History Of Ancient China | Dynasties, Confucius, And The First Emperor

this video is sponsored by a curiosity stream get free access to my video streaming service nebula when you sign up a curiosity stream using the link in the description this is China it's big most of your stuff probably comes from there and they have a solar farm shaped like a panda but most interestingly China is old for as long as people have been talking about history there has been a China 2.2 so how did China become the world's oldest continuous civilization what's the dynasty who's Confucius and is it ever okay to just bury people alive well that's fine Oh [Music] China was born along two great rivers the yellow and the Yangtze people began farming rice and millet here around 8000 BCE silk cultivation would follow at around 3,000 BCE and silk would remain a Chinese trade secret for thousands of years but these early farmers had a problem the Yellow River which had this nasty habit of unloading everyone to death enter you well no not you but like you you the engineer he spent 13 years traveling up and down the land fighting the floods so dedicated was he to his task but he walked past his own home on several occasions but never went inside to visit his wife or newborn child you built canals that led the excess flood water into the fields or out to sea and so stopped the floods everyone was very impressed with you he gets named King and so starts at China's first dynasty the Shia dynasty what's a dynasty you might ask a dynasty is a family that ruled over China if the family dies or is overthrown a new family takes over eventually China would be ruled by dynasties from now up until 1911 C II it kind of tells you a lot Chinese culture that one of the greatest heroes is a hydraulic engineer the Shah are said to have reigned from around 2589 which isn't wrong but isn't really right either we have evidence like bronze tools the remains of cities and tombs near our Ito and Yan Chi that point to an urban civilization existing around 2100 to 1600 BCE but it probably wasn't an actual unified state more a collection of culturally similar cities and villages it was once believed that a distinct Chinese culture spread out from the shower to the rest of China but now examples of dozens of neolithic cultures ranging from Manchuria to Guangdong have been unearthed known is really more advanced than the others Chinese civilization seems to have been forged by all of these cultures mixing together but the 16th century BCE the Chinese had learned to mix tin lead and copper together to form bronze warriors writing a new Eurasian import called the chariot took these fancy bronze weapons and clobbered the Shire to death these people found that the Shang Dynasty which was like an actual dynasty sorry shaft but you just weren't at the shine capital of an yang archeologists have dug up tens of thousands of so-called oracle bones priests would scratch questions for the gods on these bones and then applied heat to them the heat will crack the bones and those cracks would be read as a response from the gods the incredible thing about these are local bones is that the questions were written on them the Chinese independently invented writing something that's only been done around five times in human history these bones have recognizably Chinese characters we can still read a fair amount of them this script on the oracle bones is the ancestor of modern chinese the last of the pre imperial three dynasties is des l who overthrew the shine around 10:45 BCE they would still be there nearly 800 years later China's later dynasties wouldn't last half as long the zero came from the way Valley and were vassals to the Shang but getting tired of that they called load their armies marched in the shine territory and whooped them at the Battle of Nooyi the defeated shine King fled back to his palace had himself a little bit of a cry and then burned the palace down with himself inside it this posed a question to the Chinese the Shang ruled because heaven had given them the right to rule how could the Zhou just come along and overthrow them surely the Zhou were in the wrong here luckily the zo had an answer heaven had dumped the Shang why well according to ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian the last shanking may have hosted some festive orgies and written some extremely pornographic poems and tortured a bunch of people and maybe just maybe built himself a giant alcohol lake and inside of previously said alcoholic built a meet for us heaven frowns on that kind of behavior this resulted in the shang losing heavens mandate which heaven was happy to transfer to a more virtuous people like the Zhou from now heaven would throw storms earthquakes and peasant uprisings had rulers that it saw as unfit if rulers didn't listen and change the Mandate of Heaven with fall from their grasp and into another's the mandated heaven became central to Chinese politics as different dynasties lost and claimed the mandate for the next few thousand years under the Zhou China's first classical texts were written irrigation and foot controls spring up along with a large bureaucracy a network of canals were built to transport food and luxuries zero elite families could live in fancy walled cities and enjoy poetry and silk clothing or commanding large armies and taxing the peasants to death it was a time of immense change iron appeared in China around the 9th