Ancient World

3300 BCE-500 CE

Timeline

3300 BCE

First writing systems

Writing is a tool to store information outside human brains using marks, signs, and symbols. What started as simple record-keeping of taxes eventually evolved into words that could represent spoken language completely. Writing enabled small villages to grow into cities, states, and empires as rulers could store, organise, and share a growing amount of information needed to manage growing societies.

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3100 BCE

The first territorial state

A state is a sovereign and political entity that can enforce laws and use violence within its boundaries. Once permanent settlements began to emerge along riversides, which provided fertile soils for farming, people who were clever or ruthless enough took control of vital resources, accumulated wealth, and became rulers. The first territorial state emerged in Egypt when villages and towns of the vast land were unified under a single ruler known as Narmer.

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3000 BCE

Money makes trading easier

Money is a medium of exchange, such as coins and notes. Once people got good enough at farming, surplus came into being, and not all had to grow their own food. Some could start to practice skills they were good at and become, for example, artisans, soldiers, and priests. In the process, economies became more complex, and money was invented to help people trade goods and services instead of making barter and reciprocal favours.

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2650 BCE

Building pyramids

Ancient Egypt united into one vast kingdom around 3100 BCE. Kings depicted themselves as offspring of gods and became known as pharaohs. Their strength and authority over the kingdom grew, enabling them to use the rich resources of the land by building remarkable structures, most notably astounding stone pyramids.

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2300 BCE

The first empire arises

An empire is a collection of states, each with distinct peoples and cultures, and under the sway of a core state. The first empire arose in the Near East when Sargon the Great conquered not only the whole of ancient Mesopotamia but also large areas outside, his empire stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. Sargon became a role model for many future kings who sought to subjugate ever more people under their rule, and during the past 2,500 years, most humans have lived their lives in empires.

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2100 BCE

Making laws, the first known statute

Law refers to a system of rules that a particular state or community recognises as regulating the actions and behaviours of its members. After the introduction of agriculture, permanent settlements and rising populations led to many disputes, as farmers quarrelled over land, property, water, and many other matters. Before the rule of law, wrongdoings were usually revenged with the help of families and friends, but as states emerged, rulers assumed the sole right to use violence. To resolve disputes peacefully, they compiled lists of punishments and sanctions for persons who committed crimes, fraud, or other unwanted behaviours.

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2000 BCE

Hinduism

Hinduism is the oldest of the major existing faiths. The vast majority of its followers are in India, where it is believed to have originated some 4,000 years ago, when light-skinned horse riders from the north, calling themselves Aryans, began to spread around the subcontinent. Their beliefs mixed with those of darker indigenous people, giving rise to a religion that includes even millions of gods, and a literature known as the Vedas. Moreover, the invaders struck an extremely discriminatory caste system into religious beliefs, dictating that none could change their social class during a lifetime. Instead, Hindus believe in an endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, and deeds in this life determine one's hierarchical status in the next. Despite recent efforts to end discrimination by law, the caste system remains a defining feature of Indian society.

1800 BCE

Beginnings of monotheistic religions

Religion is a set of human beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the Universe based on faith in something supernatural that many call God. Whereas polytheists believe in many Gods, monotheists worship only one. Today, more than half of the population on Earth is either Christians or Muslims (monotheists). Hinduism (polytheistic) is the third most common religion, while atheism (a lack of belief in gods) is rising as science can explain many phenomena that were once beyond human understanding (the reason leading people to believe in the supernatural).

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A muscular blacksmith hammering metals at his forge shop.

1500 BCE

Use of iron

Some peoples may have used iron hundreds of years earlier, but it was not until around 1500 BCE that the use of iron tools and weapons began slowly to spread across Eurasia and Africa. Iron was the last metal to be worked, because it requires a very high temperature to extract from its ores. Unlike other metals that are too soft or scarce, iron is an abundant element in soil and strong enough for durable tools and weapons. Therefore, once humans learnt to make fires hot enough, iron began to change the lives of everyone.

1200 BCE

Alphabet begin to spread

Unlike in the early writing systems in which marks and signs represented words, alphabets are symbols that represent speech sounds. The first alphabet systems were probably developed in the early second millennium BCE in the Near East, and began to spread across the Mediterranean after 1200 BCE with Phoenician seafarers and traders. Instead of hundreds of different marks and signs, the Phoenician alphabet, from which most of the modern alphabetic systems have derived, had just over twenty simple symbols. Therefore, it was easy to learn, and while cuneiform and hieroglyphics were a skill of only a small group of scribes, the alphabet made writing and reading attainable for commoners as well.

800-200 BCE

Age of sages

In ancient times, even mundane happenings were far beyond human understanding. People connected natural events to the will and mood of gods, and the scope of Earth and the Universe was utterly unknown. But a period starting around 800 BCE, and lasting for a few hundred years, mainly in ancient Greece, saw early philosophers, physicians, mathematicians, and geographers who began to observe the surrounding world and find logical explanations for natural phenomena. Though many findings were far from correct or accurate, this was a giant step from the assumptions that the supernatural determined almost everything. Before better knowledge, many of their ideas also stood for more than 2,000 years.

