The Mystery of the Western Zhou: A Key Step in Chinese Civilization

China Newsweek reporter/Ni Wei

Published in the 2023th issue of China Newsweek magazine on June 6, 12

In late May 1059 BC, people at the foot of Qishan looked up and saw the "arrival of the red wu". On that day, the five planets of water, metal, fire, wood and earth gathered in a small patch of sky in the northwest. It was a rare celestial phenomenon, and more than 5,3000 years later, astronomers tracked and confirmed the "vision" of that year, which only occurred once in 516 years.

The person who saw the vision was a member of the Zhou ethnic group, surnamed Ji, who lived in Qiyi under the Qi Mountain. A hundred years ago, their leader, Gu Gong Gongfu, led his people on a journey to settle here and establish a city-state of his own people. Their current leader is called Ji Chang, the grandson of Gu Gong's father.

After three generations of leaders, the Zhou people built Qiyi stronger and stronger, and the population steadily increased. The most powerful regime at that time was the Shang Dynasty, located in the present-day Yinxu of the Central Plains, while the Zhou people lived in the far west, blocked by mountains and rivers, and merchants called them Xiqi. The Zhou people submitted to the Shang Dynasty, and the oracle bones unearthed show that when the Zhou people sacrificed, they also paid homage to the merchant ancestors and the recently deceased Shang king. However, the king of the Shang Dynasty was very cruel and mediocre, indulged in the wine pond meat forest, ignored the imperial government, and the people did not have a good life.

This time the celestial phenomenon shocked Zhou Ren. They vaguely felt, is this the call of a mysterious force? Perhaps destiny has come?

Ji Chang immediately proclaimed himself king and declared his independence from the Shang Dynasty. Under the call of the "Mandate of Heaven", the Zhou people opened the road of conquest, and the area of their rule continued to expand. After King Wen's death, in 1046 BC, his son King Wu of Zhou led a confederation of Western Turk tribes to the East, arriving at the Yellow River in northern Luoyang in winter, crossing the Yellow River and attacking the Shang capital. In February 1046 BC, the Xiqi Expeditionary Force engaged the merchants in full-scale war at the Shang suburb Makiye. The battle was extremely fierce, lasting a day and a night, and at sunrise the next day, Zhou Ren won a complete victory. King Shang burned himself to death, and Western Zhou was established.

The inscription of King Wu's Zhengshang Gui (also known as Li Guan) unearthed in 1976 in Lintong, Shaanxi Province records the Battle of Muye: "King Wu Zhengshang, Weijiazi Dynasty, Years Ding, Kedu Shu Youshang, Xin Wei, Wang Zaishi, Bestowed (Right) Shi (Shi) Lijin, used as Tangong Baozun Yi". Only 4 lines and 33 words, thrilling. This guan exists in the same period as the story of the "Romance of the Gods", and the real body can be seen in the National Museum today.

Today, in the western part of the Guanzhong Plain, Baoji, Shaanxi, the place name of Qishan has not changed for thousands of years. As a place name, it can be found everywhere. Historically, the word "Qi" is closely related to the Zhou Dynasty, and the ruins of the Zhou Yuan here are scattered with a large number of relics of the Zhou people.

Compared to the Shang Dynasty, which was known for its brutality, the Zhou Dynasty seemed to have entered another dimension of civilization. Hundreds of years later, the era of Lile Changming and Zhengtongren, which Confucius of the Eastern Zhou Kingdom of Lu remembered, was the late Pre-Zhou period represented by King Wen and the Duke of Zhou, and the early and middle Western Zhou Dynasty. In later generations, the "weekly system" left a nostalgic model of government. The Zhou people used language and writing more skillfully, systematically wrote history and poetry, and the stories and poems they left behind are still not difficult to read. By the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the philosophical ideas of the sons and daughters of the Hundred Schools were like lava eruptions, reaching puzzling heights. And all this is only one step away from the murderous and sacrificial, mysterious and barbaric Shang Dynasty.

