How Did Chinese Civilization Start? (From Prehistory to The Zhou Dynasty)

The earliest known hominins in what is now China start with some tools found in Changshen, which dates to about 2.1 million years ago. It's used simple flakes and cores, although we don't know which hominin species it belonged to, the most famous evidence being a variant of Homo erectus, the Peking Man, from around 770,000 to 300,000 BC, found in Choukou They use stone tools and apparently use fire, but we're not 100% sure. Also, there is no known direct continuity between these hominins and the Homo sapiens who will live in there later on. Denisovans have also been found in the Baixia cave on the Tibetan plateau, where a jawbone attributed to them from over 160,000 years ago was discovered, implying that Denisovans lived in at least some western parts of China and were adapted to high-altitude environments. But it is between 120,000 and 80,000 BC that we see the earliest solid evidence of Homo sapiens in prehistoric China. Around 40 teeth attributed to Homo sapiens were found in the Fujian cave in southern China, but when it comes to the Neolithic, it isn't until the 9th and 8th millenniums BC that agricultural communities emerge in China, being quite pioneering and ancient. Thing is that in China, agriculture actually developed independently. They weren't introduced to agriculture by the descendants of Anatolian farmers from the Middle East, but rather, they domesticated crops themselves, which didn't include wheat, barley or any of the common Middle Eastern crops. Therefore, it wouldn't make any sense for the Chinese to have learned farming from the Anatolians and then not cultivate any of the Anatolian crops. The Chinese agriculture developed in at least two regions. First, in the north, in the Yellow River Basin, the Nanshuangtou culture developed between around 8,500 and 7,700 BC, the first to domesticate millet, from which a large portion of it comes. Then the Jiangshao culture, from around 5,000 to 3,000 BC, with semi-subterranean dwellings and painted pottery, having relatively egalitarian villages as well, with little evidence of social hierarchy. That changed with the Longchang culture from 3,000 to 1,900 BC, which grew into larger settlements, rammed earth walls, fine black pottery and evidence of Marx's social stratification, mainly seen through differences in tombs. They also showed signs of conflict, probably competition between communities and of course, being the earliest hints of warring skills in China, in which the Chinese would be notably capable not too long after. The second region, in the south, was the Jiangxie Basin, from 5,000 to 3,000 BC. First, the Hemudu culture and its successor, Majiaban, domesticated rice, and yes, the vast majority of the world's rice does come from what was domesticated, in various parts of the Jiangxie River. Thank you so much, Neolithic Chinese, much appreciated. They also built stilt houses and developed technologies adapted to these more humid environments. Now, we have to move from the Neolithic straight into the Bronze Age, around 2,000 BC, when more advanced settlements appear. The Erlito culture, very important, emerges from the Yellow River in the north, from 1,900 to 1,500 BC, featuring quite a bit of urban planning, palatial architecture, specialized workshops, trade networks and even early bronze metallurgy. All of these makes the scholars consider them a proto-civilization or a fairly advanced society. But, why not a full-blown civilization? Well, because the earliest evidence of a proper recording system doesn't show up until 7 or 8 centuries later, 1250 BC. The only thing seen in the time of the Erlito culture are isolated symbols that don't meet the requirements of a recording system. Because of its size and level of sophistication, some historians interpret Erlito as the Xia dynasty, known from later legends as the first Chinese dynasty, dated between 2070 and 1600 BC. But, of course, there is no contemporary written evidence confirming that it was, even though it remains quite possible. This would be a good moment to clarify what the Xia dynasty actually was. Well, although it isn't described in contemporary texts, we know about it from much later works, such as the Chu Jing and the Shi Ji, written in the late 1st millennium BC, over a whole millennium later, and it was passed out from generation to generation for centuries, either through writing or oral tradition. These tell us about a very ancient kingdom founded by the King Yu the Great, the first one credited with managing to control the highly destructive floods of the Yellow River, a famous and serious problem of the time, through hydraulic works and organizing his kingdom. All of this, of course, had a certain religious and, as you'll see, mainly political connotation. Although it is said that the legitimate legendary leaders before Yu the Great, like Yao or Chun, chose their successes