PREHISTORY TO THE TIME OF CHRIST

PREHISTORY

     UNITED STATES CANADA
    MEXICO
    CENTRAL AMERICA CARIBBEAN
    SOUTH AMERICA
    EUROPE
    RUSSIA
    MIDEAST
    AFRICA
    ASIA
    SOUTH ASIA
    AUSTRALIA   

    The historian's fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when one assumes that decision makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and having the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision. It is not to be confused with presentism, a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas (such as moral standards) are projected into the past.The fallacy was named in 1970 by David Hackett Fischer, who suggested it was analogous to William James's psychologist's fallacy. Fischer did not suggest that historians should refrain from retrospective analysis in their work, but he reminded historians that their subjects were not able to see into the future. As an example, he cited the well-known argument that Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor should have been predictable in the United States because of the many indications that an attack was imminent. What this argument overlooks, says Fischer, is that there were innumerable conflicting signs which suggested possibilities other than an attack on Pearl Harbor. Only in retrospect do the warning signs seem obvious; signs which pointed in other directions tend to be forgotten. (See also: hindsight bias.) In the field of military history, historians sometimes use what is known as the "fog of war technique" in hopes of avoiding the historian's fallacy. In this approach, the actions and decisions of the historical subject (such as a military commander) are evaluated primarily on the basis of what that person knew at the time, and not on future developments that the person could not have known.

WORLD HISTORY

. The European Space Agency has released the most precise map so far of the oldest light in the universe. The best news is that is reveals an 'almost perfect universe'. By that they mean it almost conforms to expectations – but not quite. While the basic 'big bang' picture of our universe's birth is confirmed, the unexplained aspects of the data are where the real excitement lies because these could be signposts to new physics. At the press conference this morning, Professor George Efstathiou, University of Cambridge, UK said that the Planck data showed that, 'Cosmology is not finished.'In an accompanying video, he even speculates that some of the strange data could be evidence of physics that took place before the big bang. This explosive origin has traditionally been thought to be the beginning of space and time. Although now called the big bang, Belgian cosmologist Georges Lemaître, who was the first to mathematically investigate the origin of the universe, wistfully referred to it as the 'day without yesterday'. If Efstathiou is right, however, the big bang did have a yesterday after all.ESA say that this new map of the cosmic microwave background 'challenges some of the fundamental principles of the big bang theory.' It does this by confirming the existence of features in the map that cannot be explained by prevailing theory.The first strange feature is that the universe's temperature appears to fluctuate more on one side of the universe than the other. Secondly, there is definitely a 'cold spot' in the universe that extends over an area of space much larger than expected.A third challenge is that the large scale temperature fluctuations across the entire universe are smaller than those expected from the fluctuations measured at smaller scales. The theory that these observations challenge is called inflation. It postulates that a tiny fraction of a second after the big bang, the universe underwent a sudden catastrophic expansion. This behaviour was invented to explain why the temperature of the microwave background appeared, at the time, to be so uniform across the entire universe, and on all cosmic scales.Now, Planck is showing that the temperature, and the fluctuations in it, are not as uniform as thought.Another problem with inflation is that it lacks a theoretical underpinning from fundamental physics. In other words, no one can find a convincing explanation for why the universe would suddenly expand just after the big bang.The anomalies in the Planck map announced today could be the extra clues that are needed to urge inflation into a fully fledged theory, or they could provide nails for its coffin.


4.6 billion years ago: the solar system begins to form
    

MARS-The lake lay in the same crater where NASA's Mars rover Curiosity landed last year and has been exploring ever since. It lasted for hundreds or thousands of years, and possibly much longer. Whether any life ever appeared on Mars is not yet known, and Curiosity was not designed to answer that question. But the data coming back from the planet indicate that the possibility of life, at least in the ancient past, is at least plausible.John P. Grotzinger, a professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology who is the project scientist for the Curiosity mission, said that if certain microbes like those on present-day Earth had plopped into that ancient Martian lake, they would most likely have found a pleasant place to call home. "The environment would have existed long enough that they could have been sustained, prospered, grown, multiplied," he said. "All the essential ingredients for life were present. "Potentially the aqueous stream, lake, groundwater system could have existed for millions to tens of millions of years," he added. "You could easily get a lake with the area of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York." The interpretation comes from detailed analysis of two mudstones drilled by Curiosity earlier this year. The structure, chemistry and mineralogy of the sedimentary rocks were not alien. "The whole thing just seems extremely Earthlike," Dr. Grotzinger said. The scientists presented their latest findings at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco and in a set of six articles published in the journal Science. The surface of Mars today is frigid and arid, bombarded by sterilizing radiation, but after it formed and cooled with the rest of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago, it was initially a warmer and wetter place during its first billion years. Over the past decade, scientists have identified several sites on Mars that they think were once habitable. In 2004, after NASA's rover Opportunity discovered evidence that the Martian places it was traversing had once been soaking wet, Steven W. Squyres, the mission's principal investigator, declared, "This is the kind of place that would have been suitable for life."
But that location would have been an extremely challenging environment for life to take hold — very salty and highly acidic. Later, the scientists said the soils had been soaked not so much by water as by sulfuric acid. NASA chose the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater as Curiosity's landing site because readings from orbit identified the presence of clay minerals, which form in waters with a neutral pH. Curiosity's instruments indeed detected clays in the two mudstones, named John Klein and Cumberland. The clays appear to have formed at the lake bottom, not swept down from the walls of Gale Crater, strengthening the case that the lake water was not acidic. Curiosity also measured carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, nitrogen and phosphorus, elements that are critical for life on Earth, as well as iron and sulfur minerals that could have served as food for microbes. "If there were microbial organisms around, I think they would have liked that environment," said David T. Vaniman, a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson and the lead author of a Science paper examining the mineralogy. On Earth, a class of such microbes known as chemolithoautotrophs live in caves, hydrothermal vents and the deep underground. An impact, probably by an asteroid, excavated Gale Crater 3.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago, and the John Klein and Cumberland mudstones formed out of sediments that subsequently accumulated in the crater. That is roughly the same age as rocks on Earth with the earliest signs of life. "You can actually begin to line up in time what the Earth was doing and what Mars was doing," Dr. Grotzinger said. "It's kind of cool." The Gale Crater lake was also of the same era as the sulfuric-acid-soaked rocks that Opportunity found. That suggests that as Mars dried out, conditions in different regions varied widely. "Things have just gotten more complex than we thought," Dr. Grotzinger said. Curiously, even though the rocks formed in a lake, soluble elements like sodium and calcium had not been washed away. That suggests that the climate even then was cold and arid, just not as cold and arid as it is today — perhaps an ice-covered lake. "What does it mean about the climate?" Dr. Vaniman said. "It's something we're all thinking about." What has not been found yet is solid evidence for the carbon molecules known as organics that could serve as the building blocks of life. Such molecules are not always preserved in stone and are destroyed by radiation. By measuring the abundance of certain elements, a technique that has long been used to date Earth rocks, Kenneth A. Farley, a professor of geochemistry at Caltech, was able to estimate that the sediments eroded from rocks 4.2 billion years old, give or take 350 million years, and that the rocks had been exposed at the surface for about 80 million years. Previously, planetary scientists estimated ages by counting craters — the older a surface, the greater the number of craters. Dr. Farley's numbers fit with expectations for the Gale Crater rocks — "it's a nice demonstration this method could work," Dr. Farley said — and the dating technique could help locate rocks that have been exposed to radiation recently, raising the odds of finding organics, if they are present. "That's a big step forward for the exploration of life on Mars," Dr. Grotzinger said. "We're now exploring for that subset of environments can preserve organic carbon."




13.2 billion years: age of the oldest known star, HE 1523-0901

13.7 ± 0.2 billion years (4e17 seconds): estimated age of the universe
  according to the Big Bang theory


        STRINGS AND BRANES. As a string theorist, Greene is used to criticism. Like parallel universes, the idea that matter's fundamental building blocks are tiny vibrating strings or multidimensional membranes has often been knocked as unprovable, unverifiable, unfalsifiable speculation. Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, is fond of saying that string theory's vision of a "theory of everything" is actually a "theory of anything" that turns out being a "theory of nothing." We have seen, time  and again, that math is a very potent guide to revealing the true nature of reality. That's what the past couple of hundred years have established. So all we're doing is following the same kinds of procedures that we always have. And as we follow the procedures, as we push the mathematics forward, the math is  clearly suggesting that there may be other universes out there. That does not mean that there are. It does mean, however, that there's a compelling enough reason to take these ideas seriously, develop them further,  and try to make contact with observation and experiment. I fully agree that  none of these hypothetical ideas can be put within the canon of established  physics until there is some kind of observational confirmation. But you can't  get to that point unless you understand the theories extraordinarily well. And  that's what a lot of cutting-edge physics is now doing. A: We have for a long time had a conception of what a "universe" is. Look out  at the cosmos, and it's the totality of the stars and the galaxies that are  out there, everything that we in principle can see. But we have learned,  through a variety of approaches in physics, that that notion of "everything"  is possibly a small part of a far larger cosmos, a far grander reality. I like to make this concrete with a simple example that I think helps ground the physics about this. We all know about the big bang, which is basically how  our universe got started. The universe was very small in the distant past, it  underwent a rapid expansion, and in the course of that expansion, the universe  cooled down and allowed matter to coalesce into stars and galaxies. Now, many people don't fully appreciate that this story of the big bang leaves  out something very important: It leaves out the "bang." It leaves out the  physical process that started the outward swelling of space in the first  place. As we have developed mathematical tools to fill in that gap, to really understand what happened at the beginning, the math has indicated that the big  bang may not have been a unique event. There may have been, and may continue  to be, many big bangs — each of which gives rise to its own expanding  universe, our universe being but one among many. In that sense, we are part of a multiverse. This idea comes from the notion that the expanse of  space goes on forever — that it's infinitely large. That's an idea that people have contemplated for a long time. In fact, I would say that the majority of physicists and astronomers, when they speak about space, they do envision it going on forever. Then it takes but a simple little mathematical exercise to establish that, in any finite region of space, matter can only arrange itself   in finitely many configurations. The analogy I like to use is a deck of cards. When you shuffle the deck, the  cards come out in different orders, but there are only finitely many different  orders of the cards. If you shuffle that deck infinitely many times, the  orders necessarily will repeat. Similarly, in an infinite spatial universe,   the arrangements of particles have to repeat, too. If they repeat, then  indeed, things that we are familiar within the world around us — you, me, Earth, the sun, everything else — would repeat as well.When one explains this idea to someone who hasn't heard it before, it is shocking at first —  But when one takes in the  mathematical argument and mulls it over, it becomes clear this is what would  happen. "Which of these stands the greatest chance of receiving some experimental support in the not-too-distant future?" By that measure, I like to focus on  the "brane multiverse" theory. That's this idea that string theory doesn't  just contain strings. It also contains membranes — two-dimensional objects —  and three-branes, which are three-dimensional objects, and so forth. The brane multiverse imagines that all we have thought to be the universe actually takes place on one of these three-branes, with other three-branes  potentially out there.  When you have powerful proton collisions, the math suggests that some of the  debris from those collisions can be ejected off our brane, and we would notice  that by virtue of having less energy after the collision than before — because  the debris would take some of the energy away with it. People are looking for  these kinds of missing-energy signatures. If the results prove positive —  which, I absolutely need to underscore, I consider a long shot — then it would  be evidence that we are living on one of these branes. If we are living on a  brane, then there's really no reason to anticipate that our brane would be the  only one. There would be other branes out there, other universes. Q: What energy level would be required to see that sort of evidence  A: It all depends on the size of the extra dimensions within which all these  branes would be embedded. If the extra dimensions are very small, it takes   increasingly large amounts of energy to get debris from the collisions to   leave our brane and go into this tiny extradimensional space. That's the unknown: If the dimensions are big enough, then the energies required would be within reach of the Large Hadron Collider. If the extra dimensions are small, then the Large Hadron Collider would not be able to  cause this process to happen. So the best we can do is get some evidence that  confirms the brane multiverse idea. It's pretty hard to get evidence that would flatly rule it out. This idea is controversial for good reason. It is at the cutting edge — not  only the cutting edge of science, but also the edge of the kinds of ideas that  we want to embrace in science. That's what makes it exciting.Q: You make the point that it's very difficult to have any sort of direct  contact with other universes. The differences are just so great. The only way to conceptualize other universes, I suppose, is through mathematics and the bits of evidence that can be gleaned from particle collisions or the cosmic  microwave background radiation. Is there any possible avenue to get  substantive information about the bigger picture, or are we pretty much stuck  in our own little corner of the multiverse?A: I think we're certainly stuck physically. But I would not underestimate the  power of mathematics to provide the kinds of insights you are referring to. We are definitely at a rudimentary state in our understanding of these multiverse  proposals. But if we can refine that understanding, we could produce detailed  "universe demographics." We could gain a very detailed understanding of the  percentage of universes that would have this or that quality. In fact, we might get lucky with a well-developed multiverse theory. We might   find that universes differ in substantial ways, but we might also find that  there are certain common features that all universes share — like a certain  class of particle, for instance. Then, to adjudicate that multiverse proposal,   all we would need to really do is look for those particles here in our  universe. We're part of this multiverse, after all. If we fail to find those particles, we could rule out that proposed theory. It's falsifiable, even   though we can't actually see the other universes. If we do find those  particles, that would bolster our confidence that the theory is correct, as would be the case for other fields of experimental science.
 



BILLIONS OF YEARS

4,600,000,000 Precambrian-Archaeozoic and Proterozoic

    FORMATION. The Earth formed as part of the birth of the Solar System: what eventually became the solar system initially existed as a large, rotating cloud of dust, rocks, and gas. It was composed of hydrogen and helium produced in the Big Bang, as well as heavier elements ejected by supernovas. Then, as one theory suggests, about 4.6 billion years ago a nearby star was destroyed in a supernova and the explosion sent a shock wave through the solar nebula, causing it to gain angular momentum. As the cloud began to accelerate its rotation, gravity and inertia flattened it into a protoplanetary disk oriented perpendicularly to its axis of rotation. Most of the mass concentrated in the middle and began to heat up, but small perturbations due to collisions and the angular momentum of other large debris created the means by which protoplanets began to form.The infall of material, increase in rotational speed and the crush of gravity created an enormous amount of kinetic heat at the center. Its inability to transfer that energy away through any other process at a rate capable of relieving the build-up resulted in the disk's center heating up. Ultimately, nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium began, and eventually, after contraction, a T Tauri star ignited to create the Sun. Meanwhile, as gravity caused matter to condense around the previously perturbed objects outside of the new sun's gravity grasp, dust particles and the rest of the protoplanetary disk began separating into rings. Successively larger fragments collided with one another and became larger objects, ultimately destined to become protoplanets.[2] These included one collection approximately 150 million kilometers from the center: Earth. The planet formed about 4.54 billion years ago (within an uncertainty of 1%), and the planet was largely completed within 10–20 million years.[7] The solar wind of the newly formed T Tauri star cleared out most of the material in the disk that had not already condensed into larger bodies.

    MOON. The origin of the Moon is still uncertain, although much evidence exists for the giant impact hypothesis. Earth may not have been the only planet forming 150 million kilometers from the Sun. It is hypothesized that another collection occurred 150 million kilometers from both the Sun and the Earth, at their fourth or fifth Lagrangian point. This planet, named Theia, is thought to have been smaller than the current Earth, probably about the size and mass of Mars. Its orbit may at first have been stable, but destabilized as Earth increased its mass by the accretion of more and more material. Theia swung back and forth relative to Earth until, finally, an estimated 4.533 billion years ago,[8] it collided at a low, oblique angle. The low speed and angle were not enough to destroy Earth, but a large portion of its crust was ejected into space. Heavier elements from Theia sank to Earth's core, while the remaining material and ejecta condensed into a single body within a couple of weeks. Under the influence of its own gravity, this became a more spherical body: the Moon.[9] The impact is also thought to have changed Earth's axis to produce the large 23.5° axial tilt that is responsible for Earth's seasons. (A simple, ideal model of the planets' origins would have axial tilts of 0° with no recognizable seasons.) It may also have sped up Earth's rotation and initiated the planet's plate tectonics.

    VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS. Volcanic eruptions would have been common in Earth's early days.The early Earth, during the very early Hadean eon, was very different from the world known today. There were no oceans and no oxygen in the atmosphere. It was bombarded by planetoids and other material left over from the formation of the solar system. This bombardment, combined with heat from radioactive breakdown, residual heat, and heat from the pressure of contraction, caused the planet at this stage to be fully molten. During the iron catastrophe heavier elements sank to the center while lighter ones rose to the surface producing the layered structure of the Earth and also setting up the formation of Earth's magnetic field. Earth's early atmosphere would have comprised surrounding material from the solar nebula, especially light gases such as hydrogen and helium, but the solar wind and Earth's own heat would have driven off this atmosphere.This changed when Earth was about 40% its present radius, and gravitational attraction allowed the retention of an atmosphere which included water. Temperatures plummeted and the crust of the planet was accumulated on a solid surface, with areas melted by large impacts on the scale of decades to hundreds of years between impacts. Large impacts would have caused localized melting and partial differentiation, with some lighter elements on the surface or released to the moist atmosphere.The surface cooled quickly, forming the solid crust within 150 million years;[11] although new research[12] suggests that the actual number is 100 million years based on the level of hafnium found in the geology at Jack Hills in Western Australia. From 4 to 3.8 billion years ago, Earth underwent a period of heavy asteroidal bombardment.[13] Steam escaped from the crust while more gases were released by volcanoes, completing the second atmosphere. Additional water was imported by bolide collisions, probably from asteroids ejected from the outer asteroid belt under the influence of Jupiter's gravity. The planet cooled. Clouds formed. Rain gave rise to the oceans within 750 million years (3.8 billion years ago), but probably earlier. Recent evidence suggests the oceans may have begun forming by 4.2 billion years ago[ The new atmosphere probably contained ammonia, methane, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen, as well as smaller amounts of other gases. Anyfree oxygen would have been bound by hydrogen or minerals on the surface. Volcanic activity was intense and, without an ozone layer to hinder its entry, ultraviolet radiation flooded the surface
.
    4567.17 Billion years agoThe planet Earth forms from the accretion disc revolving around the young Sun.

4533     ByaAccording to one plausible theory, the planet Earth and the planet Theia collide, sending countless moonlets into orbit around the young  Earth. These moonlets eventually coalesce to form the Moon. The  gravitational pull of the new Moon stabilises the Earth's fluctuating axis  of rotation and sets up the conditions for the formation of life.

    LIFE. The replicator in virtually all known life is deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA is far more complex than the original replicator and its replication systems are highly elaborate.Main article: Origin of lifeThe details of the origin of life are unknown though the broad principles have been established. Two schools of thought regarding the origin of life have been proposed. The first suggests that organic components may have arrived on Earth from space (see "Panspermia"), while the other argues for terrestrial origins. The mechanisms by which life would initially arise are nevertheless held to be similar. If life arose on Earth, the timing of this event is highly speculative—perhaps it arose around 4 billion years ago. In the energetic chemistry of early Earth, a molecule (or even something else) gained the ability to make copies of itself–the replicator. The nature of this molecule is unknown, its function having long since been superseded by life's current replicator, DNA. In making copies of itself, the replicator did not always perform accurately: some copies contained an "error." If the change destroyed the copying ability of the molecule, there could be no more copies, and the line would "die out." On the other hand, a few rare changes might make the molecule replicate faster or better: those "strains" would become more numerous and "successful." As choice raw materials ("food") became depleted, strains which could exploit different materials, or perhaps halt the progress of other strains and steal their resources, became more numerous.Several different models have been proposed explaining how a replicator might have developed. Different replicators have been posited, including organic chemicals such as modern proteins, nucleic acids, phospholipids, crystals,or even quantum systems. There is currently no method of determining which of these models, if any, closely fits the origin of life on Earth. One of the older theories, and one which has been worked out in some detail, will serve as an example of how this might occur. The high energy from volcanoes, lightning, and ultraviolet radiation could help drive chemical reactions producing more complex molecules from simple compounds such as methane and ammonia.  Among these were many of the relatively simple organic compounds that are the building blocks of life. As the amount of this "organic soup" increased, different molecules reacted with one another. Sometimes more complex molecules would result—perhaps clay provided a framework to collect and concentrate organic material.  The presence of certain molecules could speed up a chemical reaction. All this continued for a very long time, with reactions occurring more or less at random, until by chance there arose a new molecule: the replicator. This had the bizarre property of promoting the chemical reactions which produced a copy of itself, and evolution began properly. Other theories posit a different replicator. In any case, DNA took over the function of the replicator at some point; all known life (with the exception of some viruses and prions) use DNA as their replicator, in an almost identical manner
.     The beginnings of the beginnings of life, the fundamental building blocks of
DNA and RNA, have been detected in cosmic clouds near the center of the Milky
Way galaxy, student researchers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
(NRAO) announced Thursday.
Using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to look closely at the
Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud, students detected the radio signals generated by
rotational transitions of two prebiotic molecules, cyanomethanimine and
ethanamine, key to the formation of DNA and the amino acid alanine.
"Finding these molecules in an interstellar gas cloud means that important
building blocks for DNA and amino acids can ‘seed' newly-formed planets with the
chemical precursors for life," NRAO's Anthony Remijan said in an advisory.
The NRAO team has been searching for molecules in space for years, discovering
radio signals from over 700 different molecules which have yet to be identified.
One of them, researchers announced in 2001, is alcohol. Researchers have also
detected sugar in Sagittarius B2.
To identify cyanomethanimine and ethanamine, the team used new technology to
study both molecules' radio signals in the laboratory, then matched the data
pattern to observations from signals in Sagittarius B2.
"We need to do further experiments to better understand how these reactions
work, but it could be that some of the first key steps toward biological
chemicals occurred on tiny ice grains," Remijan added.

The origin of life is basically inevitable from a mathematical standpoint, according to one physicist, and "should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill."
Jeremy England, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he's developed a mathematical formula to explain his theory that matter necessarily acquires the key attributes for life if placed under certain conditions.
The 31-year-old England theorized that a group of atoms driven by an external energy source, such as the sun, and placed in a heat bath, such as the ocean or atmosphere, will eventually restructure itself to disperse heat – a defining characteristic of life.
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"You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant," England told Quanta Magazine.
Many scientists believe a primordial soup, lightning and extraordinary luck sparked the formation of life and its subsequent evolution, but England says his theory follows the fundamental laws of nature and complements Darwin's theory of natural selection.
"I am certainly not saying that Darwinian ideas are wrong," he said. "On the contrary, I am just saying that from the perspective of the physics, you might call Darwinian evolution a special case of a more general phenomenon."
But if England's idea can be demonstrated, it would allow biologists to stop seeking a Darwinian explanation for every adaptation and view organisms more generally as energy dissipators.
Although his idea is controversial among other physicists, England's theoretical results are generally considered to be valid – even if his formula remains unproven.
Researchers are eager to test whether his formula, based on the second law of thermodynamics that helps explain the transfer of heat from a source, might represent the driving force that created life.
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"We can show very simply from the formula that the more likely evolutionary outcomes are going to be the ones that absorbed and dissipated more energy from the environment's external drives on the way to getting there," England said.
For example, a plant absorbs sunlight energy, uses it to create sugars and disperses infrared light, another form of energy.
Biological reproduction is a logical process for dispersing more and more energy over time, he theorized, adding that the theoretical minimum amount of dissipation that occurs during the replication of RNA molecules and bacterial cells is very close to the actual amount measured during that process.
"A great way of dissipating more is to make more copies of yourself," England said.
Scientists have already observed self-replication in nonliving systems, such as vortices in turbulent fluids that replicate by drawing energy from surrounding liquid, and England said snowflakes and sand dunes also demonstrate an internal order using condensation and wind.
"He is making me think that the distinction between living and nonliving matter is not sharp," said Carl Franck, a biological physicist at Cornell University.
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4500     and 2500ByaThe earliest life appears, possibly derived from  self-reproducing RNA   molecules. The replication of these organisms  requires resources like energy, space, and smaller building blocks, which soon become limited, resulting in competition. Natural selection favours those molecules which are more efficient at replication. DNA molecules  then take over as the main replicators. They soon develop inside enclosing  membranes which provide a stable physical and chemical environment  conducive to their replication: proto-cells.

4100     ByaThe surface of the Earth cools enough for the crust to solidify. The atmosphere and the oceans form.PAH infall, and Iron-Sulfide synthesis along deep ocean platelet boundaries, may have led to the RNA world of competing metabolising organic compounds.

3900                 ByaLate Heavy Bombardment: peak rate of impact events upon the inner planets by meteors. This constant disturbance probably obliterated any life that had already evolved, as the oceans boiled away completely;  conversely, life may have been transported to Earth by a meteor.

3900        2500 Mya  origin of life (cyanobacteria)  Cells resembling prokaryotes appear. These first organisms are chemoautotrophs: they use carbon dioxide as a  carbon source and oxidize inorganic materials to extract energy. Later, prokaryotes evolve glycolysis, a set of chemical reactions that free the energy of organic molecules such as glucose. Glycolysis generates ATP  molecules as short-term energy currency, and ATP continue to be used in  almost all organisms, unchanged, to this day.oldest cellular life (cyanobacteria) age of the Mare Imbrium, the Lower Imbrian epoch

3.8 billion years of simple cells (prokaryotes),

    3,500,000,000 Origin of life  Brachiopods, echinoderms, crustaceans, arthropods

3 billion years of photosynthesis,



    CELLS. A small section of a cell membrane. This modern cell membrane is far more sophisticated than the original simple phospholipid bilayer (the small blue spheres with two tails). Proteins and carbohydrates serve various functions in regulating the passage of material through the membrane and in reacting to the environment.Modern life has its replicating material packaged neatly inside a cellular membrane. It is easier to understand the origin of the cell membrane than the origin of the replicator, since the phospholipid molecules that make up a cell membrane will often form a bilayer spontaneously when placed in water. Under certain conditions, many such spheres can be formed (see "The bubble theory").] It is not known whether this process preceded or succeeded the origin of the replicator (or perhaps it was the replicator). The prevailing theory is that the replicator, perhaps RNA by this point (the RNA world hypothesis), along with its replicating apparatus and maybe other biomolecules, had already evolved. Initial protocells may have simply burst when they grew too large; the scattered contents may then have recolonized other "bubbles." Proteins that stabilized the membrane, or that later assisted in an orderly division, would have promoted the proliferation of those cell lines. RNA is a likely candidate for an early replicator since it can both store genetic information and catalyze reactions. At some point DNA took over the genetic storage role from RNA, and proteins known as enzymes took over the catalysis role, leaving RNA to transfer information and modulate the process. There is increasing belief that these early cells may have evolved in association with underwater volcanic vents known as "black smokers".or even hot, deep rocks.However, it is believed that out of this multiplicity of cells, or protocells, only one survived. Current evidence suggests that the last universal common ancestor lived during the early Archean eon, perhaps roughly 3.5 billion years ago or earlier. This "LUCA" cell is the ancestor of all cells and hence all life on Earth. It was probably a prokaryote, possessing a cell membrane and probably ribosomes, but lacking a nucleus or membrane-bound organelles such as mitochondria or chloroplasts. Like all modern cells, it used DNA as its genetic code, RNA for information transfer and protein synthesis, and enzymes to catalyze reactions. Some scientists believe that instead of a single organism being the last universal common ancestor, there were populations of organisms exchanging genes in lateral gene transfer.Photosynthesis and oxygen   The harnessing of the sun's energy led to several major changes in life on Earth.It is likely that the initial cells were all heterotrophs, using surrounding organic molecules (including those from other cells) as raw material and an energy source. As the food supply diminished, a new strategy evolved in some cells. Instead of relying on the diminishing amounts of free-existing organic molecules, these cells adopted sunlight as an energy source. Estimates vary, but by about 3 billion years ago, something similar to modern photosynthesis had probably developed. This made the sun's energy available not only to autotrophs but also to the heterotrophs that consumed them. Photosynthesis used the plentiful carbon dioxide and water as raw materials and, with the energy of sunlight, produced energy-rich organic molecules (carbohydrates).Moreover, oxygen was produced as a waste product of photosynthesis. At first it became bound up with limestone, iron, and other minerals. There is substantial proof of this in iron-oxide rich layers in geological strata that correspond with this time period. The oceans would have turned to a green color while oxygen was reacting with minerals. When the reactions stopped, oxygen could finally enter the atmosphere. Though each cell only produced a minute amount of oxygen, the combined metabolism of many cells over a vast period of time transformed Earth's atmosphere to its current state. Among the oldest examples of oxygen-producing lifeforms are fossil Stromatolites.This, then, is Earth's third atmosphere. Some of the oxygen was stimulated by incoming ultraviolet radiation to form ozone, which collected in a layer near the upper part of the atmosphere. The ozone layer absorbed, and still absorbs, a significant amount of the ultraviolet radiation that once had passed through the atmosphere. It allowed cells to colonize the surface of the ocean and ultimately the land: without the ozone layer, ultraviolet radiation bombarding the surface would have caused unsustainable levels of mutation in exposed cells. Besides making large amounts of energy available to life-forms and blocking ultraviolet radiation, the effects of photosynthesis had a third, major, and world-changing impact. Oxygen was toxic; probably much life on Earth died out as its levels rose (the "Oxygen Catastrophe").  Resistant forms survived and thrived, and some developed the ability to use oxygen to enhance their metabolism and derive more energy from the same food.Endosymbiosis and the three domains of life

    BACTERIA. Some of the pathways by which the various endosymbionts might have arisen.Modern taxonomy classifies life into three domains. The time of the origin of these domains are speculative. The Bacteria domain probably first split off from the other forms of life (sometimes called Neomura), but this supposition is controversial. Soon after this, by 2 billion years ago, the Neomura split into the Archaea and the Eukarya. Eukaryotic cells (Eukarya) are larger and more complex than prokaryotic cells (Bacteria and Archaea), and the origin of that complexity is only now coming to light. Around this time period a bacterial cell related to today's Rickettsia   entered a larger prokaryotic cell. Perhaps the large cell attempted to ingest the smaller one but failed (maybe due to the evolution of prey defenses). Perhaps the smaller cell attempted to parasitize the larger one. In any case, the smaller cell survived inside the larger cell. Using oxygen, it was able to metabolize the larger cell's waste products and derive more energy. Some of this surplus energy was returned to the host. The smaller cell replicated inside the larger one, and soon a stable symbiotic relationship developed. Over time the host cell acquired some of the genes of the smaller cells, and the two kinds became dependent on each other: the larger cell could not survive without the energy produced by the smaller ones, and these in turn could not survive without the raw materials provided by the larger cell. Symbiosis developed between the larger cell and the population of smaller cells inside it to the extent that they are considered to have become a single organism, the smaller cells being classified as organelles called mitochondria.   A similar event took place with photosynthetic cyanobacteria  entering larger heterotrophic cells and becoming chloroplasts. Probably as a result of these changes, a line of cells capable of photosynthesis split off from the other eukaryotes some time before one billion years ago. There were probably several such inclusion events, Besides the well-established endosymbiotic theory of the cellular origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts, it has been suggested that cells gave rise to peroxisomes, spirochetes gave rise to cilia and flagella, and that perhaps a DNA virus gave rise to the cell nucleus, though none of these theories are generally accepted  During this period, the supercontinent Columbia is believed to have existed, probably from around 1.8 to 1.5 billion years ago; it is the oldest hypothesized supercontinent Multicellularity

    2  10      Bya Eukaryotic cells appear. Eukaryotes contain membrane-bound organelles with diverse functions, probably derived from prokaryotes engulfing each other via phagocytosis.

