Ancient China

The Shang Dynasty is the earliest ruling dynasty of China to be established in recorded history, though other dynasties predated it. The Shang ruled from 1600 to 1046 B.C. and heralded the Bronze Age in China. They were known for their advances in math, astronomy, artwork and ...read more

The Silk Road was a network of trade routes connecting China and the Far East with the Middle East and Europe. Established when the Han Dynasty in China officially opened trade with the West in 130 B.C., the Silk Road routes remained in use until A.D. 1453, when the Ottoman ...read more

1. Few civilizations knew how to tie one on better than the Egyptians. According to archaeological research at the Temple of Mut in Luxor, the ancient inhabitants of the Nile River Valley had a raucous “Festival of Drunkenness” that occurred at least once per year during the ...read more

Though the 13th-century Italian explorer Marco Polo may have been the first Western European to leave a detailed chronicle of his travels to Asia, he was certainly not the first to make the trip. Chinese historians recorded earlier visits by people thought to be emissaries from ...read more

1. Lascaux Cave In September 1940, four French teenagers were roaming the forests near Montignac when their dog began sniffing around a mysterious hole in the ground. After shimmying down a stone shaft, the boys encountered a vast underground cavern whose walls were adorned with ...read more

1. The dynasty’s founder grew up in poverty. Born Zhu Yuanzhang in 1328 and orphaned at age 16, the man who would found the Ming dynasty survived by begging before becoming a novice at a Buddhist monastery. When his monastery was burned down a few years later during a conflict ...read more

1. Qin Shi Huang’s burial complex was the largest in the world—and it was probably never completed. Farmers digging a well in a field approximately 20 miles east of Xi’an stumbled upon a pit containing 6,000 life-size terra cotta statues in March 1974. The site was soon ...read more

For many Chinese, the annual Chinese New Year holiday is all about the food. From potstickers to noodles to citrus fruit, the foods eaten hold meaning and significance for the year ahead.  The foods enjoyed during New Year are similar to those consumed during the rest of the ...read more

1. Catherine I The life of Empress Catherine I of Russia could easily be confused with something out of a fairy tale. The future queen was born in 1684 into a family of Lithuanian peasants, and was orphaned at the age of 3 after both her parents died from the plague. Taken in by ...read more

1. Qin Shi Huang (221-210 B.C.) China was unified in 221 B.C. when the Qin people came out of the west to prevail militarily over a number of rival states. Their leader, who declared himself Qin Shi Huang (First Emperor of Qin), established a strong centralized government, in ...read more

“The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.” So begins The Art of War, a meditation on the rules of war that was first published ...read more

In 1974, peasants digging a well near the city of Xian, in Shaanxi province, China, stumbled upon a cache of life-size, terracotta figures of soldiers at what was later determined to be the burial complex of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, Qin Shi Huang (259 B.C.-210 ...read more

Kublai Khan was the grandson of Genghis Khan and the founder of the Yuan Dynasty in 13th-century China. He was the first Mongol to rule over China when he conquered the Song Dynasty of southern China in 1279. Kublai (also spelled Kubla or Khubilai) relegated his Chinese subjects ...read more

Chinese New Year celebrations were born out of fear and myth. Legend spoke of the wild beast Nian (which also is the word for “year”) that appeared at the end of each year, attacking and killing villagers. Loud noises and bright lights were used to scare the beast away, and the ...read more