Ancient history of the Gelao

The Gelao are one of the most ancient peoples of China. According to the ancient chronicles, his ancestors were coming from the frontier region antre the provinces of Sichuan and Shaanxi, from which they emigrated towards the Guizhou province in the Vth century before our age.

Possibly be one of the principal components of the Kingdom Yelang, which formed in the above mentioned province during these dates. Many of the descriptions about the travelers that during the dynasty They Have the Yelang knew to, they fit perfectly to those who left to us those who knew in epochs later to the Gelao (called only Lao in those years). The Kingdom of Yelang turned into tributary of the Han, and his political structure disintegrated.

His progeny, possibly already this Lao ancestors of the Gelao, faces during the IIIrd century of our age, to some armed expeditions sent from the kingdom of Wu towards his grounds. The Kingdom of Wu is one of the three in which small stone was divided in the called tiepo of Three Kingdoms (220-284).

It is not known if because of the attacks of the Wu, the true thing is that the Lao they migrate again towards the northwest, occupying big part of the oriental region of Sichuan. In the IVth century there have news about the establishment of an important number of Laos, possibly másde 100.000 occupying the vales and mountains of the east of Sichuan. China remained divided in those years, and the diet that Sichuan was governing, llamda dynasty Cheng Han, in spite of em attacked time and again to the Lao, they did not manage to go out victorious. On the contrary, the wear that produced the war contributed to his decline.

The Lao, in that epoch, they were organized concerning tribal chiefs. The customs that the travelers impute deserve to be mentioned. There were supporting slaves captured in the war or sold by his families; they were using of form cermonial the bronze drums; they were using bamboo canes to drink for the nose a local liquor; they were burying his dead persons hung by abysses or cliffs; they were breaking a tooth owing to duel or adulthood; they were doing that the men were resting in the bed after the childbearing of his wives and knew not even arch you do not even flower.

In the VIth century they dominate so much territory that they try, without success, to organize an independent political body. During the dynasty Tang they are still mentioned in Sichuan, from which they disappear without apparent motive, migrating some towards Yunnan, although they move the majority to the southeast for the mountains of Hunan and Guangxi.

During the dynasty Ming it is said that they had returned to the province of Guizhou, from which they had gone out more than thousand years earlier. They are considered to be mercenary and business-minded famous persons of that time, but the propulsion of the Chinese who emigrate every in major number and of other peoples as the Miao who also flee of the Chinese, it will force them to integrate into the majority society or to move back to poorer and poorer areas.

Nowadays, they still survive a few thousands of Lao (called Gelao) isolated in the most inhospitable areas of the same province of Guizhou.

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