Ancient World Timeline

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

100,000 BCE -- First ritual burying of the dead

30.000 BCE Last of the Neanderthals

25,000 BCE – statue--Venus of Willendorf --worship of female creative power

15,000 to 9,000 BCE Cave art in present-day France--The Cave of Lascaux (hunting predominates) stone weapons. Paleolithic Art Images

13,000 BCE to 8000 BCE Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age)

8000 BCE to 3000 BCE Neolithic (Late Stone Age) Dolmen in Ireland

8000 BCE Domestication of animals; villages formed; first wars; bronze tools

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

3000 BCE to 1200 BCE Bronze Age

2700 BCE Reign of Gilgamesh

2000 BCE earliest version of The Epic of Gilgamesh

1900 BCE – 1600 B.C. Babylonian Period

1200 BCE Iron Age begins

The Hebrews (Israelites—Jews)

2350 BCE the Flood

2000 BCE Abraham

1600 BCE Israelite tribes captive in Egypt

1280 BCE Exodus—Moses leads them out of Egypt

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

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

587 BCE Captivity in Babylonia

539 BCE Return to Jerusalem

6 BCE Birth of Jesus

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

600 CE the Birth of Mohammed

The Greeks

1400 BCE – 1200 BCE Mycenaean Empire (Proto-Greece)

1250 BCE Mycenaean war against Troy

900 BCE – 700 BCE Homeric epics The Iliad and The Odyssey

776 BCE First Olympic games

450 BCE – 323 BCE--Golden Age of Greece—Classical Period

429 BCE Sophocles—Oedipus Rex

400 BCE – 330 BCE Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

336 BCE – 323 BCE Alexander the Great

The Romans

753 BCE Founding of Rome

146 BCE Africa and Greece become Roman Provinces

63 BCE Conquest of Jerusalem by the Romans

55 BCE -- 44 B.C. Julius Caesar

27 BCE – 14 B.C. Augustus Caesar