What is the difference between the shang and zhou dynasty

Therefore it should be prohibited. I therefore request that all records of the historians other than those of the state of Qin be burned. With the exception of the academicians whose duty it is to possess them, if there are persons anywhere in the empire who have in their possession copies of the Odes , the Documents [Zhou-era texts], or the writings of the hundred schools of philosophy, they shall in all cases deliver them to the governor or his commandant [overseer] for burning.

Anyone who ventures to discuss the Odes or Documents shall be executed in the marketplace. Anyone who uses antiquity to criticize the present shall be executed along with his family. And, indeed, there was a clampdown on the scholars of China: many texts from non-Legalist philosophies were burned, and tradition holds—per Sima Qian—that Qin Shi Huang ordered Confucian scholars buried alive. This mass burial may not have happened as described; Sima Qian, as a committed Confucian, may have embellished the truth of it to make Qin Shi Huang seem more immoral.

An eighteenth-century depiction of Qin Shi Huang. Image credit: Wikipedia. Qin Shi Huang abolished the divisions between the once-warring states and blunted the power of the aristocracy, establishing instead an imperial bureaucracy that could rule the peasantry directly, all in the name of national unity.

Ordinary people also suffered harsh treatment. Reporting crimes was rewarded, and the lawbreakers, once convicted, were punished severely by execution, hard labour, or mutilation ranging from cutting off the whiskers to the nose or the left foot. Even perfectly law-abiding people were subject to onerous labour service, and both conscripted and penal labour were used for the building of palaces, roads, canals, imperial tombs, and fortifications [like walls and fortresses].

Several hundred thousand subjects were conscripted to build a huge new palace complex in BC. Even more were drafted to construct the Great Wall.

The Qin Dynasty marks the period during which much of the original Great Wall of China was constructed—though little of that wall remains today. Perhaps most notably, the emperor commanded the use of a common written language across China. The newly unified country was composed of people who spoke very different languages, but Qin Shi Huang demanded that those different languages all be rendered in the same script. This enabled his edicts to be understood throughout the empire.

The First Emperor of the Qin survived multiple attempts on his life and grew obsessed with the idea of living forever. He was furious with those he perceived to have already achieved immortality. Sima Qian tells a story of how Qin Shi Huang cut down a holy grove just to spite a god. Qin Shi Huang sent out expeditions to find Peng Lai—the land of Chinese immortals—and he dispatched teams of scholars to hunt for the lingzhi mushroom, which he felt would bestow upon him eternal life.

In BCE, legend holds, he fell ill from mercury poisoning—thought to be an important component of the elixir of life—and died, throwing the empire into chaos. The imperial palace became tangled with intrigue. During and BCE both classical civilizations suffered from outside invasions; growing from Central Asia. They were not as sweeping as earlier Indo-European growth but tested Rome and China severely.

When the material is cast iron then the tool should be even stronger than the material. For cast iron, a single point cutting tool of high speed steel and carbon steels should be used for this. There are cutting tools that are even stronger and powerful but the purpose of those is to cut even stronger materials. So in Cast iron, carbon steel and high speed steels are the perfect tools for the purpose of facing and turning operations.

Steel is more costly than e. It is a lot more fire resistant than wood as it melts at degrees Celsius while wood burns at Celsius. Although more costly to install as it requires specialist equipment than wood which is a lot easier to install than steel and requires a less skilled labourer.

Wood can suffer from fungal attack; it also decays, and suffers from insect attacks while steel mainly suffers from corrosion. Christendom in Europe enhanced Christianity throughout the Byzantine Empire. The European forces of Christendom established new colonies, but Muslims easily invaded them. European civilizations expanded trade routes throughout China and Islam. The pottery was made intricately and delicately with either porcelain or bronze.

They also made silk cloth, which was made out of silk worms. Another invention that they made was the pictographs.

It is pictures that looked like words that we use now. The Shang dynasty lasted years which is quite long compared to the Qin dynasty which only lasted 19 years. They also used oracle bones. The oracle bones are made of animal shells or bones, then you inscribe words on it. After that you burn it, depending what shape it ends up, it decides your fate. The Shang dynasty was a united nation, unlike the Zhou they did not have any states. Their capital was Anyang which is in the Hennan province.

They believed that if they sacrificed humans it would make the gods happy, and good things will happen. The Shang majorly improved the Art and Literature of China. A Chinese family was connected not only to their fathers and mothers of the recent past but those from the distant past. A common belief of the time was that every family traced its origin to Huang Di the Yellow Emperor , the mythological progenitor of the Han people.

The lineage system was vital for answering questions about origin and identity. The third premise stated that the human body had two souls: the soul that ascends at death, the hun, and the one that stays with the corpse, the po. The hun eventually becomes a spirit shen , while the po becomes a ghost gui. The two-soul theory confirmed the multilayered reality in which the Chinese lived. Fourth was the offering of sacrifices to their counterparts in heaven to show filial respect xiao and procure favors for the maintenance of the middle realm, earth.

Generally sacrifice ji refers to gifts of wine and meat to a spirit that was in human form or an object in nature, such as a mountain, tree, or river. The most important—at least to the elite—were the rites performed by kings and, later, emperors. Provided these rituals were done correctly, the kingdom was assured of a prosperous year or the abatement of a calamity, such as a famine.

Ancestral rites also were performed at the local and familial levels. It was common then, as it is today, to find ancestral temples and shrines in towns and villages dedicated to individuals, who became deities through legends surrounding their lives and deaths. In most homes there was an altar for wood plaques or paper with the names of deceased relatives. The fifth feature of the ancestral cult embodied the roles played by mediators, such as shamans wu and ritual specialists or priests zhu.

Both the shaman and the ritual specialist could recognize the signs of a cosmos in or out of balance and the methods required to ensure harmony. Kings and male heads of families also were considered mediators; however, shamans and priests had more expertise in the arts of divination and performance of rites, and they were often recruited for services at both the royal and local levels.

When ministering to the newly deceased, in particular, shamans and priests were called upon to perform certain rituals, including divination, to assure proper burial and treatment of the hun and po souls. Divination, the art of using omens or magic powers to discern movements in the supernatural world, has long been an important decision-making tool for the Chinese.

Whether it means consulting inscriptions on animal bones or tortoiseshells see the Shang Oracle Bone in Section 2, Traces of Ideas during the Shang and Zhou periods or using wood blocks to learn the response of an ancestor or deity in modern temples and homes, negotiating the three levels of heaven, earth, and the underworld through divination constitutes a point of continuity in Chinese religious culture.

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