Some Background Research- Pre-Dynastic China

INSIDE THE WORLD OF NEOGENESIS: THE BACKSTORY

THE SHANGXI KINGDOM (16th Century BC)
A civilization lost of the annals of Ancient Chinese history, the city of Shangxi was a metroplis
built on technology far more advanced than the world had yet seen.
Scientists and engineers were working to unlock the secrets of life, and harnessing nature's
power to create wonders...or nightmares.
Ruled over by the cruel, megalomaniac emperor Lu Gui, ony the wealthy of Shangxi can enjoy the fruits of technology. The rest of the populace are oppressed and taxed into poverty to support even grander projects.

The ultimate secret Liu Gui seeks is a weapon powerful enough to wipe out all his enemies' armies. He entusts the finest scientist in Shangxi, Lung Hui Ying, in developing this weapon. When Hui Ying instead uses this funding to help the peasants intead of making weapons of war, Liu Gui's soldiers ransack his laborator and arrest Hui Ying. Before his capture, he injects his daughter, Mei, with the serum he developed: his final masterpiece, forever altering her DNA.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: THE SHANG AND XIA DYNASTIES
XIA DYNASTY: (from Wikipedia)
The Xia Dynasty (Chinese: ??; pinyin: xià cháo; Wade-Giles: hsia-ch'ao), ca. 2100 BC–1600 BC,[1][2] of China is the first dynasty to be described in ancient historical records such as Records of the Grand Historian and Bamboo Annals. Though there is disagreement pertaining to the actual existence of the dynasty, there is archaeological evidence which points to its possible existence. According to historical records, it was preceded by the period of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors and followed by the Shang Dynasty.
According to the official history, the Xia Dynasty was founded when Shun abdicated the throne in favor of his minister Yu, whom Shun viewed as the perfect civil servant. Yu was greatly praised by his people for eliminating flooding by organizing the building of canals in all the major rivers. Soon before his death, instead of passing power to the person deemed most capable of rulership, Yu passed power to his son, Qi, setting the precedence for dynastic rule or the Hereditary System. The Xia Dynasty thus began a period of family or clan control.
The Skeptical School of early Chinese history, started by Gu Jiegang in the 1920s, was the first group of scholars within China to seriously question the traditional story of its early history: “the later the time, the longer the legendary period of earlier history... early Chinese history is a tale told and retold for generations, during which new elements were added to the front end”[3] Yun Kuen Lee's criticism of nationalist sentiment in developing an explanation of Three Dynasties chronology focuses on the dichotomy of evidence provided by archaeological versus historical research, in particular the claim that the archaeological Erlitou Culture is also the historical Xia Dynasty. “How to fuse the archaeological dates with historical dates is a challenge to all chronological studies of early civilization.”[4]
Jie, the last ruler, was said to be a corrupt king. He was overthrown by Tang, the leader of the Shang people from the east.
Archaeologists have uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs that point to the possible existence of the Xia dynasty at locations cited in ancient Chinese historical texts. There exists a debate as to whether or not Erlitou culture was the site of the Xia dynasty. Radiocarbon dating places the site at ca. 2100 to 1800 BC, providing physical evidence of the existence of a state contemporaneous with and possibly equivalent to the Xia Dynasty as described in Chinese historical works.[5] In 1959, a site located in the city of Yanshi was excavated containing large palaces that some archaeologists have attributed as capital of the Xia Dynasty. Though later historical works mention the Xia dynasty, no written records dated to the Xia period have been found to confirm the name of the dynasty and its sovereigns. At a minimum, the archaeological discoveries marked an evolutionary stage between the late neolithic cultures and the typical Chinese urban civilization of the Shang Dynasty.
In her work, The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art and Cosmos in Early China, Sarah Allan noted that many aspects of the Xia are simply the opposite of traits held to be emblematic of the Shang. Classical Chinese historians such as Sima Qian had access to records going only as far back as the Western Zhou Dynasty. The implied dualism between the Shang and Xia, Allan argues, is that while the Shang represent fire or the sun, birds and the east, the Xia represent the west and water. The development of this mythical Xia, Allan argues, is a necessary act on the part of the Zhou Dynasty, who justify their conquest of the Shang by noting that the Shang had supplanted the Xia.

