Inspiration from the Ancient World

Daily blurbs about the Ancient World (prior to 400CE) often with links...Because history is cool

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Zhou Dynasty V

The Spring and Autumn Period

By 三猎 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86546750

Spanning the time from about 770-481 BCE, the Spring and Autumn Period can be further broken into the Early Spring and Autumn Period, the Five Hegemons, and the Late Spring and Autumn Period. The royal family was much weaker, unable to enforce their will on the nobles and people, partially because they no longer had the land to support their six army groups.

King Ping, born Ji Yijiu was the thirteenth king of the Zhou dynasty, though he wasn't the preferred heir of King You since he'd exiled Queen Shen and Yujiu so that he could elevate his concubine Bao Si and her son Bofu. This caused Queen Shen's father to side with the Quanrong nomads who overthrew and killed King You and Bofu. Initially, two kings were crowned, with Ji Yuchen, possibly an uncle to Yijiu, being named King Xie king by Ji Han, who was Duke of Guo, and the Quanrong named Yuchen King Xie. For twenty years, the two ruled. Recently, the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips were donated to Tsinghua University after they were illicitly excavated at some point, and contain 138 strips on the Xinian chronicles which give an overview of the history of the Zhou dynasty through the middle of the Warring States Period and mentions that King Xie was accepted by several regional lords and was given the posthumous name of King Hui of Xie. King Xie was killed by Marquis Wen of Jin in 750 BCE.

The Commentary of Zuo, the Zuo Zhuan, mentions that King Xie violated the Mandate of Heaven. The Mandate of Heaven 天命 Tiānmìng was the idea that began toward the end of the Shang dynasty, possibly due to a combination of a period of long-term cooling that resulted in famine. A poem written at the time it was happening states 'Heaven sends down death and disorder; famine comes repeatedly'. About the time the Shang dynasty fell, the cooling reached its maximum. In May of 1059 BCE, the five naked-eye planets clustered tightly together in Cancer and Halley's Comet appeared about seven or eight months later (Halley's Comet's orbit can be perturbed by the Sun and outer planets so its orbit ranges from 74-80 years. While using the average orbital period worked backwards would give an expected date of 1057 BCE, looking at the records available indicate that it appeared in 1059 BCE.) These were 'interpreted by the powerful Lord of Zhou as a visible sign indicating supernatural approval', showing that the Shang had lost that approval. The Zhou were the first to claim such divine approval for their rule as well as divine parentage. Even though the Zhou dynasty was severely weakened, they maintained that they had the Mandate of Heaven.

It wasn't until 741 BCE that Marquis Wen actually supported King Ping and then helped Ping move the capital to Chengzhou in 738 BCE. The Zhou were dependent on their vassals to supply protection from raids and to deal with internal power struggles, never again reaching the power they had before the Quanrong raid. The King created the title of hegemon 霸 for the 'leader of the state with the most powerful military; the hegemon was obligated to protect both the weaker Zhou states and the Shou royalty from the intruding non-Zhou peoples: the Northern Di, the Southern Man, the Eastern Yi and the Western Rong', all of which appear to have been multi-ethnic groups of peoples who were labeled 'barbarians'. While there was a breakdown of 'clan customs, respect for the Ji family, and solidarity with other Zhou peoples', the prestige of the king 'legitimized the military leaders of the state, and helped mobilize collective defense of the Zhou territory'.

Through the Early Spring and Autumn Period, four main states—Qin, Jin, Qi, and Chu—emerged as the main powers, often using the 'pretext of aid and protection to intervene and gain suzerainty [overlordship] over smaller states' with rapid expansion leading to 'interstate relations [that] alternated between low-leve warfare and complex diplomacy'.

In 722 BCE, Duke Yin of Lu ascended to the title and his state began to keep the Spring and Autumn Annals. Other states also kept annals, but they've been lost to time with only the Lu chronicles making it to the modern day. In 715 BCE, Duke Zhuang of Zheng became embroiled in a border dispute with Lu about an area known as the Fields of Xu that King Huan had given to the Lu to care for as he felt they were ideal for producing sacrifices for Mount Tai but that Zhuang viewed as 'just any other piece of land'. This was after Zhuang visited Huan in 717 BCE and left feeling he 'was not treated with the respect and etiquette which would have been appropriate, given that Zheng was now the chief protector of the capital'. By 707, things were so bad that the king 'launched a punitive expedition against Zheng', which led to the injury of the king in the Battle of Xuge. This was the first time that a vassal had attacked and defied the king and 'kick[ed] off the centuries of warfare without respect for the old traditions which would characterize the period'.

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Zhou Dynasty IV

Eastern Zhou Overview

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=353825

After the death of King You in 771 BCE, the Zhou dynasty was relocated eastward to Chengzhhou, near modern day Luoyang, and is divided into two main parts, the Spring and Autumn Period, from about 770-481 or 476 BCE and the Warring States Period from the end of the prior to 221 BCE. During this period, iron became more common, changing the way warfare was conducted. The Spring and Autumn Period is named after the Spring and Autumn Annals, which is traditionally associated with Confucius.

According to the traditional narrative, Crown Prince Yijiu, King You and Queen She's son, was proclaimed the king by nobles from Zheng, Lü, Qin, as well as the Marquess of Shen and became King Ping. In the second year of his reign, the capital had been moved from the plateaus around the Feng River to where the Lou and Yellow Rivers meet. The Xinian Manuscript, a recently discovered text, however, says that 'The rulers of the states and various officials thereupon established the younger brother of King You, Yuchen, at Guo: this was King Hui from Xie. Twenty-one years after his establishment, marquis Wen of Jin named Qiu killed King Hui at Guo. For nine years Zhou was without a king, and the rulers of the states and regional lords then for the first time ceased attending the Zhou court. Thereupon, marquis Wen of Jin greeted King Ping at Shao'e and established him at the Royal Capital. After three years, he relocated eastward, stopping at Chengzhou.' This pushes the beginning of the Spring and Autumn Period to 738 BCE. This is still contentious, though it isn't without support, as the Zou Zhuan, a narrative history of the Spring and Autumn period and commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals, says that 'Earlier, when King Ping had moved the capital to the east, Xin You had gone to Yichuan and, upon seeing someone with unbound hair offering a sacrifice in the countryside, he said: "Within one hundred years this likely will be the Rong's [territory]! Ritual propriety had been lost already!" In autumn, Qin and Jin moved the Rong of Luhun to Yichuan.' The 'prophecies' from the Zou Zhuan, being written after the events they describe when they're correct, and this one lines up with the history laid out in the Xinian Manuscript but not with the traditional narrative.

Iron metallurgy began in the 9th century BCE and reached the Yangtze valley by the late 6th century BCE. It would become more prominent after the mid 4th century BCE. The most common form of iron working at this time was cast iron with forged swords appearing during the later stages of the Warring States Period. Cast iron is more brittle than iron that has been wrought, or forged, or steel, which have more carbon worked into them.

The central government during both periods was much weaker than it had been during the Western Zhou Period, with leader of various polities rising up in rebellion against the king. The system of fengjian, a type of feudalism that had been predominant prior to the fall of the Western Zhou. Part of this was because the Zhou court lost control over their home territory and only had a small royal domain centered around the capital city. During this time, what had been fiefdoms shifted into independent states with heads that increasingly sought more power for themselves, especially in six particular landholding families, leading to a series of civil wars.

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Zhou Dynasty III

By Kanguole - Own work, using Modern coastline, lakes and rivers from Natural Earth CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149446217

After the expansionism of the early period, the middle period beginning during the reign of King Mu who was the 5th king and reigned either 976-922 or 953-918 BCE, shifted into a defensive state, especially toward their eastern boundaries. Additionally, the spread of the kingdom and the increasing of the family size of the king with each generation necessitated the development of a formalized bureaucracy between the elite houses and also resulted in reforms within the military, changes in official titles, and how land was distributed.

