Let us reassemble ourselves. There is a lot of evidence, which suggests that the Shang culture was an indigenous development. There is also a lot of evidence linking the Shang with the cultures of Central and Western Asia. The fact that the Shang were Mongoloid like the preceding Neolithic peoples, the fact that their bronze technique was unique from the techniques of the west, and that their style of writing was extremely different from that of Mesopotamian cultures, all led archaeologists to abandon the idea of outright invasion and to replace it with the theory of indigenous origination.
How then are these incredible similarities and tendencies across the continent explained. Were these similarities built into the gene pool? Is sacrifice to the gods an inherent human function, as witnessed by its practice in such diverse areas as Mexico, the Middle East and China. Or is it instead part of a technology of culture that was passed around the globe before the end of the last Ice Age? Or perhaps most fantastic of all, perhaps the ideas were Ôin the airÕ.
This author will pursue the line of thought that there was a connected human culture linking Siberia, China, and the Middle East, through the ÔCorridor of the SteppesÕ. Furthermore we will demonstrate that an Ice Age culture connected cultures of Siberia with the cultures of the American continents. But we are getting ahead of our story. We would speculate that Ti with his supreme qualities and need for sacrifice, human or otherwise, was not a universal, nor was it Ôin the airÕ, but instead was the result of cultural transmission. While it is unlikely that the Chinese of the Yellow River Valley were actually invaded and conquered by cultures from the Middle East, it is likely that there was an incredible amount of diffusion due to military conflict.
While the bronze technology of the Shang developed ÔindigenouslyÕ from the south of China, who in turn was influenced by Southeast Asia, the Shang needed weaponry not ornamentation. They needed weaponry to establish order and supremacy as well as defend themselves from the aggressive nomadic tribes of the North.
Remember the Khorat culture of the Mekong River Valley had been doing some of the most sophisticated bronze work in the world before there is any evidence of bronze work in China. However all of their bronze work was ornamental. Hence the early Shang dynasty was relatively uninterested.
Let it be remembered that predator/prey interactions involve an arms race. The preyÕs ability to defend itself is growing at a similar rate to the rate at which the predator can attack. In a similar vein the successful cultures had to keep up with the latest military technologies to protect and defend themselves from attack. Of course these same technologies used to defend can also be used to attack or suppress. Hence the ability of a culture to adapt to foreign military strategies has a direct reflection upon its survival as well. In terms of the predator and prey analogy, cultures prey upon themselves. Hence in order to prevent being turned into a prey culture, one must become predator. Of course it is possible to just ward off the prey with equal military capabilities but the tendency is to expand or contract.
The Shang did not have to defend themselves particularly from the peaceful south. However the north was a different story. Not only did nomadic raiders attack from the northeast, out of Manchuria, but also increasingly they began attacking also from the northwest across the Pass between Mongolia and the Upper Yellow River. For this reason walled fortifications began to be built to keep the barbarians out. What military technology did these peoples to the north possess that was so threatening to the Shang?
Let us look briefly at the development and spread of bronze military technology to get a better perspective on the question.
In the 4th millennium BC copper smelting was developed in Iran. During this millennium other metals were mixed with copper to make a superior product. Eventually they began to mix copper with tin. This eventually led to the production of bronze by about the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC.[1]
Bronze because of hardness, malleability, and anti-corrosive characteristics was rapidly turned into weaponry. This military technology spread wherever the military expansion did. Either the cultures would adopt the new technology or they would perish or be dominated. Many times the conquering culture would splinter creating many groups with similar military technologies. Sometimes different cultures would develop similar military technologies in competition with each other.
The military pastoral Kurgan culture, which developed in the steppes of Central Asia on the western side of Lake Baikal swept in waves into the Near East and Europe starting about 4000 BC disrupting the peaceful fertility based agri-cultures there. These raids militarized the remaining agri-cultures. From this point, the interest shifted from crafts to weaponry, with which to protect, defend and, of course, attack. As the interest in military technology grew, bronze weaponry was discovered and exploited.
Hence whether the Kurgans or a militarized agri-culture discovered bronze weaponry first is secondary. What is primary is that cultural survival became dependent upon bronze military technology. Hence as the cultures grew the bronze military technology expanded to fill the surrounding areas. Hence it spread south into Egypt, westward into Europe, and eastward across the steppes of Central Asia to Lake Baikal. From the Lake Baikal region, the bronze technology spread across the Mongolian plain to the Ordos region of the upper Yellow River. From here bronze weaponry made the easy step into China.
Indeed bronze work in the steppes north of China preceded the Shang by centuries. The Shang dynasty didnÕt even begin until about 1700 BC. Neither of the prior Neolithic Yellow River Valley cultures used bronze. There are, however, Bronze Age sites in the steppes and forests of Central Asia that date before 2000 BC.
ÒSome of the Bronze age sites [in the steppes and forests of Central Asia] are of great antiquity — earlier than 2000 BCÓ (A History of Far Eastern Art, p 26)
It seems that the bronze military technology did not go straight from Central Asia to China, but instead spread from Central Asia to Siberia and then to China.
ÒThere is now a strong body of opinion that the use of bronze was both a native invention and development. However, it still seems possible that the use of bronze, in weapon form at least, was introduced in to Neolithic China from Western Asia by way of Siberia.Ó[2]
Thus the implication is that while Chinese bronze technology was ÔindigenousÕ. i.e. the south, weapon technology probably came from the north via Siberia.
