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jackWow, I knew *nothing* about ancient chinese history. Now, I still know nothing, but, you know, a slightly less unrelieved wall-to-wall nothing, thanks to ten minutes reading wikipedia. A lot of this will be tied to the reigns of such-and-and dynasties to keep everything straight even if that's not the best way of following the history.
So, before about 2500 BCE we have stuff we mostly know about through archaeology (I think) like so-and-so culture and domestication of dogs and silk.
Then we have a few hundred years of people known mostly through legend, like the Yellow Emperor and the (variously constituted) other "Three kings and five emperors", now considered deities.
At 2200 BCE (give or take... something) we start having the Xia dynasty, who controlled enough of China to be considered the first recognised dynasty (but not enough to be the first emperor). But this is still before any written records, so all these dates come from later histories or archaeological evidence, if any, and will be a bit off, but I'm going by the dates in wikipedia which seem to be the traditional ones.
Wikipedia says it was founded by Yu the Great who finally perfected the hot idea that the right channel-digging could stop the rivers flooding everything all the time and instead produce excellent arable land.
This lasted until 16xx BCE when the last Xia, who the histories say (a) was corrupt, had too high taxes and levies and (b) was overthrown by his nominal vassal, Tang of Shang, and a confederation of increasingly many other minor rulers, inaugurating the Shang dynasty. As with many of these overthrows apparently the previous ruler got to retire to rule a little fiefdom somewhere, and continued for many generations.
The Shang dynasty lasted from 16xx until 10xx. I'm skipping over a whole lot of intra-dynasty overthrow which I don't know enough to follow. They invented "saying that they overthrew the previous dynasty because they would be better rulers and so the Mandate of Heaven said it was their duty to do so" which was comparatively progressive. I should be comparing these dates to historical happenings elsewhere. Apparently this was shortly after the something dynasty in Egypt? And shortly after the apparent date of the biblical flood.
Somewhere in there was Shao Kang who was especially famous.
The last ruling Shang (ending 10xx) was apparently ESPECIALLY decadent, at least according to tradition. The example given is, digging a lake and filling it with wine and building an island on it with a tree whose branches were skewers of meat, and drifting around with all his concubines scooping wine and meat into his mouth whenever they liked, like a reverse Tantalus. Wikipedia says this persists as a byword for decadence.
Just to keep anglophones on their toes, apparently this guy was called Zhou, and was overthrown by the first of the Zhou dynasty, and as best as I can see from a ten second look at wikipedia, these names are completely different, they just happen to be spelled and pronounced the same in English?
The Zhou lasted from 10xx until nearly 2xx BCE, so for ages, but they exerted increasingly less control and controlled less territory, and until they officially fell before the Qin dynasty officially united China. The last couple of hundred years of this were known as the Warring States period, which I should probably return to.
This is too long so I'm going to rush the next but but maybe fill it in another time. The Qin dynasty started with THE emperor, famous for conquering all the warring states, uniting china, inventing a whole bunch of civilisation and bureaucracy, and overthrowing a previously-roughly-feudal social order into one run mostly by central control, standardising money, writing, etc, a centralised military, large engineering projects such as the first northern walls which eventually became The wall, etc. So a force for civilisation or dystopia depending who you ask.
But it only lasted two emperors. It was followed by four hundred years of Han, who are often thought of as the canonical example of ancient china. Which was followed by the famous Three Kingdoms interlude when three different states each claimed emperor-ship over all of China, romanticised and recorded in many novels and histories. Including Magic: The Gathering's abortive introductory produce "Portal: Three Kingdoms".
Do @ me :)
So, before about 2500 BCE we have stuff we mostly know about through archaeology (I think) like so-and-so culture and domestication of dogs and silk.
Then we have a few hundred years of people known mostly through legend, like the Yellow Emperor and the (variously constituted) other "Three kings and five emperors", now considered deities.
