Scientists confirm that China really is the Middle Kingdom

Beijing – China really is the Middle Kingdom – literally, and for much longer than we ever knew, scientists say.

China, whose own name translates as Middle Kingdom, was located in the centre of the world’s the first supercontinent, called Nuna, 1.8 billion years ago – cocooned by other ancient plates that later broke off to North America, India, Australia and others.

A joint study by mainland and British scientists has now drawn a new map for the planet’s early geophysical history that could provide useful clues to a wide range of scientific issues, from the formation of mineral deposits to the evolution of life.

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications on Monday.

Much of North China – including what’s now Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province – sat on an old and stable part of the continental land mass, or lithosphere, known as a “craton”, from the Greek word for strength.

The North China craton is one of the world’s oldest, where geologists have found many ancient rocks, the earliest dating the dawn of life more than 3.8 billion years ago.