Ancient China?

Sarah Allen has adumbrated a convincing theory regarding the Xia dynasty. She argues that the Xia was the "mythical inverse" of the Shang dynasty. In other words, Shang dynasty elites imagined themselves and their society to have certain characteristics. Part of their self-identification involved positing the existence of a preceding dynasty with the opposite characteristics. This (alleged) preceding dynasty was the Xia. Later, Zhou dynasty elites placed great emphasis on the story of the Xia dynasty as part of their conception of history and the Zhou dynasty's place in the overall course of events. Allen explains:

Within the Shang myth system, there was also a dualism, the antecedent of later yin-yang theory, in which the suns, sky, birds, east, life, the Lord on High were opposed to the moons, watery underworld, dragons, west, death, the Lord below . . . and a myth in which the Shang ancestors who were identified with the suns, east . . . had vanquished a previous people, the Xia, identified with the underworld, dragons, west. . . . When the Zhou conquered the Shang, this myth was reinterpreted in the light of their own historical context as a similar historical event at a later period and the Xia came to be regarded as a political dynasty.⁽²⁾

The Shang people (or at least the elites of Shang society) naturally regarded their own mythical origins in positive terms. They therefore attributed the opposite qualities to an imagined Xia people. As a result, the elites of the Zhou dynasty regarded the Xia dynasty as an actual political entity, and later generations of Chinese historians took the Zhou chroniclers at their word. The table below illustrates the matter from the Shang point of view. If Allen is correct, it was the imagination of members of the Shang dynasty that created the idea of a Xia dynasty. Such imaginary creations are common in human history.

(i.e. http://www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/PM-China/ch2.htm)