The Shang polity came out of the Neolithic, like its neighbours in other parts of China. But it created the model for later Chinese kingship: the central role of the king as mediator between heaven and earth; the crucial importance of lineage and ancestors; the control of shamanism and divination as a source of authority; and the monopoly of bronze technology, and of writing. In China, from the beginning civilisation was shaped by political necessity, the rituals of power and the interpretation by the elite of the will of heaven.
