A brief timeline of Ancient China

I wanted to create a brief timeline of important or interesting events in ancient China, because this topic fascinates me. I didn't make anything up on this page, but I might have researched things wrong or misunderstood things. Please do your own research before relying on anything written on this page. Most things here I got from Wikipedia or the excellent book "Chinese History: A New Manual" on Pleco.

The timeline below frequently refers to dynasties. Today, we are used to this term referring to a nation, but historically it has four potential meanings depending on context:

1. a succession of hereditary rulers qualified by patrilineal descent from the dynastic founder
2. the period in history in which a particular dynasty ruled
3. the reign of a particular ruler of a dynasty
4. the country or territory over which the dynasty ruled

For the sake of brevity, the timeline treats the beginning and end of each dynasty as mostly hard borders. However, it is important to remember that there were usually transitionary periods between them. It could take many years for a dynasty to collapse and a new one to establish itself, and slow travel over a big territory meant changes didn't happen everywhere at once.

The strict (and inaccurate) division of history into distinct dynasties without overlap is also found in many historical sources. New rulers wanted to legitimize their claim to the throne with an unbroken line of descent from the three sages. In practical terms, years were counted based on dynasties and gaps or overlap would have introduced complications.