Xia dynasty: A Visual History

The Xia dynasty (traditionally about 2070-1600 BC) is the first dynasty in Chinese historiography, said to have been founded by Yu the Great, who tamed the floods of the Yellow River, and ended by the tyrant Jie, overthrown by Tang of Shang. No contemporary written records survive, and its historicity is debated: many Chinese scholars identify it with the Erlitou culture of Henan (about 1900-1500 BC), which had a palace city, bronze casting and a stratified society, while others regard the Xia as a later invention. Either way it marks the transition from Neolithic chiefdoms to the Bronze Age state.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Xia dynasty. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Erlitou site development

Erlitou phases I to IV; the palace complex belongs to phases II and III.

Timeline of the Xia dynasty

1. 2,070 BC
   Yu founds the XiaTraditional date.
2. 1,900 BC
   Erlitou culture emerges
3. 1,750 BC
   Erlitou palace city at its height
4. 1,600 BC
   Tang overthrows JieTraditional date; Erligang (Shang) rises.

Yu the Great

Legend says Yu spent 13 years dredging channels to control the floods, passing his own door three times without entering, and was rewarded with the throne by the sage-king Shun. Instead of choosing a worthy successor he passed it to his son Qi, beginning hereditary rule and the dynasty. Later kings include Shaokang, who restored the line after a usurpation, and Jie, whose cruelty and debauchery cost him the Mandate.

Erlitou

Excavated since 1959, Erlitou covers about 3 km2 with palace foundations on rammed earth, a bronze foundry producing ritual vessels and bells, turquoise inlaid dragons and elite tombs. It is the earliest state-level society in the Yellow River valley and dominated the region from about 1750 to 1530 BC. Chinese archaeology's Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project (2000) assigned it to the Xia; Western scholars mostly call it simply Erlitou for lack of writing.

The debate

The Xia appears in Zhou-era texts as the model of a dynasty that lost Heaven's mandate, exactly paralleling the Shang's own fall, which makes some suspect it was constructed as precedent. Others note that Sima Qian's Shang king list proved accurate when oracle bones were found and argue the Xia list may be too. Until Xia writing is discovered the question stays open.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Shang dynasty (1,600 BC to 1,046 BC)
• Zhou dynasty (Western Zhou) (1,046 BC to 256 BC)
• Eastern Zhou (771 BC to 256 BC)

8 surprising things about the Xia dynasty

1. Yu the Great's flood control is China's founding myth of good government, and 'passing his door three times' is a proverb for devotion to duty.
2. The tyrant Jie is said to have built a lake of wine large enough to row boats on, a story later repeated of the last Shang king.
3. Erlitou's turquoise dragon, 70 cm long and made of 2,000 pieces, was found in a burial in 2002.
4. The Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project's dates are official in China but disputed abroad.
5. Chinese still call themselves 'Hua-Xia', linking the nation's name to the dynasty.
6. The Bamboo Annals, a chronicle buried in a tomb around 296 BC and rediscovered in 281 AD, gives Xia king lists.
7. Erlitou produced the earliest Chinese bronze ritual vessels, ancestors of the Shang bronzes.
8. A great flood on the Yellow River around 1920 BC, identified from sediments in 2016, has been proposed as the historical basis of Yu's flood.

Sources

• Xia dynasty Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Xia dynasty Wikipedia
• Xia Dynasty World History Encyclopedia
• Li Liu and Xingcan Chen, The Archaeology of China (2012) Cambridge University Press

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