EVERYDAY LIFE · SHANG TO QING
Stories
Small questions open a window onto a different world.
Questions on Bone: How the Shang Fed Their Ancestors
The Shang believed the dead became ancestors who could help the living, so they offered food and wine, divined the harvest on oracle bones, and buried retainers and sacrificial victims with the bronze.
Ruts and Carriage Boxes: Roads and Chariots at Shang Yinxu
Excavators at Yinxu have traced a grid of three east-west and three north-south roads, one with wheel ruts; Shang chariots ran on one yoke, one shaft, one box, one axle and two wheels.
Two Questions on One Shell: An Ordinary Day in Shang China
On one turtle shell the diviner Wei asked, on the same day, whether the harvest would come and whether it would not. Oracle bones are royal records; ordinary people appear only as "the many".
Eight Hundred Kilos of Bronze: How Shang Status Was Cast
The 832.84 kg ding took eight body moulds, three per leg, over a tonne of metal and seventy crucibles; Lady Hao's tomb held 1,928 objects, 755 of them jade, more than 200 older than she was.
Nine Parts Millet: What Shang Diners Actually Ate
Bones from a Shang general's tomb show a diet that was nine-tenths millet, meat rationed by rank, bronze wine vessels in sets, and plum stones in a small jar.