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The vast history of the Asian countries is a fascinating topic. The Burmese, Japanese, Chinese, and their Asian neighbors have made and are still making some historical contributions to the rest of world, even though Westerners have only been giving the East more cultural recognition since World War Two. In a lot of ways, the world owes thanks to the many Asian cultures for establishing the foundations of civilization during the time when Europe struggled through an era of barbarism.

 Every culture today can trace the roots of their existence back to the tribes that left the African continent. Dating as far back as three million years ago, the first ancestors of modern humans, Homo erectus, were leaving the East African region and spreading across the globe. These ancestors were anatomically smaller than us, but they could walk upright and use primitive tools to cut up their food and any resources that the earliest humans used for shelter. After the Ice Age had slowed human migration for some time, many biological changes took place in the Asian and European environments which caused our ancestors to adjust in order to survive in these new lands. Such adjustments included the introduction of the bow and arrow for hunting and tools used to catch fish along the coastlines. However, more significant changes took place in the drier climates of Southeast Asia.

There were a couple monumental achievements made in the founding of the various Asian cultures. The first was the rise of farming which took place during the Neolithic Revolution. Mass cultivation of rice and root crops helped start the agricultural movement throughout most of South China, Thailand, Northern Vietnam, and their Southeastern neighbors. Since these people were permanently settled in these lands, irrigation systems were put in place to keep rivers under control and flowing near to where the farmlands were. The most recent studies of what areas of Thailand, China, and Northern Vietnam were either cultivated or wild thousands of years ago are still in debate today. The second greatest achievement was the massive of numbers of people who settled in Thailand, Tibet, Northern Vietnam, and China, creating a complex civilized system. At point, each of today's modern Asian cultures were once a part of the same kingdoms together. For example, Northern Vietnam was connected to one of China's first kingdoms since so many of the same people were settled in those areas between the two countries. Writing, a key element of civilization, was invented in India and spread to the Southeastern nations (North Vietnam was left out for some time) and bronze technology was created in Indonesia for the construction of substantial societies in Asia.