11 Facts About Xia dynasty

Xia dynasty is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese historiography.

Xia dynasty was described in classic texts such as the Classic of History, the Bamboo Annals, and the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian.

The Records of the Grand Historian and the Classic of Rites say that Yu the Great, the founder of the Xia dynasty, was the grandson of Zhuanxu, who was the grandson of the Yellow Emperor.

Xia dynasty ordered the construction of large blockades to block the path of the water.

Xia dynasty was overthrown by Tang, the first king of the Shang dynasty.

Related searches

The existence of the Xia dynasty remains unproven, despite efforts by Chinese archaeologists to link them with the Bronze Age Erlitou culture.

The implied dualism of the Shang myth system, Allan argues, is that while the Shang represent the suns, sky, birds, east and life, the Xia dynasty represent the moons, watery underworld, dragons, west and death.

Allan argues that this mythical Xia was re-interpreted by the Zhou as a ruling dynasty replaced by the Shang, a parallel with their own replacement of the Shang.

Radiocarbon dating places the Erlitou sites at c 2100 to 1800 BC, providing physical evidence of the existence of a state contemporaneous with and possibly equivalent to the Xia dynasty as described in later classical Chinese historical works.

At a minimum, the era traditionally denoted as the Xia dynasty marked a period of urbanization and agricultural development bridging the late Neolithic cultures and the urban civilization of the Shang dynasty.

Unlike Sima's list of Shang dynasty kings, which is closely matched by inscriptions on oracle bones from late in that period, records of Xia rulers have not yet been found in archaeological excavations of contemporary sites, or records on later Shang dynasty oracle bones.