China stands unique among the nations of the world in many ways. One of these is the fact that she has one of the most ancient and best-preserved histories of all peoples. There is only one other nation that has an unbroken consecutively recorded history that goes further back than China's. That nation is Israel, and their history is found recorded in the Bible. Both Israel and China had a special love for preserving their past. Through archaeology we can dig up artifacts from the past, but we can't really learn a whole lot about what these ancient peoples believed or knew about life. But when we have an accurately preserved written history combined with archaeology, we can gain insight into the heart and soul of the people. China gives us such a unique opportunity because her ancient history has been more accurately preserved than most people realize.

The truth of China's history can become blurred when we fail to make a clear distinction between myth, legend, and history. Myths are woven around occurrences which, so far as human intelligence can tell, could not have happened at all. There is a myth about ten suns appearing in the heavens during the reign of Emperor Yao. Yao commanded the great archer Yi to shoot nine of the suns out of the heavens. The story of Nuwa ( Lady Wa) who supposedly patched up a gaping whole in the sky with five colored stones must be considered myth. Nothing about her is recorded before 300 B.C. As far as our human intelligence is concerned we know such events could not have actually happened.
We know with good probability that Emperor Yao was a real person and we can place him at a specific time in history (2357 B.C.). However, some of the things recorded about him clearly appear to be legendary. Legends are embellished or exaggerated stories of real people who are known to have actually lived, or real events that are known to have actually happened. Sometimes it is a challenge to separate the real history from the legend.
True and accurate history documents real events and real people. It contains no legendary embellishments either deliberately or inadvertently placed in their otherwise reliable accounts. China's ancient history as recorded by the Grand Historian Sima Qian begins with the Yellow Emperor in the 27th century B.C. The period known as the age of the five rulers is still considered the legendary period by many historians (2953 - 2205 B.C.). The people are real but there appears to be some historical exaggerations as to the events of their lives. Shun is the last of these Emperors before the Great Yu begins the Hsia Dynasty in 2205. The history of the Shang Dynasty (also called Yin) begins with Shang Tang in 1766 B.C. and the Chou Dynasty begins with Wu Wang in 1122 B.C. (The exact dates are still debated by historians).
The discovery of the Shang oracle bones has verified a large portion of the history recorded by Confucius in the Classics. In the appendix of his book, The Chinese Heritage, K.C. Wu has documented the fact that "we may reasonably assume that the very first document in the Book of History may be used as a source for credible history" (p. 465). We give this brief background so the reader may have confidence that what we are about to learn about Shang Ti is not myth or legend but real history.