Importance

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This site is important to Chinese archaeologists because of what it may teach us about the Xia-Shang-Zhou Dynasties of ancient China. This period in Chinese history, from 2100 B.C.E. to 256 B.C.E. was not as well documented as the dynasties that came after, with most of our knowledge about these societies coming from the Record of the Grand Historian, which was written in the 1st century by Sima Qian. The Erlitou site may serve as a basis to better understand the oldest of the Xia-Shang-Zhou Dynasties, the Xia, which is also the oldest and most mythical of the three dynasties.

When the site was first discovered by Xu Xusheng, he suggested it was the remains of Bo, the capital of the Shang Dynasty. However, the more recent radiocarbon dating data tends to lean more towards the theory that some if not all of the phases in the Erlitou site are native to the Xia Dynasty. An argument for this theory is the existence of a separate culture, the Erligang, a Shang Dynasty culture which was distinct and younger than the Erlitou, suggesting that Erlitou culture would belong to the Xia.