2.3 billion years ago: first known ice age
 
2 billion years of complex cells (eukaryotes),

1.8-2.1 billion years ago: earliest Eukaryotes  

1200 Bya    Sexual reproduction evolves, increasing the rate of evolution.

1200 Bya    Simple multicellular organisms evolve, mostly consisting of cell colonies of limited complexity.
1 BILLION YEARS AGO. Científicos descubren fragmento de antiguo continente en el océano Índico
 
La situación del microcontinente debajo de Mauritania (Foto: GFZ/Steinberger)
1 1 0 0Geólogos publicaron una investigación en la que concluyeron que una masa de tierra, conocida como Mauritia, se desprendió hace 60 millones de años, mientras Madagascar y la India se separaban, lo que conformaba parte de un antiguo continente en dicho océano.
La situación del microcontinente debajo de Mauritania (Foto: GFZ/Steinberger)

      

Un equipo internacional de geólogos descubrió el fragmento de un antiguo continente en el fondo del océano Índico, de acuerdo con un artículo que fue publicado en la revista Nature Geoscience.

Se estima que esa masa de tierra, conocida como Mauritia, se desprendió hace 60 millones de años, mientras Madagascar y la India se separaban, y quedó enterrada bajo enormes masas de lava, según reseña la investigación llevada a cabo por expertos procedentes de Noruega, Sudáfrica, Gran Bretaña y Alemania.

La investigación también detalló que estos micro-continentes en los océanos parecen ocurrir con más frecuencia de lo que se pensaba, aunque algunos pedazos de masas continentales pudieron haberse perdido durante la deriva.

Según los geólogos el estudio tiene su base en el análisis de los granos de arena de lava de la playa de Isla Mauricio, que contienen circones, cristales diminutos de silicato de circonio muy resistentes a la erosión, cuyas edades oscilan entre 660 y mil 970 millones de años.

Los especialistas realizaron además un nuevo cálculo de la tectónica de placas, que explica exactamente cómo y dónde los fragmentos terminaron en el océano Índico.

El planeta Tierra ha pasado por varios cambios desde su conformación, hace unos cuatro mil 500 millones de años. Carente de atmósfera, impactada por múltiples meteoritos y con una actividad volcánica intensa, poco a poco su estructura y composición se fue modelando.

Vaalbará, es teóricamente el primero. Ur, surgió después, seguido de Kenorland, Columbia y Rodinia. Este último, hace más de mil millones de años, un gran continente del que derivaron los subsecuentes, aunque no se descarta la posibilidad de anteriores a éstos, integrados y desintegrados a lo largo del tiempo.

Más tarde fue Pangea, una masa única que luego se fracturó en dos, Laurasia al norte y Gondwana, al sur, separados por un océano, Testis. Posteriormente estas grandes masas de tierra siguieron fragmentándose hasta que los continentes adquirieron la disposición actual.

Laurasia dio origen a América del Norte, Europa y Asia, mientras que de Gondwana "nacieron" América del Sur, Australia, Antártida, África y alguna porción de Asia, como por ejemplo la India. La distribución actual se alcanzó hace unos 65 millones de años
1 billion years of multicellular life

    MULTICELLULAR ORGANISMS. For most of Earth's history, there were no multicellular organisms on land. Parts of the surface may have vaguely resembled this view of Mars, one of Earth's neighboring planets.Oxygen accumulation from photosynthesis resulted in the formation of an ozone layer that absorbed much of Sun's ultraviolet radiation, meaning unicellular organisms that reached land were less likely to die, and prokaryotes began to multiply and become better adapted to survival out of the water. Prokaryotes had likely colonized the land as early as 2.6 billion years ago[48] even before the origin of the eukaryotes. For a long time, the land remained barren of multicellular organisms. The supercontinent Pannotia formed around 600 million years ago and then broke apart a short 50 million years later.[49] Fish, the earliest vertebrates, evolved in the oceans around 530 million years ago.[50] A major extinction event occurred near the end of the Cambrian period,[51] which ended 488 million years ago[52].Several hundred million years ago, plants (probably resembling algae) and fungi started growing at the edges of the water, and then out of it.[53] The oldest fossils of land fungi and plants date to 480–460 million years ago, though molecular evidence suggests the fungi may have colonized the land as early as 1000 million years ago and the plants 700 million years ago.[54] Initially remaining close to the water's edge, mutations and variations resulted in further colonization of this new environment. The timing of the first animals to leave the oceans is not precisely known: the oldest clear evidence is of arthropods on land around 450 million years ago[55], perhaps thriving and becoming better adapted due to the vast food source provided by the terrestrial plants. There is also some unconfirmed evidence that arthropods may have appeared on land as early as 530 million years ago[56]. At the end of the Ordovician period, 440 million years ago, additional extinction events occurred, perhaps due to a concurrent ice age.[57] Around 380 to 375 million years ago, the first tetrapods evolved from fish.[58] It is thought that perhaps fins evolved to become limbs which allowed the first tetrapods to lift their heads out of the water to breathe air. This would let them survive in oxygen-poor water or pursue small prey in shallow water.[58] They may have later ventured on land for brief periods. Eventually, some of them became so well adapted to terrestrial life that they spent their adult lives on land, although they hatched in the water and returned to lay their eggs. This was the origin of the amphibians. About 365 million years ago, another period of extinction occurred, perhaps as a result of global cooling.[59] Plants evolved seeds, which dramatically accelerated their spread on land, around this time (by approximately 360 million years ago).
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MILLIONS OF YEARS
    4000 Ma (million years ago)The earliest life appears. Further information: Origin of life




    3900 MaCells resembling prokaryotes appear.  Further information: Cell_(biology)#Evolution
      

2500 MaFirst organisms to utilize oxygen.
      

    2100 MaMore complex cells appear: the eukaryotes. Further information: Eukaryote#Origin and evolution
      

1200 MaSexual reproduction evolves, leading to faster evolution.[1]
      

    900     Ma ChoanoflagellateThe choanoflagellates may look similar to the ancestors of the entire animal kingdom, and in particular they may be the direct ancestors of Sponges.[2] Proterospongia (members of the Choanoflagellata) are the best living examples of what the ancestor of all animals may have looked like.They live in colonies, and show a primitive level of cellular specialization for different tasks.
      

        Paleozoic-
850    –630 MyaA global glaciation may have reduced the diversity of life. Opinion is divided on whether it increased or decreased the rate of evolution.

750 million years ago: beginning of a possible Snowball Earth ice age

600     million years of simple animals, first complex multicelled lifeforms Formation of the Earth Time since the formation of Earth to the beginnings of complex life
    600     MaIt is thought that the earliest multicellular animal was a sponge-like creature. Sponges are among the simplest of animals, with partially differentiated tissues.Sponges (Porifera) are the phylogenetically oldest animal phylum extant  today.

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    580     MaThe movement of all animals may have started with cnidarians. Almost all cnidarians possess nerves and muscles and, because they are the  simplest animals to possess it, their direct ancestors were very likely the first animals to use nerves and muscles together. Cnidarians are also  the first animals with an actual body of definite form and shape. They  have radial symmetry. The first eyes evolved at this time.
     
580    -542 MyaThe Ediacaran biota represent the first large, complex  multicellular organisms - although their affinities remain a subject of debate.Most modern phyla of animals begin to appear in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion.end of a possible Snowball Earth ice age

575 million years ago: oldest Animal fossils

570,    000,00 0         Cambrian  - trilobites (skeletal)and Chordata 570 million years of arthropods (ancestors of insects, arachnids and  crustaceans) 
      
550     million years of complex animals

    550     Ma FlatwormFlatworms are the earliest animals to have a brain, and the  simplest animals alive to have bilateral symmetry. They are also the  simplest animals with organs that form from three germ layers.

540     MaAcorn worms are considered more highly specialised and advanced than  other similarly shaped worm-like creatures. They have a circulatory system with a heart that also functions as a kidney. Acorn worms have a gill-like structure used for breathing, a structure similar to that of primitive fish. Acorn worms are thus sometimes said to be a link between vertebrates and invertebrates
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542     millio                  present The Phanerozoic eon, literally the "period of well-displayed life", marks the appearance in the fossil record of abundant, shell-forming and/or trace-makin organisms. It is subdivided into three eras, the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic, which are divided by major mass extinctions.

540     MyaThe accumulation of atmospheric oxygen allows the formation  of an ozone layer. This blocks ultraviolet radiation, permitting the colonisation of the land.beginning of the Cambrian and the end of the
      Precambrian period. Time since the Cambrian explosion the emergence of most  forms of complex life, including vertebrates, arthropods, echinoderms and  molluscs.

530     Mya The first known footprints on land date to 530 Mya, indicating that early animal explorations may have predated the development of terrestrial  plants

    530 Ma PikaiaOne of the earliest known ancestor of the chordates is Pikaia.[3] It  is the first known animal with a notochord. Pikaia is believed to be the  ancestor of all chordates and vertebrates.The Lancelet, still living today, retains some characteristics of the   primitive chordates. It resembles Pikaia Other earliest known chordate-like fossils is from a conodonts an "eel-shaped animal of 4-20 cm (1½-8 in) long" with a pair of huge eyes at the head end and a complex basket of teeth.

500,    000,000    Ordovician,-Agnatha jawless fish, lampreys  and proto-amphibiansbeginning of the Ordovician and the end of the
      Cambrian period

505 Ma AgnathaThe first vertebrates appear: the ostracoderms, jawless fish
      related to present-day lampreys and hagfishes. Haikouichthys and Myllokunmingia are examples of these jawless fish, or Agnatha. (See also prehistoric fish). They were jawless and their internal skeletons were cartilaginous. They lacked the paired (pectoral and pelvic) fins of more advanced fish. They were the Precursors to the Osteichthyes (bony fish).
      

480 Ma A PlacodermThe Placodermi were prehistoric fishes. Placoderms were the  first of the jawed fishes, their jaws evolving from the first of their  gill arches [6]. Their head and thorax were covered by articulated  armoured plates and the rest of the body was scaled or naked
.
 410 MaThe first Coelacanth appears[7]; this order of animals had been
      thought to have no extant members until living specimens were discovered  in 1938. It is often referred to as a living fossil.

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475     MyaThe first primitive plants move onto land,having evolved from green algae living along the edges of lakes. They  are accompanied by fungi, which may have aided the colonisation of land  through symbiosis.
    PLANTS. Volvox aureus is believed to be similar to the first multicellular plants.Archaeans, bacteria, and eukaryotes continued to diversify and to become more sophisticated and better adapted to their environments. Each domain repeatedly split into multiple lineages, although little is known about the history of the archaea and bacteria. Around 1.1 billion years ago, the supercontinent Rodinia was assembling.[41] The plant, animal, and fungi lines had all split, though they still existed as solitary cells. Some of these lived in colonies, and gradually some division of labor began to take place; for instance, cells on the periphery might have started to assume different roles from those in the interior. Although the division between a colony with specialized cells and a multicellular organism is not always clear, around 1billion years ago,[42] the first multicellular plants emerged, probably green algae.[43] Possibly by around 900 million years ago,[44] true multicellularity had also evolved in animals. At first it probably somewhat resembled that of today's sponges, where all cells were totipotent and a disrupted organism could reassemble itself.[45] As the division of labor became more complete in all lines of multicellular organisms, cells became more specialized and more dependent on each other; isolated cells would die. Many scientists believe that a very severe ice age began around 770 million years ago, so severe that the surface of all the oceans completely froze (Snowball Earth). Eventually, after 20 million years, enough carbon dioxide escaped through volcanic outgassing that the resulting greenhouse effect raised global temperatures.[46] By around the same time, 750 million years ago,[47] Rodinia began to break up.Colonization of land

440,    000,000    Silurian,

435,000,000beginning of the Silurian and the end of the Ordovician
      period

420,000,000first creature took a breath of air

400     million years of insects and seeds, beginning of the Devonian and the end of the Silurian period. First insects.
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    395 mil Devonian- age of fishes- lung fish (Dipnoi) and fringe-finned fishes Crossopterygian) coelacanth
 
    390 Ma PanderichthysSome fresh water lobe-finned fish (Sarcopterygii) develop legs and give rise to the Tetrapoda.The first tetrapods evolved in shallow and swampy freshwater habitats. Primitive tetrapods developed from a lobe-finned fish (an "osteolepid Sarcopterygian"), with a two-lobed brain in a flattened skull, a wide mouth and a short snout, whose upward-facing eyes show that it was a bottom-dweller, and which had already developed adaptations of fins with fleshy bases and bones. The "living fossil" coelacanth is a related lobe-finned fish without these shallow-water adaptations. These fishes  used their fins as paddles in shallow-water habitats choked with plants and detritus. The universal tetrapod characteristics of front limbs that bend backward at the elbow and hind limbs that bend forward at the knee can plausibly be traced to early tetrapods living in shallow water.[8]Panderichthys is a 90-130 cm (35-50 in) long fish from the Late Devonian period (380 Mya). It has a large tetrapod-like head. Panderichthys  exhibits features transitional between lobe-finned fishes and early  tetrapods.  Trackway impressions made by something that resembles Ichthyostega's limbs  were formed 390 Ma in Polish marine tidal sediments. This suggests tetrapod evolution is older than the dated fossils of Panderichthys  through to Ichthyostega.Lungfishes retain some characteristics of the early Tetrapoda. One example is the Queensland Lungfish.
      

    375 MaTiktaalik is a genus of sarcopterygian (lobe-finned) fishes from the late Devonian with many tetrapod-like features. It shows a clear link between Panderichthys and Acanthostega.
      

    365 Ma Acanthostega IchthyostegaAcanthostega is an extinct amphibian, among the first animals to have recognizable limbs. It is a candidate for being one of the first vertebrates to be capable of coming onto land. It lacked wrists, and was generally poorly adapted for life on land. The limbs could not support the animal's weight. Acanthostega had both lungs and gills, also indicating it  was a link between lobe-finned fish and terrestrial vertebrates. Ichthyostega is an early tetrapod. Being one of the first animals with legs, arms, and finger bones, Ichthyostega is seen as a hybrid between a fish and an amphibian. Ichthyostega' had legs but its limbs probably weren't used for walking, they may have spent very brief periods out of water and would have used their legs to paw their way through the mud.Amphibia were the first four-legged animals to develop lungs which may  have evolved from Hynerpeton

    360 Mya.Amphibians living today still retain many characteristics of the early tetrapods.
      
363     MyaBy the start of the Carboniferous period, the Earth begins to be  recognisable. Insects roamed the land and would soon take to the skies;  sharks swam the oceans as top predators, and vegetation covered the land, with seed-bearing plants and forests soon to flourish. Four-limbed tetrapods gradually gain adaptations which will help them  occupy a terrestrial life-habit

360     million years of amphibians,

345     million           Carboniferous,- first dry land plants and animals -forests and green flora  Amphibians, reptiles, molluscs, insects. Aquatic worms, corals, sponges, trilobites,    insect larvae 

340,000,000beginning of the Carboniferous and the end of Devonian
      period

315,000,000the evolution of the first reptiles.
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300     million years of reptiles

    300 Ma HylonomusFrom amphibians came the first reptiles: Hylonomus is the earliest known reptile. It was 20 cm (8 in) long (including the tail) and  probably would have looked rather similar to modern lizards. It had small sharp teeth and probably ate millipedes and early insects. It is a precursor of later Amniotes and mammal-like reptiles. Evolution of the amniotic egg gives rise to the Amniota, reptiles that can reproduce on land and lay eggs on dry land. They did not need to return to  water for reproduction. This adaptation gave them the capability to  colonize the uplands for the first time. Reptiles have advanced nervous system, compared to amphibians.They have twelve pairs of cranial nerves.

    PANGEAEA.  Pangaea, the most recent supercontinent, existed from 300 to 180 million years ago. The outlines of the modern continents and other land masses are indicated on this map.Some 20 million years later (340 million years ago[62]), the amniotic egg evolved, which could be laid on land, giving a survival advantage to tetrapod embryos. This resulted in the divergence of amniotes from amphibians. Another 30 million years (310 million years ago[63]) saw the divergence of the synapsids (including mammals) from the sauropsids (including birds and non-avian, non-mammalian reptiles). Other groups of organisms continued to evolve and lines diverged—in fish, insects, bacteria, and so on—but less is known of the details. 300 million years ago, the most recent hypothesized supercontinent formed, called Pangaea. The most severe extinction event to date took place 250 million years ago, at the boundary of the Permian and Triassic periods; 95% of life on Earth died out,[64] possibly due to the Siberian Traps volcanic event. The discovery of the Wilkes Land crater in Antarctica may suggest a connection with the Permian-Triassic extinction, but the age of that crater is not known.[65] But life persevered, and around 230 million years ago [66], dinosaurs split off from their reptilian ancestors. An extinction event between the Triassic and Jurassic periods 200 million years ago spared many of the dinosaurs,[67] and they soon became dominant among the vertebrates. Though some of the mammalian lines began to separate during this period, existing mammals were probably all small animals resembling shrews.By 180 million years ago, Pangaea broke up into Laurasia and Gondwana. The boundary between avian and non-avian dinosaurs is not clear, but Archaeopteryx, traditionally considered one of the first birds, lived around 150 million years ago.[69] The earliest evidence for the angiosperms evolving flowers is during the Cretaceous period, some 20 million years later (132 million years ago)[70] Competition with birds drove many pterosaurs to extinction, and the dinosaurs were probably already in decline for various reasons[71] when, 65 million years ago, a 10-kilometer meteorite likely struck Earth just off the Yucatán Peninsula, ejecting vast quantities of particulate matter and vapor into the air that occluded sunlight, inhibiting photosynthesis. Most large animals, including the non-avian dinosaurs, becameextinct.[72] marking the end of the Cretaceous period and Mesozoic era. Thereafter, in the Paleocene epoch, mammals rapidly diversified, grew larger, and became the dominant vertebrates. Perhaps a couple of million years later (around 63 million years ago), the last common ancestor of primates lived.[73] By the late Eocene epoch, 34 million years ago, some terrestrial mammals had returned to the oceans to become animals such as Basilosaurus which later gave rise to dolphins and whales.

__________________

280     milli  o        Permian- amphibians and reptiles (Ichtyostega) sauriansArmored fishes, sharks, dragonflies, dolichosoma longuissimumUrocordylus and Diplovertebron    Aquatic forms evolve from terrestrial ones  end of Carboniferous and beginning of Permian Period. 

     256 Ma Phthinosuchus, an early TherapsidShortly after the appearance of the first reptiles, two branches split off. One branch is the Diapsids, from which  come the modern reptiles. The other branch is Synapsida, which had temporal fenestra, a pair of holes in their skulls behind the eyes, which  were used to increase the space for jaw muscles. The earliest mammal-like reptiles are the pelycosaurs. The pelycosaurs were the first animals to have temporal fenestra. Pelycosaurs are not Therapsids but soon they gave rise to them. The Therapsida were the direct ancestor of mammals.The therapsids have temporal fenestrae larger and more mammal-like than  pelycosaurs, their teeth show more serial differentiation; and later forms  had evolved a secondary palate. A secondary palate enables the animal to eat and breathe at the same time and is a sign of a more active, perhaps  warm-blooded, way of life. [10]
      


 
     251.4 MyaThe Permian-Triassic extinction event eliminates over 95% of  species. This "clearing of the slate" may have led to an ensuing diversification. MyaThe Mesozoic Marine Revolution begins: increasingly well-adapted and diverse predators pressurise sessile marine groups; the "balance of power" in the oceans shifts dramatically as some groups of prey adapt more rapidly and effectively than others. Permian mass extinction. End of Permian Period and of the Palaeozoic Era. Beginning of Triassic Period, the Mesozoic era and of the age of the dinosaurs.

        Mesozoic-

230     millio        Triassic, -primitive mammal Sauria, dinosaurus, pretosaurus, ichtyosaurus, gymnospermous plants, sequoias and cypresses Ammonites, trichonodon (reptile with fur)

220     Mya  Eoraptor, an early dinosaur.Gymnosperm forests dominate the land; herbivores grow to huge sizes in order to accommodate the large guts necessary to digest the nutrient-poor plants.

    220 MaOne sub-group of therapsids, the cynodonts evolved more mammal-like  characteristics. The jaws of cynodonts resemble modern mammal jaws. It is very likely this group of animals contains a species which is the direct ancestor of all  modern mammals.[11]
      

    220 Ma RepenomamusFrom Eucynodontia (cynodonts) came the first mammals. Most early mammals were small and shrew-like animals that fed on insects. Although there is no evidence in the fossil record, it is likely that these animals had a constant body temperature, milk glands for their young. The neocortex region of the brain first evolved in mammals and thus  is unique to them.
      
200     m illion          years of mammals, The first accepted evidence for viruses (at least, the groupGeminiviridae) exists. Viruses are still poorly understood and may have  arisen before "life" itself, or may be a more recent phenomenon.
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195,    000,000    Jurassic,-first birds, archaeopteryx, ichthyornis, hesperornis end of Triassic and beginning of Jurassic Period; first
      mammals.

150     million years of birds, Archaeopteryx,

141,    000,000    Cretaceous-pouched mammals and placental mammals

135,000,000end of Jurassic and beginning of Cretaceous Period. First birds.
130     millionyears of flowers,  MyaThe rise of the Angiosperms: These flowering plants boast  structures that attract insects and other animals to spread pollen. This  innovation causes a major burst of animal evolution through co-evolution. Avocaos grow in Mexico.

    125 Ma  Eomaia scansoriaEomaia scansoria, a eutherian mammal, leads to the formation of modern placental mammals. It looks like modern dormouse,  climbing small shrubs in Liaoning, China.Monotremes are an egg laying group of mammals represented amongst modern  animals by the platypus and spiny anteaters that split away from the eutherian mammals. Recent genome sequencing of the platypus indicates that its sex genes are closer to that of birds. Thus it can be inferred that the first mammals to gain single paired sex determining genes (XX or XY)  evolved at or after this point within the eutherian group. 100 MaCommon genetic ancestor of mice and humans (base of the clade Euarchontoglires).
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    CenozoicTime from the dawn of the Cenozoic era and the beginning of the age of mammals  to the beginnings of human evolution

70,000,000    prosimian

    65–85 Ma Carpolestes simpsoniA Plesiadapis without fur.A group of small, nocturnal and arboreal, insect-eating mammals called the Euarchonta begins a speciation that will  lead to the primate, treeshrew and flying lemur orders. The Primatomorpha  is a subdivision of Euarchonta that includes the primates and the  proto-primate Plesiadapiformes. One of the early proto-primates is Plesiadapis. Plesiadapis still had claws and the eyes located on each side  of the head. Because of this they were faster on the ground than on the  top of the trees, but they began to spend long times on lower branches of  trees, feeding on fruits and leaves. The Plesiadapiformes very likely  contain the species which is the ancestor of all primates.One of the last Plesiadapiformes is Carpolestes simpsoni. It had grasping digits but no forward facing eyes.

    65,00    0,000 Paleocene, Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period (end of the Mesozoic era); start of the Tertiary period (Cenozoic era). End of the age of the dinosaurs. Age of mammals, birds and plant s   Mastodons, ungulates, antlers, fox, horse, flamingo   Primate shift from insectivorous to herbivorous diet  65   million  years since the non-avian dinosaurs died out, 65.5 Mya  The Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event eradicates about half of  all animal species, including all dinosaurs except the ancestors of modern  birds

    60,000,000evolution of the first primates and rodents. Complex lifeTime            from the beginnings of complex, multicellular life to the beginning      of the age of mammals

55,000,000first known bats.

54,    000,000 Eocene, prosimians

50,000,000divergence of cat and dog ancestors.

49,000,000whales return to the water
47 MaDarwinius masillae, a transitional form between the prosimians
      (lemurs and other primitive primates) and the simians (monkeys, apes). It
      looked much like a lemur but had opposable thumbs.  
      Darwinius masillae
      
40-60,000,000 Prosimiansage of the Catarrhini parvorder; first canines evolve

40MaPrimates diverge into suborders Strepsirrhini (wet-nosed primates) and Haplorrhini (dry nosed primates). Strepsirrhini contains most of the prosimians; modern examples include the lemurs and lorises. The haplorrhines include the three living groups the prosimian tarsiers, the simian monkeys, and apes. One of the earliest haplorrhines is Teilhardina  asiatica, a mouse-sized, diurnal creature with small eyes. The Haplorrhini metabolism lost the ability to make its own Vitamin C. This means that it and all its descendants had to include fruit in its diet, where Vitamin C could be obtained externally.

38,000,000 Oligocene-, anthropoid primates, AAFRICAopithecus, propiopithecus

36,000,000end of Eocene, start of Oligocene epoch

34,000,000cats begin to evolve

30 Ma AegyptopithecusHaplorrhini splits into infraorders Platyrrhini and  Catarrhini. Platyrrhines, New World monkeys, have prehensile tails and males are color blind. They may have migrated to South America on a raft of vegetation across the Atlantic ocean (circa 4,500 km, 2,800 mi). Catarrhines mostly stayed in Africa as the two continents drifted apart. One ancestor of catarrhines might be Aegyptopithecus.

