Lesson 4: Xia and Shang Dynasties.
Mar. 16th, 2002 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynEvening, folks. The clock is slowly but surely creeping into the era of properly recorded history as we move forward with the lessons; tonight we're going to cover two ancient dynasties in one go. It's not as famous a period as some of the others, but there's a good bit to be learned. We will get through these half-legendary bits eventually, I promise. For now, though, insert standard disclaimer re: my lack of qualifications vs. your grades here. Thanks.
Now, before we go on to the lesson, today's pulp survival tip: #176. People who wear what you consider pyjamas during daytime are generally either insane, comically separated from their luggage, or capable of ripping your arms out of their sockets with less effort than it takes you to sneeze. Treat them all with the respect you'd give category #3.
Back in lesson #3 we left off with the passing of power from Emperor Yu the Great to his son. This act signaled the formation of the first dynasty known to the Chinese, although I'm not sure it can really properly be called that. There are some archaeologists and historians who believe that the earliest dynasties might actually have been separate cultures in the Yellow River valley region, and that their various descendants wound up essentially retconning their history into forms that synched up with later concepts of government and kingship. It's something like the Biblical stories of Saul, David, and Solomon. All of them got called kings, but only Solomon managed to sufficiently concentrate power under the central leadership of a single ruler to truly fit the term. The two before him, while powerful rulers, were more in the nature of high chieftains rather than royal overlords. A lot of the early Chinese rulers seem to have been very much along these same lines.
The fact that up until 1959 there was no archaeological evidence whatsoever of the Xia Dynasty existing didn't exactly help, either. They'd been treated as a myth told as part of Chinese history - not unlike the way Arthur was to the English - and sort of left at that. Then came the archaeologists, who were apparently interested in researching an ancient people called the Longshan or Lungshan. They started serious diggings at a city called Yanshi, and found themselves what looked awfully like a capital city dating to the time of the Xia - 2100 to 1800 BCE. That would've been just about the time China was emerging from the Neolithic period and moving into the Bronze Age. The climate back then was much wetter, warmer, and overall damper than it is today. Apparently big chunks of the country were covered with lakes, marshes, and swamps. The area was really relatively decent to live in at the time... and I have to say at this point that I find myself looking at this and thinking about Yu's role in legend vis-a-vis the BIG FSCKING FLOODS that supposedly drowned the region year after year after year. Tamer of floods, controller of lakes, drainer of big whacking pools of unwelcome water, and look, isn't this the capital city of his supposed descendants?
Ahem. Anyway.
The other notable thing about this region is the pottery. The Lungshan people were incredibly good at pottery by ancient standards, creating a type of black pottery without painting or decoration, but with a lovely polished texture. Their neighbours, the mountain-living Yangshao people, were also big on pottery - to a degree that makes me choke. I'm really sorry, but every Yangshao pot I've ever seen has looked like something stolen from the southwestern United States. I mean, here! Look at these, or stuff like this or this. I've seen some pictures in other sources, too; the similarities get a little unnerving sometimes. Bloody weird if you ask me, but we're getting off the track again.
Xia kings held power for quite a long time, long enough to begin developing bronze technology (impressive) and getting seriously decadent (not impressive). If ever there was a pre-Romanov example of why dynastic succession is not a good way to pass power from one ruler to the next, these guys were it. Rome had its supposed seven Etruscan kings culminating in Tarquin the Right Bastard - I'm sorry, Tarquin the Proud - but Tarquin was nothing compared to the tail end of the Xia Dynasty. The last ruler thereof was a fellow by the name of Jie, who was big on entertaining himself and not a whole lot else. Part of the problem may have been that, according to the old stories, the king's advisors were responsible for most of the business of running the country. You tell a man Heaven wants him to rule, then take away all responsibility that might keep him busy and in touch with the people in his care, and what do you expect? You get an idiot with a warped sense of priorities.
