Xia dynasty

For other dynasties with the same name, see Xia.

1.1 Origins and early development

The Xia dynasty (Chinese: ; pinyin: Xi Cho;

WadeGiles: Hsia-Ch'ao; IPA: [i t ]; c. 2070
c. 1600 BC) is the rst dynasty in traditional Chinese
history. It is described in ancient historical chronicles
such as the Bamboo Annals, the Classic of History and
the Records of the Grand Historian. According to tradition, the dynasty was established by the legendary Yu the
Great* [1] after Shun, the last of the Five Emperors, gave
his throne to him. The Xia was later succeeded by the
Shang dynasty (16001046 BC).

Traditional histories trace the development of the Xia to

the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. According to ancient Chinese texts, before the Xia dynasty
was established, battles were frequent between the Xia
tribe and Chi You's tribe. The Xia tribe slowly developed
around the time of Zhuanxu, one of the Five Emperors.
The Records of the Grand Historian and the Classic of
Rites say that Yu the Great is the grandson of Zhuanxu,
but there are also other records, like Ban Gu, that say Yu
is the fth generation of Zhuanxu. Based on this, tradition ascribes the ancestry of the Xia clan to Zhuanxu.

According to the traditional chronology based upon calculations by Liu Xin, the Xia ruled between 2205 and
1766 BC; according to the chronology based upon the
Bamboo Annals, it ruled between 1989 and 1558 BC. The
XiaShangZhou Chronology Project concluded that the
Xia existed between 2070 and 1600 BC. The tradition
of tracing Chinese political history from heroic early emperors to the Xia to succeeding dynasties comes from the
idea of the Mandate of Heaven, in which only one legitimate dynasty can exist at any given time, and was promoted by the Confucian school in the Eastern Zhou period, later becoming the basic position of imperial historiography and ideology. Although the Xia is an important element in early Chinese history, reliable information
on the history of China before 13th century BC can only
come from archaeological evidence since China's rst established written system on a durable medium, the oracle
bone script, did not exist until then;* [2] however, no mention of the Xia, or the supposed conquest of the Xia by
the Shang, is found in any oracle bones found to date.
The rst documentary reference to the Xia dates from
more than a thousand years later. Thus, despite eorts by
Chinese archaeologists to link the Xia with Bronze Age
Erlitou archaeological sites,* [3] the Xia dynasty is considered by many modern historians to be legendary.

1.2 Gun's attempt to stop the ood

See also: Great Flood (China)
Gun, the father of Yu the Great, is the earliest recorded
member of the Xia clan. When the Yellow River ooded,
many tribes united together to control and stop the ooding. Gun was appointed by Yao to stop the ooding. He
ordered the construction of large blockades to block the
path of the water. The attempt of Gun to stop the ooding lasted for nine years, but it was a failure because the
oods became stronger. After nine years, Yao had already given his throne to Shun. Gun was ordered to be
imprisoned for life to reform the Eastern Barbarians by
Shun at Yushan (Chinese: ), a mountain located between modern Donghai County in Jiangsu Province and
Linshu County in Shandong Province.

1.3 Yu the Great's attempt to stop the

oods
Yu was highly trusted by Shun, so Shun appointed him
to nish his father's work, which was to stop the ooding.
Yu's method was dierent from his father's: he organized
people from dierent tribes and ordered them to help him
build canals in all the major rivers that were ooding and
lead the water out to the sea. Yu was dedicated to his
work. People praised his perseverance and were inspired,
so much so that other tribes joined in the work. Legend
says that in the 13 years it took him to successfully complete the work to stop the oods, he never went back to
his home village to stop and rest, even though he passed
by his house three times.

Traditional accounts

The Xia dynasty was described in classic texts such as the

Classic of History (Shujing), the Bamboo Annals, and the
Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) by Sima Qian. According to tradition, the Huaxia were the ancestral people
of the Han Chinese.* [4]* [5]
1

1.4

Establishment

Yu's success in stopping the ooding increased agricultural production (since the oods were destructive). The
Xia tribe's power increased and Yu became the leader of
the surrounding tribes. Soon afterwards Shun sent Yu to
lead an army to suppress the Sanmiao tribe, which continuously abused the border tribes. After defeating them,
he exiled them south to the Han River area. This victory strengthened the Xia tribe's power even more. As
Shun aged, he thought of a successor and relinquished the
throne to Yu, whom he deemed worthy. Yu's succession
marks the start of the Xia dynasty. As Yu neared death
he passed the throne to his son, Qi, instead of passing it to
the most capable candidate, thus setting the precedent for
dynastic rule or the Hereditary System. The Xia dynasty
began a period of family or clan control. It is believed
that Zhenxun (modern Gongyi) was one of the capitals
of the dynasty.

