Xia dynasty

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or Hsia dynasty

Quasi-legendary first dynasty of China, preceding the Shang.

In Chinese histories it is said to have been founded by Yu and to have had 17 rulers. Archaeological sites in Henan and Shanxi provinces in northeastern and eastern China have been tentatively identified with Xia culture. See also Erlitou culture.

More on "Xia dynasty" from Britannica Concise:

Shang dynasty - Traditionally, the second of China's dynasties, following the Xia dynasty.

Xi Xia - Kingdom of Tangut tribes that was established in the 11th century and flourished through the early 13th.

Da Yu - One of China's three legendary emperors, supposed founder of the Xia dynasty.

Erlitou culture - Neolithic culture (1900-1350 BC) of the central plains of northern China.

Shujing - One of the Five Classics of Chinese antiquity.

More on "Xia dynasty" from the 32 Volume Encyclopædia Britannica:

Xia Yan - Chinese writer, journalist, and playwright known for his leftist plays and films.

Hsia - (22nd-19th/18th century BC; traditional dates c. 2205-c. 1766 BC), early Chinese dynasty, mentioned in legends but of undetermined historicity. According to legend, the founder was Yu, who was credited with having engineered the draining of the waters of a great flood (and who was later identified as a deified lord of the harvest). Yu allegedly made the rulership hereditary in his family, thereby ...

China - Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the new dynasty, came from a family originally from northwestern Jiangsu province who by Yuan times had deteriorated into itinerant tenant farmers in northern Anhui province. Orphaned by famine and plague in 1344, young Zhu was taken into a small Buddhist monastery near Fengyang city as a lay novice. For more than three years he wandered as a mendicant through the Huai ...

China - The Shang dynasty-the first Chinese dynasty to leave historical records-is thought to have ruled from about 1600 to 1046 BC. (Some scholars date the Shang from the mid-18th to the late 12th century BC.) One must, however, distinguish Shang as an archaeological term from Shang as a dynastic one. Erlitou, in north-central Henan, for example, was initially classified archaeologically as Early Shang; ...

Xixia - kingdom of the Tibetan-speaking Tangut tribes that was established in the 11th century and flourished through the early 13th century. It was located in what are now the northwestern Chinese provinces of Gansu and Shaanxi.

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