By Sailko - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64804040

There also appears to have been changes to the state religion at the time that was reflected in the style and types of bronze ritual vessels. Some of these changes include adding a diety named Tiān 天, which means 'heaven', who is not attested in the Shang inscriptions. Scholars are not sure if this is the same as the Shang Dì 帝 or whether Tiān was a different deity with a different role. There was a reduction of burying attendants with their lord when their lord died as well as the elimination of additional human sacrifice. Grain offerings were added to burials and the vessels became larger in this middle period, coming in matching sets and quite often with matching inscriptions. The previous goblets and pourers were changed for hu, pear-shaped vessels that could reach 50 cm tall. Ancestor warship and sacrifices were central to the religious practices of the Zhou, though our records of the practices come from the Warring States period 'and reflect an idealization of the centuries-earlier Western Zhou', so our direct evidence is from the vessels they used and what they had inscribed on them. One of the Minor Court Hymns of the Odes called 'Thorny caltrop' Chǔcí 楚茨 identifies three roles during a 'communal feast during which the spirits of deceased ancestors were invited to descend from heaven to the ancestral temple to communicate with the living'. These roles were 'pious descendant' xiào sūn 孝孫, who acted in as the head of the lineage, the 'august impersonator' huáng shī 皇尸, an adolescent chosen to represent the deceased ancestors, and the 'officiating invoker' gōng zhù 工祝, the person responsible for mediating between the two during the rituals.

Within society, the Zhou introduced clan names xìng 姓 among the elite and identified 'broad kinship groups by their maternal origins'. This might have been to 'regulate marriages between the different ethnic groups of the Wei valley that formed the pre-dynastic Zhou' with nearly a dozen clans repeatedly mentioned for intermarrying in the bronze inscriptions. The next layer of the family was the lineage shì 氏, which was typically only used for elite males, while elite women were only referred to by their clan name and personal name míng 名. Commoners had neither clan nor lineage names. Leadership of a lineage was passed from father to eldest son of the primary wife. Branches that might form were supposed to follow the primary lineage. Land that that was bestowed by the king came to be seen as the property of the lineage and could be doled out how the head saw fit to the families of the lineage. Land could also be transferred to settle lawsuits or tax debt.

By Kanguole - Own work, using Major rivers from CIA World DataBank IIContours CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=169284483

The next four kings are not well attested, though the second, Yih, was succeeded by one of his brothers who became King Xiao. There might have been a forceful removal of Xiao by Yih's son, who became King Yi, with some time where they continued as rivals, but most of that has been lost to time with only a few mentioned in the inscriptions on bronze pieces that used two different calendars since the calendar's years were tied to the king's reign, but by the time of King Yi's grandson, that was smoothed to a linear transmission. Another event that was recorded in the Bamboo Annals by Sima Qian, who lived from about 145-86 BCE, is that King Yi, who reigned from either 865-858 or 885-878 BCE, 'boiled the Duke of Qi (in eastern Shandong) in a cauldron', which 'indicate[d] the waning authority of the Zhou king'. Not long after, the Chu, another Chinese territory, attacked, reaching as far as the Luo River before they were driven off.

King Li, who followed King Yi, was the first king in what is known as the Late Period of the Western Zhou. He mounted defensive campaigns in the northwest and east and was even recorded as being driven out of his capital, so he is viewed in a negative light. The sources aren't clear on whether the revolt he was dealing with began with the peasants or the nobles, though there is agreement that his infant son was barely rescued from the mob. King Li died in exile and his son became King Xuan. According to the texts that have survived, he 'acted quickly to secure the state'. He pushed westward and appointed successful generals to the eastern front and he also had multiple other victories, though there were 'succession struggles in some of the old Zhou states' he had to deal with.

King You reportedly began his reign 'with ominous portents' such as 'factional struggles within the Zhou court'. He was killed during his 11th year by a Quanrong attack from the west and ended the Western Zhou period, but not the overall Zhou dynasty.

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Zhou Dynasty II

By Philg88 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12118321

While the Zhou were very culturally similar to the Shang, including speaking a 'language largely similar in vocabulary and syntax to that of the Shang', though they apparently had familial ties to the Xirang, who were 'one of the Four Barbarians that frequently interacted with the sinitic Huaxia civilization', or the 'historical concept of the Chinese nation' among those who spoke one of the Chinese languages. This is reflected in their origin myth as Jian Yuan was Xirong. According to a modern historian, 'the term "rong" during the western Zhou period was likely used to designate political and miligary adversaries rather than cultural and ethnic "others". Cultural artifacts of the Western Rong coexisted with Western Zhou bronzes, indicating close bonds between the Rong and the Western Zhou'.

By 幽灵巴尼, 2014-03-08 15:03:24, Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31500010

The Western Zhou period extends from 1045-771 BCE, from the overthrow of the Shang and King Wu taking the throne and it ends with mercenaries from Quanrong peoples to the northwestern part of China who were hired by the Marquis of Shen sacking the capital. During this time, we are able to know a lot from what was written by those who lived through it. Thousands of inscriptions were produced, many of these on bronze ritual vessels that recorded events or honors bestowed on the elite court members. These inscriptions started short but gradually became longer and can be compared with later histories. The characters were narrow, likely indicating that most writing was done on bamboo slats, and vertically oriented from top to bottom. The characters themselves could be rotated or flipped 'generally with no change in meaning'. While the characters have evolved since the oracle bone script and that used by the Shang, they are still a long way from the modern forms that are in use now. A few pieces of pottery have survived showing that the writing on them was done was done with a brush, which historians think was the most common way of writing at the time.

By Unknown author - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11646136

During the Western Zhou, two major classics, the Book of Odes and the Book of Documents, were likely composed. The book of Odes consists of a collection of songs that are traditionally grouped into State Airs (160), Major and Minor Court Songs (105), and Hymns (40), though the melodies have been lost to time. The Airs were collected throughout the domain of the Western Zhou, but likely were polished in the court. The Book of Documents is 'a collection of formal speeches presented as spanning two millennia from the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors to the Spring and Autumn period', which happens later in the Zhou dynasty. The first histories were likely written during this time, transmitted through copying past the end of the Western Zhou.

The generally agreed upon list of kings of the Western Zhou contains 14 kings, which was written down by the Han historian Sima Qian, who lived from about 145-85 BCE. This record has been supported by the various bronze inscriptions, especially one known as the Lai or Qiu pan. From the archaeological record, it's possible to see the conquest because of the sudden appearance of 'burials in the Shang style and sophisticated bronze vessels of all types produced by the Shang, from whom the Zhou had evidently acquired skilled craftsmen, scribes and abundant resources' in their home territory in the Wei River basin. While the Zhou adopted many Shang customs to legitimatize their rule, one they did not was that of human sacrifice 'which was so extensive in the Late Shang', nor was it mentioned in their texts.

Not long after the overthrow of the Shang under King Wu, Wu Geng, the nominal ruler of the remaining Shang royal house, rose up in rebellion against the Zhou. This was put down by King Cheng, King Wu's son, and the Dukes of Zhou and Shao, who were King Wu's brother and half brother respectively. This victory allowed them to consolidate their power over the territory. They then embarked on a period of expansion that would be continued by King Kang. After them, under King Mu, 'the Zhou state shifted to the defensive, particularly in the east'. As time passed, 'the family relationships between the king and the rulers of teh colonies had also become more distant', so the Zhou state turned to bureaucracy and 'formalized relationships between the elites. There were reforms of the military, official titles and the distribution of land'.

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Zhou Dynasty I

By Philg88 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12118321

The Zhou 周 dynasty ruled from about 1046-256 BCE, a total of 789 years, the longest of any dynasty, so long that the period is subdivided into several periods. Within the Zhou, we find the beginnings of the three major Chinese philosophies, the transition from bronze to iron, developments in written Chinese, and many other transitions.

