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he Shang dynasty 商朝 is the earliest dynasty of traditional Chinese history firmly supported by archaeological evidence.

This doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an even earlier Chinese civilisation, it just means that archaelologists haven’t discovered evidence that proves one existed.

A bronze-age civilisation, it is believed that the dynasty began in 1600 BCE and was conquered by the Zhou dynasty in 1046 BCE.

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The green outline marks the extent of the Shang Dynasty on a modern map

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The Shang had lots of gods as well as believing in ancestor worship. They also believed in an afterlife, whcih is why there have been tombs uncovered with lots of objects inside for use by the dead person in the afterlife.

A King’s tomb wouldn’t jsut include objects, it would also include people sacrificed to serve the ruler in the afterlife!

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Shangdi was the most important god to the Shang. He was respnsible for victory in battle, the weather and the Yellow River’s floods – all very important to an ancient culture reliant on farming and controlling neighbouring states!

When the Shang worshipped a god they did so with offerings of food and drink in ritual bronze vessels. They did the same for thier ancestors – if the ancestors were pleased the family would be prosperous, but if the ancestors were not happy with what was offered the family’s fortunes would sink.

Priests were used to ask questions of the gods using oracle bones.

The rulers also acted as high priests and led religious ceremonies.

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The king would command a priest to carve questions into the bones to try and predict the future. Symbols like ‘Sun’ and ‘Moon’ often appear, or questions about the harvest and battles, since the Shang dynasty was so focused on farming and fighting.

The priest would then use a hot poker to burn a hole or line on the bone and look at the cracks the heat from the poker made to try to work out what the gods were saying. If an answer appeared, that would sometimes be scratched into the bones as well.

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Remains of oracle bones were only discovered recently in 1899. They’re mostly from the Shang capital Yinxu, near modern-day Anyang and are about 3500 years old.

Before the bones were discovered no one was completely sure the Shang had even existed! According to legend, they were discovered by chance when a man named Wang Yirong who happened to specialise in ancient Chinese writing was prescribed ‘dragon bone’ for his health. When he examined the medicine they discovered the bones had ancient Chinese writing on, and they traced the bones back to a huge stash of oracle bones in a pit that the locals had been digging up and grinding down into medicine.

The bones also have the names of the diviners or priests who read the bones on them. The bones mean we know the names of 11 diviners (people who read the oracle bones) and the names of 9 kings of the Shang dynasty.

The writing on the bones is the first Chinese writing that we know of, and one of the earliest forms of writing in the world.

The language has over 5000 characters in it and had a sophisticated grammar system.

The bones give us a fantastic insight into elite life in the Shang dynasty and what life was like. From them, we know about Shang rulers, weather, warfare, farming, births, deaths – everything! We even know

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Bronze was hugely important to the Shang. They were part of a metalworking network across Eurasia and they had their own distinctive ways of casting and decorating their bronze work.

Shang craftsmen were clever and unlike other Bronze Age civilisations they used reusable piece-moulds to cast their bronze objects. They made a model of the object they wanted to make then covered it in clay. They then cracked the clay mould into separate pieces like a jigsaw puzzle and removed the model they wanted to cast. This gave them a mould they could put back together and cast again and again and again.

Bronze items were used all over the Shang dynasty, for ritual and religious objects to 3-legged cooking pots (called ding 鼎).

Ding were really closed associated with power and authority and were used by Shang royalty and the Zhou rulers too. The largest one found was dedicated to a Shang queen called Mother Wu, was 188cm high and weighed over 800kg. They were often inscribed with family emblems, personal names and brief accounts of important political or personal achievements.

The Shang believed that life continued after death and ritual offering were often made to ancestors and family ties. For the Shang, they didn’t make images of gods and goddesses, they instead offered food and drink in bronze vessels as tokens to their ancestors.

Ritual bronzes were so important they were often buried with the royals and nobles who owned them. Showing respect for ancestors is still hugely important in Chinese life today.

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Bronze Mask, believed to represent a semi-legendary ancient king Cáncóng who introduced the culture of silkworm cultivation

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A ritual tripod cauldron. The Ding is one of the most important ritual vessel types. They were used to cook and serve food offerings. In the later Shang period they would have been used to burn incense

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Four-goat zun - a ritual wine vessel from the late Shang period.

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Phoenix bird-patterned wine cup. Late Shang/ early Zhou period

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The Shang people belived that they could communicate with gods like Shangdi and other divine beings through fire.

The Shang liked to use oracle bones to ask questions and try and predict the future. Flat bones worked best, like shoulder blades of oxen, or the underside of tortoise shells (called plastrons).

