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3500 BC
The 35th century BC in the Near East sees the gradual transition from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Proto-writing enters transitional stage, developing towards writing proper. Wheeled vehicles are now known beyond Mesopotamia, having spread north of the Caucasus and to Europe. Cultures * Susa (Iran since 7000 BC) * Uruk period (Sumer) * Naqada IIb (Ancient Egypt) * Early Minoan I * Sredny Stog culture (final phase) * Yamna culture (early phase) * Cucuteni culture * Vinča culture * Megalithic Europe ( Atlantic fringe) * Nuragic civilization (Sardinia) * Comb Ceramic culture * Funnelbeaker culture * Yangshao culture Artifacts Only approximate dating is usually possible for mid-4th millennium artifacts. *Kish tablet *Bronocice pot * Ginger (mummy) *Knap of Howar Events *The Sahara desert starts to form from semi-arid savannah, through desertification. *c. 3500 BC: First known zoo at Hierakonpolis. *c. 3400 BC: Sumerian temple record keepers redesign the stamp sea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Near East
The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Near Eastern archaeology are one of the most prominent with regard to research in the realm of ancient history. Historically, the Near East denoted an area roughly encompassing the centre of West Asia, having been focused on the lands between Greece and Egypt in the west and Iran in the east. It therefore largely corresponds with the modern-day geopolitical concept of the Middle East. The history of the ancient Near East begins with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC, though the date that it ends is a subject of debate among scholars; the term covers the region's developments in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, and is variously considered to end with either the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC, the establi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sredny Stog Culture
The Sredny Stog culture (, ) or Serednii Stih culture is a pre- Kurgan archaeological culture from the mid. 5th – mid. 4th millennia BC. It is named after the Dnieper river islet of today's Serednii Stih (; ), Ukraine, where it was first located. Distribution Culture features appear across a wide territory in the Black Sea steppe from the Dnipro River, the upper Donets River, the lower Don region, and the Sea of Azov in the east to the delta of the Danube River in the west. It seems to have had contact with the agricultural Cucuteni–Trypillian culture in the west, centered in modern-day Moldova, Romania and Ukraine, and was a contemporary of the Khvalynsk culture in the north-east, located in the middle Volga region. Sites One of the sites most associated with this culture is Deriivka ( Ukrainian: Деріївка, Russian: Дериевка), located on the right bank of the Omelnik, a tributary of the Dnieper, and is the largest site within the Sredny Stog cu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ginger (mummy)
The Gebelein predynastic mummies are six naturally mummified bodies, dating to approximately 3400 BC from the Late Predynastic period of Ancient Egypt. They were the first complete predynastic bodies to be discovered. The well-preserved bodies were excavated at the end of the nineteenth century by Wallis Budge, the British Museum Keeper for Egyptology, from shallow sand graves near Gebelein (today, Naga el-Gherira) in the Egyptian desert. Budge excavated all the bodies from the same grave site. Two were identified as male and one as female, with the others being of undetermined sex. The bodies were given to the British Museum in 1900. Some grave goods were documented at the time of excavation as "pots and flints", however, they were not passed on to the British Museum and their whereabouts remain unknown. Three of the bodies were found with coverings of different types (reed matting, palm fibre and animal skin), which still remain with the bodies. The bodies were found ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bronocice Pot
The Bronocice pot ( Polish: ''Waza z Bronocic'') is a ceramic vase incised with one of the earliest known depictions of a wheeled vehicle. It was discovered in the village of Bronocice near the Nidzica River in Poland. Attributed to the Funnelbeaker archaeological culture, radiocarbon tests dated the pot to the mid-fourth millennium BCE. Today it is housed at the Archaeological Museum of Kraków in southern Poland. Discovery The pot was discovered between 1974 and 1976 during the archaeological excavation of a large Neolithic settlement in Bronocice, ca. 50 km to north east of Kraków. The excavations were carried out between 1974 and 1980 by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences and the State University of New York in the United States. Sarunas Milisauskas, one of several archaeologists who worked on Bronocice excavation project wrote: "The 1974 field season yielded data beyond our expectations. An incised wagon motif was found on a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kish Tablet
The Kish tablet is a limestone tablet found at the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Kish in modern Tell al-Uhaymir, Babylon Governorate, Iraq. A plaster cast of the tablet is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, while the original is housed at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. It should not be confused with the Scheil dynastic tablet, which contains part of the ''Sumerian King List'' and is also sometimes called the Kish tablet. The signs on the Kish tablet, possibly related to proto-cuneiform, are purely pictographic, and have not been deciphered or demonstrated to correspond to any currently known human language. It has been dated to the Late Uruk period ().Hayes, John L., 1990 ''A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts'', Undena Publications See also *History of writing The history of writing traces the development of writing systems and how their use transformed and was transformed by different societies. The use of writing prefigures various social and psyc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yangshao Culture
