The First Civilisations: Xia Dynasty of China

Time for more history! Today we uncover the mysteries of China's supposedly mythical first dynasty, the Xia Dynasty!

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[benthomason]

The main reason I think the Xia were real is because I don't think I've ever heard of a mythological figure who, when faced with a problem like a flooding river, would use a solution as boring and mundane as inventing irrigation. That's how a real figure would solve it. A mythological figure would do something like seek out and lay the monster whose overabundant saliva was flooding the river.

[lukehornbach]

great work man! In depth explainations and your engaging way to speek really grateful for ur channel

[outisnemo]

The Xia was definitely real, because if you look at the archaeological discoveries regarding the Shang dynasty (the one that came after the Xia), you realize the Shang had from the very beginning a highly developed culture and society, almost too mature to have come out of no where. The Shang must have had a predecessor civilization in one form or another, and the Xia is the best candidate.

[kennywong]

Yao and Shun are not the emperors of Xia dynasty. They were rather, from the pre-dynastic period. Gun was allegedly the father of the founder of Xia dynasty, Yu the engineer though.

[thecoobs]

Damn what a great video, I only heard of this dynasty earlier today and decided I'll find something on it, this was a great video because of your approach to supposed evidence, and you were quite clear that at this point, it's all speculation

[jessereichbach]

Could the Yellow Emperor and Xia dynasty be comparable to Greek "Golden Age", how characters were basically deified or granted some form of "godhood", like Mycenaean/Bronze age Balkans/Aegean?

[koboldgeorge]

>go research it yourself, my head hurts
Great video, very informative!

[jellybean]

If I know history and China, this was probably all written and recorded at some point, but over time was either lost or edited into oblivion.

[ricochetsixtyten]

Its pronounced Sha, not Xi-ah, other than that, nice work.

[edwardyang]

The Xia dynasty is the first dynasty where power transfer as a commonly accepted rule from father to son, but it is by far *not* the beginning of the Chinese civilization, which started at least a thousand years prior.

[mmaphilosophy]

Jay off inbetweeners knows his history 😂

[peterhsieh]

Based on the latest Archaeologists findings in China, Xia Dynasty was not Han Chinese but Chinese Ethnic Yi. A lot of writings on broken potteries discovered from 4500BC, and these writings were identical and similiar to the Ethnic Yi of Shu Kingdom. The Chinese Archaeologists were using these Ancient Yi writings to decipher the meanings of these ancient writings from unearthed broken potteries. Therefore, we can also said that Chinese languages were at least 6500 years old.
This also confirmed the Chinese Ancient history that there were TWO major Tribes in Ancient China with one from Western China, the present Han Chinese and to the Eastern China, Chinese Ethnic Yi, and today ethnic Yi can only be found in China's South West Provinces.

[dudeebumblebee]

Nice work, and as far as it can go. First written texts of any kind so far found is dated som centuries later so there is nothing strange about Xia dynasty being half-real half myth. But as for its name, I think its fair to assume that a Xia dynasty ruled these arciologic findings. Like its last kings. But the discription of them is painted in myth and probably very much so.

[francisyang]

The Miao ppl are.currently the hmong ppl who migrated to SE Asia ....

[linjie]

Talking about historical Huangdi to a Chinese is like talking about historical Jesus to a Westerner.

[DaStoic_Brew]

The 3 "sovereigns" are the sons on Noah.

[Joealbert]

Separating myth and legend from China history as if it had no impact. ok...