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new WA and foo she usually depicted as
half human half dragon spirit creatures
created humans out of clay as companions
the human settled in the Yellow River
and were ruled by the five good Empress
with illogical figures who were peaceful
and benevolent but tragedy struck when
the river flooded devastating the land
you the engineers spent 13 long years
building canals and locks to control the
waters burning his place as the lands
King he founded the Shah dynasty China's
first ruling family and a structure of
government that would remain unchanged
for millennia
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in the words of John Green an open
letter to the shadynasty
dear Shia dynasty why you gotta be so
fictional yeah the Shah dynasty is
largely considered mythological at this
point but maybe intertwined with some
real events considering how much the
lighted Chinese scholars wrote about
them
speaking of writing the Chinese were
really really good at it they developed
their own famous pictograph based system
concurrently without any outside
influences but they looked a lot more
like this than this
in any case humor settled in the Yellow
River Valley forming numerous cultures
which is collectively called the Yellow
River civilization the myth of you the
engineer likely began with this early
civilizations attempts to control the
flooding of the river these settlers are
what we now call the heart although they
didn't refer to themselves as that for
at least a few centuries they were
surrounded by numerous other people's to
their south north and west the first
Chinese state to be supported by
historical evidence is the Shang the
story goes that the Shang were one of
the member states of the SHA dynasty and
rose up to overthrow the last Shah
Emperor under their leader King Tong
Tong defeated the forces of the Shah
during a storm at the Battle of Ning tau
the storm was seen as a sign that the
spirits were blessing his overthrow of
the dynasty in 1046 BC the Shang were
overthrown by the gel which is China's
longest lasting dynasty it is speculated
that the name for China in the Mandarin
language comes from this period the Zhao
ruled the kingdom under a quasi feudal
system meaning that power was given to
regional warlords all of whom pledged
fealty to the king this means that the
Kings power depends on keeping the lords
happy which King Yu did not he exiled
his wife whom he had married for
political reasons and the state she came
from rose up in Revolt they deposed the
king and installed his son ping to the
throne but merely as a figurehead with
no real authority as regional warlords
began crowning themselves Kings over
their own States chroniclers referred to
this time as the period of spring and
autumn it doesn't translate well into
English soon a rivalry would emerge
among these states for control of all
China beginning the warring States
Period and a collapse of any centralized
control
waring became so fierce in fact that the
local kings began building compacted
earth fortifications on their mutual
borders to deter invasions from rival
states fighting ended in 221 BC when the
Qin finally defeated the rest and
unified China once more the Qin Dynasty
didn't last very long but they did have
absolute authority agriculture and
herding were regulated and everyone paid
their taxes they did have a weird fear
of books for some reason the teachings
of Confucius became very popular and his
brand of philosophy began having huge
impacts on Chinese society in response
to the growing power of the zhong knew
the ancestors of the mongols emperor qin
shi huang began joining parts of the
warring States walls at strategic weak
points in the border this would be the
first foundations of China's Great Wall
the walls continued to be expanded upon
using hundreds and thousands of slave
laborers and soldiers over successive
centuries to protect the Empire from
various other nomadic Raiders Qin
Shihuang became deranged and senile in
his old age became obsessed with finding
a cure for death to allow him to attain
immortality he travelled far and wide
and spent a small fortune on alchemy
medicines and potions one of which
killed him the succession of the Emperor
caused a crisis when their nobles
attempted to crown his son and control
him as a puppet causing the country to
erupted into a civil war between rival
states the Han state was victorious
which began the rule of the Han Dynasty
famous for inventing paper which is
apparently what people used to write
things on during the unification war the
rules of the U state fled to the south
in exile where they set up their own
kingdoms the non-new and the menu'
stretching all the way to modern vietnam
the Han began a period of aggressive
foreign policy under emperor wu
conquering both the new kingdoms in the
south and going to war with the young
new confederation in the north annexing
vast amounts of the ethnic Turkic harem
basin this extremely rapid expansion
into Central Asia gave China its first
contacts with the numerous nomadic
tribes of the inner steps attracting
many merchants to the lucrative corridor
between east and west
it was the beginning of the Silk Road
it was during the harm that China
experienced its golden age great strides
were made in developing art culture and
science that would come to shape almost
everything we know about oriental
culture today a new religion making its
way down the Silk Road began taking its
own shape in the southwest it is known
to us as Buddhism in the year nine the
Han Dynasty was briefly interrupted by a
usurper named Wang man who seized power
from the Han in an attempt to establish
his own dynasty and he would have been
successful were it not for his reforms
to distribute land equally among the
populace he lost his territories in the
West and was deposed by a mob after only
13 years of rule I guess nobody told him
it was way too early for China's
Communist revolution the Han eventually
defeated the Zhong Yu after generations
of fighting and expanded their trade
with the West they eventually split into
three rival kingdoms in 222 and briefly
reunited under the Jin dynasty in 280
but the northern section rebelled
against their rule by the so-called five
barbarians which the southerners called
the sixteen kingdoms but both the south
and the North were unstable and changed
ruling families too many times to name
thus we came to power as successors to
the joust state and unified China again
in 589 while the Guk Turks rose to power
in the central steppes the Tang
succeeded the Sui and expanded the
Empire they subjugated the Guk Turks in
the north conquered the Koreans in
Goryeo and solidified their iron hold in
Southwest Asia Tang China spread its
influence over all the rest of Asia in
China's second Golden Age they were
famous for introducing land reforms
called the fuming system which is again
a flirtatious experiment with communism
I can see where this is going the
reforms were albeit successful in the
economic boom allowed for the budget of
a standing army if you're thinking to
yourself that all this prosperity is too
good to be true then you'd be right in
906 China collapsed again due to the
power of regional warlords the song
managed to control the southern part of
China but the North remained
ruled by Chinese influence nomads the
Jurchens a fringe tribe in modern-day
Manchuria rebelled against their nomad
rulers and soon conquered all the way
down to northern China
they proclaimed the Jin dynasty and vied
for power with the song in the South but
as both kingdoms contended with each
other a new powerful Confederacy was
brewing in the Mongolian steppes the
Mongols were initially a squabbling band
of nomadic herdsmen they had distant
links to the Zhang knew of the past and
made their harm on the Eurasian steppe
the culture was deeply steeped in
tradition and a religion that tied them
to their land but this was also changed
with one man named Imogen who history
remembers as Genghis Khan a man who
would reform the Mongols from within and
unite them into a powerful Confederacy
bound by blood and honor and create a
legal framework an exceptional social
mobility
the Mongols under Genghis and his
descendants founded the largest land
Empire in history and would have impacts
on nearly every part of Asia and even
Europe the story is told brilliantly in
Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the
making of the modern world
Weatherford even narrated the book
himself which is available at today's
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this is where we leave China today tune
in next time for the next chapter one
that would bring both the song and the
gin to their knees when we cover the
Mongols and subscribe to never miss out
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