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Notes on video lecture:
The Shang Dynasty (1554-1045 BC)
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on November 20, 2014 (go to class or lectures)


Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
breakfast, crack, Europeans, humans, Pantheon, archeologically, sky, written, China, drink, pharmacies, pattern, gross, animals, Xia, bronze, entombing, human, Latin, phonetic, abstract, future, offer, unified, married, eccentric, child, historical, spiritual, tomb, writing, Di, dialects, East, Yin, shamanic, vary, turtle, oracle, contentious, ridiculous, holistically, mountains, symbol
Shang Dynasty (1554-1045 BC)
first clearly attested dynasty
with Shang Dynasty the record matching up with the archeological evidence
alternate name is the Dynasty
the first source of significant written records
bones
inscriptions in vessels
once you have , you can match it up with the historical record in a rigorous way
the nature of Chinese writing
symbol of looks like a sun coming up behind a tree
the issue that Chinese symbol writing looks like pictures is a issue in Chinese scholarship
one argument is that Western alphabets are based on logocentrisms while Chinese alphabets are based on pictures
the argument goes: this is why tend to be more logical and analytical
Chinese have pictures and so tend to think more
taken to an extreme, this is a argument
some Chinese characters clearly have picture origins
very quickly, though, this just becomes an concept that means East
people don't see the anymore of the sun rising in the east
similar to the English word " " which comes from the idea of "breaking one's nightly fast"
but when I say, "Let's go have breakfast", you don't think of breaking your fast anymore
the same in Chinese: once you are a literate person, you are just reading words as people do who read European languages
so we don't want to get to about how different and Chinese writing system is, it's a writing system like any other writing system
one important feature, though, is it is not directly
there are many theories about why Chinese became at a very early date in history and remained unified
"I personally think it has to do with the writing system"
so you have people's who speak completely different , but when they read the language, they can read it in their own dialect
in this way different peoples are connected to the system in a way that is different than, let's say, if you are reading and you are a German speaker, if you are a German you can't read a Latin document from the Pope in German
however, people living in the outback areas of receiving an official notice from the central government can each read it in their own dialect
Shang chronology
King Tang - 1554 BC
defeated the evil king of the and founded the Shang dynasty
Wu Ding (1250-1192 BC)
Di Xin (1105-1046 BC)
23rd generation
dissolute, evil, mean to people, lost in
was defeated by his own army
oracle bones
makes up much of the information we have from Shang
shells
shoulder blades of oxen
discovered in 1898, "dragon bones" used in traditional medicine
they were being dug up by farmers and sold to
we now have hundreds of thousands of them
they were divination records
records of attempts to communicate with the ancestors
tend to be about things that are not under control
harvest
war
weather
dreams
sickness
bearing
there were attempts by Shang kings to get some insight into what will happen in the
so we have these records at least of what the Shang royal line was concerned about
Shang
Shang
"Lord on High"
the supreme god in the Shang pantheon
non-ancestral
seems to be an independent god
originally a god
referring to a region around the north pole in the sky
important because all the other stars go around it
ancestors
the past Shang ancestors
the further back, the more revered
nature deities
rivers
Shamanism
king is the political ruler and a kind of god
spirits communicate through patterns in bone
take a hot poker, stick it on the bone and it cracks
the pattern from the cracks reveals what the answer from the spirits is
the king is the only one who can interpret that
Shang bronze vessels
evocative imagery
animalistic spirits
shamanistic figures transforming or being embraced by
sacrifice
food and drink
animals and
large numbers of war captives were sacrifices in exchange for
favors
avoiding bad luck
announcements
if an important person is getting
you don't communicate with the ancestors without making some sort of to them
need keep them happy
the dead
elite tombs were very large
prepared physical body
there was a process which they went through to turn a dead person into a spirit
tombs wildly in elaborateness
showed a very stratified culture
would put human sacrifices in the
luxury items, food and tools
a good part of the national product went into the ground with dead people
dynasties:
Shang Dynasty (1554-1045 BC)
ruled in the Yellow River valley, the first source of significant written records
earliest known body of Chinese writing, mostly divinations inscribed on oracle bones
People:
![]() |
######################### (1675-1646 BC) The first king of the Shang dynasty in Chinese history, overthrew Jie, the last ruler of the Xia dynasty
|
Spelling Corrections:
wholistically ⇒ holistically
disolute ⇒ dissolute
ancesteral ⇒ ancestral
Ideas and Concepts:
On how a lack of unified phonetics in the Chinese writing system helped China unify early and stay unified, via this tonight's Ancient Chinese Thought course:
"The issue that Chinese symbol writing looks like pictures is contentious in Chinese scholarship. One argument is that Western alphabets are based on logocentrisms while Chinese alphabets are based on pictures. This is why, the argument goes, that Europeans tend to be more logical and analytical while the Chinese tend to think more holistically. Taken to an extreme, this is a ridiculous argument, since while some Chinese characters clearly have picture origins, for people learning to read, symbols very quickly come to represent abstract concepts, e.g. even though the character for "east" resembles a sun behind a tree, literate people simply read the symbol as the concept "east". A similar example is the English word "breakfast" which comes from the idea of "breaking one's nightly fast", yet if I use the word breakfast in a sentence, you don't think of breaking your nightly fast, but just think of the concept of a morning meal. So we don't want to get too eccentric about how different the Chinese writing system is, it's a writing system like any other writing system.
However, one important difference in Chinese writing is that is does not have a unified phonetic system. There are many theories about why China became unified at a very early date in history and remained unified, and it could have something to do with this peculiarity of their writing system since it enabled people who spoke completely different dialects to use the same written language. This was very different in Europe where a member of a Germanic or Gallic province could not read a Latin document written by the Pope in their native German or French dialects. However, people living in the outback areas of China receiving an official notice from the central government could each read the written document aloud to members who could understand their own dialect."
"The issue that Chinese symbol writing looks like pictures is contentious in Chinese scholarship. One argument is that Western alphabets are based on logocentrisms while Chinese alphabets are based on pictures. This is why, the argument goes, that Europeans tend to be more logical and analytical while the Chinese tend to think more holistically. Taken to an extreme, this is a ridiculous argument, since while some Chinese characters clearly have picture origins, for people learning to read, symbols very quickly come to represent abstract concepts, e.g. even though the character for "east" resembles a sun behind a tree, literate people simply read the symbol as the concept "east". A similar example is the English word "breakfast" which comes from the idea of "breaking one's nightly fast", yet if I use the word breakfast in a sentence, you don't think of breaking your nightly fast, but just think of the concept of a morning meal. So we don't want to get too eccentric about how different the Chinese writing system is, it's a writing system like any other writing system.
However, one important difference in Chinese writing is that is does not have a unified phonetic system. There are many theories about why China became unified at a very early date in history and remained unified, and it could have something to do with this peculiarity of their writing system since it enabled people who spoke completely different dialects to use the same written language. This was very different in Europe where a member of a Germanic or Gallic province could not read a Latin document written by the Pope in their native German or French dialects. However, people living in the outback areas of China receiving an official notice from the central government could each read the written document aloud to members who could understand their own dialect."