The Argives and Athenians defeat the Spartans at Oenoe

The Spartans defeat the Athenians at Tanagra

Democritus of Abdera: atoms move in a vacuum

Democritus of Abdera: atoms as indivisible units: “Only atoms and energy exist; everything else is opinion.”

The ancient Egyptians believed that the Sun was a glowing ball of fire.

All respectable Greek philosophers and mathematicians considered the Earth to be spherical.

Sparta: The Spartan leader Pausanias accused of treason is walled up alive in a temple

Battle of Mycale between Persians and Greeks

Naval clash at Salamis (near Athens) between Greeks and Persians: Greek victory despite clear inferiority, fundamental contribution was given by the unclassified rowers of Themistocles

Battle of Marathon between Persians and Greeks: The Persians land in Attica but are defeated by the Athenians in the Battle of Marathon, led by Militiades, who deploys his largest troops on the flanks, leaving a small group in the center as a target for the Persian archers, who are then powerless in close combat when they attack the flanks. News of the victory is brought to Athens by the hoplite Pheidippides, who runs 42 kilometers. Pheidippides runs the entire distance without stopping; after shouting the announcement of Athenian victory over the Persians, “Nike, Nike” (“Victory, victory”), the herald collapses to the ground, exhausted by the effort.

The Persians have the last chance to nip in the bud the Hellenistic culture, the embryo of Western culture, before the Greek program, made of constitutional government, private property, broad-based militias, civilian control over the military, free scientific research, rationalism, separation between religion and politics, spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.

Pheidippides runs the first marathon

The Persians built the city of Bukhara in Central Asia, not far from Samarkand. Then came the Greeks led by Alexander the Great, who remained until the 1st century AD. Then came the Turks, the Arabs, the Mongols, the Cossacks, and finally the Bolsheviks.

Modena. The Etruscans were forced to abandon the fertile valleys they had partially reclaimed, due to an Indo-European population descending from the Western Alps: the Boii Gauls, who settled where Campo Galliano now stands. They also changed the name of the Etruscan settlement from Mutuna to Mouden. Vast reclaimed areas returned to being marshland. In 192 BC, the Gauls were defeated by the Romans, who turned Mutina (the name was changed) into an important Roman military fort.

During the 60th Olympiad, a revolt broke out in the city of Sybaris; Tellis, the victorious leader, began a barbaric persecution of the defeated, who fled to Croton, where Milo and Pythagoras (who was married to Milo’s daughter) persuaded them to oppose the tyrant. Tellis marched on Croton, but after 70 days of war, he was defeated thanks to the diversion of the Crathys River toward the city of Sybaris. In Croton, however, the division of the spoils of war and the envy of the populace led to the destruction of the Pythagorean School and the death of Pythagoras himself.

Cyrus the Great, Persian king, occupies Babylon

Buddhism is born

Approximate date of birth of Pythagoras

Anaximander

Huns in Mongolia (Hiong-Nou, Yue-Tche)

The invention and use of a complete writing system by Native Americans in Mesoamerica (present-day Mexico). This is one of only two confirmed instances of independent invention of writing. The other is by the Sumerians. The earliest evidence from Mexico is a Zapotec script from southern Mexico, but the best-understood one is from the Lowland Maya region, dated 292 AD.

Nebuchadnezzar builds the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Second Wonder of the Ancient World

Phoenician navigators circumnavigated Africa in 3 years (fact reported by Herodotus)

Beginning of the Persian Empire (which will be ended by the Empire of Alexander the Great of Macedon)

Pherecydes, mentor of Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus

In 605 BC, the Babylonians defeated the Egyptians, the last power that could stop them, at Carchemish in northern Syria. But the Egyptians refused to give up and incited the local populations to revolt. A few years earlier, in 612 BC, the Babylonians, aided by the Medes, had conquered Nineveh, the Assyrian capital. And in 609 BC, the last Assyrian king was defeated at Harran.

In 609 BC, the last Assyrian king was defeated at Harran. Three years earlier, in 609 BC, the Babylonians, aided by the Medes, had conquered Nineveh, the Assyrian capital. Finally, in 605 BC, the Babylonians defeated the Egyptians, the last power that could stop them, at Carchemish in northern Syria. But the Egyptians would not give up, and incited the local populations to revolt.

Thales of Miletus introduces the notion of mathematical demonstration

Modena. The Etruscans established a settlement in the Modena area: it would become present-day Castelvetro.

Lydia. First coins made of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver.

Traditional date of the founding of the Japanese Empire with Jinmu Tenno.

“Miyake event,” a very strong solar storm that directly impacts Earth, occurs. The event is recorded in the rings of ancient trees, which will be analyzed in 2022 in a paper published in Royal Society Publishing. Annually resolved measurements of the radiocarbon content of tree rings have revealed rare, sharp increases in carbon-14 production. These “Miyake events” are likely caused by rare increases in cosmic radiation from the Sun or other astrophysical energy sources. The paper, “Modeling cosmic radiation events in the tree-ring radiocarbon record,” is by Qingyuan Zhang, Utkarsh Sharma, Jordan A. Dennis, Andrea Scifo, Margot Kuitems, Ulf Büntgen, Mathew J. Owens, Michael W. Dee, and Benjamin J.S. Pope.

Egypt: XXVI Dynasty (Saite): Necho I (672-664), Psamtik I (664-610), Necho II (610-595), Psamtik II (595-589),

Babylon: the seven-day week was born by uniting with a 7-pointed star the planets of the Solar System as it was known at the time: Moon (Mon-day), Mercury (Wednesday), Venus (Friday), Sun (Sun-day), Mars (Mars-day), Jupiter (Giove-day), Saturn (Satur-day) and Earth in the center.

King Numa (Roman) adds Januarius and Februarius to the calendar and becomes 12 months (354 days)

Nineveh, near Mosul, Iraq. A clay tablet (Flood Tablet) is carved, with a story of a gigantic flood that closely resembles the Great Flood: it tells of the construction of a large boat made from wood from the demolished house, onto which pairs of each animal were to be loaded. This occurred approximately four centuries before the oldest Old Testament account of the Christian Bible, which tells a similar story.

The Levites write the book of Deuteronomy in the Bible

Siege of Jerusalem, Kingdom of Judah, by Sennacherib, king of Assyria

A mysterious plague decimates the Assyrian army in Jerusalem.

Assyrian ruler Sargon II conquers Samaria and the Kingdom of Israel (i.e., the northern part of Palestine, not the Kingdom of Judah to the south). As per Assyrian policy, the population is forced to mix with other conquered peoples. Hezekiah remains in his post in Jerusalem; he is not taken prisoner to Nineveh, nor does he bother to pay tribute to Sennacherib, and Jerusalem is not sacked, and perhaps not even conquered. But the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel in 722-721 BC and the siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC will profoundly affect Jewish tradition. The old Israelite religion will disappear in favor of “Judaism.”