Part 1 · 1 chapters · ~8 min

Shang and Zhou: Bronze, Oracle Bones, the Mandate of Heaven

The Shang at Anyang, oracle bones and the origin of Chinese writing, ritual bronzes and royal tombs, the Zhou conquest and the Mandate of Heaven, the Western Zhou's feudal order, 841 BCE as the first securely dated year, the fall of the Western Zhou, and the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods.

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Writing on bone

Oracle bones were found by scholars in 1899 among "dragon bones" sold as medicine, which led to the excavation of Anyang from 1928. More than 100,000 inscribed pieces are known. The script is ancestral to modern Chinese characters, giving Chinese one of the longest continuous writing traditions in the world.

David Keightley, Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China (1978); Patricia Ebrey (2010); Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Ancient China (1999).

SHANG AND ZHOU
dates approximate before 841 BCE (the first precise date in Chinese history)
c. 1600 BCEShang dynasty beginsc. 1250 BCEAnyang; oracle bones
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Shang
The Shang is the first dynasty confirmed by contemporary writing. From about 1250 BCE at Anyang, kings divined by heating bones and turtle shells and reading the cracks, recording questions and answers: the oracle bones, China's earliest writing.
oracle bones: the first writingAnyang