What did Bronze age Asia look like Veeky Forums and what was it like?
Aincent attire and architecture China
>Xia Dynasty
>Bronze Age
The Xia Dynasty was definitely legendary.
As far as scholarship knows, Bronze Age China is the Shang and early Zhou dynasties. Filled with Chariot-riding feudal aristocrat warrior-class and one piece robes.
This.
In addition to Ayy Lmao aesthetics.
Funnily we have no idea of Shang/Zhou civilian wear because the Aristocracy hogged what little art survived the period and they're almost always in wargear.
these aesthetics were so good
what the fuck happened in the following centuries?
There's talk that the Shang and Zhou were copletely different civilizations.
It helps that one is from the North, and is a Shaman-theocracy, the other from South of the Shang and was a Feudal Empire.
which of the two, if either, is responsible for the dominance of the sinitic languages?
They both were sinitic.
Its just that they had completely different cultures.
The Zhou did have the bigger territory of the two following its expansion to the South of the Yangtze,
嘿笑我的屁股
So no trace is left of the common folk of the era eh?
Not even a mud hut or dead peasant in a pond?
Shang Dynasty was pretty much like Aztec Empire. Dense with jungles and routinely practised human sacrifices with slaves and POWs.
Nope.
From written record and archaeology we do have some idea of their society.
The Shang Period was a Theocracy led by shaman-priests, chief of which was the King. Their entire society revolved around the protochink states and tribes hanging around their local shaman priest (effectively princes) and interpreting the will of the gods through divination.
The Zhou Dynasty was a Feudal Empire. It was headed by the Ji Clan whose justification for rule rested on them posessing Mandate of Heaven. To rule over the other Protochink states and tribes, it required all of them to send a princess to the King and married off any available Ji son to the local aristocracy. The Zhou is characterized by the emergence of feudalism in China, where chariot riding warrior-aristocrats had fiefs who swore loyalty to a lord, who in turn swore loyalty to a Sub-King, who in turn swore loyalty to the overking- the King of Zhou of the Ji Clan. The first cities in China emerged during the time based on the holdings of the lords, which led to the rise of a second class of common folk: the urbanite artisan/merchant instead of the usual peasant commoner.
Oh I must also say: Bronze Age China was less of the unified country we know today and more like Current Europe or even much of historical India: a place filled with shitloads of civilizations and ethnicities and languages albeit sharing a certain general culture.
During the Zhou period, they gave this culture a name: Huaxia (meaning refined and noble), to refer to the civilizations and peoples who shared a common refined culture which, to them, was the height of civilization. It is similar to how Greek City States use the term "Hellenic," and the suffix -Hua still exists today in China to refer to overall Chinese culture and people (i,e, Zhonghua).
The meme unified state would not come up until various philosophers crying over the violence of the warring states all came to the conclusion that a single country was better than the fucking mess of states.
We know anything about what they worshiped?
Interesting. The blocky decorations, with a mix of curving and right-angle geometry, are reminiscent of Mesoamerican civilizations.
It should also be noted that during the Zhou and the subsequent Spring and Autumn,polities are only "Chinese" in retrospect. Yan,Qi and Qin were built by co-opting native elites with repeated conquest against non-Sinitic natives.
Shu/Ba was inhabited by Tibeto Burmans,Chu had a Tai Kadai/Hmong Mien substrate while Wu/Yue were non Sinitic barbarians possibly Austronesian.
What's interesting is sheer amount of cultural diversity that predates the Qin unification. The Shang were known to wear queues that lasted all the way to the Han dynasty.
Yes, it's already Bronze age.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
>The Xia Dynasty was definitely legendary.
Funny, that's how some people used to say about Shang dynasty, but turns out they're wrong.
>we have no idea of Shang/Zhou civilian wear
No, your don't represent "WE". You are just (You).
zh.wikipedia.org
先秦服飾制度形成研究(The Study on the Formation of the Clothing System and Social Hierarchy in the Pre-QIN Period)
big5.oversea.cnki.net
They worshiped Shang Di(上帝) and ancestors, such custom is still existed till today, also as one of roots of Qingmin festvial(清明節). 上帝 also becomes Taoism deity(玉皇大帝、天公) and used as Chinese translation term of Yehovah by Christian missionary.
Silk already a commodity in the Chinese Bronze age?
Were the ancestors of modern Chinese from Tibet, or were there Sino-Tibetan migrants that imposed their culture over the population on the Huang He?
some neolithic steppe niggers
...
ancestor worship, the civilization's first cities probably grew from shrine complexes as Shang kings were priests first and civil leaders second. The justification for the king's rule came from the supposed fact that he had the most powerful ancestors of anyone, and a supernatural ability to divine their will. Many bones from divination rituals have been preserved, where cow bones or tortoise shells would be thrown into a fire, then the king would read the cracks and determine what the ancestors were saying. Many even have the questions and answers written on the bones, as they were probably meant for public display, so we have a good idea what their concerns were.
Do we know anything about the cultures sorrounding the Xia/Sung/Zhou?
Like in Korea, Taiwan,Indochina, mongolia and Japan?
Japan and Korea sure. Korea claims to have started with Gojoseon Kingdom of the 2000s BC. However the first mention of any state-entity in the Korean peninsula is not in any Korean record: its in Chinese, when the Zhou met them in the 700s BC.
Japan meanwhile has a murkier history during this period. From 1000s BC-300s BC, Japan was still pretty much prehistory. The period is called the Jomon period and little is known about their culture. They did leave behind shitloads of ceramic artefacts to attest to at least an agrarian culture.
Also Japan missed out on the Bronze Age entirely, the Jomon period was pretty much stone-ages. Heck that stone age lasted til the first century AD. When Mainland Asian Influence came from either Chinese or Korean refugees and emigres, Steelmaking came with it.