Narrator: Life was really different in the Shang dynasty to life today. Buildings were built from mud and wood, even palaces and towers and horses were the fastest form of transport. Builder ...

workshops and royal tombs in the Yinxu Ruins are important evidence of the bronze civilization of the late Shang Dynasty. Exquisite bronze relics such as the Houmuwu Ding, a sacrificial food ...

(Also found were the remains of 16 attendants, evidence of the dynasty’s well-documented practice of human sacrifice.) The Shang’s relationships with their neighbors were not exclusively martial.

While recent discoveries have complicated the early history of China, solid evidence still points to Chinese civilisation beginning during the Shang dynasty ... made to hold food and drinks ...