China's dynasties, the steppe empires and the states of Korea and Japan built one of the world's densest political histories. These articles cover the unification of Qin, the Han and their neighbours, and the Mongol conquests that tied East Asia to the rest of Eurasia.
Pei Wenchung found the first Peking Man skull at Zhoukoudian on December 2, 1929; about 40 individuals by 1937, originals lost in 1941, casts survive.
· 770,000 BCGreg Bowen, a US soldier at Dongducheon, found a stone handaxe by the Hantan River in 1978. Excavation began in 1979; the age is still disputed.
· 200,000 BCA cranium found in Harbin in 1933 was named Homo longi in 2021 and dated to over 146,000 years. In 2025 its dental calculus yielded Denisovan mtDNA.
· 146,000 BCXianrendong's sherds lie in layers dated 20,000 to 19,000 cal BP; Yuchanyan's cauldron dates 18,300 to 15,430 cal BP. Foragers in southern China made both.
· 18,000 BCForagers at Odai Yamamoto in northern Japan fired plain pots about 13,000 BC and cooked fish in them; by 3900 BC Sannai-Maruyama ate chestnuts and fish.
· 13,000 BCSix crane-bone flutes from Jiahu, China, date to 7000-5700 BC. Nature called them the earliest complete, playable, tightly-dated multinote instruments.
· 7000 BCA 2017 PNAS paper dated ten dams and the Tangshan Levee at Liangzhu to 5,200–4,800 years ago, older than the 300 ha walled city they protected.
· 3000 BCThirteen rammed-earth pillars at Taosi, Shanxi, dug in 2003–04, were read as a sunrise observatory of the 21st century BC. A 2025 paper queries it.
· 2100 BCErlitou in Henan has palaces, a bronze foundry and grid roads from about 1900 to 1500 BC, and no writing to say whether its rulers were the Xia.
· 1700 BCZheng Zhenxiang excavated Fu Hao's unlooted tomb at Yinxu, Anyang, in 1976; the name inscribed on 109 of its bronzes divided scholars by 1986.
· 1200 BCA Sichuan city cast a 2.6-meter bronze man, giant masks and bronze trees, then broke, burned and buried them in eight pits about 1200 BC. No text says why.
· 1200 BCAnyang farmers sold inscribed Shang divination bones to pharmacies as "dragon bones" until 1899, when scholars read the marks as the earliest Chinese writing.
· 1200 BCIn 227 BC Jing Ke unrolled a map of Dukang before the king of Qin and seized the poisoned dagger inside. A doctor's medicine bag bought the king time.
· 227 BCIn 2002 a well at Liye, Hunan, gave up the Qin archive of Qianling county, 222 BC to 208 or 210 BC, naming a commandery missing from the Shiji.
· 222 BCBorn in Handan to a Qin hostage prince and king at thirteen, Zheng of Qin took six kingdoms by 221 BC and named himself huangdi, the First Emperor.
· 221 BCTrapped for seven days at Baideng, Emperor Gaozu of Han escaped through the chanyu's consort; Han then sent a princess and yearly silk, wine and food.
· 200 BCTomb 3 at Mawangdui, buried in 168 BC and opened in 1973, held a lacquer box of silk and bamboo texts, among them two Laozi editions and medical works.
· 168 BCSent by Emperor Wu to find the Yuezhi, Zhang Qian was held by the Xiongnu for over ten years; of more than 100 men, two came home 13 years later.
· 138 BCFor defending the general Li Ling, Sima Qian was condemned; his letter to Ren An explains why he chose to live and finish the 130 chapters of the Shiji.
· 99 BCTwo histories record Emperor Yang's canal orders of 605 to 610. For the Yongji Canal of 608 one counts over a million workers, the other over five million.
· AD 605Three or four horses per rider, a decimal army the Khitans and Jurchens already used, relay stations a day apart and Chinese siege technicians.
· 1206In 1218 the governor of Otrar killed 450 merchants Genghis Khan had sent to trade; the shah then executed a Mongol envoy, and the Mongols invaded in 1219.
· 1218In autumn 2011 a Ryukyu University team found a Yuan warship's keel off Takashima, 23 to 25 meters down. A second hull followed in 2014.
· 1281Rein Taagepera's estimates give the Mongol Empire 24 million km² around 1300 and Rome 4.4 million in its years on top; only Britain's empire grew larger.
· 1300
