As the first two dynasties in China, the Xia Shang left countless myths and legends, but also left countless mysteries, one of which is that after the Shang Dynasty replaced the Xia Dynasty, did the whole society progress or regress?
Generally speaking, human civilization continues to develop and become more and more civilized, so the Shang Dynasty replaced the Xia Dynasty, which should be progressive. However, because there is no shortage of backward civilizations in history to eliminate advanced civilizations, such as the Yuan Dynasty replacing the Song Dynasty, so the Shang Dynasty to obtain the Xia Dynasty, it is indeed possible to be backward to eliminate the advanced, and then let the society regress.
In recent years, in the process of searching for the Xia Dynasty script, some scholars believe that the Xia Dynasty script is the Xia Seal, represented by the Xia Yu Shu and the Yu Wang Monument, the font is very mature, very standardized, the pen is rounded, pay attention to symmetry, is a very progressive text, while in contrast, the oracle bone is a backward font. Since writing is the crystallization of civilization, it is analyzed that the Shang Dynasty society is backward than the Xia Dynasty.
So, when the Shang Dynasty replaced the Xia Dynasty, did it progress or regress? For more than a hundred years, archaeology has made some major discoveries, and the answers have long been given.
Text: The Shang Dynasty was more mature than the Xia Dynasty
Whether there was writing in the Xia Dynasty or not, this question has been debated for many years, in fact, the oracle bone has already given the exact answer. In the oracle bone buciography, it is recorded that Emperor Jun, Shang Qi, Wang Hai and others, and they are all merchants of the Xia Dynasty or before, if the Xia Dynasty does not have writing, how can the merchants record the names of their ancestors? It can be seen that there were already writings during the Xia Dynasty. Therefore, the question is not whether the Xia Dynasty has written or not, but how the Xia Dynasty script compares to the oracle bone.
In 1999, the excavation report of "Yanshi Erlitou" was published, covering the excavation materials from 1959 to 1978, and there was a passage on the above that introduced the Erlitou pottery text (partly see the picture below): "The carved symbols found are mainly from the inner edge of the mouth of the Great Mouth Zun and the mouth part of other vessels, with vertical lines of different thicknesses, crosses, crosses, dendritic shapes, etc., some of which are similar to hieroglyphs. ”
After the new century, the result of the oracle bone, many scholars after years of research, now basically determined that these pottery scripts are words, not meaningless inscriptions, the following analysis of the meaning of Figure 1 - Figure 8.
First of all, Figure 1 has a clear inheritance relationship with the oracle bone, which belongs to the first text of "Ya". Figure 2-4 also means "ya", but at that time, this text was extremely simple and simple. It is unclear whether the two arrows in Figure 1 and Figure 2-4, the latter being the first text of the former or arrows belonging to two different uses.
Secondly, Figure 5-7, which seems to be a "mouth", actually represents a "trap", a well for hunting, not a well for draft.
Figure 8 of the third is the "mouth arrow" unity, which means a hunting method that combines two means, that is, hunting with arrows and traps. In both Oracle and modern Chinese, there is no separate text that can express this meaning, indicating that the division of labor is becoming more and more precise. Gossip, in this pottery text, because of the relationship between the social environment, a word in ancient times may contain extremely complex meanings, so it is very difficult to decipher oracle bones and other words, Western scholars say that they decipher a variety of ancient Egyptian, ancient Greek, Sumerian and other words, really incredible.
Judging from the comparison between the tao script and the oracle bone script in figure 2 below, the Shang Dynasty script is obviously more mature and systematic than the Xia Dynasty script. That is to say, from a literal point of view, the Shang Dynasty is more advanced and more civilized than the Xia Dynasty.
Ancient City: The Shang Dynasty is larger than the Xia Dynasty
The city is another important embodiment of human civilization, the larger the city, the larger the building, the more reasonable the layout, it means that the higher the degree of social civilization. Compared with the ruins of the ancient city of Xia and Shang, the Shang Dynasty is larger and more technologically advanced than the Xia Dynasty.
Regarding the ancient cities of the Xia Dynasty, the most typical ones are the ruins of Wangchenggang and Erlitou, of which the ruins of Wangchenggang are considered to be the yangcheng of Yudu, and the ruins of Erlitou are considered to be the capital of the middle and late Xia Dynasty.
The ruins of Wangchenggang are located in Dengfeng City, Henan, and there are two small cities on the site, of which the West City is well preserved, and at first it was found to cover an area of about 10,000 square meters, and after the new century, there was also a large city covering an area of 300,000 square meters, and confirmed that the big city was built after the destruction of the small city. However, there are not many buildings at the site, and the scholar Yang Baocheng pointed out in "Dengfeng Wangchenggang and Yudu Yangcheng", "The ruins of Wangchenggang Castle itself cannot be used as an "important symbol of entering civilized society", and from its scale and nature, the site is only a general settlement site with defensive facilities. ”
Erlitou site is located in Luoyang City, Henan Province, has long been widely known, here will not repeat, the site area is not less than 3 square kilometers, including palaces, residential areas, pottery workshops, copper workshops, cellars, tombs and other areas, is a well-planned, large and orderly, unprecedented dynastic capital. Compared with the Wangchenggang site, the Erlitou site has been reborn.
