Timeline of Civilizations
From the Akkadian Empire to the Indian Rebellion, six stages thread together the rise and fall of five thousand years of world civilization. Tap a figure’s badge to jump to its card.
Ⅰ · The Dawn of the Bronze Age
Around 3000 BC the Sumerians developed humanity’s earliest city-states and cuneiform script in Mesopotamia, and Sargon of Akkad founded the first known multi-ethnic empire in history; in the same period ancient Egypt on the Nile completed its first stone pyramid at the hands of Imhotep, architect of the temple of Amun, and thereafter passed through the rise and fall of pharaohs such as Hatshepsut, Tutankhamun, and Nefertiti, while the Old Babylonian king Hammurabi promulgated the earliest known systematic written law code.
Sargon Founds the Akkadian Empire
Sargon of Akkad, through a series of military conquests, unified the Sumerian city-states of Mesopotamia and founded the first known true multi-ethnic empire in human history, and in the same period the priestess Enheduanna wrote the earliest known named personal poetry in the world in cuneiform.
The Promulgation of the Code of Hammurabi
The Old Babylonian king Hammurabi carved over two hundred and eighty legal provisions on a basalt stele, set up publicly in a temple for all his subjects to know, and the principle of equivalent retaliation, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," became the most widely circulated spirit of this code.
The Step Pyramid and Egypt’s Architectural Revolution
The vizier Imhotep designed and built the Step Pyramid at Saqqara for the pharaoh Djoser, pioneering the large stone tomb architecture of ancient Egypt, an architectural concept later continually developed by successive pharaohs and at last achieving the grand scale of the great pyramids of Giza.
Hatshepsut and Nefertiti: Women Rulers of Egypt
Hatshepsut was crowned pharaoh as a woman, opening a prosperous heyday of trade and building; later Akhenaten’s wife Nefertiti became famous for her iconic sculpted portrait — both highly representative women of the ruling class in ancient Egyptian history who broke conventional gender roles.
The Imperial Heyday of Ramesses II
Ramesses II reigned for more than sixty years, one of the longest-reigning pharaohs of the New Kingdom and richest in architectural remains; the peace treaty he signed with the Hittite Empire is one of the earliest surviving written international peace treaties in human history, and the colossi of the Abu Simbel temple are still an iconic symbol of ancient Egyptian architectural achievement.
The Legend of the Queen of Sheba
According to the Hebrew Bible and Ethiopian tradition, the Queen of Sheba journeyed from afar to visit the court of King Solomon in Jerusalem, the two testing each other with questions of wisdom, and this legend thereafter became an important historical narrative by which the Ethiopian royal house traced its own origin.
Ⅱ · The Empires and Thought of the Axial Age
In the sixth to second centuries BC, empires and systems of thought that profoundly shaped later ages emerged almost simultaneously across Eurasia: Cyrus the Great founded a Persian empire spanning three continents by a policy of tolerance, his descendants Darius I and Xerxes I bringing the empire to its height only to be checked in the Greco-Persian Wars; the Carthaginian general Hannibal of the Mediterranean world crossed the Alps to strike at Rome; China’s Qin Shi Huang ended centuries of division and completed the grand unification with an iron hand, his successor Emperor Wu of Han further consolidating the empire and sending Zhang Qian to the Western Regions; and India’s Ashoka, after bloody conquest, converted to Buddhism and turned to compassionate governance.
Cyrus the Great’s Empire of Tolerance
Cyrus the Great conquered most of the ancient Near East by a relatively tolerant policy of governance, founding the Achaemenid Persian Empire spanning three continents and releasing the deported Jews to return to their homeland; his son Darius I systematized the empire’s administration, and his grandson Xerxes I led an expedition to Greece, checked in turn at Thermopylae and the naval Battle of Salamis.
The Rise and Fall of Babylon and Assyria
Ashurbanipal, the last powerful monarch of the Assyrian Empire, built the most systematic library of the ancient Near East at Nineveh; the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II took Jerusalem and created the "Babylonian Captivity"; the two great Mesopotamian empires declined in turn and were at last replaced by the Persian Empire of Cyrus.
