A bronze water vessel with a spout and lid from early Zhou China
Spouted water container (he), 11th century BCE
Marked Haojing

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Zhou dynasty

The Zhou overthrew the Shang and said Heaven had given them the right to rule: the Mandate of Heaven. Their kingdom broke up into warring states, and in the chaos thinkers like Confucius and Laozi asked how to live and rule well.

Place
Haojing · Luoyang · QufuAsia
Laid out as
A dynastyA line of rulers, one after another, and what each reign changed.
Lessons
5 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IThe Mandate of Heaven
  2. IIBronzes with long inscriptions
  3. IIISprings and Autumns
  4. IVThe Warring States
  5. VA hundred schools of thought

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • King Wu
  • The Duke of Zhou
  • Confucius
  • Laozi

Objects

  • The He zun bronze
  • Bamboo slips

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1046 BC to 256 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?