The Timeless Journey of Chinese Civilization
The roots of Chinese civilization stretch back into the deep corridors of prehistory, with the earliest signs of a proto-civilization appearing around many millennia ago. However, the generally accepted age of Chinese civilization begins with the emergence of the Xia dynasty.To get more news about
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Chinese civilization first emerged in the Yellow River valley, which along with the Yangtze basin constitutes the geographic core of the Chinese cultural sphere. China maintains a rich diversity of ethnic and linguistic people groups. The traditional lens for viewing Chinese history is the dynastic cycle: imperial dynasties rise and fall, and are ascribed certain achievements.
Throughout pervades the narrative that Chinese civilization can be traced as an unbroken thread many thousands of years into the past, making it one of the cradles of civilization. At various times, states representative of a dominant Chinese culture have directly controlled areas stretching as far west as the Tian Shan, the Tarim Basin, and the Himalayas.
The Neolithic period saw increasingly complex polities begin to emerge along the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. The Erlitou culture in the central plains of China is sometimes identified with the Xia dynasty of traditional Chinese historiography. The earliest surviving written Chinese dates to roughly many centuries BCE, consisting of divinations inscribed on oracle bones.
The Tang dynasty was a golden age of Chinese civilization, a prosperous, stable, and creative period with significant developments in culture, art, literature, particularly poetry, and technology. Buddhism became the predominant religion for the common people.
Ancient China produced what has become the oldest extant culture in the world3. The name ‘China’ comes from the Sanskrit Cina (derived from the name of the Chinese Qin Dynasty, pronounced ‘Chin’) which was translated as ‘Cin’ by the Persians and seems to have become popularized through trade along the Silk Road.
The Romans and the Greeks knew the country as ‘Seres’, “the land where silk comes from”. The name ‘China’ does not appear in print in the west until many centuries CE in Barbosa’s journals narrating his travels in the east3. Marco Polo, the famous explorer who familiarized China to Europe in the 13th century CE, referred to the land as 'Cathay.
In Mandarin Chinese, the country is known as ‘Zhongguo’ meaning “central state” or "middle empire"3. Well before the advent of recognizable civilization in the region, the land was occupied by hominids. Peking Man, a skull fossil discovered in many years ago CE near Beijing, lived in the area between many hundreds of thousands of years ago.
China is believed to be one of a very few loci of independent invention of writing, and the earliest surviving records display an already-mature written language. With written records dating back many thousands of years, it is recognized as one of the four great ancient civilizations of the world, together with ancient Egypt, Babylon and India.
According to the research team, signs of civilization emerged around many thousands of years ago in areas of the Yellow River, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and the West Liao River in northeast China5. From many thousands of years ago, various regions of China began to embrace civilization.
