O CHAPTER ONE THE EARLY DYNASTIES The first dynasty in ancient China was the Xia However the Xia kings who reportedly ruled from about 2070 to 1600 BCE are mentioned only in legends They may not have actually existed According to legend the founder of the Xia dynasty was Yu the Great Yu was credited with draining the waters of a great flood and introducing irrigation to ancient China His contributions made him a lord of the harvest Tradition gives the names of the dynasty s successive rulers ending with Jie Jie is said to have fallen in love with a beautiful but evil woman who acted cruelly The story says that the outraged people rose up in rebellion Tradition tells that the leader of this rebellion Zi Lü became the first ruler of the next great dynasty the Shang The Shang Dynasty Until the 1920s many experts believed that the Shang dynasty might also be a legend like the Xia
TION UAE This sculpture in Chongqing China shows Yu the Great center ridding the land of floodwaters archaeologists discovered many artifacts that helped prove the dynasty's existence These artifacts include bones and shells carved with Chinese characters Thanks to these interesting finds the Shang dynasty is the first recorded Chinese dynasty for which there is both written and archaeolog ical evidence The Shang created one of the
Ancient Chinese characters cover the base of a tortoise shell believed to date back to the Shang dynasty IO
THE EARLY DYNASTIES earliest advanced civilizations in East Asia Culturally the dynasty is most noted for its bronze tools and written documents ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT WORLDS Apart from written records and carved inscriptions knowledge about ancient peoples is derived from the work of archaeologists Most of the significant archaeological findings have been made in the past two hundred years Some of the most important archaeological digs in China were made after the late 1970s Weapons pottery and muscial instruments are some of the more common archaeological finds but other surprising discoveries have been made In 2002 a set of four thousand year old noodles were unearthed at Lajia an archaeological site in the Qinghai Province of northwestern China The noodles made from a type of grain called millet were the oldest noodles ever discovered Location and Type of Rule Historians think that the Shang kings ruled from about 1600 to 1046 BCE The Shang state did not cover the entire territory that IIT
