:29 PM

  Or the whole thing is an "inverse" PR, completely manufacturing the information spread, to get people interested in Tang dynasty. Conspiracy vs. conspiracy.

“Many parents say that, thanks to the hoax, their children now feel confused about historical facts, the Nanjing Daily reported”

Great, lets make this useful … this specific nonsense will settle down and be proven to be a hoax and/or misinformation. An important component of parenting today is to raise kids who take claims presented on the internet with a large grain of salt. Rather than contrived examples in critical thinking exercises they might get in class or a textbook, parents now have a perfect, real example here to show their kids that online nonsense can look authoritative and be very widely believed, and yet still be false. Shields up. Less time online for kids. And don’t outsource your critical thinking to the online majority or to AI!

If Tang Dynasties are real, why haven't I seen one?

• rnd0

  today at 9:28 PM

  I had Tang every day with lunch when I was a kid. But it was the seventies so there's that ...

• yesco

  today at 9:57 PM

  Because they aren't and never have been! This has been scientifically proven from the astrological data according to my sources.

• ForOldHack

  today at 9:24 PM

  They made orange drink powder for the Apollo Missions. I KID YOU NOT!

  • Apocryphon

    today at 10:26 PM

    The Moon landings invented the Tang dynasty

  • SlightlyLeftPad

    today at 10:06 PM

    Oh so you’re saying that’s what happened to the Tang dynasty and this is just a huge coverup.

"Claiming that the 300-year dynasty was actually a myth is akin to saying the American Civil War never happened"

Aren't republicans in Texas trying to rewrite history books to ignore lynchings and burnings of Black Wall Street and claim that slaves were treated pretty well?

Seems like every country has factions who do this - right?

• zelda420

  today at 10:00 PM

  My daughter is a tx high school student and the books don’t mention slavery in context of the civil war. It’s framed as only a states rights issue, in which Texas is the honorable fighter of freedoms.

  • jmclnx

    today at 10:28 PM

    And I am sure there is no mention that Slavery was the # 1 reason for Texas Succeeding from Mexico.

  • mmooss

    today at 10:20 PM

    Yet all these educated people keep lauding and moving to Texas?

  • bilbo0s

    today at 10:13 PM

    In fairness, Texas is a place where they make elementary school kids stand up every morning and say the Pledge of Allegiance...

    to the TEXAS flag.

    Just pointing out that the educational experience in Texas is not necessarily indicative of what the educational experience in the rest of the US is like.

• today at 9:55 PM

• ndjdkfmfk

  today at 9:48 PM

  [dead]

• dj_gitmo

  today at 10:07 PM

  > Aren't republicans in Texas trying to rewrite history books to ignore lynchings and burnings of Black Wall Street and claim that slaves were treated pretty well?

  I remember this controversy from a while and IIRC I don't think this is accurate. For one thing, they teach that slavery was a central role. https://www.npr.org/2018/11/16/668557179/texas-students-will...

  I remember looking at the actual key points in the Texas curriculum and nothing seems that unusual. Some people we IMO nitpicking.

...and Han Dynasty only exists in Philadelphia.

Let's not get started on corners of the American internet... ask your favourite AI about "list of historical denial theories with US subscribers, including religious". No doubt longer and more amusing!

• culi

  today at 9:56 PM

  birds aren't real, the earth is flat, jet fuel can't melt steel beams, apollo 11 landed in hollywood, and zuckerberg is a lizard

https://archive.is/qD2nD

In another headline, people under a certain age get most of their news from social media. It 'democratizes' it, said one person quoted.

It is more important than ever that we teach people to think critically and skeptically, and the necessity of empiricism (i.e., publicly verifiable evidence).

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• UltraSane

  today at 9:26 PM

  Your comment doesn't seem to be relevant to the link at all.

• ForOldHack

  today at 9:25 PM

  "I firmly believe that there is an all-knowing being guiding the universe, except for certain parts of New Jersey." -Woody Allen.