By Raza Mehdi
June 15, 2022
Ancient Sumer, an area in Mesopotamia, is famous for fostering the first civilizations in human history. By about 4500 BC, the Sumerians could cultivate crops in such excess that they could forge the world’s first cities. The ancient Sumerians are also credited with creating the written word: over 5,000 years ago.
4500 BC to 1900 BC
The roots of the Indus Valley civilization can be traced back to about 7000 BC, when people began building villages throughout the Indus River Valley in present-day India and Pakistan. Although the Sumerians invented cities, the people of the Indus Valley perfected them around 3300 BC.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
3300 BC to 1300 BC
The Egyptians thrived for thousands of years under the pharaohs and found fame for their advances in several fields of knowledge. They possessed a vast knowledge of arithmetic, astronomy and anatomy, and were credited with inventing medical surgery.
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3100 BC to 30 BC
The Yellow River Valley of China fostered one of the world’s oldest civilizations. The first farming settlements appeared there around 5000 BC, and from these modest foundations grew a centralized government. Starting with the Xia (2070-1600 BC), several successive dynasties dominated Chinese civilization.
2070 BC to AD 220
The Mayans found the sky fascinating. They built large observatories and made meticulous records of planetary movement with a system of writing that combined pictorial and phonetic characters.
1000 BC to AD 1520
Ancient Greece was known for its art, architecture and philosophy. Archaic Greece saw advances in art, poetry and technology, but is known as the age in which the polis, or city-state, was invented.
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1100 BC to AD 140
Though Rome began as a modest village along the banks of the Tiber around 750 BC, it expanded into one of history’s largest empires. Rome's Pantheon and the Colosseum still stand thanks to the Romans’ innovations and their constructions testify to the skill of the era’s architects.
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750 BC to AD 470