The Book of Songs is the earliest collection of poems in China. Among them, the poems first appeared in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty and came to our Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period at the latest, which took a long time. In the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, that is, after the attack of the Shang Dynasty, there was no Internet at that time, and the information was so blocked. Many of them don't know how the author's poems have been handed down. This is because it is said that at that time, in the Zhou Dynasty, there was a post of poetry collector, whose duty was to collect folk poems. And they go out to collect it every spring. This position is actually understood by the emperor. Therefore, poetry collectors will collect many poems reflecting the sufferings of the people and sort them out for the emperor to see. Therefore, it is also doomed that most of these poems are unknown to us. So we can see the whole process of the Zhou Dynasty from prosperity to decline in the Book of Songs. At that time, we can understand what social life and people's lives are like.
Of course, there are more than these in The Book of Songs, including some descriptions of the daily life of nobles and royalty, some poems praising ancestors, and some people's complaints about their dissatisfaction with life. Some descriptions of people's daily life are made at sunrise and rest at sunset, and some descriptions of young men and women's mutual affection, love, marriage and some interesting social customs can give us a glimpse, although they are all sung by the people.
Therefore, The Book of Songs, as the first anthology of China's poems, also provides us with a lot of basis for studying ancient history.