The origin myth of the Zhou is that Jiang Yuan, a consort of Emperor Ku, a descendant of the Yellow Emperor, conceived 'after stepping into the divine footprint of Shangdi', the highest Chinese deity. The child, Qi, was 'credited with surviving abandonment by his mother three times, and with greatly improving agriculture, to the point where he was granted lordship over Tai, the surname Ji, and the title Houji "Lord of Millet", by the Emperor Shun. He even received sacrifice as a harvest god. The term Houji was probably a hereditary title attached to a lineage'. His son, Buzhu, 'abandoned his position as Agrarian Master (農師; Nóngshī) in old age and either he or his son Ju abandoned their tradition, living in the manner of the Xirong and Rongdi', peoples who lived to the east and north of China at the time. Ju's son, Liu, returned to the previous practices and restored prosperity to his people. He set them up in Bin, which was likely near the Fen River. One of his descendants, Tai, moved his clan from Bin to Zhou near the Wei River.

Jili, a younger son of a descendant, served as a vassal of two Shang kings but he was killed by Shang forces. His older brothers had supposedly moved to the Yangtze delta to establish the state of Wu. Jili's son, Wen, bribed his way out of being imprisoned. His son Wu and an ally Jiang Ziya, the founder of the Qi state, led an army consisting of 300 chariots and 45,000 men across the Yellow River where they defeated Di Xin in the Battle of Muye, which marked the beginning of the Zhou dynasty. A member of the Shang royal family was made the Duke of Song.

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Bronze Age IV

By Lamassu Design Gurdjieff (talk) - Image by Author, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10381870

The Shang dynasty, 商朝 Shāngcháo, also known as the Yin dynasty 殷代 Yīn dài, which might also refer to the final capital, ruled over the central Yellow River valley from about 1600-1046 BCE, the second traditional dynasty after the Xia. It is the first that can be supported by archaeological evidence, at least toward the end of their reign, though the founding of the dynasty remains shrouded in myth and legends. The earliest writing that can be identified as writing also dates from the Shang dynasty in the form of oracle bones dating to about the 12th century BCE. Many of the accounts of the Shang dynasty were written long after they ruled, with one being written around the 6th century BCE supposedly by Confucius, while other accounts were written as late as about 91 BCE, and these accounts do not necessarily align with each other.

According to the founding myth, the Shang were the descendants of Emperor Ku, also a descendant of the Yellow Emperor, and his wife Jiandi, who had 'swallowed an egg dropped by a black bird', and she gave birth to Xie, who assisted Yu the Great in controlling the flooding of the Yellow River, and for his service, Xie was 'granted a place called Shang as a fief'. As with the Xia dynasty, the name of the dynasty was taken from the land they controlled before they rose to power. Thirteen generations later, Tang, Xie's descendant, 'overthrew the impious and cruel final Xia ruler in the Battle of Mingtiao'.

By Chez Cåsver (Xuan Che) - https://www.flickr.com/photos/rosemania/4430509846/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9732214

The discovery of artifacts dating back to the Shang dynasty date to about 1899, when Chinese pharmacists were selling things they called 'dragon bones' that had archaic characters on them. It wasn't until 1928 that these were traced to their origin at a site near Yinxu on the north side of the Yellow River. Excavations were disrupted by the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. In the 1950, another site was found near Zhengzhou in Henan Province, this one with rammed earth walls that would have been 20 m wide and 8 m tall and were likely made in the 15th century BCE. In 2022, an elite tomb was found in the city walls that held over 200 artifacts, including a gold face covering. Another walled city was discovered in 1999, across the river from Yinxu, now known as Huanbei that was in use for about a century before it was destroyed and then the Yinxu site was constructed.

Whether the Shang ans Xia existed and were considered kings over their own states at the same time or whether the Shang were under the Xia until they rose up in rebellion against an unfit ruler is unclear, though some think that the later is a myth that the Zhou invented to justify their overthrow of the Shang, saying that the 'mandate of heaven' had passed on from one dynasty to another. While the succession is accepted by Chinese historians in general, it might hide the complexity of the situation.

By Mlogic - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16028177

Both bronze and pottery improved during the Shang dynasty, with bronze being more ceremonial than utilitarian. The amount of bronze items produced indicate that a large labor force was engaged in mining, refining, and transporting copper, tin, and lead. This large workforce and the logistics involved also indicate the need for managers. There were also ceremonial rules that dictated how many and what types of bronze vessels each class could own. The increase in bronze production also allowed for the army to use it for equipment and for the use of it in making wheeled chariots, which appeared in about 1200 BCE. The king maintained a standing army of 1000 soldiers at the capital in addition to a force of between 3,000-5,000 troops that were mustered up when needed for border campaigns, and up to 13,000 for suppressing rebellions, so the availability of bronze to equip these soldiers also resulted in a rudimentary military bureaucracy.

We have direct records of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty, beginning about 1250 BCE, in the Yinxu site. Bronze inscriptions and some pottery, jade, horn, stones, and other materials had writing on them, but the most commonly found were oracle bones. Because the writing system used for these inscriptions is complex and sophisticated, researchers think that there had to be a developmentally earlier system, but evidence of that system hasn't been found yet. They also had observations of Mars and various comets recorded.

We know from their writings that they practiced war and human sacrifice, with those recorded being captives Qiang people, who were taken in war. The skeletons of these victims were found in the Zhengzhou site, based on isotope analysis. The Qiang people were likely Tibeto-Burman people, though it was 'a Chinese exonym given to various groups of people at different periods in ancient China'. Also from their writings and the presence of cowry shells that there was trade with those on the sea coast, but it was limited because China was isolated at this time, but it also shows the beginnings of what would become the Silk Road via diplomatic ties with various civilizations.

By Chris Gyford - en:wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3523731

The first undisturbed grave found in the modern day was in 1976 and belong to Fu Hao, one of King Wu Ding's wives, of which he had many. Wu Ding, the 11th of 17 Shang kings, is the first king we have a direct record of, and Fu Hao was 'renown as a military general' for him. Within her grave, there were 109 inscriptions containing her name and over 200 bronze ritual vessels. She is mentioned in between 170 and 180 other oracle bone inscriptions as well. With these items, she was also buried with 'stoneware and pottery vessels, bronze weapons, jade figures and hair combs, and bone hairpins', suggesting both her military and ritual importance.

By BabelStone, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16189952

We have records of their beliefs, with the king being the head of the ancestor worship cult and that they used oracle bones to perform divinations, with more being found from the end of the dynasty. These divinations are most often concerned with the peoples living outside their territory, especially those in the Yan Mountains. They also acted as high priests to the god Di, who was a storm god, responsible for wind, rain, and thunder. The state religion required sacrifice to six main recipients: Di; natural forces such as the sun and mountains; deceased humans that were part of the pantheon, such as former lords; pre-dynastic ancestors; male dynastic ancestors; and the royal wives who were ancestors to the king. They believed these ancestors held power over their lives and the divinations were to seek their approval for actions they wanted to take. From this evidence and the tombs they left behind, it does seem that the Shang believed in an afterlife and that the burial goods were needed for it. Kings were buried with 'up to a few hundred humans and horses as well to accompany the king into the afterlife, in some cases even numbering four hundred'. Jade was thought to protect against decay and confer immortality and was in the graves for this reason.

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Bronze Age III

By Kanguole - Own work based on Chang, Kwang-chih (1986) The Archaeology of Ancient China, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=111573260

The Erlitou culture, 二里頭 Èrlǐtóu, lived in the Yellow River valley, at nearly the same location as the Xia were said to have ruled, from about 1900-1500 BCE. It was discovered in 1959 in Henan and Shanxi Provinces in North China, but it was soon discovered that the largest sites were near Erlitou in the Yiluo Basin of Henan.

By H. Sondaz - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28827822

The Erlitou site showed evidence of bronze smelting workshops, a process they dominated, having a monopoly in the production of ritual bronze vessels. Some of these were the earliest known dings, a type of 'prehistoric and ancient Chinese caldrons standing up on legs with a lid and two facing handles', which were 'one of the most important shapes used in Chinese ritual bronzes'. They also made tools, animal-faced plaques, and 'bell musical instruments' in addition to weapons. It's likely they got their copper from Zhongtiao Mountains which run northeast-southwest in the Shanxi Province, which is also where they got salt from.

