History-Chapter 2 Flashcards
What influence did climate and rainfall have on China?
It affects the crops: common crops- rice and water plants and millet and wheat
Neolithic culture can be divided into ..
eastern and western geographic regions
Oracle Bones
Interpreting cracks on heated bones inscribed with questions.
What effected the development of chinese politics and culture?
The tension between the settled communities and the more nomadic bands.
How do the Chinese favor the different genders?
The men were buried more than women, the women were buried with jewelery,, and the men gained a favored position in society.
The Five Sovereigns
Fui Xi- Ox-tamer Shen Nong- divine farmer Huang Di- yellow king Yao-rituals Shun-piety-appointed wise officials
Yu and his son founded what dynasty ?
The Xia Dynasty
Shang Dynasty
Systems of government, cities, writing, class and occupational stratification, religious ritual as the basis of the state, and sophisticated metallurgy. Kings could exercise a lot of power. Used bronze to make elaborate ceremonial and drinking vessels, weapons, pottery, and stone carvings.
Pictographs
Increasingly standardized representations of words for things rather than a scribe’s rendition of the thing itself, which is not considered writing.
Shang Writing
Characters represented many sounds or meanings. It could be used to represent many languages as well as variations of chinese in different locations and across the centuries.
Written questions were directed to who?
Ancestral spirits, who believed to be closely tied to their living descendants as members of the family group
Lady Hao
Her oracle bones had detailed her military leadership, her supervision of landed estates and her own walled town, and her importance in Wu Ding’s concerns for her health and reproductive ability.
The chinese believed that masculine superiority, so when Lady Hao consulted an oracle bone she discovered..
her birth would be unlucky due to her birth of a girl
Scribes
Recorded the kings decisions and told them to the distant subjects. They later could become trusted officials.
Religion played the key connective role in maintenance of..
Social order
Why was the king at the top of the shang power structure?
best able to communicate with supreme deity, Di and the shang himself was best able to communicate with his own ancestors.
Offerings to the kings ancestors
Human sacrifice and rich foods
Common people
didn’t belong to a clan, had no recorded ancestors
Kings and nobles
Belonged to a clan
Lesser of society had their local gods
fundamental forces of nature, such as rivers, mountains, wind, rain
Peasants
Might be free but had little mobility
Zhou Dynasty
Shang had become corrupt and that heavan had given Zhou a mandate to become the new leader
Mandate of Heaven
The new and long lasting aspect of chinese thought: Cosmos is ruled by an impersonal and all powerful heaven that sits in judgement over the human ruler who links heavens commands and human fate. The king became known as the son of heaven.
Zhou’s military
Chinese tribes switched to Zhou’s military because they were so strong. the very size of Zhou’s domain made it impossible to be ruled directly from the center.
Zhou’s power depleting
The kings and the vassals were linked by kinship of related or by marriage. Weak kings took over and now nobles could gain rank. The disloyal vassals destroyed the capital and killed the king. The royal family still practiced the rituals and some stronger vassals started calling themselves kings.
Warring States Period
Warfare often took a chivalrous form, but it turned more violent during the two and a half centuries.
The contestants of power were..
The Qi, Jin, and the Chu
Zhou Economy and Society
New lands were claimed for agriculture, marginal fields, and marshes, which encouraged trade in textiles. Chinese mastered the use of the iron.
The manure and use of the Iron tipped plow led to ..
Large scale irrigation and water control projects. Canals made it possible to move food and useful items dependably over long distances.
Zhou kings worshipped
Their ancestors
Western Zhou used magic, and then eastern Zhou established yin and yang
Yang had come to be associated with the sun and all things male, strong, warm, and active, whereas Yin was identified with the moon and all things female, dark, cold, weak, and passive.
Zhou men were premitted more than ..
One wife, although later law restricted men to only one.
The book of songs
Zhou created the first collection of poetry, classified as one of chinas greatest classics
Aristocratic wives
Often expected to mediate between their natal and husbands families, a useful skill in an era of turmoil and warring states.
Peasants
Controlled by government officials and were forced into debt slavery. To increase production and control of farmers, some rulers used their own officials rather than local intermediaries to govern the farm population. Peasants could work off debt
The Philosophical Schools- great teachers and philosophers
Thought deeply about the nature of humanity and the problems of society.
Confucianism: The Foundation
Kong Fuzi- Tried to explain the universe and the place of the Chinese people within it as well as the appropriate behavior among human beings in society.
Confucious
- lower aristocracy of a minor state
- conservative order
- his society was selfish, and greedy
- improvement of society depended upon the ruler and the quality of the government depended on the ruler’s moral character.
- his view of society was hierarchical
- his teachings resulted in an ethical program for this world
Junzi
Should be virtuous, righteous, humane, wise, and brave
Five Relationships
Between parent and child, ruler and subject, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and friend and friend.
Li
covers propriety, manners, and ceremonial and sacred rituals.
Mozi
believed in universal love instead, though he also believed in a hierarchy headed up by those who were capable and educated.
Dao
- learning to be great consists in shining with the illustrious power of moral personality, in making new people, abiding in their highest goodness.
- moral personality,highest goodness
Ren
A virtue applied to all without any hierchical dimensions
- all relationships were to be grounded in this, that human -relatedness
- motivation to support there leader
Mencius
- responsible for the emergence of confucianism
- believed all people are innately good and tend to seek the good.
- compared human nature to a mountain, once beautiful and lush, made barren by humans and animals denuding it of vegetation.
- Heaven hears as the people hear, and heaven sees as the people see.
- mandate of heaven became associated as people’s right to rebel and to overthrow the unjust leadership of a leader who had lost the mandate of heaven.
Mencius created.. The Well-Field system
Eight families to farm fields shaped like the chinese character for well, with one field in the middle farmed by all eight families for taxes. If the the ruler was not wise, it would be a sign from heaven that he was unfit to rule. Such a ruler then would loose its mandate of Heaven.
Xunzi
Wise leadership, proper rituals, and even strict laws would make humans capable of living good lives, filled with filial piety and morality.
Legalism
Lord Shang placed an emphasis on laws. He determined his subordinates’ military rank by the number of heads they cut off in battle, organized territory into counties, attracted farmers to those counties by offering them houses, land, and freedom from serfdom, made people responsible for crimes committed by members of their mutual responsibility groups, and codified laws.
Han Feizi
Believed that rulers should not be expected to be moral leaders who treated their subjects with kindness.
Daoism
Contrasted greatly with confucian ideals and practices, as it focused on natural harmony rather than social harmony. Did not welcome rulers’ intervention to improve people’s livihoods. The Dao was the way of nature with which humans should seek harmony rather than dominance.
The two Daoist texts:
Daodejing or Laozi- Rulers should not take actions, but rather allow nature to take its course.believed that doing nothing their state or society could be strengthened.
Zhuangzi-strongly rejected politics, rejects ancestors worship of bones.
