Gang or Hé, the Eastern Asian ways to call river that reveal history

Yangtze River seen from space,

image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio United States Geological Survey

Gang or Hé, the Eastern Asian ways to call river that reveal history

Before the Ice Age ended 11,700 years ago, Japan and Korea were connected; Okinawa Islands were on the verge of the Asian Continent; Taiwan and Hainan Islands were also included in the Asian Continent. There was no Taiwan Strait. The Austronesian people, or their ancestors, inhabited the Eastern Asia Continent along the Pacific coast. They must have had a common language before they had evolved and divided into various groups later. By comparing the word for “river” in Taiwanese, Korean, and language of southern part of China, we have found they all have a common origin of cognate “gang”. And the root word “ga” shifted to “ka” in some occasions.

World map of Ice Age, Image credit:

SouthEast Asian Water And Power Alliance

Occupying an important role in the Austronesian history, Taiwan has kept the most abundantly the Proto-Austronesian language. With no exception, the Taiwanese for river is also “gang”. Although “Hé” also used in recent years via the influence of Chinese occupation. The traditional usage for river as “gang” can still be found nowadays, such as in the two names of MRT stations in Taipei, “gang-ginn” and “gang-a-cui” (gang-qian and jiang-zai-cui in Mandarin), meaning “riverside” and “a riverside village”.

In South Korea, all rivers are called “gang” as showing by the table below. The river names with a “✱“, denote the pronunciation are almost identical or similar to Taiwanese. Hangul, the Korean language, still have arguments about its origin. But it appears to have been influenced by their neighbors: China , Japan, and the most ancient one, the Austronesian. [Table 1] Even some Japanese words appear to have about 30 % of Austronesian link. In Japanese, both “gawa” and “kawa” are used to mean “river”. More than 90% of Japanese rivers are with “gawa”.From these two languages we can still find the root words “ga” or “ka” from the Austronesian “gang”.

As to the more remote areas in eastern Siberia, there are three very long rivers crossing the borders between Russia, Korea and China. They are the Amur River, Ussuri River and Tumen River. We can find from the table below. The Russian for river is “peka”. The Chinese for river is “jiang”. “Jiang” is the alternative calling for “gang”. It is possible this is due to the Austronesian influence to these areas. [Table 2]

As to the rivers in China. [Table 3]We must look back to the Ice Age again. In the time of the Ice Age, Austronesian people had already inhabited the southern part of Eastern Asia, especially in the Yangtze River Basin. We can see from the table below, there are nine main river systems, categorized by which sea they are flowing to. The Mandarin word for rivers are just “Jiang” and “Hé” in all river systems. (As mentioned above, “Jiang” is the alternative usage for “Gang”.) It is quite unusual to find “Jiang” and “Hé” used in separated areas. There are only a few exceptions that both “Jiang” and “Hé” are used in the overlapped areas. “Hé” is almost exclusively used for rivers flowing to the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea only. And “Jiang” is used mainly for rivers flowing to the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the South China Sea. It appears that these two words originated from two different ethnic groups: the inhabitants of the Yangtze River Basin and the inhabitants of the Yellow River Basin.

As to the Yellow River, because it was extremely prone to flooding, and had caused millions of deaths, including the deadliest disasters in human history. The Yellow River is also called "China's Sorrow". Between 608 BC and 1938 AD, across over 2000 years, the Yellow River had changed its course 26 times, and had flooded over 1,500 times. So the Yellow River is an unstable and unreliable river, always connected with tremendous damages and disasters.

On the contrary, the Yangtze River is much more reliable in every aspect. First of all, it was called as Blue River in the 18th century, so that revealing its depth and water quality. Also, up to now the Yangtze River has never changed its course for 11 million years. Due to its static nature, abundant water volume and the location in a mild climate area, Yangtze River Valley had became a cradle for human civilization since ancient times. Human activity has been verified in this area as early as 27,000 years ago. And the evidence of rice cultivation was found in the 3rd millennium BC. Through comparing the conditions of the river basins required for nourishing the civilization, we have found the Yangtze River Basin much superior than the Yellow River Basin.

Human civilization are always located in a river basin. Since water not only sustains human life, supplying foods, and it is also an indispensable element in developing farming in the future. Human civilization only flourishes after they settle down in a place and sustainable farming has formed years later. The ancient human civilizations, such as Tigris-Euphrates (Mesopotamia and Babylonia) 3500 BCE ~ 2000 BCE, Nile (Ancient Egypt) 2920 BCE ~ 1100 BCE, Indus-Ganges (Harappan and Vedic Civilization) 2000 BCE ~ 150 BCE, Minoan-Mycenaean 2100 BCE ~ 1050 BCE, were all successful agrarian societies.

Through using agriculture as a criteria to justify Yangtze and Yellow River Basins, it is obviously the Yangtze River Basin is more suitable than the Yellow River Basin to be the cradle for the Chinese civilization. Although this point of view is not in accordance with the traditional Chinese historians’ statement - they said Chinese civilization had originated from Yellow River Basin. However human history is always updated through new archaeological discoveries and genetic DNA analyses.

Finally we must mention the cognate “gang” once again. As one of the main ancient civilization, the Ganges River Basin, must have certain relevance with the cognate “gang”. [Table 4]But how the influence had occurred still uncertain up to now. Anyway this is another window waiting to be revealed in the history of the ancient human migration on earth.

Table 1