By Gary Lee Todd - Luoyang Museum, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15992816

Among other artifacts found at the site were carved jade, including ceremonial blades known as zhang and dagger-axes known as ge. The ceramics of the area have characters that might have been a precursor to early Chinese writing, though this is still a hypothesis as there has not been a clear link to let us know that this was definitely their purpose.

By User:Shibo77 - 《偃师二里头1959年~1978年考古发掘报告》, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15992652

The site's chronology is divided into four broad periods. The initial phase, Phase I, the site was established and covered roughly 100 ha, or about 250 acres, and was estimated to have several thousand people living there. This wasn't quite large enough to be considered an urban civilization. During Phase II, the site grew to about three times its initial size and to a population of about 11,000 people. It had palace grounds that covered 20 acres with a palace that measured 150 x 50 m built around three courtyards. There was a bronze foundry just south of the palatial complex and was likely controlled by the elite. During Phase III, a 2 m thick rammed earth wall surrounded the palatial complex and 4 other palaces were built, including one that was 9,600 sq m, as the population reached about 24,000. During Phase IV, the population decreased somewhat, to about 20,000, while construction continued. This also overlaps with the subsequent dominant culture in the area, the Erligang culture. At the end of Phase IV, bronze production in the area ceased, as well as the production of other goods aimed at the elite. There doesn't seem to have been a war in the area, but all palaces were abandoned between 1450-1300 BCE.

By Windmemories - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106118590

China has a goal of finding the capitals of the Xia and Shang dynasties that have been recorded in traditional accounts, from oral tradition to recorded histories that began around 300 BCE. A school of thought, the Doubting Antiquity School of Chinese History, challenges the existence of these locations and even the historicity of the dynasties, regarding the two dynasties as a foundation myth. While the Erlitou culture roughly overlaps with the Xia's recorded territory and there was a flood that occurred about 1920 BCE, there is a 'lack of any firm evidence for such an identification' and the flood of 1920 BCE doesn't show evidence of being widespread. Critics of the attempt to identify the Xia's capitals and locations 'argue that the historiographical focus of Chinese archaeology is unduly limit[ed]' by the attempt.

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Bronze Age II

By SY - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60794591

While it's historicity is debated, the Xia dynasty, 夏朝 Xiàcháo, is said to have lasted from about 2070-1600 BCE, predating oracle bones, which were the first known writings in China and were from the 13th century BCE. Prior to this, was a period known as the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, 三皇五帝 Sān huáng wǔ dì, when a 'series of sage Chinese emperors, and the first Emperors of China. Today, they are considered culture heroes, but they were widely worshiped as divine "ancestral spirits" in ancient times'. One of these emperors is known as the Yellow Emperor, 黃帝 Huángdì, who is seen as 'the initiator of Chinese culture, he is traditionally credited with numerous innovations—including the traditional Chinese calendar, Taoism, wooden houses, boats, cars, the compass needle, "the earliest forms of writing", and cuju, a ball game'. The first emperor of the Xia dynasty was his great-great-grandson, Yu the Great. Yu's father, Gun, is the first known member of the Xia clan.

According to Sima Qian, an early Chinese historian who wrote during the Han dynasty, who lived from about 145-86 BCE, the Yellow River was flooded and many tribes were brought together to stop it from flooding and Gun was appointed by Emperor Yao to lead these efforts. Gun had large levees, or elevated ridges along the banks of the river, built to contain the river over the course of nine years while the floods continued and then worsened. After these nine years, Yao had abdicated and the throne passed to his son Shun and Shun ordered Gun imprisoned for the rest of his life. Shun then appointed Yu to control the flooding. Yu built channels from the rivers out to sea, taking 13 years to finish the project. He reportedly never went to his home during that time 'even though he passed by his house three times'. This project had the added benefit of increasing the agricultural production of the area, which led to the Xia tribe gaining more power, becoming the leaders of those tribes around them.

By Unknown author, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9997728

Not long after this project was completed, Shun sent Yu to suppress the Sanmiao tribe, who were known to harass the border tribes regularly. Yu defeats them, pushing them south of the Han River, leading to the Xia tribe gaining more power. Shun abdicated to Yu, beginning the Xia dynasty. His decision to pass the throne to his son after his death 'instead of passing it to the most capable candidate, thus setting the precedent for dynasty rule or the Hereditary System. The Xia dynasty began a period of family or clan control' of China.

The third king, Tai Kang, was reportedly 'an avid hunter but ineffective ruler', and was across the Luo River hunting while the Youqiong tribe attacked the capital and occupied it. This resulted in an interregnum, when there was a gap in the established order. It wasn't until his younger brother's grandson, Shao Kang, that the Xia were restored, organizing those who despised the Yougiong rule to do so. With the empire restored, his and his son's reign were 'characterized as one of the most prosperous periods in the Xia's history'.

The next five king after Shao Kang followed from father to son, then to younger brother between Bu Jiang and Jiong, with Jiong's grandson transferring the throne to his cousin. Jie, the 17th emperor, was the last Xia king, who 'was said to be immoral, lascivious, and tyrannical'. He was overthrown by Tang of the Shang clan and the Xia clan were given a small fief in the state of Qi.

Because the first mentions of the Xia dynasty are so long after they reigned, some historians view them as largely legendary. Some view the Xia as a creation of the Zhou, who supplanted the Shang, to justify their overthrowing of the established dynasty. Some have tried to link the Xia to the Erlitou culture, which is a site that was inhabited between about 1900-1500 BCE. One researcher 'noted that many aspects of the Xia are simply the opposite traits held to be emblematic of the Shang…the Shang represent the suns, sky, birds, east and life, the Xia represent the moons, watery underworlds, dragons, west and death'.

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Bronze Age I

During the Bronze Age in China, writing was still rare but becoming much more common as the period progressed. Cultures continued to live near the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers and we have the beginnings of what is recognized as 'earliest China', when the earliest structures of much of Chinese history begin to take shape. The Bronze Age covers the times of the earliest dynasties and the first struggles between various clans for control of the nascent civilization.

By Guss - Own work, after Li Liu, Archaeology in China, p.214, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32701410

The oldest known culture of the Bronze Age is the Majiayao culture, which started as Neolithic communities along the Yellow River that began about 3300 BCE and continued through about 2000 BCE. They became well known for their painted pottery, which is considered to be the 'peak of pottery manufacturing at the time'. They are also 'associated with the expansion of early Sino-Tibetan peoples during the Neolithic'. As the climate continued to warm from the Last Glacial Period into the Middle Holocene, crops flourished, leading to population growth.

By The original uploader was Gruschke at German Wikipedia. - Transferred from de.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7686306 , By Miguel Hermoso Cuesta - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37104118 , By Miguel Hermoso Cuesta - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41067304 , and By User:Captmondo - Own work (photo), CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4549831

Majiayao pottery is known for it's painted decorations that flowed through several phases, with designs painted in black and red. The Majiayao phase of pottery, from about 3200-2700 BCE, featured 'sweeping parallel lines and dots' in black. The Banshan phase, from about 2700-2300 BCE, focused on 'curvilinear designs using both black and red paints'. From about 2300-2000 BCE, the Manchang phase was less well finished than the preceding two, though the designs were similar, and overlaps with a time when there were 'interactions between hunter-gatherers in the Qinghai region and the westward expansion of agricultural Yangshao people'.

By Prof. Gary Lee Todd, 2011-09-02. CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31469658

The Majiayao people created the some of the oldest known bronze objects in China, with the oldest linked to their culture being a knife that dates to about 2900-2740 BCE. From this beginning, metallurgy spread through the Yellow River region, especially in the middle and lower parts through the rest of the 3rd millennium BCE. They likely learned metallurgy from the Afansievo culture, who lived in the southern part of Siberia from about 3300-2500 BCE, possibly with the Qijia culture, who lived in the upper Yellow River region from about 2400-1600 BCE, acting as an intermediary since their territory bridged the two cultures.

