|---------------------------------------------- | | Years. | B.C. | |----------------------------|-----------------| |Mythical 86 Chaldæans | 34,800 | | | { 8 Medes | 224 | 2458 | | {11 [Chaldæans] | (258) | 2234 | | {49 Chaldæans | 458 | 1976 | |Historical. { 9 Arab | 245 | 1518 | | {45 [Assyrian] | 526 | 1273 | | { 8 [Assyrian] | 122 | 747 | | { 6 Chaldæans | 87 | 625 | |----------------------------|----------|------| | | 36,000 | | |----------------------------|----------|------| _Chinese Chronology._--The Chinese, also--though, be it observed, the Chinese of modern date, according to Klaproth ("Mem. Relatifs. à l'Asie," i. 405; Klaproth places the commencement of the uncertain history of China 2637 B.C., the certain history 782 B.C.),[50] in the first year of our era, but more systematically in the ninth century--forged a mythological history, which carried the empire back 2,276,000 years (another calculation, 3,276,000). He adds, however, that the Chinese themselves do not consider the Wai-ki, the authority for these statements, to be historical. [50] Bunsen ("Egypt," iii. 405) says, "Systematic Chinese history and chronology hardly go back as far as the year 2000 B.C., _i.e._ to the reign of Yü (1991)." Yet upon indirect philological conclusions, he would really take their history back _beyond the_ Egyptian--iii. p. 379. "An explanation must be given why it (the Chinese history) commences at a later period (as above) than Egyptian chronology; much _later_, indeed, than is generally supposed. Search must be made in _other quarters than_ the regular extant chronology for proofs of that _vast antiquity_, which the numerous _records_ of language _compel_ us to assign to the origines of the Chinese." This vast antiquity may be measured by the fact that, _ex hypothesi_, it transcends the Egyptian, and for the Egyptian in his theory of progress and development, he requires _at least 20,000 years_ before the Christian era.