About the Shang Dynasty (c.1600 - c.1100 BC)

The Dynasties of China, A History
Bamber Gascoigne, Carroll & Graf Publishers
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Between the Peking man of the anthropologists and the Beijing man of today there lies a span of some 400000 years. The remains of Sinanthropus pekinensis, a man already in possession of fire and primitive stone implements, were found in 1927 in a cave about thirty miles southwest of the modern city. In another part of the same complex of caves were the skeletons of a group of men who lived some 20,000 years ago. Closer again to our own time, the Neolithic period is represented in the area by profuse remains of stone tools and pottery. These can be matched by many countries, but they were followed in this part of China by a bronze age culture unrivalled anywhere in the world in the technical skills of its vessels and implements. Within only a few more centuries one reaches, in about 1000 BC and still in this same region, the earliest surviving Chinese literature.

Then, still before the birth of Christ, begins the astonishing series of dynastic histories which would continue unbroken up to 1911. No other place can offer such detailed evidence of man’s development as this north China plain, as if in the crook of an arm, by the great right-angle bend of the Yellow River.