Between 600 B.C. and A.D. 500, China, Greece, Rome, and India each experienced a period known as the Classical Age. When scholars described a culture as classical, they mean that its intellectual and artistic works have enduring value. Such periods of intellectual flowering are also known as the Golden ages. The Zhou justified their rebellion against the Shang by declaring the Shang king had not been fit to rule. they claimed that he had been incompetent and more interested in his own pleasures than in the welfare of his subjects. In denying the right of a bad ruler to keep his throne, the Zhou originated the concept of Mandate of Heaven. A mandate is the authority to command or rule. To the Chinese at the time, heaven was a source of the gods' divine force. They felt that this force willed human beings, especially kings, to be moral. If a leader was moral, heaven would make his kingdom prosperous. If he was immoral, it would send a disaster to remove him from office. Kings were considered the kings of heaven. this gave people the right to overthrow kings. Under the Zhou rule, the kingdom expanded into the yellow river plain and part of the Yangtze River Valley. To govern this territory more easily, Wu, the first Zhou king, divided the empire into smaller states. Wu chose members of his family and the nobility to represent him in these new states. A new provinces needed able workers to help run the gov't, this gave poor people an opportunity to make a good living. The Zhou Dynasty was the beginning of china's classical age. Many cities and towns grew up. The number of skilled craftspeople and merchants went up. Metalworkers learned how to use iron. Iron plows enabled farmers to turn the soil more efficiently. Money in small coins were used, this allowed people to exchange for money instead of bartering- exchanging one item for another. trade expanded and made the dynasty more prosperous. Under the Zhou, scholars refined the Shang