Date identification of the Zhouji materials during the period of King Xin

By identifying the dates of the Zhouji materials (one kind of oracle bone) during the period of King Xin (also called Zhou the last monarch in Shang Dynasty), this paper establishes a new “Direct Solving Method” (DSM) to solve the chronology problems in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. The mathematical models are more suitable for those materials with the Ganzhi (the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, the Chinese ancient date recorded method being of the 60-day cycle, that the repetitive cycle is independent of any astronomical parameter, each day within this cycle has its own name and can also be expressed by the numbers from 1 to 60) record of the date, lunar month, and their year intervals and all of them are in history documents, oracle bones and bronze vessels. For example, taking the 12 Zhouji materials in the period of King Xin, we derive the two best results of the first year when Xin assumed the reins of government in probably 1063 BC or 1052 BC.