- [Instructor] We are now going to go the east
and explore Ancient China.
And we're going to do that in the second millennium B.C.E.,
where we see some of the first great dynasties
of Ancient China emerging.
So if we go to roughly the 16th century, B.C.E.,
so that would be about 3600 years ago,
we have the emergence of the Shang Dynasty,
and what's significant about the Shang Dynasty
is it's the first dynasty where we have significant
archaeological evidence of its existence.
We have a lot of evidence in this area where,
do you see, highlighted in red, where the Shang Dynasty
existed with its capital at Yin,
near the modern-day city of Anyang.
Now, we have accounts of a Dynasty before it,
the Xia or the Chia Dynasty, although we do not have
significant archaeological evidence of it.
But the accounts say that the Xia Dynasty
would have been around for roughly 500 years
before we get to this 16th century B.C.E.,
with the emergence of the Shang Dynasty.
Now just to get ourselves acquainted in time and space,
and think about, well what else was happening
around 1600 B.C.E., we could remind ourselves
that that was during the new kingdom in Ancient Egypt,
right around here, the height of Ancient Egypt's
power was right around that time.
We could think about the Hittite Empire
that we study in other videos,
we could think about Mycenaean Greece.
Around 1600 B.C.E. is when you start having,
or when you have the decline of the Indus Valley
civilization, also known as the Harappan civilization,
and you start to have the Vedic period,
where you have these Indo-Aryan people
start to migrate into Northern India.
In Mesopotamia, you have the Assyrian Middle Kingdom
right around here, so this is all happening
in this mid- to late-second millennium B.C.E.,
which is roughly the time of the Shang Dynasty.
Now the Shang Dynasty was known for many things,
it was a Bronze Age culture, and you can see depicted here,
many examples of that and this is pretty impressive
work with bronze, this is a bronze battle axe
right over here, you can imagine a handle for this axe,
something like this, this is nothing that you would
want to deal with in a battle, and you can see these other
very significant, large, bronze crafts, handiwork,
that the Shang Dynasty was able to produce.
Now what the Shang Dynasty is also well-known for
is their writing, it's the first evidence
of a fairly advanced writing form,
and it's related to modern Chinese.
And a lot of that writing, the significant artifacts
from that time are on what are called oracle bones.
That's an oracle bone right over here,
this is actually the scapula, the shoulder blade of an ox,
and what they would do is they would write questions
in this oracle bone script on top of that scapula of an ox
and then they would heat it up in a flame
or some type of source of heat until it cracks
and then they would interpret the cracks
to see what was the answer to their actual questions.
And you can actually see how this oracle bone script
is related to modern Chinese script.
So this is Shang written in oracle bone script
and you can see how it evolved over time
to the modern-day Chinese script.
Even though if you go straight from that to that,
they look reasonably different,
but when you look at the evolution,
you can see that they have lot of commonality.
You also see it in words, right over here,
shows you evolution of the word tiger,
and once again, this is the oracle bone script
and you can see it looks right here like a picture
of a tiger, but then it evolved over time
to the modern form right over here.
Now, this Shang civilization, it's no coincidence
that first the Xia and then the Shang,
that they develop over here in the yellow river
and the Yangtze River valleys, we've talked about it,
the Ancient Egyptians, the Mesopotamians,
all of the Indus Valley civilization,
they all started where agriculture first emerged,
which tended to be in these river valley civilizations.
Now the Shang in particular, not only were they known
for their bronze work,
they were known for their large cities,
they were known for their complex social structures,
they were known especially near the end of the Shang period,
for having chariots, and some people think
that because they had chariots,
there might have been contacts with folks further west.
Now the Shang Dynasty, I said how the Xia Dynasty lasted
for over 500 years, and the Shang Dynasty also lasts
for on the order of 500 years,
which is a very very very very long time.
But as we get to the middle of the 11th century B.C.E.,
it would reach its end.
The last king of the Shang Dynasty is this gentleman
right over here, this would be Dix Xin or Di Shin
and the accounts have him initially in his rule
as being a very capable ruler, but later in his rule,
he seems to get more corrupt, becomes less competent
of a ruler, his favorite consort Daji, right over here,
she's a bit of a not-so-popular figure in Chinese history,
a lot of people think that she helped,
or they blame her for corrupting Di Xin,
and so he eventually faces his end
in the Battle of Muye, against King Wu of Zhou
or Joe is actually the correct pronouncing, King Wu of Zhou,
and King Wu of Zhou is able to defeat Di Xin
at the Battle of Muye, and that is the end of Shang Dynasty
and it begins the Zhou Dynasty, which will go on
for another 800 years, that's pretty impressive,
how continuous these dynasties actually are,
and after that battle, Di Xin goes off and commits suicide,
and this right over here is a depiction
of King Wu of Zhou, who starts the Zhou Dynasty.
But the big picture here is we're talking about huge
swaths of time and we have a significant,
I guess you could say, civilization, that started
with the river valleys in China but it's amazing
how continuous these civilizations were
and it's almost amazing how modern their writing was
relative to modern Chinese script
and that's why historians believe that writing of this form
was, because of how advanced it was,
was probably in place for a long time before
we see these oracle bones, so even though we don't have
the strong archaeological evidence yet
for the Xia Dynasty, there's a lot of evidence
that by the time the Shang came about,
the Chinese civilization was already quite well-developed
around the Yellow River and the Yangtze.