The Western Zhou Dynasty was not an ordinary dynastic change in Chinese history, but a cultural leap. From business to zhou, politics, philosophy, culture and other levels have changed the world. As historian Xu Zhuoyun said, the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty was not only a common dynastic succession, but also a recombination of the entire cultural system and political order, which laid some basic characteristics of the Chinese cultural system. He concluded: "The Western Zhou Dynasty replaced Shang with a small state, rose to Weishang, opened an 800-year foundation, created a Chinese cultural ontology, and became the cornerstone of Chinese society." ”

How did the mysterious Shang Zhou upheaval happen?

Epic counterattack

This distant and ethereal history, thanks to the efforts of archaeologists, is not out of reach today.

From 2020 to 2021, northwest of Wangjiazui Village in Qishan County, Baoji, Shaanxi, the Zhou Yuan archaeological team discovered the site of a rammed earth building. The base site sits north facing south, covers an area of more than 2200,<> square meters, and is a two-entry courtyard-style building with a front hall and back room. After stratigraphic and artifact analysis, the archaeologists concluded that this may be the first large-scale rammed earth building site in the pre-Zhou period that can be confirmed at the Zhou Yuan site.

The first Zhou refers to the historical period before King Wu destroyed the merchants and established the Western Zhou Dynasty, and all belonged to the first Zhou from the ancient father's father to King Wen of Zhou. In other words, the first Zhou was the period of the Zhou people's traces, and the Zhou Yuan site is likely to be Qiyi.

For this "first of the week", archaeologists have been working for more than half a century.

Looking for Xian Zhou, which began in the 30s of the last century in the Baoji Fighting Platform, flourished in Zhou Yuan. In February 1976, when members of the production team in Fengyan Village in Qishan County were leveling the land, they found a large amount of hard red-boiled soil and wall skin. The archaeological team then initiated excavations and a large building site surfaced, numbered "Group A (Dzongmiao) Building Site". There are four cultural layers from top to bottom, and the lowest level is the Western Zhou Dynasty. The Phoenix Jia Group kicked off the large-scale archaeology of the Zhou Yuan.

The base site of Group A has a total of 1469 square meters, and the middle line is distributed in turn, with doorways, front halls and corridors, and gatehouses and wings on the east and west sides, like a set of standard courtyards. In addition to the grand building, there is another major discovery at the site of Group A: in the cellar of the second room of the west wing, more than 1,7 pieces (pieces) of oracle bones were unearthed, of which 282 were inscribed. This is the largest oracle bone discovery outside of the Yin ruins.

At that time, because of the name Qishan, the vicinity was always presumed to be the location of Guqiyi, but there was no evidence. Some archaeologists believe that the discovery of Fengyun Village basically confirms the central location of Qiyi. The site of Group A is a high-grade building, which makes people wonder: will it be the palace of the King of Zhou? It is still believed that it is King Wen's mansion, which can be called "King Wen's Mansion".

But archaeology is always cautious, and there is a piece of evidence that says nothing. According to archaeological analysis, the Phoenix Jia Formation cannot be confirmed as the Pre-Zhou period, while the Western Zhou characteristics are obvious. In reality, the cycle of material use often spans artificially defined eras, and it is possible that the building was used from the first Zhou to the Western Zhou, but archaeological work half a century ago does not leave us enough clues. Song Jiangning, an associate researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who has been involved in Zhou Yuan archaeology for 10 years and served as the archaeology leader in 2016, told China Newsweek that unfortunately, under the conditions of archaeological work at that time, a lot of information was not collected, so that this problem cannot be solved now.

And Song Jiangning believes that the Phoenix Jia Group may not be King Wen's palace, its wings are many and small, and the characteristics of living seem to be more prominent. According to the increasing number of Zhou Yuan architectural remains, it is difficult to identify the palace of King Zhou at this stage, let alone confirm which building was where King Wen lived.

The Zhou Yuan was located in the central and western part of today's Shaanxi Province, and the Zhou Yuan defined by archaeologists was wide and narrow. Zhou Yuan in the narrow sense refers to the northern part of today's Fufeng and Qishan counties, which is about 6 kilometers wide from east to west and about 5 kilometers long from north to south. The broad Zhou principle refers to the narrow area west of the Guanzhong Plain, north of the Wei River and south of Qishan, stretching more than 70 kilometers from east to west and about 20 kilometers from north to south.

