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History Timeline BC: Before the Common Era

To fully understand what history has to offer, sometimes we need to take a couple of steps back to view its bigger picture. Perhaps, if we looked across the broad spectrum, we would realize that nothing happens by itself. No one gets ups one morning and says, "Hmm... I think I'll invent pottery or maybe even a religion today". History is where evolutionary development happens overtime.

1000000

• Paleolithic period
• Early man walks the Earth and are hunter-gatherers and dinosaurs are extinct by now.
• Beginnings of ritualistic funerals and understanding of the Earth.

170000

• Use of crude stone tools like hand-axes

45000

• Neanderthal carvings on Wooly Mammoth tooth found near Tata in Hungary

35000

• Early hunting weapons like the Laurel Leaf spear

30000

• Ivory horse is the oldest known animal carving of mammoth ivory -Vogelherd Germany
• Venus of Willendorf made between 30000 and 25000 and is thought to be a Goddess statue. Interest in Her as well as other Venus Figures have resurfaced due to Neopaganism
• The Bering Strait gives access to the Americas to many migrating tribes.

28000

• Cro-Magnon markings of phases of the moon found on a carved bone discovered at Blanchard France.

27000 - 23000

• Dolni Vestoni

25000 - 12000

• More"Venus" figurines emerge in Europe. The data collected about these figurines from both within Europe and the Near-East suggest that the figurines could have been used for a variety of purposes. The most supported theory utilizes the figurines for reasons of trade rather than for any religious or magical use.

18000

• Chauvet cave France

15000

• Lascaux cave paintings

14000 - 10000

• Altamira Cave Paintings

12000

• Mesolithic Period

10000

• First agricultural villages
• Invention of the bow and arrow
• Engraved antler baton depicting a seal salmon and plants discovered in Montgaudier France.
• First animals are domesticated -dog and reindeer
• Earliest pottery found in Japan

10000 - 6000

• Dravidian Religion is practiced. The earliest roots of Hinduism. They practice stone worship later called Sivalinka.

8000

• Neolithic Period

8000 - 6500

• Agricultural Revolution begins: the development of settled societies due to the discovery of agriculture. Each area of the world has it own dates as when it began

8000 - 3100

• In Mesopotamia tokens for accounting and recording keeping existed.

7000

• Peoples in the Ancient Near East develop agriculture

6500 - 5650

• Catal Hulyuk Mesopotamian agriculture settlement.

6000

• Jericho
• Crop-growing and stock rearing is a regular part of existence
• Large communities have formed-towns and cities.

5000

• Rice cultivation in China

5000 - 2700

• Yangshao culture China

4500

• Neolithic Revolution in Western and central Europe

4300 - 3200

• Harappan developed farming Communities in the Indus Valley

4000 - 2200

• Hinduism one of the oldest religions is practiced

4000

• Indo European migration begins; starting in the regions around the Caspian Sea.
• The Culture of Vra

3500

• Sumerians settle in Mesopotamia
• Writing - pictographs of financial accounts written on clay tablets exist in Sumer

3500 - 2000

• Longsham culture China

3400 - 3100

• Inscription on Mesopotamian tokens overlaps with pictography

3200

• Upper and Lower Egypt united by Menes the First Pharaoh
• Harappan urbanization begins somewhere between 3200 and 2600

3100 - 2686

• Early Egyptian Dynastic Period

3000

• Domestication of sheep, cattle and water buffalo in China
• Pharoah is worshipped by the Egyptians

3000 - 500

• Late Archaic Period in the Americas

2900

• Irrigation and drainage projects in Egypt

2800 - 2340

• Beginnings of Sumerian classification of city-states.
• Innin and Tammuz are the chief Sumerian deities

2750

• Stonehenge in England was built in stages. The earliest inner ring of the Blue stones predates the Egyptian Pyramids.

2686 - 2181

• The Old Kingdom in Egyptian history

2650 - 575

• Hieroglyphics become standardized

2600

• Pyramid building begins.
• Scribes employed in Egypt.

