China

= = =China= Originally made by Kelliann and Katie.... Voki by John...

Getting Oriented

 * Chinese were not in communication with others
 * Called themselves the Middle Kingdom because they didn't know of any major civilizations

Geography

 * Very effective natural borders
 * Very similar to Egypttoc
 * River valley civilization
 * China slopes down from west to east
 * Mountains
 * Mountains, deserts and, and seas isolated Chine
 * Qinling mountains divide north China from south China
 * Rivers
 * River civilizations
 * Rivers deposit loess in the North China Plain
 * Loess: silt, builds up along sides, then it sheers off and causes big floods
 * Course of the Yellow River repeatedly changes
 * China's capital moved because the river moved too
 * Yellow River called China's Sorrow because of its destructive flood
 * Climate
 * North: dry, cold, winds in winter
 * South: more moist, summer monsoons, grow rice, tea, bamboo, mulberry trees

Neolithic China

 * Evidence:No textual sources
 * Limited to the materials that survive for archaeologists to find
 * Lack answers to many questions
 * Earliest evidence from c. 5000 BCE
 * Yangshao
 * Settled agricultural society: Banpo village
 * Groupings of houses and graves thought to reflect extended kinship relationships
 * Variations of wealth even within kinship groups
 * Practice of secondary burial in cemeteries outside the village
 * Burry, then a year later they dig them up, put in a new and nicer grave with grave goods
 * Grave goods: some have lots, some have few, social stratification, different levels of wealth/status
 * graves grouped by clan
 * family was important, family more important than social status
 * Probably not warlike, because few weapons
 * Coil Method: rolled snakes of clay layered on top of each other to make a pot--> thick
 * no specialized workers for pottery
 * proto-writing
 * Longshan
 * Start later, but overlaps with Yangshao; located farther north and east
 * Settled agriculture society
 * Defensive walls up to 40 feet thick; arrowheads and spearheads
 * Used potter's wheel; pottery is black (in contrast to red Yanshao pots)
 * thinner,used kick wheel, more sophisticated, symmetrical
 * Cultural Antecedents to the Shang Dynasty
 * From Yangshao: proto-writing, importance of kinship groups
 * From Longshan: potter's wheel, settlement walls, ritual use of cracked bones, warrior society
 * From Both: agricultural society, social stratification

China's Mythological Past

 * The Xia Dynasty
 * Accounts of early Chinese history tell of mythical kings responsible for the gifts of fire, farming, silk, etc.
 * All legends based on Confucian stories
 * No archaeological evidence to anchor theses stories in history
 * Used to think that the Shang dynasty was mythological and dismissed the ancient lists of Shang's kings as legend, and these have now been confirmed
 * Scholars now less willing to dismiss accounts of the Xia
 * Oracle bones: wrote questions on them to the gods, cracked with hot iron rod, made family tree out of names in the questions, which matched exactly to the king's list
 * Legends of the Xia
 * Traditionally dated 2205-1766 BCE
 * Founded by Emperor Yu, who organized large-scale flood control and irrigation projects
 * Dikes on side of river
 * Jie: the last emperor of the Xia dynasty, described as thoroughly evil
 * Some scholars interpret this as a myth created by the Shang to justify their seizure of power

