Early Imperial China
2,070 BCE O.S. – 220 CE O.S.79 items
ancient worldchinaFrom oracle bones to the fall of the Han
Two thousand years of early China, from the palace city at Erlitou, around 1750 BCE, to the end of the Han in 220 CE: the Shang kings who put their questions to the ancestors on bone, the Zhou who claimed the Mandate of Heaven, the philosophers of an age of war, the Qin conquest that made one empire in 221 BCE, and the four centuries of Han rule that fixed its shape.
How it is built
The dynasties and eras are bands: the Xia as tradition dates it, Erlitou, Shang, Western and Eastern Zhou, the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, Qin, Western Han, Wang Mang’s Xin and Eastern Han.
Shorter bands overlap them for a reign or a war that tells its own story: Wu Ding, Confucius’s life, the Qin conquest, the Chu–Han war, Emperor Wu, the War of the Heavenly Horses. Events that belong to one of those, or to the fifteen years of Qin, sit inside it.
The map runs from the Yellow River capitals, Erlitou, Anyang, Haojing, Luoyang, Xianyang and Chang’an, to Sanxingdui in Sichuan, the Yangtze tombs, the northern walls, the Hexi Corridor and Ferghana, 3,000 kilometres west.
Filter by tag to follow one thread: war, writing, bronze, philosophy, tombs, engineering, trade, uprising. The Dynasties of China timeline carries the story on from the Qin to 1912.
究天人之際，通古今之變，成一家之言。 “To probe the boundary between Heaven and man, to comprehend the changes of past and present, and to make the words of one school.” — Sima Qian, letter to Ren An, on what the Shiji was for
Dates
Chinese chronology is secure only from 841 BCE, the first year of the Gonghe Regency, where Sima Qian’s tables start to run year by year. Earlier dates carry a range of years. Shang and Western Zhou dates follow the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project of 2000, which is one reconstruction among several; the notes say where others differ. Every date is in the proleptic Julian calendar, converted from years of reigns, and almost all are given to the year only.
Items
The walled Shang city at Zhengzhou
Pan Geng moves the capital to Yin
The oldest oracle-bone inscriptions
Fu Hao is buried at Anyang
The sacrificial pits of Sanxingdui
The Zhou conquer the Shang at Muye
Luoyi, the eastern capital, is founded
The Mandate of Heaven, cast in bronze
The Gonghe Regency: the first sure date
The fall of the Western Zhou
The Spring and Autumn Annals begin
Zichan casts the law in bronze
Sun Wu drills the palace women of Wu
The bells of Marquis Yi of Zeng
Jin splits in three
Shang Yang’s reforms in Qin
Qin moves its capital to Xianyang
King Wuling of Zhao puts his army in trousers
The oldest Daodejing, buried at Guodian
Bai Qi takes Ying, the Chu capital
Battle of Changping
Li Bing builds Dujiangyan
Qin ends the Zhou dynasty
Zheng Guo’s canal
Han Fei dies in a Qin prison
Jing Ke tries to kill the King of Qin
King Zheng becomes the First Emperor
One script, one measure, one axle
The First Emperor climbs Mount Tai
Xi, a Qin clerk, is buried with the law
Meng Tian’s long walls
The Lingqu canal joins the Yangtze to the Pearl River
The burning of the books
The execution of the scholars
The terracotta army
The First Emperor dies at Shaqiu
The First Emperor is buried under Mount Li
Chen Sheng and Wu Guang rise at Dazexiang
Xiang Yu burns Xianyang
Liu Bang becomes emperor of Han
Surrounded at Baideng
Lady Dai and the Mawangdui tombs
Zhang Qian sets out for the west
Huo Qubing wins the Hexi Corridor
Salt and iron become state monopolies
The Taichu calendar
Sima Qian completes the Shiji
The debate on salt and iron
Wang Zhaojun marries the chanyu
The Yellow River changes course
Liu Xiu restores the Han at Luoyang
The first sure record of Buddhism in China
Ban Zhao finishes her brother’s Book of Han
Gan Ying is sent towards Rome
Xu Shen finishes the Shuowen Jiezi
Cai Lun presents paper to the throne
Zhang Heng’s seismoscope
Envoys from “Andun, king of Da Qin”
The Xiping stone classics
The Yellow Turbans rise
Dong Zhuo burns Luoyang
The last Han emperor abdicates