Timeline:

Three dynasties:

• Zhou: ca 1050 – 221 BCE
• Shang: ca 1550 – 1050 BCE
• Xia: ?? 2050 – 1550 BCE

–Yu the great, tamer of floods–

Five emperors:

• Shun
• Yao
• Di ku
• Zhuan Xu
• Huang Di

5000 years of history (Transmitted Text)?

The Zhou and Shang dynasties are both undoubtedly historical, although 100 years ago there were no discovered written records from the Shang. Unless you pick up a brick in the back that says, “Made in Shang,” you can’t be certain what you have. From Oracle bones, we can prove that the Shang is exactly what it should be.

Transmitted v.s. discovered sources–they should match up.

The Shang sources say nothing about what came before them, in terms of states or dynasties. However, the Zhou sources begin to talk about an earlier era, but only in the late or middle period. This contradicts common sense.

“In China, all you have to do is reach down and scratch the ground and you will find something older than us.”

However, there are no Xia period documents that can verify their own identity with a document stamp or any other way. Even if the Xia turns out to be a historically validated dynasty, its founder, Yu the great, is lost in the stories of Myth. He is the great founder who cleared the lands for the Chinese people by riding on the backs of dragons and letting their tails dredge trenches for a hundred years! However, there are no non-modern representations of Yu that have been found yet.

Prior to Yu, there are stories of individual sage emperors chosen for their meritorious behavior, who chose successors based on the “rule of the best.” This seems to be the stuff of Confucian myth and legend, who wanted to convince us of merit and virtue in the old “golden age.”

After the Zhou, there’s an attempt to push history back even further, back from Yao to the Huang Di (written by Sima Qian) who rules for three hundred years, being unsatisfied with 3000-4000 years of proper history, to count up to 5000 from the yellow emperor.

5000 years of history (Archaeological Discoveries)?

At least to the Shang, including Neolithic sites (7000 – 5000 BC) and Xia. Cultural regions are distinguished by clustering of common artifacts and derived behaviors across a geo-temporal region. The two major river systems are the Yangzhe and the Huang river, around and inside which are found many old cultures.

However, complete analysis of these old sites is incomplete because all Chinese people are Chinese people anyway so clearly they don’t need analysis. Native Americans do the same thing with any old bones found in the US.

The Liang Zhu culture is entirely Neolithic, but impressive jade workers, whose designs spread from their pocket of influence into today’s common Chinese culture. This happens from all different demi cultures present in Neolithic China who lend their special arts to what later becomes a China as a whole. Jade is both hard to work and extremely rare in China.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 7:33 pm and is tagged with shang dynasties, oracle bones, myth and legend, five emperors, proper history, period documents, middle period, xia, confucian, bce, unsatisfied, xu, yao, hundred years, floods, trenches, 100 years, dynasty, successors, virtue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.