More than 3000,<> years ago, the Zhou people living in the northern region of present-day Shaanxi were harassed by the ethnic minority Rong Di, and when Gu Gong's father led the tribe to migrate west, he walked to the bottom of the Qi Mountain and saw that the land was fertile and prosperous, and the bitter vegetables growing were all sweet. The Book of Poetry Daya Mian, considered to be the epic poem of the Zhou people, recorded this legend, "Zhou Yuan is a lian, pansy is like a glutton", they were very satisfied, so they "when the time comes, build a room in Yuzi", settle down and name Zhou Yuan.

The Zhou Yuan is an important area on the Chinese archaeological map and a fascinating incision in the interpretation of Chinese history. After 1976, the archaeological team returned to Zhouyuan several times in 1999 and 2014 to restart large-scale excavations and find Qiyi throughout the goal. The Zhou Yuan site is the site with the largest number of bronzes unearthed during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties in the country, with a number of thousands of pieces, exceeding the Yin Ruins, among which heavy artifacts such as the Great Bowl Ding, the Small Cup Ding, the Wall Plate, and the Mao Gong Ding are famous for their long inscriptions. More than 100,<> pieces of oracle bones unearthed in Zhou Yuan are second only to Yin Wu in number; At present, more than <> single rammed earth building remains have been discovered, which is the largest number of Western Zhou sites in China. However, this evidence is difficult to prove the location of Qiyi because of the lack of strong evidence of Xianyi.

In December 2003, while conducting field research at the site of Zhougongmiao in Qishan, 12 kilometers west of the Zhouyuan site, Xu Tianjin, an archaeologist at Peking University, came across a small bone fragment in an abandoned aqueduct. In the spring of the following year, archaeologists followed the vine and found a pit with densely packed oracle bones by the canal, and the first piece of Bujia dug up was "Duke of Zhou" at the beginning. A total of more than 30 characters are recognized on the oracle bone of the Zhou Gong Temple, and the name with the highest appearance rate is the Duke of Zhou. Later, in a forest of wild jujube trees, the archaeological team found 400 large tombs, of which 22 had 10 tomb roads, 4 had 4 tomb roads, and the tombs of the princes of the Western Zhou Dynasty had only one or two tomb roads. The owners of these higher-specification tombs can't help but speculate: Will it be the King of Zhou? But the general view among scholars is that the ruins of the Zhou Gong Temple should be the quarry of the Duke of Zhou—that is, the fields given to Qing Dafu Shilu by the monarch, and those tombs are not the tombs of Zhou Tianzi, but the tombs of the Zhou Gong family.

The search for Kieup continues. In 2004, archaeologists made a new discovery at the Shuigou site in Fengxiang County, 10 kilometers west of the site of Zhougongmiao, and found a wall with a circumference of more than 4000,<> meters, which is the largest city known to the Western Zhou Dynasty, and there are also large palace foundation sites in the city. Subsequently, with the Zhou Gong Temple as the center, they attacked everywhere, and found a military defensive Zhou city in the Jiang Family Temple, and found a copper casting workshop west of the Zhou Gong Temple...

So far, archaeologists have found four construction areas at the Zhouyuan site, including Fengyan Village and Wangjiazui Village. The confirmation of Wangjiazui's remains now provides a rare evidence for the confirmation of Qiyi. Xu Lianggao, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told China Newsweek that the most important thing in archaeological work is to find the large settlements or political, economic and cultural centers of each era, "At present, through many discoveries, I think that the area around Wangjiazui should be the highest-level center in the Xianzhou cultural area at that time." If we think that the matter of Gugong's father moving to Qi is credible, this place (Wang Jiazui) should be the most likely. ”

King Wen of Zhou became queen in Qiyai, and within a decade appeared to have conquered most of the merchant tribes living in the Wei River valley, establishing regional hegemony of the Zhou people. They gradually advanced eastward and attacked some small states in southern Jin, not far from the capital of the Shang Dynasty. Shortly before King Wen's death, he established "Feng" as the new capital in the center of the Guanzhong Plain, quietly shifting his power east from the Zhou Plain in western Weishui.

