The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāngcháo), also known as the Yin dynasty (殷代; Yīn dài), was a Chinese royal dynasty that ruled in the Yellow River valley during the 2nd millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from texts such as the Book of Documents, Bamboo Annals and Shiji. Modern scholarship dates the dynasty between the 16th and 11th centuries BC, with more agreement surrounding the end date than beginning date.
The Shang dynasty is the earliest dynasty within traditional Chinese history that is firmly supported by archaeological evidence. The archaeological site of Yinxu, near modern-day Anyang, corresponds to the final Shang capital of Yin. Excavations at Yinxu have revealed eleven major royal tombs, the foundations of former palace buildings, and the remains of both animals and humans that were sacrificed in official state rituals.
Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, stone, bone, and ceramic artefacts have been uncovered at Yinxu. Most prominently, the site has yielded the earliest known examples of Chinese writing—a corpus primarily consisting of divination texts inscribed on oracle bones, which were usually either turtle shells or ox scapulae. More than 20,000 oracle bones were discovered during the initial scientific excavations during the 1920s and 1930s, with over four times as many having been found since. The inscriptions provide critical insight into many topics from the politics, economy, and religious practices to the art and medicine of the early stages of Chinese history.
Traditional accounts
Several of the Chinese classics discuss the history of the Shang, including the Book of Documents, the Mencius and the Zuo Zhuan. From the sources available to him, the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian assembled a chronological account of the Shang as part of the Shiji (c. 91 BC) official history. Sima describes some Shang-era events in detail, while others are only mentioned as taking place during the reign of a particular king. A slightly different account of the Shang is given in the Bamboo Annals, a text whose history is complex: while originally interred in 296 BC, the authenticity of the manuscripts that have survived is controversial.
Throughout history, the Shang have also been referred to as "Yin" (殷). The Shiji and the Bamboo Annals each use this name for both the dynasty, as well as its final capital. Since Huangfu Mi's Records of Emperors and Kings in the 3rd century AD, "Yin" has been frequently used to refer specifically to the latter half of the Shang. It is also the name predominantly used for the dynasty in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, being rendered as In, Eun and Ân in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese respectively. The name seems to have originated during the subsequent Zhou dynasty; it does not appear in oracle bone inscriptions—which refer to the state as "Shang" (商), and to its capital as "Great Settlement of Shang" (大邑商; Dàyì Shāng)—nor does it appear in any bronze inscriptions securely dated to the Western Zhou (c. 1046 – 771 BC).
Founding myth
The founding myth of the Shang is described by Sima Qian in the Annals of the Yin. In the text, a woman named Jiandi, who was the second wife of Emperor Ku, swallowed an egg dropped by a black bird and subsequently gave birth miraculously to Xie. Xie is said to have helped Yu the Great to control the great flood and for his service to have been granted a place called Shang as a fief. The period before the Shang dynasty was established is known as the "Predynastic Shang" (or "Proto-Shang").
Dynastic course
In the Annals of the Yin, Sima Qian writes that the dynasty was founded 13 generations after Xie, when Xie's descendant, Tang, overthrew Jie, the impious and cruel final Xia ruler in the Battle of Mingtiao. The Records of the Grand Historian recount events from the reigns of Tang, Tai Jia, Tai Wu, Pan Geng, Wu Ding, Wu Yi and the depraved final king Di Xin, but the rest of the Shang rulers are merely mentioned by name. In the last century, Wang Guowei demonstrated that the succession to the Shang throne matched the list of kings in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian. According to the Records of the Grand Historian, the Shang moved their capital five times, with the final move to Yin in the reign of Pan Geng inaugurating the golden age of the dynasty.
Di Xin, the last Shang king, is said to have committed suicide after his army was defeated by Wu of Zhou. Legends say that his army and his equipped slaves betrayed him by joining the Zhou rebels in the decisive Battle of Muye. According to the Yi Zhou Shu and Mencius the battle was very bloody. The classic Ming dynasty novel Investiture of the Gods retells the story of the war between Shang and Zhou as a conflict with rival factions of gods supporting different sides in the war.
