EVERYDAY LIFE · SHANG TO QING
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Small questions open a window onto a different world.
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Shang · Daily Life
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.
Shang · Daily Life
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".
Shang · Daily Life
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.