4th millennium BC
4th millennium BC (4000-3001 BC) (W)
The 4th millennium BC spanned the years 4000 through 3001 BC. Some of the major changes in human culture during this time included the beginning of the Bronze Age and the invention of writing, which played a major role in starting recorded history.
The city states of Sumer and the kingdom of Egypt were established and grew to prominence. Agriculture spread widely across Eurasia.
World population growth relaxes after the burst due to the Neolithic Revolution. World population is largely stable, at roughly 50 million, with a slow overall growth rate at roughly 0.03% p.a. |
- Near East
- Mesopotamia
- 4100-3100 BC: the Uruk period, with emerging Sumerian hegemony and development of “proto-cuneiform” writing; base-60 mathematics, astronomy and astrology, civil law, complex hydrology, the sailboat, potter's wheel and wheel; the Chalcolithic proceeds into the Early Bronze Age.
- 3500 BC—2340 BC; Sumer: wheeled carts, potter's wheel, White Temple ziggurat, bronze tools and weapons.
- First to Fourth dynasty of Kish in Mesopotamia.
- Sumerian temple of Janna at Eridu erected.
- Temple at Al-Ubaid and tomb of Mes-Kalam-Dug built near Ur, Chaldea.
- 3000 BC—Tin is in use in Mesopotamia soon after this time.
- 3500–2340 BC—First cities developed in Southern Mesopotamia. Inhabitants migrated from north.
- The cuneiform script proper emerges from pictographic proto-writing in the later 4th millennium. Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans the 35th to 32nd centuries. The first documents unequivocally written in the Sumerian language date to the 31st century, found at Jemdet Nasr.
- Dams, canals, stone sculptures using inclined plane and lever in Sumer.
- Urkesh (northern Syria) founded during the fourth millennium BC possibly by the Hurrians.
- Persian plateau
- Naqada culture on the Nile, 4000–3000 BC. First hieroglyphs appear thus far around 3500 BC as found on labels in a ruler's tomb at Abydos.
- Predynastic pharaohs Tiu, Thesh, Hsekiu, Wazner, Ro, Serket, Narmer.
- 3500–3400 BC—Jar with boat designs, from Hierakonpolis (today in the Brooklyn Museum) is created. Predynastic Egypt.
- c. 3150 BC—Predynastic period ended in Ancient Egypt. Early Dynastic (Archaic) period started (according to French Egyptologist Nicolas Grimal). The period includes 1st and 2nd Dynasties.
- c. 3100 BC—Narmer Palette.
- Sails used in the Nile.
- Mastabas, the predecessors of the Egyptian pyramids.
- Harps and flutes played in Egypt.
- Lyres and double clarinets (arghul, mijwiz) played in Egypt.
- Earliest known numerals in Egypt.
- Europe
- Crete: Rise of Minoan civilization.
- Pontic-Caspian steppe
- Balkans
- c. 4000–2000 BC—People and animals, a detail of rock-shelter painting in Cogul, Lleida, Spain, are painted. It is now at Museo Arqueológico, Barcelona.
- Arzachena & Ozieri cultures.
- Malta
- 3600 BC—Construction of the Ġgantija megalithic temple complex on the Island of Gozo: the world's oldest extant unburied free-standing structures, and the world's oldest religious structures. (See Göbekli Tepe for older, buried religious structures.)
- 3600–3200 BC—Construction of the first temple within the Mnajdra solar temple complex, containing "furniture" such as stone benches and tables, that set it apart from other European megalith constructions.
- 3600–3000 BC—Construction of the Ta' Ħaġrat and Kordin III temples
- 3250–3000 BC—Construction of three megalithic temples at Tarxien
- 3200–2500 BC—Construction of the Ħaġar Qim megalithic temple complex, featuring both solar and lunar alignments.
- Northern Europe
- c. 3300 BC—Ötzi the Iceman dies near the present-day border between Austria and Italy, only to be discovered in 1991 buried in a glacier of the Ötztal Alps. His cause of death is believed to be homicide.
- Central Asia
- East Asia
- Neolithic Chinese settlements. They produced silk and pottery (chiefly the Yangshao and the Lungshan cultures), wore hemp clothing, and domesticated pigs and dogs.
