The Xiongnu, for instance, fought with the Chinese for control of the Silk Roads. Parts of today’s People’s Republic of China were home to many migrant groups from disparate cultures who arrived in waves over hundreds of years.

But many of these cultures left behind the tools necessary for others to centralize political control and create forms of common culture, such as a written script and schools of thought and religion such as… Together, China’s first dynasties—the Shang, Zhou, and Qin—produced an imperial blueprint for harnessing the power of an agrarian civilization that succeeding generations of Chinese adopted and modified to found their…

Silk Roads — a series of trade routes circulating luxury goods to and from China and parts of central Asia, India, and the Middle East. clan — a small group of several families that shared an encampment and herded or hunted together and formed the basic social unit of the seminomadic peoples of Eurasia. karma — a Hindu concept emphasizing the influence of good deeds and moral behavior on a person’s status in life and rebirth after death. Legalism — a school of philosophical thought that helped dynasties such as the Qin use uniform laws and codes to reform and strengthen rulers.