Early Kingdoms (Continuing )

According to Vietnamese myths, the first Vietnamese people descended from the Dragon Lord Lạc Long Quân and the Immortal Âu Cơ. Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ had 100 sons before they split (50 children went with their mother to the mountains and the other 50 went with their father to the sea). The eldest son became the first in a line of earliest Vietnamese kings, collectively known as Hùng kings (Hùng Vương or Hồng Bàng Dynasty). The Hùng kings called the country Văn Lang, which located on the Red River delta in present-day northern Vietnam. The people of Văn Lang were referred to as the Lạc Việt.

Before the Common Era, many tribes living south of the Yangzi River called themselves Yue (Việt in Vietnamese). Most tribes were linguistically related to the northern Chinese. Even today, Cantonese people and language are still being referred to as Yue. The Lạc Việt, however, were more linguistically related to other Southeast Asian people. Văn Lang culture was theorized to be evolving from natives who settled on the Red River delta since pre-historic time, rather than from migrating tribes from the North, as suggested in some Chinese legends.

Văn Lang was thought to be a matriarchal society, similar to many other matriarchal societies common in Southeast Asia and in the Pacific islands at the time. Various archaeological sites in northern Vietnam, such as Đông Sơn, yielded metal weapons and tools from this age. Most famous of these artifacts are the large bronze drums, probably made for ceremonial purposes, with sophisticated engravings on the surface, depicting life scenes with warriors, boats, houses, birds and animals in concentric circles around a radiating sun at the center. Many legends from this period offer some glimse into the life of the people. The Legend of the Rice Cakes(Sự Tích Bánh Dày Bánh Chưng), about a prince who won a culinary contest and then winning the throne because his creation, the rice cakes, reflected his deep understanding of the land's vital economy: rice farming. The Legend of Giong(Thánh Gióng), about a youth going to war to save the country, wearing an iron armor, riding an armored horse, wielding an iron staff, showed that metalworking was sophisticated. The Legend of the Magic Crossbow(Sự Tích Nỏ Thần), about a crossbow that can deliver thousands of arrows, showed extensive use of archery in warfare.

By the 3rd century BCE, another Viet group, the Âu Việt, emigrated from present-day southern China to the Red River delta and mixed with the indigenous Van Lang population. In 258 BCE, a new kingdom, Âu Lạc, emerged as the union of the Âu Việt and the Lạc Việt with Thục Phán proclaiming himself king An Dương Vương. At his capital Cổ Loa, he built many concentric layers of walls around the city for defensive purpose. These walls, together with Âu Lạc skilled archers, kept the capital safe from invaders for a while. However, it also gave rise to the first story of espionage in Vietnamese history that brought down king An Dương Vương.

In 207 BCE, an ambitious Chinese warlord named Triệu Đà(Chinese: Zhao Tuo) defeated king An Dương Vương by having his son Trọng Thủy(Chinese: Zhong Shi) marrying An Dương Vương's daughter, then acted as a spy. Triệu Đà annexed the kingdom of Âu Lạc into his domain in present-day Guangdong, southern China, then proclaimed himself king of a new independent kingdom, Nam Việt(Chines: Nan Yue). Trọng Thủy, the supposed crown prince, felt deep remorse as his wife was killed during the war, drowned himself in Cổ Loa.

Some Vietnamese considered the period under Triệu's rule a Chinese domination, since Triệu Đà was a former Qin general. Yet others consider it an era of Việt independence as the Triệu family in Nam Việt were assimilated to local culture. They ruled independently of what then constituted as China (Han dynasty). At one point, Triệu Đà even contemplated declaring himself Emperor to be an equal to the Chinese Han Emperor in the North.