With each of the first six historical cultures, we are vexed by the enigma of origin. Whence came the people and culture of Sumer [Parrot, 1953, pp. 308-331], Egypt [Childe, 1928, p. 6], Indus [Wheeler, 1959, pp. 100-104], Shang [Li Chi, 1957, pp. 15-18], and Maya [Thompson, 1954]? The greatest mystery concerns the origins of the Sumerians, who arrived in the Tigris-Euphrates valley about 3900 B.C. with an already developed culture. On the otherhand, archeologists know the outlines of gradual development of Mayan civilization from beginning (2500 B.C.) to end (950 A.D.), in which writing appeared spontaneously about 300 A.D. The question of mutual influence between these centers may be illumined when the Indus and Oxus-Jaxartes scripts are deciphered. These may be among the most exciting extant problems of archeology today, along with the questions of Sumerian and Egyptian origins, and the possibility of earlier cultures, such as the legendary Lemuria and Atlantis.
In China, archeological research has not been very extensive so far, and most of the mysteries are due simply to lack of evidence. This shortage may be permanent, due to the fact that one of the principle materials of early China was bamboo, which disintegrates rapidly in the west Chinese climate. We owe our knowledge of the early historical period to the peculiar divination practices of the Shang people, which required them to record a small portion of their writings on bones, which survived three millenia underground until their discovery by antiquarians in 1899. Excavation at Hsiao Thun, in the Anyang district of Hondu, from 1928 to 1937, provided about fifteen thousand important specimens. The beginning of the historical period in China is now tentatively dated at about 1300 B.C., or 1600 to 1800 years later than the earliest Sumerian writing (see Figure 11). The Hsiao Thun script is highly developed, containing about 2500 glyphs, and more primitive forms must have existed for several prior centuries.
In brief outline, the current state of archeological knowledge of the rise of Chinese civilization is this (see Figure 11).
The pre-Shang discoveries indicate the occupation of the Yellow River basin by the Chinese ancestral stock, and several other varieties of man, in Paleolithic times, possibly for 20,000 years. Extensive search by archeologists have revealed only three Neolithic cultures: the Yangshao (Painted Pottery, or Western Hsia), the Lung shan (Black Pottery, Eastern I, or Squatting Barbarian), and the Hsiao-thun (proto-Shang). [Li Chi, 1957, pp. 20-21] There characteristics are shown in tabular form in Figure 7. When the Hsiao-thun people conquered the Lung-shan, and subsequently the Yang-shao, the Shang Dynasty was born. Its culture was a composite of these three, in which writing and bronze-casting soon evolved. The genesis of Shang writing is the principle outstanding problem in the origins of Chinese culture. [Li Chi, 1957, p. 38]
Like Egypt, Sumer, and Maya, the Shangs were ruled by a priestly caste. While the peasants worked in the rice, wheat, and millet fields with plows drawn on foot or by buffalo, or cared for the herds of sheep, cattle, goats, and dogs, craftsmen cast bronze or threw pots, princes hunted elephants, tigers, bears, and boars from horse-drawn bronze chariots, and the priests labored at their secret arts: writing, arithmetic, maintenance of the calendar, and divination by yarrow, scapula, and plastron. Dogs and men were sacrificed to the ancestors and the deities: Shang Ti (the Ruler Above), Eastern Mother, Western Mother, Dragon Woman, Queen Earth, and the Gods of Winds, Rivers, Earth, and the Four Quarters. Frequent wars were pursued with large armies. The rulers lived gabled houses, the peasants in Neolithic earth pits. Music was made with wind and percussion instruments, in the diatonic scale. Thanks to the oracle bones, many further details may be found in the literature [especially Creel, 1936]. But as we are interested mainly in the archeology of wisdom, we consider further only the priestly arts.
Calendar. The year was divided into twelve lunar months, beginning approximately at new moon, with full moon on the fifteenth day of the month. Each month comprised three weeks of ten days. Various systems of intercalary days were used to maintain the lunar and solar cycles.
Arithmetic. The Shang were the first people to have the decimal number system with place value notation. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division were known, and probably computations were carried out on the suan pan (counting-board) with sticks, from which the number symbols were derived. Presumably, this art developed, as in other civilizations, because of the necessities of an accurate calendar for agriculture and ritual, and precise records for commerce.
