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by Bill McCann (Author)
Paper, the umbrella, gunpowder, the compass, porcelain, the civil service, silk, printing, ice cream, football and pasta. These and much else were first given to the world by China. She also has longest continuous civilisation the world has ever known, stretching back for more than 4,600 years. For a little over 4,500 of those years she was ruled by a single emperor. Her history under those emperors stretches from the end of the New Stone Age, through the Bronze and Iron Ages right down to the early 20th century. We are fortunate that the Chinese began to keep detailed records of the lives of the emperors and events in their reigns from an early date. The first reliable written records in China appeared more than 3,200 years ago. For the 1,400 years before that, we have the records of an oral tradition which was written down at a later date. The period covered by this first volume in the Nutshell Series on Chinese Emperors covers the first 1,012 years of that oral tradition. Naturally, there are problems in assigning precise dates to events derived at a distance from any oral tradition and it was no surprise to find that this was the case here. In fact, there is great confusion, and frequent contradiction, in the dates for the earliest emperors quoted in the various histories available to us today in libraries and on the internet. As a result, in order to remain consistent, it was necessary to go back to the basics and produce a revised chronology especially for this series. This was actually an exciting piece of work and incorporated evidence from the latest archaeological work in the areas traditionally associated with the Yellow Emperor and the Xia Dynasty. The precise details of the methodology used in constructing this chronology are set out in Part One. Amongst other results the revised chronology has allowed us to date the first practical instrument for observing the winter solstice; has given us a date for the earliest solar eclipse on record; given us dates for the earliest two earthquakes ever recorded; and has given us a date for the first ever recorded volcanic winter in planet earth's history. Internally, the revised chronology gives us dates for the reign of the Yellow emperor, as the Han Chinese people still look on the Yellow Emperor as the father of their civilisation and their remote ancestor, this date is of deep cultural significance. It has also proposed a working solution to the problems surrounding the dating of the Xia and early Shang Dynasties. The chronology for the Xia Dynasty is internally consistent and can be firmly anchored to the volcanic winter associated with the catastrophic eruption at Thera in 1628 BC. As for the Emperors themselves, we find them heroically fighting devastating floods, composing music and developing new musical instruments, building a solar observatory and maintaining it over a period of more than 500 years, indulging in ornithology and an naming new bird species and, most human of all perhaps, indulging in wild, alcohol fuelled, sex orgies on the surface of a lake filled with wine!
Author Biography
Born and educated in Ireland, Bill McCann has worked as a research chemist, archaeologist, project manager, departmental manager, geophysicist, company director, historical adviser and technical writer. He is currently working as a university lecturer in China. (In between that lot, he had great fun as a barman, dishwasher, hotel cook, movie house manager, taxi-cab dispatcher, hotel/bar stock controller and opinion survey interviewer.) Driven by a passionate curiosity and intense wanderlust, he has travelled widely and explored the cultures of many lands and peoples. He is a devoted bibliophile who has been an avid reader since the age of seven and continues to build his personal library which currently contains about 4,000 volumes on a range of subjects, including, Literature, Art, Music, Theatre, all the natural Sciences, Philosophy, Politics, Language, Mythology and, of course, History. The Nutshell Books project aims to distil the essence of the epochs, milestones, and personalities that made and shaped world history into a format more amenable and accessible to the denizens of the electronic age. He sees no sense in the notion of retirement and has every intention of avoiding the grave for as long as possible.