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No one knows exactly what Shang dynasty clothing looked like (especially for poorer Shang) but the best guesses are it was made from either linen, ramie, hemp or silk.

The Shang dynasty is generally credited with starting the basics of Chinese fashion. Their clothes were mostly in primary colours red, blue and yellow with green because of the technology at the time and although the rich people were more likely to wear silk than linen or hemp there wasn’t a great distinction between different positions and classes.

That would come with the next dynasty, the Zhou 西周, who placed more emphasis on the cultural or ceremonial significance of clothing.

People would wear a narrow knee-length tunic called a Yi 衣 over a long, narrow ankle-length skirt called a Chang 裳.

They would also have a sash and a piece of cloth that hung from their waist down to their knees called a Bixi 蔽膝, a little like a decorative apron. The Bixi was tied over the combined Yichang 衣裳.

The cross-collar was called a Jiaoling Youren 交領右衽 and overlapped at the front.

Sometimes they would wear knee-high trousers tied onto the calves called Ku or Jingyi beneath the long Chang.

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Jade Statuette of a Standing Dignitary. Artefacts like this let us know what certain people wore Photo : Harvard Art Museums

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Traditional clothing of Chinese dynasties: from Xia and Shang Dynasties to Tang Dynasty - Nationalclothing.org

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Silk is made from the cocoons of the silk worm moth Bombyx Mori whose fibres are spun together to create silk thread. The silk threads could be made into fabric using a loom and the dyed with natural minerals to make beautiful, string and colourful cloth. To get the different colours silk weavers may have used cinnabar (a red stone), red ochre, powdered silver, indigo, vegetables and ground up clam shells.

Silk was one of the most important goods the Shang made and there’s the possibility that samples of ancient silk found in an Ancient Egyptian tomb were from the Shang originally.

It shows that long before the Silk Roads were formally established during the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) there was already a successful trade in goods from East to West for many years and Chinese silk was highly prized.

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A selection of raw silk and linen samples

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This resource can be used as a virtual artefacts box or as a companion to the Schools Library Services’ Shang Dynasty Collection.

Each chapter gives background information to the artefacts that can be viewed here or be borrowed as a set from the library.

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The Shang definitely had plenty of music, especially in the richer households.

Bamboo or bone flutes had been in use in China since the Neolithic times and the Shang would have had bells, drums, chimes and ocarinas too.

The symbols for musical instruments have been found on oracle bones and describe rituals dances and music.

Shang rulers were buried with musical instruments, sometimes with full ensembles of flutes, stone chimes (called qing 磬 or bianqing 编磬 if there’s a set), ocarinas (xun 塤), bronze bells with and without clappers (ling and nao 鐃) as well as barrel-shaped and bronze drums.

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A modern Chinese ocarina is very similar to the instruments produced hunderds of years ago

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A modern replica of a traditional bamboo flute

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Qing (chime stone) is a percussion instrument from ancient China, which was used to produce melodious sounds in sacrificial ceremonies. This one is decorated with a carving of a tiger.

National Museum of China

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A selection of cowrie shells. Cowrie shells are still valued in cultures around the world today.

Cowrie shells were used by the Shang as a sort of money and had been in use since the Neolithic times. China only had a unform copper coinage system in around 210 BCE, 800 years after the Shang.

Bronze, wood and bone copies of cowrie shells have also been found in the Shang capital Yin and it’s notable that the traditional Chinese characters for goods (貨) and buy/sell (買/賣), amongst others all contain the character 貝, which stands for shell.

Although cowrie shells were in circulation it’s thought that a barter system was also in place.

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We don’t know much about the games the Shang played but statuettes have been found of people playing board games in tombs all over China, particularly from the later Han dynasty. The two most likely board games the Shang played are Lui Bo 六博 and Go 圍棋 (sometimes called by its Chinese name weiqi in the West).

No one is quite sure how to play Lui Bo but the idea seems to have been a game for two players, each of whom had six game pieces that they moved around a square board, using a bunch of 6 sticks as we'd use dice telling them how to move.

Enthusiastic gamers and historians have worked out what they think is how to play the game from looking at ancient finds and statues, but this is just an educated guess.

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Carved figures playing Lui Bo.

The British Museum

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Original Liu Bo Board and Pieces | China | Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org)

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Go is a strategy game that is still hugely popular in China and around the world today. In fact, it may be the oldest board game still in play in the world! It’s a game for two players and the aim is to defeat your opponent by capturing territory and fencing off empty space. It’s played with circular wooden counters in black and white on a grid.

