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From page 105 of the Taoist Classics, volume one, the collected translations of Thomas Cleary, "The oldest known written versions of texts in the Tao Te Ching tradition are the two manuscripts on silk discovered in 1973 at Mawangdui. The scripts used, as well as the format of the book, suggest that these were versions of the classic as studied in the Legalist tradition. The are entitled Te Tao Ching, "Courses in Virtue and the Way," reversing the generally known order of the courses, and are not divided into chapters." It struck me that Lao-Tzu or Lao Tan, living in either the Shang dynasty (1766-1122 B.C.) or the Chou dynasty (1122-256 B.C.), would be the author of a text, generally unknown for some 3,000 years. Looking back over the notes, I noticed that on page 104 of the above mentioned volume this is written, "The attempt to trace different elements of the roots of Taoism leads to question of date and authorship of its texts. At the outset, it should be noted that there are many difficulties in establishing precise dates and authorship in early Chinese literature, for a number of reasons. One reason is that much of the early literature was destroyed long ago by the ravages of censorship, war, and time. Another is that date and authorship in ancient Chinese religious and philosophical literature are traditionally regarded as more important symbolically than literally." The gap in time concerns me. 3,000 years is a long time for a text to survive unnoticed. I just read the wikipedia article on Mawangdui, and it seems I am just misinterpreting the notes, and the Tao Te Ching and other taoist texts existed before 1973. It's just that the oldest version was found in 1973. Any insight?