Ancient history

• 1. Introduction

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  Ancient history begins with a single technical breakthrough: the development of Sumerian cuneiform script. From that moment, the span of recorded human history stretches roughly 5,000 years. The period runs from 3000 BC to AD 500, covering every continent humans inhabited, and ends with the expansion of Islam in late antiquity. Consider the arithmetic of human life across this span. In 10,000 BC, the world population stood at an estimated 2 million. By the close of the ancient period in AD 500, it is thought to have reached 209 million. Over 10,500 years, the number of people alive increased by 100 times. What drove that surge, and where did it begin? How did people learn to farm, to forge metal, and to write? And why did writing emerge not once but separately in five different places? The answers reach across deserts, river valleys, and oceans, into societies that left temples, jade, and undeciphered scripts behind.

• 2. Before The Written Word

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  Homo erectus spread across Eurasia 1.8 million years ago, in the early human migrations of the Lower Paleolithic. Evidence for the use of fire has been dated as early as that same period, though the date is contested. Generally accepted evidence for the controlled use of fire reaches back 780,000 years, and actual hearths first appear 400,000 years ago. Dates for the emergence of Homo sapiens range from 250,000 to 160,000 years ago, the variation depending on whether the estimate rests on DNA studies or on fossils. Some 50,000 years ago, modern humans migrated out of Africa. They reached Australia about 45,000 years ago and southwestern Europe at roughly the same time. They arrived in southeastern Europe and Siberia around 40,000 years ago, in Japan about 30,000 years ago, and in the Americas about 15,000 years ago. Most of what is known about this period comes from the work of archaeologists, because it precedes written history entirely. The earliest temple may belong to this prehistoric world. Settlement at Göbekli Tepe began around 9500 BC, and the site may hold the world's oldest temple.

• 3. Farms, Herds, And Forges

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  Around 9000 BC, evidence for agriculture emerges in what is now eastern Turkey, then spreads through the Fertile Crescent. The Nile River Valley shows sorghum and millet cultivation starting around 8000 BC. In China, millet, rice, and legumes were grown around 7000 BC, the same date as taro cultivation in New Guinea and possibly squash in Mesoamerica. Dogs were the first domesticated animals, dating to at least 15,000 years ago and perhaps earlier. Sheep and goats followed around 9000 BC in the Fertile Crescent, alongside the first evidence for agriculture. Cattle and water buffalo were domesticated around 7000 BC, and horses, donkeys, and camels by about 4000 BC. These animals carried and pulled people and loads, greatly increasing the human ability to do work. The invention of the simple plough by 6000 BC raised agricultural efficiency further. Hammered copper items predate the smelting of copper ores, which happened around 6000 BC in western Asia and independently in eastern Asia before 2000 BC. Bronze metallurgy began around 3500 BC in Mesopotamia and developed independently in China by 2000 BC. The potter's wheel was invented sometime between 5000 and 4000 BC. By 3000 BC, that same wheel had been adapted into wheeled vehicles, capable of carrying loads further and more easily than human or animal power alone.

• 4. Writing's Five Origins

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  Writing developed separately in five different locations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, and Mesoamerica. By 3400 BC, proto-literate cuneiform had spread across the Middle East. Egypt developed its own system of hieroglyphs by about 3200 BC. By 2800 BC, the Indus Valley Civilisation had created its Indus script, which remains undeciphered to this day. Chinese characters arose independently during the Shang dynasty, in the Oracle Bone Script dated to the period 1600 to 1100 BC. Writing in Mesoamerica dates to 600 BC with the Zapotec civilization. The reason writing mattered so much lies in what surplus food made possible. Storable foodstuffs let populations settle in one place rather than migrating after crops and herds. Greater population density required an extensive labour force and a division of labour, and that organisation created the necessity of record keeping. The ancient Near East, often called the cradle of civilisation, was the first to practice intensive year-round agriculture. It also created the first centralised governments, law codes, and empires, and began the study of the stars through astronomy and mathematics.

