East Asia in the ancient world (3500 BC – 800 BC). The first cities, the first writing, the first kings who called themselves gods. These articles cover Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus and the Bronze Age world that connected them.
Erlitou 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 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 BC
