? The main feature of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty is that the power represented by Zhou Tianzi gradually declined, and the actual orders to local governors gradually lost. The early period of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty was characterized by the fact that in the face of the decline of the Zhou Emperor, local princes competed for hegemony, and the hegemony behavior in this period also had a fig leaf of respecting the king, such as Qi Huangong and Jin Wengong. The number of vassal States in the late Eastern Zhou Dynasty was more than that in the early Eastern Zhou Dynasty 140, which was gradually annexed by the great powers in the merger war. In the war of merger, the vassal States survived the fittest and rose together, which promoted the division, turmoil and unity of history. Note that, whether in the early or late Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the royal family of the Zhou Dynasty was just a side dish in the national political situation and could not control the country's politics and economy at all. In this state, with the appearance of iron production tools, the enfeoffment system established in the Western Zhou Dynasty gradually collapsed. The system of rites and music, which reflects the hierarchy of the Western Zhou Dynasty, has also been seriously damaged in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. There are endless violations of rites and music in terms of diet, travel and sacrifice, and the order of rites and music in the Western Zhou Dynasty tends to collapse, which is what we usually call "the collapse of rites and music"
? For the convenience of research, we are used to dividing the Eastern Zhou Dynasty into two stages. The first half is called the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC). Why is the previous 476 years the boundary? This is because the year of Zhou's death in Sima Guang's Chronicle of Twelve Governors in Historical Records is the year of termination, but there are also different stages in academic circles, such as before Sima Guang's Zi Jian. However, it should be noted that the second half of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, that is, the "Warring States" (475 BC to 22 BC1year), has exceeded the time range of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. In 3 14 BC, civil strife occurred in the areas directly under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, forming the Eastern Zhou State and the Western Zhou State. The last son of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Yun Wang, lived in the Western Zhou Dynasty. In 256 BC, King Yun died and the Western Zhou Dynasty perished. In 249 BC, the State of Qin destroyed the State of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. This time has a history of 29 years since the end of the Warring States Period (22 BC1year). So we can say that the late Eastern Zhou Dynasty was the Warring States Period, but the Warring States Period was not the whole history of the late Eastern Zhou Dynasty.