26,000,000emergence of the first true elephants

    25-35,000,000 Anthropoids MyaGrasses evolve from among the angiosperms; grassland  dominates many  terrestrial ecosystems.

25 Ma ProconsulCatarrhini splits into 2 superfamilies, Old World monkeys
          (Cercopithecoidea) and apes (Hominoidea). Our trichromatic color vision had its genetic origins in this period.Proconsul was an early genus of catarrhine primates. They had a mixture of Old World monkey and ape characteristics. Proconsul's monkey-like features include thin tooth enamel, a light build with a narrow chest and short  forelimbs, and an arboreal quadrupedal lifestyle. Its ape-like features are its lack of a tail, ape-like elbows, and a slightly larger brain relative to body size.Proconsul africanus is a possible ancestor of both great and lesser apes, and humans.

24,000 000Miocene epoch begins

22,    000,000 Miocene, - monkeys, forest apes, dryopithecines in East Africa, Proconsul, Rangwapithecus, Limnopithecus, tree apes (gibbons)

20,000,000 first forms of grass appear

18,000,000estimated age of the Hominidae/Hylobatidae (great apes vs.
      gibbons) split.

15 MaHominidae (great apes) speciate from the ancestors of the gibbon
      (lesser apes).
      

13 MaHomininae ancestors speciate from the ancestors of the orangutanPierolapithecus catalaunicus is believed to be a common ancestor of humans and the great apes or at least a species that brings us closer to a common ancestor than any previous fossil discovery.
      Pierolapithecus had special adaptations for tree climbing, just as humans and other great apes do: a wide, flat ribcage, a stiff lower spine,  flexible wrists, and shoulder blades that lie along its back.

10 MaHominini speciate from the ancestors of the gorillas.

 7 Ma Sahelanthropus tchadensisHominina speciate from the ancestors of the chimpanzees. The latest common ancestor lived around the time of  Sahelanthropus tchadensis, ca. 7 Ma [3]; S. tchadensis is sometimes  claimed to be the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, but this is disputed. The earliest known human ancestor post-dating the separation  of the human and the chimpanzee lines is Orrorin tugenensis (Millennium Man, Kenya; ca. 6 Ma). Both chimpanzees and humans have a larynx that repositions during the first two years of life to a spot between the pharynx and the lungs, indicating that the common ancestors have this  feature, a precursor of speech.

12,    000,000 Sivapithecus, Dryopithecus, Dryopithecus, Ramapithecus (likely ancestor)

10-30,000,000 Apes
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5,700,000 Pan/Homo split estimated age of the Homo/Pan (human vs. chimpanzee) estimated age of the Hominidae/Hylobatidae (great apes vs.  gibbons) split. split, age of the Hominini tribe

5.6 million     Possible earliest hominid:


        HOMINIDS. Australopithecus africanus, an early hominid.Main article: Human evolution  A small African ape living around six million years ago was the last animal whose descendants would include both modern humans and their closest relatives, the bonobos, and chimpanzees.[75] Only two branches of its family tree have surviving descendants. Very soon after the split, for reasons that are still debated, apes in one branch developed the ability to walk upright.[76] Brain size increased rapidly, and by 2 million years ago, the very first animals classified in the genus Homo had appeared.[77] Of course, the line between different species or even genera is rather arbitrary as organisms continuously change over generations. Around the same time, the other branch split into the ancestors of the common chimpanzee and the ancestors of the bonobo as evolution continued simultaneously in all life forms.[75] The ability to control fire likely began in Homo erectus (or Homo ergaster), probably at least 790,000 years ago[78] but perhaps as early as 1.5 million years ago.[79] In addition it has sometimes suggested that the use and discovery of controlled fire may even predate Homo erectus. Fire was possibly used by the early Lower Paleolithic (Oldowan) hominid Homo habilis and/or by robust australopithecines such as Paranthropus.[80] However it is more difficult to establish the origin of language; it is unclear whether Homo erectus could speak or if that capability had not begun until Homo sapiens.[81] As brain size increased, babies were born sooner, before their heads grew too large to pass through the pelvis. As a result, they exhibited more plasticity, and thus possessed an increased capacity to learn and required a longer period of dependence. Social skills became more complex, language became more advanced, and tools became more elaborate. This contributed to further cooperation and brain development.
 
5,500,000appearance of the genus Ardipithecus

    5,000,000     MILLION  ETHIOPIA.  settlement in Ethiopia dates
        back to ancient times. Fossilized remains of the earliest ancestors to the human species, discovered in Ethiopia, have been assiged dates as long ago as 5.9 million years.Together with Eritrea and the southeastern part of the Red Sea coast of Sudan (Beja lands), it is considered the most likely location of the land known to the ancient Egyptians as Punt (or "Ta Netjeru," meaning land of the Gods), whose first mention dates to the twenty-fifth century BC.

5,000,0000     Pliocene-early hominids (australopithecines) EthiopiaPliocene epoch begins

4,500,000 appearance of the genus Australopithecus

4.4     million     Ardipithecus ramidus:Ardipithecus is a very early hominin genus (subfamily Homininae). Two species are described in the literature: A. ramidus, which lived about 4.4 million years ago[14] during the early Pliocene, and A. kadabba, dated  to approximately 5.6 million years ago[15] (late Miocene). A. ramidus had a small brain, measuring between 300 and 350 cm3. This is about the same size as modern bonobo and female common chimpanzee brain, but much smaller than the brain of australopithecines like Lucy (~400 to 550 cm3) and slightly over a fifth the size of the modern Homo sapiens brain. Ardipithecus was aboreal, meaning it lived largely in the forest where it competed with other forest animals for food, including the contemporary ancestor for the chimpanzees. Ardipithecus was likely bipedal as evidenced by its bowl shaped pelvis, the angle of its foramen magnum and its thinner wrist bones, though its feet were still adapted for grasping rather than walking for long distances.
      ____________________________________________________________

4,000,000start of last ice age

4.3 million YA (Years Ago)  In what today is Ethiopia, creatures labeled Ardipithecus ramidus lived, represented today by the nickname created by scientists: "Ardi". Her species was either directly ancestral to humans or closely related to a species ancestral to humans. She was 1.2 meters (4 feet) tall. She walked on two feet – not knuckle-walking as gorillas and chimps do, but did not have arched feet like us, indicating that she could not walk or run for long distances. She had opposable great toes and she had a pelvis that allowed her to negotiate tree branches well.

3.2 million YA  In what today is Ethiopia, members of the biological family Hominidae lived, represented today by the nickname "Lucy." The angle of her knee joint indicates that she walked upright. She was 1.1 meters (3 feet 8 inches) tall. Walking upright improves the ability to run after game and to run from danger.

2.5 million YA  Rocks are split into flakes and used as tools.

2.5 to 1.6 million YA  A species called Homo habilis lives in what today is Tanzania. It is shorter and has disproportionately long arms compared to modern humans and is using stone tools.

1.8 to 1.3 million YA  A species called Homo erectus has come into being and spreads as far as India, China and Java. (There are still disagreements about the Homo erectus classification.) Homo Erectus is to be described as the first human species to walk fully upright.

1.77 million YA  Hominids (humans) in what today is the Dmanisi Republic of Georgia have a gum disease that scientists will think must have been caused by the use of toothpicks.


3.6 Ma Australopithecus afarensisSome Australopithecus afarensis left human-like footprints on volcanic ash in Laetoli, Kenya (Northern Tanzania) which provides strong evidence of full-time bipedalism. Australopithecus afarensis lived between 3.9 and 2.9 million years ago. It is thought that A. afarensis was ancestral to both the genus Australopithecus and the  genus Homo. Compared to the modern and extinct great apes, A. afarensis  has reduced canines and molars, although they are still relatively larger  than in modern humans. A. afarensis also has a relatively small brain size   (~380-430cm³) and a prognathic (i.e. projecting anteriorly) face. Australopithecines have been found in Savannah environments and likely  increased its diet to include meat from scavenging opportunities. An analysis of Australopithecus africanus lower vertebrae suggests that  females had changes to support bipedalism even while pregnant. 3.5 MaKenyanthropus platyops, a possible ancestor of Homo, emerges from the Australopithecus genus. 3 MaThe bipedal australopithecines (a genus of the Hominina subtribe) evolve in the savannas of Africa being hunted by Dinofelis. Loss of body hair takes place in the period 3-2 Ma, in parallel with the development of  full bipedalism.

3.0-3.9 million Australopithecus afarensis:
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3,000,000    Pongo pygmaeus, Gorilla, Pan Troglodytes, Homo
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2.5     million years since the appearance of the genus Homo. Pleistocene epoch (Quaternary period) begins; emergence  of the genus Homo

    2.5 Ma Homo habilisAppearance of Homo. Homo habilis is thought to be the ancestor  of the lankier and more sophisticated Homo ergaster. Lived side by side  with Homo erectus until at least 1.44 Ma, making it highly unlikely that  Homo erectus directly evolved out of Homo habilis. First stone tools, beginning of the Lower Paleolithic.Further information: Homo rudolfensis
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    UNITED STATES CANADA

    MEXICO

    CENTRAL AMERICA CARIBBEAN

    SOUTH AMERICA

    EUROPE

    RUSSIA

    MIDEAST

    AFRICA

2,000,000    AFRICA. Homo Habilis (Kenya) food gatherer, tool maker, hunter. Melons and Watermelons are found in Africa and the Levant.
    Grapes are in existence in the Jordan valley.    

    Quaternary-
        Ice sheets begin to recede and warm climate emerges in Europe, Asia and Africa

1,800,000    Pleistocene -glaciation-human colonization of AfricaASIA

    1.8 Ma A reconstruction of Homo erectus.Homo erectus evolves in Africa. Homo erectus would bear a striking resemblance to modern humans, but had a brain about 74 percent of the size of modern man. Its forehead is less sloping and the teeth are smaller. Other hominid designations such as Homogeorgicus, Homo ergaster, Homo pekinensis, Homo heidelbergensis are often put under the umbrella species name of Homo erectus[16]. Starting with Homo georgicus found in what is now the Republic of Georgia dated at 1.8 Ma, the pelvis and backbone grew more human-like and gave georgicus the ability cover very long distances in order to follow herds of other animals. This is the oldest fossil of a hominid found (so far) outside of Africa. Control of fire by early humans is achieved 1.5 Ma by Homo ergaster. Homo ergaster reaches a height of around 1.9 metres (6.2 ft).   Evolution of dark skin, which is linked to the loss of body hair in human  ancestors, is complete by 1.2 Ma. Homo pekinensis first appears in Asia  around 700 Ka but according to the theory of a recent African origin of  modern humans, they could not be human ancestors, but rather, were just a cousin offshoot species from Homo ergaster. Homo heidelbergensis was a very large hominid that had a more advanced complement of cutting tools and may have hunted big game such as horses.
      
 
    SOUTH ASIA

    AUSTRALIA

    Pears are grown in Central Asia.


1,500,000 AMERICAS. Animal rights groups are pressing a case in federal court maintaining that wild horses roamed the West about 1.5 million years ago and didn't disappear until as recently as 7,600 years ago. More important, they say, a growing stockpile of DNA evidence shows conclusively that today's horses are genetically linked to those ancient ancestors.The new way of thinking, if accepted, could affect hundreds millions of acres in the West where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management divides livestock grazing allotments based partly on the belief that the horses are no more native to those lands than are the cattle brought to North America centuries ago.American history textbooks teach that the wild horses roaming Western plains were first brought by European explorers and settlers. But that theory is being challenged at archaeological digs and university labs as horse protection advocates battle the U.S. government over roundups of thousands of mustangs they say have not only a legal right but a native claim to the rangeland.Rachel Fazio, a lawyer for Defense of Animals and other plaintiffs, told a 9th Circuit appellate panel in San Francisco earlier this year that the horses are "an integral part of the environment," adding, "as much as the BLM would like to see them as not, they are actually a native species. They are tied to this land. There would not be a horse but for North America. Every single evolutionary iteration of the horse is found here and only here."
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1,000,000 AFRICA. Homo Erectus Leakyi (Kenya)
    Hunting, tools, division of labor, tribes, cooperation for big game hunting Primitive society meant there are neither separate peoples nor states. Men live in small groups, clans or tribes.Men are able to make tools, gather fruits and hunt small animals.They are obliged to defend themsleves in groups.Life outside the group is fraught with danger.  There is no idea of hierarchy or inequality, nor are there any property or family ties.
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HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS

    188,000 (190,000 years ago) earliest demonstrable evidence of the controlled use of fire by Homo erectus Cooked food might be a big reason humans were able to grow such large brains compared to their body size, scientists say.If modern human ancestors had eaten only raw food, they'd have to regularly feed more than nine hours a day, according to a study published online Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.A pair of researchers from the Instituto Nacional de Neurociéncia Translacional in São Paulo, Brazil, decided to try and help explain why modern humans' brains were able to grow so large compared to their body size and why other primates' brains did not. They looked at the relative brain-to-neuron-counts of a host of primates, from owl monkeys to baboons. For the most part, these primates followed a linear pattern – the bigger the brain, the more neurons they had.Things get a bit tricky with the brain-to-body ratio, however -- partly because humans' brains are so large (and have so many neurons) compared to their body size. Great apes' brains (including gorillas and orangutans) make up something like 0.4% to 0.6% of their body mass, while humans' brains take up a full 2% -- even though it drains some 20% of the body's resting metabolic rate. (In non-human primates, the brain burns roughly 9% of the body's energy.)The brain is the third most energy-expensive organ in the body, behind only skeletal muscle and the liver, according to the study authors.  Researchers suspect this might explain why gorillas don't have large brains, too -- there's a limit to the energy they can take in to sustain a big thinker, because there's only so much time in the day to eat.Previous work had shown that adding neurons to the primate brain cost about 6 kCal per billion neurons.  For a gorilla to have a brain that's 2% the size of its body mass -- as a human does -- it would have to add 122 billion neurons, corresponding to an extra 2 hours, 12 minutes of feeding -- and a gorilla already spends 80% of a 12 hour day in feeding.Humans, however, have clearly overcome this limitation – we have large brains, and we don't spend 9 hours a day eating. (Or at least, we don't actually need to.)So how could humans have broken this pattern? A theory, as posited by Harvard University primatologist Richard Wrangham, is that humans began cooking their food, releasing nutrients locked in the raw food, saving time they spent chewing the stuff. Had Homo erectus not cooked their food, they would have had to spend more than eight hours a day feeding their 62 billion neurons, the authors calculate, and Homo sapiens would have had to spend more than nine hours a day sustaining their 76 billion to 86 billion neurons.

698,000 (700,000 years ago) last reversal of the earth's magnetic field

    516 thousand yearskaHomo antecessor is the common genetic ancestor of humans and Neanderthal. At present estimate, humans have approximately 20,000–25,000 genes and share 99% of their DNA with the now extinctNeanderthal  and 95-99% of their DNA with their closest living evolutionary relative, the chimpanzees. The human variant of the FOXP2 gene (linked to the control of speech) has been found to be identical in Neanderthal. It can therefore be deduced that Homo antecessor would also have had the human FOXP2 gene.

500,000    Java man-Homo Erectus-Heidelberg manIt was among early man's greatest technological feats: a fully engineered weapon that combined a wooden shaft, mixed adhesives and a stone that had been chiseled to a lethal point.To many anthropologists, the creation of the stone-tipped, or hafted, spear was a watershed moment in human evolution. Not only did it amplify the killing power of early hunters, it also demonstrated clearly that they had developed the capacity for complex and abstract reasoning.Pinning down this moment in prehistory has been difficult, however. It was long held that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens first lashed stone tips to spears 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. But a study published in Friday's edition of the journal Science contends that a third species, Homo heidelbergensis, developed the technology about 500,000 years ago.Researchers based their findings on 13 stone artifacts uncovered in a sinkhole in South Africa's Northern Cape province.To confirm that the triangular stones were in fact spear tips and not created through natural processes, the anthropologists created replica spears and used crossbows to fire them at animal carcasses. The chips and marks created during these simulated hunting sessions exactly matched those on the prehistoric artifacts, indicating the ancient marks could not have been caused by weathering or geologic processes."This changes the way we think about early human adaptations and capacities before the origin of our own species," said lead author Jayne Wilkins, a graduate student in the University of Toronto's anthropology department. "Neanderthals and humans did not independently invent the technology, but they inherited it from their last common ancestor."Part of the difficulty in determining the precise time in which hafting was invented has to do with the limitations of dating technology. Radiocarbon dating has a range of only 50,000 years, so other, less precise methods must be used to date older objects.In the case of the spearheads uncovered near the South African town of Kathu, researchers used radiation exposure dating techniques to estimate the age of a zebra tooth and soil samples unearthed at the site. These dating techniques determine roughly when materials were last exposed to sunlight or heat, before they were buried.Although anthropologists had until now lacked direct dating evidence, many had considered it possible that Homo heidelbergensis had developed their own hafting technology. Fossil records show that brain size in human ancestors increased dramatically about 500,000 years ago."It's not a revolutionary conclusion," said Thomas Wynn, a University of Colorado anthropologist who was not involved in the study.Wynn, who studies cognitive evolution, said it would have been interesting to know what the spear makers used to fix the stone point to the shaft. In many cases, early humans used substances like acacia gums or beeswax mixed with ocher and then heated over flame to glue the stone point to the shaft. In other cases, the wood was soaked or notched to help fix the stone, and some methods involved the use of a sinew as a tied fastener.No matter what method was used, Wynn said, it is clear that those elements were not combined accidentally, and that a great deal of thought, testing and refinement had gone into building such a device."I don't know whether I'd compare it to putting a man on the moon, but in some senses it may have been more significant evolutionarily because it really upped the arms race," Wynn said. "If you look at it from the point of view of humans and animals, the penetrating power was much greater, the killing power was much greater and the payoff was much greater."

    400,000    ASIA.  Peking man (Homo Erectus) communication, sounds, gestures, facial expression, artefacts and remains of hearths, Choukoutien, (cannibalism) Java, Burma, Punjab

498,000 (500,000 years ago) colonisation of Eurasia by Homo erectus
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    355 ka A reconstruction of Homo heidelbergensisThree 1.5 m (5 ft) tall Homo heidelbergensis left footprints in powdery volcanic ash solidified in  Italy. Homo heidelbergensis is the common ancestor of both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. It is morphologically very similar to Homo erectus but Homo heidelbergensis had a larger brain-case, about 93%  the size of that of Homo sapiens. The holotype of the species was tall, 1.8 m (6 ft) and more muscular than modern humans. Beginning of the Middle  Paleolithic.
      
    300,000 GERMANY---HOMO SAPIENS NEANDERTHALIS. Traps and pitfalls, huts, clothing, language, religious beliefs, artistic expression.

