10. China's Han Dynasty - The First Empire in Flames

Introduction to Cao Che

0:00In the early years of the 3rd century, around the year 207 AD, a Chinese poet by the name Cao Che made a journey back to the place of his birth, a city called Luoyang. At this time, the lands of China were in chaos. The armies of rival warlords were now tearing the

0:32country apart, and so his journey can't have been an easy one. Cao Che was the son of a powerful warlord in the central plains of China, but he was also a notorious drunk. He had embarrassed his family to such an extent that he was exiled, and he now returned to the only other place he knew, his hometown of Luoyang. Luoyang had once been a prosperous place. For centuries,

1:07poets had written about its bustling life and its leafy avenues full of blossom, leading up to grand palaces and temples, decorated with thousands of bronze statues. It had been the capital of China in the Golden Age of the Emperors, which had lasted for more than 400 years. But Cao had heard that Luoyang had suffered in the recent wars. Still, when he came over the crest of the Beimang Mountains to the north,

1:40nothing could have prepared him for what he saw stretching out beneath him. The entire city of Luoyang was a blackened ruin. Later, he wrote a poem about what he saw. I climbed the ridge of Beimang Mountain and looked down on the city of Luoyang. In Luoyang, how still it

2:11is? Palaces and houses all burnt to ashes, walls and fences all broken and gaping, thorns and brambles shooting up to the sky. For Caoqiu, the blackened ruins of Luoyang became an emblem of the Golden Age that had now passed. Only decades before, China had been ruled by a single emperor from a dynasty known as the Han, and a period of prosperity had reigned. The Han were the first lasting dynasty to unite China

2:51under a single banner, and people believed that this Golden Age would never end. But now the poet Caoqiu walked among the ruins and ravaged fields of the former capital and felt his memories rise up from the soot-stained stones.

3:16I do not see elders from former days. I only see young men. I turn aside, for the straight road is lost. The fields are overgrown and will never be ploughed again. I have been away such a long time, but I do not know which street is which. How sad and ugly the empty fields are, a thousand miles without the smoke of a chimney. I think of the house I lived in all those years. My breath catches, and I cannot speak."

3:52As he walked through those ruins, Caoqiu must have asked himself, how had the first great age of imperial China come to such a devastating end? Why had the people of Luoyang left this city to burn and crumble into the earth? And in all the centuries to come, would the golden age of the emperors ever return?

Podcast Introduction

4:27My name's Paul Cooper, and you're listening to the Fall of Civilizations podcast. Each episode, I look at a civilization of the past that rose to glory and then collapsed into the ashes

5:01of history. I want to ask, what did they have in common? What led to their fall? And what did it feel like to be a person alive at the time who witnessed the end of their world? In this episode, I want to look at the fascinating story of China's Han Dynasty, an Iron Age kingdom that forged the first true imperial power in China. I want to tell the story of how this remarkable society rose out of the warring

5:32states of China's Bronze Age and how it reached out its first tentative hands to make contact with the empires of the empires of the West. Finally, I want to explore what happened to bring the ornate palaces and towering temples of China's first emperors crashing down in ash and flame.

Geological History

6:03If you've ever seen footage of a car crash in slow motion, you'll have some idea of what that looks like. The two cars inching towards each other frame by frame. The crash test dummies with their blank stairs strapped securely into their seatbelts. When the collision happens, both cars crumple together, solid metal rippling and buckling. Our story starts with a car crash taking place in the slowest motion you

6:38can imagine. Up until about 180 million years ago, India was part of an immense supercontinent called Gondwana, which covered much of the southern hemisphere. Between about 180 million and 160 million years ago, deep in the Earth's liquid mantle, an enormous plume of magma rose up and began to shift the plates of the the Earth's crust above it. Gondwana broke apart, and the landmass that is now India tore away from it and out into the ocean.

