The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project () was a multi-disciplinary project commissioned by the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
in 1996 to determine with accuracy the location and time frame of the
Xia,
Shang, and
Zhou dynasties.
The project was directed by professor
Li Xueqin of
Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University (THU) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Constructio ...
in Beijing, and involved around 200 experts. It used
radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for Chronological dating, determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of carbon-14, radiocarbon, a radioactive Isotop ...
,
archaeological
Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...
dating methods, historical textual analysis, astronomy, and other methods to achieve greater temporal and geographic accuracy. Preliminary results were released in November 2000 and the final report was published in June 2022. Among other findings, it dated the beginning of the Xia to , the Shang to , and the Zhou to . However, some scholars have disputed several of the project's methods and conclusions.
Background
The traditional account of ancient China, represented by the ''
Records of the Grand Historian
The ''Shiji'', also known as ''Records of the Grand Historian'' or ''The Grand Scribe's Records'', is a Chinese historical text that is the first of the Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written during the late 2nd and early 1st ce ...
'' written by
Sima Qian
Sima Qian () was a Chinese historian during the early Han dynasty. He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for the ''Shiji'' (sometimes translated into English as ''Records of the Grand Historian''), a general history of China cov ...
in the
Han dynasty
The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...
, begins with the
Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors
According to Chinese mythology and traditional Chinese historiography, the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors () were a series of sage Chinese emperors, and the first Emperors of China. Today, they are considered culture heroes, but they wer ...
, leading through a sequence of dynasties, the
Xia,
Shang and
Zhou. Sima Qian felt able to give a year-by-year chronology back to the start of the
Gonghe Regency in 841 BC, early in the Zhou dynasty. For the period before that date, his sources (now mostly lost) were unreliable and inconsistent, and he gave only lists of kings and accounts of isolated events. Later scholars were unable to push a precise chronology back past Sima Qian's date of 841 BC.
Many elements of the traditional account, especially the early parts, were clearly mythical. In the 1920s,
Gu Jiegang and other scholars of the
Doubting Antiquity School
The Doubting Antiquity School or Yigupai (Endymion Wilkinson, Wilkinson, Endymion (2000). ''Chinese History: A Manual''. Harvard Univ Asia Center. . Page 345, see/ref>Loewe, Michael and Edward L. Shaughnessy (1999). ''The Cambridge History of Anci ...
noted that the earliest figures appeared latest in the literature, and suggested that the traditional history had accreted layers of myth. Noting parallels between the accounts of the Xia and Shang, they suggested that the history of the Xia was invented by the Zhou to support their doctrine of the
Mandate of Heaven
The Mandate of Heaven ( zh, t=天命, p=Tiānmìng, w=, l=Heaven's command) is a Chinese ideology#Political ideologies, political ideology that was used in History of China#Ancient China, Ancient China and Chinese Empire, Imperial China to legit ...
, by which they justified their conquest of the Shang. Some even doubted the historicity of the Shang dynasty.

In 1899, the scholar
Wang Yirong
Wang Yirong (; 1845–1900) was a director of the Chinese Guozijian, Imperial Academy, best known as the first to recognize that the symbols inscribed on oracle bones were an early form of Chinese writing. His work on the oracle bone script was c ...
examined some curious symbols carved on "dragon bones" purchased from a Chinese pharmacist, and identified them as an early form of Chinese writing. The bones were finally traced back in 1928 to a site (now called
Yinxu) near
Anyang
Anyang ( zh, s=安阳, t=安陽; ) is a prefecture-level city in Henan, China. Geographical coordinates are 35° 41'~ 36° 21' north latitude and 113° 38'~ 114° 59' east longitude. The northernmost city in Henan, Anyang borders Puyang to the eas ...