    500,000 Plesiadapis. A reconstruction of Australopithecus afarensis, a human ancestor that had developed bipedalism, but which lacked the large brain of modern humansThe scientific study of human evolution encompasses the development of the genus Homo, but usually involves studying other hominids and hominines as well, such as Australopithecus. "Modern humans" are defined as the Homo sapiens species, of which the only extant subspecies is known as Homo sapiens sapiens. Homo sapiens idaltu (roughly translated as "elder wise human"), the other known subspecies, is now extinct.[10] Homo neanderthalensis, which became extinct 30,000 years ago, has sometimes been classified as a subspecies, "Homo sapiens neanderthalensis"; genetic studies now suggest that the DNA of modern humans and Neanderthals diverged 500,000 years ago.[11] Similarly, the few specimens of Homo rhodesiensis have also occasionally been classified as a subspecies, but this is not widely accepted. Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000 years ago, and studies of molecular
    biology give evidence that the approximate time of divergence from the common ancestor of all modern human populations was 200,000 years ago. The broad study of African genetic diversity headed by
    Dr. Sarah Tishkoff found the San people to express the greatest genetic diversity among the 113 distinct populations sampled, making them one of 14 "ancestral population clusters". The research also located the origin of modern human migration in south-westernAfrica, near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola.The evolutionary history of the primates can be traced back 65 million years, as one of the oldest of all surviving placental mammal groups. The oldest known primate-like mammal species, the Plesiadapis, come from North America, but they were widespread in Eurasia and Africa during the tropical conditions of the Paleocene and Eocene. Molecular evidence suggests that the last common ancestor between humans and the remaining great apes diverged between 8 and 4 million years ago, first the gorillas, and then the chimpanzees (genus Pan) split off from the line leading to the humans; human DNA is approximately 98.4% identical to that of chimpanzees when comparing single nucleotide polymorphisms (see Human evolutionary genetics). The closest living relatives of humans are gorillas and chimpanzees, but humans did not evolve from these apes: instead they share a common ancestor with modern humans.Humans are probably most closely related to two chimpanzee species: Common Chimpanzee and Bonobo.[18] Full genome sequencing has resulted in the conclusion that "after 6.5 [million] years of separate evolution, the differences between chimpanzee and human are ten times greater than those between two unrelated people and ten times less than [sic] those between rats and mice".] Suggested concurrence between human and chimpanzee DNA sequences range
    between 95% and 99%. It has been estimated that the human lineage diverged from that of chimpanzees about five million years ago, and from that of gorillas about eight million years ago. However, a hominid skull discovered in Chad in 2001, classified as Sahelanthropus tchadensis, is approximately seven million years old, which may indicate an earlier divergence.[23]Human evolution is characterised by a number of important morphological, developmental, physiological and behavioural changes, which have taken place since the split between the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. The first major morphological change was the evolution of a bipedal locomotor adaptation from an arboreal or semi-arboreal one,[24] with all its attendant adaptations, such as a valgus knee, low intermembral index (long legs relative to the arms), and reduced upper-body strength.Later, ancestral humans developed a much larger brain – typically 1,400 cm³ in modern humans, over twice the size of that of a chimpanzee or gorilla. The pattern of human postnatal brain growth differs from that of other apes (heterochrony), and allows for extended periods of social learning and language acquisition in juvenile humans. Physical anthropologists[who?] argue that the differences between the structure of human brains and those of other apes are even more significant than their differences in size.Other significant morphological changes included the evolution of a power and precision grip,[25] a reduced masticatory system, a reduction of the canine tooth, and the descent of the larynx and hyoid bone, making speech possible. An important physiological change in humans was the evolution of hidden oestrus, or concealed ovulation, which may have coincided with the evolution of important behavioural changes, such as pair bonding. Another significant behavioural change was the development of material culture, with human-made objects becoming
    increasingly common and diversified over time. The relationship between all these changes is the subject of ongoing debate.The forces of natural selection have continued to operate on human populations,
    with evidence that certain regions of the genome display directional selection in the past 15,000 years.Paleolithic The Venus of Dolní
    Vestonice figurine, one of the earliest known depictions of the human body, dates to approximately 29,000–25,000 BP (Gravettian).Anatomically modern humans evolved from archaic Homo sapiens in Africa in the Middle Paleolithic, about 200,000 years ago. By the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic 50,000 BP (Before Present), full behavioral modernity, including language, music and other cultural universals had developed.The out of Africa migration is estimated to have occurred about 70,000 years BP. Modern humans subsequently spread to all continents, replacing earlier hominids: they inhabited Eurasia and Oceania by 40,000 BP, and the Americas at least 14,500 years BP. A popular theory is that they displaced Homo neanderthalensis and other species descended from Homo erectus (which had inhabited Eurasia as early as 2 million years ago) through more successful reproduction and competition for resources. The exact manner or extent of the coexistence and interaction of these species is unknown and remains a controversial.   Geneticists Lynn Jorde and Henry Harpending of the University of Utah propose that the variation in human DNA is minute compared to that of other species. They also propose that during the Late Pleistocene, the human population was reduced to a small number of breeding pairs – no more than 10,000, and possibly as few as 1,000 – resulting in a very small residual gene pool. Various reasons for this hypothetical bottleneck have been postulated, one being the Toba catastrophe theory.Transition to civilization The rise of agriculture, and domestication of animals, led to stable human settlements. The path followed by humans in the course of history Until c. 10,000 years ago, most humans lived as hunter-gatherers. They generally lived in small nomadic groups known as band societies. The advent of agriculture prompted the Neolithic Revolution, when access to food surplus led to the formation of permanent human settlements, the domestication of animals and the use of metal tools. Agriculture encouraged trade and cooperation, and led to complex class society. Because of the significance of this date for human society, it is the epoch of the Holocene calendar or Human Era.About 6,000 years ago, the first proto-states developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt's Nile Valley and the Indus Valleys. Military forces were formed for protection, and government bureaucracies for administration. States cooperated and competed for resources, in some cases waging wars. Around 2,000–3,000 years ago, some states, such as Persia, India, China, Rome, and Greece, developed through conquest into the first expansive empires. Influential religions, such as Judaism, originating in West Asia, and Hinduism, a religious tradition that originated in South Asia, also rose to prominence at this time.The late Middle Ages saw the rise of revolutionary ideas and technologies. In China, an advanced and urbanized society promoted innovations and sciences, such as printing and seed drilling. In India, major advancements were made in mathematics, philosophy, religion and metallurgy. The Islamic Golden Age saw major scientific advancements in Muslim empires. In Europe, the rediscovery of classical learning and inventions such as the printing press led to the Renaissance in the 14th and 15th centuries. Over the next 500 years, exploration and colonialism brought great parts of the world under European control, leading to later struggles for independence. The Scientific Revolution in the 17th century and the Industrial Revolution in the 18th–19th centuries promoted major innovations in transport, such as the railway and automobile; energy development, such as coal and electricity; and government, such as representative democracy and Communism.  With the advent of the Information Age at the end of the 20th century, modern humans live in a world that has become increasingly globalized and interconnected. As of 2010, almost 2 billion humans are able to communicate with each other via the Internet, and 3.3 billion by mobile phone subscriptions. Although interconnection between humans has encouraged the growth of science, art, discussion, and technology, it has also led to culture clashes and the development and use of weapons of mass destruction. Human civilization has led to environmental destruction and pollution, producing an ongoing mass extinction of other forms of life called the holocene extinction event,[35] that may be further accelerated by global warming in the future.Habitat and populationHumans often live in family-based social structures and create artificial shelter.Early human settlements, were dependent on proximity to water and, depending on the lifestyle, other natural resources, such as arable land for growing crops and grazing livestock, or seasonally by hunting populations of prey. However, humans have a great capacity for altering their habitats by various methods, such as through irrigation, urban planning, construction, transport, manufacturing goods, deforestation and desertification. Deliberate habitat alteration is often done with the goals of increasing material wealth, increasing thermal comfort, improving the amount of food available, improving aesthetics, or improving ease of access to resources or other human settlements. With the advent of large-scale trade and transport infrastructure, proximity to these resources has become unnecessary, and in many places, these factors are no longer a driving force behind the growth and decline of a population. Nonetheless, the manner in which a habitat is altered is often a major determinant in population change.Technology has allowed humans to colonize all of the continents and adapt to virtually all climates. Within the last century, humans have explored Antarctica, the ocean depths, and outer space, although large-scale colonization of these environments is not yet feasible. With a population of over six billion, humans are among the most numerous of the large mammals. Most humans (61%) live in Asia. The remainder live in the Americas (14%), Africa (14%), Europe (11%), and Oceania (0.5%).  Human habitation within closed ecological systems in hostile environments, such as Antarctica and outer space, is expensive, typically limited in duration, and restricted to scientific, military, or industrial expeditions. Life in space has been very sporadic, with no more than thirteen humans in space at any given time. Between 1969 and 1972, two humans at a time spent brief intervals on the Moon. As of August 2010, no other celestial body has been visited by humans, although there has been a continuous human presence in space since the launch of the initial crew to inhabit the International Space Station on October 31, 2000. However, other celestial bodies have been visited by human-made objects.Since 1800, the human population has increased from one billion to over six billion. In 2004, some 2.5 billion out of 6.3 billion people (39.7%) lived in urban areas, and this percentage is expected to continue to rise throughout the 21st century. In February 2008, the U.N. estimated that half the world's population will live in urban areas by the end of the year. Problems for humans living in cities include various forms of pollution and crime  ,especially in inner city and suburban slums.Humans have had a dramatic effect on the environment. As humans are rarely preyed upon, they have been described as superpredators.  Currently, through land development, combustion of fossil fuels and pollution, humans are thought to be the main contributor to global climate change.  Human activity is believed to be a major contributor to the ongoing  Holocene extinction event, which is a form of mass extinction. If this continues at its current rate it is predicted that it will wipe out half of all species over the next century.BiologyBasic anatomical features of female and male humans. Note that these models have had body hair and male facial hair removed and head hair trimmed.Human body types vary substantially. Although body size is largely determined by genes, it is also significantly influenced by environmental factors such as diet and exercise. The average height of an adult human is about 1.5 to 1.8 m (5 to 6 feet) tall, although this varies significantly from place to place. The average mass of an adult human is 54–64 kg (120–140 lbs) for females and 76–83 kg (168–183 lbs) for males. Weight can also vary greatly (e.g. obesity). Unlike most other primates, humans are capable of fully bipedal locomotion, thus leaving their arms available for manipulating objects using their hands, aided especially by opposable thumbs.Although humans appear hairless compared to other primates, with notable hair growth occurring chiefly on the top of the head, underarms and pubic area, the average human has more hair follicles on his or her body than the average chimpanzee. The main distinction is that human hairs are shorter, finer, and less heavily pigmented than the average chimpanzee's, thus making them harder to see.The hue of human skin and hair is determined by the presence of  melanins. Human skin hues can range from very dark brown to very pale pink. Human hair ranges from white to brown to red to most commonly black. Thisdepends on the amount of melanin (an effective sun blocking pigment) in the skin and hair, with hair melanin concentrations in hair fading with increased age, leading to grey or even white hair. Most researchers believe that skin darkening was an adaptation that evolved as a protection against ultraviolet solar radiation. However, more recently it has been argued that particular skin colors are an adaptation to balance folate, which is destroyed by ultraviolet radiation, and vitamin D, which requires sunlight to form. The skin pigmentation of contemporary humans is geographically stratified, and in general correlates with the level of ultraviolet radiation. Human skin also has a capacity to darken (sun tanning) in response to exposure to ultraviolet radiation.  Humans tend to be physically weaker than other similarly sized primates, with young, conditioned male humans having been shown to be unable to match the strength of female orangutans which are at least three times stronger.The construction of the human pelvis differs from other primates, as do the toes. As a result, humans are slower for short distances than most other animals, but are among the best long-distance runners in the animal kingdom.  Humans' thinner body hair and more productive sweat glands also helps avoid heat exhaustion while running for long distances. For this reason persistence hunting was most likely a very successful strategy for early humans – in this method, prey is chased until it is literally exhausted. This may have also helped the early human Cro-Magnon population out-compete the Neanderthal population for food. The otherwise physically stronger Neanderthal would have much greater difficulty hunting in this way, and much more likely hunted larger game in close quarters. A trade-off for these advantages of the modern human pelvis is that childbirth is more difficult and dangerous.The construction of modern human shoulders enable throwing weapons, which also were much more difficult or even impossible for Neanderthal competitors to use effectively.  Humans have proportionately shorter palates and much smaller teeth than other primates. They are the only primates to have short, relatively flush canine teeth. Humans have characteristically crowded teeth, with gaps from lost teeth usually closing up quickly in young specimens. Humans are gradually losing their wisdom teeth, with some individuals having them congenitally absent. Physiology Human physiology is the science of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of humans in good health, their organs, and the cells of which they are composed. The principal level of focus of physiology is at the level of organs and systems. Most aspects of human physiology are closely homologous to corresponding aspects of animal physiology, and animal experimentation has provided much of the foundation of physiological knowledge. Anatomy and physiology are closely related fields of study: anatomy, the study of form, and physiology, the study of function, are intrinsically tied and are studied in tandem as part of a medical curriculum.Genetics  Humans are a eukaryotic species. Each diploid cell has two sets of 23 chromosomes, each set received from one parent. There are 22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. By present estimates, humans have approximately 20,000–25,000 genes. Like other mammals, humans have an XY sex-determination system, so that females have the sex chromosomes XX and males have XY. The X chromosome carries many genes not on the Y chromosome, which means that recessive diseases associated with X-linked genes, such as haemophilia, affect men more often than women.A 10 mm human embryo at 5 weeks  The human life cycle is similar to that of other placental mammals. The zygote divides inside the female's uterus to become an embryo, which over a period of thirty-eight weeks (9 months) of gestation becomes a fetus. After this span of time, the fully grown fetus is birthed from the woman's body and breathes independently as an infant for the first time. At this point, most modern cultures recognize the baby as a person entitled to the full protection of the law, though  some jurisdictions extend various levels of personhood earlier to human fetuses while they remain in the uterus.Compared with other species, human childbirth is dangerous. Painful labors lasting twenty-four hours or more are not uncommon and sometimes leads to the death of the mother, or the child. This is because of both the relatively large fetal head circumference (for housing the brain) and the mother's relatively narrow pelvis (a trait required for successful bipedalism, by way of natural selection). The chances of a successful labor increased significantly during the 20th century in wealthier countries with the advent of new medical technologies. In contrast, pregnancy and natural childbirth remain hazardous ordeals in developing regions of the world, with maternal death rates approximately 100 times more common than in developed countries.  In developed countries, infants are typically 3–4 kg (6–9 pounds) in weight and 50–60 cm (20–24 inches) in height at birth. However, low birth weight is common in developing countries, and contributes to the high levels of infant mortality in these regions.  Helpless at birth, humans continue to grow for some years, typically reaching sexual maturity at 12 to 15 years of age. Females continue to develop physically until around the age of 18, whereas male development continues until around age 21. The human life span can be split into a number of stages: infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood and old age. The lengths of these stages, however, have varied across cultures and time periods. Compared to other primates, humans experience an unusually rapid growth spurt during adolescence, where the body grows 25% in size. Chimpanzees, for example, grow only 14%, with no pronounced spurt.  The presence of the growth spurt is probably necessary to keep children physically small until they are psychologically mature. Humans are one of the few species in which females undergo menopause. It has been proposed that menopause increases a woman's overall reproductive success by allowing her to invest more time and resources in her existing offspring and/or their children (the grandmother hypothesis), rather than by continuing to bear children into old age.There are significant differences in life expectancy around the world. The developed world is generally aging, with the median age around 40 years. In the developing world the median age is between 15 and 20 years. Life expectancy at birth in Hong Kong is 84.8 years for a female and 78.9 for a male, while in Swaziland, primarily because of AIDS, it is 31.3 years for both sexes.  While one in five Europeans is 60 years of age or older, only one in twenty Africans is 60 years of age or older. The number of centenarians  in the world was estimated by the United Nations at 210,000 in 2002.  At least one person, Jeanne Calment, is known to have reached the age of 122 years; higher ages have been claimed  but they are not well substantiated. Worldwide, there are 81 men aged 60 or older for every 100 women of that age group, and among the oldest, there are 53 men for every 100 women.A selection of different humans at various stages of the human life   cycle   Girl (before puberty)Woman of reproductive age  Older woman (after  menopause)    Boy (before puberty)  Adult man  Elderly man Humans are omnivorous, capable of consuming plant, animal, and inorganic material. Varying with available food sources in regions of habitation, and also varying with cultural and religious norms, human groups have adopted a range of diets, from purely vegetarian to primarily carnivorous. In some cases, dietary restrictions in humans can lead to deficiency diseases; however, stable human groups have adapted to many dietary patterns through both genetic specialization and cultural conventions to use nutritionally balanced food sources. The human diet is prominently reflected in human culture, and has led to the development of food science.  Until the development of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, Homo sapiens employed a hunter-gatherer method as their sole means of food collection. This involved combining stationary food sources (such as fruits, grains, tubers, and mushrooms, insect larvae and aquatic molluscs) with wild
    game, which must be hunted and killed in order to be consumed. It has been proposed that members of H. sapiens have used fire to prepare and cook food since the time of their divergence from Homo rhodesiensis (which itself had previously speciated from Homo erectus). Around ten thousand years ago, humans developed agriculture,   which substantially altered their diet. This change in diet may also have altered human biology; with the spread of dairy farming providing a new and rich source of food, leading to the evolution of the ability to digest lactose in some adults. Agriculture led to increased populations, the development of cities, and because of increased population density, the wider spread of infectious diseases. The types of food consumed, and the way in which they are prepared, has varied widely by time, location, and culture.In general, humans can survive for two to eight weeks without food, depending on stored body fat. Survival without water is usually limited to three or four days. Lack of food remains a serious problem, with about 36 million humans starving to death every year. Childhood malnutrition is also common and contributes to the global burden of disease. However global food distribution is not even, and obesity among some human populations has increased rapidly, leading to health complications and increased mortality in some developed, and a few developing countries. Worldwide over one billion people are obese, while in the United States 35% of people are obese, leading to this being described as an "obesity epidemic".  Obesity is caused by consuming more calories than are expended, so excessive weight gain is usually caused by a combination of an energy-dense high fat diet and insufficient exercise. Humans are generally diurnal. The average sleep requirement is between seven and nine continuous hours a day for an adult and nine to ten hours for a child; elderly people usually sleep for six to seven hours. Experiencing less sleep than this is common in modern societies; this sleep deprivation can have negative effects. A sustained restriction of adult sleep to four hours per day has been shown to correlate with changes in physiology and mental state, including fatigue, aggression, and bodily discomfort.  Psychology  A sketch of the human brain imposed upon the profile of Michelangelo's The human brain, the focal point of the central nervous system in humans, controls the peripheral nervous system. In addition to controlling "lower", involuntary, or primarily autonomic activities such as respiration and digestion, it is also the locus of "higher" order functioning such as thought, reasoning, and abstraction.  These cognitive processes constitute the mind, and, along with their behavioral consequences, are studied in the field of psychology. Generally regarded as more capable of these higher order activities, the human brain is believed to be more "intelligent" in general than that of any other known species. Some are capable of creating structures and using simple tools—mostly through instinct and mimicry—human technology is vastly more complex, and is constantly evolving and improving through time.  Although being vastly more advanced than many species in cognitive abilities, most of these abilities are known in primitive form among other species. Modern anthropology has tended to bear out Darwin's proposition that "the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind".  Consciousness and thought  Humans are one of only nine species to pass the mirror test—which tests whether an animal recognizes its reflection as an image of itself—along with all the great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos), Bottlenose dolphins, Asian elephants, European Magpies and Orcas.  Most human children will pass the mirror test at 18 months old.  However, the usefulness of this test as a true test of consciousness has been disputed, and this may be a matter of degree rather than a sharp divide. Monkeys have been trained to apply abstract rules in tasks.The human brain perceives the external world through the senses, and each individual human is influenced greatly by his or her experiences, leading to subjective views of existence and the passage of time. Humans are variously said to possess consciousness, self-awareness, and a mind, which correspond roughly to the mental processes of thought. These are said to possess qualities such as self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. The extent to which the mind constructs or experiences the outer world is a matter of debate, as are the definitions and validity of many of the terms used above. The philosopher of cognitive science Psychologist B.F. Skinner argued that the mind is an explanatory fiction that diverts attention from environmental causes of behavior,  and that what are commonly seen as mental processes may be better conceived of as forms of covert verbal behavior.  Humans study the more physical aspects of the mind and brain, and by extension of the nervous system, in the field of neurology, the more behavioral in the field of psychology, and a sometimes loosely defined area between in the field of psychiatry, which treats mental illness and behavioral disorders. Psychology does not necessarily refer to the brain or nervous system, and can be framed purely in terms of phenomenological or information processing theories of the mind. Increasingly, however, an understanding of brain functions is being included in psychological theory and practice, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, neuropsychology, and cognitive neuroscience.  The nature of thought is central to psychology and related fields. Cognitive psychology studies cognition, the mental processes' underlying behavior. It uses information processing as a framework for understanding the mind. Perception, learning, problem solving, memory, attention, language and emotion are all well researched areas as well. Cognitive psychology is associated with school of thought known as cognitivism, whose adherents argue for an information processing model of mental function, informed by positivism and experimental psychology. Techniques and models from cognitive psychology are widely applied and form the mainstay of psychological theories in many areas of both research and applied psychology. Largely focusing on the development of the human mind
    through the life span, developmental psychology seeks to understand how people come to perceive, understand, and act within the world and how these processes change as they age. This may focus on intellectual, cognitive, neural, social, or moral development.Some philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness, which is experience itself, and access consciousness, which is the processing of the things in experience.  Phenomenal consciousness is the state of being conscious, such as when they say "I am conscious." Access consciousness is being conscious of something in relation to abstract concepts, such as when one says "I am conscious of these words." Various forms of access consciousness include awareness, self-awareness, conscience, stream of consciousness, Husserl's phenomenology, and intentionality. The concept of phenomenal consciousness, in modern history, according to some, is closely related to the concept of qualia. Social psychology links sociology with psychology in their shared study of the nature and causes of human social interaction, with an emphasis on how people think towards each other and how they relate to each other. The behavior and mental processes, both human and non-human, can be described through animal cognition, ethology, evolutionary psychology, and comparative psychology as well. Human ecology is an academic discipline that investigates how humans and human societies interact with both their natural environment and the human social environment.  Motivation is the driving force of desire behind all deliberate actions of humans. Motivation is based on emotion—specifically, on the search for satisfaction (positive emotional experiences), and the avoidance of conflict. Positive and negative is defined by the individual brain state, which may be influenced by social norms: a person may be driven to self-injury or violence because their brain is conditioned to create a positive response to these actions. Motivation is important because it is involved in the performance of all learned responses. Within psychology, conflict avoidance and the libido are seen to be primary motivators. Within economics, motivation is often seen to be based on incentives; these may be financial, moral, or coercive. Religions generally posit divine or demonic influences.Happiness, or the state of being happy, is a human emotional condition. The definition of happiness is a common philosophical topic. Some people might define it as the best condition that a human can have—a condition of mental and physical health. Others define it as freedom from want and distress; consciousness of the good order of things; assurance of one's place in the universe or society.Emotion has a significant influence on, or can even be said to control, human behavior, though historically many cultures and philosophers have for various reasons discouraged allowing this influence to go unchecked. Emotional experiences perceived as pleasant, such as love, admiration, or joy, contrast with those perceived as unpleasant, like hate, envy, or sorrow. There is often adistinction made between refined emotions that are socially learned and survival oriented emotions, which are thought to be innate. Human exploration of emotions as separate from other neurological phenomena is worthy of note, particularly in cultures where emotion is considered separate from physiological state. In some cultural medical theories emotion is considered so synonymous with certain forms of physical health that no difference is thought to exist. The Stoics believed excessive emotion was harmful, while some Sufi teachers felt certain extreme emotions could yield a conceptual perfection, what is often translated as ecstasy.In modern scientific thought, certain refined emotions are considered a complex neural trait innate in a variety of domesticated and non-domesticated mammals. These were commonly developed in reaction to superior survival mechanisms and intelligent interaction with each other and the environment; as such, refined emotion is not in all cases as discrete and separate from natural neural function as was once assumed. However, when humans function in civilized tandem, it has been noted that uninhibited acting on extreme emotion can lead to social disorder and crime.Human sexuality, besides ensuring biological reproduction, has important social functions: it creates physical intimacy, bonds, and hierarchies among individuals; may be directed to spiritual transcendence (according to some traditions); and in a hedonistic sense to the enjoyment of activity involving sexual gratification. Sexual desire, or libido, is experienced as a bodily urge, often accompanied by strong emotions such as love, ecstasy and jealousy. The extreme importance of sexuality in the human species can be seen in a number of physical features, among them hidden ovulation, the evolution of external scrotum and penis suggesting sperm competition, the absence of an os penis, permanent secondary sexual characteristics, the forming of pair bonds based on sexual attraction as a common social structure and sexual ability in females outside of ovulation. These adaptations indicate that the importance of sexuality in humans is on a par with that found in the Bonobo, and that the complex human sexual behaviour has a long evolutionary history. Human choices in acting on sexuality are commonly influenced by cultural norms, which vary widely. Restrictions are often determined by religious beliefs or social customs. The pioneering researcher Sigmund Freud believed that humans are born polymorphously perverse, which means that any number of objects could be a source of pleasure. According to Freud, humans then pass through five stages of psychosexual development (and can fixate on any stage because of various traumas during the process). For Alfred Kinsey, another influential sex researcher, people can fall anywhere along a continuous scale of sexual orientation (with only small minorities fully heterosexual or homosexual). Recent studies of neurology and genetics suggest people may be born predisposed to various sexual tendencies.  Human society statistics World population 6.9 billion Population density12.7 per km² (4.9 mi²) by total area 43.6 per km² (16.8 mi²) by land area
          Culture is defined here as a set of distinctive material, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual features of a social group, including art, literature, sport, lifestyles, value systems, traditions, rituals, and beliefs. The link between human biology and human behavior and culture is often very close, making it difficult to clearly divide topics into one area or the other; as such, the placement of some subjects may be based primarily on convention. Culture consists of values, social norms, and artifacts. A culture's values define what it holds to be important or ethical. Closely linked are norms, expectations of how people ought to behave, bound by tradition. Artifacts, or material culture, are objects derived from the culture's values, norms, and understanding of the world.The capacity humans have to transfer concepts, ideas and notions through speech and writing is unrivaled in known species. Unlike the call systems of other primates that are closed, human language is far more open, and gains variety in different situations. The human language has the quality of displacement, using words to represent things and happenings that are not presently or locally occurring, but elsewhere or at a different time.[56] In this way data networks are important to the continuing development of language. The faculty of speech is a defining feature of humanity, possibly predating phylogenetic separation of the modern population. Language is central to the communication between humans, as well as being central to the sense of identity that unites nations, cultures and ethnic groups. The invention of writing systems at least 5,000 years ago allowed the preservation of language on material objects, and was a major step in cultural evolution. The science of linguistics describes the structure of language and the relationship between languages. There are approximately 6,000 different languages currently in use, including sign languages, and many thousands more that are considered extinct.Religion is generally defined as a belief system concerning the supernatural, sacred or divine, and moral codes, practices, values, institutions and rituals associated with such belief. The evolution and the history of the first religions have recently become areas of active scientific investigation. However, in the course of its development, religion has taken on many forms that vary by culture and individual perspective. Some of the chief questions and issues religions are concerned with include life after death (commonly involving belief in an afterlife), the origin of life, the nature of the universe (religious cosmology) and its ultimate fate (eschatology), and what is moral or immoral. A common source in religions for answers to these questions are beliefs in transcendent divine beings such as deities or a singular God, although not all religions are theistic—many are nontheistic or ambiguous on the topic, particularly among the Eastern religions. Spirituality, belief or involvement in matters of the soul or spirit, is one of the many different approaches humans take in trying to answer fundamental questions about humankind's place in the universe, the meaning of life, and the ideal way to live one's life. Though these topics have also been addressed by philosophy, and to some extent by science, spirituality is unique in that it focuses on mystical or supernatural concepts such as karma and God.Although the exact level of religiosity can be hard to measure,[96] a majority of humans professes some variety of religious or spiritual belief, although some are irreligious: that is lacking or rejecting belief in the supernatural or spiritual. Other humans have no religious beliefs and are atheists, scientific skeptics, agnostics or simply non-religious. Humanism is a philosophy which seeks to include all of humanity and all issues common to humans; it is usually non-religious. Additionally, although most religions and spiritual beliefs are clearly distinct from science on both a philosophical and methodological level, the two are not generally considered mutually exclusive; a majority of humans holds a mix of both scientific and religious views. The distinction between philosophy and religion, on the other hand, is at times less clear, and the two are linked in such fields as the philosophy of religion and theology.Statue of Confucius on Chongming Island in ShanghaiPhilosophy and self-reflectionPhilosophy is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level. It is the discipline searching for a general understanding of reality, reasoning and values. Major fields of philosophy include logic, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and axiology (which includes ethics and aesthetics). Philosophy covers a very wide range of approaches, and is used to refer to a worldview, to a perspective on an issue, or to the positions argued for by a particular philosopher or school of philosophy.Allegory of Music (ca. 1594), a painting of a woman writing sheet music by Lorenzo Lippi.Artistic works have existed for almost as long as humankind, from early pre-historic art to contemporary art. Art is one of the most unusual aspects of human behaviour and a key distinguishing feature of humans from other species.As a form of cultural expression by humans, art may be defined by the pursuit of diversity and the usage of narratives of liberation and exploration (i.e. art history, art criticism, and art theory) to mediate its boundaries. This distinction may be applied to objects or performances, current or historical, and its prestige extends to those who made, found, exhibit, or own them. In the modern use of the word, art is commonly understood to be the process or result of making material works that, from concept to creation, adhere to the "creative impulse" of human beings. Art is distinguished from other works by being in large part unprompted by necessity, by biological drive, or by any undisciplined pursuit of recreation.Music is a natural intuitive phenomenon based on the three distinct and interrelated organization structures of rhythm, harmony, and melody. Listening to music is perhaps the most common and universal form of entertainment for humans, while learning and understanding it are popular disciplines. There are a wide variety of music genres and ethnic musics. Literature, the body of written—and possibly oral—works, especially creative ones, includes prose, poetry and drama, both fiction and non-fiction. Literature includes such genres
    as epic, legend, myth, ballad, and folklore.An archaic Acheulean stone toolStone tools were used by proto-humans at least 2.5 million years ago.[97] The controlled use of fire began around 1.5 million years ago. Since then, humans have made major advances, developing complex technology to create tools to aid their lives and allowing for other advancements in culture. Major leaps in technology include the discovery of agriculture – what is known as the Neolithic Revolution; and the invention of automated machines in the Industrial Revolution.Archaeology attempts to tell the story of past or lost cultures in part by close examination of the artifacts they produced. Early humans left stone tools, pottery and jewelry that are particular to various regions and times.The sexual division of humans into male and female has been marked culturally by a corresponding division of roles, norms, practices, dress, behavior, rights, duties, privileges, status, and power. Cultural differences by gender have often been believed to have arisen naturally out of a division of reproductive labor; the biological fact that women give birth led to their further cultural responsibility for nurturing and caring for children and households. Gender roles have varied historically, and challenges to predominant gender norms have recurred in many societies. As a whole, partriarchal societies (i.e., in which men hold the greater degree of economic and political power) have been predominant, and matriarchal or egalitarian societies less common.A collection of mugshots showing multiple races.Main articles: Race (classification of human beings) and Ethnic groupRace and genetics and Historical definitions of raceHumans often categorize themselves in terms of race or ethnicity, sometimes on the basis of differences in appearance. Human racial categories have been based on both ancestry and visible traits, especially facial features, skin color and hair texture. Most current genetic and archaeological evidence supports a recent single origin of modern humans in East Africa.[98] Current genetic studies have demonstrated that humans on the African continent are most genetically diverse.[99] However, compared to the other great apes, human gene sequences are remarkably homogeneous.The predominance of genetic variation occurs within racial groups, with only 5 to 15% of total variation occurring between groups.[104] Thus the scientific concept of variation in the human genome is largely incongruent with the cultural concept of ethnicity or race.  Ethnic groups are defined by linguistic, cultural, ancestral, national or regional ties. Self-identification with an ethnic group is usually based on kinship and descent. Race and ethnicity are among major factors in social identity giving rise to various forms of identity politics, e.g.: racism.There is no scientific consensus of a list of the human races, and few anthropologists endorse the notion of human "race".[105] For example, a color terminology for race includes the following in a classification of human races: Black (e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa), Red (e.g. Native Americans), Yellow (e.g. East Asians) and White (e.g. Europeans).Referring to natural species, in general, the term "race" is obsolete, particularly if a species is uniformly distributed on a territory. In its modern scientific connotation, the term is not applicable to a species as genetically homogeneous as the human one, as stated in the declaration on race (UNESCO 1950).Genetic studies have substantiated the absence of clear biological borders, thus the term "race" is rarely used in scientific terminology, both in biological
    anthropology and in human genetics.What in the past had been defined as "races"—e.g., whites, blacks, or Asians—are now defined as "ethnic groups" or "populations", in correlation with the field (sociology, anthropology, genetics) in which they are considered.
    The United Nations complex in New York City, which houses one of the largest political organizations in the world.Society, Government,
    Politics, and Sovereign stateSociety is the system of organizations and institutions arising from interaction between humans. A state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. Recognition of the state's claim to independence by othestates, enabling it to enter into international agreements, is often important to the establishment of its statehood. The "state" can also be defined in terms of domestic conditions, specifically, as conceptualized by Max Weber, "a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the 'legitimate' use of physical force within a given territory."Government can be defined as the political means of creating and enforcing laws; typically via a bureaucratic hierarchy. Politics is the process by which decisions are made within groups. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Many different political systems exist, as do many different ways of understanding them, and many definitions overlap. Examples of governments include monarchy, Communist state, military dictatorship, theocracy, and liberal democracy, the last of which is considered dominant today. All of these issues have a direct
    relationship with economics.The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately killed over 120,000 humans.War is a state of widespread conflict between states or other large groups of humans, which is characterized by the use of lethal violence between combatants and/or upon civilians. It is estimated that during the 20th century between 167 and 188 million humans died as a result of war.[108] A common perception of war is a series of military campaigns between at least two opposing sides involving a dispute over sovereignty, territory, resources, religion, or other issues. A war between internal elements of a state is a civil war.There have been a wide variety of rapidly advancing tactics throughout the history of war, ranging from conventional war to asymmetric warfare to total war and unconventional warfare. Techniques include hand to hand combat, the use of ranged weapons, Naval warfare, and, more recently, air support. Military intelligence has often played a key role in determining victory and defeat. Propaganda, which often includes information, slanted opinion and disinformation, plays a key role in maintaining unity within a warring group, and/or sowing discord among opponents. In modern warfare, soldiers and armoured fighting vehicles are used to control the land, warships the sea, and aircraft the sky. These fields have also overlapped in the forms of marines, paratroopers, naval aircraft carriers, and surface-to-air missiles, among others. Satellites in low Earth orbit have made outer space a factor in warfare as well as it is used for detailed intelligence gathering, however no known aggressive actions have been taken from space.Trade and economicsBuyers and sellers bargain in a marketMain articles: Trade and EconomicsTrade is the voluntary exchange of goods and services, and is a form of economics. A mechanism that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and services. Modern traders instead generally negotiate through a medium of exchange, such as money. As a result, buying can be separated from selling, or earning. The invention of money (and later credit, paper money and non-physical money) greatly simplified and promoted trade. Because of specialization and division of labor, most people concentrate on a small aspect of manufacturing or service, trading their labour for products. Trade exists between regions because different regions have an absolute or comparative advantage in the production of some tradable commodity, or because different regions' size allows for the benefits of mass production.Economics is a social science which studies the production, distribution, trade, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on measurable variables, and is broadly divided into two main branches: microeconomics, which deals with individual agents, such as households and businesses, and macroeconomics, which considers the economy as a whole, in which case it considers aggregate supply and demand for money, capital and commodities. Aspects receiving particular attention in economics are resource allocation, production, distribution, trade, and competition. Economic logic is increasingly applied to any problem that involves choice under scarcity or determining economic value. Mainstream economics focuses on hoprices reflect supply and demand, and uses equations to predict consequences of decisions.

    Apples are found around the Black and Caspian seas suth of the Caucasus.

    DOMESTICATION OF FIRE
    The use of fire allows man to protect himself from the cold and wild animals, and to cook his food. Fire is man's first victory over nature.
 
    Stage One: A society has challenges - protecting itself from enemies, caring for the sick, obtaining food, maintaining public order. To address the challenges, organizations are formed - armies, hospitals, police forces, schools, and so on - and effective problem-solving policies and procedures are adopted.

