--- title: China: five thousand years and the oldest dynasties — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «China: five thousand years and the oldest dynasties», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Your friend Mei says China has 5,000 years of history and is the oldest country on Earth; the history teacher says Egy --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / China: five thousand years and the old… # China: five thousand years and the oldest dynasties Lesson 51 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/0/) — Your friend Mei says China has 5,000 years of history and is the oldest country on Earth; the history teacher says Egypt is older. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/1/) — Who is right? - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/2/) — A bit of both, and finding out how is the fun. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/4/) — Egypt had a state earlier, but China's civilisation has gone on without stopping for an amazingly long time. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/5/) — Think of a family photo album: the newest pages have clear photos, the oldest have only drawings and grandma's stories. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/6/) — Early Chinese history is like that: the Shang pages have writing, the Xia pages are still debated, and the Yellow Emperor is a beloved story. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/7/) — Later the Zhou kings said Heaven gave a just ruler the right to rule, and wise teachers like Confucius and Laozi wrote ideas that people still read today. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/8/) — China has one of the longest continuous civilisations in the world, but the states of Egypt and Mesopotamia began earlier; «five thousand years» is a traditional phrase that includes legendary times. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/9/) — The Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, is a legendary ruler said to have lived about 4,700 years ago; many Chinese honour him as a cultural ancestor, though historians cannot prove he lived. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/10/) — Tradition names the Xia as the first dynasty (a family of rulers, one after another), about 2070–1600 BC; some archaeologists link it to the Erlitou site, but no Xia writing has been found, so whether it was real is still debated. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/11/) — The Shang dynasty, about 1600–1046 BC, carved questions on turtle shells and ox bones, heated them and read the cracks as answers from their ancestors; these oracle bones hold the oldest known Chinese writing. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/13/) — Modern Chinese characters descend from Shang writing, but the script changed a lot, so an ordinary reader today cannot simply read an oracle bone. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/14/) — The Zhou dynasty, 1046–256 BC, taught the Mandate of Heaven: a ruler governs while he rules justly, and disasters and revolts show he has lost the right; rebels could use the same idea. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/15/) — Confucius, 551–479 BC, taught respect for family, love of learning, fair rulers and good behaviour; his ideas shaped China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/16/) — Confucius' golden rule says: what you do not want for yourself, do not do to others. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/17/) — Laozi is the traditional author of the Dao De Jing, a short book about following the natural «Way» (Dao); his very long life is a legend, and some historians doubt he was one person. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/18/) — The Art of War, credited to Sun Tzu around the 5th century BC, is a classic about strategy, widely read today in armies and business schools. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/19/) — In the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, 770–221 BC, China was split into rival states fighting each other, until the state of Qin united it in 221 BC. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/20/) — China made silk for thousands of years and guarded the method; a famous story says monks smuggled silkworm eggs to Byzantium around 552 AD. - ← previous: [Today's Ukraine and Danylo's exaggerations](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/50-todays-ukraine-and-danylos-exaggerations/) - next →: [China: the First Emperor, the Terracotta Army and the Great Wall](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)