Professor Andrew Meyer

So it was naturally screened.

It was screened by mountains in the east and mountains in the south.

So it was almost a kind of natural fortress.

That was one of the reasons that the Joe Kings had been so powerful, as long as they were able to maintain their base area there.

That valley had been taken over by this state called Qin.

You know, there are lots of debates over the origins of the Qin clan.

They claimed to be the descendants of a family that were originally vassals of the Zhou that had kind of defended the Zhou kings as the Zhou kings were retreating.

And then at the order of the Zhou kings had fought their way back into the valley and taken it over.

That was their claim.

Many historians feel that it's probably more complicated than that, that it's just as likely that the Chin Ducal family were originally chieftains of the same non-Chinese people who had driven the Zhou out of the valley and who had just sort of

converted themselves into a new type of clan.

And at the beginning of this period, during Confucius' lifetime, nobody really took them seriously.

It was considered something of a backwater.

But they had this enormous advantage of geography, and they became increasingly powerful over time.

So they became, in fact, ultimately the most powerful of the seven great states.

In the south, you had this great, almost a kind of imperial domain called Chu.

And Chu is a very, very interesting and unique place.

As far as we know, the ruling clan of Chu had actually been vassals of the Zhou kings going even before the Zhou had overthrown the Shang.

And intermittently, they had been recalcitrant vassals.

There had been wars between the leaders of the Chu clan and the leaders of the Zhou.