Shang Empire Research Paper

During the Western Zhou period, commodity circulated mostly through tribute and gift rather than office, cities were noble fortify, artisans were an heritable caste of serfs attached to states or flattery, and ministers and court members were preferential based on consanguineous rather than talent. Battles between regional leaders were relatively short and, for the nobles, restrained by a code of

First, the Han Dynasty was more important to the development of China because it created the idea of a Civil Service Exam. The Han Dynasty readopted the idea of having families rulers after the Qin Dynasty strayed from the tradition; however, they kept the idea of bureaucrats from the Qin Dynasty. They used appointed government officials to oversee the day-to-day work of their government. This lead them to implement the Civil Service Exam. The exam was meant to help chose the bureaucrats for the government. It was a test centered around the ideas of Confucius and how to apply them to everyday life. By making this a normal part of Chinese society, the Han Dynasty was able to extend government official job opportunities to people of all social classes. In addition, because the exam gave these opportunities to all people, all people put more emphasis on

The people who lived under the Shang Dynasty strongly believed that whenever their ancestors died, they became similar to gods, and deserved to be worshipped as if they too were gods. Each family in the Shang Dynasty would not only worship the gods, but would also worship their own ancestors. Along with ancestor worship, during the late Shang Dynasty, people in ancient China also began to use written oracle bones to try to predict the future and also to communicate with the gods.

After witnessing the strict policies and rule of the Qin Dynasty, the emperors of the Han Dynasty began to base their rule upon Confucian ideals revolving around the mandate of heaven and the legitimization of the emperor’s rule. Jia Yi, a scholar of both the Qin and Han Dynasties and a witness of Empress Lu’s harsh ruling, stated that “It is said that in government, the people are in every way the root (base)… Thus the security of the state or its endangerment depends on them [the people].” Yi explains that the power and legitimacy of the government resided in the people, thus, emperors

The Han Dynasty is the largest dynasty since the Zhou Dynasty, although this is not the dynasty for wars like the Zhou was. The year is one hundred and the Dynasty we are living in has learned much from the dynasties before it and used them to shape our civilization today. In the Han Dynasty we use our language, beliefs, and government all together for a successful system to live in. These three things are crucial to our individual lives and why China will retain power for many more dynasties. Another key to our success is the administrated structure we use. The dynasty before us (Qin Dynasty) divided our nation into many parts that were ruled by royal officials. We use this system too, however, we adopted the ideology from Confucius that emphasized

Their astronomers tracked cycles of the sun, moon and planets. They used Jade to kill or sacrifice people or animals. They created axes out of obsidian or flint to chop limestone into blocks. They used thorny ropes in the mouth of a person as a type of sacrifice. Some people did it to themselves.

Religion~Mesoamerican, included human sacrifices of up to 10,000 to 80,400 people were sacrificed in four days. Usually sacrificed up to 14 people in one minute. God of the sun

According to Shang Religion (n.d.), the Shang’s religion is described as a mixture of animism which is defined as “the belief that spirits inhabit some or all classes of natural objects and that an immaterial force animates the universe believe that spirits inhabit” the next is shamanism which is described as “a person who is seen to have access and influential in the world of spirits and practices divination and healing” and lastly divination which is the practice of pursuing wisdom of the future or the unknown by supernatural means. The people of Shang civilization believed that they should consult ancestors through oracle bones for support for any important choices. Similar to Egyptian culture, the Shang also had a social pyramid starting at the bottom with farmers then merchants, followed by priest’s then military nobility and finally the king could be found on the top but

Folk religion during the Shang dynasty was polytheistic, meaning the people worshipped many gods. This bronze sculpture of a human head with gold leaf is typical of the bronze artwork created during the Shang dynasty. Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang.

Chinese Dynasties: 1. Shang: Also called Yin, dynasty that was China's earliest historically verifiable state 1766 B.C. to 1122 B.C. A. Reason's for Rise: Unlike the early accounts of history by the Chinese, there is archaeological evidence of the Shang, who built their cities in northern China around the eastern parts of the Yellow River. For this reason they are called the Yellow River civilization. They were a bronze age people; bronze-working seems to have entered China around 2000 BC (about one thousand years after its invention in Mesopotamia). B. Territorial Location & size at height of power (map): The Shang ruled the area from the North China Plain northward into present-day Shantung Province and westward to the tip of Honan

The regime of Shang Dynasty was a typical combination of the divine rights and rights of the leaders. The historians of China are not so used to call the leaders of Shang Dynasty as “emperor” because the title “emperor” was invented in Qin Dynasty by Qin Shi Huang. The “emperor” actually represents a system behind it which is the absolute obedience to the emperor. But it was not the same case with the three ancient dynasties (Xia, Shang, and Zhou) of China. There was no uniform regime over the nation at that time. The nation was separated into different tribes and people only followed their own tribe leaders. Wars between different tribes were common, so did the results of the wars. That could partially explain why Shang people use Oracle Bone to predict the results. They hoped they could be motivated and blessed by the will of gods in the war.

The first, early civilizations in world history separated themselves among six empires, establishing the first known forms of settlements and politics. Two of these empires, Ancient Egypt and the Yellow (Huang He) River Valley (Shang and Zhou) civilizations, formed methods of power and diplomacy that differed, as well as related to one another. Both Egypt and Huang He’s civilizations were set up on geography and environment that promoted settlement as well as create certain difficulties that led to technological development. Within these settlements, each civilization depended on a system of divine/semi-divine leadership in which the kingdom was split by dynasties.

The Shang king had power over everyone in the land. He had a council of officials that formulated and ran the government. Their last king, Di Xin, committed suicide when his army was defeated by the Zhou. His army had betrayed him by joining the Zhou in the Battle of Muye.

In China, the Shang Dynasty was around 2000 BC. This era is the earliest known period of religion in China. The Shang Dynasty had the people praying to several gods. Many of these gods were associated to one to more aspects of nature. To the people of the Shang Dynasty their religion was so important that the government ruled by what they believed was the will of the gods.One of the main gods that they followed is the Jade emperor; the first and king of the gods.

Even though the Qin Dynasty deprived the civilization of education, it created a strong bureaucratic system that limited feudal power and developed a cooperative population. Each Warring state followed a different political system, before it was conquered by Qin. The First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, felt it was necessary to legitimize his power to unify the city states and for a cooperative population. In the Qin Dynasty, “the institution of emperor had a special meaning in China as the repository of imperial legitimacy” (Feng 2013, 249). In other words, the first emperor was given the title of being a “mythical ruler” that had godly powers and is the righteous leader of the empire based on the Mandate of Heaven