ipt was the precursor of later Chinese
script, it seemed to have contained many words which later disappeared,
and we are not sure whether Shang language was the same as the language
of Chou time. With the Chou period, however, we enter a period in which
everything which was later regarded as typically "Chinese" began to
emerge.

During the time of the Shang dynasty the Chou formed a small realm in
the west, at first in central Shensi, an area which even in much later
times was the home of many "non-Chinese" tribes. Before the beginning of
the eleventh century B.C. they must have pushed into eastern Shensi, due
to pressures of other tribes which may have belonged to the Turkish
ethnic group. However, it is also possible that their movement was
connected with pressures from Indo-European groups. An analysis of their
tribal composition at the time of the conquest seems to indicate that
the ruling house of the Chou was related to the Turkish group, and that
the population consisted mainly of Turks and Tibetans. Their culture was
closely related to that of Yang-shao, the previously described
painted-pottery culture, with, of course, the progress brought by time.
They had bronze weapons and, especially, the war-chariot. Their eastward
migration, however, brought them within the zone of the Shang culture,
by which they were strongly influenced, so that the Chou culture lost
more and more of its original character and increasingly resembled the
Shang culture. The Chou were also brought into the political sphere of
the Shang, as shown by the fact that marriages took place between the
ruling houses of Shang and Chou, until the Chou state became nominally
dependent on the Shang state in the form of a dependency with special
prerogatives. Meanwhile the power of the Chou state steadily grew, while
that of the Shang state diminished more and more through the disloyalty
of its feudatories and through wars in the East. Finally, about 1028
B.C., the Chou ruler, named Wu Wang ("the martial king"), crossed his
eastern frontier and pushed into central Honan. His army was formed by
an alliance between various tribes, in the same way as happened again
and again in the building up of the armies of the rulers of the steppes.
Wu Wang forced a passage across the Yellow River and annihilated the
Shang army. He pursued its vestiges as far as the capital, captured the
last emperor of the Shang, and killed him. Thus was the Chou dynasty
founded, an