THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION BEGINS
in 5000 BC
10 Oldest Civilizations in the World
Updated 2021
While the earliest hominid or human-like species first appeared around 2 million years ago, early homo sapiens, or modern humans, are relatively young – they first appeared in Africa around 200,00 years ago.
For thousands of years after homo sapiens first appeared, early man, laid the foundations for what would eventually become human civilization by developing agriculture, weaponry, art, social structure, and politics.
Although the Mesopotamians are typically considered the very first urban civilization in the world, several earlier peoples developed complex societies and cultures that can also be classified as civilizations and they have been included on this list.
5000 BC
Mesopotamian civilization
π Development of irrigation
π Cultivation of maize
π Use of copper
4241 BC: Earliest recorded date in the Egyptian calendar
4000 BC
π Muslims, King of Kish, rules Sumeria (Southern Babylonia).
π Development of plowing and taming of horses.
π Illustration of a wheel in the Sindh Province of India.
3760 BC: The first year of the Jewish calendar
3500 BC
π First phonetic writing and formation of a numbering system by Sumerians, who also were among the first to use wagons for carrying goods and people.
π The oldest known zoo was established in Hierakonpolis (now Nekhen), Egypt.
3100 BC: First Egyptian Dynasty was founded; Menu (Narmer) becomes the first pharaoh.
3000 BC
π The Megalithic tombs were constructed in Newgrange, Ireland.
π Building of temples and canals in Sumeria, ruled by Ur-Nina.
π Diamond polishing is practiced in China.
2950 BC: The first period of Stonehenge construction. (Some estimate 3100 BC.)
2850 BC: Fu-Hi becomes the first Emperor of China
2800 BC
π Development of the calendar.
π First recorded revolution: people from the Sumerian city of Lagash overthrew bureaucrats who were lining their own pockets but kept raising taxes.
2700 BC: The Epic of Gilgamesh, in poetry form, written (One of the oldest works of literature. Fragments of the Epic of Gilgamesh were found on clay tablets in the 19th century in the ancient city of Nineveh. It tells the story of a semidivine king named Gilgamesh who sought immortality. The king was probably based on a historical king of Uruk in Mesopotamia.)
2680 BC: The Great Pyramid at Giza was completed.
2650 BC: Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia was founded by Sargon.
2637 BC: The first year of the Chinese calendar
2600 BC: Sixth Dynasty in Egypt ends the ancient Egyptian Empire. Pepy II reigns for 94 years, the longest reign in history.
2550 BC: The Old Egyptian Empire under Khufu, his son Khafre, and his grandson Menkure start the construction of the great pyramids.
•Invention of glass
2500 BC
π The Minoan Age of Cretans begins.
π Domestication of camels
π The first libraries appear in Assyria, Egypt, and China
π Soap used. (The first mention of soap was on Sumerian clay tablets dating to this time – the soap was made of water, alkali, and cassia oil.)
2400 BC: Ur-Engur establishes the Dynasty of Ur in Sumeria.
2350 BC:
(The code has never been discovered but it is mentioned in other documents.)
Code of Urukagina
Uru-ka-gina, Uru-in-gina, or Iri-ka-gina (Sumerian: 24th century BC, middle chronology) was King of the city-states of Lagash and Girsu in Mesopotamia, and the last ruler of the 1st Dynasty of Lagash. He assumed the title of king, claiming to have been divinely appointed, upon the downfall of his corrupt predecessor, Luganda.
He is best known for his reforms to combat corruption, which are sometimes cited as the first example of a legal code in recorded history. Although the actual text has not been discovered, much of its content may be surmised from other references to it that have been found. In it, he exempted widows and orphans from taxes; compelled the city to pay funeral expenses (including the ritual food and drink libations for the journey of the dead into the lower world); and decreed that the rich must use silver when purchasing from the poor, and if the poor do not wish to sell, the powerful man (the rich man or the priest) cannot force him to do so.
He also participated in several conflicts, notably a losing border conflict with Uruk. In the seventh year of his reign, Uruk fell under the leadership of Lugal-Zage-Si, Γ©nsi of Umma, who ultimately annexed most of the territory of Lagash and established the first reliably documented kingdom to encompass all of Sumer. The destruction of Lagash was described in a lament (possibly the earliest recorded example of what would become a prolific Sumerian literary genre), which stressed that "the men of Umma ... committed a sin against Ningirsu. ... Offence there was none in Urukagina, king of Girsu, but as for Lugal-Zage-Si, governor of Umma, may his goddess Nisaba make him carry his sin upon his neck" (alternatively – "may she carry his sin upon her neck"). Lugal-Zage-Si himself was soon defeated and his kingdom was annexed by Sargon of Akkad...wiki
2300 BC: Paper made from the papyrus plant in Egypt.
2100 BC
•First Dynasty of Babylon established by Sumu-Abu.
