Kevin McSpadden based in South China delivers the CCP line on that country's archaeology. I call shenanigans that McSpadden has done any actual journalism.
McSpadden doesn't always deliver so much as a competent translation. What in blue blazes does this mean:
Scans performed on an ancient Tibetan seal last year revealed that it probably belonged to the son of a princess in the Tubo Kingdom (618-842), which was a consolidation of Tibetan tribes during the Tang dynasty (618-907). / The carving on the seal says “seal of nephew Azha King”, which helped archaeologists determine that the tomb was connected to the king of Tuyuhun, a Tibetan tribe that ruled what is now modern-day Qinghai province in northwest China.
The Tubo is a kingdom... or a consolidation of tribes... one of which is called Tuyuhun... which has a king. And seal of nephew Azha King
is some authentic gibberish. Best I can make from this wordsalad, Tubo was like Pourshariati's take on the Sasanian Eranshahr: a federation of dynasts. The core is Tibetan. We know from Valerie Hansen that the Tibetans wrestled the Tang over the Tanggut of Gansu; and all involved struggled with the diversity of the East Turks beyond. Pity we can't know it from McSpadden.
As for the Yangshao as one of the first Chinese societies
: this sounded sus to me. This society dates 5000-3000 BC and is uphill from the Han watershed; it's dangerously close to Gansu. Wikipedia holds Laurent Sagart et al. 2019 as the last word, that Yangshao could equally be counted one of the first Tibetan societies.
I know that in China today people with names like "McSpadden" cannot antagonise their minders needlessly, but a little more effort would have been nice.
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