, north of the
Yellow River
The Yellow River, also known as Huanghe, is the second-longest river in China and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system on Earth, with an estimated length of and a Drainage basin, watershed of . Beginning in the Bayan H ...
in modern
Henan
Henan; alternatively Honan is a province in Central China. Henan is home to many heritage sites, including Yinxu, the ruins of the final capital of the Shang dynasty () and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the historical capitals of China, Lu ...
province. The inscriptions on the bones were found to be divination records from the reigns of the last nine Shang kings, from the reign of
Wu Ding. Moreover, from the sacrificial schedule recorded on the bones it was possible to reconstruct a sequence of Shang kings that closely matched the list given by Sima Qian.
Archaeologists focused on the Yellow River valley in Henan as the most likely site of the states described in the traditional histories. After 1950, remnants of an earlier walled city of the
Erligang culture were discovered near
Zhengzhou
Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan, China. Located in northern Henan, it is one of the nine National central city, national central cities in China, and serves as the political, economic, technological, and educational center of the province. Th ...
, and in 1959 the site of the
Erlitou culture
The Erlitou culture () was an early Bronze Age society and archaeological culture. It existed in the Yellow River valley from approximately 1900 to 1500 BC. A 2007 study using radiocarbon dating proposed a narrower date range of 1750–15 ...
was found in
Yanshi
Yanshi District () is a district in the prefecture-level city of Luoyang in western Henan province, China. Yanshi lies on the Luo River and is the easternmost county-level division of Luoyang.
History
After the Zhou conquest of Shang in mid-11t ...
, south of the Yellow River near
Luoyang
Luoyang ( zh, s=洛阳, t=洛陽, p=Luòyáng) is a city located in the confluence area of the Luo River and the Yellow River in the west of Henan province, China. Governed as a prefecture-level city, it borders the provincial capital of Zheng ...
.
Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for Chronological dating, determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of carbon-14, radiocarbon, a radioactive Isotop ...
suggests that the Erlitou culture flourished c. 2100 BC to 1800 BC. They built large palaces, suggesting the existence of an organized state. More recently the picture has been complicated by the discovery of advanced civilizations in Sichuan and the Yangtze valley, such as
Sanxingdui and
Wucheng, of which the traditional histories make no mention.
Until the mid-20th century, many popular works, both Chinese and Western, used a traditional chronology calculated by
Liu Xin early in the first century AD. However, modern scholars studying inscriptions on Shang oracle bones and Zhou bronzes were proposing shorter chronologies, for example typically placing the Zhou conquest of the Shang in the mid-11th century BC instead of the 12th.
In 1994,
Song Jian, a
state councillor
A State Councillor of the People's Republic of China () serves as a senior vice leader within the State Council of the PRC, State Council and shares responsibilities with the Vice Premier of China, Vice Premiers in assisting the Premier of China, ...
for science, was impressed on a visit to Egypt by chronologies stretching back to the 3rd millennium BC. He proposed a multi-disciplinary project to establish a similar chronology for China. The project was approved as part of the ninth
five-year plan (1996–2000).
A preliminary report of the project was issued in 2000.
After lengthy review, the full report was sent to the publishers in 2019 and the offices of the Project were closed, with their materials sent to the Institute of Archaeology of the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) is a Chinese state research institute and think tank. It is a ministry-level institution under the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The CASS is the highest academic institution and c ...
.
The full report was published in June 2022 after more than a decade of revision.
Although the final report noted that some archaeological finds after the publication of the preliminary report were inconsistent with its findings, the chronology of the preliminary report was adopted without change.
Methods
The Project used a combination of methods to attempt to correlate the traditional literature with archeological discoveries and the astronomical record.
Western Zhou kings
The contemporary evidence for the Western Zhou consists of thousands of bronzes, many bearing inscriptions. Around 60 of these record dates of important events as the day in the
sexagenary cycle
The sexagenary cycle, also known as the gānzhī (干支) or stems-and-branches, is a cycle of sixty terms, each corresponding to one year, thus amounting to a total of sixty years every cycle, historically used for recording time in China and t ...
