hello class this is Chapter seven we're gonna talk about the Middle Kingdom right now mm-hmm so so this is okay this is China today's lecture is all about China the Middle Kingdom all right then so this is modern day China right and you see in front of you and that's we're talking about and the population of China now this is dated I was too lazy to try to look up the new population for lots of reasons but anyway but so it's much greater this but they have a tremendous population so what are the things we're gonna seek to answer today with this lecture is why are there so many people in China and the answer is going to be because they have been able to feed a large population if you have enough food then you can have more kids if you have more kids that is just going to lead to more food and then working right so you're gonna be able to have a large population super important okay then with that in mind here is the early Chinese history as the first civilizations developed here my now my argument is that China is geographically isolated relatively so it's not completely geographically isolated as you'll see but it is relatively soaked what I mean is in the North you have the Gobi Desert you know when you wanted to be by yourself kobe-wan kenobi no it didn't work I'll think about it like I Gobi Desert in the north and then over here you have the South China Sea and the East China Sea in the Yellow Sea right so if they could sail they would but of course historically they've closed their borders to sailing okay and then right over here you have the Himalaya Mountains so they do have a small trade zone here yet my argument is China is relatively geographically isolated and that to me is the reason why so many great inventions and discoveries in China stayed in China and was not spread there might be another reason but this seems the most plausible one to me as we discussed earlier the most important features geography is inevitability are the yellow and the Yangtze rivers right especially for growing food and food is always good you know we like food of course here I skipped a couple of things here all right in the north is much drier you get lots of wheat and millet and stuff in the south is my first humour and then get lots of rice but rice is gonna be important as we'll see in just a few minutes here so rice especially in the south but I'll say millet and stuff dominated by it are not dominated but dependent upon the river networks so we said this so far so far today I've said that there's lots of people in China and China is relatively geographically isolated yes okay and then as a review from a previous discussion I want you to take note of this China developed writing not for trade and financial transactions at least not initially they're going to use it for that pretty darn quick but they developed as a way to communicate with the gods the ancestors find out what they should do and I give you the I joke in my head is funny but if I wasn't where when I pray sometimes I accidentally leave my headphones in my ear and I'm so God can we spawn to me but he never does all right then not to my headphones all right then so it became a standardized and so here are some good I stole this from I don't know where it came from but I'm like wow this is great let's do this right here I mean can you imagine trying to figure this out but that's what you're trained for so you know why not right and I told you before the Chinese language written language especially Mandarin uses both phonetic and pictographic elements and is going to be especially in influential in world history now the vague language kind of like Latin dealing or Greek right the New Testaments in Greek right some of these important languages and now English has important languages and literacy is very important for keeping records effective rule preserving learning you know like taking notes while you watch this or preserving lower these these families stories right awesome and experiences of early Chinese societies literacy writing is so stinking important here to get your old pin and just touched right I was using this to draw last night but trying to but I was thinking right okay the very first civilization is going to depending on how long you want to look at not dynasty with civilization going to be the Shang then keep the Jo thanking the chin then came the Han and you're like whoa whoa whoa there's a lot of history right there right and then came the song and song was divided into the northern song and the southern song so I think if we were going to sing about any of them we should sing about the song get it think about that song that was me doesn't that okay alright then so let's talk about the Song Dynasty in other words this class is just science and technology and we skipped over a ton of great stuff to focus on technology ah here okay I just fixed something I said here I had said the Song Dynasty was a golden age of Chinese science and technology but I took that away because I should not have said that ah Song Dynasty was the Golden Age of Chinese technology very little science as we'll see in just a few minutes here so why why why was the Song Dynasty the Golden Age of Chinese technology that's a very good question Kim and the answer is because right here that an upsurge in rice cultivation more food food is good food allows you to be healthier and rice in particular is good because it yields more than any other crop per acre now I read an article that was argue that no no it's corn or maize but so corridor maize or rice but it produces a lot per acre in the 11th century not only is it a good crop to grow but they figured out new varieties of rice a line for two or three harvests every year so in other words the song dynasty is going to create a large population why why why because they could feed the large population food is good and