Shia Dynasty

Xia
夏
c. 2070 BC–c. 1600 BC
Proposed location of the Xia dynasty
Capital		Yangcheng Zhenxun
Languages		Old Chinese
Government		Monarchy
History
•	Established by Yu the Great	c. 2070 BC
•	Qi of Xia succeeds the throne	c. 2025 BC
•	Jie of Xia falls	c. 1600 BC
Succeeded by Shang dynasty

The Xia dynasty (c. 2070 – c. 1600 BC) is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese history. It is described in ancient historical chronicles such as the Bamboo Annals, the Classic of History and the Records of the Grand Historian. According to tradition, the Xia dynasty was established by the legendary Yu the Great after Shun, the last of the Five Emperors gave his throne to him. The Xia was later succeeded by the Shang dynasty (c. 1600– c. 1046 BC).

According to the traditional chronology based upon calculations by Liu Xin, the Xia ruled between 2205 and 1766 BC; according to the chronology based upon the Bamboo Annals, it ruled between 1989 and 1558 BC. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project commissioned by the Chinese government in 1996, concluded that the Xia existed between 2070 and 1600 BC. The tradition of tracing Chinese political history from heroic early emperors to the Xia, and on to succeeding dynasties, comes from the idea of the Mandate of Heaven, in which only one legitimate ruler exists at a given time. This political philosophy was promoted by the Confucian school in the Eastern Zhou period, later becoming the official position of imperial historiography and ideology.

Although the Xia is an important element of early recorded Chinese history, reliable information on the history of China before 13th century BC can only come from archaeological evidence, as China's first established written system on a durable medium, the oracle bone script, did not exist until then. No mention of the Xia, or the supposed conquest of the Xia by the Shang, has been found in any Shang period oracle bones. The first documentary reference to the Xia dates from more than a thousand years later, in the records of the Zhou dynasty. Some historians have suggested that the Zhou invented the Xia to justify their conquest of the Shang, by noting that the Shang had supplanted the Xia, as they supplanted the Shang. The existence of the Xia remains unproven, despite efforts by Chinese archaeologists to link them with the Bronze Age Erlitou culture.