The Hồng Bàng period (Vietnamese: thời kỳ Hồng Bàng), also called the Hồng Bàng dynasty, was a legendary ancient period in Vietnamese historiography, spanning from the beginning of the rule of Kinh Dương Vương over the kingdom of Văn Lang (initially called Xích Quỷ) in 2879 BC until the conquest of the state by An Dương Vương in 258 BC. Vietnamese history textbooks claim that this state was established in the 7th century BC on the basis of the Dong Son culture.

The 15th-century Vietnamese chronicle Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư (Đại Việt, The Complete History) claimed that the period began with Kinh Dương Vương as the first Hùng king (Vietnamese: Hùng Vương or Vua Hùng), a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Vietnamese rulers of this period. The Hùng king was the absolute monarch of the country and, at least in theory, wielded complete control of the land and its resources. The Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư also recorded that the nation's capital was Phong Châu (in present-day Phú Thọ Province in northern Vietnam) and alleged that Văn Lang was bordered to the west by Ba-Shu (present-day Sichuan), to the north by Dongting Lake (Hunan), to the east by the South China Sea and to the south by Champa.

The name Hồng Bàng is the Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation of characters "鴻龐" assigned to this dynasty in early Vietnamese-written histories in Chinese; its meaning is supposedly a mythical giant (龐) bird (鴻).

French linguist Michel Ferlus (2009) includes 文郎 Văn Lang (Old Chinese: ZS *mɯn-raːŋ; B&S *mə[n]-C.rˤaŋ) in the word-family *-ra:ŋ "human being, person" of Southeast Asian ethnonyms across three linguistic families, Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, together with:

There also exists a phonetically similar Proto-Mon-Khmer etymon: *t₂nra:ŋ "man, male".

The earliest historical mentions of Văn Lang, however, just had been recorded in Chinese-language documents, dated back to the Tang dynasty (7th- to 9th-century), about the area of Phong Châu (Phú Thọ). However, Chinese records also indicated that another people, who lived elsewhere, were also called Văn Lang.

The area now known as Vietnam has been inhabited since Palaeolithic times, with some archaeological sites in Thanh Hóa Province reportedly dating back around half a million years ago. The prehistoric people had lived continuously in local caves since around 6000 BC, until more advanced material cultures developed. Some caves are known to have been the home of many generations of early humans. As northern Vietnam was a place with mountains, forests, and rivers, the number of tribes grew between 5000 and 3000 BC.

During a few thousand years in the Late Stone Age, the inhabitant populations grew and spread to every part of Vietnam. Most ancient people were living near the Hồng (Red), Cả and Mã rivers. The Vietnamese tribes were the primary tribes at this time. Their territory included modern meridional territories of China to the banks of the Hồng River in the northern territory of Vietnam. Centuries of developing a civilization and economy based on the cultivation of irrigated rice encouraged the development of tribal states and communal settlements.^{[citation needed]}