1.5

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES

narrative of Xia history and Shang history that would suggest probable Zhou-era fabrication or at least embellishment of Xia history. Yun Kuen Lee's criticism of nationalist sentiment in developing an explanation of Three Dynasties chronology focuses on the dichotomy of evidence
provided by archaeological versus historical research, in
particular the claim that the archaeological Erlitou Culture is also the historical Xia dynasty. How to fuse the
archaeological dates with historical dates is a challenge to
all chronological studies of early civilization.* [6]
In The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in
Early China, Sarah Allan noted that many aspects of the
Xia are simply the opposite of traits held to be emblematic of the Shang dynasty. The implied dualism between
the Shang and Xia, Allan argues, is that while the Shang
represent re or the sun, birds and the east, the Xia represent the west and water. The development of this mythical Xia, Allan argues, is a necessary act on the part of the
Zhou dynasty, who justify their conquest of the Shang by
noting that the Shang had supplanted the Xia.

Overthrow

Jie, the last king, was said to be corrupt. He was over- 3 Archaeological discoveries
thrown by Tang, the rst king of the Shang dynasty. Tang
is said to have given the small state of Qi as a ef to the See also: XiaShangZhou Chronology Project
remnants of the Xia ruling family. This practice was re- Archaeologists have uncovered urban sites, bronze imferred to as .

Modern skepticism

Stone 'qing' (percussion instrument) from the Erlitou Culture.

Unearthed at Dongxialeng, Xiaxian, Shanxi Province, 1974.

The paucity of written evidence and the time gap between

the supposed time of the Xia and the rst written references to it have meant that the historicity of the Xia dynasty itself and the traditional narrative of its history is
at best uncertain. The Skeptical School of early Chinese
history, started by Gu Jiegang in the 1920s, was the rst
group of scholars within China to systematically question
the traditional story of its early history. By critically examining the development of the narrative of early Chinese history throughout history, Gu concludedthe later
the time, the longer the legendary period of earlier history... early Chinese history is a tale told and retold for
generations, during which new elements were added to Xia Dynasty pottery jue
the front end.* [6] Among other points, Gu and other
historians note certain parallels between the traditional plements, and tombs that point to the possible existence

3
of the Xia dynasty at locations cited in ancient Chinese 7 References
historical texts. There exists a debate as to whether or
not the Erlitou culture was the site of the Xia dynasty.
7.1 Citations
Radiocarbon dating places the site at c. 2100 to 1800 BC,
providing physical evidence of the existence of a state [1] Mungello, David E. The Great Encounter of China and the
contemporaneous with and possibly equivalent to the Xia
West, 15001800 Rowman & Littleeld; 3 ed (28 March
dynasty as described in Chinese historical works.* [7] In
2009) ISBN 978-0-7425-5798-7 p. 97.
1959, a site located in the city of Yanshi was excavated
containing large palaces that some archaeologists have [2] Bagley, Robert. Shang Archaeology.in The Cambridge History of Ancient China. Michael Loewe and Edattributed to capital of the Xia dynasty. Through the
ward
Shaughnessy, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer1960s and 1970s, archaeologists have uncovered urban
sity Press, 1999.
sites, bronze implements, and tombs in the same locations cited in ancient Chinese historical texts regarding [3] Liu, L. & Xiu, H., Rethinking Erlitou: legend, history
Xia;* [8] at a minimum, the era traditionally denoted as
and Chinese archaeology, Antiquity, 81:314 (2007) pp.
the Xia dynasty marked an evolutionary stage between
886901.
the late neolithic cultures and the urban civilization of the
[4] Cio-Revilla, Claudio; Lai, David (1995). War and
Shang dynasty.* [8]
In 2011, Chinese archaeologists uncovered the remains
of an imperial sized palacedated to about 1700 BC
at Erlitou in Henan, further fueling the discussions about
the existence of the dynasty.* [9]

Politics in Ancient China, 2700 BC to 722 BC..

The Journal of Conict Resolution. 39 (3): 471472.
doi:10.1177/0022002795039003004.

