Ly Thai To founds Thang Long (Hanoi)

1010

The first Ly king moves his capital from the mountain stronghold of Hoa Lu to the Red River plain and names it Thang Long, the Ascending Dragon. The city later becomes Hanoi.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First atomic nuclei form → First stars ignite → First galaxies assemble → Milky Way takes shape → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Ediacaran biota → Cloudina, first shells and first predators → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Lobe-finned fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → Synapsids, the mammal line, split from reptiles → Therapsids, ancestors of mammals → Cynodonts, the ancestors of mammals → First mammals → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → First anthropoid primates → Apes split from monkeys → Great apes split from gibbons → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → First fired clay figures → First pottery → Potter's wheel → The wheel → Yamnaya steppe migrations → Domestic horses spread → Spoke-wheeled chariot → Hittite Empire → Iron Age begins → Qin unifies China → Han dynasty → Sui reunifies China → Imperial examinations → Tang dynasty → Battle of Bach Dang and Vietnamese independence → Ly Thai To founds Thang Long (Hanoi)

The story

In 1010 Ly Thai To, the founder of the Ly dynasty, moved the Vietnamese capital from Hoa Lu, a fortress ringed by limestone hills, to the site of an old citadel on the Red River plain. He named it Thang Long, meaning Ascending Dragon, after a dragon that tradition says he saw rising from the river. Hanoi grew from this site and still uses the name as a poetic title. Ly Thai To had been raised in a Buddhist monastery and took the throne in 1009.

Vietnam had been independent since 938, but its early capital at Hoa Lu was defensive and cramped. In his edict the king argued that the new site, central and near the river, suited a long lived dynasty. The Ly rulers built palaces and pagodas and a Chinese style administration, and made Buddhism a close partner of the state. The Temple of Literature was founded in 1070, civil service examinations began in 1075 and a national academy followed in 1076. Later dynasties kept the site as capital for most of the next eight hundred years.

Why it mattered

The Red River plain became the lasting center of Vietnamese power, culture and trade.
Hanoi grew from Thang Long and is still Vietnam's capital, more than a thousand years later.
The Ly court's Buddhist and Confucian institutions, including exams and a national academy, shaped Vietnamese government for centuries.

Sources

Ly Thai To Britannica
Moving the Capital: a historic decision Thang Long Imperial Citadel Heritage Conservation Centre
Imperial Citadel of Thang Long, Hanoi Smarthistory

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BookKeith Weller Taylor

The Birth of Vietnam