ABSTRACT
China is the last of the great river valley civilizations in the eastern hemisphere. Its name was known to ancient India as Cinah (Cheena) in the Sanskrit language. Medieval Europe knew the country as Cathay. Only in 1516 it appear as the very great kingdom of China in the famous travel journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. China's cities, writing system and scientific culture all matured later than the other river valley civilizations. By the 2nd century B.C., when Egypt and Mesopotamia were centuries past their prime, China was a flourishing, politically unified state, whose science and technology were perhaps the most advanced in the world. From the beginning, geography, climate, and ecology played no less a role here than in other civilizations. Traditional Chinese medicine has now spread widely outside of China, gaining use in many nations and acceptance by such institutions as the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the French Academy of Medical Sciences.
