Horse, Indo-Europeans Spread and the rising of Zhou Dynasty

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Horse, Indo-EuropeansSpread and the rising of
Zhou Dynasty

• Jie Bao
• Dept of Computer Science
• Iowa State Univeristy
• http//www.cs.iastate.edu/baojie/history/chinese/
  2002-12-02_horse.htm

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Indo-Europeans

• They were ancestors of more than half of the
  people in the world
• North India and Pakistan
• Almost all Europeans
• Almost all Americans
• Almost all Australia
• Persia and Afghanistan

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Indo-Europeans

• Their homeland was the steppe - todays Ukraine
  and Kazakhstan
• They left their homeland and spread to Asia and
  Europe between 2000BC and 500BC

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Indo-Europeans

• They Caused the destroy of Egypt Old Kingdom,
  Babylon Old India
• Aryans, Medes, Persians Greeks, Tocharians,
  Celts, Italics, Slaves, Germans

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Why IEs Success

• Horse (before 1000BC)
• Chariot
• Cavalry
• Military Revolution
• Economic Importance
• Iron (after 1000BC)

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Indo-Europeans China

• Is China uninfluenced ? No
• Nomadic tribes appeared in Shang Dynasty
• Zhou Revolution 1046BC
• Continuous influence until Han Dynasty

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Shang Dynasty

• A strong nation in central China 1600BC-1046BC
• They may learnt how to use horse independently
• horse character in oracle language
• Chariot excavated in Shang ruins
• Recorded in books

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Shang Dynasty

• But they didnt use horse widely
• They built Chariot corps only to fight nomads but
  cut it down after success
• Horse needed to be imported and was expensive
• Used mostly for ceremony and nobility
• No many horse-related equipments found in a
  generals tomb

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Zhou Tribe

• They lived in Western China
• They had been both nomadic tribe and farming
  people
• They were forced to move southbound several time
  under nomadic pressure
• They learnt horse-using from their nomad
  neighbors (some of them are IE people, such as
  Yueh Chih)

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Zhou Tribe-gtZhou Dynasty

• They widely used horse and Chariot in war
• Recorded in lots historical literatures
• Conquered Shang 1046BC
• Zhou Dynasty 1046BC-256BC

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General scheme for the change

• 1500BC, Aryans come to Central Asian and drive
  Tocharians to east
• Tocharians controlled Tian Shan Mt. And western
  China, drive Qiang and Rong people to Northern
  China
• Influenced by Tocharians, Northern China was
  under nomadic pressure
• Zhou forced to move south by Rong
• Zhou people conquered Shang and built Zhou Dynasty

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Conclusions

• Chinese invented using horse independently
• But not widely used in war before Shang Dynasty
• Migrating of Zhou is caused by other nomadic
  migration triggered by IE people
• Zhou people learnt using horse in war from IE
  people directly or indirectly
• This military revolution greatly helped Zhou to
  conquered Shang