The Han Dynasty Period

The Han Dynasty Period, 206 BC to 220 AD, followed the short-lived Qin Dynasty and is widely regarded as a foundational age of Chinese civilization, so much so that the country's majority ethnic group still calls itself the Han. Emperor Wu extended Han territory deep into Central Asia and opened the Silk Road trade routes to the West, while the dynasty also standardized the Confucian civil service examination system, advanced papermaking and sundial technology, and produced the historian Sima Qian's monumental Records of the Grand Historian. A brief usurpation by Wang Mang split the dynasty into Western and Eastern Han periods, and its final collapse amid court intrigue and regional warlordism gave way directly to the Three Kingdoms Period.