The Asian Summer

THE QUESTION This volume asks a question: Who are the True Asians? The answer to this question will not come from a genetic test, a passport, or a map of where an ethnicity is presumed to have originated. Asia has been invaded, formalized, and redrawn more times than any such answers could survive. If the question were about bloodline, it would have no stable answer, because every population this book follows has been mixing, moving, and absorbing new arrivals for longer than any nation outside of Africa has existed. The question this volume is actually asking is a question about persistence across seventy thousand years of migration, invention, invasion, and empire. What aspects of a people represent them with the most accuracy? If this is your first foray into our series on Literal Human History, then you should know that we humanity, speak loud and clear, with our chosen human codes. Our codes show up in actions over 300,000 years, that when examined with non biased human eyes, or as I like to say, Human-centric eyes – clearly reveal, who we have chosen to be. We chose, to be Human, not Animal. We chose to focus not only on today, but on tomorrow, for those who follow. We chose consideration, over reaction, and participation, over exploitation. In short, we choose the sparking paths of Respect and Love of Life - over the negative pressures of contention and control. The fact that we are still here, through uncounted near species ending disasters, many of our own making, attest to our codes, having granted us the grace, not only to survive in a hostile world, but to thrive. So on our journey though Asia, we will be scanning for these precious gems of human insights and ethics, generation after generation, through every invasion, fall and rebuild. To begin this quest, we need to go back to the source.