Ancient China

China is a large nation in eastern Asia with a history that dates back many thousands of years. The Chinese culture is one of the oldest in the world. Ancient humans began growing rice in China around 6000 BC and settled in farming villages around 5000 BC. Many of these early villages were in the Yellow River Valley in north-central China. In the 1950s, archaeologists discovered the remains of an ancient town called Banpo Village in northwestern China. People lived in more than one hundred houses in Banpo Village from about 4500 to 3750 BC. These early people also used stone tools and buried their dead.

As the early villages grew, they began to join together to form larger communities....