User:Bruce M. Tindall/SBChina

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

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Although archaeologists have found settlements in China dating to 5000 BCE, the earliest nation that can be dated in the area of modern China is the Shang Dynasty, approximately 2000 BCE.

Dynasty followed dynasty, as old regimes would lose the "mandate of heaven;" it was believed that each emperor ruled only with the approval of heaven, and a ruler who was unfit to rule would curse the nation until replaced. In addition, the Chinese capital would occasionally be overrun by "barbarians," who invariably would start a new dynasty in the Chinese capital, integrating their nations into the former dynasty.

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At least 500,000 years ago, hominids of the species Homo erectus ("Peking man") lived in what is now China. They apparently were not, however, the ancestors of modern humans, who evolved much later in Africa and then dispersed around the world.

By about the year 10,000 BCE, human hunter-gatherers in China were beginning the long transition to a settled agricultural way of life, developing complex, identifiable cultures, which over time merged with each other into a smaller number of distinct groups. By about 3000 BCE there were five major cultural groups in China Proper. They had systems of interdependent towns and villages of different sizes; traded over long distances; and developed some kind of writing, though it was not related to the current Chinese writing system and has not been deciphered.

There are a number of myths about what happened over the next thousand years or so, but there appears to be no historical basis for the stories of Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor), who supposedly ruled somewhere in China from 2697 to 2597 BCE, or for his successors the three sage-kings. The status of the Xia Dynasty, which supposedly held power over some area from about 2070 to 1600 BCE, is more uncertain.

The first large, highly-organized state in China for which there is solid historical evidence is the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600–1045 BCE). But it was only one of many states in the region at the same time; it bordered at least two dozen neighboring political entities, often engaging in wars with them. The Shang, however, proved durable for several centuries, and was an important influence on the future development of Chinese culture. It had a sophisticated writing system, of which modern Chinese writing is a direct descendant, that allowed it to operate a bureaucratic government with an organized system of taxation (payable mostly in grain). The Shang also had advanced bronze technology, and practiced an early form of ancestor worship.

Prolonged drought, caused by climate change, in the Shang's territory weakened the regime in what would prove to be its last few decades. The Shang's weakness encouraged a relatively strong neighboring state, Zhou, to enlarge itself by conquering smaller neighbors and ultimately, in 1045, the Shang. Subsequent conquests resulted in Zhou rule over an unprecedentedly large area, occupying much of what is now called North China, that is, north of the Yangzi River (but by no means all of what we now call "China" or even "China Proper").

The Zhou state was not a monolithic empire, but used a feudal system of rule, in which the king granted fiefs to relatives and other powerful men, who thus got the right to rule their lands in return for providing military service and money to the central king. In later ages, many Chinese scholars and social critics, beginning with Confucius (ca. 500 BCE), romanticized the early part of the Zhou period, the Western Zhou (1045–770 BCE), as a "Golden Age" to which contemporary society could be negatively compared.

Because the feudal system encouraged the growth of competing power centers, the Western Zhou political system gradually fell apart, effectively ending in 770 BCE with a disastrous military defeat of the Zhou king by a rival state. During the following several centuries -- known as the Eastern Zhou period (770–221 BCE), divided into the Spring and Autumn period (ending in 475 BCE) and then the Warring States period -- the trend towards disunity was reversed as some states became more powerful than others and conquered them, culminating in what is regarded as the first China-wide empire, the Qin, in 221 BCE.

Many developments and innovations that occurred during the Zhou period were highly influential in shaping the future of Chinese society. The introduction of coinage helped fuel a trade economy, for example, while technological innovations like iron farm implements and animal-drawn plows improved agriculture. But perhaps the era's most lasting influences were intellectual.

To justify its overthrow of the Shang Dynasty, the Zhou regime in its early years developed the theory of the Mandate of Heaven to explain political legitimacy. Many of the Chinese classics (such as the Book of Changes and the Book of Odes) were written or compiled during this time. A category of warriors, the shi, developed into government advisors and bureaucrats whose successors would guide the governments of many future Chinese states. One such advisor, Confucius (551–479 BCE), articulated his seminal political and social vision, which was later criticized by another influential school of thought, Legalism. The philosophy (and later, organized religion) of Daoism also arose in the latter centuries of the Zhou period, with its central text, the Dao de jing, achieving its current form around 400 BCE.