The Yin Xu Archaeological Site 殷墟考古遗址 | Chinese History - The Shang Dynasty E27

Now as the site of the capital of the late Shang dynasty, Yinshi, holds a special place in its importance to modern Chinese archaeology. It is the earliest of all the ancient Chinese capitals that are referred to directly in writings passed down through the ages. You know, starting from records found on the oracle bones dating back more than 3,300 years ago. Now the number of artefacts discovered from the site holds invaluable resources for historians and scholars looking to form deeper understandings of early Chinese civilisation and the way it developed into what we know of as the Chinese culture today. And it also displayed the peak and the pinnacle of Bronze Age culture in all its glory. So what has been discovered so far in the Yinshi site? And what do these discoveries mean for, you know, the modern study of archaeology in China? Well, hello and welcome to the show. My name is Api Ngo. I'm that Chinese history guy. Here we share the myths, legends and histories of the Chinese people from the first creator to the last imperial dynasty. More than 6,000 years of stories, one video at a time. And before we continue, don't forget to give us a like, a sub, a comment and a share. Now Yinshi or the Yinshi archaeological site is actually the last capital of the Shang dynasty. Now the entire area encompasses both the north and the south banks of the Huan River. Now the archaeological site includes the palace and temple zone, the royal mausoleum zone and various other areas that served as residences for the different tribes and the clans that were residing in the capital at that time. And also found were the various workshops for, you know, bronze casting, jade working and bone working and, you know, pottery and stuff like that. And on site was also found a massive storage cave for oracle bones which, as we know, contains most of the records that we found regarding the Shang dynasty today. Now amongst all, every single Chinese ancient capital that can be found in documented records, Yinshi is the earliest one. And this has been proven by, you know, carbon dating the artefacts that were excavated there and by the records that were documented on the oracle bones that, like I said before, dated back more than 3,300 years ago. And as the capital of the Shang dynasty, Yinshi was, you know, not simply just a massive building or something like that. It is actually an amalgamation of the political, economical, and military, and even the cultural and rituistic center of the Shang dynasty. In fact, one could call this archaeological site a microcosm of the entire Shang dynasty culture. And that is the reason this Yinshi archaeological site holds such an important place in the study of archaeology and ancient Chinese history. Now the artefacts and the contents preserved in this archaeological site presented the many different facades of the sophistication and the glory of ancient Bronze Age Chinese culture or Chinese civilization. And therefore, for the past century or so, the study of the Yinshi archaeological site not only gave birth to what is known as modern day Chinese archaeology, it has become the indisputable symbol of modern archaeology in China. Now the discovery of the oracle bones and the oracle bone scripts in the Yinshi archaeological site, it actually shone a light on these studies of early Chinese civilization. And by the latest count, more than 150,000 pieces of oracle bones have been excavated from the site so far, of which more than 5,000 individual characters have been recognized, and of those, more than 1,500 of these characters have been successfully translated. And due to the fact that the content recorded on these oracle bones, they basically covered events across every section of society and spanned a vast amount of time, across long periods of time, they are often seen as the earliest database or encyclopedias of Chinese culture, ancient Chinese culture and society. Now, over its more than 3,000 years of development, the oracle bone script might have gone through various changes in terms of the way it looks and the way it's written, but the core concept of this writing system has been preserved in modern day Chinese writing, which we know today, which we use today, and in fact is a language, a writing system that is used by about 20% of all humans today. And not only that, it has greatly influenced the sense of aesthetics amongst the Chinese people, and it laid down, basically you could say that it laid down the foundation for the future development of artistic Chinese calligraphy. Now, apart from these oracle bones, another major discovery made on the Yinshi site was actually bronze artefacts. Now, in the year 1978, more than 4,000 pieces of bronze artefacts were discovered and excavated from the Yinshi archaeological site. And this, basically this is arguably the biggest find in archaeological history. Now, apart from the discovery of the Simuwu Tating, or the Simuwu giant bronze vessel, which we mentioned in the last episode, many other forms of bronze artefacts have since been excavated from the tombs located within the site, many of which have turquoise inlays. And these artefacts actually include full sets of bronze drinking implements, bronze tableware, ritualistic and implements, and various types of bronze weapons and horse chariot parts. Now, the sure amount of bronze artefacts excavated was jaw-dropping, to say the least, between the years 1936 and 1937 alone, before the Japanese occupation. Within this year or two, more than 200 pieces of very important artefacts were found in Xiaotun village alone. Now, although the Simuwu bronze vessel is the biggest and heaviest bronze artefact to be unearthed anywhere on this planet, you know, weighing in at 834.84 kilograms or 1836.1 pounds, archaeologists actually believe that it is still not the biggest bronze vessel that was ever casted during the Shang dynasty. Why do I say so? Because in the year 2003, archaeologists discovered a bronze casting workshop in An Kang. Now, in this workshop, there were actually various pieces of moulds which were used for bronze casting, and these moulds were meant for a circular bronze vessel which, believe it or not, is supposed to be more massive than the Simuwu giant bronze vessel, with the diameter of this vessel's mouth supposedly measuring around 1.6 meters. It's huge! 1.6 meters is, you know, basically