Shang dynasty

The name Shang can also be used for other things, which you can read about on Shang (disambiguation). The name Yin can refer to a different period, the Yin Kingdom during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. There is also a footballer named Shang Yin (footballer).

The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo), also known as the Yin dynasty (殷代; Yīn dài), was a Chinese royal dynasty that ruled in the Yellow River valley during the 2nd millennium BC. It traditionally came after the Xia dynasty and was followed by the Western Zhou dynasty. Old accounts of the Shang come from texts such as the Book of Documents, Bamboo Annals and Shiji. Modern scholars date the dynasty between the 16th and 11th centuries BC. They agree more about when it ended than when it began.

The Shang dynasty is the earliest dynasty in traditional Chinese history that is strongly supported by archaeological evidence. The archaeological site of Yinxu, near modern-day Anyang, matches the last Shang capital, called Yin. Excavations at Yinxu have revealed eleven major royal tombs, the foundations of former palace buildings, and the remains of animals and humans that were sacrificed in official state rituals.

Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, stone, bone, and clay objects have been uncovered at Yinxu. Most importantly, the site has produced the earliest known examples of Chinese writing. This writing mostly consists of divination texts carved onto oracle bones, which were usually either turtle shells or ox scapulae. More than 20,000 oracle bones were found during the first scientific excavations in the 1920s and 1930s, and over four times as many have been found since. These inscriptions give valuable insight into politics, the economy, religious practices, art, and medicine in the early stages of Chinese history.

Traditional accounts

Several Chinese classics discuss the Shang, including the Book of Documents, the Mencius, and the Zuo Zhuan. The Han dynasty historian Sima Qian wrote a timeline of the Shang in the Shiji, and the Bamboo Annals gives a slightly different account. The Shang have also been called "Yin" (殷). Since Huangfu Mi wrote in the 3rd century AD, "Yin" has often referred to the later part of the Shang. The name seems to have started during the later Zhou dynasty, and it does not appear in bronze inscriptions from the Western Zhou period. In the founding myth, a woman named Jiandi swallowed an egg dropped by a black bird and gave birth to Xie. Xie helped Yu the Great control the Great Flood and was given a place called Shang. The time before the dynasty is called the "Predynastic Shang."

See also: Predynastic Shang

According to Sima Qian, the dynasty was founded 13 generations after Xie, when Tang defeated Jie, the cruel final ruler of the Xia, at the Battle of Mingtiao. Sima Qian recounts the reigns of Tai Jia, Tai Wu, Pan Geng, Wu Ding, Wu Yi, and Di Xin, but mentions most other kings only by name. Wang Guowei later showed that the line of kings matched Sima Qian's list. The last Shang king, Di Xin, was defeated by Wu of Zhou at the Battle of Muye, where legends say his own army joined the Zhou rebels. The Yi Zhou Shu and Mencius describe the battle as very bloody. Later, the Ming dynasty novel Investiture of the Gods told the war as a struggle between rival groups of gods. After the defeat, King Wu let Di Xin's son Wu Geng rule as a vassal kingdom, but the Shang later joined the Rebellion of the Three Guards against the Duke of Zhou. The rebellion failed, and Zhou took control of Shang lands. Some Shang royal family members changed their surname from Zi to Yin and kept an aristocratic status. Weiziqi, a brother of Di Xin, became Duke of Song, with its capital at Shangqiu. Confucius may have descended from the Shang kings through the Dukes of Song. Legends say that Jizi left China and founded Gija Joseon in Korea, although scholars debate this.

See also: Periodization of the Shang dynasty

Early Bronze Age archaeology

Main article: Shang archaeology

Further information: History of Chinese archaeology

Before the 20th century, the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC) was the earliest dynasty that could be checked against its own records. During the Song dynasty (960–1279), antiquarians collected bronze ritual vessels from the Shang era, and some had inscriptions. In 1899, scholars noticed that Chinese pharmacists were selling "dragon bones" with strange, old characters. In 1928 these were traced to Yinxu, north of the Yellow River near Anyang, where the Academia Sinica dug until the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. After 1950, the walled city of Zhengzhou Shang City was found inside modern Zhengzhou. Its earth walls, built in the 15th century BC, were 20 m (66 ft) wide at the base and 8 m (26 ft) high. The method was older, as walls of this type were found at Neolithic sites of the Longshan culture.

In 1959, the Erlitou culture site was found in Yanshi, near Luoyang. Radiocarbon dating suggests this culture flourished c. 2100 BC to 1800 BC, and it built large palaces. In 1983, Yanshi Shang City was found, a large walled city from 1600 BC that featured pottery of the Erligang culture. In 1999, a walled city of about 470 ha (1,200 acres) was found across the Huan River from Yinxu. It is now known as Huanbei. Between 1989 and 2000, an important Shang settlement was dug near Xiaoshuangqiao, where sacrifice pits held the skeletons of cattle.