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The replica Lui Bo game includes rules based on observations and research of modern gamers and historians - there’s nothing to stop you inventing your own rules! If your class invents some interesting rules email them to schoolslibraryservices@towerhamlets.gov.uk and we’ll publish them on the Shang resources web pages.

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These are a sample set of rules

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Jade 翡翠 was hugely important to the Shang. The craftsmen who could work this very hard stone were considered highly skilled artisans and their work is very collectible even now.

Jade has been found in burial tombs. Fu Hao 婦好, a great military leader and queen, was buried with over 700 jade items in her tomb! Jade was carved into all sorts of shapes and objects. It was used in sacrificial ceremonies to gods, court rituals and to record treaties between states – it was monumentally important to the Shang.

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A sample of jade stone and replica jade artefacts

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Replica carved jade dragon

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The Bi disc 璧 is a typical jade artefact found for the Shang. These are circular discs usually with a hole in the middle and no one is completely sure what they represent.

A few centuries after the Shang they were put into tombs as links to the sky and Heaven, but no one knows what they meant to the Shang and earlier dynasties. Whatever they represented for these ancient Chinese cultures, Bi discs have been found dating back to Neolithic times.

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Where the Shang lived beside the Yellow River was hugely fertile land, perfect for farming. Farming was relied on heavily by the Shang.

The Shang may have cultivated and eaten ‘wild rice’ – there are references to it on oracle bones – but largely it’s believed that they farmed millet and wheat as well as other staple crops.

They also ate cheese and drank beer but they did not drink tea! Like rice that would not be farmed until years later.

There was a gap between rich Shang and poor. The poor often had very little to eat and nowhere to live, whilst the rich had plenty to eat and drink, fine clothes and of course jade jewellery. The rich were also more likely to have fruits and vegetables to eat.

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The Shang orginally used the lunar calendar and divided constellations up into ‘mansions’ (二十八宿, also called xiu or hsiu). The mansions were divided into 4 sectors all named after a mysterious and legendary animal: Azure Dragon in the East (青龍), Black Tortoise for North (玄武), White Tiger in the West (白虎) and Vermilion Bird (朱雀) for South.

They later switched to a solar calendar for farming after Wan-Nien observed that there were 365 days in a year and two solstices.

Some of the star names have been found written on oracle bones, that’s how we know the Shang knew about them.

Shang astronomers were able to identify comets, stars and Mars long before the West, including a possible sighting of Halley’s Comet in 1059 BCE.

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This star map is from the International Dunhuang Project, an online database of documents and paintings and textiles that were found in the Mogao caves near Dunhuang.

It is the oldest existing star map in the world and dates from around 650 ACE. Although the map is obviously not from the Shang dynasty it does show constellations that the Shang knew (because they were written on the oracle bones) and it refers to the observations of a Shang astrologer Wu Xian 巫咸 as one of the Three Astronomical Traditions.

It means that even if we don’t know whether the Shang had star maps as detailed as this one, the knowledge they had was used by successive dynasties.

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The Shang came to power through battle and ended via battle too. They fought frequently with other dynasties and nomadic peoples on the Asian steppes.

Ceremonial weaponry was an important part of Shang culture and there have been lots of jade axe heads, daggers and other weaponry found that could only have been in use for ceremonial purposes.

Shang armies were mostly made of foot soldiers armed with stone and bronze weapons. They would have had helmets, daggers, spears (máo), pole-axes (yué) and dagger-axes (gē, a spear with a dagger on the end.

The King would have an army of 1000 footsoldiers and was expected to lead them into battle personally, backed by the nobility who would have their own local garrisons. The Shang Army could be anywhere between 3000-13,000 people strong.

They also had archers, who were usually protected safely behind the footsoldiers and armed with bronze-headed arrows. Archers were held in high esteem by military leaders and was said to have been invented by the Yellow Emperor and certainly dated back to prehistoric times. By the Shang dynasty there were even archers on horseback and subjugated tribe leaders were given the title ‘Archer Lord’ and the bow was seen as a sign of nobility and rulership.

The Shang also had war chariots which were two-wheeled carts pulled by horses with a driver, a footsoldier and an archer inside. These could be devastating in battle and last appeared towards the end of the dynasty around 1200 BC under the king Wu Ding.

Battles were brutal with few rules. Survivors were often taken as prisoners. The Shang spent a lot of time fighting other dynasties for territory, glory or resources

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A bronze arrowhead of a type that would have been employed by Shang era archers