World Literature 271

Ancient World Timeline

 

 

Two million B.C. to about 13,000 B.C. Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) (From stone tools first used by humanoid creatures to the end of the last Ice Age).

 

100,000 B.C. -- First ritual burying of the dead

 

25,000 B.C. – statue--Venus of Willendorf --worship of female creative power

 

15,000 to 10,000 B.C. Cave art in present-day France--The Cave of Lascaux   (hunting predominates) stone weapons

 

13,000 B.C. to 8000 B.C. Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age)

 

8000 B.C. to 3000 B.C. Neolithic (Late Stone Age) Dolmen in Ireland

 

8000 B.C.  Domestication of animals; villages formed; first wars; bronze tools

 

3500 B.C. – 2350 B.C. Sumerian Period; development of pictographic writing; first ziggurat (temple base)

 

3000 B.C. to 1200 B.C. Bronze Age

 

2700 B.C. Reign of Gilgamesh

 

2000 B.C. earliest version of The Epic of Gilgamesh

 

1900 B.C. – 1600 B.C. Babylonian Period

 

1200 B.C Iron Age begins

 

 

The Hebrews (Israelites—Jews)

 

2350 B.C. the Flood

 

2000 B.C. Abraham

 

1600 B.C. Israelite tribes captive in Egypt

 

1280 B.C. Exodus—Moses leads them out of Egypt

 

1000 B.C. -- 961 B.C.  Reign of King David

 

961 B.C. -- 922 B.C. Reign of King Solomon

 

587 B.C. Captivity in Babylonia

 

539 B.C. Return to Jerusalem

 

6 B.C. Birth of Jesus

 

131-134 A.D. the diaspora or “scattering” of the Hebrew people by Roman Emperor Hadrian

  

The Greeks

 

1400 B.C. – 1200 B.C.  Mycenaean Empire (Proto-Greece)

 

1250 B.C. Mycenaean war against Troy

 

900 B.C. – 700 B.C.  Homeric epics The Iliad and The Odyssey

 

776 B.C. First Olympic games

 

450 B.C. – 323 B.C.--Golden Age of Greece—Classical Period

  

429 B.C. Sophocles—Oedipus Rex

 

400 B.C. – 330 B.C. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

 

336 B.C. – 323 B.C. Alexander the Great

 

The Romans

 

753 B.C. Founding of Rome

 

146 B.C. Africa and Greece become Roman Provinces

 

63 B.C.  Conquest of Jerusalem by the Romans

 

55 B.C. -- 44 B.C. Julius Caesar

 

27 B.C. – 14 B.C. Augustus Caesar