Pre Bronze Age: The Xia Dynasty
China was a giant section of land that was cut off from the rest of the world in the north by the Gobi Desert, on the south by a dense forest, on the east by an ocean, and the west by a huge mountain range. This meant that this area was completely isolated. There were a lot of rivers in China though, so some people decided to live by the Yellow River. Most people actually didn’t live by the Yangtze River back then. They managed to survive floods using irrigation techniques that were far ahead of their time. Because of this, they got a lot more crops, and the number of people skyrocketed. These may have been the people who made the all powerful, albeit possibly mythical, Xia Dynasty. The Xia Dynasty was ruled by Yu and his family. Yu was a hydraulic engineer and made sure the Yellow River didn’t flood. He went up and down the river for 13 years. He was so determined for his cause, that despite crossing his house multiple times, he never once went in to meet his wife and newborn child. When he successfully got the canals into place to stop the river from flooding everyone to death, the people made him their king. The Xia Dynasty may have been mythical, though, as there are only a few buildings and cities left over from their time.
When people first discovered bronze, they started the Chinese bronze age.
Bronze Age
The Shang Dynasty
The Shang Dynasty made the oldest Nation-State during the time they were in absolute power, from 1600 BC to 1046 BC.
Literature
They also made a writing system composed 3000 different letters. These were normally used on ‘oracle bones’. These oracle bones were the main sources of Shang literature. Priests used to scratch questions for the gods on the bones or shells, and then heat them, causing cracks that would glow red. These were the answers from the gods. China had independently created writing. That’s only happened 5 times in human history.
Religion
The Zhou had an all-powerful priest-king, showing that they valued religion. Some gods that were worshipped included Shangdi, the High God, who dealt with important and cosmic matters that are not comprehensible to mere mortals. Fuxi and Nuwa were the gods that created humanity in in a twin brother-sister alliance.
Sites
The Shang built a lot of walled cities. The biggest was Anyang, with Zhengzhou as a close second. 12 different kings and 8 generations ruled from Anyang. Zhengzhou was praised for its walls, that ran four miles, 32 feet tall, and 65 feet thick.
Trade and Communication
Millet, wheat, barley, and rice were farmed as food, and domesticated animals included dogs, sheep, pigs, oxen and silkworms. The Chinese were the ones who first domesticated dogs, as shown here, courtesy of VSauce. Bronze was also a major trade, as this growth was fueled by bronze. Bronze chariots were also made in China at this time.
Art and Architecture
The art of the Shang Dynasty was also made from stone, ceramics, and precious materials like jade. Shang architects preferred walled cities, as they had started off as a defense, but continued to be used a tradition.
Society
Society was a generic social pyramid, the king at the top, then military nobility, then there were the priests. After the priests there were the merchants, and after them were the farmers. The people at the top of the pyramid were buried with riches and good stuff in multi-roomed tombs. The people who built these were sometimes buried alive with the deceased royalty. The lower class were buried in tombs of varying sizes according to their status, and the lowest classes were sometimes thrown into wells.
Interesting Things, History, and the Dynasty’s Fall
The Shang Dynasty was also known for its cruelty and oppression. People were found buried alive in the graves of Shang nobility. There was a river, Wei, to the west of Shang. A state called Zhou grew in power there. Then they sent an army of fifty thousand people to overthrow the Shang. They were outnumbered at first, but the 170,000 slaves guarding the palace switched sides, overpowering the other gaurds easily. The emperor at the time burned his own palace down, killing himself.
The Zhou Dynasty
Literature
The 5 Chinese classics: The Book of Songs, The Book of Rites, The Book of Documents, The Book of Changes, and The Spring and Autumn Annals were written during this dynasty. There were also people like Lao Tzu (who made Taoism), Confucius, Han Fei (he made the doctrines of legalism), and Sun Tzu.
Religion
Not much changed in religion between the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, other than the Shangti being replaced with Tian. The Mandate of Heaven Doctrine was also created, and could be thought of as religious.
