Proceedings, of the Worcester Society of Entiquity, Vol. 21 (Classic Reprint)

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BC: Spring and Autumn period begins in China; Zhou dynasty's power is diminishing; the era of the Hundred Schools of Thought. The Sasanian Empire began when the Parthian Empire ended in AD 224. Their rulers claimed the Achaemenids as ancestors and set up their capital at Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia. Their period of greatest military expansion occurred under Shapur I, who by the time of his death in AD 272 had defeated Roman imperial armies and set up buffer states between the Sasanians and Roman Empires. After Shapur, the Sasanians were under more pressure from the Kushans to their east as well as the Roman then Byzantine Empire to its west. However, the Sasanians rebuilt and founded numerous cities and their merchants traveled widely and introduced crops such as sugar, rice, and cotton into the Iranian plateau. But in AD 651, the last Sassanid emperor was killed by the expanding Islamic Arabs. [47] Hittites [ edit ] Largest expansion of Kingdom of Armenia under Tigranes the Great

History [ edit ] Allegories of five literatures of antiquity, relief at Cardiff Castle, by Thomas Nicholls circa 1870 Late 4th millennium BC: Sumerian cuneiform writing system [1] [2] and Egyptian hieroglyphs are first used

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Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th-century BC) and ends with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. Such a wide span of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. Classical antiquity may also refer to an idealized vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe's words, "the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome". [4] Despite the fact that the Western Roman secular authority disappeared entirely in Europe, it still left traces. The BC: King Khufu completes the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Land of Punt in the Horn of Africa first appears in Egyptian records around this time. decline of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, while the Eastern Roman Empire persisted throughout the Middle Ages, in a state called the Roman Empire by its citizens, and labeled the Byzantine Empire by later historians. BC: Mature Harappan phase of the Indus Valley civilization (in present-day Pakistan and India) begins.

Roman Empire at largest extent under Trajan after having conquered modern-day Romania, Iraq and Armenia. http://artworld.uea.ac.uk/cms/index.php?q=node/873 . Retrieved August 10, 2012. {{ cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= ( help) [ dead link] Parthia was an Iranian civilisation situated in the northeastern part of modern Iran. Their power was based on a combination of military power based on heavy cavalry with a decentralised governing structure based on a federated system. [46] The Parthian Empire was led by the Arsacid dynasty, [ citation needed] which by around 155 BC under Mithradates I had mostly conquered the Seleucid Empire. Parthia had many wars with the Romans, but it was rebellions within the empire that ended it in the 3rd century AD. [46]

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Frucht, Richard C (31 December 2004). Eastern Europe: An Introduction to the People, Lands, and Culture. ABC-CLIO. p.847. ISBN 978-1-57607-800-6 . Retrieved 5 December 2012. People appear to have first entered Greece as hunter-gatherers from southwest Asia about 50,000 years... of Bronze Age culture and technology laid the foundations for the rise of Europe's first civilization, Minoan Crete Qin Shi Huangdi ruled the unified China directly with absolute power. In contrast to the decentralized and feudal rule of earlier dynasties the Qin ruled directly. Nationwide the philosophy of legalism was enforced and publications promoting rival ideas such as Confucianism were prohibited. In his reign unified China created the first continuous Great Wall with the use of forced labour. Invasions were launched southward to annex Vietnam. The Qin period also saw the standardization of the Chinese writing system and the government unified the legal systems as well as setting standardized units of measurement throughout the empire. [118] After the emperor's death rebellions began and the Han dynasty took power and ruled China for over four centuries with a brief interruption from AD 9 to 23. [119] The Han dynasty promoted the spread of iron agricultural tools, which helped create a food surplus that led to a large growth of population during the Han period. Silk production also increased and the manufacture of paper was invented. [120] Though the Han enjoyed great military and economic success, it was strained by the rise of aristocrats who disobeyed the central government. Public frustration provoked the Yellow Turban Rebellion; though a failure it nonetheless accelerated the empire's downfall. After AD 208, the Han dynasty broke up into rival kingdoms. China would remain divided for almost the next 400 years. [121] Neighbours of China [ edit ] Gold stag with eagle's head, and ten more heads in the antlers. Inspired by Siberian Altai mountain art, possibly Pazyryk, unearthed at Nalinggaotu, Shenmu County, near Xi'an, China. Possibly from Huns of the Northern Chinese prairie. 4th to 3rd centuries BC, [122] or Han Dynasty period. Shaanxi History Museum. [123]