After the Shang were defeated, King Wu allowed Di Xin's son Wu Geng to rule the Shang as a vassal kingdom. However, Zhou Wu sent three of his brothers and an army to ensure that Wu Geng would not rebel. After Zhou Wu's death, the Shang joined the Rebellion of the Three Guards against the Duke of Zhou, but the rebellion collapsed after three years, leaving Zhou in control of Shang territory.
Descendants of the Shang royal family
After the collapse of the Shang dynasty, Zhou's rulers forcibly relocated "Yin diehards" and scattered them throughout Zhou territory. Some surviving members of the Shang royal family collectively changed their surname from the ancestral name Zi to the name of their fallen dynasty, Yin. The family retained an aristocratic standing and often provided needed administrative services to the succeeding Zhou dynasty. King Wu of Zhou ennobled Lin Jian (林堅), the son of Prince Bigan, as the Duke of Bo'ling. The Shiji states that King Cheng of Zhou, with the support of his regent and uncle, the Duke of Zhou, enfeoffed Weiziqi (微子啟), a brother of Di Xin, as the Duke of Song, with its capital at Shangqiu. This practice was known as "enfeoffment of three generations for two kings". The dukes of Song would maintain rites honouring the Shang kings until Qi conquered Song in 286 BC. Confucius was possibly a descendant of the Shang Kings through the Dukes of Song.
The Eastern Han dynasty bestowed the title of Duke of Song and 'Duke Who Continues and Honours the Yin' upon Kong An, because he was part of the legacy of the Shang. This branch of the Confucius family is a separate branch from the line that held the title of Marquis of Fengsheng village and later Duke Yansheng.
Another remnant of the Shang established the vassal state of Guzhu (present-day Tangshan), which Duke Huan of Qi destroyed. Many Shang clans that migrated northeast after the dynasty's collapse were integrated into Yan culture during the Western Zhou period. These clans maintained an elite status and continued practising the sacrificial and burial traditions of the Shang.
Both Korean and Chinese legends, including reports in the Book of Documents and Bamboo Annals, state that a disgruntled Shang prince named Jizi, who had refused to cede power to the Zhou, left China with a small army. According to these legends, he founded a state known as Gija Joseon in northwest Korea during the Gojoseon period of ancient Korean history. However, scholars debate the historical accuracy of these legends.
Early Bronze Age archaeology
Before the 20th century, the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC) was the earliest that could be verified from its own records. However, during the Song dynasty (960–1279), antiquarians collected bronze ritual vessels attributed to the Shang era, some of which bore inscriptions.
Yellow River valley
In 1899, several scholars noticed that Chinese pharmacists were selling "dragon bones" marked with curious and archaic characters. These were finally traced back in 1928 to what is now called Yinxu, north of the Yellow River near Anyang, where the Academia Sinica undertook archaeological excavation until the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.
Archaeologists focused on the Yellow River valley in Henan as the most likely site of the states described in the traditional histories.
After 1950, the remnants of the earlier walled settlement of Zhengzhou Shang City were discovered within the modern city of Zhengzhou.
It has been determined that the earth walls at Zhengzhou, erected in the 15th century BC, would have been 20 m (66 ft) wide at the base, rising to a height of 8 m (26 ft), and formed a roughly rectangular wall 7 km (4 mi) around the ancient city. The rammed earth construction of these walls was an inherited tradition, since much older fortifications of this type have been found at Chinese Neolithic sites of the Longshan culture (c. 3000 – c. 2000 BC).
In 2022, excavation of an elite tomb inside the city walls yielded over 200 artefacts, including a gold face covering measuring 18.3 by 14.5 cm (7.2 by 5.7 in).