After King Wen's death, his son Ji Fa inherited the great cause of Chui Shang and became King Wu, and after three years of mourning for his father, King Wu led the Western Lands to fight the Eastern Crusade and complete the final blow of destroying Shang. According to the "Records of History", King Shang gathered an army of 70,<> to face the battle, and King Wu's army was only <>,<> or <>,<>, but in the harsh winter season of Makiye, the merchants had no intention of fighting for the tyrannical King Shun and defected one after another, and the Shang dynasty was buried at the hands of the Zhou Expeditionary Army. In the later mythological novel "Romance of the Gods" related to this, Yang Jian, Nezha, Lei Zhenzi and other characters were all listed in the Western Turkish army.

In the Shang Dynasty, Zhou was just an ethnic minority settlement in the western borderlands, and it was not comparable to the central royal power in political, economic, cultural, military and other aspects. It is curious why such a small country has the ideal of destroying business, and how to achieve the great cause of business. This is an important proposition in the study of the history of the Western Zhou Dynasty. Historian Xu Zhuoyun is an expert in the history of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the author of The History of the Western Zhou Dynasty, whose research focuses on how the Western Zhou Dynasty developed from a small tribe into a state and constructed a feudal order that transcended the state.

And it is this order that inadvertently forged the cornerstone of Chinese society.

　　西土联盟与天下分封

　　如果以《诗经》中的说法，周人灭商的战略规划始于文王的爷爷古公亶父，“居岐之阳，实始翦商”。凭借在西部地区三代首领的经营，周人势力虽然逐步强大，但与商王朝相比仍然难以抗衡。当时周是商的附庸国，据文献记载，纣王曾听信谗言拘禁过周文王，于是才有司马迁“文王拘而演周易”的说法；周原甲骨卜辞里也记载过，商王朝曾经讨伐过周。可见，商对周有碾压之势。

　　周人卧薪尝胆、厚积薄发，但为了灭商，依靠自己的力量是远远不够的，他们还需要一股别的力量加持。商朝西陲活跃着很多古老的少数民族，《史记·周本纪》记载，武王十一年，联合庸、蜀、羌、髳、微、卢、彭、濮等方国部族，对阵商郊牧野。这就是西土联盟。

　　联盟的格局，延续到了西周建立之后。周朝并不像商朝那样以吞并的形式实现统治，而是让各方国部族各自回到故土，保持自己的特色。

　　历史记载得到了考古的呼应。西周考古呈现出非常独特的面貌，是一种百花齐放的多次级区域中心布局。在西周都城遗址之外，遍布各地的诸侯国遗址不断带来惊喜。西周考古中大量发现的高等级遗迹遗物，都属于世袭贵族家族，如山西曲沃晋侯家族墓地、河南三门峡虢国墓地、平顶山市应侯墓地、北京房山琉璃河燕侯墓地、河北邢台邢国墓地、河南浚县辛村卫国墓地、西安张家坡井叔家族墓地、山西绛县倗伯家族墓地、山西翼城大河口霸伯家族墓地、山西黎城黎国墓地、陕西韩城梁带村芮国墓地……迄今为止，考古已经证实了晋、燕、虢、鲁、齐、应、邢、滕、陈、宋、蒋、卫等西周封国的所在。

　　西周为何有这么多封国？

　　回到西周开国之初，武王克商之后，并没有立刻占领商朝都城自居，而是率主力部队西归。被征服的商朝遗民仍交给纣王之子武庚管理，武王留下三个弟弟管叔、蔡叔、霍叔驻扎在商旧都附近，监督武庚。两年后武王去世，幼子成王年幼，武王的另一个弟弟周公摄政，管叔、蔡叔、霍叔不服，联合武庚发动叛乱。随后，周公联合西周宗室召公东征，平定叛乱。之后三年，周公再次攻下商旧都，并且征服了整个东部平原，将西周领地向东推进到山东半岛。

