{"id":1193,"date":"2009-08-21T02:49:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T02:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wp-a_lawler\/?p=1193"},"modified":"2024-12-21T12:06:16","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T17:06:16","slug":"scimag2010jandynasty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/scimag2010jandynasty\/","title":{"rendered":"Founding Dynasty or Myth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

ERLITOU, CHINA<\/strong>\u2014In the 6th century B.C.E., Confucius referred to the ancient Xia dynasty as China\u2019s first, based on documents that were old in his day. For generations of Chinese scholars, the Xia was China\u2019s initial great flowering of civilization, inaugurating a history that unfolded in methodical fashion from city-state to empire (see main text and timeline, p. 930). But there was no physical evidence for the dynasty\u2019s existence, so in 1959 an archaeological team set out to find its seat. Along this marshy section of the Luo River in the central plains of the Yellow River Valley, they uncovered a 300-hectare site dating to roughly the correct period\u2014and promptly hailed it as the long-lost first capital.<\/p>\n

But did the Xia, said to have flourished from 2100 B.C.E. to 1600 B.C.E., really exist? New, unpublished dates and excavation data from this modest site challenge its status as the capital of the Xia. \u201cWe have proven that Erlitou is the largest and most culturally developed site with the biggest population,\u201d says Chen Guoliang, an assistant researcher at the site, standing in a gentle spring rain on the roof of the dig house. \u201cBut what it was exactly requires more research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until the archaeological finds of the past half-century, most of what we knew of early Chinese history was based largely on ancient texts, which have a status here somewhat comparable to that of the Bible in the West. They provide a detailed account of how the Xia succumbed to the Shang dynasty, which in turn gave over to the Zhou dynasty around 1045 B.C.E. Although the texts were written long after most of the events, digs have confirmed many of the assertions made about the Shang and later eras. But the Xia dynasty has remained elusive, despite the identification of Erlitou as its capital.<\/p>\n

During the past decade, Xu Hong of the Institute of Archaeology in Beijing has directed extensive excavations here, although digging has stopped for now to allow archaeologists to interpret their data and the site has been reburied and planted with wheat. The digs have revealed the details of Erlitou\u2019s rise, including a central complex, possibly a palace, in the first phase. Then the settlement grew, the palace area was walled, and a street network was built. A section of road with wagon tracks provides the oldest evidence for wheeled vehicles in China, though whether they were pulled by humans or draft animals is unclear. Many bronze and other precious artifacts, including a spectacular, snakelike turquoise dragon, were apparently made in the palace area and found in large numbers in nearby tombs of the elite. At its peak, as many as 20,000 people may have lived at Erlitou before it slowly faded into obscurity around 1500 B.C.E.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like a planned city, separated by function, with relatively clustered tombs, workshop areas, pottery workshops near the river, and a clear hierarchy,\u201d says Chen. With regular walls surrounding a spacious palace complex near the city center and wide, straight streets, Erlitou\u2019s design matches an urban layout that became common throughout China for millennia and is still visible in cities like Beijing, built around the Forbidden City.<\/p>\n

Xu\u2019s radiocarbon dating of Erlitou to between 1900 B.C.E. and 1500 B.C.E. was later than records indicated for the Xia. Some archaeologists therefore called Erlitou a \u201clate Xia\u201d capital. Now, a larger series of organic samples from the lower layers shift the start date even later\u2014 to approximately 1750 B.C.E., says Wu Xiaohong of Peking University, where the samples were recently analyzed. That will make it much more difficult to connect Erlitou with the Xia, which was supposedly ending at the time Erlitou was evolving.<\/p>\n

Most younger archaeologists avoid the term Xia altogether. They prefer the term \u201cErlitou culture\u201d to \u201cXia dynasty,\u201d and its successor \u201cErligang culture\u201d to \u201cShang dynasty.\u201d Chen explains that \u201cold scholars who graduated before the Cultural Revolution are steeped in a background centered on written Chinese history and they wanted to solve the \u2018problem\u2019 of the Xia and Shang dynasties by using archaeology to prove their view.\u201d He adds that the Cultural Revolution wiped away the traditional lineages of historians, while archaeologists have since embraced Western methods. \u201cOnly physical evidence can prove the existence of these two dynasties,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Xu, the excavation chief, criticizes the recent government-funded Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project as \u201ca kind of political propaganda.\u201d For him, \u201carchaeology and legendary history are different disciplines.\u201d He says that research has been overshadowed for too long by a preoccupation with the dynastic tradition.<\/p>\n

As Xu and his team analyze the data from a decade of excavation, they are focusing on how salt production may have been Erlitou\u2019s economic driver; such issues are neglected in the written histories. The resulting scenario may be less dramatic than the texts\u2019 story of a great storm sent by heaven\u2014complete with 3 days of blood rain\u2014that inaugurated the Xia kingdom, but more convincing to modern archaeologists. F<\/p>\n

or many researchers, the controversy pitting texts against excavations is a distraction rather than an assault on Confucian learning. Like Near Eastern archaeologists, they are happy to make use of revered ancient texts but do not treat them as revealed truth. \u201cWe don\u2019t just want to know whether Erlitou is Xia; we want to know the economic and political system. That\u2019s what\u2019s important,\u201d says Ma Xiaolin, vice director of the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in nearby Zhengzhou. \u201cWe don\u2019t care about the name; we just want a clearer picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

21 AUGUST 2009 VOL 325 SCIENCE<\/p>\n

Science-2009-Lawler-Founding_Dynasty_or_Myth-934.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ERLITOU, CHINA\u2014In the 6th century B.C.E., Confucius referred to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-magazine"],"yoast_head":"\nFounding Dynasty or Myth? • Andrew Lawler<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"ERLITOU, CHINA\u2014In the 6th century B.C.E., Confucius referred to the ancient Xia dynasty as China\u2019s first, based on documents that were old in his day. 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