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. To the north and west of the Yellow River region are the wide plains of central Asia. It remained a largely frontier region until later centuries. 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. However, from about 700 BCE, the kingdoms and peoples here began to be gradually absorbed into the Chinese world. From this region rice cultivation spread far and wide across southern China and into south-east Asia.ДЇor much of ancient times, the Yangtze region remained outside the Chinese culture area. Rice is one of the most nutritious plants in the world. 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 5000 BCE. Throughout the ancient period of ChinaвЂ™s history it formed the heart of the Chinese world, and it was from here that Chinese civilization spread out across the rest of China. It was here that the earliest Chinese dynasties were based.

This region is regarded as the Cradle of ChinaвЂ™s Civilization. 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. The civilization of ancient China first developed in the Yellow River region of northern China, in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE.В 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.

All these have helped shape Chinese civilization. (For a more detailed description of the geography of China, and how it shaped its civilization, go to the вЂњgeographyвЂќ section in the article The History of China.)Д¬hina is a vast country with a huge range of terrains and climates within it: mountains, deserts and coastlands and above all, the great river systems of China, the Yellow River to the north and the Yangtze to the south. The Geography of Ancient Chinese Civilization ContentsДЎ766 BCE: traditional date for the founding of the first historic dynasty in China, the Shang dynastyДЎ122 BCE: Western Zhou dynasty founded after the overthrow of the last Shang kingД§71 BCE: Eastern Zhou dynastyperiod begins after the sack of the Western Zhou capital the first phase is traditionally divided into two: the Spring and Autumn (771-481 BCE) and the Warring States (481-221 BCE) periodsДҐ51-479 BCE: Confucius, ChinaвЂ™s preeminent philosopher, livesДў21 BCE: The First Emperor, Qin Shih Huang, completes the conquest of all other Chinese statesДў02 BCE: The Han dynastyfounded, after several years of chaos following the fall of the QinДў20 CE: the Fall of the Han dynasty is a convenient marker for the end point of the ancient period of Chinese history. As such, Ancient China was one of the most crucial periods and places in world history.В Its achievements can still be powerfully felt today, in a modern China and its world-wide influence. For the purposes of this article, Ancient ChinaвЂ™s civilization refers to that period of Chinese history which began in the early 2nd millennium BCE, when a literate, city-based culture first emerged, to the end of the Han dynasty, in 220 CE.Д«y this time all the essential foundations of Chinese civilization had been laid down.

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