Anyone good at world history?

Question

What do the legends of the three sage-kings tell us about the matters of greatest importance to the people of the early East Asian societies?

Answer 1

I am not sure what your question is as the story of the three sage kings is so old and so obscure that hardly anyone can tell what were the matters of greatest importance. But this is what I found

The Three Cultural Heroes

   In the Chinese version of history, however, history begins with three semi-mystical and legendary individuals who taught the Chinese the arts of civilization around 2800-2600 BC: Fu Hsi, the inventor of writing, hunting, trapping, and fishing; Shen Nung, the inventor of agriculture and mercantilism, and the Yellow Emperor (around 2700 BC), who invented government and Taoist philosophy (compare this history with the Hebrew version of the founding of civilization and its arts in Genesis, Chapter 3). While Western historians dismiss these Three Cultural Heroes as legend, they were regarded as historical fact for most of Chinese history.

  The Sage Kings

   The Chinese believed that the Three Cultural Heroes were followed by the Three Sage Kings, Yao (around 2350 BC), Shun (around 2250 BC), and Yu (rule began in 2205 BC). These Sage Kings ruled with perfect wisdom, clarity, and virtue. In the Chinese model of history, human events follow discernible cycles in which times of great virtue and wisdom are followed by times of decadence and decline. Still, Chinese historians believed the Sage Kings' rule to be the most virtuous period in Chinese history.

The Hsia Dynasty, 2205-1766 BC

   According to the Chinese historians, the last of the sage kings, Yu, founded a dynasty of kings, the Hsia. The Hsia began with virtue and wisdom, and ended with the rule of Chieh, who was decadent and cruel. In 1766 BC, after four hundred years of rule, the Hsia dynasty was overthrown by T'ang, who began a new dynasty, the Shang.

   There is, however, absolutely no evidence, archaeological or otherwise, that supports this account of the early civilization in China; this lack of evidence has led historians to relegate the entire account, from the Cultural Heroes to the Hsia dynasty, to the realm of mythology. Two things, however, should be kept in mind. In the strictest sense, history is not about facts, it is about cultural memory , which means that what a culture believes its history to be is as important, or even more important, than the "facts" in terms of the lived experience of that culture. Second, the Shang dynasty that the Chinese claimed followed the Hsia, was also believed to be mythological until archaeological evidence appeared in the 1920's. We may yet find a Chinese civilization equivalent to the Shang in even earlier strata of Chinese time.

  

http://wsu.edu/~dee/ANCCHINA/YELLOW.HTM

http://www.china.org.cn/travel/beijinggu...

http://homepage.mac.com/lpgoldtop/School...

Answer 2

http://wsu.edu/~dee/ANCCHINA/YELLOW.HTM