•Abraham was born in Ur in Mesopotamia.
Abraham: Abraham, originally Abram, is the first of the three biblical patriarchs. His story told in chapters 11 through 25 of the Book of Genesis, plays a prominent role as an example of faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The narrative revolves around the themes of posterity and land. Abraham is called by God to leave the house of his father Terah and settle in the land originally given to Canaan, which God now promises to Abraham and his progeny. Various candidates are put forward who might inherit the land after Abraham, but all are dismissed except for Isaac, his son by his half-sister Sarah. Abraham purchases a tomb (the Cave of the Patriarchs) at Hebron to be Sarah’s grave, thus establishing his right to the land, and in the second generation his heir Isaac is married to a woman from his own kin, thus ruling the Canaanites out of any inheritance. Abraham later marries Keturah and has six more sons, but on his death, when he is buried beside Sarah, it is Isaac who receives “all Abraham’s goods”, while the other sons receive only “gifts”.
The Abraham story cannot be definitively related to any specific time, and scholars are generally agreed that the so-called ‘patriarchal/ancestral period’ is a fictional construct. It appears to have been composed in the early Persian period (late 6th century BCE) as a result of tensions between Jewish landowners who had stayed in Judah during the Babylonian captivity and traced their right to the land through their “father Abraham”, and the returning exiles who based their counter-claim on Moses and the Exodus tradition.
2050 BC: The earliest known written legal code, Ur-Nammu’s Code, dates from this time. Although called Ur-Nammu’s Code, it is generally agreed that it was written by his son Shugli. The code allowed for the dismissal of corrupt men, protection of the poor, giving testimony under oath, and the ability of judges to order damages to be paid to a victim by the guilty party.
2000 BC:
π The twelfth Egyptian Dynasty begins, with Thebes as the capital.
π Hammurabi, King of Babylon, reforms the law and introduce agricultural improvements.
π³
1850 BC: Earliest known legal decision: A clay tablet reveals the case of the murder of a temple employee by three men. The victim’s wife knew of the murder but remained silent. Eventually, the crime came to light and the men and woman were charged with murder. Two witnesses testified that the woman was not part of the murder, that she had been abused by her husband, and that she was worse off after her husband’s death. The men were executed in front of the victim’s house but the woman was spared.
1750 BC: Hammurabi, a king of the Babylonian Empire, establishes laws for many aspects of daily life, including marriage, divorce, trade, and prices. The code’s punishments include cutting off a finger or hand for theft, cutting out a tongue for defamation, and cutting off a man’s lower lip if he kissed a married woman. The code included the law of retaliation, from which came the phrase “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
1700 BC: Assyria becomes independent of Babylonia.
1500 BC:
π The Book of Job was written by an unknown Israelite.
π The sacred works of Hinduism, the Vedas, a collection of hymns are written in Sanskrit.
1400 BC: Use of iron by the Hittites in Anatolia (Asia Minor).
1415 BC: Amenophis IV of Egypt replaces the old religion with sun worship.
1355 BC: Ramesses I begins Nineteenth Dynasty in Egypt.
1300 BC: Moses received The Ten Commandments directly from God.
Moses is a prophet in Abrahamic religions. According to the Hebrew Bible, he was a former Egyptian prince who later in life became a religious leader and lawgiver, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed. The historical consensus is that Moses is not a historical figure. Also called Moshe Rabbenu in Hebrew, he is the most important prophet in Judaism. He is also an important prophet in Christianity, Islam, and Baha’ism as well as a number of other faiths.
According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born at a time when his people, the Israelites, an enslaved minority, were increasing in numbers and the Egyptian Pharaoh was worried that they might ally with Egypt’s enemies. Moses’ Hebrew mother, Jochebed, secretly hid him when the Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Israelites. Through the Pharaoh’s daughter (identified as Queen Bithia in the Midrash), the child was adopted as a foundling from the Nile river and grew up with the Egyptian royal family. After killing an Egyptian slavemaster (because the slavemaster was smiting a Hebrew), Moses fled across the Red Sea to Midian, where he encountered the God of Israel speaking to him from within a “burning bush which was not consumed by the fire” on Mount Horeb (which he regarded as the Mountain of God).
God sent Moses back to Egypt to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery. Moses said that he could not speak with assurance or eloquence, so God allowed Aaron, his brother, to become his spokesperson. After the Ten Plagues, Moses led the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they based themselves at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, Moses died within sight of the Promised Land.
