The Shang Dynasty

1600 BCE - 1046 BCE

The Shang (Shang) Dynasty is the earliest recorded dynasty in Chinese history. They ruled in the middle and lower Yellow River valley between 1600 BCE and 1050 BCE, the same time as pharaohs ruled Egypt. 

Like the Egyptians, the Shang people came up with many innovations. The oldest evidence of Chinese writing comes from the Shang dynasty. The Shang used math, developed a twelve-month calendar and tracked solar eclipses. The Shang were known for their impressive work with bronze, an alloy made from copper and tin.  They also created art from ceramics.

The Shang used weapons made of bronze and stone, including spears, long-handled axes similar to halberds. They protected themselves with bronze or leather helmets. Archers used bows made from a combination of animal horn or bone and wood. In warfare, Shang archers would shoot arrows from a moving horse-drawn chariot.

People of the Shang dynasty worshiped their ancestors and a god called Shangdi, the supreme ancestor.

The language the Shang spoke was an early form of modern Chinese. Historians have learned a lot about the Shang from the carvings on oracle bones that were used to consult ancestors. The writing carved into these bones shows they had a complex language.

The Shang tomb of a king's wife, Fu Hao, was discovered intact in 1976 in the ruins of Yinxu. Her coffin was surrounded by valuable jade figurines, pottery, hair pins, mirrors of polished bronze, jewelry and more than 6,000 cowrie shells (which were used as money in the Shang Dynasty). The bones of 16 sacrificed humans and six dogs were buried in her tomb to serve her in the afterlife.