Shamanism and the origin of the Chinese State. See also part one.

In an agricultural era, control over a solar and lunar calendar would provide great benefits, perhaps alongside oracle-bone divination and the ornamental trappings of power. Royal dynasties and magico-religious figures do not always work well together, but in this instance they could have been one and the same, managing the mundane world of pigs and lithics, whilst drawing power as a conduit between the heavens and earth, maintaining harmony in the fields and the quarries.