At 2200 BCE (give or take... something) we start having the Xia dynasty, who controlled enough of China to be considered the first recognised dynasty (but not enough to be the first emperor). But this is still before any written records, so all these dates come from later histories or archaeological evidence, if any, and will be a bit off, but I'm going by the dates in wikipedia which seem to be the traditional ones.
Wikipedia says it was founded by Yu the Great who finally perfected the hot idea that the right channel-digging could stop the rivers flooding everything all the time and instead produce excellent arable land.
This lasted until 16xx BCE when the last Xia, who the histories say (a) was corrupt, had too high taxes and levies and (b) was overthrown by his nominal vassal, Tang of Shang, and a confederation of increasingly many other minor rulers, inaugurating the Shang dynasty. As with many of these overthrows apparently the previous ruler got to retire to rule a little fiefdom somewhere, and continued for many generations.
The Shang dynasty lasted from 16xx until 10xx. I'm skipping over a whole lot of intra-dynasty overthrow which I don't know enough to follow. They invented "saying that they overthrew the previous dynasty because they would be better rulers and so the Mandate of Heaven said it was their duty to do so" which was comparatively progressive. I should be comparing these dates to historical happenings elsewhere. Apparently this was shortly after the something dynasty in Egypt? And shortly after the apparent date of the biblical flood.
Somewhere in there was Shao Kang who was especially famous.
The last ruling Shang (ending 10xx) was apparently ESPECIALLY decadent, at least according to tradition. The example given is, digging a lake and filling it with wine and building an island on it with a tree whose branches were skewers of meat, and drifting around with all his concubines scooping wine and meat into his mouth whenever they liked, like a reverse Tantalus. Wikipedia says this persists as a byword for decadence.
Just to keep anglophones on their toes, apparently this guy was called Zhou, and was overthrown by the first of the Zhou dynasty, and as best as I can see from a ten second look at wikipedia, these names are completely different, they just happen to be spelled and pronounced the same in English?
The Zhou lasted from 10xx until nearly 2xx BCE, so for ages, but they exerted increasingly less control and controlled less territory, and until they officially fell before the Qin dynasty officially united China. The last couple of hundred years of this were known as the Warring States period, which I should probably return to.
This is too long so I'm going to rush the next but but maybe fill it in another time. The Qin dynasty started with THE emperor, famous for conquering all the warring states, uniting china, inventing a whole bunch of civilisation and bureaucracy, and overthrowing a previously-roughly-feudal social order into one run mostly by central control, standardising money, writing, etc, a centralised military, large engineering projects such as the first northern walls which eventually became The wall, etc. So a force for civilisation or dystopia depending who you ask.
But it only lasted two emperors. It was followed by four hundred years of Han, who are often thought of as the canonical example of ancient china. Which was followed by the famous Three Kingdoms interlude when three different states each claimed emperor-ship over all of China, romanticised and recorded in many novels and histories. Including Magic: The Gathering's abortive introductory produce "Portal: Three Kingdoms".
Do @ me :)
no subject
Date: 2018-05-05 10:00 pm (UTC)They're pronounced almost the same in Modern Standard Mandarin, differing only in tone, and consequently spelled almost the same in pinyin, differing only by a tone diacritical. The English spelling is then just an atonal version of the MSM versions.
In Old Chinese, the two names would likely have had at the very least different terminal consonants, and quite possibly different initial consonants as well.
(I read linguistics articles on Wikipedia for fun. Bits of them stick in my brain.)
no subject
Date: 2018-05-05 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-07 09:17 am (UTC)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdHkY3XYHKA
Also, I don't know if you've seen "Hero" or "The Emperor and The Assassin", but those are both very different takes on the beginning of the Qin unification. And both well worth watching.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-08 10:17 am (UTC)There's also the "the Xia never existed" theory I've heard of - Wikipedia says some say they were invented by the Zhou to justify their overthrow of the Shang, as in "the Shang overthrew the Xia, so we're just carrying on the grand old tradition". With the Xia I'm reminded of the old Roman Kingdom, and questions of how much of it is true and how much is myth; from where I stand, Romulus feels like myth and Tarquin feels like truth, but people who know more might disagree.