Art and Architecture
Not much changed in architecture; walls were made of rammed earth, emperors had palaces with red, engraved pillars, rich people had big houses with black pillars, and poor people either had yellow or no pillars. Landscapes and hunting scenes, jade art, bronze bells, mirrors and cups, things made of lacquer and pottery, dominated the art scene.
Sites
One of the few surviving sites from the Zhou dynasty is the stone cattle road. Most of the buildings were made of wood, so they were destroyed centuries ago.
Trade and Communication
There was a currency created (the coins were shaped like knives or spades). They were trading with everybody. Silk was discovered in a German tomb in 500 BC, even tough the silk road was created two dynasties afterward.
Society
There were no major changes in society, besides that the Zhou ruled in a more centralized way than the Shang. They created a system of semi-independent feudal states. Like Greece. The first Zhou emperor had sixteen brothers, each of whom was given a state.
Interesting Things, History, and the Dynasty’s Fall
The first emperor died in 3 years. When his son became king, a rebellion arose. Shang loyalists and nobles, along with three of the current emperor’s uncles (the previous emperor’s brothers) were in it. Though there was an uncle, Dan, the Duke of Zhou, the previous king’s older brother, stayed loyal. He became a regent and crushed the rebellion underfoot in a three-year war, and then expanded the kingdom. He also made the Mandate of Heaven Doctrine, to justify killing kings and taking their property. In basic terms, the gods had decided they were evil and given their property to someone deemed righteous. This would go on to be used a lot. The problem was that the system kept allowing emperors to turn corrupt. Dan made an eastern capital city, Luoyang. When the previous emperor, the one he had become a regent for, grew up, he stepped down without a problem. The capital was shifted. There were two parts in the Zhou Dynasty, the western and Eastern Zhou, there were also two parts in the Eastern Zhou, the spring and autumn, and the warring states. In the western Zhou, the twin cities, Fen and Ghao, which were the capital then, were burned to the ground by a group of nomads, the Quanrong, and the family of one of the king’s disgruntled wives. The doctrine of heaven mandate was used. Then the capital was moved into Luoyang, starting the Eastern Zhao. In the spring and Autumn period, the kings’ power degraded, to where he only held a ceremonial rule, while Marquis and Dukes gained more power and personal armies. In the warring states period, the Dukes and Marquis became separate states and began warring with each other. The number of states decreased from around 148 to around 30, then 7, then 3, and finally, one. Even though there was a war going on, the population skyrocketed again. There were also people like Lao Tzu (who made Taoism), Confucius, Han Fei (he made the doctrines of legalism), and Sun Tzu. The crossbow was also invented, and iron was introduced in 800 BC, 1000 years later than the rest of the middle east, but the Chinese quickly became experts and began melting and casting iron in furnaces of heat resistant clay, while everybody else was using wrought iron, which is terrible. The Chinese were about 1800 years ahead in this regard. Now, Qin was a state in the Zhou Dynasty. They won. But this victory was easy, as they already had half of China in their grasp (Shu and Ba, very lucrative places). The story of how they got them is pretty humorous. This was still in the Warring States period. Shu and Ba are located in Szechuan in modern day China and a mountain range and some forests were separating Shu and Ba from everybody else. King Huai, the king who was the ruler when Shu and Ba were taken, or the King Zheng’s (he was the one who took over the rest of China) saw Shu and Ba as an opportunity, unlike the other states, who thought they were barbarians. So, he had 5 stone cows sculpted to perfection with gold on their hind legs and backsides. The king of Shu got very excited when he saw these ‘cows’ that apparently excreted gold, so asked King Huai to send them to him. King Huai said that there was no road to send the cows over, and asked the King of Shu to make a road for him. He did. A terrifying gallery road. The king of Shu got the cows, along with a ton of chariots and siege machines to be used against them. Peasants were also taxed to death, like France. The main cause of dynasties falling would be peasant revolts in China.