What is the significance of ancient china

Later, German Johann Gutenberg invented movable type made of metal in Ancient necromancers discovered in their practice of alchemy, that an explosion could be induced if certain kinds of ores and fuel were mixed in the right proportions and heated, thus leading to the invention of gunpowder.

In the Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques, edited in by Zeng Gongliang, three formulas for making gunpowder were recorded; an explosive mixture of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal. Needham identified these as the earliest formulas of such a kind. The method of powder-making was introduced to the Arab world in the 12th century and to Europe in the 14th.

Gunpowder was originally used for making fireworks and its later adaptation revolutionized warfare across the world. Ancient necromaniers put minerals and plants together, hoping to make some medecine to keep alive forever Flying firearrows Tang Dynasty GrenadesSong Dynasty Bronze canonsYuan Dynasty Four Great Inventions of Ancient China - the Compass Sinan Warring States Period the earliest guide tool in the world The compass, an indispensable navigational tool, was another significant gift from ancient China.

While mining ores and melting copper and iron, people chanced upon a natural magnetite that attracted iron and pointed fixedly north.

After constant improvement the round compass came into being. Needham cites one of the first books to describe the magnetic compass, Dream Pool Essays by Shen Kuo in the Song Dynasty, about years earlier than its first record in Europe by Alexander Neekam in Later on, three different religions came into being in China and are still practiced today. These include Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.

Taoism was first introduced and states that everything that a person gains in life should be done in a peaceful manner. Confucianism expanded upon this idea. Buddhism teaches that individuals should try to rise above the daily challenges of their lives so that they can truly achieve inner peace.

Ancient China is by far one of the most important and influential societies in the history of the world. This is largely due to the numerous inventions and advancements in technology that its people came up with.

For instance, the idea of a written alphabet and the paper on which to write it comes from China. Of course, this is not all of the different inventions that the ancient Chinese came up with. The ancient Chinese also invented gunpowder, which they kept as a secret for many hundreds of years. They were also the first to invent the compass, which was originally used to help builders make sure that the structures they were building faced the right direction.

With this knowledge, they made their country rich through trade, since no one else knew how to make silk. China is one of the oldest continuous societies in the known world. They have lasted as a country for over 4, years. Under the Chinese kingdom, education was highly prized, and the arts, especially music and painting, grew and flourished. The Ancient Chinese were also great scientists. Their invention of cast iron and gunpowder were centuries ahead of the rest of the world.

The Great Wall of China was built over a period of hundreds of years to protect the kingdom from raiders. To protect his body when he died, the First Emperor ordered the building of a magnificent tomb, with an army of terra-cotta soldiers to guard it. This is a very fertile region; however the land needs irrigation to make the crops grow, and well-built river embankments to prevent catastrophic flooding. In ancient times, the main crop in northern China was millet, a food still grown in many parts of the world as a major crop.

It was here that the earliest Chinese dynasties were based. To the south, the great Yangtze valley , with its warm, wet climate, was the first area in the world where rice was grown, sometime before BCE. Rice is one of the most nutritious plants in the world. From this region rice cultivation spread far and wide across southern China and into south-east Asia. For much of ancient times, the Yangtze region remained outside the Chinese culture area. However, from about BCE, the kingdoms and peoples here began to be gradually absorbed into the Chinese world.

The Chinese only expanded into the mountains and coastland of southern China in the later ancient period, after the rest of China had been unified under the rule of emperors. It remained a largely frontier region until later centuries. To the north and west of the Yellow River region are the wide plains of central Asia.

This landscape here is generally unsuitable for farming, and the people have mostly followed a nomadic way of life as herders of cattle, sheep and horses.

For example, skills in working with metals , and in particular, making bronze objects, seem to have come to China from the Middle East across central Asia.

Later, the chariot also apparently arrived in China from the same direction. The peoples of the steppe were tough warriors, and the mobility that their nomadic lifestyle gave them enabled them to raid swiftly into territory populated by more settled farming populations.

They were a regular scourge to the Chinese in ancient times, as well as later. He won a great victory, which further strengthened his power. Shortly before his death, instead of passing power to the person deemed most capable to rule as had been the case in the past , Yu passed power to his son, setting the precedence for dynastic rule. Prior to the coming of cities and literacy the hallmarks of Ancient Chinese civilization , major Stone Age farming cultures had been growing up in China since the 7th millennium BCE.

One was located in the Yellow River region, the other in the Yangtze region. The Yellow River region was the setting for the emergence of Chinese civilization into the light of history. They continued to grow in size. What looks very much like primitive Chinese characters had also appeared, inscribed on pottery.

These characters became more complex as time went by. Finds of luxury grave goods and the remains of large and complex buildings show that a wealthy ruling elite stood out from the population at large. At first this was restricted to copper work, but by c. At around the same time there was a dramatic increase in the size and density of some walled settlements in that region.

These are the earliest-known cities in East Asia. The region had in fact seen the appearance of a fully urban, literate, Bronze Age civilization, and ancient China finally emerges into the full light of history with the first of its historic dynasties, the Shang. Most of the history of Chinese civilization, including the ancient period, has traditionally been divided into dynasties — lines of kings or emperors from a single family, following each other on the throne from generation to generation.

Thus the early dynastic rulers of China are known as kings, rather than emperors. It is only after the time of the First Emperor , who reigned over a united China from BCE, that the imperial period of Chinese history began. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. Archaeologists have uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs that point to the possible existence of the semi-legendary Xia Dynasty at locations cited in ancient Chinese historical texts.

In , a site located in the city of Yanshi was excavated containing large palaces which some archaeologists have identified as the capital of the Xia dynasty. Through the s and s, archaeologists have continued to uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs at locations linked to the Xia in ancient Chinese historical texts. At a minimum, the Xia dynasty seems to have marked an evolutionary stage between the late neolithic cultures and the later Chinese urban civilization of the Shang dynasty.

The Shang dynasty period saw further strides in material culture, and some of the finest bronzes in world history were produced by Chinese craftsmen of the period. In due course, the Shang dynasty was succeeded by a new line of kings, of the Zhou dynasty.

A Western Zhou bronze gui vessel. Reproduced under Creative Commons license 3. This, however, eventually resulted in fragmentation amongst numerous territorial princes. The authority of the Zhou kings declined, and the princes effectively became independent rulers. It was also a time when important innovations began to emerge, which were to characterize Chinese civilization down to the 20th century.

It was at this time that the great philosophies which would shape the Chinese world, including Confucianism , emerged; and it was also the period to which the roots of that distinctly Chinese style of bureaucratic government can be traced.

The Qin dynasty emerged when one of the states into which China was divided conquered all the others and unified China under its rule. The Qin dynasty is famous for imposing a rigid unity on Chinese society, and in building an early version of the Great Wall of China. It was brought down by regional forces which it had failed to tame and by a peasantry which it had ruthlessly exploited.

The next of these unifying dynasties, however, would rule China for some years. Under the Han emperors the Chinese became so used to being ruled as a single nation that to this day they call themselves the Han people. It was under the Han that Confucianism triumphed to become the ruling ideology of China. At the same time, an empire-wide bureaucracy, staffed to a large extent by officials recruited and promoted on merit, and imbued with Confucian thought, came to govern China.

Even the examination system for recruiting officials, which would come to play such an important role in Chinese life. The Han dynasty lasted until CE, when it broke up into several successor states.

Thus began a period of weakness for China, when no single dynasty was able to establish its rule over the whole country for several centuries.