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