10 Commandments List:
Here are lists of the 10 Commandments as recorded in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. These 10 beneficial laws were given by the Creator God to show mankind how to live a better life now and please God forever. God gave the 10 Commandments from Mount Sinai, accompanied by smoke, earthquakes, and the blast of a trumpet to emphasize the importance of these laws. Moses recorded God’s words in Exodus 20 and recounted the event again in Deuteronomy 5. There are only slight differences in emphasis in the accounts. Both versions are listed below, along with a list of the commandments in short form.
The 10 Commandments List in Exodus 20:2-17
1. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
3. “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
4. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
5. “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.
6. “You shall not murder.
7. “You shall not commit adultery.
8. “You shall not steal.
9. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
The 10 Commandments List in Deuteronomy 5:6-21
1280 BC: India’s Laws of Manu (Manu Sanhita) were written, regulating almost all facts of rules, from contracts to criminal law. It also forms the basis of the caste system, where people were classified by their social standing. Members of higher castes were punished more severely than those of lower castes. (Various dates of recording given, even as late as 880 BC.)
1200 BC: Ramesses III leads in the Twentieth Egyptian dynasty.
Iron Age begins.
In the Iron Age, humans began to produce large quantities of iron or steel, replacing bronze as a main material of tools. Iron and steel require a higher smelting temperature than bronze, so humans first needed to surpass this technological gap before wielding such materials.
This period broadly begins around 1200 BC, though historians have been unable to agree on when exactly this period should end; different dates have been declared the end of the Iron Age for different regions.
Over the course of the Iron Age, human societies advanced and grew more complicated. Major world religions were founded in the Iron Age, such as Judaism and Buddhism.
1193 BC: Greeks destroy Troy.
1186 BC: The Trojan War. (Troy was attacked a number of times.)
1020 BC: Saul becomes the first Israelite king.
970 BC: Solomon is the King of Israel.
930 BC: King Solomon dies – Hebrew kingdom divided into Israel and Judah.
900 BC: Homer writes Iliad and Odyssey perhaps around this time. (In another estimate it is 810 BC)
776 BC: First Olympiad in Greece
753 BC: Rome was founded by Romulus.
691 BC: The aqueduct was introduced to bring water from distant sources to a large urban population. One of the first known aqueducts is ordered by the Assyrian King Sennacherib for Nineveh – it is about 90 km (50 miles) long.
660 BC: Byzantium was founded by the Greeks.
621 BC: Draco writes the first code of law for Athens and Greece. The penalty for many offenses was so severe that the word “draconian” comes from his name. (Citizens adored Draco and upon entering an auditorium one day to attend a reception in his honor, they showered him with hats and cloaks as was their custom. By the time they dug him out from under the clothing, he was smothered to death.)
606 BC: Nabopolassar of Babylon and Cyaxares of Media destroy Nineveh; ending of Assyrian Empire.
604 BC: Nebuchadnezzar rules Babylon.
598 BC: Nebuchadnezzar takes Jerusalem.
586 BC: Nebuchadnezzar destroys Jerusalem.
585 BC: Aesop’s fables are thought to be written about this time. (They include “The Hare and the Tortoise” and “The Fox and the Grapes.” Aesop’s moral lessons usually are summarized in one-sentence parables at the end of his fables, such as “don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”) Very little is known about the author; some scholars believe Aesop was a slave, and some believe he was legendary.
563 BC: Buddha (SiddhΓ’rtha Gautama) was born in India.
551 BC: Confucius was born in China.
550 BC: Cyrus conquers Media and founds Persian Empire.
538 BC: Cyrus conquers Babylon.
536 BC: The Book of Punishments written in China. Punishments for offenses include tattooing as a way to mark criminals, cutting off of the nose, castration, foot amputation, and death.
535 BC: The first Roman calendar was introduced: it had 10 months, with 304 days in a year that began in March.
532 BC (?): Pythagoras of Crotona describes the relations between sides of a right-angled triangle and tone vibrations.
525 BC: Tragedy and comedy theater were performed. Celebratory songs and dances held in honor of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and merrymaking, evolved into the earliest plays.
500 BC: End of monarchy in Rome, Republic founded.
π Completion of original Hebrew manuscripts which make up the 39 Books of the Old Testament.
624 BC? -548 BC?: Thales of Miletus calculates the geometry of the circle. (He also discovered electricity.)
490 BC: Greeks defeat the Persians at the Battle of Marathon
486 BC: Spurius Cassius of Rome passes First Agrarian Law (land reform).
483 BC: Buddha dies.
470 BC: Socrates was born near Athens. (He introduced the great tradition of Western philosophy. He was executed in 399 BC.)
458 BC: Ezra leads Jews from Babylon to Jerusalem.
450 BC: The Twelve Tables were ordered to be written by 10 Romans to establish the legal system of Rome. Written on bronze and wood and tablets, the laws protected the lower class (plebes) from legal abuse by the ruling class (patricians); judges alone did not have the right the interpret the law; the organization of public prosecution was promoted; injured parties were allowed compensation by guilty parties. The Twelve Tables are considered the foundation of all modern law. (The tablets were destroyed by invading Gauls in 390.)
