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__Geography:__ **__Development Of China:__** **__Social Class:__** **__Religious Beliefs:__** **__Development Of China:__**
 * **The natural barriers some what isolated ancient China from all other civilization.**
 * **The different mountains ranges and deserts dminate about two-thirds of China's landmass.**
 * **China lays East of the Yellow Sea.**
 * **The West part if China lays on the Taklimakan.The**
 * **The North is the desolate Gobi Desert and the Mongolian Platue.**
 * **The two major rivers in China are Haung Ho, in the American language it is called the Yellow River. The other river is called Chang Jiang in chinese. The American language it is simply called the Yangtze River.**
 * ** The Banks of the Yellow River, when it over flows the silt is actually fertile soil called loess, which is blown from the wind to the north and the west. **
 * ** China's first civilization developed in a river valley. **
 * ** China also has about 10 percent of land that is suitable for farming. **
 * ** North China plains is China's Heartland. **
 * ** The modern humans lived in Southwest China about 1.7 million years ago. **
 * ** Among the oldest important Shang Cities was built out of wood and Anyong. **
 * ** The Shang surrounded there cities with massive earthern walls for protection. **
 * ** Shang rose to the power in northern china. **
 * ** The higher class people lived in Timber-frames houses with walls made out of clay and straw, these houses only lay inside of the city walls. **
 * ** The Peasants and crafts people lived in huts outside the city. **
 * ** Archaeological remains of one city includes a wall of packed earth about 118ft wide and it's base circled an area of 1.2 square miles. **
 * ** It took 10,000 men to build and about approximly 12 years to build the Great Wall. **
 * ** Shang people needed walled cities because they were constantly waging war. **
 * ** Chariot is a big tool they use alot in war. **
 * ** The people who lived outside of Chinese Civilization were called Barbarians. **
 * **The culture that grew up China had a strong unifying bond.**
 * **Family- the familes were central in Chinese Society.**
 * **The important Virtue was respect for ones parent.**
 * **The elder men in the family controlled the family's property and made important decisions.**
 * **Woman on the other hand were treated as inferiors they were expected to obey their fathers and their husbands and later there own sons.**
 * ** When a girl reached between 13 and 16 years old, her marriage was arranged and she would have to move into the house of her new husband. **
 * **The Shang society was sharply divided between nobles and peasants.**
 * **The noble familys owned the lang, they governed and scattered villages within Shang lands and sent tribute to the Shang ruler in exchange for local control.**
 * **In China the family was closely linked to religion.**
 * **Chinese also belived that the spirits of family ancestors had the power to bring good fortune or diaster to living members of the family.**
 * **Chinese did not regard these spirits as mighty gods.**
 * **They took the spirits as respect.**
 * **Every family paid respect to the father's ancestors and made sacrifies in their honor.**
 * **The Shang consulted the gods.**
 * **The Shang also worshiped a supreme god named the Shang Di,as well as many lesser gods.**
 * **The Shang Kings consulted the gods through the use of oracle bones and a preist had scratched questions for all the gods.**
 * **When speaking to the bones to see if the gods reply back is if the bone is cracked, thats how they see how the gods respond.**
 * ** In the Chinese method of writing each character generally stands for one syllable or unit of language. **
 * ** Recall that many of the egyptian hieroglphs stood for sounds in the spoken language. **
 * ** In contrast there is absolutly no links between china's wrriten language and spoken language. **
 * ** One could simply read Chinese without being able to speak one word of it. **
 * ** The Chinese system of writing had one major advantage. **
 * ** People all through China could learn the same system of writing, even if thier spoken languages were very different. **
 * ** Chinese written language helped unify a large and diverse land, and made control much easier. **
 * ** Disadvantages- of Chinese system was the enormous number of written language. **
 * ** A person needed to know over 1,500 characters to be barely literate. **
 * ** Also if you wanted to be a true scholar you needed to know at least 10,000 characters. **
 * ** This is how a noble child learned how to write, but the peasants did not. **