Shennong
c. 200 BCE – 2026 CEattested
the middle Yangtze
- Chinese
The divine farmer, who invented the plough and tested hundreds of plants on himself to sort medicine from poison. The tradition says he was poisoned dozens of times a day and eventually by something he could not survive.
Known for
- tasting every herb
- the plough and the market
- knowledge bought with the body
Dates are estimates. A great deal of what this atlas covers is only datable to within a century.