Qin and Han: China’s Grand Unification
Qin Shi Huang ended the centuries of Spring and Autumn and Warring States division with harsh law, unified the script and weights and measures, and built the Great Wall; his successor Emperor Wu of Han further consolidated centralized power, honored Confucianism alone, and sent Zhang Qian to the Western Regions to open the Silk Road, while the historian Sima Qian, through the disgrace of castration, wrote the Records of the Grand Historian, systematically recording this sweeping history.
Hannibal Crosses the Alps
The Carthaginian general Hannibal led his army across the Alps to strike at the Italian mainland, annihilating a Roman army against the odds at the Battle of Cannae, yet never taking the city of Rome itself, and Carthage was at last defeated at the Battle of Zama, falling wholly into vassalage to Rome.
The Repentance of Ashoka
Ashoka of the Maurya dynasty, having witnessed terrible slaughter in the Kalinga war, was deeply stricken with remorse and turned to embrace Buddhism, thereafter spreading the ideal of compassionate governance through his pillar edicts and vigorously funding the spread of Buddhism in South Asia and beyond.
The Scientific Peak of Alexandria and Syracuse
Euclid systematically ordered geometrical knowledge at Alexandria, writing the Elements, which influenced more than two thousand years; his contemporary Archimedes studied the principles of buoyancy and the lever at Syracuse and designed defensive machines during the Roman siege, at last perishing for his absorption in a geometric figure.
Panini’s System of Sanskrit Grammar
The ancient Indian linguist Panini, in about four thousand exceedingly concise Sanskrit grammatical rules, built a logically rigorous formalized grammatical system, of so high a degree of abstraction that it is still repeatedly cited and studied by modern computational linguistics more than two thousand years later.
Ⅲ · The Roman Peace and the Two Ends of the Silk Road
In the centuries of the Roman Empire’s height, a memorable band of rebels and scholars emerged across the Mediterranean and Eurasia: Cleopatra maneuvered amid the power struggles of Rome, the slave gladiator Spartacus raised a great revolt, the Gallic leader Vercingetorix and the British queen Boudica rose in turn against Roman rule, and the Palmyrene queen Zenobia briefly held sway over the Near East; at the same time, the woman mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, China’s Ban Zhao and Zhang Heng, and India’s Aryabhata left deep marks in the intellectual traditions of East and West, while the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian sought to revive the empire’s glory, and the hooves of the Hunnic king Attila struck terror through the Roman world.
Cleopatra’s Entanglement With Rome
Cleopatra, last queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, allied in turn with Caesar and Antony, seeking to use the power struggles of Rome to maintain Egypt’s independence, but was defeated in the end in the war with Octavian, and Egypt fell to a Roman province, the last independent Mediterranean civilization of the classical age thereby ending.
The Resistance of the Gladiator and the Queens
The Thracian gladiator Spartacus led a slave army that for a time threw Rome into panic; the Gallic chief Vercingetorix united the Gallic tribes against Caesar’s conquest and was executed after his capture; the British queen Boudica rose up under cruel Roman rule and for a time took Londinium (present-day London) — three stories of resistance on different frontiers of the Roman Empire, together forming the memory of the struggle of the lower and marginal peoples of the classical world against imperial hegemony.
Zenobia and the Brief Glory of Palmyra
Zenobia, queen of the Syrian desert oasis city-state of Palmyra, expanded swiftly amid Roman civil strife, for a time occupying vast territory in Egypt and Asia Minor and briefly founding a legend of an eastern woman ruler to rival the ancient Egyptian queen, at last defeated by the Roman emperor Aurelian, her fate still variously told.
The Last Radiance of Alexandria
The woman mathematician Hypatia inherited her father’s scholarly tradition to become the most renowned teacher of Alexandria, writing important annotations on the astronomical work Ptolemy left and on Euclid’s geometry, but in 415 was brutally murdered in a religious and political conflict, a tragedy thereafter long seen as a symbol of the decline of the classical tradition of reason.
