The ancient map of China shows evolutions of China. This historical map of China will allow you to travel in the past and in the history of China in Asia. The China ancient map is downloadable in PDF, printable and free.

The stone tools and fossils of Homo erectus found in North and central China are the earliest discovered protohuman remains in NE Asia; some of the tools date to more than 1.3 million years ago as you can see in the Ancient China map. About 20,000 years ago, after the last glacial period, modern humans appeared in the Ordos desert region. The subsequent culture shows marked similarity to that of the higher civilizations of Mesopotamia, and some scholars argue a Western origin for Chinese civilization. However, since the 2d millennium BC a unique and fairly uniform culture has spread over almost all of the ancient China. The substantial linguistic and ethnological diversity of the south and the far west result from their having been infrequently under the control of central government.

China ancient history is traditionally viewed as a continuous development with certain repetitive tendencies, as described in the following general pattern: The area under political control tends to expand from the eastern Huang He and Chang (Yangtze) basins as its shown in the Ancient China map, the heart of Chinese culture, and then, under outside military pressure, to shrink back. Conquering barbarians from the north and the west supplant native dynasties, take over Chinese culture, lose their vigor, and are expelled in a surge of national feeling.

The Three Kingdoms period (AD 220–65 as its mentioned in the Ancient China map) opened four centuries of warfare among petty states and of invasions of the north by the barbarian Hsiung-nu (Huns). Under the Sui (581–618) and the T'ang (618–907) a vast domain, much of which had first been assimilated to ancient Chinese culture in the preceding period, was unified. The period of the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms (907–60), which was a time of chaotic social change, was followed by the Sung dynasty (960–1279), a time of scholarly studies and artistic progress, marked by authentication of the Confucian literary canon and the improvement of printing techniques through the invention of movable type.