based on virtue, it is with Yu the Great that dynastic succession begins, and the story of Yu controlling the floods gives him all the legitimacy needed to establish a dynasty, apparently. The list of kings is about 17, at least traditionally, and it tells how things changed over time. It started with Yu being the ideal king, remaining stable for several generations with the following rulers, but it eventually declined with the last king, Jie, described as a terrible tyrant. Then the leader Tang of the Shang dynasty emerges, defeats Jie in the Battle of Mingxiao, and establishes a new dynasty, in a way justifying the transfer of the divine mandate from the last Xia king to the new Shang king. The passing of the right to rule from a dynasty to the other would become a key concept in Chinese history. Although the Erlito were in a full civilization in the strict sense during that period, the evidence does point to a kingdom with centralized authority and fairly complex political structures, fitting, as far as we know, the description of the Xia dynasty found in the legendary texts, even if they didn't have a developed writing system. Maybe writing just wasn't their priority, surviving the massive floods of the Yellow River, organizing themselves and actually thriving as a society was probably more important and urgent than that. That doesn't mean they were any less interesting, it just makes it harder for us to know what they believed, how they saw their own culture, or even how they described themselves, because the overwhelming majority of what we know comes from archaeology, interpretation of artifacts, and everything that's been excavated in general. So, if we want to leave the mysteries behind and move into a more historical era of China, we've got to step into the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. Sometime after the decline of Erlito, the Erligan culture emerges, around 1600 to 1400 BC, with a scale and complexity clearly greater than that of Erlito, featuring really large urbanism. For example, at the site of Chengzhou, where rammed earth walls stretching several kilometers, protecting a planned city with earliest evidence of that massive level of development in China, implying the existence of a central authority and a marked hierarchy, capable of mobilizing that much labor and resources. We also see large-scale bronze metallurgy, which was done in a more rustic way in the Erlito culture, but in Erligan, it becomes highly organized and standardized. Here, specialized workshops with complex molds produce ritual vessels in bulk, which were tied to ceremonies and to the power of the city elites. They also seem to have had territorial expansion, since their artifacts and architectural styles have been found in regions far from their original core. This wouldn't necessarily have been imperial expansion, as it could also have been influenced through trade and migrations, but the legendary texts I mentioned earlier also describe a significant territorial extent at that time, so who knows. And because of them being so advanced, they are obviously linked to the Chang dynasty, at least in its early phase, even though they didn't have a recording system at that site yet, which doesn't allow us to confirm it. But you know, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or something like that. And now's the time in which we use legendary texts as historical sources, because we got no other choice. As I said before, the Xia fell due to the tyranny and terrible rule of his last genjie. Once Tang of Chang becomes the legitimate ruler, replacing a tyrant, it's said that he ruled with supreme authority, but also had many subordinate territories. There was a noble lineage elite with authority over certain regions, but of course, they still owe loyalty to the capital, along with vassals. Sounds a bit like feudalism, so could we say it was proto-feudalism? Their religion also revolved around worshipping their ancestors and the forces of nature, since the Chang believed that their ancestors directly influenced harvests, political decisions and the fate of their kingdom. The texts also say that the Chang moved their capital several times, which explains why, despite the Chang dynasty being quite long-lasting, they were in early Gang for only about 200 years. After 1400 BC, Shengshou seems to have stopped being the fixed capital of the kingdom, and we don't really know why it was moved to another location, but it appears to have led to a certain level of decentralization, because multiple sites, initially influenced by the early Gang culture, reached quite a high advanced level of development by themselves, giving rise to multiple cultures in the region. From around 1300 BC, what is identified as the Jinshu culture develops, which is definitely the late phase of the Chang dynasty, because this is the first moment in Chinese history where we see a fully developed writing