7:20India moved north, slowly at first, about five centimeters a year. But then, around 80 million years ago, it sped up. Part of the reason for this is that the Indian plate is believed to be only about 70 to 100 kilometers thick, about half as thick as the other plates that made up Gondwana. Powered by the vast currents of molten rock beneath it, this lighter plate now ploughed northwards at a rate of 15 centimeters every year.

7:57This is about the same rate as your hair grows, but in terms of continental plates, it was a speeding juggernaut.

8:07Right in the path of this runaway plate was the continent of what is now Asia. These two landmasses hurtled together with the same inevitable force as those speeding cars. Somewhere between 70 to 35 million years ago, the impact occurred. Over millions of years, inch by inch, the Indian plate made contact with the mainland of Asia. Across an impact zone stretching for 2,000 kilometers, the rock of the Asian plate began to crumple.

8:46As the Indian plate was crushed beneath it, Asia rocked and buckled, and a great mountain range rose up, the highest in the world. These are the Himalayas. This crash is still going on, and behind the impact zone, marked by the dramatic snow-capped peaks of the world's tallest mountains, the earth's crust has been pushed up like soil before a plough.

9:19The result is a vast arid steppe, a table of land broken by salty lakes and glaciers, and with an average altitude of over 4,500 meters, the Tibetan Plateau.

9:36The formation of this plateau had a number of enormous effects for the climate of this region. Rain clouds from the Indian Ocean find it impossible to cross the Himalayas, and so to the south, the mountains create an enormous reservoir of cloud, bringing the yearly monsoon rains to India and Southeast Asia. But behind the mountains to the north, the situation is quite different.

10:06Here, the Himalayas have created what's called a rain shadow. This is where barely any rain falls, and where vast deserts have formed.

Ancient Chinese Civilization

10:16But it's to the east of this plateau that our story really takes place, and where another unique landscape has been formed.

10:31On its eastern edge, the Tibetan Plateau drops off dramatically into a rolling mass of mountains and valleys, and finally, into an enormous stretch of wide, silty plains. These stretch for nearly 2,000 kilometers between the snowy walls of the plateau in the west and the Pacific Ocean in the east.

10:58These plains are home to a number of enormous rivers. The tens of thousands of glaciers in the highlands of the Tibetan Plateau act as a kind of water tower, releasing a steady flow of meltwater that cuts its way through the rocky mountain passes before spilling out into the plains in long, meandering routes. Among these great watercourses, two of the most impressive are the Yellow River and the Yangtze.

11:30The Yangtze is the longest river in Asia and the third longest in the world after the Nile and the Amazon. It flows for 6,300 kilometers from the mountains to the sea from an altitude of five kilometers right through the center of what is today modern China. The Yangtze meanders through deep, dramatic valleys and stone gorges, and it's a relatively peaceful

12:03and stable river. The Yangtze has maintained a steady course for much of its history and has discharged into the sea at the same point for the last 11 million years.

12:18But to the north of the Yangtze is its sister, the Yellow River, and this waterway is far more changeable and deadly. In its upper reaches, the Yellow River passes through a region known as the Huangtu or the Yellow Earth Plateau, a landscape made up of some of the most easily eroded soil in the world. As a result, the Yellow River contains the highest amount of silt and sand

12:50of any river on earth, and this colors it the distinctive yellow-brown that gives the river its name.

12:59This huge quantity of silt gives the soil of the northern Chinese plains an enormous fertility, but it also creates a number of challenges. As the river flows, this silt constantly builds up at its bottom and the riverbed slowly rises. At times, it can even rise to be higher than the land around it. When this happens, the river bursts its banks

13:31and floods vast areas of the countryside around it. In the most dramatic cases, the river can change its course entirely. Sometimes sweeping across the landscape for hundreds of kilometers and washing away everything in its path.

13:49Historically, this kind of devastating event has occurred about once every hundred years.

13:58Human activity has been verified in this region as far back as 27,000 years ago. Rice first began to be cultivated along the Yangtze River around the year 8,000 BC, while wheat, barley, and millet were best suited to the drier lands in the north.

