Chapter forty-two of the Dao De Jing has the following:
The Dao engenders One
One engenders Two
Two engenders Three
And Three engenders the many myriad things
This looks rather like how Pythagoreanism is explained in Plato. The One, the Dyad and so on. Does this mean that both Pythagoros and Lao Tze Tung were referencing some primodorial ur-philosophy or that somehow it arose in one of these places and somehow over the distance on continents they managed to influence the other. Or is the most likely story is that they arose independently. Is it possible to make a plausible case for any of these options?
The above is glossed in the translation by Richard Ames and David Hall as
The Dao gives rise to continuity
Continuity gives rise to difference
Difference gives rise to plurality
And plurality gives rise to the manifold of everything that is happening.