almost as tall as me. Yeah, that's just the opening of this vessel, so one can only imagine how massive this vessel would have been. Now, of course, it is a great pity that until today, this supposedly biggest bronze vessel ever casted in history has yet to be discovered. So, yeah, maybe we will see it being unearthed or excavated one day. One can only hope. Now, I guess we have established, you know, basically from the previous episode onwards that Shang dynasty bronze casting actually enjoyed a very high level of sophistication and technological competency. Now, what's interesting is that, you know, although they are so good at casting bronze, there were actually no high quality copper mines, tin mines, or lead mines, which are basically the base ingredients for making bronze. There's no high quality mines discovered around the Anyang region, which is around the Yinshi region where all these central workshops are. And so, based on this clue, scholars basically theorized that the craftsmen of this time have mastered a way of performing rudimentary ore purification on site. You know, maybe they mined these materials, you know, pretty far away, and they were able to purify in a very basic way on site, these ores, before transporting these purified ores to be melted or smelted into bronze at the central workshops in the capital around Anyang. Now, if we look at the map and the distribution of minerals and ores, these historians and scholars theorized the copper that were needed would most probably come from the Yangtze river regions, and the tin and the lead would most probably be mined from Jiangxi. Now, these scholars have also theorized that, you know, this competition and this great need for natural resources might be one of the main reasons for the many, many frequent wars that was waged by the Shang kingdom against the local clans and tribes that, you know, held control over the regions where these mines were located. So yeah, we've spoken about quite a few of these battles and conflicts throughout the entire series, so yeah, you can go back and check them out. Now, in the more than 70 years of active archaeological excavations performed in the area, more than 8,000 tombs have been found, and not only were there, you know, royal mausoleums, there were also large numbers of tribal or clan burial grounds and the private tombs of common people, basically. And the forms they took were also hugely varied, you know, across an entire spectrum. You know, some were massive tomb complexes, mausoleum complexes, some were actually vertical tombs, vertical burial grounds where people were buried straight, you know, instead of lying down, and some were just basically ditches, you know, dug in the ground for worship purposes. And this huge variety in the forms their burial grounds took was actually pretty rare across the entire ancient world, you know, across all the archaeological sites that has been excavated so far on the entire planet. So yeah, usually you have one format for burial grounds on one site, but in Yinshi, it spreads across the entire spectrum, so that's pretty rare. Now, as one of the most important zones in the Yinshi archaeological site, the royal mausoleum zone is actually situated on the north bank of the Huan River on the highlands to the north of Wuguan village, which basically remotely echoes the palace and temple zone on the other side of the river. And the entire royal mausoleum zone stretches about 450 meters from east to west, and measures about 250 meters from north to south, which encompasses an area roughly 110,000 square meters. And this entire area was roughly divided into the east and west wings. Now, from 1936 until today, 13 large royal mausoleums and a few thousand satellite tombs and various worship sites and ditches have been discovered in this zone. And the royal mausoleums are believed to belong to the last 12 kings of the Shang dynasty, from King Pangeng to King Dixin, also known as Zhou Wang the Tyrant. And the satellite tombs would have belonged to their loyal followers who would have followed their masters in death. Now, these royal mausoleums, they hold great importance and they provide invaluable resources for the study and the understanding of social structure and the relationships between the people of the Shang dynasty. Because the construction of these mausoleums and tombs, they had to adhere strictly to the rules regarding the owner's status in society and their entitlements. You know, everything from the size of the mausoleum and the tombs, the quality and the numbers of the burial objects that were allowed, to the layout of these mausoleum and tombs themselves, they all symbolise the social status of the tomb or mausoleum owners when they were alive. So yeah, this was a pretty interesting topic for study amongst historians and it gave them a deeper insight to how society worked and how it was stratified during that time. The royal mausoleums themselves were not only large and extremely grand in scale, they also contained the remains of pretty large numbers of human sacrifices that would serve the tomb owners or the mausoleum owners in the afterlife. And the burial articles, the burial objects contained within, were actually extremely intricate and showed high levels of sophistication and artisanship. So far, scholars have only identified the owner of one of these mausoleums and that's the mausoleum of Queen Fu Hao. You can know more about her through this link. And so in the Queen Fu Hao mausoleum, more than 1,928 of these aforementioned high quality and intricate burial objects were discovered, buried together with the legendary queen. And these discoveries actually gave modern day scholars a great insight into the level of craftsmanship, production capabilities and technological competencies in the Shang dynasty. Now in contrast to this opulence and the grandeur of these royal mausoleums, the tombs of the common people often did not even house a sarcophagus or even a coffin. And in fact, in one of these discovered tombs, the only one piece of burial object found together with the tomb owner was a simple pottery jar that contained one piece of cow bone in it. So yeah, that's a great contrast. Although, to be fair, most of the small to medium-sized tombs discovered would still contain a certain number of bronze implements or bronze weapons. So yeah, that one tomb that is so decrepit, derelict, is I guess more of an exception than a rule in this