14:22Farming of these calorie-rich foods gave rise to an advanced culture known as the zhiahu, who experimented with written symbols on the walls of caves as early as 7,000 BC. The first true villages were founded in the 4th and 5th millennia, and the population of this region began to boom.

14:48The Bronze Age brought the smelting of bronze from copper and tin, and it began here around the year 3000 BC. A culture known as the Longshan domesticated the water buffalo for use in fieldwork, and they also developed the plough and sophisticated irrigation techniques, boosting the productivity of this already fertile land. In the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC,

15:20China's first villages grew into towns, and these towns into its first major cities. In ancient Chinese conceptions of the world, the lands between the Yangtze and the Yellow River were the heart of all goodness. This was conveyed using the word huaxia, a word that contains a sense of grandness

15:51and beauty.

15:53One ancient writer, Yanyu, spells this out quite clearly.

16:00Inside is the Chinese Empire, and outside are the barbarous nations. The barbarians are covetous and greedy of gain. Their hair hangs down over their bodies, and their coats are buttoned on the left side. They have human faces with the hearts of beasts.

16:18The ancient Chinese believed that the further you moved away from this center, the more the good qualities of the people faded. One text called The Book of Documents, dated around 500 BC, contains a particularly precise version of this worldview. It describes how the virtue of the land's inhabitants reduces in steady increments of 500 li,

16:48or about 400 kilometers, the further you get from the center.

16:56The central 500 li is the imperial domain. 500 li beyond is the domain of the nobles, and beyond that, the domain of peace, where they cultivate the lessons of learning and moral duties. But as you move away from the capital in these increments of 400 kilometers, things start to look a little different. 500 li more remote is the domain of restraints.

17:26The first 300 is occupied by the tribes, the other 200 by criminals who have been banished. The most remote 500 li is the wild domain. In the south, these wild domains were the hilly lands south of the Yangtze, and the people there were what the early Chinese called the southern barbarians. To the west, the wild domain was the icy plateau where few could survive,

17:58and in the north, it was the Gobi Desert, and beyond that, the wide grassy steppes of Mongolia and Siberia. A 5th century Mongolian poet named Altun would later write a description of this bare and level land.

18:19Under the dark mountains, where the sky is like the sides of a tent, stretched down over the great steppe, the sky is grey, grey, and the steppe wide, wide. Over the grass that the wind has battered low, sheep and oxen roam. So, this is where the people of early China found themselves, hemmed in by the mountains to the west, the jungle and the sea

18:50to the south and east, and the harsh deserts to the north. But within their fertile square of land, their early civilizations flourished. The first millennium BC in China was a time of rapid change and feverish invention. The land's large population had led to the swift development

19:21of complicated society and advanced technologies soon followed. The people here learned to coat bronze in chromium to increase its resistance to corrosion and inventions like the blast furnace and bellows later led to the production of cast iron, replacing bronze as a cheaper alternative. In agriculture, iron tools and mechanical devices like the

19:51multiple seed drill led to a production boom. The invention of complicated pulley systems and differential gears allowed the use of water wheels and other mechanical devices to power everything from flour mills to furnaces. They also allowed the invention of ingenious mechanical toys. One early emperor was buried with an entire mechanical orchestra that could play their instruments and sing

20:22through pipes in their mouths all powered by running water.

20:28One kind of vehicle was even invented known as a south pointing chariot. It had a mechanical gear system on board powering a device that always pointed south without the use of magnets. The crossbow was invented during this time too and it was in widespread use in Chinese armies nearly 2,000 years before it became a fixture on European battlefields.

20:59Examples have even been found of repeating crossbows which used delicate mechanisms to fire multiple bolts in quick succession without the need for reloading. One Chinese inventor even invented an early form of pinhole camera in order to view solar eclipses.

21:22This era of development and ingenuity is known as the spring and autumn period.

Warring States Period

21:30But with the rapid development of technology upheaval soon followed.