　　正是这次周公东征，而非武王伐纣，真正开启了西周的政治建构大业。

　　为了管理东部平原和其他王国边缘的战略要地，周王室成员和亲属被派到各地建立封国，战国时期的历史学家将这种制度命名为：封建。西周开国元勋姜尚——即传说中的姜子牙——受封于今天淄博附近，建立齐国；周公受封于今天曲阜的鲁国，由于要在国都辅佐成王，派长子伯禽代为赴任；燕国在今天的北京西郊房山，是北京近3000年建城史的起点……这些封国是西周王朝强有力的触角，牢牢稳固了王朝对广大领土的统治。“西周国家在其征服的每一个角落都植入了周的成分，以作为统一政权管理的一部分。”哥伦比亚大学教授、西周史学者李峰认为，“(这些变化)决定了中国华北平原随后几个世纪里的基本政治结构。”

　　这种政治格局正是源自周人龙兴的特殊经历。周人小国寡民僻居西部，面对东部的广土众民，必须设计一套统治机制——“封建亲戚，以藩屏周”的制度。许倬云说，这一封建制度，包括两个举措：一是分封子弟与亲戚，在紧要的地点戍守，彼此援助，构成一个庞大的控制网络；二是笼络不同文化的族群，寻求合作。

　　考古发现提供了佐证。迄今为止，周王室的遗存都是一个谜团。在普遍认同的西周三个都城遗址——周原、丰镐与成周，出土的基本是高等级贵族家族遗留下的遗存。丰镐遗址迄今所见最高等级的遗存，是西周贵族家族井叔家族的墓地；周原的高等级建筑和大量青铜器窖藏，基本也都与贵族家族有关；洛阳成周遗址考古所见的，也是周人和殷商遗民的贵族墓地，与王室密切的文化遗存很难见到。

　　这说明，周王权的存在感远不如商，王权留下的遗存也就稀少了，这些现象支撑了周王作为天下“共主”的说法。徐良高认为，这种商周政治体制的差异，可能就是后来中国历史上常常争论不已的 “周制 ”与 “秦制 ”两种不同政治理念与体制的历史根源。东周时期周王权衰落，诸侯并争、诸雄争霸的历史原因，也可以追溯到此。

　　做周原考古的宋江宁到殷墟考察时，就像西部小城岐邑的百姓进了首都，第一印象便被商都的壮观所折服。商是资源高度集中于首都的国家，“就像法国被称为巴黎和巴黎之外，商也可以分为殷墟和殷墟之外，”宋江宁说，“整个商王朝的GDP肯定比不过西周，但殷墟GDP会超过西周的每一个城市。”

　　地理角度为周的逆袭提供了另一个解释。从周人克商开始，来自西部关中的政治集团取代东部政治集团的变革，在中国历史上不断重演。秦灭六国，楚汉之争，北周灭北齐，隋唐建立……这一系列由弱者厚积薄发造就的王朝更迭，都是这一经典模式的复现，而以周代商是第一次。原因在于，关中平原这片神奇的土地，西起宝鸡、东至潼关，在黄河、秦岭等山河环抱之中，拥有天然的军事屏障，而渭河、泾河冲积的平原提供了北方难得的沃土，形成这些弱势族群在安全的环境中默默积蓄势力的理想温床。彼时，周人似乎还没有意识到自然禀赋的优势作用，但若从整个中国历史来看，不难清晰地看出这一点。

　　对商周之际剧变的关注由来已久。早在近一百年前，王国维曾在《殷周制度论》中断言，“中国政治与文化之变革，莫剧于殷周之际。”他认为，周人与商人最重要的制度差异，一是立子立嫡之制，从而产生宗法及丧服之制，以及封建子弟之制、君天子臣诸侯之制；二是庙数之制；三是同姓不婚之制。这些制度是周管理天下的纲纪，旨在“纳上下于道德，而合天子、诸侯、卿大夫、士、庶民以成一道德之团体。”有人赞同这一论述，也有人认为，周对商的承袭大于革命。两种观点至今争论不休。

　　哥伦比亚大学教授、西周史学者李峰认为，如果一定要说周代的创举，应该是西周的行政体制。西周的官僚制可以按照行政理性和具体的行政需要来运作，这对后来中国历史的影响非常深刻。