The original Roman Senate continued to express decrees into the late 6th century, and the last Eastern Roman emperor to use Latin as the language of his court in Constantinople was emperor Maurice, who reigned until 602. The overthrow of Maurice by his mutinying Danube army under Phocas resulted in the Slavic invasion of the Balkans and the decline of Balkan and Greek urban culture (leading to the flight of Balkan Latin speakers to the mountains, see Origin of the Romanians), and also provoked the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 in which all the great eastern cities except Constantinople were lost. The resulting turmoil did not end until the Muslim conquests of the 7th century finalized the irreversible loss of all the largest Eastern Roman imperial cities besides the capital itself. The emperor Heraclius in Constantinople, who emerged during this period, conducted his court in Greek, not Latin, though Greek had always been an administrative language of the eastern Roman regions. Eastern-Western links weakened with the ending of the Byzantine Papacy. BC: Ashoka sends a Buddhist missionary led by his son who was Mahinda Thero (Buddhist monk) to Sri Lanka (then Lanka) Mahinda (Buddhist monk). BC: Warring States period begins in China as the Zhou king became a mere figurehead; China is annexed by regional warlords. It is used to refer to various other periods of ancient history, like Ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia (such as, Assyria, Babylonia and Sumer) or other early civilizations of the Near East. It is less commonly used in reference to civilizations of the Far East.AD: Death of Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar (Octavian), ascension of his adopted son Tiberius to the throne. Emberling, Geoff (2015). "Mesopotamian cities and urban process, 3500–1600 BCE". In Yoffee, Norman (ed.). The Cambridge World History: Volume III: Early Cities in Comparative Perspective, 4000 BCE–1200 CE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.253–278. ISBN 978-0-521-19008-4. This was the period when, if the Trojan War is real, it probably happened. It probably corresponds to the time of the Biblical Book of Exodus.

Biggs, Robert D. (1974). Inscriptions from Tell Abū Ṣalābīkh (PDF). Oriental Institute Publications. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-62202-9. The precise end of the Republic is disputed by modern historians; [note 2] Roman citizens of the time did not recognize that the Republic had ceased to exist. The early Julio-Claudian Emperors maintained that the res publica still existed, albeit under the protection of their extraordinary powers, and would eventually return to its full Republican form. The Roman state continued to call itself a res publica as long as it continued to use Latin as its official language. Trajan dies of natural causes. His adopted son Hadrian succeeds him. Hadrian pulls out of Iraq and Armenia.

The Classical Greek world was dominated throughout the 5th century BC by the major powers of Athens and Sparta. Through the Delian League, Athens was able to convert pan-hellenist sentiment and fear of the Persian threat into a powerful empire, and this, along with the conflict between Sparta and Athens culminating in the Peloponnesian War, was the major political development of the first part of the Classical period. [149] The period in Greek history from the death of Alexander the Great until the rise of the Roman empire and its conquest of Egypt in 30 BC is known as the Hellenistic period. [150] After Alexander's death, a series of wars between his successors eventually led to three large states being formed from parts of Alexander's conquests, each ruled by a dynasty founded by one of the successors. These were the Antigonids, the Selucids, and the Ptolemies. [151] These three kingdoms, along with smaller kingdoms, spread Greek culture and lifestyles into Asia and Egypt. These varying states eventually were conquered by Rome or the Parthian Empire. [152] Rome [ edit ] Roman Empire AD 117. The Senatorial provinces were acquired first under the Roman Republic and were under the Roman Senate's control; the Imperial provinces were controlled directly by the Roman emperor. Evidence for agriculture emerges in about 9000 BC in what is now eastern Turkey and spread through the Fertile Crescent. [10] Settlement at Göbekli Tepe began around 9500 BC and may have the world's oldest temple. [11] The Nile River Valley has evidence of sorghum and millet cultivation starting around 8000 BC and agricultural use of yams in Western Africa perhaps dates to the same time period. Cultivation of millet, rice, and legumes began around 7000 BC in China. Taro cultivation in New Guinea dates to about 7000 BC also with squash cultivation in Mesoamerica perhaps sharing that date. [10] Animal domestication began with the domestication of dogs, which dates to at least 15,000 years ago, and perhaps even earlier. Sheep and goats were domesticated around 9000 BC in the Fertile Crescent, alongside the first evidence for agriculture. Other animals, such as pigs and poultry, were later domesticated and used as food sources. [12] Cattle and water buffalo were domesticated around 7000 BC and horses, donkeys, and camels were domesticated by about 4000 BC. All of these animals were used not only for food, but to carry and pull people and loads, greatly increasing human ability to do work. The invention of the simple plough by 6000 BC further increased agricultural efficiency. [13] BC – 1150 BC: Bronze Age collapse occurs in Southwestern Asia and in the Eastern Mediterranean region. This period is also the setting of the Iliad and the Odyssey epic poems (which were composed about four centuries later). BC: Oldest known depiction of the Staff God, the oldest image of a god to be found in the Americas. Robert Weiss notes (1969:8) that Ionic columns from the Baths of Caracalla were used in Innocent II's rebuilding of Santa Maria in Trastevere, 1139