At the Battle of Muye, the Yin-Shang dynasty did not fall. King Wu Ding of Shang and his queen, Fu Hao, had already laid out an escape route for the Shang people. On the eve of the kingdom’s collapse, King Zhou, Di Xin, entrusted the mysterious bird jade token and the bronze military command token to Fu Yu, heir to the naval fleet. With more than a hundred ships and several thousand people aboard, the Three Rivers fleet set sail, launching an epic voyage across the ancient seas.
Across ten thousand miles of raging waters, ancient ships sailed far from shore, navigating by the stars and calculating their course as they battled hurricanes, shipworms that gnawed through their hulls, and gales that tore their sails. The fleet was scattered, then struggled to reunite in the vast ocean. Pursuers followed in their wake, epidemics swept through the ships, conservative nobles harbored their own ambitions, and surviving soldiers carried the bitterness of a shattered homeland. The people of old reached a new continent and began with fortified camps, cultivating wild land, smelting copper and casting tools, building a state, establishing land laws, household registers, criminal statutes, and ancestral temples, introducing jade corn, and contending with native tribes.
An epic alternate-history saga set before the Qin dynasty, about seafaring and state-building. A story of ancient clans, with a strong female lead at the helm. The survivors of Yin-Shang migrate across the oceans in search of a new home. They build ancient ships, develop the land, sow crops, and shape a civilization. They rebuild their state in a desolate wilderness, abolish human sacrifice in the face of brutal hardship, and bear witness to the brilliance of human nature.
Inspired by archaeological discoveries and excavated artifacts, this novel draws on engineering research to imagine the people of Yin crossing east to the Americas and establishing a state overseas. This is not real history.
Originally titled Sea Traders: The Mysterious Bird's Voyage Across the Ocean, this is an original, full-length novel told in the form of a seafaring journal.
Theme: In times of chaos, women bear the burden of their people’s survival. Rather than cling stubbornly to their old homeland, they dare to leave behind the home they know and lead their people across uncharted seas, rebuilding order in a wild land.
Chapter 16 buried easter eggs: 1. In the Shang Dynasty, there were written prohibitions, which were recorded on slips; oracle bone inscriptions can be seen in the military regulations: being out of service, spreading rumors, private fire, robbery, and disobeying orders were all punished severely, and whipping and beheading were all real punishments in the Shang Dynasty. 2. Oracle bones and fragments of slips from the Yin Ruins can prove that: there are garrison (garrison troops), Xiaochen (general affairs warehouse, a close confidant of the Shang king, in charge of supplies, books, and orders), Baigong (gongzao, the prototype of Ren Heng's manufacturing camp, Yin Ruins has an independent handicraft workshop area, with workshops for smelting, carpentry, tanning, and rope sails), Zhenren / Xingguan (Hongji shaman and celestial calendar system), Jichen (medical officer), Nongchen (agricultural officer), clan Yin (people's livelihood) who manage clan members, disputes, and household registration.
Chapter 15 buried easter eggs: 1. Seven thousand shellfish from the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean were unearthed from Fuhao's tomb, as well as giant tortoise shells from the Malay Peninsula and multi-hook bronze anchor-shaped vessels. This proves that merchants during the Wuding era had opened transoceanic routes and had the shipbuilding and astronomical navigation capabilities for long voyages to the South Abyss. This is by no means a fabrication. 2. "Historical Records: Song Weizi Family" and "Shangshu Da Zhuan" clearly record that after King Wu destroyed the Shang Dynasty, Jizi was unwilling to submit to the Zhou Dynasty, so he led five thousand Yin people across the sea to Liaodong, established Jizi Korea, took root in western Liaoning and eastern Liaoning, and attracted Zhou people to visit the north.
Chapter 14 buried easter eggs: 1. Bronze smelting and casting: The bronzes of the Yin Ruins in the Central Plains are centered on complex ritual vessels, followed the block model method, pursuing the decoration of ritual vessels, exquisite craftsmanship, giving priority to sacrificial rituals, and the proportion of tools and weapons is relatively low. China Archeology Network. The archaeological characteristics of the upper Guzhu-Xiajiadian Bronze Culture in Western Liaoning are as follows: the ritual vessels imitate the Central Plains, but a large number of local artifacts are daggers, axes, daggers, and tools; the style is rough, the emphasis is on practical weapons, and the decoration is simplified. The local mold casting technology is different from that of the Yin Ruins. 2. Lingzhi, Tuhe and Yuren. From "Yi Zhou Shu·Wang Hui", ancient tribe in western Liaoning. 3. Jizi: Jizi is an official historical figure. "Historical Records" records: King Zhou's uncle remonstrated with Zhou and was imprisoned; after King Wu conquered Shang, Jizi did not want to serve Zhou and left Liaodong. Later generations derived the legend of Jizi from Korea. Bronze vessels with "Ji" inscriptions unearthed in Kazuo and Qian'an in western Liaoning prove that the Ji clan's influence was indeed active in the Guzhu Kingdom. 4. Guzhu was an important country with the same surname in the north of the Shang Dynasty. Its center was in the area of Lulong in present-day Hebei and Chaoyang in western Liaoning. It was founded for nearly a thousand years. Records related to Guzhu appear many times in oracle bone inscriptions, and bronze vessels with Guzhu inscriptions such as "Yawei Lei" were unearthed. Boyi and Shuqi are the solitary bamboo princes, a well-known Chinese allusion.
