Many of us now have more impressions of the Yin Shang Empire from the "List of Fengshen Gods", but this ancient book novel is not really history. Because the novel is easy to understand and extremely widely disseminated, most people think that the Yin Shang Empire is a dark empire. Is this really the case? Of course not.
After King Wu of Zhou attacked the SongCheng of the Yin Shang Dynasty, he did not completely annex the territory of the Yin Shang Empire, and many of the royal families of the Yin Shang Empire temporarily submitted to the Western Zhou, such as Emperor Xin's son Wu Geng, who was sealed in the core hinterland of the original Yin Shang Empire, and Jizi and Weizi, all of which stayed briefly near the Yin Shang King's City. The royals of yin shang recognized the co-lordship of King Wu of Zhou.
During this period, it was obvious that the Ji Zhou royal clan, including King Wu of Zhou, could not completely conquer the Yin Shang Empire and even those large and small Fang states, so even after Wu Geng launched a rebellion and was destroyed, the Zhou people still had to divide the royal sons of the Yin Shang Empire to establish the Song State in the former land of Yin Shang. Or in the eyes of the Zhou people, only by "using Yi to control Yi" can we best control the enemy country.
With a history of five thousand years, it is the two great empires of the Western Zhou and Eastern Zhou that are really more credible. This statement does not negate the existence of the two major dynasties of Xia and Shang, but only two weeks have really left a relatively rich historical record for future generations, and as for the Xia and Shang dynasties, it was not until the excavation of oracle bones more than a hundred years ago and the excavation of the Erlitou settlement that people were convinced of their existence.
The culture of the two-week period can be described as the source of the entire five-thousand-year culture, and the various cultures that followed, the evolution of various politics, economy, culture and even science, are difficult to escape the contribution of the two-week era. The ritual and patriarchal system promoted by the Ji Zhou family can be said to continue to this day. The sub-feudal system that arose from this became a symbol of the feudal era and an absolute order that maintained the major feudal dynasties in the future. Therefore, the historical existence of the Zhou Dynasty is stronger and longer.
All ancient history that is not based on archaeology is a hooligan, since the importance of the oracle bone is fully recognized, coupled with the discovery of the Yin Ruins, a treasure trove of the world, and the excavation of many cultural sites in the Central Plains, although the history of the Shang Dynasty is not as detailed as recorded by those dynasties in the Xinshi Era, but there is already a preliminary outline, and the Shang Dynasty, which was previously one of the representatives of the Golden Age, gradually faded the aura of "disenchantment" and appeared in front of people.
The bronze civilization of the Shang Dynasty is at its peak, and even the various bronze utensils of the two-week period unearthed later cannot be compared, and there are even some phenomena of stagnation and regression in development. The civilization of the Shang Dynasty was far less evil than the Zhou people preached, and certainly not as good as some later Confucians claimed. Confucius said that the revival of the old rites, some of which are actually the old rites of Yin Shang, in the Confucian classics often mentioned Cheng Tang, Wu Ding, is the famous sage of the Yin Shang Empire.
Many people's criticism of the Shang Dynasty today focuses on large-scale human martyrdom, which is the dark history of the Yin Shang Empire. In ancient times and even in the Shang Zhou Dynasty, due to the confusion of the understanding of heaven, most people believed that there was a transitional existence between heaven and man, that is, God. And what is God? God is omnipotent, the co-lord of the world is the spokesman of heaven and the spokesman of God, the heavens are in control of all things, and God rewards good and punishes evil.
The so-called evil, the non-my race is evil, the one who opposes the co-lord is evil, and the one who rebels against the emperor is evil, so the co-lord of the world will fight against these evils, and the captives obtained from the crusade are the spoils of war, which must be dedicated to heaven and God. The people of the Yin Shang Empire believed that only in this way would heaven and god bless the dynasty to enjoy eternal peace and happiness on earth. This is actually a kind of normalized, large-scale collective activity, which is related to both the times and politics. Even in the later Zhou Dynasty era, the system of human martyrdom was not completely abolished, which shows that later people said that the brutality and bloodshed of the Yin Shang Empire were itself untenable.
There is also an untenable one, that is, the Zhou people said that the Yin merchants were drunk, and in many records at the time of the founding of the Western Zhou Dynasty, there were many records that the Zhou people had a reflection on the demise of the Yin Shang Empire, believing that in addition to the brutal reasons for the demise of the Yin Shang Empire, there was also a reason for alcoholism. But don't Zhou people drink heavily? No, but more and more later, the Zhou people could not completely abstain from alcohol, and in many ceremonies, the heavenly sons, princes, and even the courtiers would hold a big feast, and would indulge in drinking at the banquet. The civil strife in many princely states also occurred on the wine table. Jin Linggong, Song Mingong, Chen Linggong, Zheng Linggong, etc. all made mistakes at the banquet table and were killed by their subjects.
The attitude of the Zhou people towards the Yin Shang Empire was constant reflection and continuous blackness. When dividing the princes, the Zhou Tianzi would also issue edicts similar to the "Kang Shu" and "Wine Curse" for the princes, which was to conduct an in-depth analysis of the reasons for the fall of the Yin Shang Empire, that is, to expand the sound of the yin Shang Empire's fall, and even the later princely states were also constantly publicizing, and from generation to generation, the dark history of the Yin Shang Empire was deeply rooted.