Anyang Henan (Honan) China

A line of hereditary Shang kings rules over much of northern China, and Shang troops fight frequent wars with neighboring settlements and nomadic herdsmen from the inner Asian steppes.

The capitals, one of which is at the site of the modern city of Anyang, are centers of glittering court life.

Court rituals to propitiate spirits and to honor sacred ancestors are highly developed.

In addition to his secular position, the king is the head of the ancestor- and spirit-worship cult.

Evidence from the royal tombs indicates that royal personages were buried with articles of value, presumably for use in the afterlife.

Perhaps for the same reason, hundreds of commoners, who may have been slaves, are buried alive with the royal corpse.

Chinese civilization, as described in mythology, begins with Pangu, the creator of the universe, and a succession of legendary sage-emperors and culture heroes who teach the ancient Chinese to communicate and to find sustenance, clothing, and shelter.

The first prehistoric dynasty is said to be Xia, from about the twenty-first to the sixteenth century BCE.

Until scientific excavations were made at early bronze-age sites at Anyang, Henan Province, in 1928, it was difficult to separate myth from reality in regard to the Xia, but since then, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists have uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs that point to the existence of Xia civilization in the same locations cited in ancient Chinese historical texts.

At minimum, the Xia period marks an evolutionary stage between the late neolithic cultures and the Chinese urban civilization typical of the Shang dynasty.

The last ruler of the Xia Dynasty ruled China for fifty-two years until 1618 BCE, according to the Xia Shang Zhou Chronology Project.

According to legend, Tang of Shang overthrew Jie of Xia in the Battle of Mingtiao.

According to the Shiji, the Shang had a long history, and there are different theories about their origin.

An analysis of bones from the remains of Shang people showed a Huaxia (Yellow River area) ethnic origin.

Their civilization was based on agriculture and augmented by hunting and animal husbandry, and in addition to war, the Shang also practiced human sacrifice.

Beginning around 1600, the Shang dynasty takes over a number of petty kingdoms including the Xia and controls a loose confederation of settlement groups in the Henan region of North China.

The Shang have a fully developed system of writing as attested on bronze inscriptions, oracle bones, and a small number of other writings on pottery, jade and other stones, horn, etc.

Their writing system's complexity and sophistication indicates an earlier period of development, but direct evidence of that development is still lacking.

(Chinese writing is thought to descend from a hieroglyphic script.)

Achieving political unification during the sixteenth century, the Shang dynasty maintains cultural continuity in matters of literary functions, as well as social, religious, economic, and governmental controls.

A slave society is apparently emplaced in China under the Shang dynasty, whose urban centers anchor the first true Chinese civilization.

The Shang state employs numerous specialists and distinguishes between commoners, the priesthood, the royal family, the nobility and, almost certainly, the slaves.

Power in Chinese society under the Shang emperors flows from them to the ruling elite, including feudatory landowners and commanders of the organized soldiery, down to the urban artisans and village agriculturists, with enslaved people at the bottom.

Sophisticated bronze metallurgy develops in China in the sixteenth century BCE.

Complex bronze-casting technology (previously undocumented in China) spreads rapidly under the Shang, whose artisans use metal tools in the carving of jade.

The supreme god of the Shangs is Shangdi (Shang-ti), to whom they pray, supplemented by prayers to ancestral spirits.

The Shang dynasty moved its capital six times, as stated by the Records of the Grand Historian; the final, and most important, move being to Yin (modern Anyang) in 1350 BCE, which leads to what is to be the golden age of the dynasty.

It is to be the longest dynasty in Chinese history, featuring thirty-one kings in fraternal succession from Tang of Shang to King Zhou of Shang.

The Shang domain, now at its height, extends from the Wei River tributary area to the west of the central valley, eastward to the seacoast above the northern edge of the Yangtze River basin, and northward to the steppe country occupied by nomads.

Chinese priests are using the Oracle bone script by 1400 (although its origins probably lie in an earlier time).

Found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in Bronze Age China.

The vast majority record the pyromantic divinations of the royal house of the late Shang dynasty at the capital of Yin (modern Anyáng, Hénán Province); dating of the Anyáng examples of oracle bone script varies from about the fourteenth to the mid-eleventh centuries BCE.

Chinese astronomers begin to catalogue and name the brightest stars.

Star names later categorized in the twenty-eight mansions have been found on oracle bones unearthed at Anyang, dating back to the middle Shang Dynasty (Chinese Bronze Age), and the mansion system's nucleus seems to have taken shape by the time of the ruler Wu Ding (1339-1281 BCE).

Shang astronomers have also sighted Mars and various comets.

The Shang rule from the city of Yin, near modern Anyang, beginning about 1350 BCE.

The new capital city includes defensive walls plus palaces, temples, tombs for the elite, facilities for storage of grain, and army barracks.

The Shang dynasty has a fully developed system of writing; its complexity and state of development indicates an earlier period of development, which is still unattested.

Two distinct forms of Chinese writing (readable today) date from around the thirteenth century BCE (still earlier forms are as yet undeciphered).

Pictographic script writing continues to be written on oracle bones, pottery, jade and stone, wooden table surfaces, and silk-covered bamboo.

Shang artisans of the thirteenth century BCE produce glazed pottery, carving in marble and jade, and exquisite bronze casting.

At Anyang, bronze casters of the Shang Dynasty produce distinctive vessels, drums and bells, some with calligraphic ornamentation.

The bronze is commonly used for art rather than weapons, although Shang troops fight frequent wars with neighboring settlements and nomadic herdsmen from the inner Asian steppes.

The Shang king, who often performs oracle bone divinations himself, repeatedly shows concern about the fang groups, which represent barbarians outside of the civilized tu regions that make up the Shang center.

In particular, the tufang group of the Yan Shan mountain region is regularly mentioned as hostile to the Shang.

Sculptures of chariots found in ancient Chinese tombs reveal that the spoked wheel (evidenced by sculptures of chariots in contemporary Chinese tombs) arrives in China by the thirteenth century BCE, effectively completing the diffusion of the wheel to the major centers of Old World civilizations.