Fire is used in China by Peking man, and may have been in use much earlier in Africa

Peking man shelters in caves south of modern Beijing, leaving many scraps of evidence of his way of life

The Chinese discover that the cocoon of a certain worm can be unwound, spun as thread and then woven - thus creating silk

Rice is by now grown in the Indus Valley civilization, in the region of Lothal in modern Pakistan, and in parts of China and Korea

The characters written in Chinese documents of the Shang dynasty are directly related to those still in use today

The Chinese develop a form of scroll, made of strips of bamboo threaded together and rolled up like a wooden blind

The Great City Shang, on a site later known as An-yang, develops as the capital of China's first dynasty

Chopsticks are in use in China, with bronze versions featuring in Shang tombs

Ancestor worship, a central theme of Chinese history, is practised by the royal family and high nobility in Shang times

China produces superb bronzes, in the ritual vessels for sacrifices to the ancestors

Chinese priests record on oracle bones the result of their divination, thus providing the earliest examples of Chinese characters

The Zhou defeat the Shang, and establish a new dynasty with a capital at Ch'ang-an (now Xi'an)

The Zhou rulers, driven east from Xi'an, create a new capital at Loyang and establish the Eastern Zhou dynasty

The poems of the Shi Jing, China's earliest work of literature, are gathered together

K'ung-fu-tzu, or Confucius, teaches a practical philosophy which will profoundly influence Chinese history

The Chinese become the first people to cast iron, after developing a furnace which can reach a very high temperature

The secret of lacquer, the sap of a tree which can be hardened by moisture, is discovered in China

The Chinese I Jing, or 'Classic of Changes', is compiled as a book of divination

The Chinese philosophy of alternating opposites is expressed as yin and yang

Daodejing ('The Way and the Power') is the book of Daoism

Daoism, attributed to the mythical sage Lao Tzu, becomes a popular alternative to the solemnity of Confucianism

Tea, now well established as a drink, features in a Chinese dictionary

The brutal philosophy of Legalism contributes to the decline of the Zhou dynasty

The earliest surviving decimal multiplication table is written in China on twenty-seven bamboo strips, known now as the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips

The Chinese develop the crossbow, many centuries before its use in Europe