SHANG DYNASTY: (from Wikipedia)
The Shang Dynasty (Chinese: ??) or Yin Dynasty (??) (ca. 1600 BC - ca. 1100 BC)[1] was the second historic Chinese dynasty and ruled in the northeastern region of the area known as "China proper", in the Yellow River valley. The Sh?ng Dynasty followed the legendary Xià Dynasty and preceded the Zh?u Dynasty. Information about the Shang Dynasty comes from historical records of the later Zhou Dynasty, the Han Dynasty Shiji by Sima Qian and from Shang inscriptions on bronze artifacts and oracle bones—turtle shells, cattle scapulae or other bones on which were written the first significant corpus of recorded Chinese characters.
These divinations can be gleaned for information on the politics, economy, culture, religion, geography, astronomy, calendar, art and medicine of the period,[2] and as such provide critical insight into the early stages of the Chinese civilization. One site of the Shang capitals, later historically called the Ruins of Yin (??), is near modern day Anyang . Archaeological work there uncovered 11 major Yin royal tombs and the foundations of palace and ritual sites, containing weapons of war and human as well as animal sacrifices. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, stone, bone and ceramic artifacts have been obtained; the workmanship on the bronzes attests to a high level of civilization. In terms of inscribed oracle bones alone, more than 20,000 were discovered in the initial scientific excavations in the 1920s to 1930s, and over four times more have since been found.
The Shang dynasty is believed to have been founded by a rebel leader who overthrew the last Xia ruler. Its civilization was based on agriculture, augmented by hunting and animal husbandry. The Records of the Grand Historian state that the Shang moved its capital six times. The final and most important move to Yin in 1350 BC led to the golden age of the dynasty. The term Yin dynasty has been synonymous with the Shang in history, and indeed was the more popular term, although it is now often used specifically in reference to the latter half of the Shang. The Japanese and Koreans still refer to the Shang dynasty exclusively as the Yin (In) dynasty.
A line of hereditary Shang kings ruled over much of northern China, and Shang troops fought frequent wars with neighboring settlements and nomadic herdsmen from the inner Asian steppes. The capitals, particularly that in Yin, were centers of glittering court life. Court rituals to propitiate spirits developed. In addition to his secular position, the king was the head of the ancestor- and spirit-worship cult. The king often performed oracle bone divinations himself, especially near the end of the dynasty. Evidence from the royal tombs indicates that royal personages were buried with articles of value, presumably for use in the afterlife. Perhaps for the same reason, hundreds of commoners, who may have been slaves, were buried alive with the royal corpse.
The Shang had a fully developed system of writing as attested on bronze inscriptions, oracle bones, and a small number of other writings on pottery, jade and other stones, horn, etc.;[16] its complexity and state of development indicates an earlier period of development, which is still unattested. Bronze casting and pottery also advanced in Shang culture. The bronze was commonly used for art rather than weapons. In astronomy, the Shang astronomers saw Mars and various comets. Many musical instruments were also invented at that time.
Shang influence, though not political control, extended as far northeast as modern Beijing, where early pre-Yan culture shows evidence of Shang material culture.[17] At least one burial in this region during the Early Shang period contained both Shang-style bronzes and local-style gold jewelry.[17] This Shang influence likely made possible the integration of Yan into the later Zhou Dynasty.[17]
The Shang king, in his oracular divinations, repeatedly shows concern about the fang groups, which represented barbarians outside of the civilized tu regions that made up the Shang center. In particular, the tufang group of the Yan Shan region is regularly mentioned as hostile to the Shang.[17] The discovery of a Chenggu-style ge dagger-axe at Xiaohenan demonstrates that even at this early stage of Chinese history, there was some level of connection between the distant areas of north China.[17]
Shang Zhou, the last Shang king, committed suicide after his army was defeated by the Zhou people. Legends say that his army betrayed him by joining the Zhou rebels in a decisive battle.
A classical novel Fengshen Yanyi is about the war between the Yin and Zhou, in which each was favored and supported by one group of gods.
After the Yin's collapse, the surviving Yin ruling family collectively changed their surname from their royal Zi (?) (pinyin: zi; Wade-Giles: tzu) to the name of their fallen dynasty, Yin (?). The family remained aristocratic and often provided needed administrative services to the succeeding Zhou Dynasty. The King Cheng of Zhou (???) through the Regent, his uncle the Duke Dan of Zhou (???), enfeoffed[clarify] the former Shang King Zhou's brother the ruler of Wei, WeiZi (??) in the former Shang capital at Shang (?) with the territory becoming the state of Song (?). The State of Song and the royal Shang descendants maintained rites to the dead Shang kings which lasted until 286 BC. (Source: Records of the Grand Historian.)
Both Korean and Chinese legends state that a disgruntled Yin prince named Jizi (??), who had refused to cede power to the Zhou, left China with his garrison and founded Gija Joseon near modern day Liaoning to what would become one of the early Korean states (Go-, Gija-, and Wiman-Joseon).
Many Shang clans migrated northeast and were integrated into Yan culture during the Western Zhou period. These clans maintained an elite status, continuing their sacrificial and burial traditions.[17]
Shang infantry were armed with a variety of stone or bronze weaponry, including máo spears, yuè pole-axes, ge pole-based dagger-axes, the compound bow, and bronze or leather helmets (Wang Hongyuan 1993).[22] Their western military frontier was at the Taihang Mountains, where they fought the ma or "horse" barbarians, who might have used chariots. The Shang themselves likely only used chariots as mobile command vehicles or elite symbols.[23] Although the Shang depended upon the military skills of their nobility, the masses of town dwelling and rural commoners provided the Shang rulers with conscript labor as well as military obligation when mobilized for ventures of defense or conquest.[24] The subservient lords of noble lineage and other state rulers were obligated to furnish their locally-kept forces with all the necessary equipment, armor, and armaments, while the Shang king maintained a force of about a thousand troops at his capital, and personally led this force into battle.[25] A rudimentary military bureaucracy was needed in order to muster troops of three to five thousand troops in border campaigns, while it was recorded that up to thirteen thousand troops were mustered in order to suppress uprisings of insolent states to Shang authority.[25]
The army was divided into three sections - left, right, and middle.[22] There were largely two types of army units in these sections, those being the loosely organized infantry that were conscripted from the privileged populace and played a supporting role, while the core of the army was the warrior nobility who rode in chariots.[22] Chariot-based warfare continued as a prime means of conducting battle well into the Warring States (481 BC-221 BC) period, although this was slowly phased out by massive infantry, and then large cavalry-based forces by the 3rd century BC.[26] However, even after the Shang integrated the chariot into their military forces, the nobility were still largely amassed in infantry form, as the chariot was mostly associated with transportation, ceremonies, and large-scale royal hunting expeditions.[26] Chariots in the Shang period generally carried three men, the driver placed at the center, an archer on the left, and a warrior armed with a dagger-axe on the right.[26] It had a rectangular frame, with two large spoked wheels, and was driven by two horses,[26] although some of the chariots had teams of four horses.[21]