1046 BCE–771 BCE
Mandate of Heaven and Western Zhou ritual order
Religion · Chinese traditions · Ritual and the state
After the Zhou conquest, kinship, sacrifice and political legitimacy were reorganized. The Mandate of Heaven functioned as a historical language of legitimate rule, with practices that varied across communities.
Precision, calendar, and review
- Start
- year · no uncertainty qualifier in this record
- End
- year · no uncertainty qualifier in this record
- Dating in the source document
- 1046–771 a. C.
- Calendar and convention
- Historical-era years; the source calendar is not identified. No conversion of days is assumed.
- Year zero
- The scale goes from 1 BCE to 1 CE without year zero. Changing era names changes labels only.
- Documentary review
- 2026-09-04
Reading the date: duration of a process.
Sources
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Source provenance and scope
- Publication date
- 2004-10-01
- What this date describes
- The cited source or edition; it may postdate the historical event.
- Bibliographic date checked
- 2026-09-23
The correspondence between this reference and individual claims has not yet been itemized.
This record is an editorial synthesis. Consult the sources to check claims and their limits. Chronological relationships alone do not establish causation.