2600 - 2000

• Harappan Civilization well established culture

2500

• Great Pyramids built and the Sphinx altered at Gizah
• The beginnings of the Isis and Osiris in Egypt.
• The Snake and the Bull are chief religious symbols in Minoan Crete
• Ishtar worship prominent in Mesopotamia

2400

• In India: Engraved seals for identifying the writer

2300

• Weakening of pharaoh's central authority

2250

• Copper working

2200

• Date of the oldest found document written on papyrus

2085

• Abraham the founder of Judaism

2000

• Marduk is worshipped as the chief god of Babylon
• The "Book of the Dead" 18th dynasty of Egypt

2000

• Aryans invade the cities of the Indus Valley

2000 - 1900

• Harappan Civilization collapses

1900 - 1600

• The Babylonian Empire

1800

• Celto-Ligurian culture

1600

• Bronze Ages
• After the fall of the Harappan Civilization, between 1600 and 1000 saw the great architecture of Mahabharata, Viz, Hastinapur, Dwarka and Hulas. It was also the time of the great epics like Vedas.

1523 - 1027

• Shang dynasty

1500

• Phoenician alphabet
• Bronze Age in Scandinavia
• Brahmanism

1500 - 700

• Poverty Point Culture

1400

• Oldest record of writing in China inscribed on bone.

1385

• Ikhnaton attempts to establish monotheism in Egypt with the worship of Anton the sun god, however he failed.

1270

• Syrian scholar compiles an encyclopedia

1250

• Moses receives the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai

1200

• Urnfield lts

1200 - 1000

• The Age of the Judges in Israel

1200 - 750

• The Era of the Smaller Civilizations

1027 - 771

• Zhou dynasty

1000

• Aryans migrate into Ganges Valley
• Proto Germanic people settle in the general area of modern Scandinavia and begin to develop a linguistic /cultural / religious identity separate from that of general Indo-European stock.
• Development of the traditional Greek pantheon.

900

• China has an organized postal service for government use

850 - 800

• Homer's Illiad and Odyssey

800

• Hesiod's Theogony

775

• Greeks develop a phonetic alphabet that is written from left to right

770 - 256

• Later Zhou dynasty

701

• The Prophet Isaiah

630 - 553

• Zarathustra (Zoroaster) founder of Zoroastrianism in Persia

611 - 545

• Anaximander and Anaximenes

599

• Mahavira founder of Jainism

585

• The Prophet Jeremiah
• Thales of Miletus begins the development of philosophy by speculating about the nature of the"cosmos."

563 - 483

• The Life and Teaching of Sidhartha Gautama

550

• Lao Tzu founder of Taoism

535 - 475

• Heraclitus of Ephesus

530

• Xenophanes of Colophon
• A library in Greece

500

• Iron Age begins in Scandinavia
• Greek telegraph system: via trumpets, drums, shouting, beacon fires, smoke, signals, and mirrors.
• Persia has a long distance communication in a form of a pony express.
• Chinese scholars write on bamboo with reeds dipped in pigment inks.

500 - 480

• Pythagoras of Samos

500 - 200

• Celtic rule throughout most of Continental Europe
• East Germanic peoples (Goth, Burgundians ...) migrate from Scandinavia to Eastern Europe, settling in the Steppes and Black Sea area.
• West Germanic peoples migrate south into the area of modern Germany, displacing the Celts who had previously ruled the region.
• The Proto-Germanic language is dividing into North Germanic (Old Norse which becomes Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese and others); West Germanic (Continental Germanic and Anglo Saxon: which becomes English, Yiddish, and Dutch) and East Germanic (Gothic with no surviving modern language)

475

• Parmenides

469 - 399

• Socrates

427 - 347

• Plato

400

• Chinese write on silk and wood.

390

• "Western Europe" concept enters History between 390 to 500 AD

384 - 322

• Aristotle

273 - 237

• The Reign of Asoka: India

250 - 100

• development of the runes

220

• End of the Han Dynasty

200

• Books written on parchment and vellum.
• Tipao gazettes are circulated to Chinese officials. (First Newspaper?)

180 - 284

• Crisis of Third century Rome

150

• The Buddhism Canon is put to writing

150 - 100

• Germans meet the Romans mutually hate.

140 - 87

• Han China at its largest territorial extent under the Emperor Wu Ti.

130

• Rome establishes its dominion in the Mediterranean

101

• Cimbri and Teutones invade Italy

100

• Rise of Mahayana Buddhism
• between 100 BC to 500 AD sacrificing/executing people in bogs is carried out regularly in Scandinavia especially Denmark

98 - 117

• Roman Empire at its largest territorial extent under the Emperor Trajan.

59

• Julius Caesar orders postings of Acta Diurna

55 - 54

• Julius Caesar military expedition into Britain

47

• Varro's Human and Divine Antiquities

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Edited: 2011.05.01
© 1999-2011 Hypatia Hyland