Before we can change as a society, we have to build and grow from the past. We have to learn from the mistakes of yesterday to move on to tomorrow. This means understanding the past from different viewpoints in cultures, through even the worst of time periods. Social inequality can be brought about through a society’s misunderstanding of race, gender roles, social stereotyping of classes or occupations, religion may even factor into the misunderstanding. The way people behave socially, through racist, sexist, or classist forms of discrimination, can be in the littest of details. Social inequality refers to when a society’s foundation limits or harms one’s social status making day to day life in a community harder. Social inequality can be shown and demonstrated through various areas of day to day life such as political or monarchical manipulation, access to goods, but what really can capture a society’s standing is the architecture or artifacts during that time. One of the first dynasties in China to be documented, the Shang Dynasty, displayed social equality through class rankings, how ones tomb was presented, and what materials an individual used commonly.
How housing was built or made, where the wealthy lived versus poor or middle class, what materials social classes have access to, can all be found in what history leaves behind. Archeologists carry a large role in capturing the material culture in helping us understand what it was like back then. We can develop a better understanding of what was going on at the time, even without correct documentation to provide answers, you can always look at where, or what individuals lived in to get a better understanding of day to day lives as well as struggles. To better understand the Shang Dynasty, we need to know the basics of what was the dynasty, where was it located, and what was to be expected during this time in this society. The Shang Dynasty is the first of prehistoric China that has been proven to have existed by archaeological evidence with graves and oracle bones and the oldest substantial evidence of Chinese writing.
Writing during the Shang Dynasty was already in an advanced form, suggesting that the written language had already existed for a long time. Under the Shang Dynasty, the Chinese built huge cities with strong social class divisions, expanded irrigation systems, and the use of bronze. The Shang Dynasty was located in the Yellow River valley, during the second millennium, around 1600-1046 BCE, was the second dynasty of China which succeeded the Xia Dynasty after the overthrow of the Xia tyrant Jie by the Shang leader, Tang. Due to a lack of evidence, many historians question whether another dynasty existed, the Shang Dynasty may have actually been the first in China and the origin of what is Chinese culture. The stability of the country during the Shang Dynasty led to many cultural advances such as bronze casting, the calendar, religious rituals, and writing. The king appointed local governors, and there was an established class of nobles as well as the masses, whose chief labour was in agriculture. The king issued pronouncements as to when to plant crops, and the society had a highly developed calendar system with a 360-day year of 12 months of 30 days each. It was during the Shang that Chinese writing began to develop, and the symbol for “moon” was—as it has remained—that also for “month.”
The calendar took cognizance of both lunar and solar cycles, and, when it became necessary to adjust the basically lunar year to the seasonal reality of the solar year, intercalary months were added. The last emperor of the Xia Dynasty, Jie, was a tyrant who lived for his own pleasure at the expense of his community. It was believed that the Xia ruled according to the mandate of heaven, that the gods gave certain people the right to rule over others, but Tang came to see that the Xia had lost the mandate and led his people to fight back. Excavation at the Ruins of Yin (near Anyang), which was the last Shang capital, uncovered eleven major royal tombs and the foundations of palaces and ritual sites, containing weapons and remains from both animal and human sacrifices. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, stone, bone, and ceramic artifacts have been found. The Anyang site has yielded the earliest known body of Chinese writing, mostly on oracle bones. More than 20,000 were discovered in the initial scientific excavations during the 1920s and 1930s, and over four times as many have been found since. The writings provide an insight into what built this early civilization such as politics, and religious practices to the art and medicine.
