Second half of the II millennium B.C. can be considered as the time when the first writing system appeared in East Asia in the form of oracle bone inscriptions jiagu wen (甲骨文). For the first time those inscriptions sparked academic interest and received recognition at the end of 19th century, though their place of origin remained a mystery for some time. At the end of the 1920s Archaeological department of Institute of History and Philology Academia Sinica initiated archaeological excavations near modern city of Anyang, Henan province, PRC, because it was implied that the oracle bones with inscriptions had originated there. Archaeological excavations reveled a great ancient center in Anyang, including a cult center, workshops, and cemeteries including royal necropolis. Due to the fact that names of rulers, known from the transmitted texts, were often mentioned in those inscriptions, it was possible to identify the site as the last capital of Shang-Yin dynasty, so-called ‘Great Settlement Shang’ (14th–11th centuries B.C.). All these make the complex rather unique for its time, as it gives us a chance to connect pre-historical and historical data. Researchers managed to determine two relative chronologies (based on archaeological and epigraphic sources) and later to interconnect them and relate to the events mentioned in transmitted texts on early political history. Still, there is a number of problems in correlating those relative chronologies with absolute dates. Up to now the greatest project to coordinate chronology of the II millennium B.C. has been the project “Chronology of the Three Dynasties: Xia–Shang–Zhou” in 1996–2000, initiated by the Chinese political figure Song Jiang. Regardless of some international criticism of the projects’ results, a great number of scholars make use of them in their studies.
‘The Nir Coalition’ in 1959 and the Opposition Struggle against Mapai
