Early Chinese

Civilizations

Geography of China

Mountains and deserts served as barriers that separated Chinese people from other Asian people.

Shang Dynasty

Religious beliefs:

• rulers believed they could communicate with the gods to get help with their affairs

• strong belief in life after death

• human sacrifice

• spirits of ancestors could bring good or evil

Zhou Dynasty

Mandate of Heaven:

• belief that kings received their authority to command, or mandate, from Heaven

• it was the king’s duty to keep the gods happy, failure to do so would lead to decline and new dynasty would take over

Dao: The proper “Way”

Chinese Philosophies

Confucianism:

• Concerned with human behavior-proper way to behave was in accordance with the Dao

•View of the Dao-Duty and humanity

• Five Constant Relationships-parent and child, husband and wife, older and younger siblings, older and younger friends, and ruler and subjects

• All people had to subordinate their own interests to the broader needs of the family and the community.

• “Work Ethic”-If each individual worked hard to fulfill his or her duties, then the affairs of society as a whole would prosper as well.

Duty

Humanity

• a sense of compassion and empathy for others

• “Do not do unto others what you would not wish done to yourself”

• “Measure the feelings of others by one’s own”

• “Within the four seas all men are brothers”

Daoism:• inaction rather than action

• The best way to act in harmony with the universal order is to act spontaneously and let nature take its course by not interfering with it.

Legalism:• “School of Law”

• proposed that human beings were evil by nature

• believed a strong ruler is required to create an orderly society

Qin Dynasty

Changes in Chinese Politics:

• Legalism was adopted as the regime’s philosophy

• anyone who opposed the regime was punished or executed

• centralized state

• created to protect against nomadic invaders from the north

• linked existing walls together to create “The Wall of Ten Thousand Li”

• present wall was ordered 1,500 years after the first Qin Emperor

Great Wall of China

Han DynastyNew developments in technology:

• advances in textile manufacturing

• water mills for grinding grain

• iron casting

• steel paper

• rudders

• fore-and-aft rigging for ships

Purpose of the terra-cotta figures: they were a re-creation of Qin Shihuangdi’s imperial guard and were meant to be with the emperor on his journey to the next world