Читать книгу World History For Dummies - Peter Haugen - Страница 65

A river also runs through the beginnings of Chinese civilization: the powerful Yellow River. Around 4000 BC, people started farming (first millet and later rice) along this northernmost of China’s major rivers. Chinese legends attribute the nation’s origins to semimystical, demigod monarchs, including a Yellow Emperor of about 2700 BC, three “Sage Kings” or “August Rulers” (from 2350 BC), and a Hsia Dynasty that lasted until 1766 BC. Because historians have no proof that these figures are anything but legend, they credit the later house of Shang (also called Yin) as being the first dynasty to bring together warring Yellow River city-states in the 16th century BC.

Under the Shang, the early Chinese charted the movement of the sun and stars to predict seasons, kept astronomical records to rival those of the Egyptians, and devised a nifty 12-month calendar. The Shang Dynasty lasted until 1027 BC, when it was succeeded by the Zhou Dynasty.

Isolated from Asia Minor and Africa, where the Sumerians and Egyptians invented writing, the Chinese developed their own kind of pictograph symbols. Archaeologists have found characters on Shang Dynasty artifacts that are essentially the roots of the same writing system that China uses today. China’s historical writings outshine the records of any other culture in volume, detail, and continuity. For the BC period, China boasts 26 major official written dynastic histories.