EASTERN ASIA — BISHOP 437 



appears, too, a new style of architecture, with colonnaded and gabled 

 buildings, sometimes of large size; although just as later, the pillars 

 were of wood, not stone or burnt brick. We also now encounter a 

 system of writing, obviously with a long period of development 

 behind it somewhere, and ancestral to the present Chinese script. 



The Chinese Bronze Age was thus by no means primitive or 

 elementary. It was nevertheless decidedly more archaic in aspect, 

 more impoverished in content, than the corresponding civilizations 

 of the Occident. Such a state of affairs is however quite normal to 

 a marginal area like the Far East. 



THE SHANG DYNASTY 



With this somewhat belated appearance of a Bronze Age civili- 

 zation in China, we reach the beginnings of that country's historical 

 existence. The period is that of the Shang Dynasty — the first 

 Chinese ruling house of which actual remains have been identified.^" 

 The line seems to have begun during the second quarter of the second 

 millennium before our era.^' 



The Shang priest-kings, of primitive type, worshipped the spirits 

 of their ancestors and also various divinities, of whom the chief 

 was Shang Ti, "the Ruler Above." ^^ In war, they and their fol- 

 lowers used spears, dagger-axes," and helmets of bronze, as well 

 as compound bows and two-horsed chariots. As in the early Near 

 East, political organization took the form of city-states, of which 

 the one ruled by the Shangs themselves claimed allegiance and 

 tribute from the rest. Incidentally, society was now, among the 

 ruling class at least, organized on a rigidly patrilineal basis. 



BRONZE OBJECTS OF THE SHANG PERIOD 



Sites of the Shang period have yielded no bronze swords. Evi- 

 dently in Chma as elsewhere, these weapons appeared only rela- 

 tively late in the Bronze Age. We do, however, find in China at 

 this time two types of bronze implements of no little significance. 

 One is the socketed celt,^° which in the Occident antedates the middle 



"According to later Chinese legend, there was one earlier still — the Hsla Dynasty; 

 but for the existence of the latter we have as yet no archeologlcal evidence. 



Dr. H. G. Creel has ably discussed the question of the "Hsia Dynasty" on pp. 97-131 

 of his Studies in early Chinese culture, Baltimore, 1937. See also my paper cited in 

 footnote 14 ; ref. to p. 243. Dr. Creel's conclusions and my own, though reached quite 

 Independently, are in essential harmony. 



" On this dating see my paper mentioned in footnote 14 ; ref. to p. 242. 



'^The two "Shangs" in this sentence have quite different meanings, and are written 

 In Chinese with distinct characters. 



" Bronze dagger-ajces had been used in the Occident also before the invention of bronze 

 swords in that quarter of the globe. 



*> On the distribution of the socketed celt, see C. G. Seligman, Bird-chariots and socketed 

 celts in Europe and China. Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., vol. 52, pp. 153-158, 1920; ref. 

 to p. 154. 



