Talk:Zu Jia

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Inconsistent Regnal Years

The sidebar gives him Regnal Years of 1184-1177 BC (7 years) but provides no source, meanwhile, the article text itself seems to imply he reigned at least 27 years, but this is also unsourced. These dates neither match up with the XSZ Chronology Project or the Cambridge History. AvRand (talk) 08:41, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

While the XSZ Chronology Project received a lot of hype for being government sponsored and including so many and such reputable scholars, it's telling that they never released a final (or indeed second) draft of their results, archaeological discoveries having overtaken them and thrown their timeline methodology into some disarray.

The "events" seem to be based on an uncritical reading of the Bamboo Annals, but I'm not familiar enough with them to know if this period is one where they are considered reliable or not. The most pointed criticism of the XSZ Chronology comes from the Nivisin–Shaughnessy "two initial years" school, but for a general treatment see Lee, Yun Kuen (2002). "Building the Chronology of Early Chinese History". Asian Perspectives. 41 (1). University of Hawai'i Press: 14–42. JSTOR 42928543.

The radiocarbon dating of Shang Oracle Bones conducted in 2021 had to group him together with Zu Geng, and the investigators gave that group a date range of BCE 1206–1177±10 years with a 68% confidence level. "Radiocarbon Dating of Oracle Bones of the Late Shang Period in Ancient China". Radiocarbon. 63 (1). Cambridge University Press: 155–175. 2020-10-20. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help) Their methodology rested on assuming a 59-year reign for Wu Ding, which is not contested in the transmitted literature, but doesn't seem like a strong enough claim to calibrate all the results around, at least to me personally.

The encyclopaedia has had an unfortunate history of reporting false precision for early Chinese monarchs, probably largely based on the XSZ draft. We used to have exact regnal years for all figures going back to the early Xia, which is essentially doubly speculative. Folly Mox (talk) 13:47, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]