case. Now according to the records and the documentation on the oracle bones, the people of this era, the people who lived in the capital at that time, had a quite advanced understanding and knowledge of natural sciences. The Shang people of that period, of that era, were already able to accurately predict and document solar and lunar eclipses. And they were actually already observing and studying supernovas that they most probably saw in the night sky. So yeah, that's pretty advanced. I mean, we would imagine these ancient people to be quite backwards in their thinking, but yeah, they were studying supernovas. And in terms of keeping track of days, months, and years, the Shang people used a lunisolar calendar, which I have spoken about in the myths series. So yeah, the Shang people used a lunisolar calendar that separated the year into 12 months and used a leap month to correct any deviation from the natural movement of celestial bodies in the sky. And this system of calendar is actually still in use today in the modern Chinese calendar. That's why Chinese New Year usually fall, you know, between late January to mid-February. Today, yeah, now you know. And in terms of numbers and mathematics and calculation, the Shang people already had a concept of ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and even ten thousands. And for the purposes of calculation and complex mathematics, the Shang people actually use a decimal system. So you know, ones, tens, hundreds. Yeah, a decimal system has been used and the concept is already very well, pretty well recognized by that time. And remember, we are talking about 1,100, 1,200, 1,300 BC. So yeah, pretty advanced for their time. And we have to talk about their accomplishments or their knowledge of medicine and medical conditions. In fact, medical knowledge and treatments have advanced to a stage by this time that the Shang people actually recognize more than 10 different major illnesses and ailments that will plague the people. And they came up with treatment methods that would include, apart from herbal medicine, which has been in use for a long time by this period. Apart from herbal medicines, treatment methods will actually also include acupuncture and even massages. And you know, the ailments they could recognize and documented included toothaches, headaches, and other body sores and pains and certain forms of diseases and infections. So yeah, pretty good for a people that supposedly lived more than 3,000 years ago. Now, of course, we mentioned this many, many times across quite a few episodes of this series. The archaeological discoveries at Yinshi showed us that the level of craftsmanship or artisanship was extremely high and it was spread across a wide variety of different fields. And the scale of productions were extremely large in the areas of bronze casting, jade working, bone working, chariot building, and pottery. Barring the leap made during the Industrial Revolution in modern history, I believe the Shang dynasty's production levels were very, very high. In fact, higher than most other ancient civilizations if we consider the level of technological advancement and the level of streamlining and specializations that they employed during that time. Now, in terms of the levels of sophistication of their crafts, here's one example. The white pottery that was produced during the Shang dynasty was basically foundation and it laid the groundwork for the development of Chinese porcelain. Well-loved and well-known throughout the world, it laid the groundwork for the development of Chinese porcelain that came much later and the groundwork was already laid down in the late Shang dynasty. Now, in terms of horse chariot building, from the horse chariots or the remnants of the horse chariots that were excavated from the Yinshi archaeological site, scholars and archaeologists found that many of the more intricate and complicated mechanical parts were actually crafted and casted from bronze, which are naturally more durable than wood and timber. This actually showed that the Shang craftsmen, Shang artisans, had a pretty deep understanding of mechanical engineering for their time and they had quite a good grasp of the concept of material sizes. They know that this would be a better material to craft load-bearing parts and maybe it would be better to use bronze to craft moving mechanical parts. This understanding and this mastery of the technology was actually pretty advanced for this time. Now, therefore, it would definitely come as no surprise to anyone that this grand and unique ancient capital built to exacting requirements, displaying the pinnacle of cultural and technological achievements of its people during the Bronze Age, sits at the top of the list of the 100 most important archaeological discoveries made in 20th century China. Now, the Yinshi archaeological site has solemnly and silently preserved an extremely radiant chapter of human history and human civilization and evolution. It should, you know, it itself should be meticulously protected and preserved by us, you know, to be passed down to all future generations. Ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of the Shang Dynasty series. It has been a blast and I know there has been quite a few pauses during the updates of this series and I do deeply apologize for it. I do hope that you enjoyed and you found value in this entire series and if you did, as usual, don't forget to give us a like, comment, a sub, and share the video and the channel with everyone you know. And if you would like to support this little project and this channel beyond that and you would like to do it in a more tangible way, you can do so by becoming one of the channel's patrons and the link is available together with, you know, all the social media links. The Patreon link is available in the description box below and these are the Patreons that has been keeping the channel going and has been, you know, keeping the lights on around here and really, really, really thank you so much. You have no idea how much you are helping this channel and you are helping me out. So thank you so much, all you guys. Yeah, and yeah, I guess that's it for today and in the next episode, we will begin the series on the Zhou Dynasty and things are starting to get a bit more interesting. So yeah, keep your eyes peeled for that and I will see you, you ridiculously beautiful people out there. I will see you in the next episode.