The Phoenicians use an alphabet of 22 letters, all consonants

Hammurabi’s law code in Babylon, Mesopotamia

Egypt: The Middle Kingdom

Aryan populations (perhaps originating from the Baltic regions) begin to settle in India

Positional numbering in Mesopotamia

Maximum splendor of the Minoan civilization in Crete

The 14 generations after the Deportation to Babylon: Jeconiah, Salathrel, Zerubbabel, Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, Zadok, Achim, Eliud, Eleazar, Mattau, Jacob, Joseph-Mary, Jesus.

Jacob became the father of 12 sons (the twelve patriarchs): his wife Leah gave birth to Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun; his wife Rachel gave birth to Joseph and Benjamin; Bilhah, Rachel’s servant, gave birth to Dan and Naphtali; Zilpah, Leah’s servant, gave birth to Gad and Asher.

Abraham, born in Ur of the Chaldeans, son of Terah, who is the son of Shem, who is the son of Noah; Abraham goes up the Euphrates and goes to Haran and Urpha in Anatolia and then to Hebron, Mecca, Egypt; when Abraham is 99 years old, his servant Hagar bears him a son: Ishmael; the following year his wife Sarah bears him another son: Isaac, the father of Jacob Israel; the Jews claim to be descendants of Isaac and Muhammad claims to be a descendant of Ishmael; Abraham died at the age of 175; Abraham: Jews, Christians and Muslims still venerate him as a patriarch.

After the flood, children were born to Noah’s sons:

Noah lived 500 years and fathered Shem, Ham, Japheth.

At 182 years old, Lamech fathered Noah; Lamech lived another 595 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

At 187 years old, Methuselah fathered Lamech; Methuselah lived another 782 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

At 65, Enoch fathered Methuselah; Enoch lived another 300 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

At 90 years old, Enos fathered Kenan; Enos lived another 815 years and fathered other sons and daughters.

Egypt: IX-X Dynasty

Egypt: The First Intermediate Period: 7th-8th Dynasty

First Chinese Dynasty (Xia Dynasty)

The city of Nabada is suddenly abandoned

Comet Hale-Bopp passes close to Earth. It will pass again in 1997 AD (I saw it), then in 4385 AD. In 2215 BC, its passage may have been noted and recorded by the Egyptians in the Pepi Pyramid at Saqqara, built during that period. It contains a reference to the “star nhh,” meaning “long-haired star,” which would accompany the pharaoh across the sky.

Beginning of civilization in Greece

Domestication of bees in Egypt

First enamelled objects.

First use of metals

First evidence of the existence of the game of dice

Beginning of civilization in India (Harappan culture)

Glass objects spread rapidly in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

First glass objects in Babylon

Genetic evidence (a study published in “Science”) shows that all Iberian hunter-gatherer males were replaced around 2500 BC by immigrants from Central Europe and the Russian steppes. This is the result of a genetic analysis conducted on hundreds of individuals spanning 8,000 years of Iberian history. It shows that the genes of the original Iberian Y chromosome disappear from 2500 BC onward. This occurred in present-day Portugal, Gibraltar, and Spain, with the exception of the Basque Country in the north of the country, where the genes of the original Iberians are still present.

The Sumerian kings use cuneiform extensively to issue decrees, and the priests to record oracles, and the less exalted people to write personal letters… At the same period hieroglyphics in Egypt are used for the same purpose.

Mesopotamia. The first coin is minted, actually an 8.33-gram piece of silver, thus the first money without intrinsic value (the barley used as payment by the Sumerians for five centuries is edible, but silver is not).

The Chinese introduce the abacus, which will be used in China until the 1982 census (AD)

China. According to legend, Princess Hsi-ling-shih, concubine of Emperor Huang-ti, discovered that she could spin a thin, delicate silk thread from the cocoon of an insect that had fallen into her tea. This silk thread is the small gray larva of the Bombyx mori moth, which feeds on the leaves of the mulberry tree (Morus alba). It lays 500 eggs in five days and then dies. One gram of these eggs produces a thousand silkworms, which consume 36 kilograms of mulberry leaves, producing 200 grams of raw silk. Silk became one of China’s main exports, along with porcelain. Despite countless Western attempts to imitate and copy both silk and porcelain, the Chinese managed to keep the secret for millennia, in the case of silk, and for centuries (perhaps dating back to at least 202 BC).

Egypt: V Dynasty: Userkaf (2510-2500), Sahura (2500-2490), Neferirkara (2490-2480), Sheiseskara (2480-2470), Neferefra (2470-2460), Niuserra (2460-2430), Menkaumor (2430-2420), Djedkara (2420-2380), Unis (2380-2350), Egypt: VI Dynasty: Thetis (2350-2320), Userkara, Pepy I (2320-2300), Merenra I (2300-2293), Pepy II (2293-2200), Merenra II (2200), Nitocris (2200-2195)

Egypt: IV Dynasty: Snofru (2630-2606), Cheops (2606-2583), Didufri (2583-2575), Chephren (2575-?), Menkaure (2535-2517), Shepseskaf (?-510)

Egypt: The Old Kingdom: III Dynasty: Sanakht (nebka?) (2700-2680), Djoser (2680-2650), Sekhemkhet (2650-2640), Vamba (2640-2635), Huni (2635-2630),

Egypt: The first great stone pyramids are built (Cheops, Chephren, Menkaure)

Egypt: The Great Pyramid of Cheops is the First Wonder of the Ancient World; it will remain the world’s tallest building for 46 centuries.

Beginning of civilization in Crete (Knossos)

The city of Nabada was founded in the north-east of present-day Syria; other cities contemporary with it were: Cagash, Umma, Ur, Urk in present-day Iraq, and Chuera, Ebla, Mari, Nagar, Tuttul in the north of present-day Syria, Troy in Asia Minor and Byblos in present-day Lebanon.

Lech River Valley, Bavaria, present-day Germany. Dozens of buried bodies were discovered in 2020, showing evidence of exclusive social elites, with some bodies covered in bronze and gold ornaments and artifacts, while others were completely unadorned. There are also bodies of women of high social status.

Egypt: II Dynasty: Hotepsekhemuy, Nebra, Nynetjer, Senedj, Peribsen, Sekhemib, Krasekhemuy

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 to prefer another lifestyle. Stonehenge, moreover, indicates some kind of coordination across large areas of the British Isles, without finding evidence of specific kings or queens.

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 invention was by idea diffusion and not independent.

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 writing. The other occurred in Mesoamerica (present-day Mexico) around 600 BC. All other alphabetic writing systems (Cherokee, Cretan Linear A7B, Phoenician, Korean, Greek, Roman, Etruscan, etc.) or logograms (Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese kanji, etc.) are likely derived from or inspired by one of the previous two. The only question is whether Chinese and Egyptian writing systems arose independently or through “idea diffusion,” that is, invented from scratch but inspired by the Sumerian idea.

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 the sequence of the alphabet, which has remained very similar: aleph = ox, beth = house, gimel = camel, daleth = door, etc. for a, b, g, d, etc., which then became alpha, beta, gamma, delta, etc. in Greek. Then the Romans replaced the “g” with a c and invented a new “g” in a different position.

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 over the next five millennia. And it never emerged spontaneously and indigenously in Australia. Scholar Jared Diamond identifies the causes, not specifically in the aptitudes or genes of the populations, but rather in the geographic and climatic characteristics of the territory and the opportunities it offered.

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 it to be Transcaucasia. It is currently believed that this important fruit species originated in Turkestan, where it grows wild up to 2,000 meters above sea level.

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 Italy in the 1st century BC, while it was introduced to America by Spanish colonizers.