Talk:Ancient History/China/Introduction

There are a couple of problems with this page.

These are shown by the statement in the first paragraph - "China is the oldest civilization in the world, with the famous Peking Man having been found to have lived near 400,000 years ago. The Chinese Neolithic Period is made unique to archaeologists by the sheer number of tools found littered within the cultural borders of its peoples. So one must always keep in mind that when discussing the history of China, you are discussing, without question, the most established civilization that has ever existed."

1. The articles on Mesoptamia and Egypt (and scholarly sources outside Wikipedia) state that these civilisations started in the fourth millenium BCE. China became unified under the Qin dynasty during the first millenium BCE, which gave its name to 'China', and if 'civilisation' means the presence of towns, manufactured goods like weapons or pots, rudimentary government institutions and standing armies, these did not appear in China more than 1000 years before the Qin.

2. The Neolothic period (i.e. the new stone age) is normally understood to be pre-civilisation, and the evidence of its development is found around the world, probably most richly in Africa. Even earlier there were pre-homosapiens versions of man, including Peking Man, Neandearthal man and so on, which are not part of the study of civilisation or ancient history as these terms are normally understood.

The really important aspects of Chinese history are its continuity into present times, unlike all others of comparable or greater age, and its scale.