How did Chinese Civilization begin? (Shang and Zhou dynasties) Bronze Age China history explained

"After every victory, one must develop the custom of saying GG EZ to the enemy, demoralizing them and bringing their prestige lower"-Sun Tzu.

I also find the ancient Chinese history really exciting. They had all the incidents, intrigue and philosophy that any great civilization could have plus the absolute mad lads wrote down as many things as possible which gave a much easier job for the historians

The philosophy of Mohism should have deserved a mention; Mohists they were the numbers and science people - engineers, logicians and maths whiz of the time.

Wow that's a lot of philosophers. It's kind of like the Asian version of classical Greece.

I started learning Chinese 22 years ago, have lived in China for 8 years but only just now getting interested in China history... especially the beginning. These videos are great for me to catch up. I often pause and rewind a lot. But very, very interesting! Cheers, Epimetheus.

Great video, Bronze and Iron age China is so criminally overlooked. The Language barrier is a big issue too, there are mountains of archaeological finds documented and studies published untranslated into English... and honestly Chinese historical academics are notoriously conservative, with very strict litmus acceptance which is nice. They loved to fight and debunk amongst themselves; which at least makes finding peer reviewed accurate data easy if you can translate it.

China has been around for so long!! It's truly remarkable and its history is so fascinating. This video is a great dive into it. Great job :)

"Infinity war is the most ambitious crossover in history"

The Art of War also says " Dab on those fools and drop nuts on their corpses"

I absolutely love that you guys are teaming up with some of my favorite history channels on youtube! I cannot wait to watch it all!

Epimetheus, you are one of the best history channels out there! Keep up these great collabs!

This collaboration is amazing! Thank you for being such awesome creators. Way better than ANYTHING on tv

Dan-, the Duke Wen of Zhou's life is nothing sort of extraordinary. For starters, he was Confucius' hero even though the 2 men lived nearly half a millennium apart. As you mentioned, During his regency of the young King, Wen introduced "Mandate of Heaven." This way, vertically, it guaranteed the legitamacy of the Zhou (and the illegitimacy of the Shang.) The Shang had always branded themselves as the sons of Heaven or the sons of Tian, so this entire re-framing of the situation acknowledged both that perhaps Shang was once truly great and benevolent, but they have lost their way, and because the new Zhou dynasty was virtuous and freed the slaves and fed the poor they were legitimate. Horizontally, Duke Zhou also reformed the labyrinthine system of Kings and petty vassals, and gave birth to feudalism in China, formalized them into titles such as Dukes, Marquis, and Counts. Incidentally, this completely mirrored that of the later medieval European. Two thirds of the states were bestowed to members of the royal family and families loyal to them. With this in mind, two achievements were realized. One: Vertically Duke Wen legitimized the Zhou dynasty as both favorable and blessed by the divine Heavens, thus paving the way for a streamlined top- down chain of command that allowed the Zhou Kings to exact a greater control. Two: Horizontally, Duke Wen placed many of the Zhou family members and trusted Zhou allies across the 2/3 of the states of the realm. These two factors quickly created a synergy that further preserved the Zhou hold on power, and formed the society of China for the next millennia until the first Emperor. It was also because this division of the nobilities that a new class was born, the scholar- retainers called “Shi” (士) meaning attendant, the class that some of the greatest thinkers from ancient China would be born from: including Laozi, Sun Tzu, Mencius and Confucius himself. And then, after having done all of these things, Duke Wen abdicated his station as the young King's regent and retired in peace. In terms of feudalism, he shaped China for the next 1000 years, in Mandate of Heaven, he shaped China's thinking for the next 3000 years until the end of the Qing, in the scholarly class tradition, I think his influence still lives on even today. Duke Wen was arguably the single figure that created the foundation of the Chinese identity and cultural soul. He also lived almost contemporaneously to the historical Trojan War so that's shows how long his impact for China is.

Second stop on the playlist. Great work! 👍🏻

One of the best historical videos I've seen. I like how you show things that have been found from the dynasties.

When you are writing the scripts for your next few videos, and you see Epimetheus has released a new video all work stops and you watch the video. Simple.

my whole youtube feed just got thrown back into the bronze age

This helps with history. I’ve been watching your vids last week for my history research and it really help

Yes! More Bronze Age videos!

I was subscribed within the first minute. Glad you all did this collaborative playlist because this video is exactly what I needed for world building a whole section of my fantasy world.