The Culture of Ancient China

GEOGRAPHY 

Ancient China (same area as modern China) was protected on the south, west, and east sides by the Pacific Ocean, Thar Desert, and the Himalayan Mountains. There was no protection from the north however, and the mongols and some other nomads would try to break in and conquer their land. That lead to the building of the Great Wall (more on that later on…). About 50% of the land was mountainous terrain, and only about 10% farm-able land. The Fertile Valley was on the eastern side of China. There were a lot of species of animals and plants that were unique to China because it was kind of walled in from all sides so the species couldn’t go in or out (pandas, bamboo,stuff like that).

COMMUNICATION

The ancient Chinese had a form of symbolic/hieroglyphic writing system. They had written records of their history and government records. They used paper as a writing tool.They also had oracle bones which were ox bones that the emperor would write a question into and then put into the fire until it cracked. Then his advisers and people like that could look at the cracks in the bone and determine what the ancestors thought would happen.

ARCHITECTURE

The Ancient Chinese built all of their buildings pointing the same direction which the compass allowed them to do. They also built the Great Wall of China to protect themselves from invaders from the north. It took about 2000 years of construction time to build and 2-3million people died working on the project. The construction was started around 2400 years ago. It was over 4000 miles long! The method of making the wall was called “rammed earth” which is where you pound dirt/clay together to make it denser and harder and stronger (don’t know exactly what it is). The wall was actually 2 walls about 10 feet apart with a bunch of dirt in the middle. It was about 15-30 feet thick and up to 25 feet tall. Its usefulness decreased as guns and more modern weapons were being developed. When somebody working on the project died they were buried in the wall and used as material (efficiency gone bad). It can be seen from outer space but not from the moon. They improved and modernised the wall during the Ming Dynasty from 1368-1644 to make it stronger and added cannons. There were around a total of 100,000 soldiers patrolling it and they would communicate with smoke signals.