As the climate helped the Majiayao culture to flourish, it was likely the climate also brought about their downfall. Recent studies suggest that from about 3830-2900 BCE was particularly wet in the area, allowing the Majiayao to flourish, and that from about 2900-2700 BCE, there was a drought in the area, resulting in decline and people moving eastward and likely explains the lower quality pottery of the later period.

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Prehistory II

During the Neolithic, people began to produce food via farming and herding animals in a single area. This also led to larger and more complex living groups than mobile tribes, which likely led to more abstract symbols and eventually writing to record physical, concrete things which is then expanded to record abstract things. There were many centers of civilizations from this time that are known by their locations and through the artifacts, including pottery and paintings, and in some locations, remains of their dwellings. This transition began around 12,000 years ago.

By Zhangzhugang - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15220484

One of the earliest sites is the Xianren Cave, 仙人洞, Xiānréndòng, in Jiangxi province, which was used as a shelter while people were still hunter-gatherers. Interestingly, this site also contains remains of pottery that goes back as far as 20,000 years ago, at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, which saw the beginning of glaciers retreating from the northern hemisphere, leading to a more mild and temperate climate. The pottery found often has scorch marks, suggesting it was used for cooking rather than for storage, suggesting that the users of the pottery were still mobile. There are also signs that rice was cultivated in the area, with dates as early as 7000 years ago.

By 用心阁 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6984489

The oldest site that was used definitively in the Neolithic only is Nanzhuangtou, 南莊頭, Nánzhuāngtóu, near Lake Baiyangdian, which was used about 10,500 years ago, and it's one of the oldest sites showing that millet was cultivated in the area. Pottery in the area dates to a little bit later, around 10,200 years ago. The location was preserved under layers of lake deposits, resulting in a peat bog over the area. The Peiligang culture is from about this area, with more than 100 sites within 100 square km on the south side of the Yi-Lou river, which flows into the Yellow River. They cultivated millet and herded pigs and potentially poultry. They supplemented by hunting wild boar and dear as well as fishing for carp. They created nets from hemp fibers. They separated the dead from their living quarters, creating necropolises. Nearby, at a site know as Jiahu, which is 'several days' travel to the south of the main group', is slightly older and focused on rice cultivation. Researchers are divided if Jiahu, which predated the Peiligang sites by 'several hundred years', is a different culture or a 'practice' for the villages Peiligang.

By Prof. Gary Lee Todd - CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73025359

The earliest known site near the Yangtze river is of the Pengtoushan culture, 彭頭山文化 Péngtóushānwénhuà, which was used from about 9500-7500 years ago. Rice was cultivated in this area, with pots from later cultures showing that pots were used to store rice. Pottery also showed signs of being cord-marked, which uses clay mixed with materials such as shells, plant fibers, sand, or crushed clay that had been previously fired, which made the clay more stable and prevented cracking when the pot was dried and then fired. Pots were shaped with a 'paddle and anvil method that was accomplished by pressing cord-wrapped paddles against the side of the pottery to form and thin the pottery. This was done while holding an anvil stone on the inside of the vessel'. This type of pots have been found within grave goods at this site. Tools, such as bone and wood spades, have been found here, further evidence of rice cultivation.

By Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China - Longshan Culture Black Egg-shell Pottery Stemmed Cup, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=108959733

A more recent site, dating from about 5000-4900 years ago, is the Longshan culture, 龍山文化 Lóngshānwénhuà, which spanned the middle and lower Yellow River valley areas. They are also known as the Black Pottery Culture, as they are 'noted for [their] highly polished black pottery (or egg-shell pottery)'. This culture spanned the late Neolithic period and showed many improvements from those that came before. The settlements were larger and had rammed earth walls, created by piling the raw materials (earth, silt, gravel, or chalk) within a temporary frame or form as well as some type of stabilizer (lime or animal blood), which is then compacted with a pole to about half its original volume in layers until the wall is the desired height. The presence of these walls indicate that there was likely warfare between the various polities. They also made use of the pottery wheel, which allowed their black pottery to have thin walls and edges as well stems. This pottery was initially used to suggest 'a fairly uniform culture attributed to expansion from a core area in the Central Plain. More recent discoveries have uncovered much more regional diversity than previously thought, so that many local cultures included within [Kwang-chih] Chang's [1963 definition of the] Longshanold horizon are now viewed as distinct cultures, and the term "Longshan Culture" is restricted to the middle and lower Yellow River Valley'. Farming in this area primarily focused on millet, with some rice and wheat also being found, while animal husbandry shows evidence of pigs, sheep, and goats being domesticated as well as early silkworm farming, as well as the presence of dogs. As time progressed, there were regional differences developed resulting in about 6 major cultural centers as settlements became cities, showing social stratification and ritual structures. These cities showed signs of being connected to the villages around them, possibly 'indicating the ability of the urban elites to exert control over the countryside and its agrarian wealth'.

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High Level Overview of Chinese History: Prehistory I

During the Paleolithic, humans typically traveled in tribes, smaller groups that didn't leave as much of a mark that survived to modern times. These groups often followed migration of animals and the availability of plants in an effort to feed themselves. They left traces behind in the form of their stone tools, the remains of fire, and sometimes their skeletons. The oldest tools resemble those found in Africa of the Oldwolan cultures and didn't match the Acheulean culture that was in use at the time in the West.

Source: https://www.chinesehistorydigest.com/historic-sights/xihoudu-village/xihoudu-site

The oldest remains found in the area now known as China are a collection of 32 stone implements in Xihoudu 西侯度 Xīhóudù, on the slopes of the Zhongtiao Mountain in the south of the Shanxi Province along the course of the Yellow River. These artifacts were found in the 1960s and date to about 2,430,000 years ago. These are 'relatively primitive', and included 'stone cores, flakes, and stone tools'. Also within the site, researchers found remains that were younger in the same area, including 'stone tools includ[ing] cut or scraped antlers, as well as burned animal bones, hornes and teeth, which are considered to be signs of humans use of fire…[and]more than 1,500 stone products and animal fossil specimens' that range from 700,000-500,000 years ago. The oldest stone tools are disputed as the 'artificial nature of stone tools cannot be determined', which means they might have been created by natural processes, like rocks being thrown against each other in a river.

Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/shangchen-stone-tools-put-early-hominids-china-earlier

Shangchen 上陈, in Xhaanxi, is a cliff face in the Loess Plateau, which is named for the extremely fine grained, silt-sized sediment that is blow by the wind, is also near the Yellow River. In 2018, using a technique known as magnetostratigraphy, which was used to date the layers that the tools found at the site by determining the direction of magnetic particles were oriented as the Earth's magnetic field shifts over time, the oldest artifacts were dated to about 2,120,000 years ago. The oldest hominid skull in China was found in this area, dating to 1,630,000 years ago, less than 5 km away from the tools. A total of 96 tools, flakes, points, and cores were recovered from the site in 17 layers. These are also disputed as there has been farming in the area, making deeper layers unavailable, and it's also possible that river currents formed the stone remains, as with Xihoudu.

By Mutt assumed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3916059

Perhaps the best known archaeological site from the Paleolithic is the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site 周口店北京人遗址, which is in the Fangshan District of Beijing, where the first Homo erectus skull was discovered in 1926, when two human teeth were discovered within the caves. This led to the now debunked theory that H sapiens evolved in Europe, Asia, and Africa, leading to the various races. Over the course of the next several years, more hominin remains were found, with the proposed species being given as Sinathropus pekinensis. A skullcap was found in 1929 at a time when the site was worked 'in frigid weather, with a hammer in one hand and a candle in the other'. Another skullcap was found in 1930, which allowed for more workers at the site. Over 200 fossils were recovered belonging to 40 individuals by the time of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Many of artifacts were lost by 1941, though one of the researchers 'had made copies of the fossils to preserve their physical characteristics'. The dating of the remaining artifacts and those found later varies a lot, including '700,000–200,000 years ago, 670,000–470,000 years ago, or no earlier than 530,000 years ago'. The oldest tools date back likely between 670,000-530,000 years ago.

