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China: Law and Order
Human Experience p.70-71
The Shang Dynasty
Early Religion
Though the Shang kings were
political leaders, they also performed
religious duties. As high priests, they
could communicate with nature deities
on behalf of the people. They prayed,
made offerings, and performed
sacrifices to gain a good harvest, a
change in the weather, or victory in
battle. Kings also had special powers
for calling upon their ancestors. To do
so, they had a priest scratch a question
on an animal bone or sometimes on a
tortoise shell. The priest then applied
intense heat to the bone. The bone
would crack, and the priest would
interpret the splintered pattern of cracks
as the answer to the king’s question.
The bones helped the kings to predict
the future. The scratchings on the
oracle bones, as they are called, are the
first known examples of writing in
China.
Important Achievements
The priests writing on the oracle
bones used a script with many
characters. These characters
represented objects, ideas, or sounds
and were written in vertical columns.
To use the script with ease, a writer had
to memorize each character. Because
only a small percentage of the
population could master all the
characters, few people in ancient China
could read and write.
Not only did the Chinese of the
Shang period develop a written script,
but they also perfected their mentalcasting skills and produced some of the
finest bronze objects ever made. These
included bronze dagers, figurines, and
ritual urns. They built massive
ceremonial cauldrons that stood on legs.
Bronze fittings adorned hunting
chariots, and warriors carried bronze
daggers. Artisans also carved beautiful
ivory and jade statues. They wove silk
into elegantly colored cloth for the
upper class and fashioned pottery from
kaolin, a fine white clay.
The Chinese built their first
cities under the Shang. Archaeologists
today have identified seven capital
cities, including the city of Anyang
(AHN-YAHNG). Their excavations
reveal the general layout of Anyang. A
palace and temple stood at the center of
the city, as in the cities of other early
civilizations, and public buildings and
homes of government officials circled
the royal sanctuary. Beyond the city’s
center stood various workshops and
other homes.
Expansion and Decline
Shang kings at first ruled over a
small area in northern China. Later,
their armies, equipped with bronze
weapons and chariots, conquered more
distant territories and finally took over
most of the Huang He valley.
The Shang dynasty lacked
strong leaders, however, and in time
grew weak. Around 1000 B.C., Wu, a
ruler of a former Shang territory in the
northwest, marshaled his forces and
marched on the capital. Wu killed the
Shang king and established a new
dynasty. Wu’s dynasty, known as the
Zhou (JOH), ruled China for 800 years.
Many Centuries of Dynasties
From the beginning of its
recorded history until the early 1900s,
dynasties ruled China. When writing
about China’s past, Western historians
have followed the Chinese practice of
dividing Chinese history into periods
based on the reigns of these ruling
families.
The Chinese believed that their
rulers governed according to a principle
known as the Mandate of Heaven. If
rulers were just and effective, they
receive a mandate, or authority to rule,
from heaven. If rulers did not govern
properly- as indicated by poor crops or
losses in battle- they lost the mandate to
someone else who then started a new
dynasty. The principle first appeared
during the Zhou dynasty. Indeed the
Zhou, as did later rebels, probably
found the Mandate of Heaven a
convenient way to explain their
overthrow of an unpopular dynasty.