Divination. According to tradition, yarrowmancy was used by the Shang, but to date no definite evidence has been found. This practice originally consisted of drawing long or short stalks of yarrow (Achillea sabirica, or Siberian milfoil) to answer a yes-or-no question. Eventually, it evolved into the yarrow oracle of the I Ching. Other Shang methods:
Literature. The primitive forms of the Shang writing have not yet been found by archeologists, possibly because they occurred only on perishable materials. By the time of the Anyang oracle bones, the writing system already comprised all of the important principles of character formation used by modern Chinese writing, and about two thousand five hundred glyphs, which are prototypes for the contemporary characters. The system may have developed, before scapulimancy, for the purpose of sending messages to the ancestors. This was done by writing a letter and burning it, the message traveling to heaven with the smoke. [Creel, 1937, pp. 161-2] Of Shang literature, only the oracle bones and a few bronze inscriptions have been unearthed. But through literary evidence from later times, it is known that the Shang had many books. In fact, their symbol for book () indicates a set of bamboo strips, joined with a cord. Some such books, from the Han period, still exist. But no Shang books have been yet discovered, and it is unlikely that any could have survived. Presumably their language would have been more sophisticated than the telegram style of the bones, necessitated by the lack of space. Some late Shang literature may have survived through successive recopying by the scribes, but scholars have not been able to prove this is so. The suspected remnants are found in the Lien Shan, Kuei Tsang, Shih Ching, and Shang Shu (see Figure 9).
After a lengthy war, the Chou people conquered the Shang. The vanquished were allotted the Sung territory, as Chou vassals. Presumably, this was to insure the maintenance of the priestly arts, especially sacrifices to the ancestors, which the Chou had learned to revere during several generations of contact with their Shang neighbors. The Chou swallowed Shang culture into their own, and conquered much of northern China, establishing the Chou Dynasty. The new hierarchy of deities was headed by Thien, the (male) sky god, and the calendar was changed from a ten to a seven-day week. Society was led not by a priestly caste, but by clans of nobles whoheld all the offices and owned all the land. It was more strictly patriarchal than the Shang. Trade was highly organized, and money coined. The divination arts remained the specialty of the Shang priests, while writing became the common property of the nobles, who delighted in writing notes and letters, and literature flourished. Thousands of bamboo tablet books were written, but few have survived (see Figure 9). The kernel of the I Ching (the Pen Ching) was among these (see Figure 10).
In the Chhun Chhiu (722 to 480 BC) and Warring States (480 to 221 BC) periods, Chou culture grew from feudalism to high sophistication in the midst of chronic warfare. The Iron Age arrived, and music developed into a major art. Scapulimancy and plastromancy were superceded by a more sophisticated yarrowmancy based on the trigrams and hexagrams of the I Ching, and by astrology, geomancy, and other methods. [Needham, 1956, Ch. 14] The Confucian and Taoist philosophies were born, and an extensive scholarly literature emerged, including the classics, chronological records, and many philosophical and historical commentaries (see Figure 9). Mathematicians discovered the Pythagorean Theorem of trigonometry, and many other properties of numbers and angles, and began the first classic of Chinese mathematical literature, the Chou Pei Suan Ching (The Arithmetical Classic of the Gnomon and The Circular Paths of Heaven). [Needham, 1959, pp. 19-33] Proto-science was originated by Tsou Yen. [Needham, 1956, Ch. 13(a)] Chinese culture had caught up with Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece (see Figure 11).
With the newly forged long iron sword, the Chhien ended Chou dominance, unified China, and established the first Chinese Empire, under the rule of Shih Huang-ti. He reformed government, built the Great Wall, a network of roads, the postal system, and burned books, including those of Confucius, all in a few years. After his death and a brief revolt, Kao-tsu established the Han dynasty, in 202 BC. Confucius was restored to favor, and his books reconstructed. The Taoists flourished, and several other schools of philosophy were developed. Mathematicians finished the Chou Pei Suan Ching and began the Chiu Chang Suan Shu (Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art) which reached the level we would call high school algebra, including areas, volumes, square and cube roots, ratio and proportion, and negative numbers. In the natural sciences, the yin-yang and five-element theories of Tsou Yen matured into naturalist and alchemical theories, and the commentaries on the I Ching were written (see Figure 10).