The Chinese civilisation first appeared in a fertile river valley- the valley of the Yellow River(Huang River) in north China. Plains around the river have fertile soil that is good for farming.
However, it can be dangerous to live there as flood happens frequently.People learned how to control the flood and transport water.
The Yangshao and Longshan villages
The Yangshao People
A group of villages, called Yangshao villages, appeared on the Yellow River c. 3000 BCE. Evidences, from the 1950, show that people grew millet and kept dogs and pigs. The people use hunting tools,which are made from stone and bone, like bows and arrow.
The Longshao People
The Longshan people are much more advance than the Yangshao people as they live in walled communities, grew rice and millet and raised cattle, sheep, dogs and pigs. They made pottery of fine quality with the help of potters' wheel. The Longshan are remembered for their polished black pottery today.
Shang Civilisation
Government
Shang civilisation was ruled by kings, according to ancient records. A dynasty is formed when kings came from the same family line. Kings live in the capital city where there are palaces, temples and storage houses to store food in the capital.
Occupations
The Shang people were mostly farmers, traders, priests and craftsmen. Shang craftsmen made intricate bronze objects which as weapons, wine jars and cups. Modern craftsmen find it difficult to make exact copies of such objects even with the help of latest technologies.The craftsmen also made beautiful silk clothes and jade ornaments for kings and families.
Writing
One of the greatest contributions of the Shang Civilisation towards the Chinese culture was a writing system or script which formed the basis of Chinese script today. Shang writing consist of more than 3000 characters which looks like pictures of the things or idea they represented. This writing is called pictographic writing and the characters are called pictograms. Chinese characters that are used today are from pictographic writing. Such writing can be found on bronze objects and thousands of oracle bones.
Oracle bones
Oracle bones were used by priests to tell the future. The priest would interpret cracks as giving answers to questions. Both questions and answers were carved onto the bones, which were usually the shoulder of sheeps or cows or sometimes turtle shell. The bones were also used to record the name of rulers, family histories and events like eclipses of the sun and moons.
The fall of the Shang Dynasty
The last Shang king was killed c. 1150 BCE. The next dynasty was the Western Zhou dynasty(1027-771 BCE). The Zhou kings and Shang kings have similar cultures thus the change in dynasty did not result in the end of the Shang Civilisation. Around 771 BCE, a group of people killed the king and his son move his capital towards east. His dynasty was known as the Eastern Zhou dynasty(771-221BCE). Fighting between the people continued and the last of the 232 years of the Eastern Zhou dynasty was known as the Period of the Warring States. During this period, the northern part of China was broken into several kingdoms. In 221 BCE, a prince managed to unite these kingdomsto form the first Chinese empire under the Qin dynasty(221-206 BCE)