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Introduction to a High Level Overview of Chinese History

China has a very long history of hominid habitation that isn't often taught in the West, going back as far as the Paleolithic when Homo erectus first reached it more than 1,700,000 years ago. Chinese history, written records, go back nearly as far as those in the Mediterranean and Egypt. Much of Chinese history is focused around two major river complexes, the Yellow River and the Yangtze, with the Yellow River changing its course many times throughout history and the Yangtze, or 'long river', maintaining a relatively stable course throughout history. It is often fraught with conflict and a series of rulers who tried to control the widest amount of the land. Over the next few weeks, we shall go through a high level overview of Chinese history, from its prehistoric origins through the Tang dynasty.

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Xiao Tong

By Wang Qi, Wang Siyiji (王圻 王思義輯) - Sancai Tuhui, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51997958

Born in October 501 CE, Xiao Tong 蕭統 was a son of Xiao Yan, a general in the Southern Qi during the civil war against Xiao Baojuan, who was a cruel and violent emperor, and his concubine Din Lingguang. Xiao Yan's wife, Chi Hui, had died in 499, leaving him only with concubines, none of whom he elevated to wife. Shortly after Xiao Tong's, on 31 December 501, he was killed by his own generals during a siege of Jiankang as they feared punishment for not breaking the seige, the capital of the Eastern Wu dynasty. His father was made Emperor Wu of Liang on 30 April 502, though he at first declined the throne, citing an incomplete civil war, though he'd been angling for the throne. Xiao Tong was named crown prince on 24 December 502 as Emperor Wu's advisors suggested, and his mother 'was given a special status co-equal with her son', though she was not made empress. In 506, he was moved to the Yongfu Mansion, the traditional home of the Crown Prince, but he missed his parents so much that his father would visit 'every few days or so…[and] spend several days at Yongfu Mansion', though history doesn't record if his mother visited him as well. On 17 May 508, he was married to Lady Cai, who would be his primary wife, and on 31 January 515, he 'went through his rite of passage and was declared an adult'.

Because his father was a Buddhist, Xiao Tong was also very devout. He studied sutras, or aphorism, inviting Buddhist monks to discuss doctrines quite frequently. His father also began to turn over the day-to-day operations of the empire to him. His uncle, Xiao Dan, died on 9 December 522, and custom was that the crown prince wouldn't have an official mourning period for an uncle, which he felt was unfilial, so he had the officials discuss the ccustom and they suggested a month long mourning period.

He began collecting ancient texts and poetry that he called Wenxuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, but which became known as Zhaoming Wenxuan, with Zhaoming being his posthumous name. It is considered to be of historical importance because he preserved ancient texts that might have otherwise been lost to history.

In 526, his mother became ill and he spent much of his time attending to her, not resting as he took carre of her. On 3 January 527, she died and Xiao Tong sunk into mourning so deep that he didn't eat. His father 'tried to console him by pointing out that he should not harm his body and that he still had his father', so he began to take porridge, but nothing else. Her death would also cause a break in the relationship between father and son when they disagreed over where she should be buried. A landowner bribed a eunuch to have Emperor Wu buy a particular piece of land and the eunuch claimed it would be lucky. He had Consort Ding buried there, but then a Taoist monk told Xiao Tong the land would bring him ill fortune, so he buried items to diffuse that ill luck. When one of his attendants was 'squeezed out' of the inner circle by another, he told the Emperor that the attendant who'd pushed him out had 'carried out sorcery on Xiao Tong's behalf'. When the emperor found the items buried to dispel the bad fortune, he became enraged and eventually killed the Taoist monk who'd told Xiao Tong the land was a bad omen. Xiao Tong was never able to clear his name with his father after that.

On 31 May 531, Xiao Tong died after an illness. When he was ill, he worried that if his father knew, he would fall ill, so he continued to do his daily work. His father attended his wake and buried him with all the honors of en emperor, even giving him a regnal name Zhaoming, and making his wife the Empress Dowager Gong. His father considered making Xiao Tong's son, Xiao Gong, the next crown prince, but he still had problems with the buried talismans, so he instead made his younger son with Consort Ding, Xiao Goang, crown prince instead.

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Iron and Its Place in the Ancient World

By Alchemist-hp (www.pse-mendelejew.de) - Own work, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10115787

Iron is the 26th element on the periodic table and by mass, the most common element found on Earth with most of it being locked away within the core, leaving it the fourth most common element in the crust. In it's pure form, which rarely occurs on the surface, unlike like gold, silver, and copper do, it is a silvery-gray metal that reacts readily with water and oxygen forming a brown to black iron oxide, more commonly known as 'rust'. Rust takes up more space than the original iron does, which exposes more of the iron to the oxygen or water as it flakes off. There are four stable isotopes, though iron-56 is the overwhelming majority of iron on earth at 91.754%. The other isotopes are iron-54, which is 5.845%, iron-57, 2.119%, and iron-58, 0.282%. Iron synthesis triggers stellar supernovas known as type II supernovae, where the core collapses because producing iron doesn't produce any energy to keep the star from collapsing. As the star collapses, it rebounds off its core and explodes. It is also formed in type Ia supernovae which are caused by material falling on a white dwarf star usually from a companion star, appearing in the cloud of material around the explosion site after some time has passed as radioactive products decay. Iron is also the end result of radioactive decay because it takes energy to split iron atoms as opposed to releasing energy. When unalloyed iron is found on the surface, it is most likely from meteorites, which are remnants of the cloud of material that the solar system form from, indicating that there was most likely a supernova in the vicinity where the sun formed. Iron is required by every form of known life on earth In microbes, it is used in proteins that are used in transporting oxygen and for nitrogen fixing.

By geni - Photo by user:geni, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7210200

Meteoric iron usage goes back as far as the 4000 BCE in Egypt and Sumer where the iron was made into ornaments or spear tips. It's likely that, because of its rarity in this form, iron was worth more than gold. Records show that the Hittites bartered iron for 40 times its weight in silver by the first centuries of the 2nd millennium BCE. These meteoric iron tools were also found in the Arctic, where pea-sized bits of iron were hammered into disks that were then fit into bone handles. These were used as trade, with some tools made from a meteor found in Cape York, Greenland, known as the Innaanganeq meteorite, which is one of the largest known meteorites in the world. These were traded for other goods, with some of the tools made from the Innaanganeg meteorite found 1600 km away from the meteorite.

By Regs_productoras_de_metales_en_la_Edad_Antigua_en_Oriente_Medio.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8900808

It's unclear exactly where iron smelting, or the extraction of iron from oxidized iron ores, began. Smelting iron is more complicated than smelting tin or copper, which require only relatively simple furnaces, like the kilns used for pottery, to produce melted metal. Iron smelting requires furnaces that reach higher temperatures and was quite often used as a flux, or a material that helps purge impurities from the desired result, in copper smelting which made it 'not surprising that humans mastered the technology of smelting iron only after several millennia of bronze metallurgy'. The beginning of iron smelting as it is difficult 'distinguishing metal extracted from nickel-containing ores from hot-worked meteoritic iron' which began in the 3rd millennium BCE, but worked iron artifacts are rare until the 12th century BCE.

By Giovanni Dall'Orto. - Own work, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15648126

The Iron Age is defined by the 'replacement of bronze weapons and tools with those of iron and steel', which happened in various locations at different times. Around 1500 BCE, non-meteoritic iron began to outnumber those created from meteorites. Iron was smelted in furnaces that had air forced through iron ore and burning charcoal by bellows, a structure known as a bloomery. This resulted in a spongy mass known bloom that would then be beaten to force out the by products, or slag, resulting in wrought iron, which is a relatively soft alloy of iron and carbon, making it a 'mild' steel. At some point, during the transition from bronze tools to iron, iron workers found they could improve the strength of iron by heating it over charcoal once the piece is finished and then quenching, or rapidly cooling it, in water or oil, which would turn the outer layers into a higher grade of steel and made the core less brittle than it was before.

