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.

During the the earth’s 4.6-billion-year history, the continents had merged and separated three times. Supercontinent Nuna, also called Columbia, existed between 2.5 and 1.6 billion years ago in the Proterozoic eon.

The position of North China on Nuna had intrigued researchers for nearly a decade, not only because it was an important piece in the geological jigsaw puzzle, but because many mineral belts such as iron ore were formed in that age.

It was no easy job pinpointing where China was located 1.8 billion years ago, nonetheless. Most evidence of Nuna’s existence was lost or destroyed in the formation of more recent supercontinents, when damage to the edges of the North China craton was severe.

Previous studies had placed China on various locations at the far-flung corners of Nuna, due to the lack of solid evidence the North China Craton.

The new research, led by professors Wan Bo and Xiao Wenjiao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geology and Geophysics, reported the discovery of a special rock formation in Inner Mongolia that suggested that North China was connected to the southern boundary of Russia’s Siberia before they drifted apart, only to rejoin in more recent ages.

The consensus among the geophysical society was that the Siberia plate was in the heart of Nuna, so China must be at the “centre” as well, the scientists reported.