, the phase of the moon, the month and the year of reign. However, the rules of the Western Zhou
lunisolar calendar
A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures, that combines monthly lunar cycles with the solar year. As with all calendars which divide the year into months, there is an additional requirement that the year have a whole number of mont ...
, in particular the start of a month or year and the insertion of
intercalary months, were not fixed. In addition, the current king is typically not identified.
Occasionally an unusual astronomical event was recorded. A key reference point was the accession of
King Yih of Zhou, when according to the "old text" ''
Bamboo Annals
The ''Bamboo Annals'' ( zh, t=竹書紀年, p=Zhúshū Jìnián), also known as the ''Ji Tomb Annals'' ( zh, t=汲冢紀年, p=Jí Zhǒng Jìnián), is a chronicle of ancient China.
It begins in the earliest legendary time (the age of the Yellow E ...
'' the day dawned twice.
The Project adopted (without acknowledgement) the proposal of the Korean scholar Pang Sunjoo (方善柱) that this referred to an annular
solar eclipse
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of Earth, totally or partially. Such an alignment occurs approximately every six months, during the eclipse season i ...
at dawn that occurred in 899 BC.
Other scholars have challenged both this interpretation of the text and the astronomical calculations involved.
King Wu's conquest of the Shang

Perhaps the most significant event requiring dating is the conquest of the Shang by the Zhou, described in traditional histories as the
Battle of Muye
The Battle of Muye, Mu, or Muh () was fought between forces of the ancient Chinese Shang dynasty led by King Zhou of Shang and the rebel state of Zhou led by King Wu. The Zhou defeated the Shang at Muye and captured the Shang capital Yin, ...
, though the site of the battle has not been identified. Previous chronologies had proposed at least 44 different dates for this event, ranging from 1130 to 1018 BC.
The most popular have been 1122 BC, calculated by the
Han dynasty
The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...
astronomer
Liu Xin, and 1027 BC, deduced from a statement in the "old text" ''Bamboo Annals'' that the Western Zhou (whose end point is known to be 770 BC) had lasted 257 years.
A few documents relate astronomical observations to this event:
* A quotation in the ''
Book of Han
The ''Book of Han'' is a history of China finished in 111 CE, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. The work was composed by Ban Gu (32–92 CE), ...
'' from the lost ''Wǔchéng'' 武成 chapter of the ''
Book of Documents
The ''Book of Documents'' ( zh, p=Shūjīng, c=書經, w=Shu King) or the ''Classic of History'', is one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature. It is a collection of rhetorical prose attributed to figures of ancient China, a ...
'' appears to describe a lunar eclipse just before the beginning of
King Wu's campaign. This date, and the date of his victory, are given as months and sexagenary days.
* A passage in the ''
Guoyu'' gives the positions of the Sun, Moon, Jupiter and two stars on the day King Wu attacked the Shang.
* The "current text" ''Bamboo Annals'' mentions
conjunctions of all five planets occurring before and after the Zhou conquest. Han-period texts mention the first conjunction as occurring in the 32nd year of the reign of the last king. Such events are rare, but all five planets did gather on 28 May 1059 BC and again on 26 September 1019 BC. Although the recorded positions in the sky of these two events are the reverse of what occurred, they could not have been retrospectively calculated at the time the account first appears.
The strategy adopted by the Project was to use archeological investigation to narrow the range of dates that would need to be compared with the astronomical data. Although no archaeological traces of King Wu's campaign have been found, the pre-conquest Zhou capital at
Fengxi in
Shaanxi
Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...
has been excavated and strata at the site have been identified with the
Predynastic Zhou
The Predynastic Zhou or Proto-Zhou (; ) refers to the ancient Chinese state ruled by the Ji (surname 姬), Ji clan that existed in the Guanzhong region (modern central Shaanxi province) during the Shang dynasty, before its rebellion and subsequen ...
.
Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for Chronological dating, determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of carbon-14, radiocarbon, a radioactive Isotop ...
of samples from the site as well as at late
Yinxu and early Zhou capitals, using the
wiggle matching Wiggle matching, also known as ''carbon–14 wiggle-match dating'' (WMD) is a dating method that uses the non-linear relationship between 14C age and calendar age to match the shape of a series of closely sequentially spaced 14C dates with the ...
technique, yielded a date for the conquest between 1050 and 1020 BC. The only date within that range matching all the astronomical data is 20 January 1046 BC. This date had previously been proposed by David Pankenier, who had matched the above passages from the classics with the same astronomical events, but here it resulted from a thorough consideration of a broader range of evidence.
Other scholars have raised several criticisms of this process. The connection between the layers at the archaeological sites and the conquest is uncertain. The narrow range of radiocarbon dates are cited with a less stringent
confidence interval (68%) than the standard requirement of 95%, which would have produced a much wider range. The texts describing the relevant astronomical phenomena are extremely obscure. For example, the inscription on the
Li ''gui'', a key text used in dating the conquest, can be interpreted in several different ways, with one alternative reading leading to the date of 9 January 1044 BC.
Late Shang kings
For the late Shang, the oracle bones provide less detail than Zhou bronzes, routinely recording only the day in the sexagenary cycle.
However, calculations using a longer ritual cycle were used to date the reigns of the last two Shang kings. Mentions of five lunar eclipses in oracle bone divinations from the late Wu Ding and Zu Geng reigns were identified with events spanning the period from 1201 and 1181 BC, from which a start date for Zu Geng's reign was derived. The start date of Wu Ding's reign was then calculated using the statement in the "Against Luxurious Ease" chapter of the ''
Book of Documents
The ''Book of Documents'' ( zh, p=Shūjīng, c=書經, w=Shu King) or the ''Classic of History'', is one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature. It is a collection of rhetorical prose attributed to figures of ancient China, a ...
'' that his reign lasted 59 years.
Early Shang and Xia

According to the traditional histories,
Pan Geng, three reigns earlier than Wu Ding, moved the Shang capital to its last site, generally identified with the
Yinxu site in
Anyang
Anyang ( zh, s=安阳, t=安陽; ) is a prefecture-level city in Henan, China. Geographical coordinates are 35° 41'~ 36° 21' north latitude and 113° 38'~ 114° 59' east longitude. The northernmost city in Henan, Anyang borders Puyang to the eas ...
.
Different interpretations of the text of the ''Bamboo Annals'' give intervals of 275, 273 or 253 years between this event and the Zhou conquest.
The project settled on a date near the shortest of these intervals.
The four phases of the
Erlitou culture
The Erlitou culture () was an early Bronze Age society and archaeological culture. It existed in the Yellow River valley from approximately 1900 to 1500 BC. A 2007 study using radiocarbon dating proposed a narrower date range of 1750–15 ...
have been divided between the Xia and Shang dynasties in different ways by various prominent archaeologists.
The project assigned all four phases to the Xia, identifying the establishment of the Shang dynasty with the building of the
Yanshi
Yanshi District () is a district in the prefecture-level city of Luoyang in western Henan province, China. Yanshi lies on the Luo River and is the easternmost county-level division of Luoyang.
History
After the Zhou conquest of Shang in mid-11t ...
walled city north-east of the Erlitou site.
The time span of the Xia dynasty was taken from reign-lengths given in the ''Bamboo Annals'' and from a conjunction of five planets during the reign of
Yu the Great
Yu the Great or Yu the Engineer was a legendary king in ancient China who was credited with "the first successful state efforts at flood control", his establishment of the Xia dynasty, which inaugurated Dynasties in Chinese history, dynastic ru ...
recorded in later texts.
As this period was longer than the time spanned by the Erlitou culture, the project also included the later phases of the Wangwan III variant of the
Longshan culture within the Xia period.
