Download EARLY CHINA NOTES This _____ river valley civilization has

EARLY CHINA NOTES
This _____ river valley civilization has endured to the present day,
and is the oldest continuous civilization in the world! Just like the
river valleys of Egypt, the Fertile Cresent, and India the Huang He
Valley also invited settlement from a very early time. The people in
the Huang He valley called their homeland Zhong Guo, or the:
GEOGRAPHY:
China's varied geography has affected its historical development from
the very beginning. Mountains make up about 1/3 of China’s area.
The Himalayas close off China to the southwest, and on the western
border China has two other mountain ranges. To the east lie the vast
desert wastes of the ________. These physical features hindered
cultural diffusion both into and out of China for many centuries.
Although some of the Chinese were devoted seafarers, they mostly
focused on developing the agriculture of eastern China’s fertile river
valley and plains. For centuries large numbers of Chinese have
farmed in the region of the North China Plain.
Three Major rivers drain through eastern China:
1)
-Melting snow from the mountains and the monsoon rains between
July & October feed the Huang He. Also, the abundance of yellow soil
in the Huang’s waters gives it its name- Yellow River.
2)
3)
THE SHANG DYNASTY
The first dynasty to be dated from written records in China is the
Shang. The Shang ruled China from about 1700 B.C. to 1000 B.C.
Though the Shang Kings were political leaders, they also performed
religious duties:
-They prayed, made offerings, and performed sacrifices to gain a good
harvest. Kings also had special power for calling upon their ancestors.
To do so, they had a priest scratch a question on a tortoise shell. The
priest then applied intense heat to the shell. The shell would crack,
and the priest would interpret the splintered pattern of cracks as the
answer to the king’s question from the ancestor. The scratchings on
the shells are the first know examples of ……=
The Chinese built their first cities under the Shang. The city of
Anyang was the biggest of all the capital cities (7).
DECLINE
The Shang dynasty lacked strong leaders, and in time the dynasty
became weak. Around 1000 B.C., Wu, a ruler of a former Shang
territory, marshaled his forces and marched on the capital. Wu killed
the Shang king and established new dynasty. Wu’s dynasty, known as
the Zhou, ruled China for over 800 years.