 

Stage Two: Social change gradually alters the nature of the problems the organizations were created to solve - a different kind of enemy threatens, a plague of unknown cause strikes, once-productive soil wears out. As the problems change, the policies and procedures that worked well in Stage One gradually become less appropriate and efficient.
    Stage Three: Eventually, the inadequacy of the original problem-solving approaches becomes too obvious to ignore. Fingers of blame are then pointed at those in the problem-solving organization. More rigorous standards are imposed. Supervisory staffs are enlarged. Policy and procedures manuals grow fatter. Penalties for poor performance grow harsher.Help fight ignorance. Click here for daily Truthout email updates. Stage Four: Because the basic problem - failure to monitor change and adapt to it - remains unaddressed, the situation becomes more dire. Reacting, authorities tighten procedural screws, then tighten them again. A kind of  dynamic takes over, a variation of, "The beatings will continue until morale improves."Stage Five: The organization disintegrates or becomes irrelevant. The once-effective problem-solving policies and procedures either disappear or become meaningless rituals.   ____________________________________________________________


250,000 - In the nineteenth century, before the advent of modern scientific chronometric dating, archaeologists and museum curators relied exclusively on relative dating. To make sense out of the chaotic collections, Christian Jurgensen Thomsen, the curator of the Danish National Museum, began to classify cutting tools according to the material used to make them: stone, bronze, and iron. He then extended this classification to other materials which were found with them. This gave rise to a chronological scheme known as the Three-Age System: Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Thomsen published an account of this chronological sequence in his Guide to Northern Archaeology. This guide had wide influence and was translated into several other European languages.
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Thomsen's assistant and successor at the Danish National Museum, Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae, extended the Three-Age system from museum displays to the field. He used layer-by-layer excavation to demonstrate its validity. Brian Fagan, in his book Archaeologists: Explorers of the Human Past, writes:


"Through excavation rather than museum work, this energetic and charismatic archaeologist proved with stratigraphic, or layer-analysis, geology that the Three Age System accurately reflected the physical record of prehistoric development."
Today, the Three-Age system provides a basic set of chronological markers which are widely used in European prehistory. This chronology is, of course, relative—older/younger—rather than absolute in that it does not provide precise time periods. In addition, the Stone Age and Iron Age categories are also used in Africa. The system is not seen as an inevitable progression of cultural and technological development, but simply a way of providing relative dating classification. Brian Fagan writes:

"The Three Age System still flourishes today, even if it is now little more than a broad framework for the past."
Humans have used stone tools for most of their existence and it is not surprising, therefore, to find that much of archaeology deals with the Stone Age. In 1865, Sir John Lubbock published his popular book Prehistoric Times in which he divided the Stone Age into two parts: Paleolithic (the Old Stone Age) and Neolithic (the New Stone Age). David Lewis-Williams, in his The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, writes:

"The Paleolithic period was one of flaked stone artefacts and hunting and gathering as a way of life. The Neolithic, by contrast, saw the introduction of polished stone axes and the beginnings of farming."
Later archaeologists working in Europe would add a third era—the Mesolithic—to this sequence. The European stone ages—Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), and Neolithic (New Stone Age)—are briefly described below.
Paleolithic:

In Europe, the Paleolithic marks the earliest occupation of Europe by hominids beginning about 700,000 years ago. Not all of Europe was occupied during this time period and the archaeological record shows cycles of depopulation and recolonization in response to changing climatic conditions and resource availability.

Traditionally the European Paleolithic is subdivided into three time periods: (1) Lower Paleolithic beginning with the first hominids about 700,000 years ago; (2) Middle Paleolithic starting about 250,000 years ago; and (3) Upper Paleolithic at about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.

Simple flaked stone tools and hand-axes are characteristic of the Lower Paleolithic. The hand-axes are sometimes referred to as the Acheulean Tradition.  These stone tools were not made by Homo sapiens, but by earlier hominids such as Homo erectus and Homo hiedelbergensis.

The Middle Paleolithic is characterized by more sophisticated stone tools which include the use of the Levallois technique. In the Levallois technique, a stone core is carefully prepared so that the flakes struck from it will have a predetermined shape. In A Dictionary of Archaeology, Ian Shaw and Robert Jameson write:


"Flint knappers using the Levallois method controlled the eventual shape of the flake by carefully preparing a flint module, roughing it out to give a flattened face and a carefully designed striking platform."
The Middle Paleolithic is contemporary with the Neanderthal occupation of Europe.
At about 40,000 BCE, the first anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe and this marks the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. The Upper Paleolithic is characterized by highly developed stone tools as well as well as bone tools and the appearance of spectacular cave art. This seems to correspond with the arrival of fully modern humans in Europe. David Lewis-Williams, in his book The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, writes:


"To take advantage of animal migrations, people had to be able to predict the times and places best suited to hunting and then to organize parties to be present at the right times and to perform different but complementary functions. Upper Paleolithic people were also able to predict the early spring salmon runs when these fish swim upstream to spawn."
Mesolithic:
Later archaeologists added the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) to this sequence. The European Mesolithic is the period between the retreat of the ice sheets about 10,000 years ago and the introduction of farming. Writing about Britain in their book The Origins of Britain, Lloyd and Jennifer Lang write:


"This early post-glacial period is known archaeologically as the Mesolithic (middle Stone Age) and marks the adaptation of the upper Paleolithic societies to the changing environment. Men followed the rapidly migrating herds of animals, and spread out through the forests that gradually covered much of Britain."
During this time, hunting and gathering societies managed a fairly comfortable way of life. As the climate warmed, the migratory herds of reindeer shifted north and were replaced by woodland game such as deer and wild pig.
During this time, microliths—tools in which tiny flint triangles and rhomboids were inserted into handles of wood and antler—were used for knives and composite spear points. Dugout canoes came into use. Willow and hazel branches were used to fashion fishtraps which were placed in streams to harvest the migrating salmon. Steven Mithen, writing in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, reports:


"The rapid environmental change during the Mesolithic, and the diversity of animal and plant communities across Europe, make it difficult to generalize about Mesolithic communities."
Neolithic:
Originally the Neolithic was defined by the appearance of ground stone tools. Later the Neolithic came to be characterized by the appearance of farming communities. The Neolithic begins in southeast Europe about 7000 BCE and in Central Europe by about 5500 BCE. With regard to Britain, Lloyd and Jennifer Laing write:


"The Neolithic in Britain begins with the arrival of scattered groups of immigrants whose origins are still largely obscure, but lie in western Europe. They introduced plant cultivation and animal husbandry before 4000 BC and began to open up the forests for their fields."
Chris Scarre, writing in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, reports:

"This represented not an influx of new people but the adoption of new techniques by existing hunter-gather populations. They used cereals of Near Eastern origin, but steadily developed crop varieties better suited to the cooler and damper environment of temperate Europe."
The Australian archaeologist Gordon Childe would characterize the Neolithic as the "Neolithic Revolution" and indicate that this was a period of sudden change. However, the archaeological data came to show that the introduction of farming was not a sudden event. In his book Exploring Prehistoric Europe, Chris Scarre writes:

"Farming was never an easy option, and its spread through Europe was slow and gradual, dependent on particular sets of local circumstances—a famine, perhaps, or a temporary need—to gain acceptance. It was not a sudden change, however, and hunting and gathering, and seasonal mobility continued to play a major role in many parts of Europe long after domesticated plants and animals had been introduced."
It should be pointed out that farming is far more labor intensive than hunting and gathering: the land has to be cleared, tilled, seeded, and the crops tended, all before they can be harvested. The herding of livestock, unlike hunting, requires daily effort. However, the result is the availability of more food and the ability to feed more people.
In a mobile hunting and gathering band, women spaced the birth of  children so that they only had one child every four to five years. With farming and settled communities, women could have more children and the population grew much faster. This, in turn, created the demand for more farmland and so more forests were cleared which reduced the land available for the wild animals which had once been hunted.

Another characteristic of the Neolithic is the appearance of megalithic monuments. "Megalith" means "big stone" and megalithic monuments make use of very large, unshaped blocks of stone as a principal component. There are two key expressions of megalithic building: tombs, and ceremonial monuments.  With regard to Neolithic monuments, Chris Scarre writes:


"They include both impressive stone circles and numerous burial mounds of various shapes and sizes, many of them containing stone-built chambered tombs."
The most famous Neolithic monuments include Carnac in France, Stonehenge and Avebury in Britain, and Newgrange in Ireland.
    250,000 CHINA. 250,000Archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest humans in China date to 2.24 million to 250,000 years ago. A cave in Zhoukoudian (near present-day Beijing) has fossils dated at somewhere between 300,000 to 550,000 years.The earliest evidence of a fully modern human in China comes from Liujiang County, Guangxi, where a cranium has been found and dated to approximately 67,000 years ago. Although much controversy persists over the dating of the Liujiang remains, a partial skeleton from Minatogawa in Okinawa, Japan has been dated to 18,250 ± 650 to 16,600 ± 300 years ago, so modern humans must have reached China before that time.
    
        Anatomically modern humans — Homo sapiens — are believed to have originated somewhere around 200,000 years ago or earlier in Africa; the oldest fossils date back to around 160,000 years ago. The first humans to show evidence of spirituality are the Neanderthals (usually classified as a separate species with no surviving descendants); they buried their dead, often apparently with food or tools. However, evidence of more sophisticated beliefs, such as the early Cro-Magnon cave paintings (probably with magical or religious significance) did not appear until some 32,000 years ago.[86] Cro-Magnons also left behind stone figurines such as Venus of Willendorf, probably also signifying religious belief. By 11,000 years ago, Homo sapiens had reached the southern tip of South America, the last of the uninhabited continents (except for Antartica, which remained undiscovered until 1820 AD) .Tool use and language continued to improve; interpersonal relationships became more complex.

248,000 (250,000 years ago) appearance of Homo neanderthalensis

    200,000 EUROPE. Neanderthal man- wooly mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, saber tooth tiger,  cave bear,, Swanscombe, Montmaurin, Bilzingsleben Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, Italy 200,000 years since humans started looking like they do today, 200,000 years ago)Anatomically modern humans appear in Africa. Around 50,000 years before present they start colonising the other continents, replacing the Neandertals in Europe and other hominins in Asia. The Holocene epoch starts 10,000 years ago after the Last Glacial Maximum, with continuing impact from human activity.

    200,000  In ancient history, civilizations did not have definite boundaries as states have today, and their borders could be more accurately described as frontiers. Early dynastic Sumer, and early dynastic Egypt were the first civilizations to define their borders. Moreover, for the past 200,000 years and up to the twentieth century, many people have lived in non-state societies. These range from relatively egalitarian bands and tribes to complex and highly stratified chiefdoms.

    200,000    BERBERS. Berbers in the world  Early inhabitants of the central Maghreb left behind significant remains including remnants of hominid occupation from ca. 200,000 B.C. found near Saïda. Neolithic civilization (marked by animal domestication and subsistence agriculture) developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghrib between 6000 and 2000 B.C. This type of economy, so richly depicted in the Tassili-n-Ajjer cave paintings in southeastern Algeria, predominated in the Maghreb until the classical period. The amalgam of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a distinct native population. The Berbers lacked a written language and hence tended to be overlooked or marginalized in historical accounts.The Berbers have lived in North Africa between western Egypt and the Atlantic Ocean for as far back as records of the area go. Evidence of these early inhabitants of the region are found on the rock art across the Sahara. References to them also occur often in ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sources. Berber groups are first mentioned in writing by the ancient Egyptians during the Predynastic Period, and during the New Kingdom the Egyptians later fought against the Meshwesh and Libu tribes on their western borders. From about 945 BCE the Egyptians were ruled by Meshwesh immigrants who founded the Twenty-second Dynasty under Shoshenq I, beginning a long period of Berber rule in Egypt. They long remained the main population of the Western Desert; the Byzantine chroniclers often complained of the Mazikes (Amazigh) raiding outlying monasteries there
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    200,000 SWAZILAND. Mantenga FallsArtifacts indicating human activity dating back to the early Stone Age 200,000 years ago have been found in the kingdom of Swaziland. Prehistoric rock art paintings date from ca. 25,000 B.C. and continue up to the 19th century.The earliest inhabitants of the area were Khoisan hunter-gatherers. They were largely replaced by the Bantu tribes during Bantu migrations. Evidence of agriculture and iron use dates from about the 4th century, and people speaking languages ancestral to current Sotho and Nguni languages began settling no later than the 11th century.
200,000 YA  Give or take thousands of years, Homo sapiens  have come into being in Africa. They create what will be a fossil record of their species. They are to remain very rare in Africa for much more than 100,000 years. They will be described as having a greater part of their brain devoted to language and speech than Homo erectus.

130,000 YA  The Eemian interglacial period begins. Greater warmth in the next 5,000 years will allow forests to reach above the Arctic Circle. By now another creature belonging to the homo genus (biological grouping), Neanderthals, exist in Europe. They are a species apart from Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Throat anatomy suggests to scientists that Neanderthals could speak with complex sounds similar to humans.

110,000 YA  Give or take thousands of years, the Eemian interglacial period ends and another ice age begins, but humans and the Neanderthal will endure.

198,000 (200,000 years ago) appearance of Homo sapiens in Africa

    198,000 (300,000 years ago) Homo sapiens separated from Homo erectus (Middle Paleolithic); approximate age of Canis lupus

    195 ka  Homo sapiens sapiens (Pioneer plaque)Omo1, Omo2 (Ethiopia, Omo river) are the earliest fossil evidence for archaic Homo sapiens, evolved from Homo  heidelbergensis.

    160 ka Homo sapiens (Homo sapiens idaltu) in Ethiopia, Awash River, Herto  village, practice mortuary rituals and butcher hippos. Potential earliest evidence of behavioral modernity consistent with the continuity hypothesis including use of red ochre and fishing
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    158,000-(160,000 years ago) split between Homo sapiens idaltu and Homo sapiens sapiens

150,000    Late Neanderthal

150 ka Mitochondrial Eve is a woman that lived in East Africa. She is the
          statistically expected most recent female ancestor common to all mitochondrial lineages in humans alive today. Note that there is no evidence of any characteristic or genetic drift that significantly differentiated her from the contemporary social group she lived with at the time. Her ancestors were homo sapiens and her mother had the same   mtDNA.

    150,000 MIGRATIONS. Human migration is physical movement by humans from one area toanother, sometimes over long distances or in large groups. The movement of populations in modern times has continued under the form of both voluntary migration within one's region, country, or beyond, and involuntary migration (which includes the slave trade, Human traffic in human beings and ethnic cleansing). People who migrate are called migrants or more specifically, emigrants, immigrants, or settlers, depending on historical setting, circumstances and perspective.The pressures of human migrations, whether as outright conquest or by slow cultural infiltration and resettlement, have affected the grand epochs in history and in land (for example, the Decline of the Roman Empire); under the form of colonization, migration has transformed the world (such as the prehistoric and historic settlements of Australia and the Americas). Population genetics studied in traditionally settled modern populations have opened a window into the historical patterns of migrations, Forced migration has been a means of social control under authoritarian regimes yet free initiative migration is a powerful factor in social adjustment and the growth of urban populations.Different types of migration include:  Seasonal human migration mainly related to agriculture.   Rural to Urban, more common in developing countries as industrialization takes  effect (urbanization)   Urban to Rural, more common in developed countries due to a higher cost of urban living (suburbanization)   International migration  Pre-modern migrations Early human migrations and Historical migration2nd to 5th century Migration Period Historical migration of human populations  begins with the movement of Homo erectus out of Africa across Eurasia about a  million years ago. Homo sapiens appear to have occupied all of Africa about  150,000 years ago, moved out of Africa 70,000 years ago, and had spread across  Australia, Asia and Europe by 40,000 years BCE. Migration to the Americas took  place 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, and by 2,000 years ago, most of the Pacific  Islands were colonized. Later population movements notably include the Neolithic  Revolution, Indo-European expansion, and the Early Medieval Great Migrations  including Turkic expansion.

148,000 (150,000 years ago) time of mitochondrial Eve
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123,000 (125,000 years ago) peak of the Eemian Stage interglacial

100,000AFRICA. Modern man in EthiopiaOctober 14, 2011 .In a tiny South African cave, archaeologists have unearthed a 100,000-year-old art studio that contains tools for mixing powder from red and yellow rocks with animal fat and marrow to make vibrant paints as well as abalone shells full of dried-out red pigment, the oldest paint containers ever found.The discovery, described in Friday's edition of the journal Science, suggests that humans may have been thinking symbolically — more like modern-day humans think — much earlier than previously recognized, experts said. Symbolic thinking could have been a key evolutionary step in the development of other quintessentially human abilities, such as language, art and complex ritual.The artifacts were uncovered at a well-studied site called the Blombos Cave, which sits by the edge of the Indian Ocean about 180 miles east of Cape Town. The two shells, lying about 6 inches from each other, had a red residue from a soft, grindable stone known as ochre. Ochre is rich in iron compounds that usually give it red or yellow hues, and it is known to have been used in ancient paints. A residual stain line in one of the shells indicated that the mixture had at one time been wet, rather like the brown ring left around the edge of a coffee cup that's been sitting out for too long.Previous finds had established that early humans made paint to adorn walls and decorate artifacts. But the suite of intact tools and ingredients found in the studio was a rare find that suggested a degree of planning and a basic knowledge of chemistry."In general we find pigment," said study coauthor Francesco d'Errico, an archaeologist at the University of Bordeaux in France. "But you never find the container with the residue. We were able to study microscopically all the elements in the recipe."Along with ground-up red ochre, the mixtures contained charcoal and crushed spongy bones that were probably once rich in fat and marrow. The team also found rock fragments from the grinding stones that were used to make the mixture. One of the stones had remnants of a yellow pigment, perhaps from a previous batch of paint, that was not present in the reddish batches from the abalone shells.By measuring the damage to quartz sediments caused by radioactive isotopes in the soil around the ochre containers, researchers were able to calculate that the paint tool kits were about 100,000 years old.The cave was isolated; researchers found few artifacts associated with constant human activity from the same period when the paints were being mixed. Perhaps only one or two artisans from a nearby community came here to mix their paints, the team speculated.Modern humans are thought to have evolved around 200,000 years ago, but much of the archaeological evidence of humans painting with ochre goes back only 60,000 years, D'Errico said. Examples of ochre use and other complex behaviors from around 100,000 years ago are few and far between, he said.But the ability to mix and use paint signals a lot of important behaviors that are key to social and cognitive development, said Alison Brooks, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University who was not involved in the study. Unlike weapons, utensils or other artifacts, paint has little utilitarian value. Paint could be used to decorate objects, clothing or the body, often to send a social message in an increasingly complex society."If you only see the same people in the same face-to-face group you've known your entire life, there's no need to make a statement," she said. And as those groups became larger and people traveled farther from home, "there was a need to demonstrate to somebody — at a considerable distance, — who you were."In recent years, many anthropologists have made the case that such ochre mixtures were not used as paints but were mixed with plant resins that were used to bind stone spearheads to wooden shafts, Brooks said. As such, the mixtures were a sign of technological development, but not of cultural and cognitive change.In this cave, however, the ochre had been mixed not with plant resins but with animal fat and marrow, substances that had no use as adhesives, Brooks said, but were excellent binders to make liquid paint."All of this boils down to [the idea that] their social horizons were expanding," she said.


    ASIA. Kwantung, China,

____________________________________________________________

TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS

98,000 (100,000 years ago) earliest estimate for the domestication of dogs

88,000 (90,000 years ago) time of Y-chromosomal Adam

                South Africa The ancestors of the Khoikhoi and San are living in Southern Africa.

78,000 (80,000 years ago) approximate age of Haplogroup M (mtDNA)
 
75,000 YA  Give or take thousands of years, people in Africa have begun to expand from the east or the south, to the west and to the north. Genetic evidence suggests that they will replace other peoples, except for the Khoisan and pygmy peoples. In density of population they will remain rare.

    73,000-68,000 YA  The Toba Catastrophe Theory holds that on the island of Sumatra a super-volcanic eruption created a volcanic winter that extended to Africa and reduced the world's human population there to between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding couples. A mini ice age followed, lasting around 1,000 years. Where the eruption occurred a lake developed – Lake Toba.

73,000 (75,000 years ago)  Toba Volcano supereruption.
            South Africa. According to a paper published in the US periodical     Science, primitive man made spears and knives using a technique known as pressure flaking. The difficult and delicate method, used at least 75,000 years ago, helped humans create more precise cuts and better weapons. "These points are very thin, sharp and narrow and possibly penetrated the bodies of animals better than that of other tools," Reuters quoted a curator of the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and study co-author Paola Villa as saying. Scientists say pressure flaking was used by anatomically modern humans during the Middle Stone Age and involved heating of silcrete. Through the process previously shaped by hard stone hammer strikes followed by softer strikes with wood or bone hammers are carefully trimmed on the edges by directly pressing the point of a tool made of bone on the stone, the report said. "Using the pressure flaking technique required strong hands and allowed toolmakers to exert a high degree of control on the final shape and thinness that cannot be achieved by percussion," Villa explained. The most recent evidence of pressure flaking prior to those in Blombos Cave was from the Upper Paleolithic Solutrean culture in France and Spain dating back to about 20,000 years ago. The new report also says the technique might have been invented in Africa and used sporadically before it was later adopted in Europe, Australia and North America. "This flexible approach to technology may have conferred an advantage to the groups of Homo sapiens who migrated out of Africa about 60,000 years ago," the Science report read.

    60,000-55,000 YA  The planet warms a bit. Ice retreats a little. Changes in climate will eventually begin to alternate between warmer and colder conditions, often in sudden jumps. Much of what would be Indonesian islands are a part of the Asian mainland. New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania are one continent, known today as Sahul.

 

 

50,000 YA  Humans running from drought have left Africa, taking a coastal route to India.

50,000 YA  Mating between Neanderthals and people called Denisovans introduces genes that will help modern humans cope with viruses. The interbreeding will embody as much as 4 percent of the human genome.

45,000 YA Humans are in Italy, according to some scholars, reported in Scientific American (20 Aug 2014),"overlapping" with Neaderthals "for up to 5,400 years in parts of southern Europe, yet to a much lesser extent or not at all in other parts of the continent."

44,000? YA  Neanderthals in Europe on average are about as tall as contemporaneous humans, with around the same size skulls, suggesting similar brain size. Scientists will describe Neanderthals as highly intelligent, that in weapon making they were the first to use "dry distillation." Their bones are a little heavier and they tend to have stronger arms and hands. Like humans they use stone tools. DNA studies will indicate that because Neanderthal and human genes are so nearly identical some interbreeding may have occurred between the two species. Genetic analyses will reveal modern European individuals as 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal genetically. (PBS Nova: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/decoding-neanderthals.htm

43,000 YA  Humans are in an area around 500 kilometers south of what is today Moscow, their presence to be surmised in CE 2007 by archaeologists who have uncovered artifacts at what today is called the Kostenki Site.

42,000 YA  By now, humans have crossed a body of water from Sunda in Southeast Asia to the continent of Sahul, including what today are called New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania.

40,000 YA  Near what today is Beijing, human bones dating to around this year have been found. At least one person to whom these bones belong wore shoes. According to Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in Missouri, evidence also exists of some shoe or sandal wearing among Neanderthals.

40,000 YA  Neanderthals "disappear from Europe" around now according to Scientific American, (20 Aug 2014).

40,000 YA  Europe is first settled by humans around this time. ("Science & Environment," BBC News, 7 Nov 2014.)

30,000 YA  Homo Erectus becomes extinct. This species will be described as having used the same basic hand axe for more than a million years. Homo Sapiens, meanwhile, have been using the spear.

27,000 YA Climate change has produced ice now at a peak in covering something like two-thirds of Europe. Hunter-gatherer societies "ebbed and flowed" according to Mirazón Lahr, from Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES). In other words some groups died and some survived. The ice was to start melting 17,000 years later.
 
25,000 YA The last Ice age is reaching its peak. DNA comparisons will show that "Native Americans" are beginning to diverge genetically from their Asian ancestors. These ancestors are disappearing in Northeastern Siberia while those who will be called Native Americans are surviving between Siberia and Alaska on land that is dry as a result of low sea levels that accompanied the ice age. (See Scientific American, 4 March 2014)

20,000 BCE (Before the Common Era)  By now humans are in southern Greece.

18,000 BCE  People in what today is Hunan province, in central China near the Yangzi River, are making pottery.

14,500 BCE  An ice-free corridor in Canada allows migration from Alaska southward.

14,000 BCE  A melting ice sheet begins a rise in sea levels and warming in Europe. Rising waters have separated New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania.

13,000 BCE  Rice is being grown in Korea. Father north, the land bridge between between Siberia and the North American continent begins to disappear.

12,000 BCE  The epoch described by geologists as the Pleistocene has ended. The epoch spanned nearly 1.8 million years. The last continental glacier is in retreat, and for archaeologists the Paleolithic age – a cultural period – ends.

70,000    Mousterian (Neanderthaler)   
    Corn grows wild in the Americas

70 ka Appearance of mitochondrial haplogroup L2. Behavioral modernity
         according to the "great leap forward" theory

    60 kaY-chromosomal Adam lives in Africa. He is the most recent common ancestor from whom all male human Y chromosomes are descended. Appearanceof mitochondrial haplogroups M and N, which participate in the migration out of Africa. Homo sapiens that leave Africa in this wave start interbreeding with the Neanderthals they encounter.

    58,000(60,000 years ago) out of Africa migration of modern humans; approximate age of Haplogroup N (mtDNA), Haplogroup C (mtDNA) and Haplogroup A (mtDNA)

50,000-   The spread zones, Dr. Renfrew said, are mostly
 the result of recent dispersals caused by   agricultural inventions. The mosaic zones "may   be those of the first humans to occupy those  areas, at least in Australia and America," he   said.  The language spoken by the ancestral human  population may never be known, though Dr.   Greenberg has tried to reconstruct a few words   of it. But some linguists who study the click languages of southern Africa feel they are very  ancient. This belief is supported by genetic  evidence showing that the Khoisan peoples, the   principal speakers of click languages, belong to   the most ancient of all the human lineages,    based on mitochondrial DNA   Dr. Anthony Traill, a click language expert at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said that linguistically the  languages fell into three separate groups whose  relationship, aside from the clicks, was hard to    establish. The clicks must be ancient, he said,  because "the chances of clicks being invented   after being lost is zero." The only use of clicks outside of Africa is in an Australian
 aboriginal initiation languages in which the  clicks are used as meaningless sounds. "The idea that clicks were lost from all  languages other than Khoisan," Dr. Traill said, "is stimulating, but I don't know what to make of it."  Of the three disciplines that bear on human origins — historical linguistics, population genetics and archaeology — only archaeology has    a rock-solid method of dating, based on   radiocarbon and other kinds of radioactive decay.But geneticists are now improving their dating  methods, even though the dates are still very approximate, to the point that they can begin to  correlate their findings with the archaeologists'. The geneticists' first foray  into human prehistory was the famous "mitochondrial Eve" article of 1987 by the late Allan Wilson, showing that when people around  the world were placed on a family tree    constructed from their mitochondrial DNA, the  tree was rooted in African populations, in an   individual who lived about 200,000 years ago. Though the methodology of the paper was  imperfect, its result was unchanged after the  method had been corrected, and geneticists have developed a growing confidence in mitochondrial   DNA dates. The mitochondrial DNA trees trace  back to a single individual, not because there   was only one Eve — the ancestral human   population is thought to have contained about  10,000 people — but because the lineages of all the other Eves have gone extinct. The process is easy to visualize by thinking of an island  population with 10 surnames. In each generation,  some men will have no children or only daughters  and their surnames will disappear until only one  is left; the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA  follow the same pattern.  The first major branch points in the  mitochondrial Eve tree have been called  the  daughters of Eve and they fall in a geographic pattern with some daughters of Eve being characteristic of Africa, some of Asia and the Americas and some of Europe and the Near East. Dr. Richards and his colleagues have analyzed  the ancestry of the present European population by looking within the major daughter of Eve  branches for subbranches that occur both in  Europe and the Near East, from western Iran  through Turkey and Arabia to Egypt, because the  Near East is the probable source of most of the  ancestral populations that entered Europe. The subbranches from each region were then dated  by counting the number of mutations that had  occurred in the mitochondrial DNA sequence from  the beginning of the subbranch until today. If  the subbranch was older in the Near East than  Europe, it indicated a migration into Europe. By  this method Dr. Richards's team was able to date the migrations into Europe. They also picked up  a sizable back-migration from Europe to the Near   East.