In 1959, the site of the Erlitou culture was found in Yanshi, south of the Yellow River near Luoyang. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the Erlitou culture flourished c. 2100 BC to 1800 BC. They built large palaces, suggesting the existence of an organised state.
In 1983, Yanshi Shang City was discovered 6 km (3.7 mi) north-east of the Erlitou site in Yanshi's Shixianggou Township. This was a large walled city dating from 1600 BC. It had an area of nearly 200 ha (490 acres) and featured pottery characteristic of the Erligang culture.
The remains of a walled city of about 470 ha (1,200 acres) were discovered in 1999 across the Huan River from the well explored Yinxu site. The city, now known as Huanbei, was apparently occupied for less than a century and destroyed shortly before the construction of the Yinxu complex. Between 1989 and 2000, an important Shang settlement was excavated near Xiaoshuangqiao, about 20 km (12 mi) northwest of Zhengzhou. Covering an intermediary period between the Zhengzhou site and the late capitals on the Huan River, it features most prominently sacrificial pits with articulated skeletons of cattle, a quintessential part of the late Shang ritual complex.
Chinese historians were accustomed to the notion of one dynasty succeeding another, and readily identified the Erligang and Erlitou sites with the early Shang and Xia dynasty of traditional histories. The actual political situation in early China may have been more complicated, with the Xia and Shang being political entities that existed concurrently, just as the early Zhou, who established the successor state of the Shang, are known to have existed at the same time as the Shang. It has also been suggested the Xia legend originated as a Shang myth of an earlier people who were their opposites.
Other sites
The Erligang culture centred on the Zhengzhou site is found across a wide area of China, even as far northeast as the area of modern Beijing. At least one burial in this region during this period contained both Erligang-style bronze utensils and local-style gold jewellery. The discovery of a Chenggu-style dagger-axe at Xiaohenan demonstrates that even at this early stage of Chinese history, there were some ties between the distant areas of north China. The Panlongcheng site in the middle Yangtze valley was an important regional centre of the Erligang culture.
Accidental finds elsewhere in China have revealed advanced civilisations contemporaneous with but culturally unlike the settlement at Anyang, such as the walled city of Sanxingdui in Sichuan. Western scholars are hesitant to designate such settlements as belonging to the Shang. Also unlike the Shang, there is no known evidence that the Sanxingdui culture had a system of writing. The late Shang state at Anyang is thus generally considered the first verifiable civilisation in Chinese history.
In contrast, the earliest layers of the Wucheng culture predating Anyang have yielded pottery fragments containing short sequences of symbols, suggesting that they may be a form of writing quite different in form from oracle bone characters, but the sample is too small for decipherment.
Absolute chronology
The earliest securely dated event in Chinese history is the start of the Gonghe Regency in 841 BC, early in the Zhou dynasty, a date first established by Sima Qian. Attempts to establish earlier dates have been plagued by doubts about the origin and transmission of traditional texts and the difficulties in their interpretation. More recent attempts have compared the traditional histories with archaeological and astronomical data. At least 44 dates for the end of the dynasty have been proposed, ranging from 1130 to 1018 BC.
- The traditional dates of the dynasty, from 1766 to 1122 BC, were calculated by Liu Xin during the Han dynasty.
- A calculation based on the "old text" of the Bamboo Annals yields dates of 1523 to 1027 BC.
- David Pankenier, by attempting to identify astronomical events mentioned in Zhou texts, dated the beginning of the dynasty at 1554 BC and its overthrow at 1046 BC.
- The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project identified the establishment of the dynasty with the foundation of an Erligang culture walled city at Yanshi, dated c. 1600 BC. The project also arrived at an end date of 1046 BC, based on a combination of the astronomical evidence considered by David Pankenier and radiocarbon dating of archaeological layers.
- David Nivison and Edward Shaughnessy argue for an end date of 1045 BC, based on their analysis of the Bamboo Annals.
- Radiocarbon dating of oracle bones has yielded an end date of 1041 BC, with an uncertainty of about 10 years.