Chinese Dynasty Timeline
LookupsEverything runs locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded
Enter a year to see which dynasty was in power, or a dynasty name to see its dates, capital and founder. One thing most people get wrong: dynasties overlapped. In the year 1000 the Northern Song and the Liao both existed; in 1200 it was the Southern Song, Jin and Western Xia at once. School timelines lay them out in a single line for narrative convenience, which is why "the Song was followed by the Yuan" feels familiar — in reality the Song overlapped the Liao and Jin for over a century. So a year lookup lists every state that existed then. That is not over-explaining; it is what the period looked like. An empty input gives the full table.
Features
- Year lookup across BC and AD, accepting 221 BC or -221
- Dynasty detail: dates, capital and founder
- Contemporary states listed separately — Song, Liao, Jin and Xia are not hidden
- Sub-periods: Western/Eastern Han, Northern/Southern Song, the Three Kingdoms
- Sub-period names work as input too (try Western Han or Southern Song)
- All 33 entries — dynasties and sub-periods — sit in one searchable dropdown with their dates, so a half-remembered name is enough
- Approximate dates are marked as approximate rather than stated as fact
- Empty input shows the whole timeline, from Xia to the present
How to use
- Enter a year (1000) or a dynasty (Tang), or browse the dropdown by date
- A year gives the dynasty plus any contemporary states; a name gives dates, capital and founder
- Turn the option off if you do not want the contemporary states
- Clear the input to see the full table
FAQ
- Why does the year 1000 show both Song and Liao?
- Because both existed that year. The Liao (916–1125) overlapped the Northern Song (960–1127) for more than 160 years, and the Southern Song coexisted with the Jin for over a century. Traditional timelines follow one thread for narrative reasons, but showing only one state for a given year implies it was alone — so all of them are listed here.
- Why are the Xia and Shang dates marked as approximate?
- Because there is no scholarly agreement on when they began: proposals for the start of the Xia range from 2070 BC to 2205 BC, a spread of decades to centuries. Marking the number as approximate and saying so is a different kind of honesty from picking one and presenting it as settled.
- How are periods like the Three Kingdoms handled?
- They are spans during which several states existed at once, so a year lookup lists all of them (in 250 AD that is Wei, Shu and Wu). Entering the period name instead returns the dates of each state within it.
- Is anything uploaded?
- No. The table loads with the page and the tool sends no requests, so it works offline.
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