century BCE about a thousand years later than in the Middle East but the Chinese quickly became experts Europe and the Middle East could not figure out how to melt iron and so were forced to use wrought iron which is terrible but the 4th century BCE the Chinese were using heat-resistant clay in their furnaces which allowed them to reach temperatures of over 1500 and 37 degrees Celsius so they could liquefy iron and cast it into moles this technology wouldn't reach Europe for another 1800 years this gave the Chinese much stronger tools and weapons that could be produced on a massive scale trade kicked off as the population soared to 15 million and cities turned into manufacturing centers Chinese silk has been discovered as far away as Germany in the 6th century BCE suggesting that the famous Silk Road was already emerging the zoo started using money which was a novel idea at the time it was shaped like knives or spades which seems inconvenient but you know they were figuring things out there's elk ingdom had an issue though it was very decentralized it was a feudal state so the king handed out his lands to Lords but these local Lords began to amass more and more power and the Zell began to lose control of their own kingdom in 1771 BC the zel capital was sacked and they fled to a new capital at la yang the zou still had about 500 years left in them but at this point there were just puppets - they're much more powerful vassals this end of the Western Zhou period and began the eastern zo period this period is divided into two parts both named after the historical texts that record them the spring and autumn annals and the warring States annals at the beginning of the spring and autumn period 148 states were all fighting to be top dog this whittled down to about 30 or so and in the highly volatile warring States Period brought it down to seven and then three and then finally won but troubled times bring new ideas at around the same time the warring city-states of ancient Greece gave of Socrates and the competing Vedic kingdoms of India Broadus mahavira and the Buddha in ancient China the most important philosopher in East Asian history is about to be born master Kong or Confucius as he is known to us lived a fairly uneventful life a failed civil servant dying in 479 BC without ever having wielded any real power or influence but he had managed to gather a small group of followers who recorded his sayings in the Analects Confucius's philosophy was concerned with the chaos that was destroying China he wanted to restore order to a world I was falling apart to do this Confucius advocated a system of five hierarchical relationships the five relationships were ruler to subject husband to wife father to son older brother to younger brother and friend to friend the younger partner was always supposed to respect and honor the older or a more male partner yeah Confucius as a man from thousands of years ago wasn't really great when it came to women's so keep that in mind most of these relationships were within the family with the father holding the highest position this led to a tradition of filial piety still important in East Asia today filial piety means to be good to one's parents to respect them to follow their orders and to act in a way to positively reflects on them it worked the other way - parents were supposed to provide the best care possible for the children and make sure they were safe and their futures secure within this system family came before anything else confucius emphasized a concept called ren which roughly translates to benevolence or humanity this virtue was key to confucius his golden rule which is do not do unto others what you would not wish done to yourself confucius believed that if everyone followed their role and acted with benevolence then society would work perfectly the ruler especially needed to be benevolent because they were the one that set the example for everyone else people were only stealing or warring because their rulers were greedy and violent confucius said in administering your government what need is there for you to kill just desire the god yourself and the common people will be good confucius was a fairly outspoken critic of the powerful of his day maybe his most revolutionary idea was that the government should work to benefit the people and should be open to everyone not just nobles this evolved into a new concept the civil service examination centuries after his death the Han Dynasty government would establish examinations based on Confucian texts that all government officials would need to pass any male could take these examinations this meant that careers in government were opened to the best and brightest men this exam based system was in place in China thousands of years before anywhere else Confucius wasn't the only philosopher travelling around China at this time in fact it was the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy often called the hundred schools of thought it saw the rise of a school known as legalists they disagreed with Confucius as view that human nature was good legalist argued to humans by their very nature were evil and could only be made good through guidance of strict laws powerful rulers and a strong state there was Amuro as the popularity around the same time founded by Lao Zhu or the old master there was a masala though accepting what is happening it's not action but in action called Wu Wei the Taoism sees as