　　不同于商依靠霸权和宗教维系统治，正规的政府管理开始在西周出现。到西周中期，基本形成了具有官僚形态的政府体制，主要包括卿事寮、太史寮、王家三大系统。最重要的成就是“寮”这种机构，寮不是具体官职，而相当于常设的行政机构，能把不同官员放在这个机构里，反映了当时周人对政府基本行政功能已经有分类的概念。“寮”本身的字义，象征宫殿里面有火，火意味着灯火通明，反映的是日常不间断的行政职能。中国最早的政府由此诞生。

　　殷鉴不远：周的反思

　　不仅后世为周人灭商的历史所不解，连周人自己也很意外。

　　为什么周能灭掉商？周人何以配得上这天下？他们希望找到一种解释，同时也是在建立一种正统性。《尚书》中几篇写于周初的文献里，记载了灭商之初周人对这段历史的求索和解释。他们最后相信，是“天命靡常，惟德是亲”的道理让他们继承大统，将商人失国归咎于德行败坏，罪名包括酗酒、荒淫、不恤民力……《诗经·大雅·荡》记下了振聋发聩的名句：“殷鉴不远，在夏后之世!”周人发现，商朝的倾覆与夏朝近乎于原样复刻，他们终于领悟，这便是“天命”的规律。

The Zhou people were very reflective, for example, they believed that alcohol addiction was an important cause of the decline of the Shang Dynasty, and issued a ban on alcohol. Bronze Yao, Jue, and Cane wine vessels occupied a central position in the Shang Dynasty ritual system, while the Zhou Dynasty replaced them with food vessels such as ding and guan, and the archaeological evidence is completely consistent with the documentary records. Yin Jian was not far away, and the Zhou people warned themselves everywhere with the lesson of merchants losing their country.

When they traced the vision of the "arrival of the red wu" in 1059 BC, they believed that it was a sign of being ordained by heaven, and that King Wen established the kingdom and King Wu felled the road for heaven. Later generations of scholars generally regarded the concept of "Mandate of Heaven" as a major invention of the Zhou people, in opposition to the "God" of merchants. Merchants do not respect the sky, they revere "emperor", "emperor" is the protective deity of the Shang tribe, derived from the ancestor worship of the Shang tribe. "As the 'heaven' of the god who endows humanity - the ultimate power of the universe, this seems to be undoubtedly a discovery of Zhou Ren." Li Feng said.

Li Feng believes that the extermination of commerce by the Zhou people is not only a military war, but also an ideological and even psychological war. Because King Shang was named a ruthless and cruel tyrant, the officials of the Shang Dynasty were also alcoholic, indulgent and incompetent, and as the Zhou people who were destined by heaven, they felt that they had an unshirkable responsibility to carry out the punishment imposed by heaven on Shang. As the Book of Poetry says: "Although the Zhou is an old state, its life is new."

Zhou Ren believes that he represents a new set of morality and opens a new era.

"The Zhou people were very weak at that time, and seeing that the Shang Dynasty was so powerful and so cruel, it was necessary to supplement virtue in addition to force, so that it was possible to unite more forces and establish a strong alliance, and it was possible to overcome Shang." Song Jiangning said. The most direct archaeological evidence of the "Yin Zhou Change" is that there have never been human martyrs or human sacrifices in the Zhou people's ruins. The small state of Xiqi, which was at the same time as the Shang Dynasty, had a completely different way of ruling and belief structure. "Mr. Wang Guowei never saw such evidence at that time, which is the contribution that our archaeology can do today." Song Jiangning said.

Wang Zhenzhong, a distinguished professor at the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, once concluded that the thinking of the Shang and Zhou dynasties of etiquette was to pay attention to the "etiquette of human-god relationship" and "interpersonal relationship etiquette", respectively, and from the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, the Zhou people—especially the Zhou Gong—incorporated the devotion to heaven into the framework of the etiquette system, put forward the concept of respecting heaven and protecting the people, and transformed the "ritual of man and god" into "interpersonal etiquette". Wang Zhenzhong believes that the most important way to achieve this transformation is to introduce the concept and norms of "virtue" and form a dialectical unity of the combination of the Mandate of Heaven and the rule of virtue, and the Mandate of Heaven and the will of the people. Compared with the theocratic politics of the Shang Dynasty, this is obviously a leap forward.

