Previously, this webmaster put Soong Dynasty divination-chronicle historian Shao Yong's reign years under superscript denotation of 1. Shao Yong derived the reign years of the fabled thearchs on basis of Han Dynasty historian Lin Xin1's wrong calculation, namely, 1122 B.C. for the Zhou conquest of Shang, and then extrapolated the reign years up and down. Shao Yong, a friend of neo-Confucians Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao, wrote a book entitled Yichuan Ji-rang Ji (collection of hitting soil in the Yi-shui River plains area), in which he talked about five happiness in life: being born in China; being born as a man; being an intellectual; seeing the heavenly peace; and hearing the essence of virtues and righteousness --something Leften Stavrianos described in "A Global History: From Prehistory to the 21st Century" as the Chinese men's pride in being born a human being, not an animal; being born a man, not a woman; being born a Chinese, not a barbarian; and being born in Luoyang the most beautiful city of the world. Shao Yong, who wrote Huang Ji Jing Shi to have traced the Chinese history to the sovereigns and sage kings, was so confident of his results that he claimed that the sun and moon like the constantly-moving ants which never took rest, he had lived through the 3000 years out of the epoch of 129600 years and could run through the historical events from beginning to end: "wu neng yi guan zhi, jie ru sheng suo li".
 
The reign years of the fabled thearchs with superscript denotation of 1 was from the forgery contemporary version Jin Ben of The Bamboo Annals for the dates of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties. This set of fake reign years were the same as seen in the 19th century translation Part I: The Shu King, The Religious Portions of the Shih King, The Hsiao King (The Sacred Books of China 16), translated by James Legge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879.
 
In the Xia-Shang dynasties' section, additional adjusted reign years were provided, namely, the useless work done by Prof Zhu Yongchang of Purdue. The raw data dates from The Bamboo Annals for the first Xia king Qi was 1978 B.C.E. or 1991 per adjustment by Prof Zhu Yongchang of Purdue. The raw The Bamboo Annals dates for the year of demise of Xia was 1559 B.C.E. The raw The Bamboo Annals dates for the year of demise of Shang was 1050 B.C.E. (See Zhou Dynasty for a list of Zhou kings.) Professor Zhu Yongchang of Purdue adjusted the records by evening out the different imperial mourning years that were in conflict with the stem-branch years, and synching up with NASA's astronomical data etc. Professor Zhu of Purdue University believed that there were some minor differential errors by a few years in the "contemporary" version of The Bamboo Annals. The basis that Professor Zhu used was about the same as Li Xueqing's fake Chinese research project, namely, matching the recorded astronomical events with the NASA data. Prof Zhu's work was what this webmaster called "useless work" in the terms of physics since The Bamboo Annals was a forgery.
 
Prof Zhu Yongchang of Purdue, having pointed out that the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches in The Bamboo Annals could be latter-day add-ons - just as Sima Qian's Shi-ji might have similar add-ons of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches - used the NASA data to rebut the errors by folks like David Pankeniers et al. Prof Zhu believed that The Bamboo Annals was correct from last Xia King Jie up to the records of Xia King Shaokang, with all astronomical events matched with the NASA data. With data from the "Stalman and Gingerich Solar and Planetary Longitudes for Years 2500 to 2000", Professor Zhang Peiyu's "Five Planets Conjunction 2500 – 1500 BC", "NASA Espenak's Solar Eclipse Paths: 2004 World Atlas of Five Millennium of Solar Eclipse Paths (2000 BCE to 3000)", Prof Zhu adjusted the Xia years with three full mourning years, adjusted the year for King Shao-kang's restoration, and synched up The Bamboo Annals records with the Solar Eclipse, Crisscross of Five Planets, and Conjunction of Five Planets in a Cluster. Unfortunately, as expounded in the section on the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, the contemporary version [Jin Ben] of The Bamboo Annals were very much re-invented possibly in the late Southern Soong dynasty and re-discovered in the Ming dynasty [if not reinvented] in the Ming dynasty, and had errors that basically meant that it was useless for the dates of the Xia and Shang dynasties and the early part of the Zhou dynasties. Throughout the duology and up to the interregnum (841-828 B.C. per Shi-ji/840-827 per Zhang Wenyu), the forgery contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals, with its forgery contents covering the prehistoric legendary thearchs before the three dynasties of Xia (Chapters 10-12), Shang (Chapters 13-15) and Zhou (Chapters 16-23), was debunked line by line in this webmaster's books Sinitic Civilization-Book 1, Sinitic Civilization-Book 2 and The Bamboo Annals - Book 1.
 