It used to be thought that this process was developed by the Hittites and spread to other groups after the Sea Peoples destroyed their empire, it spread through the region, but there is no evidence to support this theory in the archaeological record. More recent theories suggest that the disruption of copper and tin trade during the Late Bronze Age Collapse, causing smiths to turn to iron. This, too, lacks archaeological support as bronze items remained abundant.

By Photograph taken by Mark A. Wilson (Department of Geology, The College of Wooster). - Original photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4150061

In India, iron smelting likely began in India during the 2nd millennium BCE at places like Gangetic plains along the northern border of the Indian subcontinent, where it appeared between 1800-1200 BCE. Iron smelting was practiced in a large scale by the 13th century BCE, reaching southern India by between the 12th and 11th centuries BCE. Iron was used for a broad range of applications, from knives and other types of blades to bowls and spoons to door fittings by around 600 BCE. By 500 BCE, high quality steel began to be produced by the crucible technique, where iron ore and potentially lower grade steel, are put into a crucible, a container that is able to deal with very high temperatures, along with various fluxes, like sand, glass, or charcoal. Wootz steel, which is a very high-carbon crucible steel known for its strength, was developed in Sri Lanka around 300 BCE and would be prized through Classical Antiquity through the Middle East and Mediterranean world. Sri Lanka made use of the monsoon winds to fire their furnaces. This would cause a pressure difference in the kiln that led to higher temperatures and better quality steel. An iron pillar was erected between about 375-415 CE in modern day Delhi still stands today with very little corrosion despite being nearly pure iron and being exposed to heavy rains.

By Wang Zhen - http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/waterwheels/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3288905

In China, the oldest known iron artifacts date to the 14th century BCE and are from the Siwa culture in the modern day Gansu Province, likely from the Afanasievo culture that lived in southern Siberia. China developed bloomeries around the 9th century BCE in the central plains. The workers in southern Wu developed furnaces that reached temperatures of 1130°C, which is where 'iron combines with 4.3% carbon and melts', creating a better grade of steel than bloomeries, one that is less laborious to work with than the metal from bloomeries. Around 300 BCE, the process of decarburization, or reducing the carbon content of 'wrought iron by heating it in air for several days', resulting in a less brittle material, made iron the tool of choice through the area. The Han dynasty made ironworking a state monopoly, though this was eventually repealed. Blast furnaces were then built in Henan province, each capable of producing several tons per day. In the 1st century BCE, it was discovered that mixing wrought iron and cast iron, which have different iron contents, together resulted in an steel with a medial amount of carbon, attributed to Liu Bang, the first Han emperor, in legends because of texts mentioning 'harmonizing the hard and the soft' when talking about ironworking. The Han dynasty is when the waterwheel was applied to powering the bellows of blast furnaces, in about 31 CE, when it was recorded by Du Shi, who was then the Prefect of Nanyang.

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Copper and Its Place in the Ancient World

By Jonathan Zander (Digon3) derivative work: Materialscientist - CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7223304

Copper is the 29th element of the periodic table, a soft, malleable (able to be formed by pressure), ductile (able to be drawn out) metal that is highly thermally and electrically conductive that is pinkish-orange when freshly exposed and pure and oxidizes a brown-black and will patina with a layer of verdigris, a copper carbonate layer that ranges from green to bluish-green, depending on the isotope of copper. It can be found naturally occurring unalloyed with other metals. Copper has two stable isotopes, copper-63 and copper-65, with the first being about 69% of naturally occurring copper on earth. Copper is created within massive stars as part of their nucleosynthesis thought the slow neutron capture (s-process). It is one of the few metals that is essential to all organisms that require oxygen as it forms part of the respiratory pathway. It was named for the island of Cyprus, with the Latin name being cuprum, which is where the chemical symbol Cu comes from.

By Daderot - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30938396

Copper is one of the first metals to be used, with its history going back as far as 9000 BCE in the Middle East, with a pendant found in Iraq that dates to about 8700 BCE. Based on evidence from the archaeological record, only gold and meteoric iron were used by humans before copper. Use of copper was so significant that an entire archaeological period was named for it, the Chalcolithic, or the Copper Age with the name derived from the Greek for copper, chalkos, which dates to about 6000-3500 BCE in the Middle East, falling between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. During this time, copper working went from hammering native copper without heating it to smelting it, or applying heat to the metal or ore to purify it.

By Bullenwächter, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14690470

The oldest known extraction of copper rather than working what is found on the surface that we've found dates to about 6500 BCE in the Old Copper complex around the Great Lakes of North America, while the earliest known evidence of hammering native copper dates between 7200-6000 BCE in Çayönü Tepesi in Anatolia. The oldest copper mine, where copper was dug out of the earth rather than just found on the surface, dates back to about the 4th millennium BCE in the Timna Valley in Israel, which was used for surface deposits in the fifth and sixth millennium BCE before that. Around 5000 BCE in Pločnik, Serbia, the first signs of high temperature smelting begin to appear in the archaeological record. In the Americas, copper smelting in Boliva began as early as 700 BCE, after copper working began in the Atacama Desert around 1432-1132 BCE. Studies of Ötzi the Iceman suggest that he was involved in copper smelting when he lived sometime between 3300-3200 BCE and he carried with him a copper axehead that was 99.7% pure.

By Oren Rozen - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10851056

Various forms of casting were developed throughout history. Lost wax is a process where a model is made out of wax or an oil-based clay around which a mold is made. Wax is then poured in to create a layer over the mold, which is removed from the mold to. A tree-like structure is then added to allow air to escape and to give more paths to add metal. The wax structure is then dipped into a slurry of ceramic to make a shell that is then placed in a kiln where the wax is melted and runs out as the ceramic is hardened. After this, the form is tested with water, to make sure it will flow freely through the tubes and that there are no leaks. It is then put back in the kiln to remove any moisture from the form. The form is then put into a container of sand where the molten metal will be poured into it while it is still hot. Once the metal is cooled, the ceramic container is hammered and dusted away. The resultant casting has any imperfections worked away and is polished. This process was developed around 4500 BCE around the Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria.

By Anonymous (Egypt) - Walters Art Museum: Home page  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18791249

The Bronze Age also owes its name to copper, but this time alloyed with tin, which began around 4500 BCE, with the oldest known bronze artifacts created by the Vinča culture. Sumerians and Egyptians soon followed in around 3000 BCE. During this time, the Egyptians used cuproivaite, a calcium copper silicate, to create a synthetic pigment that became known as Egyptian blue, which they used in pottery glazing, to create a faience, an almost glass-like coating, around 3250 BCE and it continued to be in use through the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fourth century CE.

By Wilson44691 - self-made; Mark A. Wilson[1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3793641

Copper remained an important resource through the Iron Age. The ancient Greeks associated copper with Aphrodite because 'of its lustrous beauty and its ancient use in producing mirrors; Cyprus, the source of copper, was sacred to the goddess', which also led to it being associated with the planet Venus as it was the third brightest heavenly body after the Sun and Moon, which were associated with gold and silver respectively. Copper was used as money, first as lumps and later as coins among the Romans. The Romans pulled about 15,000 tons of copper out of their mines annually.

Source: https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/j.jas.2019.105010

In Sub-Saharan Africa, copper was considered 'more precious and prestigious than either gold or silver' with mining beginning in about 2000 BCE around the Agadez region in Niger. It was widely traded while gold deposits were ignored.

[inspofromancientworld]

Silver and Its Place in the Ancient World

By Alchemist-hp (talk) (www.pse-mendelejew.de) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7394995

Silver is the 47th element on the periodic table, a softly, whitish-gray, lustrous, transitional metal, or from the part of the periodic table that has four rows in the middle, that is the most electrically and thermally conductive, and reflective metal. It can be found as native silver, in its elemental form, as an alloy, or mixture, with other elements such as gold, copper, and lead. Like gold, it is fairly malleable, or able to be shaped by pressure, and ductile, able to be drawn out into a wire, though not as much as gold. Like gold, silver is produced in rapid neutron capture events (r-process) like supernovas and neutron star collisions, but also in slow neutron capture events (s-process) where neutrons are captured by atoms within stars and if it's stable, it'll become an isotope of the original atom but if it's unstable, it'll emit a beta particle and the neutron will become a proton and the atom will move up the periodic table. Because of this, silver has two stable forms, or isotopes, weighing 107 and 109 daltons, the unit of atomic mass, and are nearly equal in distribution, with 107 being slightly more abundant at 51.839%, and both are stable forms.

