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Ready to spark something, download the Sims 4 and play for free. Hello and welcome to the history of China.

Episode 6, them bones, Them Oones, them Oracle Bones. Last time, we finished out our overview of the Shah Dynasty and ended on Tong, the Duke of Chang, banishing Jia of Shah into permanent exile

before anointing himself the new dynastic emperor.

This time we're going to be pressing the pause button on this story of the

shang dynasty itself and my sincere apologies if any of you were banking on my

delving into Tong of sh, as I suggested last week.

I promise, we'll get there next week.

Suffice it to say, when looking over the information, I couldn't help but use this breakpoint to temporarily rest our narrative from its

relentless forward march. Instead, today we'll be panning out to the much broader and more meta story of what we know about the

Shong and even more interestingly how we've come to know it.

As I've been repeating over the past five episodes, both the Shah Dynasty and the pre-Dynastic

founding period are considered, at best, semi-mythical. Though we have evidence that people and cultures existed prior to the 17th century

B.C. we have no way to tie them to the stories and cultural hero tales that have often been attributed to them.

In terms of the Shaw period, we know through the Arly Todig sites that some group of people

lived in the Yellow River Valley at roughly the same time and place as the Shaw Dynasty.

But that's literally it.

...