Early Dynastic China

ASIA IN ANCIENT TIMES HIST 1301 | History Early Dynastic China China's culture developed significantly as a result of the Yellow River. It starts in the western Chinese highlands and travels across 3,395 kilometres before emptying into the Bohai Sea in Shandong province. (The Yangtze River is the only longer river to the south.) The loess soil, which is very rich but is readily disturbed by winds that scour the plain and are carried along as silt by the force of the river, was essential to the growth of agricultural and human habitation along the Yellow River. Because of the soil's pliable nature and the man-made dikes that line the river, it has changed and evolved throughout the ages, causing frequent floods in the surrounding areas and exposing farmers to cycles of abundant harvests and natural calamities. Because of the Yellow River's low annual rainfall of around twenty inches, frequent droughts have typically coincided with the river's floods. The Henan province's Erlitou site, located close to the Yellow River, reveals a society characterised by the construction of palaces, the making of bronze vessels for ceremonies, and the engagement in ancestor worship. The reality of the Xia dynasty, a legendary country supposedly founded by one of China's epic heroes, the Great Yu, has been called into question by sites like these. As of yet, no website with Xia-authored documents has been located. Rather, all mentions of it are from documents penned several centuries after the potential mythological realm vanished. The Shang is the first Chinese dynasty for which we have conclusive evidence. It produced a sophisticated, socially stratified Bronze Age culture whose invention of writing was its crowning achievement. Before researchers found ancient turtle shells with Chinese characters engraved in a medicine shop in the late eighteenth century, the Shang were long believed to be a legendary kingdom similar to the Xia. These shells and other so-called "oracle bones," which were formerly employed in divination, were eventually discovered to be written documents dating back to China's first dynasty. Ancestor worship practices borrowed from the Erlitou civilization and tailored to the practice of bone divination were used by Shang monarchs to establish their dominance. They asked spirits questions and deduced their prophecies about future harvests, military expeditions, or the birth of an heir from the carved written characters on shells and animal bones that they heated until they cracked and shattered. From there, the Shang created a logographic alphabet in which words and ideas were graphically represented by characters that could combine symbols to create new sounds and thoughts as needed. These figures performed a variety of functions, including recording information, creating calendars and managing time, and transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. The oldest known examples of Chinese writing are probably not surviving because they were probably created on brittle materials like silk or bamboo. However, because the Shang left a logographic script—rather than a phonographic alphabet— for succeeding dynasties, literacy remained the domain of the affluent for millennia. acquiring the sounds of a considerably smaller number of letters, as is the case with an alphabet, was not as necessary for reading as ultimately acquiring hundreds or even thousands of symbols and their meanings. This logographic alphabet included Chinese ideals, values, and spiritual beliefs that endured long after the Shang period, playing a crucial role in maintaining continuity across dynasties. For two centuries, the Shang were also in control of vast riches thanks to their development of writing. They acquired the organisational skills necessary to extract metal ores and ship them to foundries where they were turned into hundreds of pounds worth of bronze goblets, cups, and cauldrons. Silk was woven into fabric by Shang artisans, and ten thousand labourers moved soil to build bulwarks that were thirty feet high by sixty feet wide to surround an early Zhengzhou capital. However, unlike the older and more trade-oriented societies, the Shang formed China's first dynasty primarily due to their military strength, increasing their dominance via invasion. The Shang established one of the earliest sizable nations in history ruled by an aristocratic warrior class by battle and the development of a network of walled cities. This region covered parts of the provinces of Shandong, Hebei, Shanxi, Anhui, and Henan. The Shang waged raids on neighbouring societies using bronze spears, bows, and eventually horse-drawn chariots. They awarded rewards to vassals and converted foes into friends in exchange for a cut of the loot. Enslaved or sacrificed prisoners of battle held by the elite Shang warriors were among the spoils. The Shang were a military and aristocratic people that organised royal hunts for animals like bears, tigers, and even elephants to practise their hunting techniques.The oracle bones imply that ritual and religion were the core of Shang civilization. In addition to being military commanders, the kings were also high priests who worshipped Di, the ultimate deity, and their ancestors. In addition to being involved in politics and military, Shang queens and princesses included some noteworthy ladies like general Fu Hao, who led sizable armies into battle. In the royal ancestor worship, aristocratic women also frequently held the position of priest. The Shang dynasty, like many other ancient cultures, had a theocratic aspect, with the rulers asserting their unique right to serve as go-betweens for their followers with the afterlife. The Shang constructed palaces, temples, and altars for worship in their capital cities, staffed by craftspeople producing a wide range of items, in order to perform this regal duty. They created massive underground graves for aristocrats and royalty, demonstrating their ability to arrange labour and materials in a highly organised manner. For example, Fu Hao's tomb was tiny compared to many other Shang royals' tombs, yet it was sunk 25 feet below the ground and big enough to house hundreds of bronze weapons, mirrors, bells, and other objects made of bone, jade, ivory, and stone in addition to sixteen human sacrifices. When early Shang tombs from Zhengzhou are compared to later tombs found in Anyang, it becomes clear that human sacrifices were becoming more and more severe as well as more spiritually meaningful. Afterwards, hundreds of slaves, POWs, and animals like horses and dogs were discovered buried alongside kings, not just a few casualties. The Shang dynasty intended to placate Di and their ancestors in order to prevent issues like starvation by bleeding human blood. However, the scope of these rites grew to enormous proportions; according to one account, King Wu Ding sacrificed almost nine thousand victims in a single bloodletting ritual. Even those outside of the Shang's dominion in the Yangtze River valley and the west were impacted by their creative forms and themes. The diverse Neolithic civilizations of northern China became increasingly homogeneous under the Shang. However, the Shang's reliance on bloodshed and a religion that valued human sacrifices throughout their rule fostered unrest and could have contributed to the public's impression of their monarchs as despicable and corrupt. It may have even sparked a rebellion against the Shang emperors and the final decline of the society.