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Historical distortions on the roof of the world

Published: 31 Mar. 2025, 00:05

Kim Seung-jung

The author is an archaeologist and professor at the University of Toronto.

A few days ago, I attended a lecture in Toronto by Professor Mark Aldenderfer, a high-altitude archaeologist who has spent decades excavating ancient sites on the Tibetan Plateau. He is a renowned scholar who has traced the remnants of ancient civilizations in the windswept terrain more than 4,000 meters above sea level. His talk that day spanned from the tomb of Songtsen Gampo, the founding emperor of Tibet, to civilizations that existed before the arrival of Buddhism.

What was particularly intriguing, however, was the fact that the Zhangzhung culture — once dismissed as a “forgotten civilization” — is now being reexamined under China’s historical strategy.

Zhangzhung was an independent ancient kingdom based in western Tibet, widely regarded as the birthplace of Bon, the indigenous spiritual tradition. Though it was incorporated into Songtsen Gampo’s Tibetan Empire in the 7th century, China today is reframing Zhangzhung not merely as a pre-Tibetan civilization, but as a constituent of a multiethnic empire absorbed into Chinese civilization.

Zhangzhung area on the Tibetan Plateau.. [KIM SEUNG-JUNG]

State-sponsored archaeological excavations, exhibitions, and research projects on Zhangzhung are being interpreted in ways that diminish the centrality of Tibetan Buddhism and the influence of India while bolstering China’s historical claims over the Himalayan region. Yet according to Professor Aldenderfer’s findings, the archaeological remains discovered in what is now considered Zhangzhung’s heartland fall short of the social and economic sophistication required to be labeled the “cradle of Tibetan culture.” The evidence suggests it was not a highly developed political or religious center. Nevertheless, China continues to subsume this complex and unfinished legacy into a simplified historical narrative.

Whose history, then, is Zhangzhung? For those of us familiar with Japan’s past distortions of history and archaeology, this case serves as a stark reminder of how historical manipulation can distort a people’s collective identity. One can only hope that the proceedings at Korea’s Constitutional Court do not, even in retrospect, become shackles of historical revisionism.

Translated using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.