East Asia in the medieval world (500 – 1500). A thousand years of kingdoms, caliphates, steppe empires and trading cities between the fall of Rome and the voyages that joined the hemispheres.
Two 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.
· 1300A one-line colophon dates the Jikji's metal-type printing to 1377 at Heungdeoksa in Cheongju. Its only surviving volume is at the BnF in Paris.
· 1377From 1405 to 1433 the Yongle emperor's eunuch admiral led seven fleets from China to East Africa. Why they ended is argued: cost, Mongols, court politics.
· 1405The Sejong Sillok records 28 new letters in 1443 and a finished Hunminjeongeum in 1446, with Choe Malli's 1444 memorial of protest between them.
· 1446