    50,000-The ancestors of most modern humans mated with Neanderthals and made off with important swaths of DNA that helped them adapt to new environments, scientists reported Wednesday.Some of the genes gained from these trysts linger in people of European and East Asian descent, though many others were wiped out by natural selection, according to reports published simultaneously by the journals Nature and Science.The stretches of Neanderthal DNA that remain include genes that altered hair and pigment, as well as others that strengthened the immune system, the scientists wrote. Together, they offer intriguing hints about how Neanderthal genes may have helped humans adapt as they spread around the globe. They also add to evidence that Neanderthals linger in us, about 30,000 years after they mysteriously vanished."They are not fully extinct, if you will," said geneticist Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, a coauthor of the Nature study. "They live on in some of us today — a little bit."Genes controlling keratin, a key component in the development of skin and hair, stand out as the strongest Neanderthal signal in a modern genome, Paabo said. Precisely how these may have helped change modern physical characteristics remains unresolved, he added.The new studies confirm earlier findings that modern humans did more than bump elbows with Neanderthals when they encountered them after they left Africa.An estimated 1% to 3% of the human genome comes from Neanderthals, suggesting that members of the two species mated perhaps 300 times about 50,000 years ago, said Joshua M. Akey, a population geneticist from the University of Washington and lead author of the study published in Science. There's no way to tell whether those encounters happened about the same time or were spread out over many generations, he said."Individually, we are a little bit Neanderthal," Akey said. "Collectively, there is a substantial part of the Neanderthal genome that's still floating around in the human population that's just shattered into different pieces, and everyone has slightly different parts."Confirming that there are slivers of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans is one thing; knowing what effect it had on us is another, said UC Berkeley biologist Montgomery Slatkin, who has done similar research on Neanderthal genetics but was not involved in either study. "Now there is convincing evidence that indeed some [genes] were selected in humans."Overall, at least 20% of the Neanderthal genome made its way into human DNA, and East Asians retained slightly more of it, according to Akey's analysis, which made comparisons among 379 Europeans and 286 East Asians.The genetic signature of Neanderthals is slightly larger among East Asians. To Akey, that suggests a second wave of matings after they parted from the forebears of Europeans. "It's a two-night-stand theory now," he said. Akey cautioned that there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding the extent and duration of interbreeding. Other hypotheses, including a smaller group of Asian ancestors, could explain the larger amount of Neanderthal DNA. In addition to the long strands of DNA that survived, there are vast "deserts" lacking any Neanderthal signal, the studies found. Researchers suspect the areas once contained Neanderthal genes that were erased under evolutionary pressure.Where did the DNA go? Most of the deserts lie on the X chromosome. They also were more common in genes that play a role in male fertility, the Nature study found. Male sterility, a well-known consequence of mating between species, could have wiped out the missing Neanderthal genes, researchers suggest; the sterile men carried the foreign DNA to their graves. Sriram Sankararaman, a statistical geneticist at Harvard Medical School and coauthor of the Nature paper, calculated that about one-third of the Neanderthal DNA once in the human genome had been cleared out. That evolutionary purge is "a huge amount in a relatively short period of time," he said. The Neanderthal genome project has helped scientists understand one of our closest relatives. Short-bodied and brutishly strong, Neanderthals were well-adapted for hardship and colder climates. They made use of fire, crafted simple flaked tools and hunted to supplement forage unavailable in colder months.For decades, paleontologists and geneticists found little indication of Neanderthal-human interbreeding. But as methods, samples and tools improved, evidence began to accrue in both the fossil record and genetic analyses. Genes linked to several modern diseases, including Type 2 diabetes, are among the Neanderthal legacy. Though that DNA may not seem helpful in an era of plentiful cheeseburgers and French fries, it could have been valuable at a time when food was often scarce, Paabo said. Other studies have traced important immune system genes to Neanderthals and another closely related extinct group, the Denisovans. Although both of the new studies focus on the DNA sequences shared by humans and Neanderthals, some scientists are more interested in exploring the differences that make humans unique.

50 ka Migration to South Asia. M168 mutation (carried by all non-African
          males). Beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. mt-haplogroups U, K.

50,000 Burial shows belief in afterlife. Modern man in Morocco
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48,000 (50,000 years ago) Modern humans spread from Asia to the Near
    East; age of Haplogroup B (mtDNA)[10] In the next millennia, these
        human group's descendants move on to southern India, the Malay islands, Australia, Japan, China, Siberia, Alaska, and the northwestern coast of North America.

40 ka    Migration to Australia and Europe (Cro-Magnon).

40,000 Israel (Neanderthaler) Borneo (Modern Man in Borneo, Europe,
    Middle East, China, Indonesia, Australia

    Last Ice Age, Cro Magnon begins to enter Europe from the east.

40,000 MESOAMERICA. Los primeros pobladores

    Empiezan a cruzar el estrecho Bering. Estan oprganizados en pequeñas bandas.Hacen armas e instrumentas de piedra y hueso. Usan el fuego

    40,000 MIGRATION. B.C. – 25,000 B.C. Paleolithic people move into Beringia across the Bering Land Bridge into western Alaska.   Bison (buffalo), mammoths, and mastodons are thought to have migrated from Asia to America about this time. This would imply a land bridge between the continents that would have had a food supply.

    38,000 (40,000 years ago) Cro-Magnon colonisation of Europe (Upper Paleolithic)

    38,000 INFANTICIDE. PALEOLITHIC Paleolithic and NeolithicMany Neolithic groups routinely resorted to infanticide in order to control their numbers so that their lands could support them. Joseph Birdsell believed that infanticide rates in prehistoric times were between 15% and 50% of the total number of births, while Laila Williamson estimated a lower rate ranging from 15% to 20%. Both anthropologists believed that these high rates of infanticide persisted until the development of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution. Comparative anthropologists have calculated that 50% of female newborn babies were killed by their parents during the Paleolithic era. Decapitated skeletons of hominid children have been found with evidence of cannibalism. The children were not necessarily actively killed, but neglect and intentional malnourishment may also have occurred, as proposed by Vicente Lull as an explanation for an apparent surplus of men and the below average height of women in prehistoric Menorca. In ancient history In the New World- Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian culturesArchaeologists have uncovered physical evidence of child sacrifice at several locations.  Some of the best attested examples are the diverse rites which were part of the religious practices in Mesoamerica and the Inca Empire.In the Old WorldThree thousand bones of young children, with evidence of sacrificial rituals, have been found in Sardinia. Infants were offered to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Pelasgians offered a sacrifice of every tenth child during difficult times. Syrians sacrificed children to Jupiter and Juno. Many remains of children have been found in Gezer excavations with signs of sacrifice.

            Allegedly, this  practice stems from a particular perception of unborn children in Chinese culture. According to Dr. Warren Lee, former president of the Hong Kong Nutrition Association, "eating foetuses is a kind of traditional Chinese medicine and is deeply founded in Chinese folklore." Traditionally, ancient Chinese assumed that firstborns or aborted foetuses do not have personhood of their own and thus have no soul. From this perspective, foetuses are merely a part of a mother's flesh and can be indigested. It was believed that if a mother 'reabsorbs' her still-born or aborted foetus she will then give birth to a healthy and strong baby. Admittedly, this type of belief is not uncommon in societies where cannibalistic infanticide was once considered to be normal practice.
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    35,000 RWANDA. The Twa, the aboriginal Pygmy inhabitants, have probably lived in the region in and around Rwanda for 35,000 years. According to historical legend, such as those recounted by European colonists such as John Hanning Speke, an offshoot of the Hamitic tribes, the Hutu, arrived in Rwanda from the Congo basin.

    35,000MIGRATION. Archaeological sites found in Dyukhtai Cave and other sites in the Aldan River valleyhave yielded remains of a culture that may be a potential Paleoindian ancestor. This culture occupied the region from 35,000-12,000 years ago. The Dyukhtai or similar Northeast Asian cultures may have entered the New World through Beringia and spread into British Columbia . It is thought that they pursued Pleistocene mammals such as the giant beaver, goats, elk, ancient reindeer (early caribou), horses, Yukon camels, steppe bison, musk ox, mastodons, and woolly mammoths.The chief characteristic of the Dyukhtai was their manufacture of microliths or microblades. Microblades are small flakes less than 1 1/4 inches long, with a sharp edge and a "backed" or blunted edge that could be guided with the index finger to sever meat from a carcass. Microblades could also be incorporated into composite tools such as an arrow or sickle. Thousands of microblades have been found at upper Paleolithic Stone Age sites. They have been found north of Mongolia together with projectile points and hand-carved ivory statuettes. The earliest of several sites there has been dated at 45,000 years ago. Microblades appeared in Japan by 20,000 during the LGM when the island was still a peninsula and reachable by landMicroblade manufacture was an important event in human history and its appearance corresponds roughly to the end of the Middle Paleolithic 60,000 years ago. Over 98% of all human history is encompassed by the period of time that began with the appearance of Australopithecus afarensis [e.g. "Lucy] and ended with the manufacture of microblades by lower-upper Stone Age cultures such as the "Dyukhtai".
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    .
    34,000    Homo sapiens-blade tools-disappearance of Neanderthalers

            HOMOSAPIENS. Throughout more than 90% of its history, Homo sapiens lived in small bands as nomadic hunter-gatherers. As language became more complex, the ability to remember and transmit information resulted in a new sort of replicator: the meme. Ideas could be rapidly exchanged and passed down the generations. Cultural evolution quickly outpaced biological evolution, and history proper began.

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        33,000 CRO-MAGNON (35,000 years ago) oldest known figurative art (Venus of Hohle Fels), age of the Aurignacian culture
        Diversification of races. The era of the Clan, based on female kinship, because groups marriages were common practice, as a result children never knew their fathers, only their mothers. Weapons are improved, clay vessels appear, boring, drilling and polishsing of stone appears, primitive froms of  land cultivation and animal husbandry.Agriculture developed from gathering, domestication of food animals developed from hunting. Agriculture and stockbreeding became spheres in which man ousted women. The invention of the plough, as opposed to the hoe, became man's purview with the aid of draught beasts. Women were given a new role in domestic tasks.
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    Early history.  Reciprocal tolerance among adult males and absence of jealousy constituted the prime  condition for humans to form  lasting and extensive groups.  The elimination of  selection among groups, resulted in an increase of  individuals on the planet, and led to greater migration of genetic material.  It reduced to zero inter-individual variability within a  species, but increased the  possibilities of producing  distinct types of humans generally.  Thus the possibility  that homosexual beings could be  produced increased more than in other species.  As human nature developed,  social demands became specialized,  and the reproductive function gained special significance, having a special relationship with the growth and development of the laboring groups and the potential for the group to survive. Casual relationships were substituted by group marriages, later displaced by pair groupings, which became the basis for an extended family. According to maternal or paternal lineage large communities became structured, which in many places migrated from maternal to paternal. Human communities based on the gens, gathered all its members in a single grouping. By means of the regulatory function of marriage, the family and the satisfaction of basic material necessities, production was assured, social relations were maintained, and the collective could be defended from outside attack. The gens needed each and every member of the group. These heterosexual relations were later transformed into a new organizational form; the tribe. Rules for men were rigorous, taking the form in initiations or tests. Passing the initiation was proof that taboos were accepted and that the initiated boy was in condition to create a family.  Those who failed had to go about dressed as w omen and could not vote at meetings. Individual motives are subordinated to those of the group, according to their ethical norms and group behavior. Dependency on natural forces became more immediate as the social division of labor developed, along with means and processes of production, which carried along socio-pathological changes in the group.  Norms become less rigid, each behavioral norm  competes with another which contradicts it, and there is a new ambivalence established. There are no  rules of what is "natural" that  that can be understood by themselves.  Some members of the group  are set apart in the process  of individuation.   The establishment of monogamy was accompanied  by relations of  exploitation of  women, who were turned into  property and slaves. The male was  considered superior.  It is not surprising  that the Bible speaks  of  homosexuality among men, but not among women, who lacked the social space to make themselves known.  The search for an explanation to  homosexuality in the supernatural in reality constituted a step in the  transition to scientific thought.  Thus there are initiated exceptional rites and  practices that allow homosexual conduct and  transvestism.  It  is known that homosexual priests and priestesses were venerated.  Nevertheless, in    76% of primitive societies such practices were condemned or prohibited, although evidences exist of their  practice in  secret.  One must study  societies by their internal connections, for as  Marx points out, the outward appearance of things and their essence do not coincide directly.  


        MIGRATIONS-hunters and gatherers-- Siberia, South east Asia, Indian Ocean, South America, African pygmies, Australia, Tasmania, Tierra del Fuego, Bushmen, Lapps, Papua


    30,000 HOMINIDS. The discovery of material evidence of a distinct hominin (human) lineage in Central Asia arecently as 30,000 years ago does not come as a surprise to those who have looked at the historical and anecdotal evidence of 'wild people' inhabiting the region," Herodotus, , the father of historians, wrote about these human cousins, the "Arimaspians," around 450 B.C. They were "strong warriors, good horsemen  rich in flocks of cattle and sheep and goats; they are one-eyed, 'shaggy with hairs, the toughest of men'," according to John of Tzetses, a writer of the Byzantine era. They also fought griffons, mythical winged lionswith eagle's faces, for gold, according to Herodotus and his contemporary Aristeas, Heaney notes that legends of hairy wild people, or almases, have been  standard fare in the Russian steppes for centuries. "The reports of wild  men, although having typical mythic overtones, do often reflect what we  know of primitive hominins," "The presumed almases  of Central Asia could be any one of a number of pre-(homo) sapien ancestors." What about their gold-mine-guarding griffon foes? Suggested their legend sprang from dinosaur bones unearthed by  nomads in their travels across the steppes of Western Mongolia."That region could well be Bayan-Ulgii aimag (province) in western Mongolia and environs, where I have wandered many long days and have seen ancient and contemporary small gold mines," says archaeologist Jeannine  Davis-Kimball of the Center for the Study of Eurasian Nomads, who calls a dinosaur-bone origin for griffon stories reasonable. "We have excavated Bronze Age hunters and gatherers and small villagers along the Eurasian rivers — these were the people that precede the nomads   by a 1,000 or maybe even many more years. I've seen lots of skeletons from  many locales in my travels from Hungary to Mongolia, but none that  correlates with this new hominid line or with the one-eyed Arimaspians,"  "It's too difficult for me to believe that  hominids living 1,000,000 years ago could be perpetuated in a myth to the  time of Herodotus or about 450 BC." Dima Cheremisin of the Russian Academy of  Sciences who looked at the ancient Pazyryk people of Siberia, an Iron Age tribe whose burial mounds dot the Altai Mountains. "The mythical griffon   is the most popular figure in Pazyryk art, suggesting that the Pazyryk  people maybe identified with the 'griffons guarding gold,' mentioned by  Aristeas and Herodotus," Cheremisin noted.  And cryptozoologists, who make a study of legendary creatures, have  offered similar archaic human explanations in the past for sightings of  the Yeti or Bigfoot. Bernard Heuvelmans, Such sightings of the wild  people could be based on ancestral memories of Neanderthals. Of course, it does turn out that people seem to have interbred with Neanderthals,  long-time ancient genome researcher who also was a co-author on the Denisova Cave discovery report. More than 50,000 years ago, most  likely in the Near East, intermingling of early modern humans and  Neanderthals led to modern-day Europeans and Asians typically having a  genome that is 1- 4% Neanderthal, according to the study.Such interbreeding is another staple of old stories. Hercules, the hero of Greek myths, walked around in a lion skin with a club over his shoulders  and was wondrously strong, a bit like a Neanderthal, due to half-divine parentage.Even the Old Testament contains references to Nephilim, "giants," who married people and had children. "These stories go back millennia, but they don't go back that far," says  biblical archaeologist Robert Cargill of UCLA.." Homo floresiensis, nicknamed "hobbits"  for their puny stature about three feet tall, who died out perhaps 12,000  years ago in Indonesia

    30,000 Neanderthal man dies out Ancient humans interbred with Neanderthals, Denisovans and a mystery species that may have originated in Africa and migrated to Asia, paleontologists said this week. Improved genome sequencing from two extinct human relatives suggests the forerunners to modern humans intermingled with one another more extensively than was previously known. Ancient genomes, one from a Neanderthal and one from a different archaic human group, the Denisovans, were presented Monday at the Royal Society in London, where researchers said they'd found evidence to suggest rampant interbreeding among members of ancient human-like groups more than 30,000 years ago in Europe and Asia – including an unknown human ancestor."What it begins to suggest is that we're looking at a ‘Lord of the Rings'-type world — that there were many hominid populations," said Mark Thomas, evolutionary geneticist at University College London. Previous Neanderthal and Denisovan genome sequences showed the two groups had interbred with anatomically modern humans, contributing to the genetic diversity of modern humans, and revolutionized the study of ancient human history. But those genome sequences were of low quality and full of gaps and errors. A team led by David Reich, an evolutionary geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said they'd produced genome sequences that matched the quality of modern human genomes. All humans whose ancestry originates outside Africa have about 2 percent Neanderthal genomes, and some Oceanic humans, such as Papua New Guineans and Australian Aboriginals, have about 4 percent of their DNA from interbreeding between their human ancestors and Denisovans, whose remains were found in a cave in Siberia's Altai Mountains.
        Researchers said the Denisovans interbred with Neanderthals and humans who lived in China, East Asia and Oceania. But researchers said the new genomes also suggested that Denisovans interbred with another extinct population of ancient humans who lived in Asia more than 30,000 years ago, and scientists are left guessing who they might have been. "We don't have the faintest idea," says Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the London Natural History Museum. Stringer speculated that they might be related to Homo heidelbergensis, a species that left Africa about 500,000 years ago and later gave rise to Neanderthals in Europe. "Perhaps it lived on in Asia as well," Stringer said.


30,000 (32,000 years ago) Aurignacian culture begins in Europe.

    30,000 MIGRATION. –20,000 years ago: Mammoth bones, believed to have been chipped by humans, are found at the Yukon's Bluefish Caves[25] and Old Crow Flats[26] sites in the 1970s and1980s by archeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars and his team.[27] In 2004, Albert Goodyear of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology announced that radiocarbon dating of a bit of charcoal found in the Topper Site near Allendale County, South Carolina.[28]However, these deposits may have been made by forest fires. Geneticists have variously estimated that peoples of Asia and the Americas were part of the same population from 21,000 to 42,000 years ago.Ice-free corridor running north and south through Alberta and the continental glacier called Laurentide ice sheet. Introduced by  geologists in the 1950s when stone tools were found in the Grimshaw, Bow River and in Lethbridge Alberta, under glacial sand and gravel are believed to be pre-glacial and therefore may indicate nomadic humans occupied the area.[30] A child's skull found in 1961 near Taber, Alberta  is believed to be one of the oldest inhabitants discovered in  Alberta. Siberian mammoth hunters believed to have penetrated far into the Arctic  where ice-free corridors north during the time are believed found. Theory first introduced by geologist in the late 1970s when core samples  indicate ice is no older than 17,000 year old.23,000    MIGRATION. –16,500 years ago:  The Ice Age entombs the northern hemisphere in glaciers, cutting off  routes from Siberia to the south. the presence of the X haplogroup was found in a small percentage of  modern indigenous Americans that is known to exist in a few locations in  Europe and the Middle East. Subsequent research indicated that the European DNA was not the result of genetic mixing after Columbus. However the time estimates on haplogroup X entering Americas is around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. Genetic evidence (2007–2009) suggests the Beringia population first  genetic diversification from Asian populations occurred.[35] An article in the American Journal of Human Genetics states "Here we show, by using 86 complete mitochondrial genomes, that all Native American haplogroups,  including haplogroup X, were part of a single founding  population

29,000(31,000 years ago) oldest known cave paintings
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                28,000 AMERICAS.  New wave crosses Bering Straits from Asia to                 Americas
        approximate age of Haplogroup X (mtDNA) and Haplogroup I (mtDNA). A herd of reindeer is slaughtered and butchered by humans in the Vezere Valley in what is today France.

27,000 (29,000 years ago) extinction of Homo neanderthalensis.

    26,500 (28,500 years ago) New Guinea is populated by colonists from Asia or Australia.

26,000 (28,000 years ago) Gravettian period in Europe. Harpoons, needles,
          and saws invented.
    
25,000     EUROPE.  Venus of Vestonice 25,000 years since Neanderthals died out.

25 ka    The independent Neanderthal lineage dies out. Y-Haplogroup R2;
          mt-haplogroups J, X.

24,000 (26,000 years ago) Women around the world use fibers to make baby-carriers, clothes, bags, baskets, and nets.

23,000 (25,000 years ago) first colonisation of North America. A hamlet consisting of  huts built of rocks and of mammoth bones is founded in what is now Dolni Vestonice in Moravia in the Czech Republic. This is the oldest human permanent settlement that has yet been found by archaeologists.

23,000     AMERICA. The man of Los Angeles is buried, while hunting mamoth.23,000    MIGRATION. During the coldest millennia of the last ice age, roughly 23,000 to 19,000 years ago, lobes of glaciers hundreds of kilometers wide flowed down to the sea.[15] Deep crevasses scarred their surfaces, making travel across them dangerous. Even if people traveled by boat—a claim for which there is currently no direct archaeological evidence as sea level rise has hidden the old coast line — the journey would have been difficult with abundant icebergs in the water. Around 15,000 to 13,000 years ago the coast was presumed ice-free. Additionally, by this time the climate had warmed, and lands were covered in grass and trees. Early Paleo-Indian groups could have readily replenished their food supplies, repaired clothing and tents, and replaced broken or lost tools. Coastal or watercraft theories have broad implications; one being that Paleo-Indians in North America may not have been purely terrestrial "big-game hunters", but instead were already adapted to maritime or semi-maritimelifestyles.[10] Additionally, it is possible that "Beringian " (western Alaskan) or European groups migrated into the northern interior and coastlines only to meet their demise during the last glacial maximum, approximately 20,000 years ago,[21] leaving evidence of occupation in specific localized areas. However they would not be considered a founding population, unless they had managed to migrate south, populate and survive the coldest part of the last ice-age. Timeline of archeological, geological and genetic evidence.
      
20,000    Pressure flaking Solutrean culture .Use of jewelry
        Cave art flourishes in Lascaux, Altamira.man living Australia.

20,000     (22,000) years ago the oldest known tally stick (the Ishango Bone)
 
    20,000 -     15000 Apricion del hombre en America. Desarrollo de la         agricultura la produccion minera y textil, arte y religion. Caza y recoleccion.

19,000    (21,000 years ago) Last Glacial Maximum

18,000     (20,000 years ago) Chatelperronian culture in France.

16,000     La Madeleine, Lascaux, Altamira. Clay bison modeling

    16,500 MIGRATION. –13,000 years ago: Geologists report this is when receding glaciers reopened an ice-free  corridor through Canada between Alaska and the rest of the Americas. Massive flooding would have created large lakes covering vast areas of north America with glacial waters. Age estimates based on Y-chromosome micro-satellite place diversity of  the American Q-Haplo at around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.Mass extinction of large fauna begins due to climate change and perhaps   hunting. The Dire Wolf, Smilodon, Cave Lion, Giant beaver, Ground sloth,  Mammoth, American Mastodon, American Camel, American Equine, and American lion all become extinct by 11,000 years ago.Pre-Clovis sites uncovered from 1973-1978 Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania site indicated occupancy as early as 16,000 years ago and possibly as long as 19,000 years ago. Dates in excess of 19,000 years have been claimed for the deepest occupation layer uncovered.pre-Clovis sites found in Monte Verde, located along Chinchihuapi Creek,in Chile. A crew of eighty people, led by Tom Dillehay of the University of Kentucky, excavated the site from 1977-1985.[40] A coastal migration could explain how people arrived in Monte Verde. archaeologists say people were living at Cactus Hill, Virginia  where stone tools and charcoal from a fire pit are found.

    15000 MIGRATION. .  The chronology of migration models is currently divided into two general approaches. The first is the short chronology theory with the first movement beyond Alaska into the New World occurring no earlier than 15,000 – 17,000 years ago, followed by successive waves of immigrants.[4][5] The second belief is the long chronology theory, which proposes that the first group of people entered the hemisphere at a much earlier date, possibly 21,000–40,000 years ago,[6][7] with a much later mass secondary wave of immigrants.[8][9][10] However, other theories propose early migration from Europe, while supporting evidence for separate origins for "now-extinct" populations may exist.One factor fueling the debate is the discontinuity of archaeological evidence between North and South America Paleo-Indian sites. A roughly uniform techno-complex pattern known as Clovis appears in North and Central American sites from at least 13,500 years ago onwards.[12] South American sites of equal antiquity do not share the same consistency and exhibit more diverse cultural patterns. Thus, archaeologists conclude that the "Clovis-first", and Paleo-Indian time frame do not adequately explain complex lithic stage tools appearing in South America. Some theorists seek to develop a colonization model that integrates both North and South American archaeological records.The following dates summarize the availability of unobstructed routes for human migration southward from Beringia during the ice age.  
        Dates BCEBeringia"Land Bridge"Coastal RouteMackenzie Corridor 38,000-34,000accessible)34,000-30,000submerged 30,000-22,000accessible 22,000-15,000accessible 15,000 - todaysubmerged