Jie went to war against several neighbouring states in order to get himself women that he wanted, or to enslave entire populations. This was necessary because the SOB was the kind of guy who would dig a rowboat pond, then fill it with wine, or build a palace big enough to hold all 3,000 of his favourite dancing girls. Granted, these claims are probably embellished after the fact, but the basic idea remains: they had a king who had no concept whatsoever of his long-ago forebears' responsibilities towards their people. Long before there was ever a King Louis in France, Jie was declaring himself the Sun King - the story is that when his advisors told him his extravagance would ruin the country, he said 'everything under heaven belongs to me, and I am like the sun in the sky. Will the sun ever be extinguished?'
Okay, maybe it's me, but this man was ASKING for trouble with a line like that.
Jie's preference for entertaining himself at the expense of the welfare of his kingdom bit him in the ass one day. A state not all that far away, called Shang, had come about as the result of a man named Tang uniting several tribes and looking around for something else to do. Given that the king of the Xia region was such a sot, he looked like an easy target. And he was. Word of advice to those of you planning on becoming an Evil Overlord or Overlady: don't take your concubines or concubators to the front for the big battle, okay? Jie did. It wasn't the only reason he lost, but it's just so not the wise thing to do. The man was a moron. He deserved to lose. So he did, and the Shang, who were really good with bronze, assimilated his kingdom and got themselves a nice big chunk of China to rule.
In The Story of the Stone, by Barry Hughart (ha! Thought I wouldn't mention him this time, eh?), Number Ten Ox speaks of how the oracle bones of the city of An-yang were said by Master Li to be the only evidence the semilegendary Shang dynasty ever existed. There's a good deal more evidence than that, enough to show that the empire had several capitals - enough, in fact, to make it very clear to archaeologists galore that the Shang rulers constituted the first real, solid dynasty in China. They centralized power in the city of the ruler to a degree never before seen in the Middle Kingdom-
Quick note here. I should've done this ages ago when I started using the term. China is a name that didn't get applied to the country until well after the first true Emperor, Qin Shihuangi, aka the Duke of Ch'in to readers of Barry Hughart. The local name for the place has generally been rendered as Chung Kuo or Zhong Guo - the Middle Kingdom. The belief was that the country lay directly under Heaven and was at the center of the entire world. Before you say anything about geography, have a look at the medieval Europeans' maps that featured Jerusalem as the center of the world. People like to place what's dear to them as close to the eye of their gods as possible, I think.
All right, back to the history. The Shang rulers consolidated their power to a frightening degree. Anyang was only one of the capitals they established over the years; there was another one at a city called Zhengzhou. THAT capital had a wall around it. A big wall, made of earth, stamped down hard enough to become as tough as cement. The wall was four miles long and in some places reached as high as 27 feet. Think about how many people that must've required in ancient China - we're talking sometime between, oh, about 1750 and 1040 BCE. That's a LOT of work. King Solomon couldn't get that kind of work done without going off to look for foreign assistance in the form of alliances, supplies, and wives. Then again, Solomon wasn't a ruler of the most advanced bronze-working civilization in the ancient world. Neither was he into the kind of enthusiastic religion the Shang rulers were. We're talking Aztec enthusiasm here - large-scale human sacrifices. King died? Round up a hundred or so slaves and prisoners, whack off their heads, and set them in the tomb with him to serve him in the afterlife. Putting up a temple? Go find fifty or so slaves and sacrifice them to the gods and various deities. Building a new palace? Hope you've got a bunch of prisoners on hand, 'cos there's gonna be a big need for blood shortly...
You get the idea. You just can't get that kind of bloodshed without having a serious organization in place, the people start causing problems. For what it's worth, the Shang people were fairly prosperous, being agriculturalists and developers of near-porcelain-quality pottery. They had their writing system - found on oracle bones, and then on turtle shells, and then on bronze and stone. All Chinese writing to this day descends from this, although it's been reformed and refined more times than I know how to count. (You can pop on back to lesson #2 and look up the information there, if you like.) They had a fairly unique system of inheritance, too - the king's son was not his heir, but his next eldest brother was. When the brothers ran out, the throne went to the oldest surviving son of the king's sister. I dimly recall hearing that a similar system prevailed among ancient Saxons in Europe, but honestly, I don't know if I ever saw a real source for that.