Regarding the merchant ruins, the earliest can be traced back to the Five Emperors era, located in the Shijiazhuang area of Hebei Province, of which the pingshan west gate site covers an area of more than 20,000 square meters, and the Luquan North Huzhuang site has not been fully explored, and the area now discovered is 150,000 square meters. However, similar to the Wangchenggang ruins, these sites are still "settlement sites".
During the late Five Emperors and the Xia Dynasty, merchants gradually moved south, from Shijiazhuang to Handan, to Puyang, Henan, and to Xinxiang, Henan. Among them, in the area of Mengzhuang in Hui County, Xinxiang, 125,000 square meters of ancient shang city was found, which is about the era of the merchant Wang Hai, indicating that the merchant has become a relatively independent political entity at that time.
After entering the Shang Dynasty, the huge ancient cities of the Shang Dynasty emerged in an endless stream, with Zhengzhou Mall reaching 25 square kilometers, Yanshi Mall covering an area of 1.9 million square meters, and Anyang Yin Ruins covering a total area of 36 square kilometers. Among them, Yanshi Shangcheng is the ruins of the capital city with the clearest layout structure found in the Xia and Shang dynasties, with palaces, treasuries, barracks, workshops, temples, etc., and the layout is very reasonable. Yanshi Mall, as well as the Erlitou ruins, the urban layout is far from being comparable to that of the Xia Dynasty.
Therefore, whether from the perspective of the sites of the shang dynasty or from the ancient cities of the Shang Dynasty, even if it is not certain that the Shang Dynasty is more advanced and the Xia Dynasty is more backward, at least it cannot be said that the Xia Dynasty is more advanced than the Shang Dynasty.
Bronze: The Shang Dynasty is more advanced than the Xia Dynasty
The level of utilization of metals is one of the important criteria for the degree of social civilization. The higher the degree of civilization and the more advanced the technology, the harder and larger metal products can be manufactured. But from the perspective of Xia Shang bronzes, the Shang Dynasty is far more than the Xia Dynasty.
In the ruins of Wangchenggang in the Xia Dynasty, archaeology found a bronze fragment, which belongs to tin lead bronze, only 5 or 6 centimeters square. Many bronzes have been excavated from the Erlitou site, with a variety of uses, the most widely known of which is the bronze jue (see picture below), but the bronzes at the site are not large in scale and belong to small bronzes.
In contrast, the bronze technology of the Shang Dynasty was very advanced, and almost one Simu Pengding could dwarf the entire Xia Dynasty bronze. According to the research report, Simu Pengding is 133 cm high, 110 cm long, 79 cm wide, and weighs 832.84 kg, which is the heaviest bronze in the Shang Dynasty.
Regarding the Xia Shang bronzes, there is a more intuitive comparison, which is also related to the Xia Shang script, which is the bronze jue.
Du Jinpeng, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out: "The knighthood characters in the oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty, the imitation of the jue, should obviously be the Erlitou culture or at the latest the Erligang period (also known as the Zhengzhou Shangcheng site) Shang culture, but in the late Shang Dynasty is no longer visible. That is to say, the "Jue" character of the Shang Dynasty should have been created in the Erlitou or Erligang period, which is about the late Xia Dynasty or the middle and early Shang Dynasty, so to a certain extent, the word "Jue" also corroborates the existing writing of the Xia Dynasty.
So, where did the Xia Shang bronzes change? In fact, the aesthetic difference between Xia and Shang is not to be discussed, what is important is that the bronze technology of the Shang Dynasty is far more advanced than that of the Xia Dynasty. The bronze carcass of the Erlitou site is thin, roughly made, three-legged and thin, and the body of the knight has few patterns, while the bronze knight of the Shang Dynasty (see the picture below) is thicker, stronger, and the body is usually painted with a pattern, and it is not difficult to see that the bronze technology of the Shang Dynasty is higher.
In summary, from the perspective of the three elements of writing, city and bronze, the Shang Dynasty is more advanced than the Xia Dynasty.
In fact, in recent years, archaeological discoveries, the "Xia Dynasty" statement may not be very accurate, because archaeology found that there were indeed some "regional kingdoms" before the Shang Dynasty, the most typical of which are the Wangchenggang ruins, Erlitou sites, etc., but these sites do not represent a "wide domain kingdom", so now it should be called "Xia Dynasty Period". That is to say, in history, there may not have been a Xia dynasty with wide-area kingship, but a Xia kingdom with regional kingdoms.
From the previous "Xia Dynasty" to the "Xia Dynasty Period", and the Shang Dynasty belonged to a wide area of royal power, so from this point of view, the Shang Dynasty was indeed more civilized and more advanced than the Xia Dynasty, and the Shang Dynasty did not replace the Xia Dynasty backwards.