Chronology with superscript denotation of 2 was the result of Li Xueqing's Chinese research project which, started in 1995, had been reported to have pushed the exact date to the year 2070 BC as the starting point for Xia Dynasty. Do note that the "Chinese Research Project" was heavily influenced by politics and government than serious academic research. The 1995-2000 Gap Reign Year Project (i.e., ‘Xia-Shang-Zhou duan-dai gongcheng’), i.e., a multidynastic engineering project,, headed by Li Xueqin, used some astronomical events in the ancient classics, such as the non-existent five planets’ conjunction and crisscrossing, the Jupiter’s position at the quail fire sector division, plus a statement on an excavated tureen called Li Gui, for pinpointing the exact year, month and day of the Zhou campaign against Shang, and wrongly concluded the conquest year to be 1046 B.C.
 
Chronology with superscript denotation of 3 was from China The Beautiful, which was basically the commonly-accepted but non-validated years --that had similarity to the years laid out by Lu Jinggui in the early Republican China time period. Note that the year 1122 BC, a number derived by Liu Xin, was commonly treated as the year when the Shang Dynasty ended. In the ancient times, two derivations had been used to determine the exact year the Shang Dynasty ended. Liu Xin derived 1122 BC, while some others, including Seng Yixing's version in "New History of Tang Dynasty", had the year 1111 BC instead. Liu Xin, not fully understanding the Jupiter's sidereal effect and synodic periods, assumed that it took 144 years for the planet to exceed one chronogram. Since the Jupiter took 11.86 years to make one revolution, not 12-year, it would be every 84.71 years for the planet to exceed one chronogram. As a result of applying the 144-year formula, Liu Xin derived the year 1122 B.C. for Zhou King Wuwang's campaign against the Shang dynasty, with the future astronomers, like Seng Yixing of the Tang dynasty, adopting a similar approach to derive equally wrong years.
 
As seen in the book Wu-xing Zhan ("Astrology/Divination on the Five Planets") that was excavated in 1973 from the Mawangdui Mausoleum in Changsha, speculated to be that of Li Xi with the title of Marquis Dai4-hou, son of Li Cang (?-185 B.C.) the prime minister for Wu Chen the former king of Changsha, there was rudimentary description of the synodic periods of Jupiter or the year star (planet), with a seemingly detailed account of the planet’s motion over the course of one synodic period during the first month of Qin Emperor Shihuangdi, without the sophistication of detecting or calculating the differential from the 11.86-year versus 12-year sidereal effect. That is, China, in the early Han dynasty, had not found a way to calculate the number of years it would take the planet to exceed a chronogram, with ZUO ZHUAN attributing the planets' missing the sector division of the ecliptic to some bad omen, namely, something to be explained by hemerology or by the sorcerers.
 
The "Xia-Shang-Zhou Dynasties' Gap Reign Project" of the late 20th century was a Communist China forgery just like the fake consumer products that China manufactured in the last few decades. The raw data from the forgery contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals pointed to the date of 1978 B.C.E. as the start reign of first Xia king Qi. Professor Zhu Yongchang ([Yongtang]; John Y.D. Tse]), who matched The Bamboo Annals' astronomical events with NASA data, adjusted the Xia lord Qi's date to 1991 B.C.E. and Lord Yu's reign to 2002-1995 B.C.E with rule of 8 years and life of 100 years. Though, you could not have the best of two worlds, i.e., the precise year from the Stellarium/NASA data and the selective use of the years and events in The Bamboo Annals, namely, the so-called ancient Chinese dilemma in the singular choice of either fish or the bear's paw, or either a person's life or the righteousness in Mencius. For example, should you buy the five planets' conjunction in 1059 B.C., then the forgery contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals would give you the year 1038 B.C. for the Zhou's overthrow of Shang, not 1046 as the forgery Xia-Shang-zhou project said. See this webmaster's discourse in the Zhou Dynasty section. There was no definition as to how wide a celestial range should be for defining the conjunction, criss crossing or one line alignment of the five planets, i.e., a subjective call, not to mention the name or type of the comets as recorded in ancient China. This webmaster's point was that the usage of astrological and astronomical records in China's prehistory was unscientific, something that would contradict all the established records on the coherent and sequential events that happened during all kings and lords' reign years.
 
Zhang Wenyu, who only accepted Liu Xin’s adjustment of Lu Lord Shanggong’s reign to 60 years, used the Lu lords’ summary reign years to derive the year 1106 B.C. for the Zhou conquest of the Shang dynasty. The matter in regards to the Lu lords’ lineage history is a cornerstone for cementing the reign years of the ancient Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties of China. The author was able to build confidence in the Zhou dynasty’s reign years after following bronzeware expert Zhang Wenyu’s consistent moon phase approach to interpreting the bronzeware texts. Zhang Wenyu's chronology was denoted with the superscript 4.