important it's best to act in harmony with universe and just let nature take its course these explanations of Confucianism legalism and Taoism are far from complete we simply don't have the time but there are some links down below you can follow to learn more the state of chin lay on the outskirts of what the warring States era Chinese considered the civilized world the chin were semi barbarians by their standards the chin lived in a dangerous world between Zhang knew nomads and the warring States this meant military might was needed for survival they adopted every innovation they came across siege weapons iron swords crossbows sitting on horsey boys rather than writing and chariots behind them the Qin adopted all of these and add their own innovations to rather than being a feudal state with Lords the Qin created a highly centralised state strict laws now regulated trade and harsh and punishments the entire population was registered with the government and now peasants pay taxes and contributed labor and military service directly to the state rather than to their local Lord every household in the state was grouped in fives or tens and each group was held responsible for the actions of their members soldiers of the same group were punished as a group if an individual was currently disciplined drilled armored and armed with swords and crossbows the new armies of the Qin were ready to go take on their era Socratic chariot riding enemies King Zhuang is normally given credit for conquering all of China and creating the first Chinese Empire however healed a lot to his great-great-grandfather King Huai of Qin who reigned around 311 to 338 BC he cleverly shifted his focus off the drama of the warring States and to the weaker year rich states to the southwest there over the Qinling mountains lay a land of silk and money the central plain of Sichuan has been continuously farmed for more than 3000 years because of its rich soil and benign climate the Chinese call it t on foo the heavenly kingdom this was Szechuan today China's fourth most populous province the warring States paid little attention to the isolated Szechuan kingdoms of Shu unbar they saw them as barbarians King Huai saw them as an opportunity but getting there remained the challenge according to a much later and pretty hilarious account he came up with a fairy cunning plan he had five stone cows sculpted to perfection with gold spattered around their tails and back legs then they were placed out in the field where the end voice of the Shu could see them the Shu Qing obviously excited about the idea of these infinitely gold pooping cows asked for them as a gift but getting these gifts over the impassable mountains would be impossible until King Huai offered to build the road this stone cattle road does actually have some archeological evidence it's probably the earliest mountain highway in China Qin engineers made the mountains crossable by building gallery roads what's a gallery road you may ask this this terrifying thing is a gallery road they bored holes into the mountainside and then plugged them with wooden planks they made these things large enough to accommodate chariots and horses and carriages and stone cows along these sky death roads as historians called them the stone cows were brought to the king of Shu an unexpected x-ray was the thousands of Quin soldiers and war wagons that came in behind them in 316 BCE with soldiers now pouring across the new road the kingdoms of Shu and BA fell and Szechuan now belonged to the Qin this really was a land of silk and money Szechuan had huge silk supplies and massive amounts of mineral wealth mined Szechuan copper was minted in the Qin coins and made them filthy rich all hyped up on Szechuan steroids the Qin could steamroll over the other warring States so when the young king Zhen came of age and to tree eight BCE he already possessed half of his future Empire he just had to finish it off and by two-to-one BCE he had wiped out all of the other warring states with China under his rule he adopted the title Qin Shi Huang the first emperor of Qin the Qin Dynasty had now begun and the Emperor set about turning china from a bunch of feudal kingdoms into a united Empire with the help of Li si the new chief minister everything was standardized laws standardized weights and measurements standardized the length of chariots carts roads swords walls tools all standardized it was like a giant East Asian IKEA the mining winemaking and salt industries were all brought on their state control this was all done to form China into a single cohesive unit Li si went about creating a government where people were promoted based on merit rather than birth which made it extremely efficient he had the weapons of the warring States melted down into giant statues so that no one would get any ideas about whether they could challenge this new state which is some gameofthrones type stuff Qin copper coins became the Empire standard currency there a design circular with a square hole in the middle would last more than 2,000 years people across China were using the writing system developed under the shine but in different regions people were using different characters it was making communication difficult and it was messing with the Empire's taxes which just simply wouldn't do the Emperor had each and every character you guessed it standardized this new small seal script created a written language that was common