Eventually, around 1040 BCE, the Shang dynasty got smacked in the face by their neighbours to the west. These neighbours were of a semi-nomadic tribe called the Zhou, who would form the next dynasty to rule over China, and some of the critical ideas that shaped much of the rest of Chinese history would come from them - but that's a story for the next lesson, and I hope you'll forgive me for putting it off until then.
Now, before we go on to the lesson, today's pulp survival tip: #176. People who wear what you consider pyjamas during daytime are generally either insane, comically separated from their luggage, or capable of ripping your arms out of their sockets with less effort than it takes you to sneeze. Treat them all with the respect you'd give category #3.
Back in lesson #3 we left off with the passing of power from Emperor Yu the Great to his son. This act signaled the formation of the first dynasty known to the Chinese, although I'm not sure it can really properly be called that. There are some archaeologists and historians who believe that the earliest dynasties might actually have been separate cultures in the Yellow River valley region, and that their various descendants wound up essentially retconning their history into forms that synched up with later concepts of government and kingship. It's something like the Biblical stories of Saul, David, and Solomon. All of them got called kings, but only Solomon managed to sufficiently concentrate power under the central leadership of a single ruler to truly fit the term. The two before him, while powerful rulers, were more in the nature of high chieftains rather than royal overlords. A lot of the early Chinese rulers seem to have been very much along these same lines.
The fact that up until 1959 there was no archaeological evidence whatsoever of the Xia Dynasty existing didn't exactly help, either. They'd been treated as a myth told as part of Chinese history - not unlike the way Arthur was to the English - and sort of left at that. Then came the archaeologists, who were apparently interested in researching an ancient people called the Longshan or Lungshan. They started serious diggings at a city called Yanshi, and found themselves what looked awfully like a capital city dating to the time of the Xia - 2100 to 1800 BCE. That would've been just about the time China was emerging from the Neolithic period and moving into the Bronze Age. The climate back then was much wetter, warmer, and overall damper than it is today. Apparently big chunks of the country were covered with lakes, marshes, and swamps. The area was really relatively decent to live in at the time... and I have to say at this point that I find myself looking at this and thinking about Yu's role in legend vis-a-vis the BIG FSCKING FLOODS that supposedly drowned the region year after year after year. Tamer of floods, controller of lakes, drainer of big whacking pools of unwelcome water, and look, isn't this the capital city of his supposed descendants?
Ahem. Anyway.
The other notable thing about this region is the pottery. The Lungshan people were incredibly good at pottery by ancient standards, creating a type of black pottery without painting or decoration, but with a lovely polished texture. Their neighbours, the mountain-living Yangshao people, were also big on pottery - to a degree that makes me choke. I'm really sorry, but every Yangshao pot I've ever seen has looked like something stolen from the southwestern United States. I mean, here! Look at these, or stuff like this or this. I've seen some pictures in other sources, too; the similarities get a little unnerving sometimes. Bloody weird if you ask me, but we're getting off the track again.
Xia kings held power for quite a long time, long enough to begin developing bronze technology (impressive) and getting seriously decadent (not impressive). If ever there was a pre-Romanov example of why dynastic succession is not a good way to pass power from one ruler to the next, these guys were it. Rome had its supposed seven Etruscan kings culminating in Tarquin the Right Bastard - I'm sorry, Tarquin the Proud - but Tarquin was nothing compared to the tail end of the Xia Dynasty. The last ruler thereof was a fellow by the name of Jie, who was big on entertaining himself and not a whole lot else. Part of the problem may have been that, according to the old stories, the king's advisors were responsible for most of the business of running the country. You tell a man Heaven wants him to rule, then take away all responsibility that might keep him busy and in touch with the people in his care, and what do you expect? You get an idiot with a warped sense of priorities.
Jie went to war against several neighbouring states in order to get himself women that he wanted, or to enslave entire populations. This was necessary because the SOB was the kind of guy who would dig a rowboat pond, then fill it with wine, or build a palace big enough to hold all 3,000 of his favourite dancing girls. Granted, these claims are probably embellished after the fact, but the basic idea remains: they had a king who had no concept whatsoever of his long-ago forebears' responsibilities towards their people. Long before there was ever a King Louis in France, Jie was declaring himself the Sun King - the story is that when his advisors told him his extravagance would ruin the country, he said 'everything under heaven belongs to me, and I am like the sun in the sky. Will the sun ever be extinguished?'