Germanic languages seem to have borrowed their words for silver from the Basque language, a language with no known relatives, who called the metal zilar, though research is still ongoing. Argentum, the Latin name of the metal and where the chemical symbol of Ag comes from, derives from the Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'white' or 'shining'.

Because it is soft, silver didn't lead to improvements in metallurgy, though it, along with copper and gold, was 'probably used as the first primitive forms of money as opposed to simple bartering'. Likely because of its luster, it was often used as decoration. Silver is more likely than gold to react with other elements, so it was initially more difficult mine, so it was valued more highly than gold. Around the 15th century BCE, the Egyptians used a smelting technique of heating ores with salt and then exposing the resulting silver chloride light or heat, which converts it to silver and chlorine separately.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667136025000020

Possibly as early as the 4th millennium BCE, islands in the Aegean Sea used a form of smelting known as cupellation which allowed heating the ore to very high temperatures which are then worked through a set of processes that separate out the noble metals from other metals, which allowed it to be extracted in higher quantities. That process didn't seem to spread widely until much later. This process was also used in Sardinia, one of the first silver processing sites in Europe. In East Asia, such as India, China, and Japan, the origin of silver production has been lost to time since they were not well-documented.

By Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60558104

Silver was so plentiful in Spain that when the Phoenicians first arrived there, they recovered so much silver that it filled their ships and they also used it to weigh their anchors instead of lead. This led to silver coins being 'a staple of the economy' for ancient Greece and Rome. The Greeks were able to extract silver from galena, a mineral containing lead sulfied and silver, as early as the 7th century BCE, which aided in the rise of Athens as they controlled the silver mines of Laurium where they mined around 30 tonnes per year from 600-300 BCE. It was around 600 BCE that the first coins were minted in Lydia out of electrum, though pure silver coins were not far being, such as the Roman denarius and the karshapana that were used in India beginning around the 6th century BCE. Rome relied on Spanish silver to supply their economy, with about 10,000 tonnes circulating in about the middle of the 2nd century CE. After the fall of the Roman empire, silver production 'came to a nearly complete halt'.

In his Works and Days, a Hesiod, Greek poet who lived sometime between 750-650 BCE, that the 'ages of man', or historical stages of human history, named them after metals, with the first being gold, the second being silver, the third being bronze, the fourth being iron. He wrote 'But when good Saturn, banish'd from above,/Was driv'n to Hell, the world was under Jove./Succeeding times a silver age behold,/Excelling brass, but more excell'd by gold'.

[inspofromancientworld]

Gold and It's Place in the Ancient World

Source: James St. John - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/16848647509/, CC BY 2.0

Gold is the 79th element on the periodic table, a bright metallic yellow, dense, soft, malleable (able to be shaped by being beaten or under the pressure of rollers), and ductile (able to be drawn out or extended with ease) metal, one of the noble metals, those that generally resist corrosion and are found in nature uncombined with other elements, and only platinum is less reactive than it is. When it occurs mixed with other metals, such as with silver in electrum, it is a 'solid solution', where two elements form a crystal structure because they have the same crystalline structures, but are not bound together like molecules are. It is a relatively rare element, though about 30 times more common than platinum. The word 'gold' comes from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning 'to shine, to gleam; to be yellow or green' while the Latin aurum, where the chemical symbol Au comes from, derives from a Proto-Indo-European meaning 'glow', related to the word meaning 'dawn'. It is produced by three main paths in the universe: nucleosynthesis during a supernova, the collisions, and flares of magnetar stars, all of which are a 'r-process', or rapid neutron capture, and recent studies have show that neutron star collisions are the most common process of creation. All of the gold on earth was in the cloud of dust that the solar system formed from. The rocks that contain gold on earth formed during the Precambrian and onward, and is usually found with silver. Only about 25% of all gold now above Earth's surface, which if were to be put into a cube would be 21.7 m on a side, was mined before 1910.

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/varna-bulgaria-gold-graves-social-hierarchy-prehistoric-archaelogy-smithsonian-journeys-travel-quarterly-180958733/

Evidence of gold being used by humans goes back as far as to 40,000 years ago, with some being found in Spanish caves from that time, though it was in it's natural state, how it was found, and not worked into anything else. The oldest worked gold artifacts date back to between 4600-4200 BCE and were found in the Varna Necropolis, near the Black Sea in Bulgaria. Within the cemetery that contained about 312 graves which have been worked so far, researchers found about 5.9 kg of worked gold in the form of pendants, bracelets, beads, breastplates, bulls, headpieces, and even used as a decoration in pottery. One person was found 'adorned with gold balngles, neclaces made from gold beads, heavy gold pendants, and delicate, pierced gold disks that once hung from his clothes' along with 'a polished axe with a gold-wrapped handle like a scepter; another axe lies just beneath. There's a flint "sword" 16 inches long at his side and a gold penis sheath lying nearby'. Prior to the find at Varna in 1972 CE, all the gold artifacts from the Copper Age weighed less than half a kilogram and the initial findings, found by a team who were digging trenches for electrical cables, weighed about 1 kg. Four of the graves held about 75% of the gold, showing that the society in that area was stratified. This period ended with a period of warming, leading to about 6 centuries of unstable temperature and rain before the Copper Age became the Bronze Age.

By Sailko - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89064646

In Egypt, gold began to be used at the end of the 5th millennium BCE, during the pre-dynastic period, with smelting allowing the creation of golden artifacts early in the 4th millennium, around which time gold artifacts also appear in Lower Mesopotamia. Some of the more interesting types of artifacts that have been found from the Bronze Age are known as golden hats, of which four have been found. They are made of a 'thin sheet gold and were attached externally to long conical and brimmed headdresses which were probably made of some organic material and served to stabilize the external gold leaf'. They date from about 1400-800 BCE and were found in modern day France, Germany, and Switzerland, and were created by the Tumulus culture. It's likely that they were used in connection with some type of ritual and are 'covered in bands of ornaments along their whole length and extent. The ornaments—mostly disks and concentric circles, sometimes wheels—were punched using stamps, rolls or combs. The older examples…show more restricted range of ornaments than the later ones'. One interpretation is that the symbols 'represent a lunisolar calendar. The object may have permitted the determination of dates or periods in both lunar and solar calendars', knowledge of which would have been as precious as the gold in the hats.

By CaptMondo - Own work (photo), CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4590297

The first known gold mine was mapped in the 19th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt in Nubia, which was between 1320-1200 BCE, though the first reference to gold was recorded during the 12th Dynasty in about 1900 BCE. In about 2600 BCE, King Tushratta of the Mitanni wrote that gold was 'more plentiful than dirt' within Egypt when he was writing for aid.

By Georges Jansoone (JoJan) - Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2107552

The historical King Midas ruled over Phrygia during the late 8th century BCE, in central Anatolia, at a time when the southeast corner of the Black Sea began to be mined for gold. The Golden Fleece might be related to the practice of using 'fleeces to trap gold dust from placer deposits [accumulation that separates out through gravity when forming, with the name coming from the Spanish word for 'alluvial sand'] in the ancient world'. Coinage of gold began to be used around 610 BCE in Lydia, which covered much of western Anatolia in modern day Turkey, with coins appearing in the Chu state of China during the 6th or 5th century BCE.

By Rafael Ibáñez Fernández - Tomada por User:Rayet, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=477666

The Romans made improvements in metallurgy that used hydraulic mining to extract more gold in their mines in Hispania and Dacia. The mine in Las Medulas in modern day León, Spain, had seven aqueducts to work the large deposit there. Mining methods were described by Pliny the Elder, who lived from about 23 or 24-79 CE, in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia.