Violence in China before the Zhou
The area of China during the Neolithic period (c. 10000 bce-c. 2000 bce) was home to a variety of geographically dispersed and culturally distinct groups, yet some generalisations about violence are possible.
The absence of reliable written records from these times means that all evidence is archaeological, and even some of that evidence is inferential. The existence of rammed-earth walls around settlements implies the threat of warfare, for instance. Weapons and replica weapons were intrinsic to ritual practices, suggesting the great importance of those objects. Axes are tools with peaceful purposes, to be sure, but the evidence of their use in burials and other rituals suggests greater significance. Similarly, archery was a means to take game, but archaeologists have also recovered arrowheads at sites in numbers that they suggest indicate mass killing in battle rather than hunting. The presence of sculptures with weapons in hand further amplifies this impression. Other evidence of violence is more direct. There are, for instance, numerous archaeological discoveries that reflect human sacrifice, including piled and mutilated corpses interred at building sites and within elite tombs.[843]The earliest extant texts from China are short entries on ‘oracle bones'. These prognostication texts on bovine scapulae and turtle plastrons date to the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 to mid eleventh century bce). Archaeologists have recovered thousands of oracle bones from excavations of the final Shang capital, Anyang (Henan). These short texts make the Shang the earliest dynasty attested to and confirm the presence of violence in that society. Military activity is prominent among the oracle bone inscriptions, yet the inscriptions do not describe actual bloodshed. They record only general military matters: battles, attacks and prisoners captured.
And they sometimes include appeals to the Shang deity, Di, for help in battle. One such example reads, ‘We will attack the Gongfang, for Di will confer assistance on us.'[844]The variety of weapons recovered from grave assemblages and elsewhere further reflects the prominent position of warfare in Shang society and the resources invested in preparing for it. The Shang produced arrowheads, halberds, axes, knives and spearheads of bronze in large numbers. Both oracle bone inscriptions and archaeology reflect that the Shang continued the practice of human sacrifice they inherited from their Neolithic predecessors. Many elite graves contain multiple skeletons, including both the decedent and human sacrifices that accompanied him or her into the afterlife. While some of these victims were beheaded before interment, scholars argue there is also evidence reflecting that some were buried alive. The killing of human sacrifices to accompany deceased members of the elite classes and others persisted into the subsequent Zhou dynasty, then faded out before unification in the third century. Whatever precise form they took, these practices were related to but distinct from the sacrifice of prisoners of war to the ancestors, which followed a similar trajectory.[845]
More on the topic Violence in China before the Zhou:
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- The Zhou Dynasty and the Early Textual Traditions
- Violence in Revolutionary China, 1949-1963
- Violence and Warfare in Early Imperial China
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- State, Society and Trained Violence in China, 618-1500
- Legal Understandings of Sexual and Domestic Violence in Late Imperial China
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