21:39The spreading use of iron meant the production of weapons and armor had become cheap and easy. Large armies could now be supplied by anyone with the wealth to do so. This ushered in an age quite fittingly known as the Warring States period.

22:01The period of the Warring States saw countless feudal kingdoms fighting and conquering one another, coalescing together like beads of mercury on a table. The historian Summa Chien recalls this as a dark time in Chinese history.

22:21The land was torn by the strife of the warring kingdoms. Men honored deceit and power and scoffed at benevolence and righteousness. They put wealth and possessions first and courtesy and humility last. Some commoners became so rich that their wealth was counted in the hundreds of millions while among the poor there were those who could not even get enough dregs and chaff to fill their bellies.

22:50Soon they had settled into seven large kingdoms locked in constant competition. Among these, the two that matter most to our story are the kingdoms of Han and the kingdom of Qin. For some, it must have seemed like the wars would never end. But out of the violence of this time, one of the seven warring states, the state of Qin, rose to eclipse all the others.

23:22Qin was the furthest west of these kingdoms, with its back to the steep walls of the Tibetan plateau. The king of Qin, a man named Qin Shi Huang was an enthusiastic reformer who revolutionized his kingdom's society and administration. He moved to reduce the power of aristocrats and landowners and strengthened the central government of Qin to collect taxes directly from the peasantry.

23:54The Qin also used the latest military tactics, making an unprecedented use of cavalry, still a relative rarity in Chinese armies, to mount guerrilla raids on their enemy's supply lines and river crossings. For years, Qin Shi Huang bided his time and increased his power. When all his preparations were ready, he struck with lightning speed.

24:23He first attacked the Han, the Qin's much smaller neighbor directly to the east, and he took their capital of Xinjiang in the year 230 BC.

24:36Next, Qin Shi Huang struck northward at the state of Zhao, who surrendered two years later, and he took the northernmost state of Yan two years after that. In less than a decade after setting out on his campaign, Qin Shi Huang had conquered all the lands between the mountains and the sea. For the first time in its history, one man would now rule over all the kingdoms of China.

Qin Shi Huang's Reign

25:11Qin Shi Huang crowned himself as China's first emperor. He declared that he held his position through a kind of divine authority, the Tian Ming, or the mandate of heaven. And it's thought that the name of the Qin dynasty is what has given us the word for China today.

25:37For the most part, Qin Shi Huang ruled his empire just as he had ruled his kingdom. It was a reign of ambitious reforms and territorial expansion that saw the young empire of China grow even further.

25:55But the emperor Qin's reign was also not without its troubles. He suffered three separate assassination attempts, narrowly escaping each time, but these attacks filled him with paranoia. He became terrified of death and soon began to tour the whole empire, talking to all the wise men he could find and trying to discover some secret, some medicine or magic

26:26spell that would allow him to live forever.

26:31As his life wore on and his health got worse, his search became desperate. He began to execute scholars whose potions and elixirs had no effect on him. At one point, he even sent a fleet of ships out into the ocean, carrying hundreds of young men and women in search of the legendary Panglai mountain, which was supposed to lie somewhere out in the southern sea and where he

27:02believed a thousand-year-old magician might live. These people never returned, perhaps wisely considering how Qin Shi Huang treated those who failed him.

27:16During these later years, the emperor became mortally afraid of evil spirits and he had workers build a series of tunnels and passageways between each of his more than 200 palaces, believing that if he traveled unseen, they would find it more difficult to target him.

27:38Soon, this paranoia turned into tyranny.

27:44He turned his rage against the scholars who were unable to unlock the secrets of eternal life. At one point, it's even recorded that he burned the books kept in the libraries of the capital, as the historian Summa Qian recalls with bitterness. The Confucian scholars loathed the Qin for having burned the book of odes and the book of documents and mercilessly put to death the scholars who expounded them, while the common

28:15people hated its harsh laws so that the whole world rose up in rebellion. At this time, everyone began to speak ill of the Qin.