then way down here the last bullet here new tools allow them to cultivate that rice that's gonna be even more beneficial such as the plough the paddle chain water lifting device here is an image of the plough sketch of the early plough and here is one of the paddle chain water lifting device I'm sure it sounds much better in Chinese right in this case here you have to get water from a lower level to a higher level you might be thinking well why didn't they just use the Archimedean screw that was even better because they are in geographic isolation relatively now I was an AP World History grand exams couple years ago on China and somebody was saying what the pet peeve was and they were saying my pet peeve is when they say that China was in geographical isolation and I'm like uh I think that's a pretty accurate by the way I said my pet peeve is I don't have any peeps that are pets so therefore I don't like pets that wasn't funny either so okay so irrigation agriculture is the cause of the rise of Chinese civilization to begin with you're like that's an obvious statement because all civilization have to have a way to grow more food and irrigation is important but that also led to the formation of governments to control the irrigation to make sure people aren't taking advantage of each other in China now that are growing more food they also have this wonderful system of canals begun earlier but developed in much greater extent at this time how wonderful the great canal was pretty grand so it's got the Grand Canal connecting the rivers of the north to the south now you have east-west and north-south here here's a better map of them and here is an actual image that stole from the internet no I have not been driving to China I like to drive I don't like to fly although I do fly but would it be cool if I could find some sort of car that he'd go over the water chitty-chitty bang-bang I don't know all right then here and this is important because canals are important transportation highways 400,000 tons of grain transported annually on these in 11th century that's awesome canals you know also reservoirs but that's in reserve anyway for example if I were to compare that to the importance of Diskin all here this is the Erie Canal that I visited last summer and the it was so important for the development for the economic development of the United States this was just as important for the economic development of the Song Dynasty in China same importance so important so I have been arguing that there's an increase in agriculture because of rice okay that's all increase in agriculture which led to an increase in population now that population might say well let's say if you have six kids I don't think I want to live on the farm I want to move to the city because the city is pretty awesome so that leads to large urban centers more food will actually lead to big cities as people move to the cities but what are you gonna do in the city you're gonna be a farmer in the city nope you're gonna have to find a job in trade and manufacturing so on this you can see how an increase in agriculture will eventually lead to an increase in trade and manufacturing oh I don't I show this this was a little video I found you can look it up if you want to it's very good but it did wasn't what I wanted but I haven't been able to find one just on what I want to get okay now another important aspect is that on the beginning of today's lecture I said they're they worthy let me go back and show you if it'll go back quickly you know that the Chinese whoops there you go the Song Dynasty I mean was the Golden Age of Chinese technology why technology Kim what happened to science remember we taught by Islam and had lots of science it was great well the answer is one of the things that you really need to have proper scientific development in my opinion is some sort of educational system our schools and I believe that is because sometimes you go to university and you are forced to read books you would not normally read you're like oh my gosh I am taking this class by dr. Kim he is so boring I would not normally do that for fun I would do it for a degree or something what they don't have universities here but they did have it which will spur the scientific revolution in Europe what they have here is an educational system in which the only purpose of education is to get a job in government service civil service you could do that too if you wanted to work in the government you could take the civil service exam and if your whole life all you ever did was a study for the civil service exam well that's all you would know so China highly centralized this means no separate institutional entities such as colleges or guilds apart from central government control the only thing that education was really for was to take the civil service exam therefore there was no thinking outside the box you want to think outside the box that's what universities let you do for example reading a book you will not normally read so mandarins are that civil service you can become a Mandarin not the orange and going to civil service so most educated therefore went into state service rather than scientific endeavors there is no science in China they go there's a separation of science and technology there will be a bit of science if you look hard enough you'll look hard enough at anything there's something that you can find but no not compared to the rest of the world so I am trying to say that technology therefore develops apart from science they are going to develop lots of technology and hold on let me pause this video well let me finish this section of the video by stating the totality of its advanced technologies not science technology says your book regardless of their originality or priority made China a world leader in technology through the song era and beyond ok let's pass this