Ancient history

[11] The Nile River Valley has evidence of sorghum and millet cultivation starting around 8000 BC and agricultural use of yams in Western Africa perhaps dates to the same time period.

However, the Sasanians rebuilt and founded numerous cities and their merchants travelled widely and introduced crops such as sugar, rice, and cotton into the Iranian plateau.

[50] This "Israel" was a cultural and probably political entity of the central highlands, well enough established to be perceived by the Egyptians as a possible challenge to their hegemony, but an ethnic group rather than an organised state.

[51] Israel had emerged by the middle of the 9th century BC, when the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III named "Ahab the Israelite" among his enemies at the battle of Qarqar (853).

[66] The civilisation of ancient Egypt was characterised primarily by intensive agricultural use of the fertile Nile Valley;[67] the use of the Nile itself for transportation;[68] the development of writing systems – first hieroglyphs and then later hieratic and other derived scripts – and literature;[69] the organisation of collective projects such as the pyramids;[70] trade with surrounding regions;[71] and a polytheistic religious tradition that included elaborate funeral customs including mummification.

[81] The civilisation of Djenné-Djenno was located in the Niger River Valley in the country of Mali and is considered to be among the oldest urbanised centres and the best-known archaeology site in sub-Saharan Africa.

This archaeological site is located about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) away from the modern town and is believed to have been involved in long-distance trade and possibly the domestication of African rice.

Peoples speaking precursors to the modern-day Bantu languages began to spread throughout southern Africa, and by 2000 BC they were expanding past the Congo River and into the Great Lakes area.

[82] Iron metallurgy and agriculture spread along with these peoples, with the cultivation of millet, oil palms, sorghum, and yams as well as the use of domesticated cattle, pigs, and sheep.

[94] The kingdom of Magadha rose to prominence under a number of dynasties that peaked in power under the reign of Ashoka Maurya, one of India's most legendary and famous emperors.

During the reign of Ashoka, the four dynasties of Chola, Chera, and Pandya were ruling in the South, while Devanampiya Tissa (250–210 BC) controlled Anuradhapura (now Sri Lanka).

[100] Territorial principalities in both Insular and Mainland Southeast Asia, characterised as "agrarian kingdoms",[101] developed an economy by around 500 BCE based on surplus crop cultivation and moderate coastal trade of domestic natural products.

[104][105] Intensive wet-rice cultivation in an ideal climate enabled the farming communities to produce a regular crop surplus that was used by the ruling elite to raise, command and pay work forces for public construction and maintenance projects such as canals and fortifications.

[104][102] The earliest known evidence of copper and bronze production in Southeast Asia was found at Ban Chiang in north-east Thailand and among the Phùng Nguyên culture of northern Vietnam around 2000 BCE.

[107] By about 500 BCE, large and delicately decorated bronze drums of remarkable quality, weighing more than 70 kg (150 lb), were produced in the laborious lost-wax casting process.

Among large, thin-walled terracotta jars, ornamented and colorized cooking pots, glass items, jade earrings and metal objects were deposited near the rivers and along the coast.

[114][115][116] For a few centuries, the Polynesian islands were connected by bidirectional long-distance sailing, with the exception of Rapa Nui, which had limited further contact due to its isolated geographical location.

The trade was established by links between the indigenous peoples of Taiwan and the Philippines, and later included parts of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and other areas in Southeast Asia (known as the Sa Huynh-Kalanay Interaction Sphere).

[120][121][122][123] During the operation of the Maritime Jade Road, the Austronesian spice trade networks were also established by Islander Southeast Asians with Sri Lanka and Southern India by around 1000 to 600 BCE.

[127][128] An Austronesian group, originally from the Makassar Strait region around Kalimantan and Sulawesi,[129][130] eventually settled Madagascar, either directly from Southeast Asia or from preexisting mixed Austronesian-Bantu populations from East Africa.

The Hundred Schools of Thought of Chinese philosophy blossomed during this period, and such influential intellectual movements as Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism and Mohism were founded, partly in response to the changing political world.

[150] As neighboring territories of these warring states, including areas of modern Sichuan and Liaoning, were annexed by the growing power of the rulers of Qin,[151] they were governed under the new local administrative system of commandery.

[164] Beyond these areas, the use of agriculture expanded East of the Andes Mountains in South America particularly with the Marajoara culture,[citation needed] and in the continental United States.

[189] Rome then expanded into Greece and the eastern Mediterranean,[190] while a series of internal conflicts led to the republic becoming an empire ruled by an emperor by the first century AD.

[197] Migrations of Germanic tribes disrupted Roman rule from the late 4th century onwards, culminating in the eventual collapse of the empire in the West in 476, replaced by the so-called barbarian kingdoms.

By the later Iron Age (La Tène period), Celts had expanded over wide range of lands: as far west as Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula, as far east as Galatia (central Anatolia), and as far north as Scotland.

[citation needed] By the early centuries AD, following the expansion of the Roman Empire and the Great Migrations of Germanic peoples, Celtic culture had become restricted to the British Isles.

[199] The Huns were a nomadic people who formed a large state in Eastern Europe by about AD 400, and under their leader Attila, they fought against both sections of the Roman Empire.

[214] In the west, the Greek philosophical tradition, represented by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, was diffused throughout Europe and the Middle East in the 4th century BC by the conquests of Alexander the Great.

[222] Water managing Qanats which likely emerged on the Iranian plateau and possibly also in the Arabian peninsula sometime in the early 1st millennium BC spread from there slowly west- and eastward.