    15,000 MIGRATION. –13,000 years ago: AMERICAS. The Taima Taima mastodon kill/butchering site in Falcon, Venezuela was first excavated by J.M. Cruxent in the 1960s and 1970s. It is one of the  earliest archaeological sites that is pre-Clovis. In l976 a broken El Jobo point (red arrow) was found inside the pubic cavity of a partially  disarticulated and butchered young mastodon whose bones had been cut with a jasper flake found near the left ulna of the animal.Peñon women found by an ancient lake bed near Mexico City in 1959. Mention is made of the possibility of Solutrean peoples migrating to the area 15,000 to 20,000 years ago.El Abra sites located in the valley east of the city of Zipaquirá,  Colombia. First excavated by Gonzalo Correal and associates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 3,072 pieces found indicate it was inhabited continuously for over 7,000 years.At Paisley Caves in the Cascade Range of Oregon, archaeologists find a  scattering of human coprolites, or fossil feces in 2003.[46] The  mitochondrial DNA extracted from coprolites linked the cave dwellers to  two genetic groups of early Americans that arose 14,000 to 18,000 years ago.[46] This two genetic groups were the founding Paleo-Indians and later Na-Dené migration.
    15,000 BC NEOLITH. MIDDLE EAST. Domestication of animalsWhen hunter-gathering began to be replaced by sedentary food production it became more profitable to keep animals close at hand. Therefore, it became necessary to bring animals permanently to their settlements, although in many cases there was a distinction between relatively sedentary farmers and nomadic herders. The animals' size, temperament, diet, mating patterns, and life span were factors in the desire and success in domesticating animals. Animals that provided milk, such as cows and goats, offered a source of protein that was renewable and therefore quite valuable. The animal's ability as a worker (for example ploughing or towing), as well as a food source, also had to be taken into account. Besides being a direct source of food, certain animals could provide leather, wool, hides, and fertilizer. Some of the earliest domesticated animals included dogs (about 15,000 years ago), sheep, goats, cows, and pigs.
    Domestication of animals in the Middle East Dromedary Camel caravan in AlgeriaThe Middle East served as the source for many animals that could be domesticated, such as goats and pigs. This area was also the first region to domesticate the Dromedary Camel. The presence of these animals gave the region a large advantage in cultural and economic development. As the climate in the Middle East changed, and became drier, many of the farmers were forced to leave, taking their domesticated animals with them. It was this massive emigration from the Middle East that would later help distribute these animals to the rest of Afroeurasia. This emigration was mainly on an east-west axis of similar climates, as crops usually have a narrow optimal climatic range outside of which they cannot grow for reasons of light or rain changes. For instance, wheat does not normally grow in tropical climates, just like tropical crops such as bananas do not grow in colder climates. Some authors like Jared Diamond postulated that this East-West axis is the main reason why plant and animal domestication spread so quickly from the Fertile Crescent to the rest of Eurasia and North Africa, while it did not reach through the North-South axis of Africa to reach the Mediterranean climates of South Africa, where temperate crops were successfully imported by ships in the last 500 years.The African Zebu is a separate breed of cattle that was better suited to the hotter climates of central Africa than the fertile-crescent domesticated bovines. North and South America were similarly separated by the narrow tropical Isthmus of Panama, that prevented the andes llama to be exported to the Mexican plateau.Consequences of the Neolithic RevolutionSocial changeIt is often argued that agriculture gave humans more control over their food supply, but this has been disputed by the finding that nutritional standards of Neolithic populations were generally inferior to that of hunter gatherers, and life expectancy may in fact have been shorter, in part due to diseases.Average height, for example, went down from 5' 10" (178 cm) for men and 5' 6" (168 cm) for women to 5' 3" (165 cm) and 5' 1" (155 cm), respectively and it took until the twentieth century for average human height to come back to the pre-Neolithic Revolution levels. Actually, by reducing the necessity for the carrying of children, Neolithic societies had a major impact upon the spacing of children (carrying more than one child at a time is impossible for hunter-gatherers, which leads to children being spaced four or more years apart). This increase in the birth rate was required to offset increases in death rates and required settled occupation of territory and encouraged larger social groups. These sedentary groups were able to reproduce at a faster rate due to the possibilities of sharing the raising of children in such societies. The children accounted for a denser population, and encouraged the introduction of specialization by providing diverse forms of new labor. The development of larger societies seemed to have led to the development of different means of decision making and to governmental organization. Food surpluses made possible the development of a social elite who were not otherwise engaged in agriculture, industry or commerce, but dominated their communities by other means and monopolized decision-making. Subsequent revolutionsDomesticated cow being milked in Ancient Egypt.Andrew Sherratt has argued that following upon the Neolithic Revolution was a second phase of discovery that he refers to as the secondary products revolution. Animals, it appears were first domesticated purely as a source of meat.{Sherratt 1981} The Secondary Products Revolution occurred when it was recognised that animals also provided a number of other useful products. These included:  hides and skins (from undomesticated animals)  manure for soil conditioning (from all domesticated animals)  wool (from sheep, llamas, alpacas, and Angora goats) milk (from goats, cattle, yaks, sheep, horses and camels)  traction (from oxen, onagers, donkeys, horses and camels) Sherratt argues that this phase in agricultural development enabled humans to make use of the energy possibilities of their animals in new ways, and permitted permanent intensive subsistence farming and crop production, and the opening up heavier soils for farming. It also made possible nomadic pastoralism in semi arid areas, along the margins of deserts, and eventually led to the domestication of both the dromedary and bactrian camel. Overgrazing of these areas, particularly by herds of goats, greatly extended the areal extent of deserts. Living in one spot would have more easily permitted the accrual of personal possessions and an attachment to certain areas of land. From such a position, it is argued, prehistoric people were able to stockpile food to survive lean times and trade unwanted surpluses with others. Once trade and a secure food supply were established, populations could grow, and society would have diversified into food producers and artisans, who could afford to develop their trade by virtue of the free time they enjoyed because of a surplus of food. The artisans, in turn, were able to develop technology such as metal weapons. Such relative complexity would have required some form of social organisation to work efficiently, so it is likely that populations that had such organisation, perhaps such as that provided by religion, were better prepared and more successful. In addition, the denser populations could form and support legions of professional soldiers. Also, during this time property ownership became increasingly important to all people. Ultimately, Childe argued that this growing social complexity, all rooted in the original decision to settle, led to a second Urban Revolution in which the first cities were built.DiseaseLlama overlooking the ruins of the Inca city of Machu PicchuThroughout the development of sedentary societies, disease spread more rapidly than it had during the time in which hunter-gatherer societies existed. Inadequate sanitary practices and the domestication of animals may explain the rise in deaths and sickness during the Neolithic Revolution, as diseases jumped from the animal to the human population. Some examples of diseases spread from animals to humans are influenza, smallpox, and measles. In concordance with a process of natural selection, the humans who first domesticated the big mammals quickly built up immunities to the diseases as within each generation the individuals with better immunities had better chances of survival. In their approximately 10,000 years of shared proximity with animals, Eurasians and Africans became more resistant to those diseases compared with the indigenous populations encountered outside Eurasia and Africa.[22] For instance, the population of most Caribbean and several Pacific Islands have been completely wiped out by diseases. According to the Population history of American indigenous peoples, 90% of the population of certain regions of North and South America were wiped out long before direct contact with Europeans. Some cultures like the Inca Empire did have one big mammal domesticated, the Llama, but the Inca did not drink its milk or live in a closed space with their herds, hence limiting the risk of contagion.The causal link between the type or lack of agricultural development, disease and colonisation is not supported by colonization in other parts of the world. Disease increased after the establishment of British Colonial rule in Africa and India despite the areas having diseases that Europeans had no natural immunity to. In India agriculture developed during the Neolithic period with a wide range of animals domesticated.

        MIGRATION. years ago:  The Ice Age is ending, melting   glaciers have raised sea levels 120   meters and submerged the land  bridge between Alaska and Siberia.   Geologic evidence indicates     that by 11,500 years ago, the Cordilleran  and Laurentide ice sheets    had retreated far enough to open a habitable   ice-free corridor between them. The exposed land was dry and probably  restored enough to support plants and animals, which the migrating hunter-gatherer followed. Clovis theory – People were living near  Clovis, New Mexico where tools   from this era were found in    1930s. This find gave rise to the widely  held "Clovis First" theory that people spread through the Americas only after the Ice Age.  The Clovis culture was believed replaced by several more localized   regional cultures, such as the Folsom tradition,  from the time of the    Younger Dryas cold climate period. Peru coastal region inhabitants   fished with nets and bone hooks,  collecting seafood such as crabs and  sea urchins.

    14,000 (16,000) years ago) EUROPE. Wisent sculpted in clay deep inside the cave now known as Le Tuc d'Audoubert in the French Pyrenees near what is now the border of  Spain.

  14,000 -  In A History of God, Oxford graduate and former nun Karen Armstrong argues that "social god-making" has largely determined "the nature of religious experience."  Focusing on the social implications of religion, Armstrong presents a compelling historical analysis of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic monotheism.
Interestingly, Armstrong herself is not a monotheist but a self-professed agnostic, who contends that once she left the convent she felt her own "belief in God slip quietly away."
Armstrong argues that humanism—which she defines as "a religion without a God"—"has its own disciples of mind and heart and gives people the means of finding faith in the ultimate meaning of human life that were once provided by the more traditional religions."  Humanism, in Armstrong's view, like all systems of belief throughout the centuries, "is highly pragmatic, [for] it is far more important for a particular idea of God to work than for it to be logically or scientifically sound."

It was in the Middle East, Armstrong begins, that "the idea of our God gradually emerged about 14,000 years ago."  The ancient Middle Easterners "personalized the unseen forces and made them gods, associated with the wind, sea and stars."  Access to the sacred world allowed human beings to resemble gods:  If men and women imitated the actions of the gods they would share to some degree their greater power and effectiveness ...  The sacred world of the gods ...  was the prototype of human existence ...
In the mythology of the ancient people of Canaan (Phonecia), the gods were born from chaos.  Later, "other gods emerged from them in a process known as emanation, which would become very important in the history of our own God."  In fact, the Canaan "High God El" seems to have developed into the prophet Abraham's god Yahweh, "a very mild deity" who bore a much stronger resemblance to El than to the "cruel and violent" Yahweh who later appeared to Moses in Exodus.
In contrast to Moses' all-powerful and dynamic Yahweh, the Greeks revered a "divine world [that] was static and changeless."  As conceived by Plato, "divine forms ...  could be discovered within the self"; for Aristotle, God was "Unmoved Mover ...  pure being, and, as such eternal, immobile and spiritual ...  Pure thought  ...  the highest object of knowledge."  This remote Aristotelian "Unmoved Mover" was quite unlike the different Yahwehs of Abraham and Moses, or the Yahweh who later appeared to the Judean Isaiah.  Neither "tribal deity" nor "war god," Isaiah's new Yahweh belonged to everyone, Jew, gentile or pagan:  "his glory ...  filled the whole earth."
Although his message was often grim, the new Yahweh inspired many prophets, from Amos to the Second Isaiah, through whom the new God stressed "compassion" and "love" while denouncing "pagan gods."  Once the Israelites worshiped Yahweh exclusively, Armstrong asserts, "the religion of Judaism was born."
Forced into exile after the Romans seized the Holy Land, the Jews began to form new sects including the Essenes and the Qumran, "who sought forgiveness of sins by baptismal ceremonies," and the Jewish Pharisees, whose Rabbis encouraged their people to "atone for sins with acts of loving-kindness to their neighbor."  In their preachings, the Rabbis often spoke metaphorically:  One of their favorite synonyms for God was the Shekinah, which derived from the Hebrew shakan, to dwell with or to pitch one's tent.  Now that the Temple [in Jerusalem] was gone, the image of God who had accompanied the Israelites on their wanderings in the wilderness suggested the accessibility of God.... Like the divine "glory" or the Holy Spirit, the Shekinah was not conceived as a separate divine being but as the presence of God on earth.  The image of the Shekinah helped the exiles to think of themselves "as a united community with 'one body and soul.'" Thus, even in exile, the Jews felt "enveloped by a benevolent God [who] stressed that Jews had a duty to keep well and happy."
Much later in human history, Christianity emerged, Armstrong suggests, from the teachings of the Pharisees, who preached that "charity and loving-kindness were the most important of the mitzvah (commandments)."  Jesus may have been a Pharisee, Armstrong writes, for he clearly adopted the words of the great Pharisee Rabbi Hillel the Elder who had said, "Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you."  Ultimately, Jesus' disciples and the Jews parted company.  Although Jesus referred to himself as "the Son of Man," his disciples believed "that Jesus had somehow presented an image of God"; as "passionate monotheists," the Jews could not accept the notion of a divine Messiah.
Christians had disagreements not only with the Jews, but also among themselves.  Paul, for instance, did not believe in "the idea of Christ existing as a second divine being beside [Yahweh] from all eternity," while Peter, in contrast, insisted that after Jesus' crucifixion, "God had raised him to life and had exalted him to an especially high status 'by God's right hand.'"
In addition to their theological disagreements, many of the early Christian converts "felt lost, adrift and radically displaced."  Among Christian sects, for instance, the Gnostics "did not experience the world as ...  the work of a benevolent deity."  Indeed, contends Armstrong, God would not become a congenial God until the third century, when "some truly cultivated pagans began to be converted to Christianity" and the philosopher Clement reformulated God to be a peaceable being, "utterly impassable and serene."  Later, Plotinus, the Roman Platonist, influenced Christian thinking by suggesting that the faithful withdraw into themselves to discover this serene God.
Whereas Eastern Christians embraced Platonists' tranquil deity, the Western Christians were increasingly convinced "that martyrdom was the only sure path to God."  When the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312, it became the state religion of the Roman empire and "began to attract new converts who made their way into the Church for the sake of material advancement."
According to Armstrong, the Church soon became bitterly divided over official doctrine:  "Either Christ ...  belonged to the divine realm (which was now the domain of God alone), or he belonged to the fragile created order."  After lengthy arguments in Nicaea, three Turkish theologians finally posited that "Father, Son and Spirit" were simply the outward manifestation (hypostases) of God, and not God himself, whose "divine nature (ousia) is unnameable and unspeakable."  Thus the Trinity, which Western Christians would find "simply baffling" and Eastern Christians would consider "an inspiring religious experience," became part of Church doctrine.
The idea of the Trinity seemed "puzzling and even blasphemous" to Muslims, who, Armstrong says, denounced the concept as "self-indulgent guesswork about things that nobody can possibly know or prove."  The Koran counseled Muslims "to see through the fragmentary world to the full power of original being, to the transcendent reality that infuses all things."
The Islamic prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah, who introduced the Koran to Islam, was, writes Armstrong, "a man of exceptional genius":  When he died in 632, he had managed to bring nearly all the tribes of Arabia into a new united community, or ummah ...  Like many of the Arabs, Muhammad had come to believe that al-Lah ...  whose name simply meant "the God," was identical to the God worshiped by the Jews and the Christians.
A merchant of the Meccan tribe of Quraysh, Muhammad lamented that his people had become capitalists and seemed "lost."  In 610, Muhammad was visited by two angels but only later determined that he "had received a revelation from the God of Moses and the prophets, and had become the divine envoy to the Arabs."
"The Koran was revealed to Muhammad   ...  over a period of twenty-three years," Armstrong notes, and when "each new segment was revealed, Muhammad, who could neither read nor write, recited it aloud and the Muslims learned it by heart and those few who were literate wrote it down."
The Koran encouraged the Quraysh "to become aware of God's benevolence," but also cautioned the Muslims that "if they failed to reproduce God's benevolence in their society, they would be out of touch with the true nature of things.  [They therefore] had a moral duty to create a just, equitable society, where the poor and vulnerable are treated decently."  Moreover, "Muslims were not to abdicate their reason, but to look at the world attentively and with curiosity."
While "it took the ancient Israelites some 7000 years to break with their old religious alliances and accept monotheism," Armstrong asserts, " ...  Muhammad managed to help the Arabs achieve this difficult transition in a mere 23 years."  As Muslims, they embraced "no other deity but al-Lah the Creator of heaven and earth, who can save man and send him the spiritual and physical sustenance that he needs."  And from these monotheistic beliefs, Muslims became highly tolerant of other, non-Islamic theologies, reasoning that "because there was only one God, all rightly guided religions must be derived from him alone."
Following Muhammad's death, "egalitarianism would continue to characterize the Islamic ideal."  New sects began to emerge, including the Shiahs—who believed "that only members of Muhammad's family had true knowledge of God"—and the Sufis—who sought God transcendentally.  After the twelfth century, "the Iranian philosopher Yahya Suhrawardi linked Islamic Falsafah [the interpretation of the Koran from the perspective of Greek rationalism] indissolubly with mysticism and made the God experienced by the Sufis normative in many parts of the Islamic empire."
The Jews, meanwhile, had developed Kabbalah, in which "as in Sufism, the doctrine of the creation is not really concerned with the physical origins of the universe, but with the mystery of God."  While mysticism preoccupied both Jews and Muslims, the Christians "began to see God in still more rationalistic terms."  After battling Muslims in the Crusades to wrest control of the Holy Land and mounting brutal pogroms against Sephardic Jews in Spain, the Christians conquered the New World.
Having subjugated all enemies while acquiring considerable wealth, Christians were at leisure to question their own precepts, and thus the Reformation was born.  Protestantism developed as an alternative to Roman Catholicism under the leadership of Martin Luther, who viewed "life as a battle against Satan," and later under John Calvin, who inspired people "to believe that they could achieve whatever they wanted."
When Protestantism took root in America, "the old proofs of God were no longer satisfactory ...  and philosophers, full of enthusiasm for the empirical method, felt compelled to create the objective reality of God in the same way they proved other demonstrable phenomena."  (A similar preoccupation with "finding truth through reason" also occurred among 18th-century Jews under the elegant philosophical arguments of Moses Mendelssohn.)
But "Rationalism," Armstrong asserts, would in time foster atheism in many Christians.  Indeed, "by the end of the nineteenth century, a significant number of people were beginning to feel that if God was not yet dead, it was the duty of rational, emancipated human beings to kill him."  Likewise the Zionist Jews of this century propose that man "no longer needs God; he himself is the creator."  So, even as Muslims continued to rely on God as "a force for transformation at a deep level," Westerners were increasingly secularizing their world.
As a response to atheism, says Armstrong, fundamentalists of all religions "are swift to condemn the enemies of God" and yet increasingly defy "a crucial monotheistic theme ...  the ideal of compassion"—an omission that causes Armstrong to conclude that "if we are to create a vibrant new faith for the twentieth century, we should, perhaps, ponder the history of God for some lessons and warnings."
                
    12ka    Beginning of the Mesolithic / Holocene. Y-Haplogroup R1a; mt-haplogroups V, T. Evolution of light skin in Europeans (SLC24A5).Homo  floresiensis dies out, leaving Homo sapiens as the only living species of  the genus Homo.  
 12000 BC-  12,000 BCE  The epoch described by geologists as the Pleistocene has ended. The Holocene epoch begins – to today. With the exception crossing a body of water to get to New Guinea and Australia, they have arrived in places by walking.

11,000 BCE  Stone spearheads and human DNA found in Oregon caves will indicate "that at least two cultures with distinct technologies ... shared the continent more than 13,000 years ago." (New York Times, July 12, 2012.)

10,900 BCE  Comet debris smash into North America. According to theory, it reversed the ice age thaw, and the recooling killed mammals such as the saber-toothed tiger, dire wolf, and the wooly mammoth.

10,000 BCE  Homo sapiens are the sole surviving creatures of the Homo genus – a species with a superior ability to plan and communicate. These humans have spread into most of the earth's habitable places. Sparse populations allow for hunting game, gathering food that grows wild and drifting from campsite to campsite. Storytelling and myth are a major pastime.

10,000 BCE  In Eurasia and North America, the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) has become extinct.

10,000 BCE  People in the Middle East have domesticated goats and dogs. And people are starting to grow their own food.

9,500 BCE  Throughout the world, climates become warmer, wetter and more stable. There are perhaps five million people in the world, most of them hunter-gatherers.

9,000 BCE  21st century academics mark this as around the time that the shift from hunter-gathering societies to settled farming begins. In the Jordan Valley, figs are cultivated, while wild barley, oats and acorns are being gathered. (See BBC News, June 2, 2006, "Ancient fig clue to first farming.)

8000 BCE  Hunter-gatherers in Southeast Asia begin growing crops to supplement their food supply. In the Jordan Valley in Southwest Asia, a walled settlement exists at Jericho. Mesopotamians are using clay tokens to represent agricultural and hand manufactured goods.


 

 

8000 BCE  Tropical monsoons are making the Sahara green.

7600 BCE  Hunter-gatherers are living along the Seine River in what is today the city of Paris.

7300 BCE  Tribal people in what is today Britain have domesticated dogs.

7200 BCE  In what is today Greece, people have domesticated sheep.

7000 BCE  In the Fertile Crescent, people are farming and raising animals. Their farms anchor them to one place. Gods are seen as settled into a temple and place.

6700 BCE  A man dies in the vicinity of what is now known as the Columbia River. In 1996 CE his bones will be found almost entirely intact and he will be called Kennewick Man. A projectile point will be found embedded in his pelvis, but his bone grows around it, indicating that he survived the wound.

6500 BCE  In what today is northwest Turkey agriculture appears, and cow herders are producing what will be tentatively considered the world's first dairy.

6000 BCE  Farmers from the Near East arrive in Europe and transform the genetic landscape of Europe (See BBC News, Science and the Environment, 5 Nov 2014). Growing crops and domesticating animals have begun in southern and eastern Europe, including Greece.

6000 BCE  Agriculture is developing among hunter-gatherers in what today is southern Mexico. Along the upper Nile, people are growing sorghum, millet and wheat.

5800 BCE  Agriculture appears in what today is France.

5600 BCE  Sea levels have been rising, and – according to the disputed "Black Sea Deluge Theory" – sea water suddenly begins pouring into the Black Sea basin, flooding vast amounts of inhabited land and sending people on new migrations with stories about a great flood.

5500 BCE  People in China are planting seeds.

5400-4900 BCE  What German archaeologist F. Klopfleisch calls the first true farming communities appear in central Europe.

5000 BCE  The first metal tools are produced. Near what today is the village of Herxheim, in southwest Germany, as many as 500 men, women and infants are butchered and cannibalized – perhaps during one of the periodic famines that occurred in agricultural societies.

4500 BCE  Farming reappears in Africa south of the Sahara in the Niger Basin in the West. The Sahara at this time is grass and woodland with an abundance of rainfall, rivers, lakes, fish and aquatic life. People there are growing crops and raising sheep, goats and cattle.

4200 BCE  Egyptians are mining and smelting copper.

4200 BCE  Around now the Sahara is beginning to become desert again.

4100 BCE  Y-DNA Haplogroup E1b suggest migrations have ocurred or will occur from North Africa to Sicily, to the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, from Sicily to the Italian Peninsula and the Balkans. By the 21st century from 5 to 10 percent of Germans will share this DNA from North Africa.
                    
    12000 MIGRATION. –AMERICAS. 10,000 years ago: Ice age over, climate similar to present temperatures. Old migration  theories believe first widespread migration in South America and  subsequently a dramatic rise in population all over the Americas, introduced in the 1930s.The Maritimes of Canada are settled by Paleo-Indians. Sites in and around Belmont, Nova Scotia have evidence indicating small seasonal   hunting camps, perhaps re-visited over many generations.[52]   Luzia Woman's skull and other bones excavated in the Lagoa Santa, Brazil   area by French archaeologistAnnette Laming-Emperaire in the 1970s. By 2006, Lagoa Santa sites had produced no fewer than 75 well-preserved  ancient skulls. 1994, University of California, Riverside anthropologist R. Erv Taylor  examined seventeen of the Spirit Cave artifacts near Fallon, Nevada from  the 1940s using mass spectrometry. The results indicated that a mummy  was approximately 9,400–10,200 years old — older than any previously  known North American mummy. Unique markers found in DNA recovered from an Alaskan tooth were found  in specific coastal tribes, and were rare in any of the other indigenous  peoples in the Americas. This finding lends substantial credence to a  migration theory that at least one set of early peoples moved south  along the west coast of the Americas in boats.

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12,800 (14,800 years ago) The Humid Period begins in North Africa. The              region that  would later become the Sahara is wet and fertile, and              the Aquifers are full.

    12,800 BC    PALESTINE. 12800 - 10300 BCE). Other remains from this era have been found at Tel Abu Hureura, Ein Mallaha, Beidha and Jericho.Between 10000 and 5000 BCE, agricultural communities were established. Evidence of such settlements were found at Tell es-Sultan, Jericho and include mud-brick rounded and square dwellings, pottery shards, and fragments of woven fabrics.Chalcolithic period (4500 - 3000 BCE) and Bronze Age (3000 - 1200 BCE) Babylonian reasoning In Mesopotamia, Esagil-kin-apli's medical Diagnostic Handbook written in the  11th century BC was based on a logical set of axioms and assumptions, including  the modern view that through the examination and inspection of the symptoms of a  patient, it is possible to determine the patient's disease, its aetiology and future development, and the chances of the patient's recovery.Another movement which rejected the oral law was Karaism. It arose within two centuries of the completion of the Talmud. Karaism developed as a reaction against the Talmudic Judaism of Babylonia. The central concept of Karaism is the rejection of the Oral Torah, as embodied in the Talmud, in favor of a strict adherence to the Written Law only. This opposes the fundamental Rabbinic concept that the Oral Law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai together with the Written Law. Some later Karaites took a more moderate stance, allowing that some element of tradition (called sevel ha-yerushah, the burden of inheritance) is admissible in interpreting the Torah and that some authentic traditions are contained in the Mishnah and the Talmud, though these can never supersede the plain meaning of the Written Law.

        Karaism has virtually disappeared, declining from a high of nearly 10% of the Jewish population to a current estimated 0.2%.

    12,000 Domestication of plants and animals. Use of coal and clay. Tribes and totems Humans were producing food across the vast plain of what is now the Sahara desert.
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11,00    Clovis and Folsom
    End of big game hunting-glaciers melted and seas rose

    11,000 BC, BRITAIN there was a gradual amelioration of climate leading to the replacement of tundra by forest and of reindeer hunting by that of red deer and elk. Valuable insight on contemporary conditions was gained by the excavation of a lakeside settlement at Star Carr, Humberside, which was occupied for about 20 successive winters by hunting people
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    10,000 (12,000 years ago) land ice leaves Denmark and southern Sweden; start of the  Holocene epoch and Neolithic Age and end of the last Ice Age. Invention of agriculture is the earliest given date for the beginning of the ancient era                                                                                       10,000        Holocene-Berbers

    10,000            AMERICAS. Man reaches tip of South America.MESOAMERICA.  El hombre de Tepexpan, MÉXICO
        Harvesting of plants. First villages (Natufian) Figs, celery and parsley  are found between the Nile and the Indus valley.

    10,000 MIGRATION. AMERICAS. Indigenous Amerindian genetic studies have concluded that the "colonizing founders" of the Americas emerged from a single-source ancestral population that evolved in isolation, likely in Beringia. The isolation in Beringia might have lasted 10,000–20,000 years.Age estimates based on Y-chromosome micro-satellite place diversity of the American Haplogroup Q1a3a (Y-DNA) at around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. This does not address if there were any previous failed colonization attempts by other genetic groups, as genetic testing can only address current population ancestral heritage.Migrants from northeastern Asia could have walked to Alaska with relative ease when Beringia was above sea level. But traveling south from Alaska to the rest of North America may have posed significant challenges. The two main possible routes proposed south for human migration are: down the Pacific coast or by way of an interior passage (Mackenzie Corridor) along the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains. When the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets were at their maximum extent, both routes were likely impassable. The Cordilleran sheet reached across to the Pacific shore in the west, and its eastern edge abutted the Laurentide, near the present border between British Columbia and Alberta. Geological evidence suggests the Pacific coastal route was open for overland travel before 23,000 years ago and after 15,000 years ago.

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THOUSANDS OF YEARS
        9000 - 6000 BC  Domestication of cattle and cultivation of cropsSubsequently both livestock, particularly cattle, and plant products such as grain, come to be used as money in many different societies at  different periods. Cattle are probably the oldest of all forms of money, as domestication of animals tended to precede the cultivation of crops, and were still used for that purpose in parts of Africa in the middle of  the 20th century.

 9000    ATLANTIS. The network of criss-cross lines is 620 miles off the coast of north west Africa near the Canary Islands on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean The perfect rectangle – which is around the size of Wales – was noticed on the search giant's underwater exploration tool by an aeronautical engineer who claims it looks like an "aerial map" of a city. The underwater image can be found at the co-ordinates 31 15'15.53N 24 15'30.53W.  Atlantis experts said that the unexplained grid is located at one of the possible sites of the legendary island, which was described by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. According to his account, the city sank beneath the ocean after its residents made a failed effort to conquer Athens around 9000 BC.        
9,000    Bushman drawings in Drakensberg Mt

        First human settlements in Los Angeles basin.

    9,000    (11,000 tears ago)founding of the city of Jericho . Olives are cultivated in Mount Carmel and the Levant.

