Editing China (section)

===The Zhou===
The Zhou were a family from out west in the boonies that moved onto Shang land and became vassals to the Shang until they... weren't.

Unlike the Shang, whose culture has to be gathered from myth and scattered nonliterary documents, Linear B style; the Zhou culture actually produced a literature, although that got transmitted through layers of copying and redaction. Still, Chinese culture is [https://razib.substack.com/p/3000-years-of-chinese-history remarkably continuous from the Zhou].

To justify their rebellion, and then their rule, the Zhou introduced the concept of a "Mandate of Heaven" (''tian ming'' in modern Mandarin orthography) issued not by the mercurial gods but by the cosmic forces of rightness, to which even gods must bow.  It was brilliant, in its own way: theoretically, each dynasty ruled by the Mandate.  When they didn't do so well or justly, Heaven would withdraw the Mandate and give it to someone else who'd overthrown them. And the Zhou stopped their subjects from sacrificing each other, which was a major step forward.

More-cynically, this Mandate meant that a ''successful'' rebellion was "proof" that Heaven had turned its back on the old order, and an ''unsuccessful'' one was "proof" that it wasn't time yet; this system of ''ex post facto'' justification has proven to be much more durable than the western concept of the ''divine right of kings'' and persists to this day (if not in name). It also didn't hurt that the Zhou showed mercy upon the Yin family who'd run the Shang, allowing them to keep a fief in the Song duchy. Confucius himself was of the Yin / Song ex-Shang.

Anyway, the Zhou had a good run, but the state's vassals started pulling apart during [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn_period Spring and Autumn period], and eventually the whole thing fractured into a mess of warring states fighting for supremacy.  This was known as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warring_States_period Warring States period]. At the same time, constant conflict and the need to innovate culminated in to the "Hundred Schools". The origin of both Confucianism (under the sovereign-again Song/Yin) and Daoism in some of their earliest forms was observed.