How old is China? How old is China?

Internationally, it is said that Chinese history began with the Shang Dynasty, so it is 3700 years. And if you count the time of the Five Emperors, it is more than 5,000 years. Because in the 600th year of Xia and the 165th year of Yaoshun, the Three Emperors did not pass on the country, so there were about 500 years.

That's about 5,000 years. Greece and Rome are not ancient civilizations, because Greece was really around 1000 BC, later than the four ancient civilizations, and was greatly influenced by Egypt in the early days, and later had its own development, so it is not counted. But because of their contributions to Western culture, they are called classical civilizations.

The other three ancient civilizations began around 3500 BC, 3000 BC, and 2500 BC, and the reason why China is later than them is because historians have discovered that the earliest written records are from the Shang Dynasty. If the city had been built according to the press, China would not have been very late, probably because the written records before the Xia Dynasty have not been handed down, so it was 1700 BC.

Counting from the Xia Dynasty with written records, that is, from about 2070 BC, that is to say, Chinese civilization has a history of more than 4,000 years, a great civilization. However, the Chinese civilization is not the earliest, the Egyptian civilization is earlier and more developed, and the pyramids were built around 2500 BC, you can imagine that more than 500 years before the appearance of the Xia Dynasty, Egypt had the ability to build the pyramids (the Egyptian writing appeared even earlier), which is really a great miracle! One more reference:

Since there were no underground historical materials before the Xia Dynasty, and only legends could be relied on, the history of Chinese civilization could only be counted from the Xia Dynasty 4,000 years ago. Whether there are any remnants of Chinese civilization before Xia, the Chinese archaeological community has been looking forward to finding physical evidence. As early as the 30s of the 20th century, Chinese and foreign archaeologists embarked on a journey to find the origin of Chinese civilization for 5,000 years, they searched for the symbols carved by the Yangshao culture pottery in the Yellow River Basin, and the "words" carved on the pottery of the Dawenkou culture, trying to prove that the origin of Chinese civilization can be as early as 5,000 or even 6,000 years ago, but it did not achieve the expected purpose.

Altogether 3910 years.

The starting point of ancient Chinese history is the Xia Dynasty, that is, 2070 BC, to the Opium War in 1840 (the beginning of modern Chinese history), a total of 2070 + 1840 = 3910 years.

Xia Dynasty: c. 2029 B.C. c. 1559 B.C., total: 471 years.

Shang Dynasty: c. 1559 B.C. c. 1046 B.C., total: 438 years.

Zhou Dynasty: c. 1046 B.C. 256 B.C., divided into Western Zhou, Eastern Zhou, and Eastern Zhou into Spring and Autumn and Warring States, total: 867 years.

Qin Dynasty: 221 BC-206 BC, 221 BC King Yingzheng unified the six kingdoms, the first emperor, total: 16 years.

BC Ancient Algorithm:

The specific algorithm is followed by the first year of A.D., that is, A.D. 1, and there is no A.D. 0, so the time period from x B.C. to y A.D. is calculated as x+y-1.

The so-called 2014 A.D. is the 2014th year from the first year of A.D., and 2020 B.C. means the 2,000th year before the first year of A.D.

The years of the Common B.C. are counted backwards. For example, the Western Han Dynasty was founded in 202 BC, and the Qin Dynasty was founded in 221 BC, which was later in 202 BC than in 221 BC. It should be noted that the months of the BC years are still counted upright, with January before and December behind.

The same is true for the dates, with the first day of the new year before and the fifteenth day after.

According to modern measurements, the age of the Earth is 4.6 billion years.

And Chinese history is recorded from the Yuanmou people, according to the order of 1.7 million years now: Yuanmou people, Beijing ape people, mountain cave people, Banpo and Hemudu people, Dawenkou, Suiren Fuxi and Shennong's legends, followed by the Yellow Emperor and Yan Emperor, Yao Shunyu, the Xia Dynasty is the first dynasty in Chinese history, from the 21st century BC to the 16th century BC, these are not written, China's written history began with the Shang Dynasty, established in the 16th century BC.

In addition, there should have been prehistoric civilizations.

(1) The "history" of a certain country or nation: It is counted from the time when there is credible evidence that the country has begun to have human beings. Because the so-called "history" is the history of human activities, and with human beings, there will be human history.

The so-called evidence here refers to archaeological excavations of human sites, relics, and especially bones. It is physical evidence, and it cannot be based solely on myths and legends, such as the biblical "Genesis" that God first created the man Adam and then took a rib from Adam to create the woman Eve, which should be regarded as the beginning of human history, but should be judged based on the ruins and bones of the "East Africans" discovered by paleoanthropologists and archaeologists and the dating determined by scientific methods (about 3 million years ago) that the known world history should begin more than 3 million years ago. When the history of our country began, we should not start from the "Pangu Kaitian", but should be counted from the known and recognized by the academic community about 1.7 million years ago.

2) "History of Civilization": "History" in the narrow sense refers to "history of civilization", and what people generally call "history" in the past and present refers to "history of civilization". For example, when we say that Egypt has a history of more than 5,500 years and China has a history of more than 4,000 years, we both refer to the "history of civilization".

The more consistent definition of the so-called "history of civilization" refers to the history after the establishment of the state, because with the state, people can produce a true scientific culture, including writing. In this sense, the "history of civilization" in our country should be counted from the establishment of the Xia Dynasty in the 21st century BC, although people often follow the old habit to take the legendary era of the Yellow Emperor 5,000 years ago as our "civilization".

3) "History with written records": In China, it refers to the history that began with the Shang Dynasty. Because although the Banpo site in the matriarchal clan era in China has found symbols that are suspected of writing, they are only suspected and have not been deciphered.

The Shang Dynasty, on the other hand, had a large number of oracle bone inscriptions as evidence. Of course, the oracle bone script was already a relatively mature script, and the basic composition of Chinese characters, such as pictograms, signifiers, meanings, pretenses, and morphophonics, were already in place at that time, so if China could discover earlier characters in the future, China's "history with words to examine" would be advanced.

4) "History with exact dates": refers to the history of which the absolute date can be accurately dated. China's "exact history" began in the "first year of the Republic" of the Western Zhou Dynasty, that is, in 841 BC.

4016 (there are artifacts to prove).

Counting from the opening of the world in Pangu, hundreds of thousands of years.

From the beginning of the ancestors, it will be around 6000-8000 years, and the relevant cultures include Yangshao culture, Hemudu culture and so on.

From the recorded human history, China should start from Emperor Yao Shun, about 5000 years ago, China is really called the Far East mainland with historical precipitation of the country from Qin Shi Huang, in the Western Han Dynasty, about 2000 years of history. In 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang completed the unification.

Since the Yuanmou people have human history, there are more than 1.7 million years.

There are billions of years since the biological history of dinosaurs.

The history of China's territory, which began with land, is tens of billions of years.

Not now, after all, we are not as developed as the United States now, and the economy cannot keep up.