Chapter 13: Pre-buried easter eggs: 1. When the Yin and Shang Dynasties fell, it is a historical fact that royal craftsmen and historians fled with tools and technical brochures; a large number of bronze smelting, shipbuilding and woodworking skills were introduced to the coastal area with the survivors who migrated south, completing the southward spread of technology. A large number of bronze ritual vessels that are highly consistent with the style of the Yin Ruins were unearthed from the late Shang Dynasty tomb in Oceania, Xingan, Jiangxi (before and after the Shang and Zhou dynasties). The mainstream speculation is that the craftsmen of the Shang remnants migrated south and brought the entire copper casting technology to the south. This is archaeological evidence. 2. Research on the storage of oracle bones in the Yin Ruins: In the Shang Dynasty, the underground caves where oracle bones were stored were covered with plant ash to absorb moisture, which was used to relieve the moisture in the cellar and protect the oracle bones. 3. In the Shang Dynasty, there were already wooden slips used for daily government affairs and population registration. "Shangshu" records that "the ancestors of the Yin Dynasty had records and canons", and the bamboo and wooden slips were filed in series with ropes.
Chapter 12 buried easter eggs: 1. Shell mound ruins. The ancient ancestors along the coasts of Jiaodong and Shandong built large numbers of shell mounds to form residential platforms that could withstand ocean tides. The piles of shells on Wenzhong Beach are typical shell mounds along the Dongyi coast. 2. In the southern coastal waters of the Yellow Sea, northerly winds prevail in early spring, making it easier to sail along the coast from north to south; this is also the climatic basis for Shang and Yi to choose to go south at this time for their long voyages along the coast. 3. The mountainous coastal passage in the Western Liaoning Corridor is narrow. Shang survivors after Makino could only flee eastward along this narrow coastal strip. The mountain road was difficult to navigate, and the migration of large groups was easily intercepted. 4. In the coastal settlements of the Shang Dynasty, corn and sea fish were common staple foods for coastal immigrants; inland nobles had long eaten rice and meat, and often had difficulty adapting to sea fish porridge for the first time.
Chapter 11 buried easter eggs: 1. The core anti-seepage technology of pre-Qin wooden boats: linen wool + resin / raw lacquer caulking. The Yin Shang Dynasty already used hemp fiber, which was the predecessor of the ship twisting technology of later generations. 2. Bohai (ancient Bohai Sea) falls into the ocean in winter: the temperature of offshore water in winter is extremely low, around 0℃. When a person falls into icy water, he suffers cold water shock + rapid hypothermia, and loses the ability to move within a few minutes, which is much faster than death by simple drowning. Ancient sea dwellers have long observed this phenomenon, and it is not simply "drowning".
Chapter 10: Pre-buried Easter Eggs: Fleeing with oracle bone fragments: 1. Oracle bones coated with cinnabar: Oracle bones that record important conquests in the Shang Dynasty. The cinnabar will be filled into the notches, and the red color will remain long-lasting to commemorate the war; 2. Inscriptions on the conquest of the barbarians: Emperor Xin (Shang Zhou) personally conquered the Eastern Barbarians and left a large number of oracle bone records in the late Shang Dynasty. When nobles accompanied the army, they could carry small tortoise shells to commemorate their family's military achievements. When fleeing from war, it was difficult to carry large ritual vessels, so the nobles would choose oracle bone fragments with inscriptions to keep close to their chests as family heirlooms.
Chapter 8 buried easter eggs: 1. Su Shen: A fishing and hunting group in the northeast of the Shang and Zhou dynasties. They paid tribute to arrows and stone weights and were good at raiding with bows and arrows in the mountains and forests; 2. Border military of the Shang Dynasty: enemy soldiers captured in foreign battles could be beheaded on the spot as a frontier deterrent; 3. Raw lacquer: It has been mined in the Shang Dynasty and is used for anti-corrosion and anti-seepage of wood and ship boards.
Chapter 8 buried easter eggs: 1. Young sailors carve their mother's name on the ship's plank. The vast majority of people at the bottom of the late Shang Dynasty could not read the complete text; however, a few full-time personnel in the royal workshops and clan boat masters could read and carve simple names and emblems. This sailor is one of the few boatmen who can learn to carve simple characters, and he can only carve his mother's name. A large number of pottery fragments and cast copper pottery models were unearthed from the Yin Ruins workshops. Craftsmen would carve names, family emblems, numbers, and simple words on the bottom of the vessel/handle of the pottery model as a mark of the craftsman and owner. For example, the handles of the Liujiazhuang Beidi pottery kiln are engraved with personal names such as "Bing, Yang, It"; the Miaopu Beidi cast copper pottery models are engraved with craftsman's marks, which were engraved by the craftsmen themselves, not written by Zhenren. On the pottery from Zhengzhou Shangcheng, Gaocheng Taixi, and Wucheng ruins, the numbers, names, and pictograms (arrow, fish, and minister) carved by craftsmen were found. They are simple characters used by grassroots craftsmen and have the same writing system as oracle bone inscriptions. 2. This place is the coast of Jiaodong Cape Bay, which is used in the book. This is a bedrock coast with many intertidal reefs and half-moon-shaped wind shelters. There is sea ice near the coast in the first month of the Yellow and Bohai Seas, and the ice belt becomes thinner from north to south. There is a southward coastal backflow, which is suitable for ancient nearshore navigation. "Mencius" records the coastal routes in this section of the pre-Qin period; the shell mound sites along the Jiaodong coast and the Pearly Gate culture in the late Shang Dynasty confirm that Lai Yi have been active on this coast for a long time, and the shore signs passed down orally from generation to generation have a realistic basis.
Chapter 7: Pre-buried Easter Eggs: The eight-foot-long standing tree on board was photographed and traced back to the tomb of King Taosi. Taosi used an eight-foot standing table to measure shadows and mark the center of the ground. This technique was passed down to the Yin and Shang Dynasties as a royal secret. Hongji simplifies it and makes it portable. You can watch the sun and shadows on the stern of the ship to carve the tortoise shell to survey the route. The method of observing the king's power in the fixed land was brought into the eastern abyss.