Dynasty is a term that defines a certain period of regime, and usually the use of dynasties and dynasties is limited to a small difference between academic and general history readings, such as the Xia Dynasty, as the first hereditary dynasty in China, but rarely uses this title in many academic monographs, but often calls it "Xia Dynasty".
In fact, the time span of "generation" is often longer than that of "dynasty", such as the five dynasties and ten kingdoms in history, and the "generation" here includes many feudal dynasties that are divided. Similarly, the meaning of the Xia Dynasty is to extend before and after under the premise of taking the Xia Dynasty as the ontology, and as for which dimension it is extended to, it depends on the needs of the study of the Broken Dynasty.
However, the situation in the Xia Dynasty seems to be much more complicated than that of later dynasties.
In january 2021 news reports on the discovery of the ruins of The City pool in Yusi Village, Mengzhou City, Henan Province, the official media used the term "Yuxia period"; in the news report on the Dongqu site discovered in Jishan County, Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, in March 2022, the state media used the expression "Xia period".
It is worth mentioning that the "Xia Period" is more vague in the definition of time and space, which not only includes the stage of the Xia Dynasty, but also includes the stage of the ancient kingdom with the Xia ethnic group as the main body before the establishment of the Xia Dynasty. In terms of space, the "Xia period" may also refer to other archaeological cultures that are in the same time period as the Xia Dynasty (country) but do not belong to the category of Xia culture.
It can be said that "summer period" is a very broad expression.
Then we can't help but ask, didn't the national Xia Shang Zhou Dynasty Project already determine the total year of the Xia Dynasty from 2070 BC to 1600 BC? So why can't it be called the "Xia Dynasty Period" in this time frame, but vaguely called the "Xia Dynasty Period"?
This involves a conceptual judgment of "Xia culture", that is, what is Xia culture? In other words, is the Xia culture the culture of the Xia Hou tribe, or the culture created by all the different groups during the xia hou clan's rule?
Mr. Xu Xusheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences believes that xia culture refers to the culture of the Xia clan, that is, the culture of the Xia Hou clan mentioned in the "History" and the culture co-created by the same surname or in-laws, such as the Hu clan, the Chu Xun clan, the Chou clan, and the Qi clan.
Professor Zou Heng of Peking University believes that the Xia culture is "the archaeological culture to which the Xia Dynasty belongs", or more precisely, the Erlitou culture discovered by archaeology.
Indeed, judging from the absolute chronology of stratigraphic superimposition and carbon 14, the Erlitou culture, with the Yanshi Erlitou site in Henan as the core, was later than the Henan Longshan culture (Neolithic) and earlier than the Shang culture (Erligang culture).
The magnificent palace architecture, numerous ceremonial utensils, and the phenomenon of cross-regional spread of culture are enough to confirm that before the establishment of the Shang Dynasty, there was a mature political entity in the Central Plains of Iloilo, and this political entity had already broken through the ancient stage of blood ties and became a geopolitical group.
But the problem lies precisely in the time limit of the two miles.
According to the carbon fourteen determination and the correction of the tree ring, the absolute age of the Erlitou culture is from 1750 BC to 1530 BC. This means that the Early Erlitou Culture could not be connected with the Longshan Culture in Henan, and there was a gap period in the middle, and the late period had entered the Shang Dynasty, and even overlapped with the Shang Dynasty for nearly 100 years.
In other words, if we take the 1600 BC year of the rise of Zhengzhou Shangcheng as the dividing point of Xia and Shang, Xia as a dynasty has only existed for more than a hundred years at best, far from the "From Yu to The Seventeenth Dynasty, there are kings and no kings, with a year of 471 years", that is, around 2070 BC.
Is it possible that Erlitou was only the capital of the middle and late Xia Dynasty, and the capital city of the early Xia Dynasty had not yet been discovered?
From the perspective of archaeology, the cultural relics created by different social groups must be different, and the culture created by the same groups must be continuous before and after, which is why archaeologists can judge the era in which the remains are located only based on the shape of the excavated cooking utensils and burial customs.
The consensus of archaeologists on the Erlitou culture is that no direct source of the Erlitou culture has been found. The core artifacts of the Erlitou site include daily pottery and Xinzhu from the Longshan culture in Henan, as well as jade from the pottery and Liangzhu culture in southern Jin, as well as cultural factors in Dawenkou, Shandong, and Zaolutai in eastern Henan.
