[pbhjpbhj]

2 questions:

When the dominant state broke down and new states emerged - as in 3 kingdoms, or 16 kingdoms periods - would you always consider a later state to be a successor in title of the state that existed prior to the break up? Is it the language?

>"critically the indisputable development of written Chinese characters." //

What makes the characters Chinese. Italian, for example, uses the Latin character set (though that comes from Greek, which comes from, ...; which may make it a poor analogue). Why aren't they Qin, or Han, or whatever? Is it just imprecise naming.

[contingencies]

Agreed. Succession is relative and a grey area, and nomenclature is arbitrary.

[pbhjpbhj]

I was hoping for inciteful answers .. but accord will do ;o)

Funnily enough https://qz.com/522079/the-long-incredibly-tortuous-and-fasci... popped up in my reading today and dovetailed serendipitously with this discussion, the images of symbol development were particularly interesting to me.