- Vietnamese Bronze Age culture. The Đồng Đậu Culture, 4000–2500 BC, produced many wealthy bronze objects.
- South Asia
- Americas
- Australia
- Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa remains in the Paleolithic period, except for the earliest neolithization of the Sahel following following the desiccation of the Sahara in c. 3500 BC. As the grasslands of the Sahara began drying after 3900 BC, herders spread into the Nile Valley and into eastern Africa (Eburan 5, Elmenteitan). The desiccation of the Sahara and the associated neolithisation of West Africa is also cited as a possible cause for the dispersal of the Niger-Congo linguistic phylum.
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Bronze Age
Bronze Age (W)
The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, and in some areas proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, for classifying and studying ancient societies.
An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by producing bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Bronze itself is harder and more durable than other metals available at the time, allowing Bronze Age civilizations to gain a technological advantage.
Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact that there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the 3rd millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition. Although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas (such as Sub-Saharan Africa), the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic.
Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia (cuneiform script) and Egypt (hieroglyphs) developed the earliest viable writing systems.
The overall period is characterized by widespread use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction and development of bronze technology were not universally synchronous. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques. Tin must be mined (mainly as the tin ore cassiterite) and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of extensive use of metals and of developing trade networks (See Tin sources and trade in ancient times). A 2013 report suggests that the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to the mid-5th millennium BC in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik (Serbia), although this culture is not conventionally considered part of the Bronze Age. The dating of the foil has been disputed. |
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Near East Bronze Age Divisions
Near East Bronze Age Divisions (W)
- Near East Bronze Age Divisions
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The archetypal Bronze Age divisions of the Near East have a well-established triadic clearness of expression. The period dates and phases below are solely applicable to the Near East and thus not applicable universally.
- Early Bronze Age (EBA)
3300–2100 BC
- 3300–3000: EBA I
- 3000–2700: EBA II
- 2700–2200: EBA III
- 2200–2100: EBA IV
Middle Bronze Age (MBA)
- Also, Intermediate Bronze Age (IBA)
2100–1550 BC
- 2100–2000: MBA I
- 2000–1750: MBA II A
- 1750–1650: MBA II B
- 1650–1550: MBA II C
Late Bronze Age (LBA)
1550–1200 BC
- 1550–1400: LBA I
- 1400–1300: LBA II A
- 1300–1200: LBA II B (Bronze Age collapse)
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Late Bronze Age collapse
Late Bronze Age collapse (W)
The Late Bronze Age collapse involved a dark-age transition period in the Near East, Asia Minor, Aegean region, North Africa, Caucasus, Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, a transition which historians believe was violent, sudden, and culturally disruptive. The palace economy of the Aegean region and Anatolia that characterised the Late Bronze Age disintegrated, transforming into the small isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages. The half-century between c. 1200 and 1150 BC saw the cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, of the Kassite dynasty of Babylonia, of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and the Levant, and of the Egyptian Empire; the destruction of Ugarit and the Amorite states in the Levant, the fragmentation of the Luwian states of western Asia Minor, and a period of chaos in Canaan. The deterioration of these governments interrupted trade routes and severely reduced literacy in much of the known world. In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Pylos and Gaza was violently destroyed, and many abandoned, including Hattusa, Mycenae, and Ugarit. According to Robert Drews:
"Within a period of forty to fifty years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth century almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again." (Drews, 1993, p. 4.)
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Late Bronze Age collapse
Late Bronze Age collapse (W)
(↑Chalcolithic) Bronze Age (↓Iron Age) |
Near East (c. 3300–1200 BC)
- Anatolia, Caucasus, Elam, Egypt, Levant, Mesopotamia, Sistan, Canaan
Late Bronze Age collapse
Europe (c. 3200–600 BC)
- Aegean (Cycladic, Minoan, Mycenaean), Caucasus, Catacomb culture, Srubna culture, Beaker culture, Unetice culture, Tumulus culture, Urnfield culture, Hallstatt culture, Apennine culture, Canegrate culture, Golasecca culture,
- Atlantic Bronze Age, Bronze Age Britain, Nordic Bronze Age
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A map of the Bronze Age collapse
A map of the Bronze Age collapse (W)
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