An overview of Shang Dynasty culture, the economy and culture of the Shang Dynasty

Bronzes and oracle bone inscriptions are symbols of Shang Dynasty culture, which are described as follows:

1. Bronzes in the "Shang Dynasty Culture":

Chinese bronze culture has a long history and has strong national characteristics and artistic styles. A large number of bronzes unearthed in Yinxu, including ritual vessels, musical instruments, weapons, tools, living utensils, ornaments, artworks, etc., have formed a bronze civilization based on bronze ritual vessels and weapons, reaching the peak of the development of China's Bronze Age, and occupying an important position in the history of ancient Chinese civilization. The appearance of a large number of bronze ritual vessels in Yinxu proves that Chinese bronze culture has developed to the highest stage.

2. The oracle bone inscription in the "Shang Dynasty Culture":

The oracle bone inscription mainly refers to the oracle bone inscription of Yinxu, which was engraved (or written) on tortoise shells and animal bones for divination by the royal family in the late Shang Dynasty (14th and 11th centuries BC) in China. It is the earliest and relatively complete system among the ancient scripts found in China. These oracle bones are basically the divination records of the rulers of the Shang Dynasty.

Introduction to "Yin Shang Culture":

Yin Shang culture is very rich in connotation and has multiple levels, such as Xuanniao business, Wang Hai business, and Chengtang business. The origin of Chinese merchants, commerce and commercial culture originated in the Central Plains, which is the consensus of the national archaeological and historical circles. The Yin Shang culture is heavy and the Zhou people are heavy on agriculture, which is the foundation of Yin and Zhou culture.

Archaeology believes that the pre-Shang culture is closely related to the Xia Qiheng culture.

The above content reference: Encyclopedia - Yin Shang Culture.

The social economy of the Shang Dynasty was dominated by agriculture, agriculture was the decisive production sector at that time, the handicraft industry developed rapidly, and the bronze casting industry was the most important handicraft industry department in the Shang Dynasty. The oracle bone inscription is an important symbol of the development of the Shang Dynasty culture, and the Shang Dynasty writing is mainly preserved on the tortoise shell and the shoulder blade of the ox, so it becomes the oracle bone inscription. The content is mostly to record divination, so it is also called "divination".

There is also some literature on the bronzes and other objects, but there are few of them, and the oracle bone inscriptions are actually archival materials from the Shang dynasty. Shang Dynasty nobles, etc., both conquest, field hunting, disease, agriculture of the weather of the weather, wind and rain, etc., have to use the method of divination to ask the ghosts and gods, these divination records are the oracle bone inscription in the late Shang Dynasty Chengdu Yin Ruins found oracle bone words, about more than 100,000 days of oracle bone inscription words total about 3,500 words, has been known about 2,000 words or so, oracle bone words have extremely important value for the study of the history and culture of the Shang Dynasty. The Shang Dynasty already had a considerable level of astronomical knowledge and relatively perfect legislation, and the progress of astronomy and legislation was closely related to the development of agricultural production.

Characteristics of Shang Dynasty culture.

It is to respect the gods, the ghosts, the ghosts before the rituals. Early Shang Dynasty bronzes have a unique shape. Ding, mustache and other food utensils three-legged. There must be a foot and an ear in a vertical line, and there is a sense of visual imbalance. The columnar feet such as Ding and Zhu form conical feet and abdomen.

This is due to the fact that at that time, the casting of the fan core was not fully enclosed. The square tripod is huge, and the container part is square and deep bucket shaped, which is completely different from the rectangular trough shape of the square tripod in the Yinxu period. The shape of Jue inherits the cultural style of Erlitou.

Like, — the law is flattened with a flat bottom. The stream is very narrow and long. In addition to the flat-bottomed bronze skull, there is also a bag-foot skull. Yao, Zun, Ou, Wei and other circle-foot vessels all have +-shaped large holes, which are quite Erligang upper layer of the vessel, and the + glyph has become a large square hole.

Target. Some are even on the edge of the circle, leaving several gaps, and such examples have been unearthed in Zhengzhou and Huangpi Panlongcheng. The semi-capped pouch with the pipe flow obliquely placed on the top of the tubing, and there is a large hammer on the back side to hold, which is quite distinctive in this period. It's all narrow.

The lips are high, the neck has shoulders, and the body is also high. In the early Shang Dynasty, there were two kinds of pots with handles: those with long necks, leaking branches, small mouths, drums, belly shapes, and small mouthparts with hanging gourds, and small mouthparts with low necks and no handles.

