The History of the World Podcast, written and presented by Chris Hasler. Volume 4, The Medieval World.

Episode 65, The Tang Dynasty. Oh, It's time to pick up our ongoing story about the history of China which we last left at the rise of the

Sway Dynasty during the Classical world volume.

The earliest origins of Chinese civilisation are fairly hazy,

as they are considered to be semi-legendary.

The Hyah Dynasty may have existed around 4,000 years ago.

The Scheng Dynasty that followed it is the earliest dynasty of China for which we have a good evidence of his existence.

We covered these dynasties during the ancient world volume of the podcast.

Around 3,000 years ago the Joe dynasty brought quite a centralized governance to China

however this centralization would diminish over the centuries of the first millennium

B.C. as local rulers started to gain more power.

With the rise of local rulers came competition for power and despite the Joe dynasty still being

the ceremonial and spiritually approved rulers of China, the local rulers were at war with one another

bringing about the warring states period of Chinese history.

This was also a time when intellectual and spiritual schools of thinking emerged such as

Taoism and Confucianism.

This kind of advanced form of academic philosophizing is not too

dissimilar to what was happening in Greece during the same millennium.

During the third century B.C.E one particular movement made a military bid for

overall supremacy over the whole of China and this resulted in the formation of

the Qing dynasty. The emperor known as Qing Chih Huang

is considered to be the first true emperor of a unified China and he would do much to standardize weights, measures and

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