Chinese historians readily linked the Erligang and Erlitou sites to the early Shang and Xia dynasty of traditional histories. The real political situation may have been more complicated, since the Xia and Shang may have existed at the same time. The Erligang culture spread across a wide area of China, even to the area of modern Beijing. The Panlongcheng site in the middle Yangtze valley was an important regional centre. Other advanced settlements, such as the walled city of Sanxingdui in Sichuan, were culturally unlike Anyang, and there is no known evidence they had writing. The late Shang state at Anyang is therefore generally considered the first verifiable civilisation in Chinese history. The earliest layers of the Wucheng culture have yielded pottery with short symbol sequences, but the sample is too small to decipher.

Absolute chronology

The earliest date in Chinese history that is known for certain is the start of the Gonghe Regency in 841 BC, early in the Zhou dynasty. Sima Qian first set this date. Older dates are hard to pin down because people doubt where the old texts came from, how they were passed down, and how to read them. Newer work compares the old histories with archaeology and astronomy. At least 44 dates for the end of the dynasty have been suggested, ranging from 1130 to 1018 BC.

Scholars have tried many ways to date the Shang. Liu Xin calculated the traditional dates of the dynasty, 1766 to 1122 BC, during the Han dynasty. Using the "old text" of the Bamboo Annals gives 1523 to 1027 BC. David Pankenier looked at astronomical events mentioned in Zhou texts and dated the start of the dynasty to 1554 BC and its overthrow to 1046 BC. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project linked the start of the dynasty to a walled city from the Erligang culture at Yanshi, dated to about 1600 BC. It also reached an end date of 1046 BC, using astronomy and radiocarbon dating. David Nivison and Edward Shaughnessy argue for an end date of 1045 BC, based on the Bamboo Annals. Radiocarbon dating of oracle bones has given an end date of 1041 BC, with an uncertainty of about 10 years.

Late Shang at Anyang

Main article: Late Shang

The oldest direct records, from about 1250 BC, come from Yinxu near Anyang and cover the reigns of the last nine Shang kings. The Shang had a complete writing system, found on bronze inscriptions, pottery, jade, stone, and horn, but most often on oracle bones. Shang astronomers observed Mars and various comets, and the Shang invented many musical instruments. Their civilisation was based on farming, with hunting and animal herding added. Besides war, the Shang practised human sacrifice. Most of the victims mentioned in Shang writings were war captives from the Qiang people, who lived to the northwest. Shells from cowries found at Anyang suggest trade with people on the coast, but China was largely isolated from other large civilisations. Trade and diplomatic ties through the Silk Road did not exist until the reign of Emperor Wu during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 221 AD).

The royal palace at Yinxu had large stone pillar bases and rammed earth foundations, which supported 53 buildings made of wood using post-and-beam construction. Many Shang royal tombs had been robbed in ancient times, but Tomb 5, found in 1976, was undisturbed and one of the richest Shang tombs yet discovered. Its more than 200 bronze ritual vessels and 109 inscriptions of the name of Fu Hao led Zheng Zhenxiang and other archaeologists to identify it as Fu Hao's tomb. She was a consort of King Wu Ding, and was also a military general. The king led the court and ancestor worship, and he sometimes performed oracle bone divinations himself. The Shang fought frequent wars with neighbouring settlements and nomadic herders, and the people of the Yan Mountains were often described as hostile. Shang religion centred on divination and sacrifice to Di, the high god, to natural forces, and to ancestors. The degree to which shamanism was central to Shang religion is debated. Bronze was mainly used for ritual items, and the Shang began large-scale bronze production around 1500 BC. Bronze was also used on spoke-wheeled chariots, which appeared in China around 1200 BC. The Shang also fought the northern tribes called the Guifang.

Main article: Religion of the Shang dynasty

Main article: Chinese ritual bronzes

Main article: Military of the Shang dynasty

Kings

For a more comprehensive list, see List of monarchs of China § Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE), and Family tree of ancient Chinese emperors § Shang dynasty.

The earliest records are oracle bones carved during the reigns of Shang kings, starting with Wu Ding. The bones do not list kings, but they do record offerings to earlier kings and ancestors, which followed a regular schedule that scholars have worked out. Using this evidence, scholars have built a likely list of kings and family tree. It mostly agrees with the later accounts, especially for later kings. In this list, Wu Ding was the twenty-first Shang king.

The kings were called by posthumous names on the oracle bones. The last character of each name is one of the 10 celestial stems, which also matched the day of the 10-day Shang week when offerings were made to that ancestor. Since there were more kings than stems, names have prefixes such as da ("greater"), zhong ("middle"), xiao ("lesser"), bu ("outer"), and zu ("ancestor"), along with some other, less well-known ones. The kings are grouped by generation in the order of succession shown on the oracle bones. Later reigns were assigned to groups of oracle bone diviners by Dong Zuobin.