776 BCE

Origins of the Olympic Games

The Olympic Games are often considered the foremost sports competition in the world. The origins of the Olympics lie in ancient Greece, where constantly warring city-states gathered together in festivals dedicated to a common God, Zeus, every four years. Hostilities were always at a pause, but as a benign surrogate for war, they arranged tests of physical fitness in events such as wrestling, throwing, running, and boxing. After 393 CE, the Olympics were forbidden because of the rise of Christianity, but were revived again in 1896 CE.

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630 BCE

Coinage

Early forms of money, such as barley grains, usually had intrinsic value – they could be eaten, worn, or drunk. Yet, since they were difficult to store and transport, people soon began to use futile metals, such as silver, as money. As the value of money shifted solely into human imagination, trust that others accepted useless metals as a medium of exchange became extremely important. When the first coins were struck around 630 BCE by King Alyattes of Lydia, they addressed two problems. First, the value of a coin imprinted on one side meant that people didn't need to weigh money in each transaction, simplifying the process. Second, a stamp of an issuer, most often a king, embedded on the other side sought to create trust by guaranteeing the value, and to scare counterfeiters, who were typically tortured before being killed. Still today, counterfeiting money remains a serious crime.

507 BCE

Testing democracy

In a tyranny, the rule is under a single strong leader. In an oligarchy, power lies in the hands of a few—usually the nobles and the wealthy. In a democracy, the authority is vested in the people. For most of history, democracy has been rare and fragile as ruthless, self-interested individuals have sought to consolidate personal power and wealth. Democracy was first tested in ancient Athens, Greece, where rising differences in wealth caused unrest. To solve the volatile situation, debt laws were changed in favour of the poor, citizens were made equal in court, and eventually, they could participate in decision-making through voting. Democracy in Athens lasted nearly 200 years before the city-states of Greece fell under Macedonian rule, and democracy disappeared for more than a thousand years, and has gained a foothold only in the past centuries.

500 BCE

Buddhism

Whether it is a religion or a way of life, Buddhism is followed by hundreds of millions and is regarded as one of the major faiths. Growing from Hinduism, Buddhism aims to escape the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth by finding a way out of suffering. Its founder, Siddhartha Gautama, was a prince who saw suffering all around him: no matter whether you were rich or poor, a man or a woman, a child or an oldster. He realised that the cause of suffering was desire; the human mind is never content and constantly craves for more or better. He left his riches, became a vagabond, and developed a practice to free human thoughts from cravings. He was the first one to achieve this state of mind and escape from reincarnation. He became known as the Buddha, the Enlightened One, and his teachings form the basis of Buddhism.

5 BCE

Jesus of Nazareth is born

Little is known about the early life of Jesus, but embellished stories about him that spread after his death laid the foundation for Christianity, the most populous religion on Earth today. Commonly accepted facts are that Jesus was born between 4 BCE and 6 BCE and belonged to one of many small Jewish sects at the outskirts of the Roman Empire. After being baptised around the age of 30, Jesus declared himself the Messiah (Christ), saviour of Jewish people. He sided with the poor and suffering, questioned the strict laws and cruel punishments of authorities, and spread the message of love and peace, not only for Jews but also for non-Jewish people as well. His populist words angered both the Roman authorities and Jewish priests, and he was crucified in Jerusalem around 30 CE.

1 BCE / BC

The modern dating system that counts years was devised in the sixth century CE by a Christian monk named Dionysius Exiguus. The year one was supposed to be the year Jesus Christ was born, but based on better knowledge, however, scholars today estimate that Jesus was born between 4 BCE and 6 BCE. Nevertheless, we use BC (Before Christ) or less religious BCE (Before Common Era) to record years before the year 0, and AD (Anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") or less religious CE (Common Era) to count years after the year 0. Year 0 does not appear in the calendar, and our dating system jumps from 1 BCE directly to 1 CE. This website uses BCE and CE, without a religious twist.

1 CE / AD

50 CE

Christianity

Christianity is the most populous religion today. Starting from a small Jewish sect at the outskirts of the Roman Empire, Christianity began to grow around the embellished tales of the life, death, and ascension of Jesus Christ, a prophet denied by Jews. The first Christian meeting was held around 50 CE in Jerusalem, where attendees decided which Jewish laws should remain in the new creed and which should not. Though the Romans occasionally persecuted early Christians for their faith, Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire over the course of the fourth century CE, and its followers began to grow exponentially. Over time, the Bible was compiled into its holy book, consisting of many conflicting stories from different time periods. Today, Christianity has split into hundreds of sects, arguing about the content of the book.

105 CE

Paper

Paper was invented in China around 105 CE by an official named Cai Lun, who boiled cloth rags and tree bark into a pulp, then pressed and dried the pulp to create paper. Paper was cheap, easy and efficient to produce, and it quickly spread across China, replacing wooden and bamboo strips as a writing material. The technology reached the Islamic world during the first millennium, and the first paper mills in medieval Europe were established in the thirteenth century. The full benefits of paper, however, were utilised only after the first printing presses began to produce books in mass, first in China in the seventh century, and later, but more extensively, in Europe in the fifteenth century.

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