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Egypt: I Dynasty: Ara (menes), Djer wadj, Den Adjib, Semerkhet, Qu’a

Egypt: The Thinite Age

Stonehenge: First attempt to predict lunar positions

The people who built Stonehenge were not an agricultural society. They had been farmers before, but had abandoned cereal cultivation and returned, around 3300 BC, to hazelnut harvesting and livestock farming as their primary sources of sustenance. They consciously valued cereal cultivation and consciously decided

The first religious beliefs were born in the Indus Valley, which would become one of the components of Hinduism.

Egypt. Invention of logogram writing (hieroglyphics), immediately after the invention of writing by the Sumerians. The geographical and temporal proximity of the two events, and the fact that the Egyptian invention arose suddenly (unlike the long gestation of the Sumerian one), suggests that the Egyptian

The invention and use of a complete writing system by the Sumerians in the Fertile Crescent. The cuneiform system, written from left to right and top to bottom, is the oldest known writing system and one of only two confirmed instances of independent invention of

The Sumerian civilization used an advanced writing system, the first in the world. It is one of only two certain instances of independent invention of writing. The other occurred in Mesoamerica (present-day Mexico) around 600 BC. The Semitic alphabet used names for things to recall

In Eurasia and North Africa, civilizations existed with writing, centralized governments, cities, the use of metals, the use of domesticated animals, and agriculture to produce surplus food. Nothing comparable existed on other continents. It emerged slowly and only partially in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa

Apricots were cultivated in China, and spread to Europe (first Italy and then Greece) at the beginning of the Christian era, thanks to the Romans, after the conquest of Armenia. Linnaeus believed the apricot (Prunus armeniaca) to be originally from Armenia, while other scholars believed

Native to China, where it has been cultivated for over 5,000 years, the peach tree (Prunus persica vulgaris) later spread to Syria, Persia (from which it takes its name), and Greece, where it was already known by the 4th century BC. This crop arrived in

First archaeological evidence of nation-states taking prisoners. (Previously, hunter-gatherer tribes, lacking sufficient means of subsistence for all, killed them.) Mesopotamian states solved the problem of using prisoners for useful labor by gouging out their eyes to blind them and thus prevent them from escaping, and

Full development of the Sumerian city-states

Eastern Anatolia. The city of Arslantepe flourishes, modeled on Uruk in Mesopotamia. But Arslantepe sees the rise of a warrior aristocracy with a new aesthetic of hand-to-hand combat, often depicted and extolled with swords and spearheads finely crafted from arsenic-rich copper. The site of Arslantepe

Uruk (present-day Warka, Iraq, the biblical Erech) is a 200-hectare city with between 20,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, which remained populated and flourishing for 3,000 years. It boasts nine monumental buildings and the use of writing for accounting in the city’s temples. Uruk, unlike the Ukrainian

The Egyptians introduced a symbol for the number 10, simplifying the writing of large numbers.

Black Sea area. First evidence of the wheel in Europe, a Sumerian invention only a hundred years earlier.

First evidence (from chemical analysis) of the use of wine in Mesopotamia and at Hajji Firuz Tepe in Iran

Andes and Amazonia, present-day Ecuador, Peru, and Amazonian Brazil. Domestication begins, also understood as the selection of the most suitable species and thus the involuntary genetic modification of the species, of plants like potatoes, and animals like the llama and the Guinea pig. All this

Mesoamerica, now Mexico. Domestication begins, also understood as the selection of the most suitable species and therefore the involuntary genetic modification of the species, of plants like corn and beans, and animals like turkey. All this allowed human groups to form villages, have surpluses to

Eurasia. The invention of the wheel in the Fertile Crescent spread rapidly east and west across Eurasia, thanks to the absence of significant natural obstacles. Within a few centuries, it had spread throughout Eurasia. The situation was drastically different in the Americas: the wheel was

Domestication of the grape vine

Humans learn to extract and work copper. This element possesses some unique properties that have been exploited by man in the past: first and foremost, its color; it is the only red metal, comparable to gold, the only other colored metal. Furthermore, its malleability, making

Probable founding of Palmyra, in present-day Syria. For two thousand years, it was little more than a village of sun-baked bricks and rammed earth, used as a seasonal residence by 17 local tribes. It was during the Roman Empire that this village became a city

Domestication of the first fruit trees, such as olives, figs, walnuts, dates, and grapevines. Compared to cereals and legumes, they have the distinct disadvantage of not starting to bear fruit until at least three years after planting, and not reaching full production for another ten

Thanks to the technology of deep-sea vessels, the Caribbean islands were reached and populated by the American Indians.

The first evidence of human dairy consumption was found in 2019 through analysis of the composition of dental calcifications from 8,000-year-old human remains.

First form of organized mathematics, attributed to the Babylonians

The Egyptians already used a 365-day solar calendar (12×30+5 added by Thoth).

Homo Sapiens Sapiens (first written records)

Beginning of the Byzantine Era (abolished in Russia only in 1700)

landslide of 25 cubic kilometers broke away from the eastern slope of Etna and fell into the Ionian Sea; it generated a tsunami with waves up to 50 meters high that traveled at 700 km/h and even devastated the coasts of present-day Israel (the coastal

The Laurentide Ice Sheet, a gigantic glacier that reaches up to 3 km in thickness in central-northern Canada, is rapidly melting and letting out, from beneath, the waters of Lake Agassiz, a huge lake of 163,000 cubic km (twice the size of the Caspian Sea)

Indus Valley, present-day India. Domestication begins, also understood as the selection of the most suitable species and thus the involuntary genetic modification of the species, of various plants such as sesame and eggplant, and of animals such as cows. All this allows human groups to

Mexico. Corn and squash are plant species domesticated by humans through agriculture. But they would only become staples of the local diet 5,000 years later. Even in the eastern forests of North America, seed crops were already present by 3,000 BC, but serious agriculture did

First permanent agriculture

The spread of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent is primarily due to a few factors: the Mediterranean climate, characterized by short, wet winters and long, hot, dry summers. This leads to the natural selection of annual species, which wither and die in the dry season;

The Neolithic Age begins: the spread of livestock farming and agriculture

Cyprus. The strait-tusked elephant (an island version of the African elephant weighing just 200 kg) and the lesser spotted hippopotamus (the smallest known hippopotamus) became extinct on the island of Cyprus, the last European (or near-European) outpost of these animals, almost simultaneously with the arrival

Cave hyenas are beginning to become extinct across Europe.

Crossover diversity point: diversity on land exceeds that in the seas.