Who would question something that never happened, the reason why many Western scholars question the existence of the Xia Dynasty is largely because of their hard mouths.
Many countries in the world have no historical precipitation, and they do not want to see that the Chinese nation has such a deep historical precipitation.
Coincidentally, the Xia Dynasty did not have a self-proof text, and could only prove the existence of the Xia Dynasty from the side through the excavation of different archaeological sites.
However, due to the fact that the records of these historical books are too far away from the Xia Dynasty and lack of archaeological evidence, many scholars still do not admit the existence of the Xia Dynasty, so as to shorten the historical precipitation of the Chinese nation.
In fact, the existence of the Xia Dynasty is not subject to the subjective will of those who question it. But then again, after going around in a circle, blame the rulers of the Shang Dynasty, why don't you take the oracle bone inscription to record such a big event as Shang Tang's destruction of Xia?
The Xia Dynasty does not appear in the oracle bone records of the Shang Dynasty, but it does appear on the bronzes of the Western Zhou people, but because there is a dynasty in between, some uncertainty is introduced.
After years of archaeological excavations, it can be concluded that the reason why the Xia Dynasty has been questioned is because "Xia" did not appear in the history books of the Shang Dynasty, and the Shang Dynasty recorded some things about the "previous dynasty", but the main body in it was not "Xia".
As a result, this matter has fallen into a dead zone. The Shang Dynasty and the Zhou Dynasty were inconsistent in their names for the Xia Dynasty, and we could not find the most direct evidence to prove it, which led to doubts about the authenticity of the Xia Dynasty.
If anyone familiar with Chinese history understands that the names of a person or a place in ancient times are diverse. Especially in the pre-Qin period, it was possible to call a person by an official title, or to refer to a person by his fiefdom. In addition, the ancients had names and characters, and even "nicknames".
History pays attention to inheritance, these things are inherited in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and these etiquette culture of the Western Zhou Dynasty are naturally not produced out of thin air, and even have a bit of Shang characteristics.
From this point of view, whether it is the Western Zhou Dynasty or the Shang Dynasty, it must be quite common for more than one thing, and then it is inferred that the Xia Dynasty is likely to have a variety of names in the mouths of the ancients.
As for a "Yin Shang", the descendants replaced him with the location of the capital "Yin", while the merchants would only call themselves "Shang". Therefore, according to the cultural inheritance, the Shang Dynasty will not appear out of thin air, and there must be continuity before and after.
According to the record of "Shangshu", "only the ancestors of Yin, there are books and classics", it can be seen that the Shang Dynasty also had his own set of things to record the major events that occurred in the dynasty.
However, the set of things that recorded the major events has not been handed down, but the bones of turtle shells and beasts used for divination have been preserved, and the words carved on them can be seen by future generations.
Although the oracle bone inscription is more used for divination, it still covers various fields such as sacrifices, wars, and agricultural development during the Shang Dynasty, and even the name of each generation of Shang kings appears many times in the oracle bone inscription.
Even if it covers such a wide range of fields, there is no trace of "summer" in it. Then why didn't the oracle record "summer"?
According to the explanations of some archaeologists, the oracle bone inscriptions have only been explained and read more than 1,000 so far, and a large part of them have not been deciphered.
Moreover, the oracle bone inscription appeared relatively late, and it is likely that it appeared in the middle and late Shang Dynasty after Pangeng moved the capital. In the absence of written records, the Xia Dynasty hundreds of years ago may not have attracted the attention of the world, so it was not recorded on it.
However, the oracle bone inscription records a large amount of information about the Shang kings, involving the names of all the Shang kings, which also makes the existence of the Shang Dynasty verified. Could it really be that as mentioned above, the oracle bone inscription did not find any trace of the Xia Dynasty because it mainly recorded the sacrifices and divination of the Shang Dynasty.
The oracle bone inscriptions of the Zhou people excavated in Zhouyuan, Qishan, Shaanxi Province, quickly overturned the previous speculation. In addition to the relevant records of the Zhou king, the oracle bone inscriptions of the Zhou people also recorded a lot of information about the Shang Dynasty, such as Shang Tang, Taijia and others, all of whom were "frequent visitors" in the oracle bone inscriptions of the Zhou Dynasty.
In this way, there is no trace of the Xia Dynasty in the Shang Dynasty oracle bone inscription, which makes people even more suspicious, could it be that the Xia Dynasty really never existed?
It is recorded in the Book of Songs: Ode to Commerce:
There was soup in the past...... It is said that business is often ...... Set up the capital in Yu's achievements.
It can be deduced from this that the name of Xia was only after the Western Zhou Dynasty, and in the Shang Dynasty, Xia was not called Xia, they were probably called Yu, or other pronouns.
In the records of the oracle bone inscriptions in the late Yin Shang period, a word with a high frequency of entry and exit is "Xiyi", and in the batch of bamboo slips of the Warring States period unearthed later, there are also records about "Xiyi".
"Tang went to conquer the Buddha...... "From Xijian Xiyi, there is a summer" - "Yin Zhi"
It is speculated that there was some connection between the Xiyi in the oracle bone inscription and the Xia in the Zhou population, while in the Shang Dynasty Xia only referred to summer, and in the Warring States period, Xiyi was added to the character Xia and called "Xiyi Xia".
To sum up, the Xia Dynasty, as a dynasty in the transition from the primitive Stone Age to civilization, had its own system and cultural precipitation imperfect.
The ancients were crossing the river by feeling the stones, whether it was the later invention of writing or naming, Chinese culture could initially understand the meaning of a system or writing itself through "as the name suggests".
Therefore, at first, in order to better distinguish, the ancients often named some unknown things with place names or job names and personal names, which also led to different dynasties and different titles, which in turn led to the doubt about the existence of the Xia Dynasty.
This problem was not a problem in the first place, as long as we continue to explore and find more records about the Xia Dynasty through archaeological means, we can prove to the world that the Xia Dynasty really existed, and eliminate those doubts in one fell swoop.