• 5. Empires Of The Near East

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  Hammurabi created an empire out of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad, founding Babylonia with Babylon as its capital. King Sargon of Akkad pushed the city of Akkad to the height of its power between about 2330 and 2150 BC. Through his conquests, the Akkadian language spread and replaced Sumerian, and by 1450 BC it had become the main language of diplomacy in the Near East. The precise site of Akkad has never been found despite extensive searching. Assyria began as a small state on the Upper Tigris in the 19th century BC, with its capital at Assur, which gave the state its name. Assyrian kings controlled a large kingdom at three different times, known as the Old, Middle, and Neo-Assyrian periods, the last reaching from the 9th to the 7th centuries BC, with Nineveh as its capital. The Neo-Babylonian Empire, or Chaldea, rose in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Under Nebuchadnezzar II, it conquered Jerusalem, built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and raised the still-surviving Ishtar Gate. Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, becoming king of the Persians, then conquering the Medes, Lydia, and Babylon by 539 BC. By building roads, the Achaemenids sped both government instructions and military deployment across their lands. Darius the Great expanded the empire to the Indus River, creating the largest empire in the world to that date. But Darius and his son Xerxes I failed to push into Greece, with expeditions in 490 and 480 BC eventually failing, and the dynasty fell to Alexander the Great by 330 BC.

• 6. The Wider Ancient World

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  Around 814 BC, Phoenician settlers founded Carthage, a city-state that came to rule an empire across North Africa and modern Spain through alliances and trade. The Phoenicians invented the Phoenician alphabet, the forerunner of the modern alphabet still in use today. Their colony of Carthage warred constantly with Rome in the Punic Wars, and after the third war Carthage was destroyed and occupied. Ancient Egypt unfolded over at least three and a half millennia, beginning with the unification of Nile Valley polities around 3100 BC, traditionally under Menes. Its New Kingdom, begun around 1550 BC, saw Egypt expand into Palestine and Syria. The Indus Valley Civilisation developed around 3000 BC, also called Harappan after Harappa, the first of its cities to be excavated. By about 1600 BC, the Indus people had abandoned many cities, including Mohenjo-Daro, for reasons still unknown. In China, the Shang dynasty, traditionally dated 1766 to 1122 BC, left over 100,000 oracle bones still extant. Ying Zheng, king of Qin, unified the other six powers and proclaimed himself the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, by 213 BC. He built the first continuous Great Wall using forced labour. Across the ocean, the first Olmec centre of San Lorenzo was founded around 1200 BC. The Maya, who emerged around AD 300, used the concept of zero in their calculations and recorded knowledge with glyphs descended from the Olmec system. In the Andes, organised fishing communities arose from 3500 BC, and the Chavin culture emerged around 1000 BC, raising large temples and weaving sophisticated textiles.

• 7. Seafarers And Traders

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  Around 3000 to 1500 BC, a large-scale migration of Austronesians began from Taiwan, driven primarily by population growth. These first settlers reached northern Luzon in the Philippines, mingling with an Australo-Melanesian population that had lived there some 23,000 years earlier. By 1500 BC, Austronesians colonised the Northern Mariana Islands, becoming the first humans to reach Remote Oceania. The Lapita culture spread to Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga by around 900 to 800 BC. A later surge of colonisation reached the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and the Marquesas by 700 AD; Hawaii by 900 AD; Rapa Nui by 1000 AD; and New Zealand by 1200 AD. Around 500 BC, bronze drums of remarkable quality, weighing more than 70 kg, were produced by the Đông Sơn culture in the laborious lost-wax casting process. The Maritime Jade Road, a jade trade network, existed in Taiwan and the Philippines from 2000 BC to 1000 AD. By around the 2nd century BC, these Austronesian trade networks connected with routes of South Asia, the Middle East, eastern Africa, and the Mediterranean, becoming the Maritime Silk Road. Srivijaya, founded at Palembang in 682 AD, rose to dominate trade around the straits of Malacca and Sunda by controlling luxury aromatics and Buddhist artefacts bound for a thriving Tang market.

• 8. Faith, Thought, And Invention

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  About the 6th century BC, new philosophies and religions arose in both east and west. Hinduism traces to around 2000 BC, Buddhism to the 5th century BC, and Jainism to the 6th century BC, all in India, while Zoroastrianism arose in Persia. The Abrahamic religions trace their origin to Judaism, around 1700 BC. Siddhartha Gautama, born around 560 BC in northern India, founded Buddhism on his ascetic life, a faith that spread throughout Eastern and Southeastern Asia after his death. In China, three schools of thought came to dominate: Taoism, Legalism, and Confucianism. The Confucian tradition, which would attain dominance, looked for political morality not to the force of law but to the power and example of tradition. The Greek philosophical tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle was diffused through Europe and the Middle East in the 4th century BC by the conquests of Alexander the Great. Technology advanced alongside belief. The Egyptians invented and used basic machines such as the ramp and the lever to aid construction, and helped develop Mediterranean maritime technology, including ships. The Babylonians and Egyptians were early astronomers who recorded their observations of the night sky. The Hindu-Arabic numeral system, with the concept of zero, was developed in India, while modern forms of paper were invented in China in the first century AD.