The Han Woman Historian and Inventor
Ban Zhao continued the Book of Han her brother Ban Gu left unfinished, becoming the first clearly recorded woman historian in Chinese history; her contemporary Zhang Heng invented the seismoscope and the armillary sphere and systematically expounded the "sphere-heaven" cosmology, while the Indian astronomer Aryabhata boldly proposed the conjecture of the earth’s rotation, nearly a thousand years before Copernicus.
Justinian, Attila, and Aksum
The Eastern Roman emperor Justinian sought to revive the former glory of the Roman Empire and directed the compilation of the Code of Justinian; the Hunnic king Attila led his army in repeated invasions of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, called the "Scourge of God" by the Christian tradition; and King Ezana of the East African Kingdom of Aksum converted to Christianity and established it as the state religion, becoming one of the earliest Christian state rulers in the world.
The Trung Sisters Resist the Han Dynasty
The Vietnamese Trung Sisters rose up after the elder’s husband was put to death by a Han official, briefly driving out the Han garrison and setting up an independent kingdom; and though the revolt was later suppressed, the two sisters were thereafter long seen as a symbol of the Vietnamese national spirit of resistance to foreign rule.
Ⅳ · The Middle Ages of Faith, Conquest, and Knowledge
The medieval Eurasia witnessed a grand picture woven of faith, knowledge, and force: the "House of Wisdom" of Baghdad under the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid gave rise to the mathematical breakthroughs of scholars such as al-Khwarizmi; the Tang monk Xuanzang made a daring journey west to India for the scriptures, and Wu Zetian became the only female emperor in Chinese history; Genghis Khan and his grandson Kublai Khan built the Mongol Empire spanning Eurasia, connecting the Yuan dynasty in China with the farther regions of Central Asia; and the foundation laid by Sundiata Keita, founder of the West African Mali Empire, was thereafter carried to its height by Mansa Musa.
The Golden Age of the Baghdad "House of Wisdom"
During the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid, Baghdad developed into the foremost scholarly and trade center of the world of the time, and the mathematician al-Khwarizmi systematically expounded the methods of solving algebra at the "House of Wisdom," his work and name thereafter becoming the direct etymological source of the two modern words "algebra" and "algorithm."
Xuanzang’s Westward Journey for the Scriptures
The Tang monk Xuanzang, in defiance of the court’s ban, slipped across the border and, after years of trekking, reached Nalanda in India to study, carrying a great body of Sanskrit Buddhist original texts back to Chang’an, thereafter directing the translation of over thirteen hundred scrolls of Buddhist sutras and profoundly driving the spread and development of Buddhism in East Asia.
Wu Zetian Takes the Imperial Title
Wu Zetian, through court intrigue, at last ascended to found the Wu Zhou dynasty, becoming the only universally acknowledged female emperor in Chinese history, vigorously reforming the examination system during her reign and employing many talents of humble origin.
The Whirlwind of the Mongol Empire
Genghis Khan unified the tribes of the Mongol steppe and led an unprecedented large-scale military conquest, building the largest contiguous land empire in human history; his grandson Kublai Khan thereafter founded the Yuan dynasty, completed the final unification of China, and received the Venetian merchant Marco Polo.
The Rise of the West African Mali Empire
Sundiata Keita founded the West African Mali Empire through a series of military and political maneuvers, and Mansa Musa thereafter inherited and vigorously developed this empire, the lavish gold he scattered along the way on his pilgrimage to Mecca through Timbuktu for a time crashing the price of gold in Cairo and making the wealth of the Mali Empire famous throughout the Mediterranean and Arab world.
The Global Travels of Ibn Battuta
The Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, beginning with the pilgrimage to Mecca, thereafter traveled over nearly thirty years almost the whole of the known Islamic world and beyond, a total journey of more than a hundred and ten thousand kilometers, dictating in his later years the Rihla of Ibn Battuta, the most important primary document for the study of the fourteenth-century Islamic world and the Indian Ocean trade network.
The Astronomical Measurement of the Yuan Dynasty
Guo Shoujing, commissioned by Kublai Khan to direct nationwide astronomical observation and calendar reform, set up twenty-seven observation stations across the country, and the Shoushi Calendar he compiled was ahead in precision of the great majority of calendar systems in the world of the time.
