Shang and Zhou

A detailed Summary of Shang and Zhou

During the Shang period life as we know it had just began from our knowledge started about in 1766 B.C. ended in about 1122 B.C. the capital at the time was An-yang. The first signs of the Chinese writing system were found on the oracle bones. Some of the Chinese characters are recognizable with the untrained sys because they have the same character as they have now. Other finds in An-yang are the bronze items which means that they had an idea of being wealthy with the goods most of the good where weapons so they must have had many solider, also they found many ceremonial vessels which probably indicates they the people at the time where very religious. During the Shang period farming, they also raised sheep and cow but those were primarily for the use of milk and not for the meat. Bronze was still costly at the time so they made their farming tools out of wood or stone in some cases. The political life of the Shang was very simple the successor of the rule was usually the brother of the king and not always the son of the king. The culture of the Shang was almost as they were slaves, no freedom and yet they had to do the kings bidding at anytime. There were many human sacrifices, and the servants and the aristocrats where buried w

Well of course the human sacrifices stopped and many of the economic ideas have changed instead of just farming, they are making all sorts of items for export as their main source of wealth. Another source of wealth at the time was trading heavy, heavy trading with other country places. But some of the things are the same as before like the farming tools in some cases they have upgraded. Many parts of china are still very primitive because of lack of education. In both dynasties the rulers both had an iron fist at one point. The writing I believe stayed the same so that they could read and write. Some of the important changes where that they did not have anymore human sacrifices and that they also had generally had less slaves and the burial of the kings were still the same importance but just at less magnitude. Both of the dynasties were conquer when they were both weak and unable to defend for their lives. The bronze metal casting was never the same after the Shang dynasty so that the other dynasty did not make the bronze casting anything like the Shang so in other words it was a lost art. The Kings did not have as high in quality as some of the kings in the Shang period. There are many other differences and many similarities but because of the lack of knowledge of the Shang period other comparisons are only guesses.

City-states were highly aristocratic societies. As technology advanced so did the amount of p

Some common words found in the essay are:
, Zhou Dynasty, Zhou Shang, T'ien Heaven, Zhou City-states, Luoyang Zhou, human sacrifices, shang period, zhou dynasty, Ti Lord, shang dynasty, casting shang, source wealth, zhou conquered, bronze items, dynasty dynasty, farming tools,

Approximate Word count = 958
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History