The Shang Dynasty

 * Overview
 * Capital near modern Anyang, north of the Yellow River on the North China Plain
 * Earliest form of Chinese writing
 * Walled cities
 * Bronze age technology
 * Thought to be only legendary until the discovery of oracle bones
 * Evidence
 * Writing on oracle bones and bronze artifacts
 * Oracle bones link archaeological finds and ancient Chinese histories
 * Archaeological finds
 * Ancient Chinese histories written hundreds of years later
 * Government
 * Shang heartland
 * King is the political, religious, and military leader
 * Highest religious figure because he's the head of the Shang family
 * Their clan ancestors were controlling things around them, so people related to the ancestors to the ancestors could rule because their ancestors would listen to them
 * Only males can be king
 * Hereditary rule was passed through the eldest son
 * Members of the royal family governed estates for the king
 * Not all family members had equal status, so they had different titles
 * Scholars think that government positions were hereditary
 * These nobles enjoyed the incomes from their lands but also had to supply soldiers for the king's use
 * Each estate was ruled from a walled city
 * The king had less power farther from the center
 * Allied Chieftains
 * Most distant lands were ruled by chieftains without blood ties to the kings
 * Independent ruler of a tribe
 * Allied chieftains not really under king's control, but king has a bigger army
 * Divination
 * Ritual
 * Hot poker touched to holes made on turtle shells or ox scapulas to cause cracking
 * Opposing statements tested, sometimes repeatedly; then cracks would be interpreted (only done by the king because of his divine power)
 * Texts
 * Over 100,000 fragments of inscribed bones have been found
 * Inscriptions follow a formula: the date, the diviner, the statement
 * A Skewed View?
 * Remarkable as unmediated and unedited sources, but very limited purpose and focus
 * How might the oracle bones distort our picture of Shang culture?
 * Shang Military
 * Weapons
 * Bronze halberds (ge), daggers, and special axes for beheading (yue), but NO SWORDS
 * Composite bows (first civilization to have composite bow)
 * Light chariots similar to those of Egypt
 * Conflicts
 * Frequent battles with neighboring nomads, who were designated with the character '-fang' when they were rebelling
 * Numerous accounts of the beheadings of war captives as gifts to the gods and ancestors
 * Both the nobles and 'the multitudes' fought
 * Fu Hao provides an example of a noblewoman leading troops into battle
 * Kings often used divination to guide their military planning
 * Religion under the Shang Dynasty
 * Shang Ancestors
 * Dead ancestors were believed to affect health, success in battle or hunt, childbirth, weather, and harvests
 * More distant ancestors held more power
 * Sacrificed to both male and female ancestors
 * Ancestors of the Zi clan (Shang) functioned as Gods for all
 * The king oversaw religion because he was the head of the Zi clan
 * Nature Gods
 * Little information available about most of these gods
 * Theory says that many of these Gods are more distant Shang ancestors, or the Shang adopted the deities of the tribes that their empire absorbed
 * Other gods include the Yellow River, winds, soil, and sun
 * Di, the high god, had the widest range of powers but never required sacrifice (VERY SIMILAR TO TIAN IN ZHOU RELIGION)
 * Sacrifices
 * Sacrifices of human war captives and animals were made to both ancestral and nature spirits
 * Regularly scheduled sacrifices were made, as well as additional sacrifices for specific concerns
 * By the end of the Dynasty, there was a major ritual every day of the year
 * Shang Society
 * Clan Structure
 * Shang society is best understood in a collection of groups rather than individuals
 * Lineage groups, or clans, would have been united by blood and ancestral sacrifice
 * Clans seem to have shared a single occupation (clans of bronze casters, horse breeders, shepherds, executioners, etc.)
 * Social Class
 * Members of the Zi clan would hold the highest positions
 * Others seem to have held noble titles, including allied chieftains
 * Priests, craftsmen, scribes, etc, may have formed a middle class
 * The vast majority of the people were farmers
 * Economy
 * Cowry shells functioned as currency
 * Imitation cowry shells were also used
 * Our evidence tells us little about trade
 * Fu Hao (Lady Hao)
 * Wife of King Wuding
 * Appears in charge of troops, carrying out an essential mission to link her forces with those of Wuding's ally, Guo of Zhi, and coordinating a rendezvous with troops led by the king
 * In 1976, her tomb was discovered intact with a wealth of ritual bronze vessels, carved jade ornaments, and 7000 cowry shells, as well as the bodies of attendants and beheaded captives
 * Fu Hao was exceptional, not typical of royal women

The Zhou Dynasty
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