ÒThe casting technique [of the Shang] may have been imported first from Siberia, which received it in turn from somewhere farther west; and objects, rather than technique, must have come at first in the form of weapons such as the ax and the dagger.Ó[3]
While the bronze work of the Central Asian cultures was weapon based, the Chinese already had a sophisticated bronze technology producing ornamentation, probably deriving from the Khorat culture of the Mekong delta Southeast Asia, as we saw. Thus it was an easy step for the Chinese Shang to go from ornamentation to weaponry. Thus it is likely that the Shang while fighting their forest brothers in Siberia saw this same shiny material they used for jewelry in weapon form and suddenly became very interested.
ÒHow did they make those cool axes, knives and swords with sharp blades and stuff. We must find out how they do that.Ó
Just as the Chinese went after the Arabian War Horse over a thousand years later they probably aggressively pursued the blade technology of the Siberians, who in turn had gotten it from their Kurgan brothers of Lake Baikal in Central Asia, who in turn had picked it up while raiding Western Asia. The Chinese, as always, experts at copying foreign technology, were able to discover the technology of the bronze blade. They immediately put this new technology to good use. The techniques of bronze making had always been there but only put to peaceful use.
ÒNow we, the great Shang peoples can put this divine metal to the use it was meant for globally, weaponry.Ó
Thus the existing bronze technology of the Southern China was utilized by the ruling North to more effectively exploit the crafts people and peasants, who were producing the real goods and services. The government seized control of the sources of tin and copper. Bronze became a royal prerogative. It could only be used by royalty for weaponry or for their most magnificent creation, their immense bronze cauldrons, ting, which were just a beautiful way of storing weapons – as we saw with the 9 ting of YŸ, the first emperor of the Xia. Furthermore because of the reusability of bronze, most likely all bronze ornamentation could easily have been seized and melted down for weaponry. Thus the paucity of early bronze works is probably linked with this mechanism of recasting bronze into weaponry. (We have an European example of this phenomenon in Renaissance times. Michelangelo created an enormous bronze of the Pope, which later generations melted down for cannonballs. Cultural survival first; art second.)
The hunter fishers of Siberia probably got their bronze military technology from the nomadic cultures to the west of Lake Baikal.
Remember that a group of humans were trapped east of Lake Baikal, north of China, and west of the Alaska with the waxing of the last Ice Age. These people survived the Ice Age but adapted physically into the Mongoloid race to survive the extreme cold. With the physical changes also came psychological changes. This race developed an extreme discipline in order to survive the Ice Age winters. With the retreating Ice Age, the Lake Baikal region was connected once again, which meant that cultural influences from the west, i.e. specifically Central Asia could again be felt.
The last Ice Age separated the cultures from the West and East of Lake Baikal. Each developed in their own unique way. While the cultures on both sides of Lake Baikal had similar characteristics, there were a few major differences. The eastern side was basically a hunting culture with an emphasis upon fishing, while the western side was basically pastoral and nomadic. The eastern side did lots of woodworking because of the abundant forests, while the west was influenced by Western Asian influences, which they transmitted to the east.
ÒTo the west [of Lake Baikal], in the Minusinsk region of the Upper Yenisei, the Bronze Age sequence is rather clear, É The sequence Afanasievo, Andronovo, Kara Suk, Kurgan cultures are stages in the development of pastoral nomadic cultures not completely divorced from the boreal forest economies of hunting and fishing, nor the pottery stone-tool manufacturing techniques and styles apparent farther east. Nonetheless these are generally distinct as horse-possessing, bronze-using pastoralists, whose affinities were to the grasslands and the deserts. These horse-nomads probably spread into the East and South sometime after 1500 BC, beginning to exert those political and military pressures which eventually led to the construction of the Great Wall.Ó (Origins, p 177)
The Kurgans to the west were a nomadic culture of the desert and steppes, while the Siberians to the east were basically a hunter-fisher culture.
Hence there is a triangle of influence that went from the Near East to Lake Baikal where it was transmitted south to Northern China via the Ordos region of the Northern Yellow River or the coastal Manchurian route. At later dates the influences came back the other way[4]. However for the purposes of the Shang bronze weaponry, the technological diffusion was from west to east.
In exploring the roots of the Shang bronze work, we first saw that their bronze production techniques were probably the result of cultural diffusion from the craft-oriented Khorat culture of Southeast Asia. While this explains the ÔindigenousÕ origins of Chinese bronze making, it does not explain the Shang use of bronze for military purposes. For this we looked north into Siberia, who in turn had gotten their military bronze technology from military interaction with Central Asian cultures. These nomadic Central Asian cultures had militarized the agri-cultures of Mesopotamia through periodic raids. These military interactions, in turn, stimulated the development of bronze military technology by the competing cultures. This technology developed in Western Asia by the militarized agri-cultures, now called Bronze Age civilizations, spread south to Egypt, west to Greece and eventually Rome, north into Russia, and east back into Central Asia. Since the end of the last Ice Age the forest cultures of Siberia and the nomadic cultures of Western Age had been reconnected after a long separation. Fighting over scarce resources militarized the nomads from the west. They would attack their hunter/fisher neighbors. These two combating cultures established a military parity, where cultural transmission could exist, in this case primarily military in nature. Then in the military interaction between Siberia and China via the Ordos plain or Manchuria the military technology was spread to Shang China.
[1]Grolier Interactive, Bronze Age 1997
[2] A History of Far Eastern Art, p 27
[3]A History of Far Eastern Art, pp. 35-36
[4] A History of Far Eastern Art, p 27, ÒThere is thus a possibility of the influence of the ancient Near East on Central Asia and Siberia and thence on to China, with a returning influence from China at a slightly later date.Ó