The Lombard king Aistulf is again defeated by the Franks, allies of the Pope; King Aistulf will die shortly after the acceptance of the peace treaty that provides for the cession of Ravenna.

Caliph al-Mansur receives from the Byzantine Emperor the version of Euclid’s Elements that Hypatia and her father Theon had worked on in the 5th century. It will be translated into Arabic and thus passed down to subsequent generations.

France. Carolingian dynasty (Carolingiens) with 31 sovereigns: Pepin le Bref (Peppino the Short), Carloman I, Charlemagne (Charles I, crowned Emperor of the West by Pope Leo III in Rome on 25 December 800), Louis I le Pieux (Louis I the Pious), Charles II le Chauve (Charles II the Bald), Louis II le Begue (Louis II the Bald), Louis III (Louis III the Young), Charles II, Charles le Gros, Eudes, Charles III le Simple, Robert I, Raoul, Louis IV d’Outre-mer, Lothaire, Louis V le Faineant, Hugues Capet, Robert II le Pieux, Henri I, Philippe I the Just, Louis VI Le Gros, Louis VII le Jeune (Louis VII the Younger), Philippe II Auguste, louis VIII le Lion, Louis IX ou Saint Louis, Philippe III le Hardi (Philip III the Bold), Philippe IV le Bel, Louis X le Hutin (Louis

The Lombard king Astolfo conquers Ravenna; here he will reside in the Palace of the Exarch and mint Byzantine-style coins.

Charlemagne, of the Carolingian dynasty and grandson of Charles Martel, was the first ruler of the Holy Roman Empire (Central Europe from Northern Italy, the Balkans to France, Germany).

The nomadic people of the Magyars settled in Hungary. The origins of these populations are not known with certainty but it is thought that they were of Hunnic origin.

Buddhism and Shinto have completely merged and established themselves in Japan.

The Toltecs invade the Mayan territory of Teotihuacan

Arabs from Al-Andalus, Spain, cross the Pyrenees and flood into Septimania

Islamic mathematicians and astronomers reintroduce trigonometry (already known to the Greeks, who also knew spherical trigonometry)

The Arabs, having passed into Spain from North Africa, overthrew the Visigothic kingdom

The Islamic Empire conquers Türkiye and Spain, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar and annihilating the Visigothic army and its king, Rodrigo

The Islamic conquest of Central Asia begins. Arab soldiers convert the city of Bukhara, in Uzbekistan, to Islam first.

Tajikistan. Arab invaders raze the city of Pendgikent, the cultural capital of the Sogdian civilization.

The Umayyads rule the Sunnis from Damascus and expand Islamic dominions from Iberia to the Punjab.

Death of Muhammad. Beginning of the era of the caliphs (literally, successors).

The Indian mathematician Brahmagupta wrote the astronomy treatise “Brahma-Sphuta-Siddhanta” in which among other things he defined zero

Muhammad completes the Hijrah. On September 24, 622, the Prophet Muhammad escaped death by completing the Hijrah, or “flight” from Mecca to Medina. Mecca is the birthplace of the great prophet and the sacred heart of Islam. In 610, in a cave on Mount Hira, north of the city, Muhammad had a vision in which God commanded him to become a prophet of the “true religion.” His following in the city was larger, and the authorities, concerned about his rise, plotted to kill him. Having escaped the plot, Muhammad reached Medina on September 24. There he founded and organized the Islamic community. In 630, he returned to Mecca as a conqueror. The Hijrah subsequently marked the beginning (year 1) of the Muslim calendar.

T’ang Dynasty in China: The practice of koan meditation (11,700 riddles and paradoxes) develops. In China, the Tang Dynasty also ushers in a Chinese Renaissance that lasts from 618 to 907. There will also be an Islamic Renaissance between 750 and 1260. And then the European Renaissance, which will intersect with the globalization of trade. During the T’ang Dynasty in China, the Chinese send troops to support the kingdom of India. After the intervention, centuries of mutual trade and peace will follow between the two countries.

Paqal, the Mayan ruler, reigns for 70 years and restores the empire and its buildings and has new ones built.