This shows that the Erlitou culture is the product of the exchange and integration of different groups, and this just proves that the Erlitou site is indeed the capital of a dynasty, bringing together different ethnic groups and cultures from all over the world.
So what kind of scene was the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River that preceded the era of Erlitou, the so-called middle and early Xia Dynasty (before 1750 BC)?
Professor Xu Hong, who was the head of the Erlitou Archaeological Task Force, once made the following conclusion: "In the one or two hundred years before and after 2000 BC, that is, in the early Xia Dynasty in the literature, various groups in the Central Plains found by archaeology did not belong to each other, and wars were frequent, and archaeology could not see the 'dynastic weather' corresponding to the documents passed down from generation to generation."
Archaeologists represented by Professor Zou Heng, after decades of archaeological excavations, have also made the following judgment: "In the ancient documents and records, that is, in the Central Plains in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, it is unlikely that any new archaeological culture will be discovered."
These two heavyweight conclusions can be summed up in one sentence: if the Xia Dynasty really existed for 471 years, then only more than a hundred years of them were true dynasties, and the early 300 years or so were still beyond the ancient state stage.
Although some scholars have tried to include the late Longshan culture in Henan (2000 BC - 1900 BC) and the subsequent Xinzhan culture (1870 BC - 1720 BC) into the category of Xia culture, thus extending the Xia Dynasty's Guozuo to more than 400 years from an archaeological point of view, they cannot explain the huge differences between Henan Longshan culture and Erlitou culture.
For example, the circular bag-shaped ash pit that is popular in the Longshan culture of Henan is extremely rare in the Erlitou culture, and the common gray pits such as rounded corners and oval shapes of different sizes are common in the Erlitou culture.
Even the Xinzhan culture, which is regarded as one of the predecessors of the Erlitou culture, has both certain factors that have a sequential and development relationship with the Henan Longshan culture and the Erlitou culture, and a unique set of cultural characteristics that dominate the innovation characteristics that are different from the two before and after.
More direct evidence comes from archaeological discoveries in Yangcheng.
According to the "Records of History", "Xia Yu du Yangcheng (present-day Dengfeng, Henan). Since then, the ruins of Eastern Zhou Yangcheng near Dengfeng Wangchenggang have found cultural relics with the "Yangcheng Warehouse" stamp of the Warring States period, and archaeologists have discovered two city sites from the Longshan cultural era after archaeological excavations of the Wangchenggang site, and the carbon fourteenth dating is 2050 BC and 1935 BC respectively.
An Jinhuai, an archaeologist who presided over the excavations, believes that the site of Longshan City in Wangchenggang is likely to be the Yangcheng of the Xia Dynasty. However, the core pottery combination of the Longshan period of the Wangchenggang site is a pot, a ding, a bowl, and a cup, while the core artifact group of the Erlitou culture is a round-bellied jar, a cup, an oblique abdomen basin, and a knight, and the difference in drinking vessels, eating utensils, and wine vessels also shows that the Erlitou culture is the product of the fusion of various groups, and the Xia Hou clan is only one of the "genetic factors".
Under the premise of lack of written self-evidence materials, there will be two problems that cannot be solved: first, archaeology cannot accurately distinguish between the pre-Xia culture, the Xia culture and the Xia immigrant culture; the second is the xia culture in which stage belongs to the ancient country, and at which stage it enters the dynastic stage?
Judging from the archaeological findings, the cultural form of Yudu Yangcheng is obviously different from that of Erlitou, at least indicating that in the Dayu era, the political form of Xia was still tribal alliances. There is also a more extreme possibility that the royal family of the Erlitou civilization is not the XiaHou clan, but may be the Shu Clan or other non-Dayu direct clans.
To take an example of the Qin Dynasty, qin as a dynasty has only existed for 14 years, but Qin culture has appeared since the day Qin became a prince, so Qin culture has existed for more than 500 years. If we leave the literature and rely on archaeological findings alone, we cannot accurately distinguish which time node is the Qin State and which time node became the Qin Dynasty.
The ascension of Yin Zheng to the throne does not mean the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, similarly, the father-son inheritance of Dayu or Qi only represents the establishment of the family world system within the Xia Hou clan, but it cannot confirm that the Xia Dynasty at that time had been established.
Based on this, many scholars represented by Xu Hong, out of careful consideration, do not call it the Xia Dynasty, but only refer to it as the Xia culture or the Xia period, or only call it the Erlitou culture.