"China’s First Kingdom Likely Fell Victim to Rapid..." Topic

… Desert Formation.

"Scholars believe the Hongshan culture of Neolithic China, established some 6,500 years ago, may be the earliest Chinese kingdom. Now, in an attempt to gain insight into this ancient and mysterious culture, a team of researchers has investigated a region called the Hunshandake Sandy Lands of Inner Mongolia, where they found many Hongshan artifacts. The new study's findings, published this week, suggest some surprising new conclusions about the fate of the Hongshan kingdom, and its importance in Chinese history.

Though it was long thought that Chinese civilization began in the Yellow River Valley region, historians now know that earlier cultures existed in other regions of China. One of the earliest known of these was the Neolithic Era's Hongshan culture, whose members inhabited the lands between Inner Mongolia and today's Liaoning and Hebei Provinces beginning around 6,500 years ago—a full 2,400 years before the rise of the Xia Dynasty, described in ancient historical chronicles as the first Chinese dynasty. Hongshan means "Red Mountain," after a site in Inner Mongolia.

Archaeologists have excavated Hongshan sites all around northern China. According to researchers, the Hongshan were responsible for some of the earliest known examples of jade-working in China, including a fishlike jade creature believed to be the first Chinese symbol to resemble a dragon. Indeed, jade artifacts have sometimes been the only items found inside Hongshan tombs, indicating the importance of jade to their culture…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

I thought you were going to say rapid breeding … leading, of course, to famine and loss of natural habitat resources.

Dan

In the end it is always climate change.

It was when they went from the 2 horse to the souped up high methane emitting four horse chariots that they doomed themselves.

Methane has many times the greenhouse effect of CO2.