Social Studies: Huang Valley Flashcards
What is loess?
A dust like material that can form soil
What is a dike?
Wall to hold back water
What are oracle bones?
Animal bone or shell carved with written characters that was used to predict the future in ancient China
What is a pictograph?
A picture that represents a word or an idea
What is logograph?
A symbol that represents a word or a group of words
What is interpret?
Yo explain or give the meaning ofh
What is a challenge?
Something that is demanding or difficult to do
How is China’s geography challenging?
The size of the country is huge. It is also covered with rugged mountains such as the Himalayas and vast deserts such as the Gobi and Taklimakan.
These factors made it difficult to travel, communicate, conduct trade and govern in ancient times.
This also isolated China from other ancient civilizations.
What are the 2 main rivers in China?
Huang and Chang (Yangtze) Rivers.
Why was the Huang River the more important one for the development of early Chinese civilization?
It travels eastward and goes through the Gobi Desert - winds blew loess from the desert into the river, and the river carries loess downstream to deposit it on river banks when it overflows. This makes soft fertile soil which ancient Chinese people used for agriculture, leading to the first large settlements in China.
What was the first dynasty that rose from the Huang River settlements? How did it rise to dominate the region?
As farming villages grew with agriculture, villages start to have chiefs and ruler to organize their workforce and lead armies. Strong chiefs led their armies to take over other villages, creating small kingdoms.
One of these rulers was strong enough to build the Shang Dynasty which ruled for 600 years.
The Shang Dynasty grew after farming villages grew
How were rulers chosen in the Shang Dynasty?
Rulers came from the same family, and passed from brother to brother, and from the youngest brother to his oldest son.
How did the Shang Dynasty expand?
The rulers organized their workforce to work and collect new land, which produced surplus food to support more people and to support an army. The rulers then conquered neighboring lands and expand their territory.
What did the rulers build as they got wealthier?
They built city walls and dikes along the Huang River to try to control floods.
How can we know so much about the ancient Shang Dynasty?
They had a system of writing, and wrote on oracle bones that survived until today.
They wrote questions about the future on oracle bones, heat them until they cracked, and tried to interpret meanings. They also recorded important events on oracle bones. This is how we learned so much about their civilization.
