The world’s largest, most densely populated country is also one of the most ancient sites of civilization. China is bound and interspersed by nearly all kinds of environments, from seas, to deserts, to forests, to mountains. In the north, its Great Plain covers more than 300,000 square kilometers, and is outlined by the Yellow River and the mighty Yangtze, making it a fertile land for agriculture, conflict, and history.

It is here, in these plains, that China first came into being. Millet came in from the north. Rice came from the burgeoning Southeast Asia in the south. The Yellow River provided silt to nearby soils, but flooded the lowlands and destroyed many plantations as well. In the midst of this constant stream of flood, rains, and harvests was born a dynasty – the first that Chinese civilization would ever know, with its wars and kings written upon bamboo annals and oracle bones, with its tales and triumphs shrouded in the fog of legend.

For thousands of years, historians regarded the Hsia dynasty as the mere stuff of tall tales. It was only in the last few decades that excavations provided evidence of a true dynasty, of a myth finally having a basis in fact.

Chinese creation legends tell of a deity called Pangu, who created the universe and sent a dynasty of sage-emperors to rule it. These wise rulers taught the Chinese to communicate, feed, clothe, and build shelter for themselves, and established the Hsia dynasty. One of the first emperors, Yu, drained away the great flood from the Yellow River, making ancient China habitable.

History is a little less fantastic. Records and excavations show that food production and storage, development in tool technology, social organization, and the shift from nomadic communities to settled, agricultural villages was progressing in China by at least 6000 B.C. China was moving into the Bronze Age, and one group of people, the Hsia, held sway over China with their command of copper and citadel construction.

China grew in the Hsia era. People wove silk, molded fine pottery, and baked bricks to build their homes. They learned how to control floods and direct rivers to irrigate their fields. The Hsia was a slave society, governed by ruling families who used elaborate, dramatic rituals to confirm their power to govern, or communicate with spirits for help and guidance.

The Hsia were an agrarian population, and domesticated a good number of crops. Drought resistant millet first appeared in around 5000 B.C. in Northern China, while rice was being grown in the Southeastern wetlands at the same time. Wet rice agriculture predominated – a labor-intensive process which also required that farmers channel water from the Yellow River to their rice paddies. So dependent was the civilization on the river that it encouraged the need for political organization, since regular flooding likewise brought with it the need to construct dikes and dams to control its waters.