system, the oracle bone script. They didn't use write on bones but also on turtle shells by the way, being a logographic system, where each symbol represents a word. The site of Jinshu is identified as the capital Jin of the Chang state, in the present day region of Anyang. As a result, it's at this point that China becomes a full civilization, and we know it was the Chang dynasty, because the Chang kings of that time, according to the legendary texts, had the custom of using oracle bones to communicate with legendary ancestors, on which they wrote their names, which clearly match those mentioned in the Qi Ji and the Chu Jing as being the Chang kings, and it turns out that the bones also later had the answers to the questions written on them, supposedly the ancestors replying to the kings. Because yes, the Chang believed that the spirits of their ancestors were eternal and partially divine, since they were descendants of the supreme ancestor Shangdi, the ultimate deity of early Chinese religion, originating within the Chang dynasty itself. And the Chang believed their ancestors communicated with them through wind, rain and above all, fire. A bit reminiscent of how, in ancient Greece, the Greeks believed their ancestors continued inhabiting the household eternally, and communicated through the fire of the home, because for the Greeks, the family as a collective mattered more, individualism wasn't a priority, they weren't individualistic. But that's a topic for later on, there's a lot of philosophy embedded in the beliefs of each ancient culture. The political system of the Chang remained quite similar to what they had in early Gang, but in here, there's evidence that the kings had stronger religious authority, being considered the main intermediary between the human world and that of the ancestors, making them even more legitimate. We've also found large palatial complexes and royal tombs with very rich grave goods, including animal sacrifices, showing that they probably had some kind of belief of the continuation of power in the afterlife. But here's the problem, the sacrifices weren't just animals, they were also human. A fair amount of victims of human sacrifice have been found in Chang funerary contexts, between 30 and 500 each time a monarch died, depending on the tomb. Also, an image that I may have shown on screen before, is this piece by the artist Joan Francesco Oliveras, which represents quite well what the Chang dynasty of the Bronze Age looked like. And please tell me I'm not the only one who sees a certain similarity with Bronze Age Peruvian civilizations too. I don't know, it's like maybe the geometric shapes of the animal-like faces look oddly similar, or maybe I'm just delusional. Anyway, let's move on to the Zhou dynasty. So let's start with how the Chang dynasty ended. According to the Chu Jin, the Xi Ji and the Bamboo Annals as well, by the 11th century BC, after ruling Jin for hundreds of years, the last Shang kings become increasingly decadent. The second to last king, Di Ji, already seems to have lost virtue, but the final king is Di Xin, a ruler of great physical strength and intelligence, but completely consumed by excess. He indulges in a lifestyle of temptation and excess alongside his consort Daji, under whose influence he orders the construction of the Lake of Wine and the Forest of Meat, where they hold extravagant banquets that seem utterly abhorrent from the outside. Di Xin punished his subjects with brutal methods, such as the Burning Bronze Pillar, where victims were forced to walk over incandescent metal. Any royal minister who tried to correct him in the slightest was exiled, tortured or executed. Meanwhile, in the West, the House of Zhou rises and its leader, Ji Fa, son of Ji Shang, is presented as the perfect counterpart for Di Xin, virtuous, just and in harmony with the cosmic order. Ji Fa's campaign doesn't seem like a mere political event, but is portrayed as destined, as if heaven itself were guiding his steps. The crucial battle is that of Muye, around 1046 BC, in which the Zhou army advanced against the Shang forces, but during the campaign, many Shang soldiers, who were very fed up with Di Xin's tyranny, turn against him or simply refuse to fight, making the defeat not just military, but also moral, completely humiliating. Once the capital is defeated by the army of the Zhou, Di Xin flees to his palace, where he unalives, setting himself on fire, still being surrounded by his riches. And with that, the Shang dynasty comes to an end. Then the Zhou dynasty begins. Ji Fa ascends as King Wu and justifies his conquest not as a rebellion, but as a restoration of the proper order, all righteous, all moral, a hero in favor of all of the good and against all of the bad, the usual. And he declares that heaven itself has granted him the mandate due to the corruption of the Shang, because it's here in the Zhou dynasty that the concept of mandate of heaven