Cantonese appeared earlier than Mandarin?

In fact, modern Chinese characters should be developed from ancient Chinese. The embryonic form of Cantonese is the language "Ya Yan" of Han people in Zhou Dynasty.

The earliest popularization of Chinese in Guangdong can be traced back to hundreds of thousands of Han troops stationed in Lingnan after Qin Shihuang occupied Lingnan and an additional 500,000 Han immigrants in the Central Plains.

Mandarin and most northern dialects are greatly influenced by other northern nationalities in the development process, but Cantonese is located in the south corner and is less affected. Therefore, there is a huge gap between Cantonese and Mandarin, and there are many ancient Chinese in southern dialects such as Cantonese.

Speaking of the problem that the northern dialect represented by Putonghua is greatly influenced by other ethnic groups, add a little history: for example, after the Western Jin Dynasty, the Five Hus and Sixteen Countries, and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Liao and Jin Dynasties basically ruled the north by foreigners, while the foreign people ruled and influenced the north more strongly than the south in the Yuan and Qing Dynasties. The present Mandarin is basically similar to that of the Qing Dynasty, but it is actually Mandarin with Manchu accent. For example, Beijingers like to speak with the "er" sound, but it was not until the Ming Dynasty in ancient Chinese that this habit was formed. This is the habit of Manchu. Even Mandarin English and Mandarin were transliterated into English by foreigners according to "Manchu" in Qing Dynasty. Now look up Mandarin in the English-Chinese dictionary, which means not only Mandarin, but also the old officials in China.

To sum up, it makes sense to speak Cantonese earlier than Mandarin. Personally, I think Cantonese is closer to ancient Chinese and more accurate than Mandarin, because I think both Cantonese and northern dialects (represented by Mandarin) have been developing and changing faster or slower.