History of Ancient China

In antiquity and early Middle Ages, the southern part of modern East Asia, Southeast Asia and the East! South Asia in some respects can be regarded as a single historical region (sometimes in Soviet literature it is even called "Proto-Southeast Asia"). In the north-west of its border are the upper reaches of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra valley, the forests of Assam. In the north - the spurs of the Himalayas, the north-eastern border - the watershed of the Yangtze and the Yellow River.

From an ancient period here there was a consolidation of several ethnolinguistic communities of the South Mongoloid peoples living in close proximity to each other.

There was a patriarchal and common (from the ancient Khmers) slavery. Social lower classes, close to the status of slaves, as a rule, only partially belonged to the ethnos dominant in the central valleys of the given state; Often they were representatives of another people or mountain tribes from the same ethnos. The owners of the slaves were representatives of the ruling class (usually its tops). Such slaves were used mainly in the non-productive sphere, in the service sector and in temple facilities. The history of ancient China ...

The cities, judging by excavations in the Okeo, Peiktano and other places, as well as from the sources, were administrative and trade-and-craft centers. The capitals of states, according to the same data, were also the centers of foreign trade. A number of researchers consider the ancient states that existed here to be slave-owning, and the states of the 7th c. And later - to the feudal.

The main unifying group for the Indochina Peninsula were in the first half of the 1st millennium AD. E. Aust-roasiyats (mon-Khmers) with their ancient culture and developed statehood. To the north of them lay the Thai center, to the north-east - the Vietnamese, to the south and the east - the seaside austronesian (or ancient Indonesian), the latter being closely connected with the Vietnamese and Mon-Khmer centers. From the north-west, this system is gradually beginning to include the Berman-speaking peoples, previously inhabiting the north.

The West-monastic seaside cities of Ramannadhesha ("The Land of the Monks") and Suvarnabhumi, the easternmost riverine towns of Srideva, Labapura and others in the valley of Tiao-Praia and the Khmer cities on the lower Mekong and along the rivers of the Great Lake basin (Vyadhapura, a city near the modern Okeo, ) - all came about at about the same time, around the 1st c. H

History of Ancient China