The Epic of Persia and the Map of Sicily
The Persian poet Ferdowsi spent thirty years composing the national epic the Shahnameh, carrying on the survival of Persian language and culture in pure Persian amid the wave of Arabization; the Arab geographer al-Idrisi, at the invitation of the Norman king Roger II of Sicily, drew the most precise and detailed world map of the known world of the time.
Ⅴ · The Afterglow of the Old World and the Collision of the New
In the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, the conquerors and scholars of the Old World were still active: Tamerlane, claiming to be Genghis Khan’s heir, again swept Central Asia, the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun proposed a social theory explaining the cyclical rise and fall of civilizations, and China’s Ming navigator Zheng He led a vast fleet on seven voyages; the Mughal emperor Akbar built a vast empire noted for religious tolerance in the South Asian subcontinent; yet at the same time, the two great civilizations represented by the Inca emperor Pachacuti, the Aztec emperor Montezuma II, and the last Inca emperor Atahualpa collapsed swiftly before the guns and plague brought by the Spanish conquistadors Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, one of the most drastic collisions of civilizations in human history.
Tamerlane’s Conquest of Central Asia and Samarkand
Tamerlane, claiming to be a son-in-law and heir of the golden lineage of Genghis Khan, launched a series of great military conquests reaching as far as India and Anatolia, while making his capital Samarkand a resplendent jewel of Central Asian Islamic architecture; the historian Ibn Khaldun had a historic meeting with Tamerlane during his siege of Damascus.
Zheng He’s Seven Voyages
The Ming Emperor Yongle sent the eunuch Zheng He to lead the largest oceangoing fleet in the world of the time on seven voyages, reaching Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and even the coast of East Africa, displaying the prestige of the Ming and conducting tributary trade — a peaceful oceangoing feat of unprecedented scale in the pre-modern world.
Akbar and the Religious Tolerance of the Mughal Empire
The Mughal emperor Akbar consolidated the empire’s rule through military conquest and marriage policy, abolished the poll tax levied on non-Muslim subjects, founded a "Divine Faith" fusing elements of several religions, and built in the South Asian subcontinent a vast empire noted for relative religious tolerance.
The Height and Collapse of the Inca Empire
The Inca emperor Pachacuti vigorously expanded the territory and built grand works such as the city of Cusco and Machu Picchu, bringing the Inca Empire to its height; yet less than a hundred years later the last emperor Atahualpa was captured and executed by a scheme of the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro at Cajamarca, and the vast Inca Empire fell apart in an exceedingly short time.
The Fall of the Aztec Empire
The Aztec emperor Montezuma II ruled the most powerful empire of Mesoamerica, yet collapsed swiftly before the expedition led by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and the smallpox epidemic that came with it, the capital Tenochtitlan falling, marking the beginning of the impact of European colonial power on the native civilizations of the Americas.
Ⅵ · The Resisters at the Margins of Empire
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the wave of European colonialism and industrialization swept the globe, two rulers of Africa and South Asia responded to this great historical change in utterly different ways: Shaka of the Zulu Kingdom of southern Africa, through military and social reform, made a small tribe into a powerful kingdom the colonizers too came to fear; and Rani Lakshmibai, queen of the Indian princely state of Jhansi, took up arms in person in the 1857 Indian Rebellion, becoming one of the most symbolic historical figures of India’s resistance to British colonial rule.
Shaka and the Military Innovation of the Zulu Kingdom
Shaka, by introducing the close-combat short spear "iklwa," the "buffalo horns" tactic, and a strict militarized social organization, transformed the small Zulu tribe into the most formidable military power of southern Africa in an exceedingly short time, profoundly changing the political map of the whole of southern Africa, in the period of upheaval and migration known as the "Mfecane."
Lakshmibai and the 1857 Indian Rebellion
Rani Lakshmibai, queen of the princely state of Jhansi, rose in resistance after the British East India Company sought to annex her domain, and after the outbreak of the 1857 Indian Rebellion led her army into battle on horseback in armor in person, fighting to the death, thereafter honored in the Indian nationalist narrative as the most symbolic woman hero of resistance to British colonial rule.