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