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Ancient China’s Dynasties. Guiding Question. What makes a culture unique?. Shang Dynasty. Why did China’s Shang rulers become powerful?. Huang He Valley is the birthplace of Ancient Chinese Civilization Early settlers were farmers Rivers provided rich soil for farming
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Guiding Question What makes a culture unique?
Shang Dynasty Why did China’s Shang rulers become powerful? • Huang He Valley is the birthplace of Ancient Chinese Civilization • Early settlers were farmers • Rivers provided rich soil for farming • Rivers were used for travel and trade
Yu the Great • Yu dug the first channels to control the floodwaters of the Huang He river • Yu chased away the dragons that caused the floods and was then able to control the floods • Yu was aided in his task by other dragons • Took 13 years to complete his work and afterwards, the floodwaters traveled safely to the sea sparing thousands of lives • Legend says that Yu became the first Emperor of the Xia Dynasty which later became the Shang Dynasty
Yu Controlled the Flood • The story of Yu is based on a king of the same name who ruled in Chinese legend from 2205 to 2197 B.C. • Like all demigods of ancient times, Yu changes into different shapes whenever necessary. • Unlike the demigods of ancient times, Yu is the first to pass on his status as ruler to his descendants and thus create a dynasty, or ruling family. • He named his dynasty the Xia Dynasty. It isn’t a mythical dynasty, the archaeological evidence has proven its existence.
Shang Dynasty • Archaeologists believe the Huang He valley was the center of Chinese civilization. • The Shang kings were part of a dynasty that may have build the 1st Chinese cities. They ruled from about 1750 B.C. to 1122 B.C. • The Shang Dynasty built the city of Anyang which was China’s first capital.
Shang Dynasty People of the Shang dynasty were divided into groups… • THE NOBLES: The king and his family were the most powerful of this group. Warlords and other royal officials were also in the class. They were aristocrats, nobles whose wealth came from the land they owned. • THE COMMONERS: Traders and artisans were below the nobles. The commoners did most of the specialized work including farming. • THE SLAVES: Slaves captured during wars were the lowest class of people.
Religion • Shang religion consisted of a mixture of shamanism, divination and sacrifice. • There were six main recipients of sacrifice: (1) Di, the High God (2) nature powers like the sun and mountain powers (3) former lords, deceased humans who had been added to the dynastic pantheon (4) predynastic ancestors (5) dynastic ancestors (6) dynastic ancestresses such as the concubines of a past emperor. The Shang rulers subscribed to the notion that these ancestors held power over them and performed rituals to ascertain their intentions. • One of the most common rituals was divination, which often was performed to determine whether ancestors desired specific sacrifices or rituals. Divination involved cracking a turtle carapace or ox scapula to answer a question, and to then record the response to that question on the bone itself. It is unknown what criteria the diviners used to determine the response, but it is believed to be the sound or pattern of the cracks on the bone.
Religion Continued • The Shang also seem to have believed in an afterlife, as evidenced by the elaborate burial tombs built for deceased rulers. Often "carriages, utensils, sacrificial vessels, [and] weapons" would be included in the tomb. A king's burial involved the burial of up to several hundred humans and horses as well to accompany the king into the afterlife, in some cases even numbering four hundred. Finally, tombs included ornaments such as jade, which the Shang may have believed to protect against decay or confer immortality. • The degree to which shamanism was a central aspect of Shang religion is a subject of debate. • The Shang religion was highly bureaucratic and meticulously ordered. Oracle bones contained descriptions of the date, ritual, person, ancestor, and questions associated with the divination. Tombs displayed highly ordered arrangements of bones, with groups of skeletons laid out facing the same direction.
Zhou Dynasty • An Aristocrat named Wu Wang believed the Shang ruler was a tyrant and overthrew him in 1045 B.C. • This began the Zhou Dynasty- Longest Dynasty in Chinese history- 800 years • Zhou ruled China with similar guidelines and principles as the Shang. • Zhou ruled with a bureaucracy- government officials who carried out the tasks of the government. • The Zhou formed an army an took control of weaker kingdoms, creating a large and vast empire.
Zhou Dynasty Continued • By the end of the Zhou Dynasty, they had doubled in size • Zhou kings governed China similarly to the Shang but created a bureaucracy. • Created a strong army and took over weaker kingdoms. • Kingdoms were divided into territories. • King’s chief duty was to carry out religious ceremonies • Mandate of Heaven is the belief that the Chinese King’s right to rule came from the gods. The Mandate stated the idea that the gods chose a wise and good person who would rule well and honestly. • Dao is a principle where the king must rule by the “proper way.” He must honor and please the gods. • If there was a natural disaster or bad crop- it was the King’s fault and he could be replaced.
Zhou Dynasty Religious Beliefs • The religion of the Zhou people was quite different from the Shang religion. While the Shang kings saw the universe filled with real ghosts and spirits of good and evil, the Zhou religion was much more abstract and transcendental. • Heavenly spirits (tianshen天神), terrestrial forces (dizhi地祇) and human ancestors (rengui人鬼, zuxian祖先, zongzu宗祖) were the three realms of deities. The highest celestial deities were Heaven (HaotianShangdi昊天上帝, Shangtian上天), sun, moon and the stars and planets and different anthropomorphic forces reigning the universe and celestial phenomena like wind and rain. • The highest terrestrial deities were the God of Millet (Sheji社稷), the Five Offerables (Wusi五祀), the Five Mountains (Wuyue五嶽/岳) and geographical phenomena like hills, ravines and swamps. • Furthermore, human sacrifices (renxun人殉) during the burials of high nobles or the kings seemed to have disappeared. The vanishing of the belief in ghosts can also be observed in the patterns of the ritual bronze vessels where dragons and monsters - very common during the Shang period - were gradually replaced by abstract decorations.
Zhou Religious Beliefs Continued • The four highest priests of the Western Zhou period were prayers (zhu祝), sacrifiers (zong宗), diviners (bu卜) and astrologers (shi史). The astrologers also recorded natural phenomena and later historical events, one of the two scribes is said to have recorded royal activities, the other royal decrees. • Oracles taken with oxen scapulae or tortoise plastrons (jiagu甲骨; bufa卜法 oracles) were inherited from the Shang Dynasty, but the divination by counting out milfoil stalks (shicao蓍草) soon became the prevalent divination method (shifa筮法 oracles). • While the ancestral rituals became more and more a matter of a bureaucratic state, poetry and writing became more individual and allowed to express own opinions about the ruling social stratum. • The view of the writing people changed from the religion centered inscriptions to a nature and human centered world vision. It was not any more the ancestors and Great Heaven that determined the life of people, but mankind itself.