The Zhou people implemented the idea of respecting heaven and protecting the people in their rule, such as "prudent punishment with wisdom", "knowing the difficulties of crops", "knowing the dependence (pain) of small people", etc., compared with the Shang Dynasty's tradition of human sacrifice, the Zhou people took an important step in respecting life and caring for the people. Xu Zhuoyun believes that the concept of "Mandate of Heaven" put forward by the Zhou people can be extended to two points: first, the ruler's governance must meet certain moral standards; Second, the power of transcendence, that is, heaven, has the power to supervise and judge the order of the world. These views are unprecedented breakthroughs in Chinese history, freeing themselves from the limitations of sect gods and tribal gods and transforming them into transcendent forces of universal significance. When the ruler bears the Mandate of Heaven, he must assume the moral responsibility entrusted by the Mandate of Heaven.

"This is a superb ideal that is difficult to fully realize in real life, but it is precisely because of this ideal that the realm of human order is enhanced." In the History of Western Zhou, Xu Zhuoyun praised, "The Zhou people hanging this ideal can be described as an epoch-making event in Chinese culture, unlike other cultures where divine will and anger are the standard, it took a long time to evolve to get to this point." This new set of philosophies stabilized the political order of the time, guided the political behavior of the Zhou generation, and opened the political tradition of Chinese spirit and moralism.

Laying the foundation for Chinese civilization

Back to the site of the Group A building discovered in Phoenix Village in 1976, the most mysterious part of the building is the cave that served as the oracle bone pit.

Located in the second room of the west wing, this rectangular cave is 1.55 meters long, 1 meter wide and 1.9 meters deep, with 1.3 meters of rammed earth on the upper four walls, belonging to the rammed earth foundation of the house, and 0.6 meters of raw soil in the lower section. This structure indicates that the cellar broke the foundation of the house, which should be later than the age of the foundation of the house. There is also a transverse chamber about 1 meter deep on the east and west sides of the cellar, and a small niche on the north side.

When it comes to oracle bones, people think of almost only Yin Wu, in fact, the Zhou people also have the custom of using oracle bones. Its material characteristics and font style are very different from Anyang oracle bone. Many of the inscriptions are as small as corn and as thin as a hair, the smallest of which is only 1 millimeter square, comparable to a miniature carving, and can only be seen with a magnifying glass. The straight pen knife technique is strong and powerful, and the round pen is used freely and has a unique pen style.

The Zhou people used these oracle bones for sacrifice and divination, for example, one of them was inscribed with "Fa Shu" and the other was inscribed with "Zheng Chao", which should be the divination done in advance for the conquest of Shu and Chao. The Bu Zhi recorded a lot of first-hand information about the Zhou people, such as the Zhou people would sacrifice the deceased Shang kings, indicating that they were subordinate to the status of merchants; And the expression "Chu Zi came to sue" seems to be the tone of a hegemon, indicating that the strength of the Zhou people is rising. The Zhou Yuan archaeological team in charge of the excavation deduced that many of these records were pre-Zhou histories before King Wu's felling.

These oracle bones reflect the level of language and writing, similar to the Yinxu oracle bone script. However, in the Western Zhou Dynasty, the inscriptions cast on bronze objects showed a huge leap in the language and writing ability of the Zhou people. At least hundreds of bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhou Dynasty exist that are quite long and complete. Fortunately, these oracle bone and bronze inscriptions, which seem crooked today, have allowed future generations to return to the real historical scene due to the ancients' devotion and belief in writing. When compared with the ancient texts handed down, the distinction between legend and faith history is revealed.

If Li Guo's account of King Wu's destruction of merchants is still concise, other bronze inscriptions are rich and vivid in detail. Many of the bronzes cast in the Zhou Dynasty are used in religious scenes to worship ancestors, but the content is usually not related to the sacrifice itself, but records some real historical events, and the themes are quite wide, covering various aspects such as Zhou king's orders, military merits, officials, marriages, genealogy, economic transactions, diplomatic and legal treaties. "The improvement in the quality of written evidence compared to the Shang Dynasty will give us a better and more continuous understanding of the political and ceremonial systems and social conditions of the Western Zhou Dynasty." Li Feng said.

