Early Chinese Civilizations

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Early Chinese Civilizations
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Geography of China
Mountains and deserts served as barriers that
separated Chinese people from other Asian people.
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Shang Dynasty

• Religious beliefs
• rulers believed they could communicate with the
  gods to get help with their affairs
• strong belief in life after death
• human sacrifice
• spirits of ancestors could bring good or evil

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Zhou Dynasty

• Mandate of Heaven
• belief that kings received their authority to
  command, or mandate, from Heaven
• it was the kings duty to keep the gods happy,
  failure to do so would lead to decline and new
  dynasty would take over

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Dao The proper Way
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Chinese Philosophies

• Confucianism
• Concerned with human behavior-proper way to
  behave was in accordance with the Dao
• View of the Dao-Duty and humanity

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Duty

• Five Constant Relationships-parent and child,
  husband and wife, older and younger siblings,
  older and younger friends, and ruler and subjects
  
• All people had to subordinate their own
  interests to the broader needs of the family and
  the community.
• Work Ethic-If each individual worked hard to
  fulfill his or her duties, then the affairs of
  society as a whole would prosper as well.

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Humanity

• a sense of compassion and empathy for others
• Do not do unto others what you would not wish
  done to yourself
• Measure the feelings of others by ones own
• Within the four seas all men are brothers

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• Daoism
• inaction rather than action
• The best way to act in harmony with the
  universal order is to act spontaneously and let
  nature take its course by not interfering with it.

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• Legalism
• School of Law
• proposed that human beings were evil by nature
• believed a strong ruler is required to create an
  orderly society

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Qin Dynasty

• Changes in Chinese Politics
• Legalism was adopted as the regimes philosophy
• anyone who opposed the regime was punished or
  executed
• centralized state

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Great Wall of China

• created to protect against nomadic invaders from
  the north
• linked existing walls together to create The
  Wall of Ten Thousand Li
• present wall was ordered 1,500 years after the
  first Qin Emperor

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Han Dynasty

• New developments in technology
• advances in textile manufacturing
• water mills for grinding grain
• iron casting
• steel paper
• rudders
• fore-and-aft rigging for ships

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Purpose of the terra-cotta figures they were a
re-creation of Qin Shihuangdis imperial guard
and were meant to be with the emperor on his
journey to the next world