Okay, maybe it's me, but this man was ASKING for trouble with a line like that.
Jie's preference for entertaining himself at the expense of the welfare of his kingdom bit him in the ass one day. A state not all that far away, called Shang, had come about as the result of a man named Tang uniting several tribes and looking around for something else to do. Given that the king of the Xia region was such a sot, he looked like an easy target. And he was. Word of advice to those of you planning on becoming an Evil Overlord or Overlady: don't take your concubines or concubators to the front for the big battle, okay? Jie did. It wasn't the only reason he lost, but it's just so not the wise thing to do. The man was a moron. He deserved to lose. So he did, and the Shang, who were really good with bronze, assimilated his kingdom and got themselves a nice big chunk of China to rule.
In The Story of the Stone, by Barry Hughart (ha! Thought I wouldn't mention him this time, eh?), Number Ten Ox speaks of how the oracle bones of the city of An-yang were said by Master Li to be the only evidence the semilegendary Shang dynasty ever existed. There's a good deal more evidence than that, enough to show that the empire had several capitals - enough, in fact, to make it very clear to archaeologists galore that the Shang rulers constituted the first real, solid dynasty in China. They centralized power in the city of the ruler to a degree never before seen in the Middle Kingdom-
Quick note here. I should've done this ages ago when I started using the term. China is a name that didn't get applied to the country until well after the first true Emperor, Qin Shihuangi, aka the Duke of Ch'in to readers of Barry Hughart. The local name for the place has generally been rendered as Chung Kuo or Zhong Guo - the Middle Kingdom. The belief was that the country lay directly under Heaven and was at the center of the entire world. Before you say anything about geography, have a look at the medieval Europeans' maps that featured Jerusalem as the center of the world. People like to place what's dear to them as close to the eye of their gods as possible, I think.
All right, back to the history. The Shang rulers consolidated their power to a frightening degree. Anyang was only one of the capitals they established over the years; there was another one at a city called Zhengzhou. THAT capital had a wall around it. A big wall, made of earth, stamped down hard enough to become as tough as cement. The wall was four miles long and in some places reached as high as 27 feet. Think about how many people that must've required in ancient China - we're talking sometime between, oh, about 1750 and 1040 BCE. That's a LOT of work. King Solomon couldn't get that kind of work done without going off to look for foreign assistance in the form of alliances, supplies, and wives. Then again, Solomon wasn't a ruler of the most advanced bronze-working civilization in the ancient world. Neither was he into the kind of enthusiastic religion the Shang rulers were. We're talking Aztec enthusiasm here - large-scale human sacrifices. King died? Round up a hundred or so slaves and prisoners, whack off their heads, and set them in the tomb with him to serve him in the afterlife. Putting up a temple? Go find fifty or so slaves and sacrifice them to the gods and various deities. Building a new palace? Hope you've got a bunch of prisoners on hand, 'cos there's gonna be a big need for blood shortly...
You get the idea. You just can't get that kind of bloodshed without having a serious organization in place, the people start causing problems. For what it's worth, the Shang people were fairly prosperous, being agriculturalists and developers of near-porcelain-quality pottery. They had their writing system - found on oracle bones, and then on turtle shells, and then on bronze and stone. All Chinese writing to this day descends from this, although it's been reformed and refined more times than I know how to count. (You can pop on back to lesson #2 and look up the information there, if you like.) They had a fairly unique system of inheritance, too - the king's son was not his heir, but his next eldest brother was. When the brothers ran out, the throne went to the oldest surviving son of the king's sister. I dimly recall hearing that a similar system prevailed among ancient Saxons in Europe, but honestly, I don't know if I ever saw a real source for that.
Eventually, around 1040 BCE, the Shang dynasty got smacked in the face by their neighbours to the west. These neighbours were of a semi-nomadic tribe called the Zhou, who would form the next dynasty to rule over China, and some of the critical ideas that shaped much of the rest of Chinese history would come from them - but that's a story for the next lesson, and I hope you'll forgive me for putting it off until then.
