hello everyone this video marks the start of a new series in which I cover all the Chinese dynasties
in five minutes or less and in this video I will be covering the Xia dynasty according
to the xia shang zhou chronology project the xia Dynasty lasted from 2070 BC to about 1600
BC although there's some debate about that we'll talk about in a minute but in order to understand
the xia dynasty do we have to go back even further into history because we're going so far back into
history a lot of what we know is based on legends and folktales and oral traditions which can of
course be greatly exaggerated over time so you know that's kind of a pity but I want to do the
best I can if you want to go back to the beginning there's this guy named Pangu and he separated the
earth in the sky the yin and the yang from each other and kept them separate and when he died the
different parts of his body became the different elements and that is one of the traditional
Chinese creation stories yeah that's super far back in ancient Chinese history you'll hear a
lot about the three emperors and five sovereigns but who are they people who are instrumental in
creating the foundation of Chinese civilization there are a lot more than just three and five
and different sources will tell you different things just illustrate we'll talk about the
three sovereigns first of all there was Nv Wa, who performed people out of the clay of the earth then
there was fuxi who invented writing trapping and fishing been there was Shen Nong who taught people
about agriculture and herbal medicine there's the heavenly sovereign the earthly sovereign and
then there was the yellow emperor who is the most important of all and he was revered for creating
Chinese civilization they're more than just five emperors according to all the sources, but we're
going to talk about emperor Shun because when he bequeathed his power to emperor Yu he created
the xia dynasty the Xia dynasty state itself was located in puban which is now in Shaanxi province
what's really interesting about this dynasty is just how much of it is shrouded in mystery and
how much debate there is about it the dates that I gave you before according to the Xia Shang Zhou
chronology project or actually wide a bit up for debate and discussion depending on who you ask
and there are actually a lot of people who will argue that the dynasty itself was not even real
it was invented by the shang dynasty in order to validate their version of the Mandate of Heaven
which is something we're going to talk about later a problem with studying the Xia dynasty
is that we don't have any written records although we have is oral tradition now the earliest records
are the Jia Gu Wen the oracle bones and those day two like two or three or four hundred years after
the xia dynasty fell world history and reading history both have pros and cons but today we
prefer written history but the stuff that we have is based on oral tradition there are many
different historical figures to look at within this part of history but the most important one
is the founder of this particular dynasty and that is emperor Yu. Yu was the eighth grandson
of the Yellow Emperor and while that is a cool claim to fame he also introduced flood control
into China which helped a lot of the agricultural communities flourish along the major rivers in
that part of Chinese history the society at that point in Chinese history was a tribal one and the
xia tribe was one of the more powerful tribes and not as a dynasty as we've come to think of
it . Emperor Shun, who we mentioned earlier was the leader of this xia tribe and he trusted here
to lead some of his armies to conquer some of the other tribes around there and when that happened
that obviously strengthening the xia tribe and it became the tribe to be with or the most powerful
tribe in that area as he became older he passed his power on to Yu, and that is what we see as
the establishment of the Xia dynasty as a ruler in it for he was moral upright upstanding and he was
loud advice Confucius and other moral teachers throughout all of Chinese history and is still
revered today is a great man. as he became older he decided to pass his power on to his son rather
than a trusted adviser or something in that said the precedents for hereditary dynastic rule and
that is why that is China's first dynasty there were many different rulers of the shadow honesty
but let's just talk about the last one whose name is Jie and Jie was a very cruel and corrupt and
really just despicable leader and it was said that he fell around 1600 BC to Tang Shang so Tang of
the Shang Dynasty or what would become the Shang Dynasty and we'll talk about him next time there
are still many people who are arguing that that xia dynasty was not real because we don't have
the archaeological evidence to support this oral tradition but there have been some interesting
finds at Erlitou which is in henan province which people think that that could be from the zhou
dynasty although people are still arguing about it and we don't know conclusively yet whether
that is true or not if you're interested in that I can put some links down below and you can read
it for yourself well that about wraps it up for the first episode if you liked what you saw leave
comment down below you can subscribe and I guess I will see you in the next episode see you later