China is one of the world's oldest continuous major civilizations, with written records dating back 3,500 years. Turtle shells with markings reminiscent of ancient Chinese writing from the Shang Dynasty have been carbon-dated to around 1,500 BC. These records suggest that the origins of Chinese civilization started with city-states that may go back more than 5,000 years. Two thousand years ago is commonly used as the date when China became unified under a large kingdom or empire. Successive dynasties developed systems of bureaucratic control that would allow the emperor to control the large territory that would become China Proper.
The forced imposition of a common system of writing by the Qin emperor (200 BC) and the development of a state ideology based on Confucianism (100 BC) marked the foundation of what we now call the Chinese civilization. Politically, China alternated between periods of political unity and disunity, and was occasionally conquered by external groups of people, some eventually being assimilated into the Chinese population. Cultural and political influences from many parts of Asia, carried by successive waves of immigration, merged to create the image of Chinese Culture today.
Prehistoric times
China was inhabited, possibly more than a million years ago, by Homo erectus. The excavations at Yuanmou and later Lantian show early habitation. Perhaps the most famous specimen of Homo erectus found in China is the so-called Peking Man found in 1923. The Homo sapiens or modern human might have reached China about 65,000 years ago from Africa. Early evidence for proto-Chinese rice paddy agriculture is carbon-dated to about 6000 BC, and associated with the Peiligang culture of Xinzheng county, Henan. With agriculture came increased population, the ability to store and redistribute crops, and to support specialist craftsmen and administrators. In late Neolithic times, the Huang He valley began to establish itself as a cultural center, where the first villages were founded; the most archaeologically significant of those was found at Banpo, Xi'an.
Ancient histories
Archaeological sites such as Sanxingdui and Erlitou show evidence of a Bronze Age civilization in China. The earliest written record of China's past dates from the Shang Dynasty in perhaps the 13th century BC, and takes the form of inscriptions of divination records on the bones or shells of animals—the so-called oracle bones. However the earliest comprehensive history of China, the Historical Records by Sima Qian, a renowned Chinese historiographer of the 2nd century BC, begins perhaps 1300 years earlier, with an account of the Five Emperors. These rulers were semi-mythical sage-kings and moral exemplars, and one of them, the Yellow Emperor, is said to be the ancestor of all Chinese people.
Sima Qian relates that the system of inherited rulership was established during the following early period called the Xia Dynasty, and that this model was perpetuated in the recorded Shang and Zhou dynasties. It is during this period of the Three Dynasties (Chinese: pinyin: sandai) that the historical China begins to appear.
Xia Dynasty
Sima Qian's account dates the founding of the Xia Dynasty to some 4,000 years ago, but this date has not been corroborated. Some archaeologists connect the Xia to excavations at Erlitou in central Henan province, where a bronze smelter from around 2000 BC was unearthed. Early markings from this period, found on pottery and shells, have been alleged to be ancestors of modern Chinese characters, but such claims have not been accepted by many scholars. Proof of Xia's existence still requires further archaeological discovery. With no clear written records to match the Shang oracle bones or the Zhou bronze vessel writings, the Xia era remains poorly understood.
Shang Dynasty
Archaeological findings providing evidence for the existence of the Shang Dynasty, c 1600–1046 BC is divided into two sets. The first, from the earlier Shang period (c 1600–1300) comes from sources at Erligang, Zhengzhou and Shangcheng. The second set, from the later Shang or Yin period, consists of a large body of oracle bone writings. Anyang in modern day Henan has been confirmed as the last of the six capitals of the Shang (c 1300–1046 BC).
Chinese historians living in later periods were accustomed to the notion of one dynasty succeeding another, but the actual political situation in early China is known to have been much more complicated. Hence, as some scholars of China suggest, the Xia and the Shang can possibly refer to political entities that existed concurrently, just as the early Zhou (successor state of the Shang), is known to have existed at the same time as the Shang.
Zhou Dynasty
By the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the Zhou Dynasty began to emerge in the Huang He valley, overrunning the Shang. The Zhou appeared to have begun their rule under a semi-feudal system. Near the end of this dynasty, power became decentralized during the Spring and Autumn Period when regional feudal lords began to assert their power, absorb smaller powers, and vie for hegemony. The Hundred Schools of Thought of Chinese philosophy blossomed during this period and such influential intellectual movements as Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism and Mohism were founded. After further political consolidation, seven prominent states remained by the end of 5th century BC, and the years in which these few states battled each other is known as the Warring States period. Though there remained a nominal Zhou king until 256 BC, he was largely a figurehead and held little real power.
As neighboring territories of these warring states, including areas of modern Sichuan and Liaoning, were annexed, they were governed under the new local administrative system of commandery and prefecture. This system had been in use since the Spring and Autumn Period and parts can still be seen in the modern system of Sheng & Xian (province and county). The final expansion in this period began during the reign of Ying Zheng, the king of Qin. His unification of the other six powers, and further annexations in the modern regions of Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi in 214 BC enabled him to proclaim himself the First Emperor (Shi Huangdi).
Qin Dynasty: The first Chinese Empire
Though the unified reign of the Qin Emperor lasted only twelve years, he managed to subdue great parts of what constitutes the core of the Han Chinese homeland and to unite them under a tightly centralized Legalist government seated at Xianyang (in modern Xi'an).
His sons, however, were not as successful; as soon as the Qin reign ended, the Qin imperial structure collapsed. The Qin Dynasty is well known for building the Great Wall of China, which would later be augmented and enhanced during the Ming Dynasty.
The English word China was derived from the porcelain or ceramic ware originally made in China. The phonetic derivative was most probably introduced into the English language from Persian or Sanskrit terms for "Chinese People" ultimately derived from qin (pronounced similarly to "chin".)
Han Dynasty: A period of prosperity
The Han Dynasty emerged in 202 BC. It was the first dynasty to embrace the philosophy of Confucianism, which became the ideological underpinning of all regimes until the end of imperial China. Under the Han Dynasty, China made great advances in many areas of the arts and sciences. Emperor Wu (Han Wudi) consolidated and extended the Chinese empire by pushing back the Xiongnu (sometimes identified with the Huns) into the steppes of modern Inner Mongolia , wresting from them the modern areas of Gansu , Ningxia and Qinghai . This enabled the first opening of trading connections between China and the West, the Silk Road .
Nevertheless, land acquisitions by elite families gradually drained the tax base. In AD 9, the usurper Wang Mang founded the short-lived Xin ("New") Dynasty and started an extensive program of land and other economic reforms. These programs, however, were never supported by the land-holding families, for they favored the peasant and lesser gentry, and the instability they produced brought on chaos and uprisings.
Emperor Guangwu reinstated the Han Dynasty with the support of land-holding and merchant families at Luoyang, east of Xi'an. This new era would be termed the Eastern Han Dynasty. Han power declined again amidst land acquisitions, invasions, and feuding between consort clans and eunuchs. The Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out in 184, ushering in an era of warlords. In the ensuing turmoil, three states tried to gain predominance in the Period of the Three Kingdoms. This time period has been greatly romanticized in works such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
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