Ancient history is the study of significant cultural and political events from the beginning of human history until the Early Middle Ages. Although the ending date is largely arbitrary, most Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD as the traditional end of ancient history. Another term that is often used to refer to ancient history is antiquity, although this term is most often used to refer specifically to the civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000-5,500 years, with Sumerian cuneiform being the oldest form of writing discovered so far. Genetic evidence, however, points to the first appearance of human beings about 150,000 years ago. There is also a growing body of evidence that Homo sapiens first left Africa about 60,000 years ago.
The study of ancient history
The fundamental difficulty of studying ancient history is the fact that only a fraction of it has been documented, and only a fraction of those recorded histories have survived into the present day. Literacy was not widespread in any culture until long after the end of ancient history, so there were few people capable of writing histories. Even those written histories which were produced were not widely distributed; the ancients, not having the luxury of a printing press had to make copies of books by hand. The Roman Empire was one of the ancient West's most literate cultures, but many works by its most widely read historians are lost. For example, Livy, a Roman historian who lived in the 1st century BC, wrote a history of Rome called Ab Urbe Condite ("From the Founding of the City") in 142 volumes. Only 35 still survive. Historians have two major avenues which they take to better understand the ancient world: archaeology and the study of primary sources.
Archaeology
Archaeology is the study of past human civilizations by finding and interpreting human artefacts. In the study of ancient history, archaeologists excavate the ruins of ancient cities looking for clues as to how the people of the time period lived.
Some important discoveries by archaeologists studying ancient history include:
- The Egyptian pyramids - giant tombs built by the Ancient Egyptians beginning around 2600 BC as the final resting places of their royalty
- The city of Pompeii - an Ancient Roman city that was preserved by the eruption of a volcano in 79 AD; its state of preservation is so great that it is an invaluable window into Roman culture
- The Terracotta Army - the mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor in Ancient China
Primary sources
Perhaps most of what is known of the ancient world comes from the accounts of antiquity's own historians. Although it is important to take into account the bias of each ancient author, their firsthand (or primary) accounts are the basis for our understanding of the ancient past.
Some of the more notable ancient writers include:
- Herodotus
- Josephus
- Livy
- Polybius
- Suetonius
- Tacitus
- Thucydides
- Sima Qian
Chronology
Prehistory
- 10th millennium BC - invention of agriculture is the earliest given date for the beginning of Ancient Era
- 5th millennium BC-Possible introduction of writing, Tartaria tablets in the lower Danube Valley date from this period
- 4th millennium BC - First writings in the cities of Uruk and Susa (cuneiform writings); hieroglyphs in Egypt
- 33rd century BC - oldest historical documents
Important events
- 3300 BC - Bronze Age begins in the Near East, slowly spreads to the rest of Eurasia
- 3000 BC - First known use of papyrus by Egyptians
- 2580 BC - Completion of the Great Pyramid of Giza
- 2000 BC - Domestication of the horse
- 1600 BC - The beginning of Shang Dynasty in China, development of first Chinese writing system
- 1600 BC - Beginning of Hittite dominance of the Eastern Mediterranean region
- c. 1200 BC - Theorized time of the Trojan War
- c. 1180 BC - Disintegration of Hittite Empire
- 1122 BC - The Zhou people overthrow the last king of Shang Dynasty; Zhou Dynasty established in China
- 800 BC - Rise of Greek city-states
- 753 BC - Founding of Rome (traditional date)
- 751 BC - The Rise of LeChe
- 722 BC - Spring and Autumn Period begins in China; Zhou Dynasty's power is diminishing; the era of the Hundred Schools of Thought
- 653 BC - Rise of first Persian state
- c. 512 BC - Persian Empire at largest extent under Darius I
- 509 BC - Expulsion of the last King of Rome, founding of Roman Republic (traditional date)
- 490 BC - Greek city-states defeat Persian invasion at Battle of Marathon
- 404 BC - End of Peloponnesian War between the Greek city-states
- 403 BC - Warring States Period begins in China as the Zhou king became a mere figurehead; China is annexed by regional warlords
- 323 BC - Death of Alexander the Great
- 221 BC - Qin Shi Huang unifies China, end of Warring States Period; beginning of Imperial rule in China which lasts until 1912
- 202 BC - Han Dynasty established in China, after the death of Qin Shi Huang; China in this period officially becomes Confucian state and opens trading connections with the West, i.e. the Silk Road
- 202 BC - Scipio Africanus defeats Hannibal at Battle of Zama
- 149 BC-146 - Third and final Punic War; destruction of Carthage by Rome
- 146 BC - Roman conquest of Greece, see Roman Greece
- 49 BC - Roman Civil War between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great
- 44 BC - End of Roman Republic; beginning of Roman Empire
- 6 BC - Earliest theorized date for birth of Jesus of Nazareth
- 9 - Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the Roman Army's bloodiest defeat
- 14 - Death of Emperor Augustus (Octavian), ascension of his adopted son Tiberius to the throne
- 68 - Year of the four emperors in Rome
- 117 - Roman Empire at largest extent under Emperor Trajan
- 220 - Three Kingdoms period begins in China after the fall of Han Dynasty
- 285 - Emperor Diocletian splits the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western Empires
- 313 - Edict of Milan declared that the Roman Empire would be neutral toward religious worship
- 378 - Battle of Adrianople, Roman army is defeated by the Germanic tribes
- 395 - Roman Emperor Theodosius I outlaws all pagan religions in favour of Christianity
- 410 - Alaric sacks Rome for the first time since 390 BC
- 476- Romulus Augustus, last Western Roman Emperor is forced to abdicate by Odoacer, a half Hunnish and half Scirian chieftain of the Germanic Heruli; Odoacer returns the imperial regalia to Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno in Constantinople in return for the title of dux of Italy; most frequently cited date for the end of ancient history
End of ancient history in Europe
The date used as the end of the ancient era is entirely arbitrary and is a matter of some dispute amongst historians. Some other dates that are given for the end of antiquity are:
- 293 - reforms of Roman Emperor Diocletian
- 395 - the division of Roman Empire into the Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire
- 476 - the fall of Western Roman Empire
- 529 - closure of Platon Academy in Athens by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I
- 622 - Muhammad travels to Medina
- 962 - coronation of Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XII, the translatio imperii
Some prominent civilizations of ancient history
Europe and the Mediterranean
- Ancient Egypt
- Ancient Greece
- Ancient Rome
- Carthage
- Etruscans
- Hittites
- Phoenicia
East Asia
- Ancient China
- Ancient Japan
- Ancient Korea
Central and Southwest Asia
- Ancient India
- Ancient Persia
- Assyria
- Babylonia
- Indus Valley civilization
- Kingdom of Judah
- Mesopotamia
- Mitanni
- Sumer
- Urartu
Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa
The Americas
- Aztecs
- Mayans
- Native America
- Incans
- Olmecs
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