445 BC: Nehemiah begins rebuilding of walls of Jerusalem.
440 BC: Greek philosopher Leucippus and his student Democritus puts forward the notion that all matter consists of fundamental particles called atoms; they taught that everything is composed of infinitely tiny indivisible particles called atoms.
(The word atom comes from the Greek word meaning” indivisible.”)
Hippocrates of Cos (430 BC? -377 BC?), the father of medicine, records medical cases.
Eudoxus of Cnidus (388 BC? -355 BC) theorize planetary motions.
399 BC: Socrates is required to drink hemlock to end his life after being found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens.
350 BC: Aristotle writes Meteorologica, the first book on weather.
347 BC-322 BC: Aristotle identifies and classifies living forms.
π Plato establishes a philosophy academy.
336 BC: Alexander the Great becomes King of Macedon and supreme general of Greeks.
330 BC: Darius II dies – the end of the Persian empire.
325 BC: Theophrastus, philosopher, and student of Aristotle, takes over leadership of Aristotle’s school, the Lyceum. His writings include Inquiry into Plants and the Growth of Plants. The works survived. Theophrastus is considered the founder of botany.
300 BC: The Great Wall of China was constructed in parts.
π Euclid, a Greek from Alexandria, writes Elements, introducing geometry, which means “land measurement”.
264 BC:
First Roman gladiatorial games.
240 BC: Livius Andronicus is the first Roman poet.
221 BC: China unites when the king of Ch’in, Ying Zheng, defeat the kings of the other 6 kingdoms – Zheng becomes Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China.
212 BC: Archimedes explains the area of a circle, the principles of the lever, the screw, and buoyancy.
200 BC: Completion of the Septuagint Greek Manuscripts which contain The 39 Old Testament Books AND 14 Apocrypha Books.
π The first documented food fight takes place between Greek Mathematician Archimedes, who invented the catapult, and Egyptian King Ptolemy III. At dinner, the king insisted that he found the geometry and physics of Archimedes’s design lacking in principle. Archimedes, so the story goes, says he’ll demonstrate the shortest distance between two points and starts pelting the king with olives. Ptolemy’s guards respond with fresh fruit, forcing Archimedes to surrender.
194 BC: Eratosthenes determines the size of the Earth and put forward theories of the climate.
166 BC: Maccabaean rebellion against Seleucid rule begins in Judah.
150 BC: Chinese make paper from macerated hemp fibers, and plant bark, molded over old fishnets.
141 BC: Wu of Han becomes emperor of China.
120 BC (?): Hipparchus of Rhodes (161 BC? -122 BC?) explains the pattern of the cosmos in latitude and longitude and makes triangular measurements of celestial navigation.
100 BC: The trip hammer and the use of paper developed in China.
77 BC: The Book of Esther, the last book of the Old Testament, is translated into Greek.
74 BC: Xuan of Han becomes emperor of China at age 17.
71 BC:
The Revolt of slaves and gladiators under Spartacus was crushed by consuls Pompey and Crassus.
55 BC: The Romans invade Britain.
51 BC: Rule of Queen Cleopatra in Egypt (until 30 BC). [There were seven Cleopatra in history, one became legendary.]
50 BC: Julius Caesar crosses Rubicon to battle Pompey.
π Heron of Greece invented steam power, but the leaders of the day thought that it would cause unemployment which may lead to unrest, and the invention, well, ran out of steam.
48 BC: Yuan of Han becomes emperor of China.
π The library of Alexandria was destroyed by fire during a battle between Julius Caesar and Ptolemy XIII.
45 BC: Rome bans all vehicles from within the city – and in other cities vehicles, including horses, were allowed only at night – because of traffic jams.
π The Julian calendar was introduced.
44 BC: Julius Caesar was assassinated.
37 BC: Marc Antony marries Cleopatra.
33 BC: Cheng of Han becomes emperor of China – he is known as a womanizer but did not leave an heir, dying in 7 BC of an aphrodisiac overdose.
30 BC: Suicide of Antony and Cleopatra
π Horace of Rome completes his Book of Epodes.
19 BC: Roman poet Virgil completes the Aeneid.
7 BC: Ai of Han is made emperor of China.
6 BC: Probable year that Jesus Christ was born, perhaps in March.
4 BC: The earliest known reference to the Scots was made by the Greek Pretanoi, who refers to their practice of painting faces or tattooing associated with the bluish dye known as woad.
1 BC:
π Nine-year-old Ping of Han is made emperor of China – he is poisoned six years later.
π The revised Julian calendar was introduced (on March 1).
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