The diffusion of literacy culture was not limited to geography, but also extended to various social spheres in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Unlike the Shang Dynasty, which mainly used words for divination, the government administration, official appointments and other activities of the Western Zhou Dynasty would be put into writing, and the Western Zhou Dynasty unearthed more than 100 inscriptions, which were the appointment documents at that time. According to bronze inscriptions, writing on materials such as bamboo and wood at that time had been used in folk commodity trading, land deeds, etc., and although these words had long been turned into clay with perishable materials, they were once widely present in the daily life of the Zhou people.

Because of the wide application of writing in society, it can be assumed that literacy skills were more widely popularized in the Western Zhou Dynasty, which laid the foundation for the development of culture. Parts of the I Ching, Shang Shu and Shi Jing were written by the people of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and the true Chinese tradition of writing began. The migration of the Zhou aristocracy from the Wei River plain to remote areas, possibly with the well-educated Shang dynasty remnants, spread the writing and culture to a wider area, making the Western Zhou a key period in the development of Chinese and even East Asian writing.

"The culture of the Western Zhou Dynasty had a great influence on later generations. For example, the culture of Lile, we later thought that the difference between Huaxia and Rong Di is the difference between Lile culture, what is Huaxia? Lile culture is the core of Chinese culture. Another example is the influence of politics, the Zhou system and the Qin system as two political models that shaped later generations. Not to mention the hundreds of schools, the core and foundation of Chinese culture lie in this, and Confucianism is based on the Duke of Zhou as the founder. Not to mention the Book of Poetry, which laid the foundation for literature. So we often say that the Zhou culture has laid the core of Chinese culture in a sense. Xu Lianggao, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.

The distinctive feature of Shang culture is elimination and replacement, while Zhou culture is characterized by alliance and compatibility. "The general feeling is that the spread of business culture is like a KFC fast food chain, a global standard. The spread of Zhou culture is like China's Sichuan cuisine, which has changed in different places to adapt to the traditional taste preferences of people everywhere. Xu Lianggao said.

From an archaeological point of view, the formation of the Western Zhou state can be seen as a process of implanting elements of the elite culture of the Zhou people in various regions with strong local traditions outside the Wei River Valley. Since the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the eventual fusion of Zhou cultural traditions and different local traditions has laid the foundation for the flourishing local culture of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.

In 1963, in Jia Village, Chen Cang District, Baoji City, not far from the Zhou Yuan site, archaeologists excavated a Western Zhou bronze statue from the ground, named He Zun. He Zun is 38.8 cm tall and 28.8 cm in diameter, with a flamboyant and sophisticated appearance. Cast with a 122-character long inscription at the bottom of the Zun Zheng, this important document tells about the move of the capital of King Zhou Cheng to Luoyang Chengzhou, and the most striking thing is the four characters that appear in the inscription - Zhaizi China.

The meaning of these four words is that after King Wu conquered the merchants, he announced to heaven that he would build a capital in the world and govern the people. "Zhai Zi China" symbolizes the attainment of the Mandate of Heaven and the possession of the world. The so-called "China" does not refer to the country, but to the region in the world. However, because of its literal meaning, it has been given an irreplaceable meaning: it is the earliest word "China" in all existing scripts.

Judging from the literature, the Chinese appellation began precisely in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Of course, China at that time and China today are two completely different concepts. However, looking back at history, that distant and vast, mysterious and magnificent ancient era is still inextricably linked with us in our bones. It unites its allies with the tenets of virtue and equality, creates a magnificent counterattack myth, and merges foreign countries with a gesture of acceptance and tolerance, embarking on the path of incredible cultural leaps. All this is still enlightening for the world 3,000 years later.

References: Li Feng, The Political System of the Western Zhou Dynasty, Early China: Social and Cultural History; Xu Zhuoyun "History of the Western Zhou" and "Wangu Rivers"; Xu Lianggao, "The Similarities and Differences of the Shang and Zhou Political Systems from Archaeological Discoveries"; Han Maoli "Earth China" and so on

China Newsweek, Issue 2023, 21

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