The Cambridge Illustrated History of China

From early times, Chinese myths about their origins focused not on gods but on a series of extraordinarily brilliant human beings who invented writing, agriculture, states, and the other key elements of their culture and society. Modern scholars, drawing on knowledge of geology, palaeoanthropology, and archaeology, not surprisingly construct very different stories of the origins of Chinese civilization. Their accounts do not slight agriculture, writing, bronze technology, and state formation, but usually differ from the traditional story in giving more weight to the role of ritual and religion in shaping the significant characteristics of Chinese culture and more attention to the physical environment. Equally important, they do not see Chinese history as a single-stranded story, centred on a royal line, but as a many-stranded one in which a great many distinguishable cultures interacted, some perhaps colonies of the more central state, others probably enemies. As more archaeological sites are excavated, the distortions of the single-stranded story become more apparent. Archaeology has also added greatly to our understanding of the early states in central China and what gave them advantages.

Origin myths

Through most of the imperial period, literate Chinese had a ‘great man’ theory of how their civilization developed. Unlike other peoples who pointed to gods as their creators or progenitors, the Chinese attributed the inventions that step by step transformed the Chinese from a primitive people to a highly civilized one to a series of extraordinarily brilliant human beings. Fu Xi, the Ox-tamer, domesticated animals and invented the family. Shen Nong, the Divine Farmer, invented the plough and hoe. Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor, invented the bow and arrow, boats, carts, ceramics, and silk. He also fought a great battle against alien tribes, thus securing the Yellow River plain for his people. In China's earliest history, he was labelled the first of the five great pre-dynastic rulers, the last two of whom were Yao and Shun. Yao was credited with devising the calendar and rituals. Rather than hand over power to his own less worthy son, he selected Shun as his successor, a poor peasant whose filial piety had been demonstrated by his devoted service to his blind father and evil stepmother.