I know how people ponder why the chinese ultimately fell so far behind in technology, and i know the answer to that, and the reason is an oppressive government which restricted rights to technological and scientific advancement. Now onto my question. How did china get so advanced in the first place? Around 2300 years ago, when no one in Europe or the Middle East got into advanced crafting the Chinese had already produced a whole army of terracotta warriors carved from stone. Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses. It was not until the mid-1700's in Europe that such feats of metallurgy and advanced craft were achieved in Britain, the technically most advanced country of Europe. In china ancient statues were forged from furnaces thousands of years before anybody else in the world got the idea. What made the chinese civilization so advanced, so productive? they had tons of innovators, they understood the laws of mechanics completely more than a thousand years before europeans did. What was the cause of this? I was interested in this question when i watched Guns, Germs and Steel, and i wondered what makes some more advanced than others, what advantages did Europe and Asia have over the rest of the world?