or divine mandate is consolidated, according to which the right to rule is not eternal, it depends on the virtue of the ruler. When a king turns into a tyrant, heaven revokes his right to rule and hands it to someone else, because it's precisely the Zhou who seem to have consolidated the stories we're using as sources in the first place. That's why you notice that in the legendary texts in both the Xia and Shang dynasties, very similar things happen. The early kings are excellent and the last ones are degenerates, serving as a warning that any dynasty, no matter how good it seems at the start, it can end up losing virtue and as a consequence the mandate of heaven, becoming weakened and maybe even corrupted by prosperity and access to resources. That's kind of what's happening to Europe geopolitically right now. But the Zhou dynasty stopped being a centralized kingdom like the Shang were and becomes a constellation of feudal states. An early version of what would later be classical feudal China, between 1046 and 771 BC. This is known as the Western Zhou period, inheriting oracle bone writing and the central religious role of the monarch from previous dynasties. But then came the King Zhou of Zhou around 771 BC, famous for his relationship with the concubine Bao Xi, who heavily influenced his behavior and thinking. As a result, King Zhou had the habit of lighting beacon fires as a joke, which worked as the alarms for invasions, causing the capital to ignore real invasion warnings, thinking they might just be the king joking again. And as a result, the Western Zhou collapsed after several invasions and internal conflicts, forcing them to move their capital eastward, which is when the Eastern Zhou period begins. And this is when Chinese history becomes a lot more solid in documentary terms, since the story of King Zhou feels more like a legend than anything else. But who knows, first comes the Spring and Autumn period, between 770 and 476 BC. As a consequence of earlier events, the vassal states begin to act like independent kingdoms, meaning the Zhou king still exists and holds an important symbolic role, but at the same time, all their supposedly minor leaders do more or less whatever they want, creating a fragmented semi-empire. And it is in this period that Taoism emerges, attributed to the author Lao Tzu, around the 6th century BC, a peaceful philosophy about flowing with the universe, living simply, an emotional detachment, although we don't know whether Lao Tzu was real or just a legendary figure. Confucius also appears in the 5th century BC, a real historical philosopher. He's considered foundational in Chinese philosophical thought, since he established moral order as the basis of society, where each person belonged to a rigid hierarchy, and emphasized obedience to superiors, pushing somewhat against individualism. But problem is that, among other things, he argued that women should have a subordinate role within the family, restricted to the domestic sphere. In fact, over time, perhaps centuries or even a millennium later, Confucian tradition standardized the idea that a woman should follow the three obediences, to her father before marriage, to her husband during it, and then to her son once widowed. Although, again, it wasn't Confucius who said that. There is also Sun Tzu, dated to the late spring and autumn period, author of The Art of War, a very important text for the military culture of East Asia. One of his main tools for war was deception, making the enemy believe the opposite of what you're going to do, and even if you don't fully achieve that, you can at least remain unpredictable. Deja vu. He also talks about understanding yourself, not just your army, but also your position and resources, and doing the same with the enemy in order to anticipate outcomes. Adapt your strategy to the situation, avoid rigidity, use resources efficiently, and not fight long wars that exhaust your state and encourage unrest or rebellion. Finally, show hegemony would break apart in the mid-5th century BC, and the king would be reduced to a completely ceremonial role, leading inevitably to conflicts between the rulers of different smaller states, in what is known as the Warring States period. It kind of reminds me of the Japanese Sengoku period, but I'll tell you all about it in the second chapter of China's history. Thank you so much for watching! In case this is the first video you've seen on my channel, I focus on ancient history, especially the Bronze and Iron Ages, so if you're interested in knowing how everything began in terms of human history, whether in the Middle East, which tends to be my main focus, or in Europe, Asia, Africa, or even the Americas, stick around because I'll keep talking about this. The next video will finally be the one on why civilization began in Sumer. I need to make that video, I keep putting it off, sorry about that. It's been a pleasure, as always, ciao!