throughout the empire regardless of the brighter spoken dialect without this standardization Chinese lawmakers today would probably need about the same amount of translators as the European Union all the ideas that popped up during the hundred schools of thought were outlawed as legalism became the state ideology they believed other schools of thought threaten stability and Confused the common people so in 2 1-3 BCE Li si and the Emperor ordered the burning of all books that went against state ideology preserving a few copies of each in state libraries away from public view it was followed according to some sort by a purge of Confucian scholars who are either executed or buried alive in an event called burning books and burying Confucius which is that the best PR move considering that Confucian Astana people that wrote Chinese history to the north the Qin state was constantly hassled by nomadic Xiong nu to defend the frontier a series of walls covering a distance of about 10,000 Li or 5,000 kilometers were constructed now this is a great wall in China but it's not the Great Wall of China that was built 1,500 years later during the Ming Dynasty but some parts of the Qin wall are still visible the Emperor's centralization conquest and constructions had created a lot of enemies like the former powerful families the Confucians and the common people but he was apparently aware of all the people that wanted him dead so he created a class of eunuchs men who's a yin and yang had been removed to be the close servants of the royal family as eunuchs couldn't have families who was assumed that a eunuchs loyalty was more reliable the rivalry between eunuchs and the other members of the court would go on to dominate Chinese history the Emperor had ruled for about eleven years now and he was getting a bit old but he wasn't planning on dying anytime soon because death is for peasants he began to consult with sorcerers to find an elixir of immortality the potions prepared for him by the immortality experts contained cinnabar and cinnabar when ingested has the unintended side effect of death the first emperor had a tomb of unimaginable scale built for himself to this day it still remains one opened but parts of it have revealed the famous terracotta army which was reported to have taken over 700,000 workers to build which brings us to an important point all the wonders of these empires the Great Wall the canals the tombs the palaces in the cities were built with millions of hours and lives of force or near forced labor all of this depended on exploding the peasants and the slaves who tended to grow pretty tired of the Han the Tang the one the mean and the Qing dynasties were all brought down by peasant revolts shortly after the Emperor died in 210 BC II the dynasty was paralyzed by rivalries and the oppressed peasants rose up four years later the dynasty was overthrown its 15 year reign was the shortest in Chinese history but the chins revolutionary act of creating a united Chinese Empire was a monumental event in world history the previous dynasties had been small and decentralized so was the Qin that really gave birth to the idea of China I mean China from now on dynasties would change more periods of warring States would occur but China as a unified culture will remain constant the Golden Age of the Han is about to dawn they will invent paper and flying machines and earthquake detectors Confucianism will become the state ideology where it will remain until now really the famous connections with India and Rome along the Silk Road will shape world history they'll fight nomads and even Greeks as they expand north south and west but that is a story for another time and when that time comes that video will be up first and ad-free over on nebula a streaming video platform I am helping to build along with lots of other independent creators like CGP grey Lindsey Ellis knowing butter and a bunch of other creators YouTube can be tough on creators like us but curiosity stream loves independent creators and wants the help us grow our platform so they're offering cogito viewers free access to nebula we knew sign of a curiosity stream comm forward slash cogito by signing up for curiosity stream you'll be getting access to thousands of documentaries like this one on the Silk Road which is a sweeping documentary that covers the various cities and vast distances that brought goods across the ancient world they have thousands of documentaries featuring top names like David Attenborough and Stephen Hawking including exclusive originals you'll get unlimited access starting 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Channel: Cogito

Views: 646,628

Rating: 4.8595576 out of 5

Keywords: the history of ancient china, china, ancient china, history, who is confucius, confucius, who is confucius and what did he do, confucianism, the history of china, ancient china history, ancient china history documentary, history of ancient china documentary, qin dynasty, qin dynasty history, shang dynasty, xia dynasty, zhou dynasty, chinese dynasties, chinese dynasties documentary, yellow river, han dynasty, chinese history

Id: tpy5BMhMYYw

Length: 23min 39sec (1419 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 02 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/sargon344]

Never heard of the zao dynasty ;) I kid, but I really hope people can learn some Chinese when pronouncing names. It just sounds terrible otherwise.