China
Background
On the surface, the China of five or six thousand years ago bears little resemblance to the present-day nation remade by its 20th-century revolution. However, from China’s beginning certain institutions and attitudes have repeatedly reappeared throughout the millennia. Even during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, China was home to much that is characteristic of the Chinese tradition. Such luxury items as silk, jade, bronze and lacquer were already being refined. Silk, particularly, exerted a profound influence on what came to characterize Chinese aristocratic society. By the end of the 3rd millennium B.C., silk was established as a prerogative of rank and was linked to a ruling elite that first emerged in China: the Bronze Age Shang.
