Ancient China
Please study your Class Notes and Powerpoint slides!

Geography of China
 China’s physical geography made farming possible but travel and
communication difficult.
 Civilization began in China along the Huang He and Chang Jiang
rivers.
 China’s first dynasties helped Chinese society develop and made
many achievements.
 The Gobi desert separates China from its neighbors. There are
mountains in the western frontier.
 Monsoons can bring as much as 250 inches of rain each year!
 The Huang He, or Yellow River stretches over 3000 miles across
northern China.
 Famers grew rice and domesticated animals such as pigs and
sheep along the Yellow River.

China’s First Dynasties
 The Xia Dynasty, around 2200 B.C. Stories from the ancient
Kings showed how the ancient civilizations solved problems.
 The first dynasty with historical evidence was the Shang Dynasty.
 Shang Priests believed that these heated cracks would predict the
future. The bones were called oracle bones because an oracle is a
prediction.
 The Zhou dynasty expanded China then declined.
 Confucius offered ideas to bring order to Chinese society.
 The Zhou king gave land to the lords, or people of high rank.
 The peasants were the farmers.
 Ethics is moral values.
 The ideas of Confucius was known a Confucianism.
 Confucianism became a guiding force in human behavior and
religious understanding in China.
 Daoism stressed living in harmony with the Dao, the guiding
force of reality.
 Daoists believed the universe is a balance of opposites.

China’s First Dynasties (continued)
 Legalism, the belief that people bad by nature and needed to be
controlled.
 The first Qin emperor created a strong, but strict government.
 A unified China was created through Qin policies and
achievements
 Shi Huanghi created a strong government with harsh
punishments.
 A Unified China
 Qin set up a unified system laws and punishments that would be
the same throughout the empire.
 Qin set up a unified written language.
 Qin set up a new money system. Standardized copper and gold
became the currency in all of China.
 Qin build the Great Wall of China. This wall was a barrier that
linked the earlier walls with China’s Northern frontier.

The Han Dynasty
 Han dynasty was government was based on the ideas of Confucius.
 Family life was supported and strengthened in Han China.
 The Han Dynasty made many achievements in art, literature, and
learning.
 The family once again became important to Chinese society. The
social classes were based on Confucianism.
 Children were taught to respect their elders.
 Han Chinese invented paper.
 Han inventors created the seismograph, a device the measures the
strength of an earthquake.
 The Han invented acupuncture or the practice of inserting needles
through the skin to relieve pain.

Han Contracts with other Cultures
 Farming and manufacturing grew during the Han dynasty.
 Trade routes linked China with the Middle East and Rome.
 Buddhism came to China from India and gained many followers.
 Chinese people created silk, a soft light, highly valued fabric.
 The Silk Road was a 4000-mile network of routes stretched westward
from China across deserts and mountain ranges, through the Middle
East, until they reached the Mediterranean Sea.
 Buddhism was an example of diffusion, the spread of ideas from one
culture to another.