Warm up question:

What is so unique about Chinese civilization?

5,000 years of continuing history

Chinese civilization is one of oldest and continuous civilizations on Earth

Question:

What was the oldest civilization of China?

The Shang civilization happened in Huang Ho Valley

The Huang Ho (Yellow river) originates from Western China and flows through nine provinces

Neolithic settlements in Yangtze & Yellow river valleys

The two neolithic villages of Neolithic period in China before the Shang were the:

Yangshao-painted pottery community

Longshan-black pottery community

Question:

What are the contributions of Shang civilization to the world?

Shang Dynasty contributions

Impressive bronze technology

Shang Dynasty contributions

Oracle bones—beginning of writing system using ideas and things in vertical order and later became calligraphy

What was the oracle all about?

Oracle bones were used to practice of a form of divination, fortune-telling, known as pyro-osteomancy. Pyro-osteomancy is when seers tell the future based on the cracks in an animal bone or turtle shell either in thei natural state or after having been burned.

Continuation…….

The cracks were then used to determine the future. The earliest pyro-osteomancy in China included the bones of sheep, deer, cattle, and pigs, in addition to turtle plastrons (shells). Pyro-osteomancy is known from prehistoric east and northeast Asia, and from North American and Eurasian ethnographic reports.

Continuation……

Of most interest to historians are the scratchings discovered on the surface of Shang dynasty oracle bones, which have been identified as precursors to Chinese characters. Oracle bones of the Shang dynasty were ox scapulae and plastrons only, and they had characters and holes drilled into them..

Shang political system

1) priest-kings ruled (most famous king Wu Ding)

These kings when buried were accompanied with slaves as human sacrifices.

Important religious ideas from Shang

Notion of supreme heavenly power—Shangdi (god above)

Belief in power of spirits of ancestors to affect events on earth (they pray to ancestors)

Importance of rituals venerating ancestors & role of king in performing rituals

Shang culture characterized by:

Stratified social classes (aristocrat vs. lower classes)

Palatial architecture

Distinctive writing system

Elaborate religious rituals

Sophisticated art forms

Shang culture characterized by

Bronze metallurgy

Horse drawn chariot

Ability to mobilize human labor for huge projects/corvee labor

Relatively accurate calendar

Money in form of cowrie shells

Pantheon of gods

Complex lineage structure

Shang musical instruments

Music used as “civilizing” influence in state rituals

Drums

Bells

Chiming stones

ocarinas

Shang economic featuresTamed water buffalo

Cultivated rice in south

Grain grown in north

Review Questions:

1) What contributions from the Shang civilization can you remember?

2) How are they important to the present?