ABSTRACT
The ethnic group that today calls itself the Han people traces its origins to the upper reaches of the Huang He, or Yellow River, between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. The language group that includes both the Sinitic and the Tibeto-Burman languages is usually called the Sino-Tibetan. The territory of the Shang state was, however, probably rather small, although its technological innovations may have spread over a wider area. When the Zhou system finally came to an end, it was not one of the inner states but yet another outer state that imposed hegemony over what was to become China: the state of Qin. The greatest cultural contribution of the Han period and the one with the deepest implications for the unity of the Sinitic peoples, even today, was the development of the language form generally known in the West as Classical Chinese.
