1st millennium BC
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First millennium BCE
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The 1st millennium BC, also known as the last millennium BC, was the period of time lasting from the years
BC; in astronomy: JD 1356182.5 – 1721425.5[1]). It encompasses the Iron Age in the Old World and sees the transition from the Ancient Near East to classical antiquity
.
World population roughly doubled over the course of the millennium, from about 100 million to about 200–250 million.[2]
Overview
The Neo-Assyrian Empire dominates the Near East in the early centuries of the millennium, supplanted by the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century. Ancient Egypt is in decline, and falls to the Achaemenids in 525 BC.
In Greece,
Hellenistic civilization
(4th to 2nd centuries).
The
Aksum
arise.
In South Asia, the
Indo-Greek and Iranian states. Japan is in the Yayoi period
.
The Olmec civilization declines, and the Maya and Zapotec civilizations emerge in Mesoamerica. The Chavín culture flourishes in Peru.
The first millennium BC is the formative period of the classical
world religions, with the development of early Judaism and Zoroastrianism in the Near East, and Vedic religion and Vedanta, Jainism and Buddhism in India. Early literature develops in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Tamil and Chinese. The term Axial Age, coined by Karl Jaspers, is intended to express the crucial importance of the period of c. the 8th to 2nd centuries BC in world history
.
World population
more than doubled over the course of the millennium,
from about an estimated 50–100 million to an estimated 170–300 million.
Close to 90% of world population at the end of the first millennium BC lived in the Iron Age civilizations of the Old World (Roman Empire, ).
The population of the Americas was below 20 million, concentrated in Mesoamerica (Epi-Olmec culture);
that of Sub-Saharan Africa was likely below 10 million. The population of Oceania was likely less than one million people.[2]
Ancient history
Timeline
- 10th century BC
- Near East: Neo-Assyrian Empire
- Near East: Shoshenq I invades Canaan
- Aegean: Helladicperiod ends
- Sub-Saharan Africa West: Ile-Ife
- 9th century BC
- Chavín culture in Peru
- 872 BC: Nile floods the Temple of Luxor
- Egypt: 836 BC: Civil war in Egypt
- North Africa: 814 BC: Carthage founded
- 828 BC Gonghe Regency
- 8th century BC
- 727 BC: Egypt: Kushite invasion (25th dynasty)
- 771 BC: China: Spring and Autumn period
- Near East:
- Near East: of the Israelites.
- Greece: Archaic Greece, Greek alphabet
- Greece: Homer
- 776 BC: Greece: First Olympiad
- foundation of Rome
- Mesopotamian lion, from the Northern Palace in Nineveh, c. 645-635 BC
- 671 BC: Assyrian conquest of Egypt
- Near East: 631 BC: Death of Ashurbanipal, decline of the Assyrian Empire
- 6th century BC
- Egypt: 592 BC: Psamtik II sacks Napata
- Sudan: Meroe
- Near East: Achaemenid conquest of Babylon under Cyrus the Great
- South Asia: Śramaṇa movement and "second urbanisation"
- South Asia: Early Buddhism
- Europe: 509 BC: Roman Republic
- 5th century BC
- China: 479 BC: death of Confucius
- China: 476 BC: Warring States period
- China: 486 BC: Grand Canal construction begins
- Near East: Second Temple Judaism, redaction of the Hebrew Bible
- Greece: beginning of the classical period (Greece in the 5th century BC).
- Greece: Greco-Persian Wars (Battle of Marathon, Battle of Thermopylae)
- Greece: 440 BC: Herodotus' Histories
- Greece: 431 BC: Peloponnesian War
- Oceania: Austronesian expansion reaches Western Polynesia
- 4th century BC
- Greece: 395 BC: Corinthian War
- Egypt: Achaemenid conquest
Map of the world in 323 BC - Greece/Asia/Egypt: 330s BC: conquests of Macedonian Empire, beginning of the Hellenistic period
- South Asia: Mauryan Empire
- 3rd century BC
- China: Qin Unified China
- China: Han Dynasty
- South Asia: Kalinga war
- Rome: Roman expansion in Italy
- Rome/Carthage: Punic Wars
- China:
- 2nd century BC
- Rome/Carthage: Roman province of Africa
- Rome/Greece: 146 BC Battle of Corinth, beginning of the Roman era
- South Asia: 185 BC: Fall of the Maurya Empire
- China: Confucianism became the state ideology of China
- Rome/Carthage:
- 1st century BC
- China: 91 BC: Records of the Grand Historian finished
- Rome/Europe: 58–50 BC Gallic Wars
- Rome: 32/30 BC: Final War of the Roman Republic (Battle of Actium)
- Rome/Egypt: 31 BC: Roman conquest of Egypt
- Rome/Europe/West Asia/Africa: 27 BC: Roman Empire
Inventions, discoveries, introductions
- 8th century BC
- Greek alphabet, the first alphabet with vowels.
- 7th century BC
- 6th century BC
- 5th century BC
- 4th century BC
- 3rd century BC
- Lighthouse of Alexandria[3]
- Malleable Cast iron China[6]
- buoyancy (Archimedes)
- Spherical Earth
- water clock[3]
- Qin built and unified various sections of the Great Wall of China.
- Qin built Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum guarded by the life-sized Terracotta Army.
- 2nd century BC
Literature
- Greco-Roman literature
Archaic period
- Homer (late 8th or early 7th c.), Iliad, Odyssey
- Hesiod (8th to 7th c.), Theogony and Works and Days
- Archilochus (7th century), Greek poet
- Sappho, (late 7th to early 6th c.), Greek poet
- Ibycus
- Alcaeus of Mytilene
- Aesop's Fables
Classical period
- Aeschylus (c. 525–455 BC), Greek playwright
- Herodotus (484–425 BC), Histories
- Euripides (c. 480–406 BC), Greek playwright
- Cyropaedia
- corpus Aristotelicum
Hellenistic to Roman period
- Septuagint
- Apollonius of Rhodes: Argonautica
- Callimachus (310/305-240 B.C.), lyric poet
- Aegyptiaca
- Theocritus, lyric poet
- Euclid: Elements
- Menander: Dyskolos
- Enquiry into Plants
- Old Latin Livius Andronicus, Gnaeus Naevius, Plautus, Quintus Fabius Pictor, Lucius Cincius Alimentus
- Classical Latin: Cicero, Julius Caesar, Virgil, Lucretius, Livy, Catullus
- Chinese literature
- I Ching (date unknown, between the 10th and 4th centuries BC)
- Classic of Documents (Shūjīng) (authentic portions), Classic of Changes(I Ching)
- Spring and Autumn Annals (Chūnqiū) (722–481 BC, chronicles of the state of Lu)
- Confucius: Analects (Lúnyǔ)
- Classic of Rites (Lǐjì)
- Commentaries of Zuo (Zuǒzhuàn)
- Laozi (or Lao Tzu): Tao Te Ching
- Zhuangzi: Zhuangzi (book)
- Mencius: Mencius
- Sanskrit literature
- Vedas, Brahmanas
- Vedanga
- Mukhya Upanishads
- early layers of the Sanskrit epics(c. 3rd century BC to 4th century AD)
- Hebrew
- c. 8th to 7th c.: the Book of Nahum, Book of Hosea, Book of Amos, Book of Isaiah
- c. 6th c.: Psalms
- c. 5th century: redaction of the Torah
- 3rd century: Ecclesiastes
- 2nd century: Book of Wisdom
- Avestan
- Other (2nd to 1st century BC)
- Tipitaka
- Tamil :Sangam literature
- Aramaic: Book of Daniel