all three names are "manifestly unrelated". He further states that sound changes made the names more superficially similar than they really had been, and prompted later commentators to conclude that those names must have referred to one same people in different epochs, even though people during the Warring States period would never have been thus misled. Other fang-countries The Shang state had a system of writing attested to by bronze inscriptions and oracle bones, which record Shang troops fighting frequent wars with neighboring nomadic herdsmen from the inner Asian steppes. In his oracular divinations, a Shang king repeatedly showed concern about the fang (方, likely meaning "border-region"; the modern term for them is 方国 fāngguó "fang-countries"), groups of barbarians outside his inner tu (土) regions in the center of Shang territory. A particularly hostile tribe, Tufang (:zh:土方) from the Yan Mountains region, is regularly mentioned in divinatory records. Another Chinese ethnonym for the animal husbandry nomads was ma (馬) or "horse" barbarians mentioned at the Shang western military frontier in the Taihang Mountains, where they fought and may have used chariots. Notes References Citations Sources Further reading Fang Shiming & Wang Xiuling (1981). 古本竹書紀年輯證 (Old Text Bamboo Annals - Collected Proofs)'' (in Chinese) See also Ethnic groups in Chinese history Ancient peoples of China Shang dynasty Xiongnu