28:25During his fourth tour of eastern China, the emperor became seriously ill. It's thought that his court physicians had been giving him pills full of the liquid metal mercury, believing that it would extend his life. Of course, mercury is actually highly poisonous. Prolonged exposure can damage the entire nervous system, causing depression and bodily tremors, as well as delirium and

28:55hallucinations. If Qin Shi Huang was taking mercury, this might explain some of his strange preoccupations towards the end of his life. When the emperor fell ill, it seems likely that his doctors would have increased his dosage. The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, died in the year 210 BC, and his dynasty died with him.

29:24For all of its immense historical significance, the Qin dynasty barely lasted more than 15 years.

29:34The first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, left very specific requests for his burial, and to this day, they stand as a testament to his greatness, but also to the madness that plagued him in later life. He was buried in a vast mausoleum, one of the most remarkable constructions of the ancient world. It was built in the form of an enormous underground palace, an exact

30:04replica of the one he lived in during his life. This buried palace was filled with life-sized models of the courtiers and bureaucrats who had served the king, fashioned with meticulous detail in terracotta, their lifeless eyes open and staring forever.

30:27The buried palace was also guarded by an army of thousands of terracotta soldiers, each with a slightly different face. In total, it's estimated that Qin Shi Huang was buried with 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 soldiers on horseback, a full retinue of royal bodyguards to protect their king

30:57in the next life. There was even a replica of the imperial stables where the bodies of real horses were buried with terracotta figures of grooms kneeling beside them.

31:11Nearby, a mass burial ground has been found for the countless slave laborers who died while being forced to build this complex. At the center of the underground palace was the emperor's burial chamber.

31:29The historian Sumatian describes how the floor was painted to look like the lands of China, with its rivers represented by flowing streams of mercury.

31:42The tomb was filled with rare artifacts and wonderful treasure. Craftsmen were ordered to make crossbows and arrows primed to shoot at anybody who enters the tomb. Mercury was used to simulate the hundred rivers, the Yangtze, the Yellow River, and the Great Sea, and set to flow mechanically. Above were representations of the heavenly constellations, below the features of the land.

32:10While the tomb of Qin Shi Huang has never been opened, studies have shown that the soil of the mound that covers it does contain an unusually high concentration of mercury. One study even claims to show that the distribution of the mercury in the mound corresponds to the position of China's rivers.

32:36The empire of China was still a very new idea, and during Qin Shi Huang's life, it had been a thin veneer over a still very divided land.

32:49With the death of the first emperor, the empire looked as if it might come crashing down. The Qin state began to fall apart, and China fissured into 18 kingdoms, who once again began to war among themselves. It looked like the old age of chaos was about to return.

Rise of Liu Bang

33:14But history had other plans, and this is due to a rather unassuming character, a common man named Liu Bang.

33:28There's not much to distinguish Liu Bang during his early life. He was born in the kingdom of Han, and it's recorded that he liked to drink. Nevertheless, he rose to the position of a local sheriff. After the death of Qin Shi Huang, he was ordered to bring a group of slaves to the enormous construction site where the old emperor's tomb was being built. But along the way, some of these slaves

33:58escaped.

34:01Liu Bang knew that when he arrived, he would likely be punished for this mistake, and so he made a remarkable decision. He broke the chains of all the remaining slaves and declared that he would rather fight as a rebel against the empire than deliver them up to toil on the emperor's tomb.

34:22Many of the slaves were so grateful that they took up arms and joined him.

34:29Liu Bang and his followers took refuge at a place called Mount Mangdang, setting up camp in the crumbling ruins of an old fortress. From there, they watched the empire of the Qin fall apart around them. They soon entered the service of a rebel king, fighting what remained of the Qin empire, and Liu Bang showed extraordinary skill on the battlefield. So much so that the ancient historian

35:00Sumar Qian attributes his military success to supernatural causes.

35:07When Liu Bang was still a commoner, he once killed a great snake, whereupon a spirit appeared and announced, This snake was the son of the white emperor, and he who killed him is the son of the red emperor. When he first began