The Shang Dynasty (also called Yin 殷 after the last capital near modern Anyang 安陽/Henan) is the second of the Three Holy Dynasties (San Dai, Sandai　三代) of Chinese historiography (Xia 夏, Shang 商, and Zhou 周). It is said to have been founded by Tang the Great 大湯, the last ruler was the depraved King Zhou 紂王 (posthumous title Di Xi, Dixin 帝辛). Since all the events of this historical period, reported by sources written many hundred years later, cannot be taken seriously, many scholars at the end of the 19th century thought the Shang Dynasty to be purely mythical. Only the discovering of oracle bones at the begin of the 20th century and the deciphering of the incised inscriptions (oracle bone inscriptions, jiaguwen 甲骨文) proved that at least the last part of the Shang was indeed a historical period. But the kings of Yin were not the center of the Chinese world. Around them, many other cities and states (the ten thousand states, wanguo 萬國) - Chinese and Non-Chinese - presented a world full of cultural diversity of which the state of the rulers at a city discovered at Erligang 二里岡 (near Zhengzhou 鄭州/Henan) were dominating the ancient Central Plain for a certain time. Later, when the kings of Yin (known as the ruling house of Shang) entered history, they were only one royal house that had to fight for dominance with many other cities between modern Gansu and Shandong, Hebei and Jiangxi.

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