[5] Lung, Rachel (2011), Interpreters in early imperial China,

Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, p. 5,
ISBN 978-90-272-2444-6

Archaeological evidence of a large outburst ood that destroyed the Lajia site on the upper reaches of the Yellow River has been dated to about 1920 BC. This date is [6] Yun Kuen Lee, Building the Chronology of Early Chinese History. Asian Perspectives, Vol. 41, 2002.
shortly before the rise of the Erlitou culture in the middle
Yellow River valley and the Yueshi culture in Shandong, [7] Fairbank, John K. China: A New History. Cambridge:
following the decline of the Longshan culture in the North
Harvard University Press, 1992, page 35.
China Plain. The authors suggest that this ood may have
been the basis for the later myth, and contributed to the [8] China the ancient dynasties. Library of Congress
Country Studies.
transition of cultures. They further argue that the timing
is further evidence for the identication of the Xia with
[9] China nds 3,600-year-old palace. People's Daily Onthe Erlitou culture.* [10] However, no evidence of conline. 13 December 2011.
temporaneous widespread ooding in the North China
Plain has yet been found.* [11]
[10] Wu, Qinglong; Zhao, Zhijun; Liu, Li; Granger, Darryl E.;

Sovereigns of the Xia dynasty

Wang, Hui; Cohen, David J.; Wu, Xiaohong; Ye, Maolin;

Bar-Yosef, Ofer; Lu, Bin; Zhang, Jin; Zhang, Peizhen;
Yuan, Daoyang; Qi, Wuyun; Cai, Linhai; Bai, Shibiao
(2016). Outburst ood at 1920 BCE supports historicity of China's Great Flood and the Xia dynasty. Science.
353 (6299): 579582. doi:10.1126/science.aaf0842.

The following table lists the rulers of Xia according to

Sima Qian's Shiji. Unlike Sima's list of Shang dynasty
[11] Normile, Dennis (2016). Massive ood may have led
kings, which is closely matched by inscriptions on oracle
to China's earliest empire. News. American Associabones from late in that period, records of Xia rulers have
tion for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved 5 August
not yet been found in archeological excavations of con2016.
temporary sites, or records on later Shang dynasty oracle
[12] Mungello, David E. The Great Encounter of China and
bones.
the West, 15001800 Rowman & Littleeld; 3 edition (28
March 2009) ISBN 978-0-7425-5798-7 p.97.

Xia dynasty family tree

See also
Erlitou culture
List of Neolithic cultures of China
Nine Provinces

[13] Wang Quangen , (1993). Huaxia Quming Yishu

. (Taipei: Zhishu-fang Chuban Jituan
), 42.

7.2 Sources
Allan, Sarah (1991), The Shape of the Turtle: Myth,
Art, and Cosmos in Early China, State University of
New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-0459-1.

9
Allan, Sarah (2007), Erlitou and the Formation
of Chinese Civilization: Toward a New Paradigm
, The Journal of Asian Studies, 66 (2): 461496,
doi:10.1017/S002191180700054X.
Keightley, David N. (1999), The Shang: China's
rst historical dynasty, in Loewe, Michael;
Shaughnessy, Edward L., The Cambridge History of
Ancient China, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 232291, ISBN 978-0-521-47030-8.
Lee, Yun Kuen (2002),Building the chronology of
early Chinese history, Asian Perspectives, 41 (1):
1542, doi:10.1353/asi.2002.0006.
Lewis, Mark Edward (2012), The Flood Myths of
Early China, SUNY Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-82223.
Li, Feng (2013), Early China: A Social and Cultural
History, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0521-89552-1.
Liu, Li (2009), Academic freedom, political correctness, and early civilisation in Chinese archaeology: the debate on Xia-Erlitou
relations, Antiquity, 83 (321):
831843,
doi:10.1017/S0003598X0009904X.
Liu, Li; Chen, Xingcan (2012), The Archaeology of
China: From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze
Age, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-52164310-8.
Liu, Li; Xu, Hong (2007), Rethinking
Erlitou:
legend, history and Chinese archaeology, Antiquity, 81 (314): 886901,
doi:10.1017/S0003598X00095983.
Mair, Victor; Brooks, E. Bruce (2013),Was There
a Xi Dynasty?" (PDF), Sino-Platonic Papers, 238.
Nylan, Michael (2001), The FiveConfucianClassics, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-081855.
Wang, Haicheng (2014), Writing and the Ancient
State: Early China in Comparative Perspective, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-107-78587-8.

Further reading
Allen, Herbert J. (translator) (1895). Ssma
Ch'ien's Historical Records, Chapter II The Hsia
Dynasty. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 27
(1): 93110. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00022784.
Legge, James (translator) (1865). The Annals of
the Bamboo Books: The Dynasty of Hea. The
Chinese Classics, volume 3, part 1. pp. 117127.

EXTERNAL LINKS

9 External links
History of China
Stunning Capital of Xia Dynasty Unearthed

10
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