The Yangshao culture ( zh, c=仰韶文化, p=Yǎngsháo wénhuà) was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the middle reaches of the Yellow River in China from around 5000 BC to 3000 BC. The Yangshao culture saw social and technological development in the region, with advancements in agriculture, architecture, and crafts. The culture is named after the Yangshao site, the first excavated site of this culture, which was discovered in 1921 in the town of Yangshao in western Henan by the Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson (1874–1960). The culture flourished mainly in Henan, as well as the neighboring provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi. Recent research indicates a common origin and spread of the Sino-Tibetan languages with the Cishan, Yangshao and/or Majiayao cultures. Origins After the discovery of the Yangshao site in 1921, Johan Gunnar Andersson hypothesized, based on his analysis of the pottery patterns, that the Yangshao culture was originated fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Funnelbeaker Culture
The Funnel(-neck-)beaker culture, in short TRB or TBK (, ; ; ), was an archaeological culture in north-central Europe. It developed as a technological merger of local neolithic and mesolithic techno-complexes between the lower Elbe and middle Vistula rivers. These predecessors were the (Danubian culture, Danubian) Lengyel culture, Lengyel-influenced Stroke-ornamented ware culture (STK) groups/Late Lengyel and Baden culture, Baden-Boleráz in the southeast, Rössen culture, Rössen groups in the southwest and the Ertebølle culture, Ertebølle-Ellerbek groups in the north. The TRB introduced farming and husbandry as major food sources to the pottery-using hunter-gatherers north of this line. The TRB techno-complex is divided into a northern group including Northern Germany and southern Scandinavia (TRB-N, roughly the area that previously belonged to the Ertebølle-Ellerbek complex), a western group in the Megaliths in the Netherlands, Netherlands between the Zuiderzee and lower E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comb Ceramic Culture
The Comb Ceramic culture or Pit-Comb Ware culture, often abbreviated as CCC or PCW, was a northeast European culture characterised by its Pit–Comb Ware. It existed from around 4200 BCE to around 2000 BCE. The bearers of the Comb Ceramic culture are thought to have still mostly followed the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer ( Eastern Hunter-Gatherer) lifestyle, with traces of early agriculture. Distribution The distribution of the artifacts found includes Finnmark (Norway) in the north, the Kalix River (Sweden) and the Gulf of Bothnia (Finland) in the west and the Vistula River (Poland) in the south. It would include the Narva culture of Estonia and the Sperrings culture in Finland, among others. They are thought to have been essentially hunter-gatherers, though e.g. the Narva culture in Estonia shows some evidence of agriculture. Some of this region was absorbed by the later Corded Ware horizon. Ceramics The Pit–Comb Ware culture is one of the few exceptions to the rule that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sardinia
Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia and 16.45 km south of the French island of Corsica. It has over 1.5 million inhabitants as of 2025. It is one of the five Italian regions with some degree of Autonomous administrative division, domestic autonomy being granted by a Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, special statute. Its official name, Autonomous Region of Sardinia, is bilingual in Italian language, Italian and Sardinian language, Sardinian: / . It is divided into four provinces of Italy, provinces and a Metropolitan cities of Italy, metropolitan city. Its capital (and largest city) is Cagliari. Sardinia's indigenous language and Algherese dialect, Algherese Catalan language, Catalan are referred to by both the regional and national law as two of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuragic Civilization
The Nuragic civilization, also known as the Nuragic culture, formed in the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, Italy in the Bronze Age. According to the traditional theory put forward by Giovanni Lilliu in 1966, it developed after multiple migrations from the West of people related to the Beaker culture who conquered and disrupted the local Copper Age cultures; other scholars instead hypothesize an autochthonous origin. It lasted from the 18th century BC (Middle Bronze Age), up to the Iron Age or until the Roman colonization in 238 BC. Others date the culture as lasting at least until the 2nd century AD, and in some areas, namely the Barbagia, to the 6th century AD, or possibly even to the 11th century AD. Although it must be remarked that the construction of new nuraghi had already stopped by the 12th-11th century BC, during the Final Bronze Age. It was contemporary with, among others, the Mycenaean civilization in Greece, the Apennine and Terramare culture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic Fringe
Atlantic Europe encompasses the western portion of Europe which borders the Atlantic Ocean. The term may refer to the idea of Atlantic Europe as a cultural unit and/or as a biogeographical region. It comprises the British Isles (Great Britain and Ireland), Iceland, Belgium, the Netherlands, the central and northern regions of Portugal, northwestern and northern Spain (including Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Southern Basque Country, and some portions of Castile and León), the southwestern and western portion of France (Northern Basque Country), western Scandinavia as well as western and northern Germany. Weather and overall physical conditions are relatively similar along this area (with the exception of parts of Scandinavia and the Baltic), resulting in similar landscapes with common endemic plant and animal species. From a strictly physical point of view most of the Atlantic European shoreline can be considered a single biogeographical region. Physical geographers label th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Megalith
A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. More than 35,000 megalithic structures have been identified across Europe, ranging geographically from Sweden in the north to the Mediterranean Sea in the south. The word was first used in 1849 by the British antiquarian Algernon Herbert in reference to Stonehenge and derives from the Ancient Greek words " mega" for great and " lithos" for stone. Most extant megaliths were erected between the Neolithic period (although earlier Mesolithic examples are known) through the Chalcolithic period and into the Bronze Age. Types and definitions While "megalith" is often used to describe a single piece of stone, it also can be used to denote one or more rocks hewn in definite shapes for special purposes. It has been used to describe structures built by people from many parts of the world living in many different periods. The most widely known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
