Xia dynasty

Origins

Later histories, above all Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, describe the Xia as the dynasty founded when Yu the Great, rewarded for controlling the floods of the Yellow River, passed power to his son Qi, making rule hereditary. The register follows the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project's dates. No writing survives from the period itself.

Rule and society

Everything known comes from texts written a thousand years later or from archaeology. Many scholars link the Xia with the Erlitou culture of the Luoyang basin in Henan, which built palace compounds on rammed-earth platforms, cast the earliest Chinese bronze ritual vessels and made jade blades. Whether Erlitou was the Xia, and what its people called themselves, cannot be proved without inscriptions.

Decline and legacy

Tradition holds that the last king, Jie, was a tyrant overthrown by Tang, founder of the Shang dynasty, at the Battle of Mingtiao. The Xia became the model of the first legitimate dynasty, and later Chinese political thought used its fall as the classic example of Heaven withdrawing its favour from a corrupt ruler.

Few sources survive for this state; details are uncertain.