Arabia, Muhammad (Mohammed – ben – Abdallah) begins to preach in Mecca

Aethelberht (King of the Britons) converts to Christianity and Augustine is appointed Archbishop of Canterbury

The Anglo-Saxons control almost all of present-day England

Western Europe has a population of 14.7 million. Their population continued to increase around the year 1000, and until 1300, when they dropped dramatically due to the bubonic plague.

The Kingdom of Kent converts to Christianity; the rest of England will convert by 650

Modena. The Lombards reconquer the city from the Byzantines and establish a garrison of Bavarian soldiers there, in the place now called Baggiovara.

The Lombards dominated Italy: Pavia was the Lombard capital; the Kingdom was divided into Longobardia Major (in turn divided into a western area, or Neustria, and an eastern one, or Austria) and Longobardia Minor in central and southern Italy. The border in Northern Italy, first with the Byzantines and then with the Kingdom of the Church, ran between Modena and Bologna.

Northern Italy. The Lombard invasion forced thousands of wealthy families to leave the mainland and move to the lagoons. Some trace the birth of several villages in the future Venetian lagoon to this period, which later merged to form Venice itself.

The city of Teotihuacan in Mexico was abandoned. However, social tensions had long been simmering between the different ethnic groups, which by 550 AD had torn the city’s social fabric apart. Things disintegrated from within, and the population dispersed into the surrounding territories, just as rapidly as the city had emerged more than five centuries earlier. It had begun its urban growth more than five centuries earlier. Entire populations had crossed the Puebla Valley and the Basin of Mexico to escape the effects of seismic activity on its southern borders, including a Plinian eruption of the Popocatepetl volcano. Some of the abandoned villages brought with them their own culture, which would characterize Teotihuacan: for example, Cuicuilco had a tradition of building pyramids (think of the incredible Step Pyramids of the Moon and the Sun in Teotihuacan), while in Tetimpa, archaeologists have unearthed houses resembling those in Teotihuacan. The city was able to somehow manage the manpower and organization to build the pyramids (all without pack animals or metal tools). All these monumental constructions required sacrifices: in the two pyramids and the temple, the human remains of hundreds of victims of ritual killings were found, including remains of newborns at the corners of the Pyramid of the Sun, and those of foreign prisoners, some of them mutilated or decapitated. The city of Teotihuacan initially took an authoritarian path, only to then, around 300 AD, drastically deviate towards an egalitarian one, without a military, religious, or administrative leadership. With the egalitarian shift, construction of the pyramids suddenly stopped, but they continued to be used until 550 AD, albeit for less lethal purposes, unknown to us, before being abandoned to the forest that would eventually engulf them. During the egalitarian period, Teotihuacanha had more than decent stone houses for every family, not just the wealthy and privileged: complete sewer systems, finely plastered walls and floors, a comfortable lifestyle with a diet of corn tortillas, eggs, turkey, rabbit meat, and a milky drink called pulque, made from the fermentation of the thorny agave plant. We can certainly rule out any kind of top-down organization, although there may have been some sort of neighborhood councils.

The Angles attack again and push the remaining Romano-British into Wales, Cornwall and Scotland.

Third cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland, with consequences in Europe (the first was in 536, the second in 540).

The Plague of Justinian. The bubonic plague reaches Europe. It is likely the first true pandemic in history, considering the known world, in the Mediterranean basin. It has been reconstructed that the plague originated in the Nile region, then spread thousands of kilometers in 18 successive waves, lasting until the year 755, when it disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as it had arrived. A key moment will be the year 590, when the plague reaches Rome, the capital of Christianity, which, according to tradition, is saved in extremis by the Archangel Michael. The archangel, sheathing his sword after banishing the plague, is commemorated by the statue on Hadrian’s Mole. The building is called Castel Sant’Angelo. The plague sometimes provokes a surge in religiosity, but sometimes also pushes in the opposite direction: how can the death of so many innocent children be justified? Some were led to the terrifying conclusion that there could be no God. It is not atheism, perhaps, but a silent, mostly unexpressed desperation, a psychological shock.

Plague ravages the British Isles

After the terrible 536, in 541 the bubonic plague arrived in the port of Pelusium in Egypt, Eastern Roman Empire.

A brief episode of extreme cold occurs for several years in China, North America and Europe