What would you say if you were a hunter-gatherer, and you’ve spent all day looking for plants to eat, and then you stumble on a river which has a whole lot of plants which you proceed to eat, and there’s an unlimited supply of this food, because this river is ~fertile~. If you said, “hey I’m going to hang out here for a while and my ancestors will form one of the most powerful and culturally influential nations in the world”, then you’re probably along the Yellow River in 7000BCE, and the following is a brief summary of your future. Now, a disclaimer: the earliest histories of civilizations are always pretty interesting because it’s generally tough to distinguish fact from fiction. As a result, you get some wild stories which we have to take into account because, well, we have nothing that proves them wrong. You get a lot of that in Early Chinese history, because from the beginning China had a unique and powerful culture, which took hold of a lot of the history. You’ll see what I mean.

 

Xia Dynasty (2100-1600BCE): So we pretty much just found out about this one. It’s been thought of as a myth for few thousand years, and just a few years ago archeologists found evidence that it did in fact exist. The dynasty was founded by Yu (which was indeed his full name) who, according to legend, drained a flood. Everyone was pretty pumped about that. So pumped that they made him the first Emperor of China. In his infinite flood draining wisdom Yu decided that he’d make the whole dynasty thing hereditary, and so you have the beginning of the Xia dynasty. And the Xia went on, undivided and harmonious forever.  Or it would have, if it wasn’t for King Jie, who had his servant work force build a lake, and fill it with wine. He rafted around in it for a day, got bored, and ordered the servants who built the lake to drink it dry, to which the servants responded “we probably should have seen that one coming.” They all drowned. Three thousand of them. And believe it or not, the general Chinese population wasn’t thrilled about their tax dollars going towards deadly wine lakes, and the Xia was overthrown and King Jie is said to have died alone in exile. Ok, so we’ll never make that mistake again, said all of China. If we ever have another wine lake, we’ve messed up (foreshadowing).

 

 

Shang Dynasty (1558-1046): So the villages that popped up around the Yellow River outside of the Xia Dynasty were brought together by our manz Tang, who was the guy that kicked out King Jie. The Shang Dynasty is when a lot of people really count Chinese history as starting, because it was when the basis of Chinese culture took off. For example, ancestor worship became a huge huge deal. This meant that your ancestors were considered semi-divine, and their spirits were super powerful. They’d make plenty of sacrifices to the ancestors, like wine, food, people, the usual things you’ll find lying around the house. Not only would they sacrifice things to the ancestors to get them in a good mood, but they’d communicate with them too by using oracle bones, which were literally people bones (probably from those people you sacrificed earlier). You’d write a positive statement and a negative statement on a bone, poke it with a hot stick, and whichever way the bone cracked would be the prediction, so say the ancestors. So these prehistoric Ouija Boards were used to ask the ancestors questions like, oh how will the harvest go this year and things of the sort. During the Shang you’ve also got a whole lot of technology advances. A standard calendar is implemented, writing hits the scene, and bronze is invented. The Shang Dynasty was big on bronze; you got your bronze weapons, your bronze bowls, and that’s pretty much all you need in 1500BCE. Arguably the most important development was the Mandate of Heaven. This meant that the gods would bless a dynasty to rule for a while, and if things started to break down, the people had the right to overthrow the dynasty and install a new one because the current ruler had lost the mandate/approval of the gods. So the Shang dynasty went on happily and peacefully, until I kid you not this guy King Zhou decided to have his servants build him a lake filled with wine. Someone hadn’t read enough Clear Cut History. Except this time, King Zhou decided this was not enough. He was the ruler of the second Chinese dynasty after all, and so once the lake was done, he ordered his servants to build an island, put trees on the island, and cover the trees with roasted meat. He made a meat forest in his lake of wine. This guy. Needless to say he lost the mandate.

 

 

Zhou Dynasty (1046-256BCE): So this is the longest of all of China’s dynasties. Basically what happened is the Zhou where a tributary state of the Shang, which meant they paid cash every so often, and were protected by the Shang Dynasty. That was until the Zhou got tired of their money going towards meat forests, and decided they’d do a better job if they were in charge. So, King Wu, leader of the Zhou, made some alliances with neighboring chiefdoms. He led an army of 50,000 against the Shang army of 700,000 troops and won (the Battle of Muye), partly because a solid portion of the Shang troops switched over to his side. They had also had enough of wine lakes and meat forests. After his devastating defeat, the Shang king went home and did the reasonable thing: locking himself in his palace and setting it on fire. And thus began the Zhou Dynasty. The state as divided into a confederation of feudal territories which helped the emperor hold control, and another capitol was built further East to assist in controlling that bit of the empire. This arrangement broke down 200 years later because feudal lords decided they wanted more power, and the political system weakened. So most historians divide this dynasty into two sections: before 771 (Western Zhou dynasty) when everything was united, and after 771 (the Eastern Zhou Dynasty), when everything wasn’t. The Eastern Zhou was mostly made up of small competing feudal states, also known as, understandably, the Warring Sates period. Typically, a whole lot of unrest or war is bad for culture, but in this case it was the opposite. The fighting states during the Eastern Zhou not only fought on the battlefield, but in the arts studio. Each state developed their own style and culture. Jade entered the scene, silk became a thing, and bronze and pottery got even more complex and artistic. Competition encouraged technology as well; ox drawn plows, irrigation, crossbows, horseback riding, all became commonplace across the fractured empire. Philosophy boomed with the advent of Confucianism and Daoism, which became hallmarks of Chinese culture in the dynasties to come. Eventually, one state did overpower the rest, which marked the end of the Zhou and Warring States period, and the beginning of the Qin, which is where our story ends.