Page 342 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

The date of Pan Keng and the building of Shang is disputed.
The traditional date is 1395 ®c., or by another tradition 1324,
but both traditions are of late origin. The evidence of eclipses

recorded in the oracle bones appears to give support to various
scraps of documents and later references which suggest that
the date was actually the very year 1300 b.c.

The archaeological evidence for the origins of the Shang
dynasty to the south and east of the Yellow River is slight and
ambiguous, based mainly on the apparent introduction by this
dynasty of the water buffalo and the tortoise to the north. But

the big question which An-yang poses is that of the origin of
Chinese bronzeworking and of the Chinese written language.

Both are found at An-yang in a highly developed form, owing
apparently nothing to influences from outside China. By what
route the knowledge of bronzecasting and of writing reached
China, if indeed both arts were not independently invented there,

is still unknown. Certainly a considerable period of “native” ex­
perimenting with both media must have preceded the highly in­
digenous and formalized examples of both arts found at An-yang.

Yet writing has been found at none of the many sites earlier than
An-yang which have been investigated, and only one of these
sites, the early Shang site of Cheng-chou, has produced bronzes
earlier than those of An-yang.

The classical description of the finding and excavation
of An-yang is given by H. G. Creel in The Birth of China. The
actual excavator, Li Chi, has given a more up-to-date interpreta­

tion in The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization. Much more than
the development of Chinese art (a discussion of the problem of
dating is included) is given in W. Willetts s Chinese Art