Early history of China | myHistro

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Early history of China

8000BC

Early human settlement in China

Humanlike creatures as well as humans have lived on the north China plain for hundreds of thousands of years. Finds of Homo erectus, another species of our human family, attest to early human-like inhabitants of China more than 1 million years ago...

8000BC

2000BC

Role of irrigation in Chinese civilization

Increasingly elaborate irrigation systems were vital to the expansion of the agrarian base of society. Some of China's most ancient and venerated cultural heroes were linked to the building and restoration of the system of dikes and canals that grew up...

2000BC

1700BC

Shang dynasty

Semi-legendary Chinese accounts tell us that Yu, the father of north China's great network of dikes and canals, also founded China's first kingdom, Xia. Because no archeological sites connected to Xia have been found, it is possible that it was purely...

1700BC - 1046BC

1500BC

Shang society

Though Shang monarchs were served by a sizeable regular bureaucracy in the capital city and the surrounding areas, most of the peasant and artisan population of the kingdom was governed by vassal retainers...

1500BC

1400BC

Shang culture

Given their frequent involvement in warfare and concern for controlling peasant groups, it is not surprising that the Shang elites were preoccupied with rituals, oracles, and sacrifices. In addition to the fertility functions of the ruler the entire...

1400BC

1300BC

Development of writing

As in pre-Shang times, oracles made their prognostications on the basis of "readings" taken from animal bones or tortoise shells. Each of the bones or shells was drilled with a hole and touched by a red-hot iron poker...

1300BC

1050BC

Zhou dynasty

Around 1122 BC, the leader of the Zhou tribe overthrew the Shang ruler, who, it was claimed, had failed to rule fairly and benevolently. The Zhou leader announced that Heaven (Tien) had given him a mandate to replace the Shang...

1050BC - 256BC

700BC

Zhou economy

Despite its political instability, the Zhou period is unrivaled by any later period in Chinese history for its material and cultural progress. These developments led the Chinese to distinguish between their own high civilization and the nomadic ways of...

700BC

600BC

Zhou society

Class divisions and consciousness became highly developed under Zhou feudalism and have remained until modern times. The king and the aristocracy were sharply separated from the mass of the people on the basis of land ownership and family descent...

600BC

500BC

Rise of philosophical schools

By the 5th century BC, the increasing warfare among the feudal lords and Warring States had destroyed the stability that had characterized Chinese society under the Shang and early Zhou dynasties...

500BC

480BC

Confucianism

The first, most famous, and certainly most influential Chinese philosopher and teacher was K'ung-fu-tzu ("Master K'ung, the Sage," 551-479 BC), known in the West as Confucius after Jesuit missionaries to China in the 17th century latinized his name...

480BC

450BC

Taoism

A second philosophical reaction to the troubled life of the late Zhou period was the teaching of Lao-tzu ("Old Master"), a semi-legendary figure who was believed to have been a contemporary of Confucius...

450BC

370BC

Meng-tzu's contribution to Confucianism

The man whose work was largely responsible for the emergence of Confucianism as the most widely accepted philosophy in China was Mencius, or Meng-tzu (372-289 BC). Born a century after the death of Confucius, Mencius added important new dimensions to...

370BC

355BC

Legalism

Another body of thought emerged in the fourth and third centuries BC and came to be called the School of Law, or Legalism. It had no single founder, as did Confucianism and Taoism, nor was it ever a school in the sense of a teacher leading disciples...

355BC

352BC

Rise of the Qin dynasty

Throughout the two centuries of the Warring States period (c. 450-221 BC) there was the hope that a king would emerge who would unite China and inaugurate a great new age of peace and stability...

352BC

256BC

Qin dynasty unites China

In the middle of the 3rd century BC, a hundred years after Lord Shang, another Legalist prime minister helped the king of Qin prepare and carry out the conquest of the other Warring States that ended the Zhou Dynasty in 256 BC and united China by 221 BC..

256BC - 221BC

210BC

Fall of the Qin dynasty

When the First Emperor died in 210 BC while on one of his frequent tours of inspection, he was succeeded by an inept son who was unable to control the rivalry among his father's chief aides. Qin policies had alienated not only the intellectuals and the...

210BC

Thinking..

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