In the Chinese historical tradition, the Zhou…

In the Chinese historical tradition, the Zhou defeated the Shang and oriented the Shang system of ancestor worship toward a universalized worship away from the worship of Di, the Supreme Being, and to that of Tian, which can either mean the physical sky or the presiding God of Heaven.

They legitimize their rule by invoking the Mandate of Heaven, the notion that the ruler (the "Son of Heaven") governed by divine right but that his dethronement would prove that he had lost the mandate.

Such things that proved the ruling family had lost the Mandate were natural disasters and rebellions.

The doctrine explains and justifies the demise of the Xia and Shang Dynasties and at the same time supports the legitimacy of present and future rulers.

After the Zhou conquest, the Shang practices of bronze casting, writing, and pyromancy—a kind of divination involving the application of heat or fire—continue.

China’s new dynasty (called by historians the Early, or Western, Zhou) is structured similarly to the Shang, operating as a centralized bureaucracy with vassals ruling the peripheral areas.

Consolidation of the Zhou Empire proceeds rapidly.