In religion there appears some evidence of star-worship.  The deities seem to have been conceived as a kind of celestrial court of Shang Ti, as his “officials”.  In the field of material culture, horse-breeding becomes more and more evident.  Some authors believe that the art of riding was already known in late Shang times, although it was certainly not yet so highly developed that cavalry units could be used in war.  With horse-breeding the two-wheeled light war chariot makes its appearance.  The wheel was already known in earlier times in the form of the potter’s wheel.  Recent excavations have brought to light burials in which up to eighteen chariots with two or four horses were found together with the owners of the chariots.  The cart is not a Chinese invention but came from the north, possibly from Turkish peoples.  It has been contended that it was connected with the war chariot of the Near East:  shortly before the Shang period there had been vast upheavals in western Asia, mainly in connection with the expansion of peoples who spoke Indo-European languages (Hittites, etc.) and who became successful through the use of quick, light, two-wheeled war-chariots.  It is possible, but cannot be proved, that the war-chariot spread through Central Asia in connection with the spread of such Indo-European-speaking groups or by the intermediary of Turkish tribes.  We have some reasons to believe that the first Indo-European-speaking groups arrived in the Far East in the middle of the second millenium B.C.  Some authors even connect the Hsia with these groups.  In any case, the maximal distribution of these people seems to have been to the western borders of the Shang state.  As in Western Asia, a Shang-time chariot was manned by three men:  the warrior who was a nobleman, his driver, and his servant who handed him arrows or other weapons when needed.  There developed a quite close relationship between the nobleman and his chariot-driver.  The chariot was a valuable object, manufactured by specialists; horses were always expensive and rare in China, and in many periods of Chinese history horses were directly imported from nomadic tribes in the North or West.  Thus, the possessors of vehicles formed a privileged class in the Shang realm; they became a sort of nobility, and the social organization began to move in the direction of feudalism.  One of the main sports of the noblemen in this period, in addition to warfare, was hunting.  The Shang had their special hunting grounds south of the mountains which surround Shansi province, along the slopes of the T’ai-hang mountain range, and south to the shores of the Yellow river.  Here, there were still forests and swamps in Shang time, and boars, deer, buffaloes and other animals, as well as occasional rhinoceros and elephants, were hunted.  None of these wild animals was used as a sacrifice; all sacrificial animals, such as cattle, pigs, etc., were domesticated animals.