Looking no further than China for examples, in the 17th century French Jesuit priests confidently affirmed that writing had come to China from Egypt via Greece, because both used pictographic characters, and in the early 20th century, theories that Chinese culture had its origins in more westerly regions were popular for a time, with many people suspecting that Chinese civilization had come from the Middle East.
遠的不說，就以中國為例，十七世紀的法國耶穌會教士曾經十分肯定中國文字是由埃及經希臘傳過去的，因為兩者都是象形文字。而二十世紀初「中國文化西來論」曾經盛極一時，不少人懷疑中國文明的起源是來自中亞，不過這些推測都已被後來的考古發現推翻了。