Chronological table
The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project concluded precise dates for accessions of rulers from
Wu Ding, the
Shang dynasty
The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty that ruled in the Yellow River valley during the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou d ...
king whose reign produced the oldest known
oracle bone
Oracle bones are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron which were used in pyromancya form of divinationduring the Late Shang period () in ancient China. '' Scapulimancy'' is the specific term if ox scapulae were used for the divination, ''p ...
records. These dates are here compared with the traditional dates and those used in the ''
Cambridge History of Ancient China'':
Earlier dates are given more approximately:
* The relocation of the Shang capital to
Yin during the reign of
Pan Geng is aligned with the earliest layers at Yinxu, dated at c. 1300 BC.
* The establishment of the Shang dynasty was identified with the foundation of an
Erligang culture walled city at
Yanshi
Yanshi District () is a district in the prefecture-level city of Luoyang in western Henan province, China. Yanshi lies on the Luo River and is the easternmost county-level division of Luoyang.
History
After the Zhou conquest of Shang in mid-11t ...
, dated at c. 1600 BC, compared with the ''Cambridge Historys c. 1570 BC and the traditional date of 1766 BC.
* The establishment of the
Xia dynasty
The Xia dynasty (; ) is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese historiography. According to tradition, it was established by the legendary figure Yu the Great, after Emperor Shun, Shun, the last of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, Fiv ...
was dated at c. 2070 BC, compared with the traditional date of 2205 BC.
Reception
Coverage of the project in non-Chinese press focused on the conflict between nationalism and scholarship. However, not every member of the chronology project agrees on all of the dates. Indeed, the project has been unafraid to contest dates proposed even by the director. This suggests that the dates are being considered on their own merits rather than by deferring to authority, and that politics does not influence the detailed work of the project.
In addition to methodological concerns, scholars have complained that the project is part of a tradition of relegating archaeology to a role of verifying traditional histories. They argue that this forces archeological evidence into a framework of a single sequence of similar dominant states, as depicted in the histories and reflected in the title "Three Dynasties". However, when evaluated on its own merits, the evidence reveals a much more complex origin of Chinese civilization, with many other advanced states that are not mentioned in the histories.
A session of the Annual Conference of the
Association for Asian Studies in 2002 was devoted to the preliminary report, where its methods were criticised by
David Nivison, among others.
Session 79: The Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project: Defense and Criticism
, AAS Annual Meeting, Washington, 2002. An international conference on chronology arranged for October 2003 was postponed due to the SARS
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the virus SARS-CoV-1, the first identified strain of the SARS-related coronavirus. The first known cases occurred in November 2002, and the ...
outbreak, but never rescheduled. The Project's dates have however become the orthodox chronology in Chinese textbooks and reference works.
Some bronze inscriptions discovered since the draft report was issued in 2000 are inconsistent with the project's dates for the Western Zhou. For example:
* The Jue Gong ''gui'', an early Western Zhou vessel probably from the reign of King Cheng but possibly from the following King Kang, has an inscription stating that it was cast in the 28th year of the king, whereas the project gave reign lengths of 22 and 25 years respectively to these kings.
* The Jun ''gui'', assigned to the reign of King Yih, has an inscription stating that it was cast in the 10th year of the king, to whom the project assigned a reign of 8 years.
The final report acknowledged many of these problems, but did not alter the date table issued in the preliminary report.
See also
* History of China
The history of China spans several millennia across a wide geographical area. Each region now considered part of the Chinese world has experienced periods of unity, fracture, prosperity, and strife. Chinese civilization first emerged in the ...
* History of Qing (People's Republic)
* Five thousand years of Chinese civilization
Notes
References
Footnotes
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project
Bronze Age in China
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2000 documents
Historiography of China
Chronology
Archaeology timelines
Archaeological theory
Periods and stages in archaeology
Projects in Asia
Projects established in 1996
Organizations disestablished in 2000
University projects
Research projects