An anachronism is the act of placing anything, whether an object, a concept or a perspective, in a period of time to which it does not belong. The use of vocabulary, theories and concepts unknown to historical actors is also a form of anachronism. The word derives from the Greek noun anachronismós (ἀναχρονισμός) which is composed of the word for time (chrónos – χρόνος) and a preposition ana (ἀνα) which has the meaning of going upwards or backwards. Simple anachronisms include statements like “Romans ate tomatoes” or “Laozi walked past the Great Wall”. Tomatoes, of course, belong to the New World and the Great Wall was built after Laozi’s lifetime. Objects do not necessarily have to be dislocated in the anterior past, They can also be anachronistic in posterior periods where they find little to no use. A floppy disk is, for instance, anachronistic in today’s world of computer storage devices (but continues to function as the default save icon 💾!).

While one can misplace objects and figures in space and time when writing fiction, in scholarship such basic anachronisms are considered serious blunders. That said, scholars in the Humanities, Social Sciences and many other disciplines do use later concepts, theories, paradigms and hypotheses to organise, understand and evaluate time and space. Conceptual anachronisms are actually quite pervasive in that we constantly use them to categorise and evaluate the past in relation to the present. To speak of biology in antiquity is, for example, a kind of conceptual anachronism since the use of this term to describe the branch of science that deals with living organisms only comes into use in the 17th century. That doesn’t mean, however, that no one was thinking or writing about biological processes before the 1600s. Aristotle’s musings on metabolism, temperature regulation and reproduction can still be meaningfully studied under the rubric of biology.

The act of periodising, understanding causation and attributing significance and meaning to past events is also anachronistic. The notion of a “Silk Road” was first devised by the 19th century German scholar Ferdinand von Richthofen to describe the pre-modern trading routes between China and the Mediterranean. While the term Silk Road is a later invention and comes with a limiting paradigm, namely a focus on silk and the singularity of the road in question, it simply represents the act of naming a phenomenon which can be empirically proven through the evaluation of historical sources. The naming or classifying of ideas, theories and concepts which already exist in some form in the past is therefore an anachronism constructed on an evidential basis. These sorts of anachronisms provide useful conceptual frameworks for understanding human experiences through time.

But there are also conceptual anachronisms which are “bad” in a scholarly sense as far as history and related disciplines are concerned. This happens when we project and impose ideas, theories, concepts on periods of time or historical actors when it is clear that these theories, concepts or ideas did not exist in verifiable form. These are, therefore, anachronisms lacking in an evidential basis. This is dangerous as it means distorting the past for presentist concerns. These sorts of presentist anachronisms are usually harnessed to fulfil practical purposes – whether supporting the political agendas of a nation-state and its stakeholders, offering moral lessons or buttressing imagined identities. In some realms of scholarship, however, (most prominently in literary studies), it is quite acceptable to use modern critical paradigms like feminist or psychoanalytical perspectives, most of which are recent constructs, to evaluate texts as the uncovering of historical truth is not the primary concern.

In short, it is not the case that all anachronisms are bad – although they can be abused! We constantly use anachronisms to organise information and evaluate data concerning humans. Our understanding of space and time is conditioned by individual and collective experiences, language and modern intellectual frameworks. Being conscious of anachronisms is a form of bias identification. It entails being self-conscious about our use of language, paradigms and preconceptions and how this frames our understanding of space and time.

Toponymic anachronisms

Let’s consider one specific kind of anachronism which relates to identities and place-names (toponyms). Many toponyms and identity markers in contemporary usage did not exist in the distant past or do not exist in the native languages used by the respective peoples. A good example would be China – a politico-cultural entity better known as Zhōngguó or Zhōnghuá in the native Chinese language. The toponym China in European languages traces its genealogy back to the Sanskrit Cīna which makes its earliest appearance in texts like the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahābhārata and the Arthaśāstra (late centuries BCE). It is borrowed into Greek by the 6th century CE since it appears as Tzínista (Τζίνιστα) in Cosmas Indicopleustes’ Christian Topography. But China only comes into popular use in Europe in the 16th century and after – initially used to describe porcelain rather than the people or country! Meanwhile other terms were applied on the region we now call China: Marco Polo, for instance, describes it as Cathay which corresponds to Kitai (Китай) in Russian and Hitay in Ottoman Turkish. Cathay and its variants in turn derive from the word Khitan, the name of a nomadic group speaking a Mongolic language which ruled northern China between 916 – 1125 CE (Liao dynasty).

While Cīna is first noticed in Sanskrit texts, there is no scholarly consensus as to where this term comes from. The derivation of this toponym from the name of the Qin dynasty, the first imperial house of China, has been contested by scholars although it remains the most popular explanation in non-scholarly circles. The Sanskrit Cīna was back-translated into Chinese by Buddhist authors as early as the 6th century CE as Zhīnà 脂那 rather than Qin 秦 suggesting that premodern Chinese audiences did not see a straightforward equation between Cīna and Qin. Scholars like Geoff Wade propose a derivation from Zina, the name of a people from Yelang 夜郎 in western Guizhou, while Yang Xianyi suggests that it is a corruption of Qiang, an ethnic term referring to inhabitants of Sichuan.

Whatever its origins, China has become the standard exonym (external term) for describing the politico-cultural entity locally called Zhōngguó or Zhōnghuá. The usage of this term is anachronistic for much of history since it does not have much currency in the native language. But as this term describes a politico-cultural formation which has a historically-verifiable reality, it can be taken as a useful conceptual anachronism operating on an evidential basis. As you respond to the quiz and discuss anachronisms in your tutorials, consider what other identity markers or toponyms in regular use today are anachronistic – Asian? Eastern? Western? Indian? European?