The main body of the early Shang Dynasty bronze ornamentation has been.

It is the animal face pattern, composed of rough hook and whirlwind lines, all are deformed patterns, except for the round eyes of the beast, as a symbol, the rest of the Hui stripes do not specifically show the various parts of the image, the ornamentation is more flat carving, the individual main pattern appears in relief, the upper layer of Erligang, Wei and other instruments have been decorated with the sacrificial head of Chang high relief on the shoulder. All animal face patterns or other animal patterns do not have thunder patterns as the ground, which is characteristic of this period. The geometric patterns of the early Shang Dynasty were extremely simple, with some rough thunder.

There are also single or multiple rows of beaded lines, and nipple nail lines have also appeared.

The bronzes of the early Shang Dynasty have very few inscriptions, and it was previously believed that the turtle shapes on the individual were words, but in fact they were still ornaments rather than words.

Excerpt from netizens, thank you.

The written materials of the Shang Dynasty mainly include pottery inscriptions, jade inscriptions, oracle bone inscriptions and gold inscriptions, and the oracle bone inscriptions of the late Shang Dynasty are the most. The characters left on various materials belong to the same system as the oracle bone inscriptions, so the Shang Dynasty characters can be represented by the oracle bone inscriptions. The oracle bone inscription is a kind of script in the history of the development of Chinese characters in China, which is the divination script of the late Shang period, and it is also the script actually used at that time.

For the name of this kind of divination script, some people called it "turtle version script", "tortoise shell script", "oracle bone inscription", "tortoiseshell beast bone script", and later some people called it "Zhenbu script", "oracle bone script", "Yin Xuan divination script", and some people called it "Yin Xuan script", "Yin Xuan script", etc., and finally it was conventionally called "oracle bone script", referred to as "oracle bone script".

Over the past few decades, about 150,000 pieces of oracle bones have been unearthed in Yinxu, and nearly 5,000 words have been discovered. According to statistics, there are 1,723 characters that can be recognized and can be assigned as Chinese characters, 2,549 words that cannot be recognized and unsubordinated, and 371 characters that can be coordinated.

From the perspective of the structure of the text, the so-called "six books" of later generations, that is, the six principles of pictogram, signifier, huiyi, borrowing, morphophonic and transliterating, are all present in the oracle bone inscriptions, but there are more four kinds of pictograms, huiyi, morphophonics and pretenses.

The main ones are oracle bone inscriptions and gold inscriptions (also called inscriptions).

The Shang Dynasty was the second dynasty in Chinese history, which went through three major stages from 1600 BC to 1046 BC. The first stage is "pre-consultation"; The second stage is "early business"; The third stage is the "Evening Quotient". It is said that there are 31 kings in 17 generations and lasted for 600 years.

In general, the Shang Dynasty was at the height of slavery, and the slave-owning aristocracy was the ruling class, forming a huge bureaucratic ruling body and army. Slave owners could either buy or sell slaves or kill them at will; After the death of the slave owner, the slave was also buried by the slaves, and it can be seen from the tombs of the emperors and dignitaries of the Shang Dynasty that the buried slaves ranged from dozens to thousands.

The difference between the cultures of the Zhou and Shang dynasties is mainly in the concept of the Mandate of Heaven and the humanistic tradition of the two generations The three types of divine oil believed in by the merchants, God God, Ancestor God and Nature God, and God God was the main one. It also frequently sacrifices to the ancestral gods, forming the culture of "weekly sacrifice system", and at the same time retains the nature worship of the primitive religion, the mountains and rivers, the wind god thunder and lightning. Superstitious worship of "ghosts" after death has formed the concept of "Yin people and ghosts".

The developers of the Zhou Dynasty had the concept of supremacy of God, believing that the royal power was not only received by heaven, but also left by the ancestors, so they respected the ancestors of heaven and law. The ancestors of the Zhou people were different from the Shang "Zhou sacrifice system", and the "Zhaomu system" was implemented, and the ancestors were arranged in two columns according to the generations. At the same time, the Zhou people's concept of the Mandate of Heaven is distinguished by the emphasis on "virtue" and the emphasis on "people".

What the Zhou people's "Restoration" emphasized was that it was necessary to implement changes in response to the mandate of heaven, to "respect virtue and protect the people", and "to match heaven with virtue".