The Rise and Fall of China’s First States

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

China’s late Neolithic period saw the emergence of increasingly powerful groups of elites who buried themselves in lavishly decorated tombs and built palaces and public buildings at the hearts of their fortified settlements. From these political centers, the elites built and ruled a patchwork of small, competing states. But by around 2000 BC, all of these early states had fallen apart, destroyed by changing climatic conditions, social upheaval, and interstate conflict.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The thumping of the drums and the whistling of the chimes cut through the cool light air,
0:14.7	building in volume and tempo until it reached a crescendo.
0:18.9	When the noise stopped, the black jade blade of the knife flashed in the fireless.
0:24.0	A strangled scream split the air just for a moment, and then stopped with a wet gurgle.
0:29.7	The poor from the gash across the sacrificial victim's neck, pouring onto the freshly turned
0:34.6	earth of the pit.
0:36.4	Silence ruled, but only for a moment, until the one performing the ritual whispered a few
0:40.6	words, offering the person's life and thanks to the ancestral spirits who were being honored
0:45.4	by her death.
0:47.4	Her body, still leaking red, was tossed into the waiting hole.
0:51.4	Rich soil filled the pit and covered the corpse, leaving no trace that she had ever been there,
0:56.0	aside from the blood rapidly soaking into the earth.
0:59.5	Soon a temple would rise on this spot, its foundations built over her makeshift grave.
1:04.9	She was, had been, a young woman, her life cut short before reaching adulthood, a prisoner
1:10.3	taken in war.
1:12.0	She had suffered in life and suffered at her life's end.
1:15.4	Her suffering would continue in death with no family left to mourn her, forgotten by
1:19.5	the people who would build and occupy the temple above the pit containing her body.
1:24.0	To them, her death was simply a necessary part of the construction process.
1:28.6	She had served her purpose.
1:31.1	More than 4,000 years ago, the societies of China's late neolithic entered a new stage.
1:36.8	The difference between those at the top and those at the bottom, like this victim of human
	...

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