    9,000    MIGRATION. –8,000 years ago: Remains, known as Kennewick Man, are found in 1996 on the Columbia River  near Kennewick, Washington. A skull and more than 300 bones and bone  fragments were found at the site, making up among the oldest, best preserved, and most complete human remains ever found in North America.  Initial radiocarbon dating indicated the remains were between 7,000 and  9,500 years old. A leaf-shaped projectile found on the body was  long, broad and had serrated edges, all fitting the definition of a  Cascade point. This type of point is a feature of the Cascade phase,  occurring in the archaeological record from roughly 6000 to over 8500 years ago.  1930s-1990s no major Central American archaeological sites that go back  more than 9,000 years have been found. Isolated finds of stone tools in Belize, Nicaragua and Costa Rica indicates that such sites almost  certainly exist. Lack of funding for exploration in the areas has postponed likely finds. Tehuacan Valley of Mexico – people are living in rock shelters and using stone cooking pots, which were left in the center of the hearth. Maize  was to be used in the same valley between 7,000–6,000 years ago.GeneticsSchematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia.Formore details on this topic, see Indigenous Amerindian genetics.IndigenousAmerindian genetics primarily focus on Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups and Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroups. "Y-DNA" is passed solely along the patrilineal line, from father to son, while "mtDNA" is passed down the matrilineal line, from mother to offspring of both sexes. Neither recombines, and thus Y-DNA and mtDNA change only by chance mutation at each generation with no intermixture between parents' genetic material.[58] Autosomal "atDNA" markers are also used, but differ from mtDNA or Y-DNA in that they overlapsignificantly.[59] AtDNA is generally used to measure the average continent-of-ancestry genetic admixture in the entire human genome and related isolated populations.The genetic pattern indicates Indigenous Amerindians experienced two very distinctive genetic episodes; first with the initial-peopling of the Americas, and secondly with European colonization of the Americas. The former is the determinant factor for the number of gene lineages, zygosity mutations and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous Amerindian populations.Human settlement of the New World occurred in stages from the Bering sea coast line, with an initial 15, 000 to 20,000-year layover on Beringia for the small founding population. The micro-satellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicates that certain Amerindian populations have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region. The Na-Dené, Inuit and Indigenous Alaskan populations exhibit haplogroup Q (Y-DNA) mutations, however are distinct from other indigenous Amerindians with various mtDNA and atDNA mutations. This suggests that the earliest migrants into the northern extremes of North America and Greenland derived from later migrant populations.Land bridge theoryBerengia -Wisconsin glaciationAlso known as the Bering Strait Theory or Beringia theory, the Land Bridge theory has been widely accepted since the 1930s. This model of migration into the New World proposes that people migrated from Siberia into Alaska, tracking big game animal herds. They were able to cross between the two continents by a land bridge called the Bering Land Bridge, which spanned what is now the Bering Strait, during the Wisconsin glaciation, the last major stage of the Pleistocene beginning 50,000 years ago and ending some 10,000 years ago, when ocean levels were 60 metres (200 ft) lower than today. This information is gathered using oxygen isotope records from deep-sea cores. An exposed land bridge that was at least 1,000 miles wide existed between Siberia and the western coast of Alaska. In the "short chronology" version, from the archaeological evidence gathered, it was concluded that this culture of big game hunters crossed the Bering Strait at least 12,000 years ago and could haveeventually reached the southern tip of South America by 11,000 years ago.SynopsisAt some point during the last Ice Age, about 17,000 years ago, as the ice sheets advanced and sea levels fell, people first migrated from the Eurasian landmass to the Americas. These nomadic hunters were following game herds from Siberia across what is today the Bering Strait into Alaska, and then gradually spread southward. Based upon the distribution of Amerind languages and language families, a movement of tribes along the Rocky Mountain foothills and eastward across the Great Plains to the Atlantic seaboard is assumed to have occurred at least some 13,000 to 10,000 years ago.Clovis cultureFurther information: Clovis culture and Clovis pointMap showing the approximate location of the ice-free corridor and specific Paleoindian sites (Clovis theory).This big game-hunting culture has been labeled the Clovis culture, and is primarily identified with fluted projectile points. The culture received its name from artifacts found near Clovis, New Mexico, the first evidence of this tool complex, excavated in 1932. The Clovis culture ranged over much of North America and appeared in South America. The culture is identified by distinctive "Clovis point", a flaked flint spear-point with a notched flute by which it was inserted into a shaft; it could then be removed from the shaft for traveling. This flute is one characteristic that defines the
        Clovis point complex.Dating of Clovis materials has been by association with animal bones and by the use of carbon dating methods. Recent reexaminations of Clovis materials using improved carbon-dating methods produced results of 11,050 and 10,800 radiocarbon years B.P. (before present). This evidence suggests that the culture flowered somewhat later and for a shorter period of time than previously believed. Michael R. Waters of Texas A&M University in College Station and Thomas W. Stafford Jr., proprietor of a private-sector laboratory in Lafayette, Colorado and an expert in radiocarbon dating attempted to determine the dates of the Clovis period. The heyday of Clovis technology has typically been set between 11,500 and 10,900 radiocarbon years B.P. (The radiocarbon calibration is disputed for this period, but the widely used IntCal04 calibration puts the dates at 13,300 to 12,800 calendar years B.P.). In a controversial move, Waters and Stafford conclude that no fewer than 11 of the 22 Clovis sites with radiocarbon dates are "problematic" and should be disregarded—including the type site in Clovis, New Mexico. They argue that the datable samples could have been contaminated by earlier material. This contention was received as highly controversial by many in the archaeological community.Clovis-type artifacts seem to disappear from the archaeological record after the hypothesized Younger Dryas impact event roughly 12,900 years before the present. The effects of the event possibly caused a decline in post-Clovis human populations and shifts in culture and behavior patterns.Problems with Clovis migration modelsSignificant problems arise with the Clovis migration model. If Clovis people radiated south after entering the New World and eventually reached the southern tip of South America by 11,000 years ago, this leaves only a short time span to populate the entire hemisphere. Another complication for the Clovis-only theory arose in 1997, when a panel of authorities inspected the Monte Verde site in Chile, concluding that the radiocarbon evidence predates Clovis sites in the North American Midwest by at least 1,000 years. This supports the theory of a primary coastal migration route that moved south along the coastline faster than those that migrated inland into the central areas of the Americas. Many excavations have uncovered evidence that subsistence patterns of early Americans included foods such as turtles, shellfish, and tubers. This is quite a change of diet from the big game mammoths, long-horn bison, horse, and camels that early Clovis hunters apparently followed east into the New World.At the Topper archaeological site (located along the banks of the Savannah River near Allendale, South Carolina) investigated by University of South Carolina archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear, charcoal material recovered in association with purported human artifacts returned radiocarbon dates of up to 50,000 years BP. This would indicate the presence of humans well before the last glacial period. Nevertheless, considerable doubt over the validity of these findings has been raised by many other researchers, and the pre-Clovis Topper dates remain controversial.Pre-Clovis dates have been claimed for several sites in South America, but these early dates have yet to be verified unequivocally.Recent discoveries of human coprolites (fossilized feces) found deeply buried in an Oregon cave indicate the presence of humans in North America as much as 1,200 years prior to the Clovis culture.Watercraft migration theoriesEarlier finds have led to a pre-Clovis culture theory encompassing different migration models with an expanded chronology to supersede the "Clovis-first" theory. Pacific coastal modelsCoastal MigrationPacific models propose that people reached the Americas via water travel,
        following coastlines from northeast Asia into the Americas. Coastlines are unusually productive environments because they provide humans with access to a diverse array of plants and animals from both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. While not exclusive of land-based migrations, the Pacific 'coastal migration theory' helps explain how early colonists reached areas extremely distant from the Bering Strait region, including sites such as Monte Verde in southern Chile and Taima-Taima in western Venezuela. Two cultural components were discovered at Monte Verde near the Pacific Coast of Chile. The youngest layer is radiocarbon dated at 12,500 radiocarbon years (~14,000 cal BP) and has produced the remains of several types of seaweeds collected from coastal habitats. The older and more controversial component may date back as far as 33,000 years, but few scholars currently accept this very early component.Other coastal models, dealing specifically with the peopling of the PacificNorthwest and California coasts, have been advocated by archaeologists Knut Fladmark, Roy Carlson, James Dixon, Jon Erlandson, Ruth Gruhn, and Daryl Fedje. In a 2007 article in the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, Erlandson and his colleagues proposed a corollary to the coastal migration theory—the kelp highway hypothesis—arguing that productive kelp forests supporting similar suites of plants and animals would have existed near the end of the Pleistocene around much of the Pacific Rim from Japan to Beringia, the Pacific Northwest, and California, as well as the Andean Coast of South America. Once the coastlines of Alaska and British Columbia had deglaciated about 16,000 years ago, these kelp forest (along with estuarine, mangrove, and coral reef) habitats would have provided an ecologically similar migration corridor, entirely at sea level, and essentially unobstructed. Australia/Oceania modelAs early as 1787 Chilean naturalist Juan Ignacio Molina mentioned the possibility of South America being populated from south Asia through the "infinite island chains" of the Pacific while north America could have been populated from Siberia. Some anthropologists such as Paul Rivet have proposed that peoples of Oceania or southeast Asia crossed the Pacific Ocean and arrived in South America long before the Siberian hunter-gatherers. These hypothetical Pre-Siberian American Aborigines populated much of South America before being nearly exterminated and/or absorbed by the Siberian migrants coming from the north. Some of the theories involve a southward migration from or through Australia and Tasmania, hopping Subantarctic islands and then proceeding along the coast of Antarctica and/or southern ice sheets to the tip of South America sometime during the last glacial maximum.There have been well-dated stratigraphic studies that point to people entering Australia some 40,000 years ago. At this period Australia was not connected to another continent, which leads to the assumption that it was reached by watercraft. If Australia was reached in this fashion, some reason that the New World could have been reached in the same way. Proponents of this model have pointed to cultural and phenotypical similarities between the Aboriginals of Australia and the Selknam and Yaghan tribes of southern Patagonia. The theory of Australoid migration to the Americas has earned little scientific support as there is no genetic evidence matching indigenous Australians with South American populations. This model is taught in Chilean schools together with the land bridge model A recent study claimed that the Mapuche pre-Columbian Araucana chicken came from Polynesia by analysing their DNA; this suggests a more recent contact between the Mapuche and Polynesia. Another recent study has contradicted this claim stating that the DNA found in the chicken bone was closer to post colonial European chickens. One of the earliest known sites of human occupation in the Americas, Monte Verde, lies within what was later to become Huilliche territory, although there is currently no demonstrated link between the Monte Verde people and the Mapuche. Southeast Asians: Paleoindians of the CoastThe boat-builders from Southeast Asia may have been one of the earliest groups to reach the shores of North America. One theory suggests people in boats followed the coastline from the Kurile Islands to Alaska down the coasts of North and South America as far as Chile  The Haida nation on the Queen Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia may have originated from these early Asian mariners between 25,000 and 12,000. Earlywatercraft migration would also explain the habitation of coastal sites in South America such as Pikimachay Cave in Peru by 20,000 years ago and Monte Verde in Chile by 13,000 years ago   "'There was boat use in Japan 20,000 years ago,' says Jon Erlandson, a University of Oregon anthropologist. 'The Kurile Islands (north of Japan) are like stepping stones to Beringia,' the then continuous land bridging the Bering Strait. Migrants, he said, could have then skirted the tidewater  glaciers in Canada right on down the coast." Atlantic coastal modelArchaeologists Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley champion the coastal Atlantic route. Their Solutrean Hypothesis is also based on evidence from the Clovis complex, but instead traces the origins of the Clovis toolmaking style to the Solutrean culture of Ice Age Western Europe. They have hypothesized that Solutrean hunters and fishers, living like Eskimos, may have worked their way along the southern margins of the Atlantic sea ice to North America, getting food, and blubber-oil for heating, by killing fish and seals, hauling out on ice each night. Their argument is based on technological analysis of the similarities between Solutrean and Clovis flint-knapping techniques, and that Clovis sites are generally found in eastern North America and seem to have radiated westward. Stanford and Bradley are currently working on publishing a book on the Solutrean hypothesis.[citation Other Atlantic migration proponents include the French archaeologist Remy Cottevieille-Giraudet, who in the 1930s suggested a European Cro-Magnon origin of the Algonquian peoples. In 1963, Emerson Greenman proposed a hypothetical Atlantic migration during the Upper Paleolithic, also citing New World similarities with Solutrean tools as well as art. He suggested that the Beothuk people of Newfoundland, among others, may have been at least partial descendants of that migration. According to a research report on Beothuk DNA published in 2007, "the data do not lend credence to the proposed idea that the Beothuk (specifically, Nonosabasut) were of admixed (European-Native American) descent." Problems with evaluating coastal migration modelsThe coastal migration models provide a different perspective on migration to the New World, but they are not without their own problems. One of the biggest problems is that global sea levels have risen over 100 metres since the end of the last glacial period, and this has submerged the ancient coastlines which maritime people would have followed into the Americas. Finding sites associated with early coastal migrations is extremely difficult—and systematic excavation of any sites found in deeper waters is challenging and expensive. If there was an early pre-Clovis coastal migration, there is always the possibility of a "failed colonization." Another problem that arises is the lack of hard evidence found for a "long chronology" theory. No sites have yet produced a consistent chronology older than about 12,500 radiocarbon years (~14,500 calendar years), but South America has still seen only limited research on the possibility of early coastal migrations.

    9000    Científicos revelan que frijol se originó en Mesoamérica Es una de las proteínas vegetales de mayor consumo en el planeta y es cultivado en cerca de 150 países.Un equipo internacional de investigadores dice ahora tener la respuesta: el frijol se originó en Mesoamérica y no en los Andes, como sostenían algunos científicos.El frijol común o Phaseolus vulgaris L., también conocido como habichuela, poroto, alubia y caraota, entre otros nombres, fueron domesticados independientemente en dos regiones: en los Andes, en lo que es hoy Perú y Ecuador, y en México y América Central. Estas variedades tienen un ancestro común en Mesoamérica, según los científicos.Las diferencias entre las dos grandes fuentes genéticas se basan en variaciones en el tipo de proteína y en el ADN mitocondrial, entre otros criterios.Ambas vertientes se habrían diversificado hace unos 11.000 años.


    8000    MIGRATIONS.  Early humans migrated due to many factors such as changing climate and landscape and inadequate food supply. The evidence indicates that the ancestors of the Austronesian peoples spread from the South Chinese mainland to Taiwan at some time around 8,000 years ago. Evidence from historical linguistics suggests that it is from this island that seafaring peoples migrated, perhaps in distinct waves separated by millennia, to the entire region encompassed by the Austronesian languages. It is believed that this migration began around 6,000 years ago.[2] Indo-Aryan migration to and within Northern India is presumed to have taken place in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, contemporary to the Late Harappan phase in India (ca. 1700 to 1300 BC). From 180 BC, a series of invasions from Central Asia followed, including those led by the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, Indo-Parthians and Kushans in the north-western Indian subcontinent.
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    8,000    BC NEOLITH. The Neolithic Revolution is believed to have become widespread in southwest Asia around 8000 BC–7000 BC, though earlier individual sites have been identified. Although archaeological evidence provides scant evidence as to which of the genders performed what task in Neolithic cultures, by comparison with historical and contemporary hunter-gatherer communities it is generally supposed that hunting was typically performed by the men, whereas women had a more significant role in the gathering. By extension, it may be theorised that women were largely responsible for the observations and initial activities that began the Neolithic Revolution, insofar as the gradual selection and refinement of edible plant species was concerned.The precise nature of these initial observations and (later) purposeful activities that would give rise to the changes in subsistence methods brought about by the Neolithic Revolution are not known; specific evidence is lacking. However, several reasonable speculations have been put forward; for example, it might be expected that the common practice of discarding food refuse in middens would result in the regrowth of plants from the discarded seeds in the (fertilizer-enriched) soils. In all likelihood, a number of factors contributed to the early onset of agriculture in Neolithic human societies. Agriculture in the Fertile CrescentGeneralised agriculture apparently first arose in the Fertile Crescent because of many factors. The Mediterranean climate has a long dry season with a short period of rain, which made it suitable for small plants with large seeds, like wheat and barley. These were the most suitable for domestication because of the ease of harvest and storage and the wide availability. In addition, the domesticated plants had especially high protein content. The Fertile Crescent had a large area of varied geographical settings and altitudes. The variety given made agriculture more profitable for former hunter-gatherers. Other areas with a similar climate were less suitable for agriculture because of the lack of geographic variation within the region and the lack of availability of plants for domestication.Agriculture in AfricaNile River Valley, EgyptThe Revolution developed independently in different parts of the world, not just in the Fertile Crescent. On the African continent, three areas have been identified as independently developing agriculture: the Ethiopian highlands, the Sahel and West Africa.The most famous crop domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands is coffee. In addition, Khat, Ensete, Noog, teff and finger millet were also domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands. Crops domesticated in the Sahel region include sorghum and pearl millet. The Kola nut, extracts from which became an ingredient in Coca Cola, was first domesticated in West Africa. Other crops domesticated in West Africa include African rice, African yams and the oil palm.A number of crops that have been cultivated in Africa for millennia came after their domestication elsewhere. Agriculture in the Nile River Valley developed from crops domesticated in the Fertile Crescent.

8,000    BC NEOLITH. In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond argues that Europeans and East Asians benefited from an advantageous geographical location that afforded them a head start in the Neolithic Revolution. Both shared the temperate climate ideal for the first agricultural settings, both were near a number of easily domesticable plant and animal species, and both were safer from attacks of other people than civilizations in the middle part of the Eurasian continent. Being among the first to adopt agriculture and sedentary lifestyles, and neighboring other early agricultural societies with whom they could compete and trade, both Europeans and East Asians were also among the first to benefit from technologies such as firearms and steel swords. In addition, they developed resistances to infectious disease, such as smallpox, due to their close relationship with domesticated animals. Groups of people who had not lived in proximity with other large mammals, such as the Australian Aborigines and American indigenous peoples were more vulnerable to infection and largely wiped out by diseases.During and after the Age of Discovery, European explorers, such as the Spanish conquistadors, encountered other groups of people who had never or only recently adopted agriculture, such as in the Pacific Islands, or lacked domesticated big mammals such as the highlands people of Papua New Guinea. Archeogenetics  The dispersal of Neolithic culture from the Middle East has recently been associated with the distribution of human genetic markers. In Europe, the spread of the Neolithic technologies has been associated with distribution of the African haplogroup E1b1b lineages and the Middle Eastern Haplogroup J. . In Africa, the spread of farming, and notably the Bantu expansion, is associated with the dispersal of Y-chromosome haplogroup E1b1a from West Africa.See alsoÇatalhöyük, a Neolithic site in southern Anatolia Natufians, a settled culture preceding agriculture Original affluent society Haplogroup G (Y-DNA) Haplogroup J2 (Y-DNA)  Haplogroup J (mtDNA) Agricultural Revolution Neolithic tomb  Surplus product  Göbekli Tepe
        Blackberries, raspberries loganberries and cloudberries are found in Western Europe.
        Chile peppers — native to Latin America and the Caribbean and believed to date back more than 8,000 years — were taken to Europe and then transported to Asia by traders hoping to build up Asian spice markets."It found its way to the Eastern Hemisphere by Christopher Columbus, who was
        looking for a new trade route to India," says Danise Coon, the Chile Pepper Institute's program coordinator. "Columbus mistakenly thought it was related to the black pepper, which is why it's called chile pepper.

        8500    Somewhere between 8500 and 7000 BC, humans in the Fertile Crescent in Middle East began the systematic husbandry of plants and animals: agriculture. This spread to neighboring regions, and also developed independently elsewhere, until most Homo sapiens lived sedentary lives in permanent settlements as farmers. Not all societies abandoned nomadism, especially those in isolated areas of the globe poor in domesticable plant species, such as Australia.[91] However, among those civilizations that did adopt agriculture, the relative security and increased productivity provided by farming allowed the population to expand. Agriculture had a major impact; humans began to affect the environment as never before. Surplus food allowed a priestly or governing class to arise, followed by increasing division of labor. This led to Earth's first civilization at Sumer in the Middle East, between 4000 and 3000 BC. Additional civilizations quickly arose in ancient Egypt, at the Indus River valley and in China. During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers began employing an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems, which was an important contribution to logic and the philosophy of science. Babylonian thought had a considerable influence on early Greek thought.
        THE FIRST GODS. Heaven and Earth ( Uranus and Gaea) begat Cronus (Rea) Coeus, (Phoebe), Ocean (Tethys). Cronus begat Hestia Pluto Poseidon Zeus (Athena) (Hera) Demeter (Zeus ). Zeus begat Ares Hebe Hephaestus, whereas Demeter (Zeus)  Begat Persephone. Coeus begat Leto (Zeus) who begat Apollo and Artemis. Ocean begat Iapetus, who begat Prometheus, Atlas and Epimetheus. Atlas begat Maia (Zeus) who begat Hermes. Epimetheus begat Sione (Zeus) who begat Aphrodite, born of sea foam. 
        ANCESTORS OF PERSEUS AND HERCULES. Zeus and Io begat Epaphus who begat Lybia (Poseidon) who begat Belus, who had three children; Aegyptus, Danaus and Cepheus I. Aegyptus has a son, Lynceus, who married Danaus' daughter, Hypermestra. They had Abas, who begat Acrisius who begat Danae (Zeus) who begat Perseus (Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus II and Cassiopea) they had two children, Eletryon and Alcaeus. Electryon begat Alcmene (Zeus) and had Hercules. Alcmene married Amphitrion, son of Alcaeus, and had Iphicles.
        8,000 Bananas are cultivated between the Nile and the Indus valley.
8,000   Land mass submerges to become Bering straight---
        AMERICAS. First domesticated dog found in US 10,000 LAS VEGAS.  PrehistoryThe prehistoric landscape of what is now the Las Vegas Valley and most of southern Nevada was a virtual marsh of abundant water and vegetation. Over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, rivers that were present sank into the ground, and the marsh receded. The valley evolved into a parched, arid landscape that only supported the hardiest of animals and plants.At some point in the valley's geologic history, the water that had been submerged below the terrain sporadically resurfaced and flowed into what is now the Colorado River. This helped proliferate luxurious plant life, creating a wetland oasis in the Mojave Desert landscape.Evidence of prehistoric life in Las Vegas Valley manifested in 1993 when construction workers discovered the remains of a Columbian mammoth. Paleontologists estimate that the mammoth roamed the area some 8,000 to 15,000 years ago.Native Americans lived in the Las Vegas Valley, beginning over 10,000 years ago. Archeologists have discovered baskets, petroglyphs, pictographs and other evidence in diverse locations, including Gypsum Cave and Tule Springs. Paiutes moved into the area as early as AD 700, migrating between nearby mountains in the summer and spending winter in the valley, near Big Springs.
        Marta Lucía Chaves Montoya, arqueóloga que dirige ese equipo, informó que en el sector de trabajo que denominaron La Isla se encontraron varias piezas que están analizando. (Foto: La Nación)1 0 0 0Un grupo de arqueólogos de Costa Rica encontró evidencias de la presencia humana en ese país hace 12 mil años.Marta Lucía Chaves Montoya, arqueóloga que dirige ese equipo, informó que en el sector de trabajo que denominaron La Isla se encontraron varias piezas que están analizando. (Foto: La Nación)Un equipo de arqueólogos del Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad encontraron en Siquirres (este), un pequeño trozo de carbón, evidencia de presencia humana en la región 12 mil años atrás, en el período paleoindio o paleoamericano.El equipo de expertos encontró varias piezas arqueológicas, entre ellas la que luego resultó ser la más antigua y que semeja un raspador de grasa del cuero.Diez de las muestras fueron sometidas a la prueba Carbono-14 para conocer la edad de las piezas orgánicas en el laboratorio Beta Analytic, Florida, Estados Unidos, donde se confirmó la pertenencia al período paleoindio, y constituir el primer control cronométrico en Centroamérica y por supuesto, en Costa Rica.Posteriores excavaciones y nuevas muestras corroboraron la presencia en la región de grupos humanos ante vestigios de herramientas y armas talladas, propias para la cacería y la recolección, acorde con la experta, quien comparó la zona con un taller de armas de piedras correspondiente al paleoindio.Previo a este descubrimiento se pensaba en una presencia humana ocho mil años atrás a partir de muestras encontradas en Turrialba, Cartago.El paleoindio se extiende desde el 2 mil hasta el 8 mil a.C. y es elevada la cantidad de restos arqueológicos desenterrados en Estados Unidos, México, Centroamérica y Suramérica.
                 Lake Chad is formed from melting Ice Age

        MIDDLE EAST. Agriculture develops in Near East.  Sheep and cattle domesticated
            The establishment of patrilineal kinship marks a new stage. Important transition from stone tools to metal takes place. Men smelt copper, and soon begin to fuse it with tin to make bronze. Clans specialize in either tillage or herding. Cultivators are found in the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Hwang Ho in China, Asia Minor and the Balkans. The pastoralists setlled in Siberia, the Aral Sea, the Iranian plateau and the Black Sea. Exchange of produce grows up between the agriculturalists and the pastoralists. People now start to produce surplus food for barter.

        8,000    BC    PALESTINE. Palestine has been settled continuously for tens of thousands of years. Fossil remains have been found of Homo Erectus, Neanderthal and transitional types between Neanderthal and modern man. Archeologists have found hybrid Emmer wheat at Jericho dating from before 8,000 B.C., making it one of the oldest sites of agricultural activity in the world. Amorites, Canaanites, and other Semitic peoples related to the Phoenicians of Tyre entered the area about 2000 B.C. The area became known as the Land of Canaan.

                                  8,000    MESOMAERICA.domesticaron plantas (agaucate, calabaza, frijol, maiz, chile)
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     7,000 Development of American cultures.
        Avocados are cultivated in Mexico.Capsicum   chiles are cultivated in the Americas.

    AFRICA. By the first millennium B.C.—well before any European contact was made—groups of African homo sapiens had developed an iron-based culture and had begun trading with other clans on the African continent Though African natives were at one time a single people, or possibly several peoples, the advent of the iron-pointed spear paved the way for the eventual fracturing of ancestral stocks into a great number of "tribes."

    7000- By the eighth millennium BC, people of a Neolithic culture had settled into a sedentary way of life there in fortified mud-brick villages, where they supplemented hunting and fishing on the Nile with grain gathering and cattle herding.[18] During the fifth millennium BC migrations from the drying Sahara brought neolithic people into the Nile Valley along with agriculture. The population that resulted from this cultural and genetic mixing developed social hierarchy over the next centuries become the Kingdom of Kush (with the capital at Kerma) at 1700 BC. Anthropological and archaeological research indicate that during the predynastic period Nubia and Nagadan Upper Egypt were ethnically, and culturally nearly identical, and thus, simultaneously evolved systems of pharaonic kingship by 3300 BC.[19]

7000- {\rtf1}

















An ancient European hunter-gatherer man had dark skin and blue eyes, a new genetic analysis has revealed.





The analysis of the man, who lived in modern-day Spain only about 7,000 years ago, shows light-skin genes in Europeans evolved much more recently than previously thought.



The findings, which were detailed today (Jan. 26) in the journal Nature, also hint that light skin evolved not to adjust to the lower-light conditions in Europe compared with Africa, but instead to the new diet that emerged after the agricultural revolution, said study co-author Carles Lalueza-Fox, a paleogenomics researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain.



Sunlight changes



Many scientists have believed that lighter skin gradually arose in Europeans starting around 40,000 years ago, soon after people left tropical Africa for Europe's higher latitudes. The hunter-gatherer's dark skin pushes this date forward to only 7,000 years ago, suggesting that at least some humans lived considerably longer than thought in Europe before losing the dark pigmentation that evolved under Africa's sun.



"It was assumed that the lighter skin was something needed in high latitudes, to synthesize vitamin D in places where UV light is lower than in the tropics," Lalueza-Fox told LiveScience.



Scientists had assumed this was true because people need vitamin D for healthy bones, and can synthesize it in the skin with energy from the sun's UV rays, but darker skin, like that of the hunter-gatherer man, prevents UV-ray absorption.



But the new discovery shows that latitude alone didn't drive the evolution of Europeans' light skin. If it had, light skin would have become widespread in Europeans millennia earlier, Lalueza-Fox said.



Mysterious find



In 2006, hikers discovered two male skeletons buried in a labyrinthine cave known as La Braña-Arintero, in the Cantabrian Mountains of Spain. [Images of the Ancient Skeletons]



At first, officials thought the skeletons may have been recent murder victims. But then, an analysis revealed the skeletons were about 7,000 years old, and had no signs of trauma. The bodies were covered with red soil, characteristic of Paleolithic burial sites, Lalueza-Fox said.



At the time of the discovery, genetic techniques weren't advanced enough to analyze the skeletons. Several years later, the team revisited the skeletons and extracted DNA from a molar tooth in one skeleton. (The other skeleton had been sitting in water for millennia, so his DNA was more degraded, Lalueza-Fox said.)



Blue eyes, dark skin



The new analysis of that DNA now shows the man had the gene mutation for blue eyes, but not the European mutations for lighter skin.



The DNA also shows that the man was more closely related to modern-day northern Europeans than to southern Europeans.



The discovery may explain why baby blues are more common in Scandinavia. It's been thought that poor conditions in northern Europe delayed the agricultural revolution there, so Scandinavians may have more genetic traces of their hunter-gatherer past — including a random blue-eye mutation that emerged in the small population of ancient hunter-gatherers, Lalueza-Fox said.



Skin changes



The finding implies that for most of their evolutionary history, Europeans were not what many people today would call 'Caucasian', said Guido Barbujani, president of the Associazione Genetica Italiana in Ferrara, Italy, who was not involved in the study.



Instead, "what seems likely, then, is that the dietary changes accompanying the so-called Neolithic revolution, or the transition from food collection to food production, might have caused, or contributed to cause, this change," Barbujani said.


 In the food-production theory, the cereal-rich diet of Neolithic farmers lacked vitamin D, so Europeans rapidly lost their dark-skin pigmentation only once they switched to agriculture, because it was only at that point that they had to synthesize vitamin D from the sun more readily

 




    7,000    Catal Huyük(9,000 years ago) Jiahu culture began in China 9,500 years ago: Çatal Höyük urban settlement founded in Anatolia9,000-10,000 years ago: In northern Mesopotamia, now northern Iraq, cultivation of barley and wheat begins. At first they are used for beer,  gruel, and soup, eventually for bread.[1] In early agriculture at this time,  the Planting stick is used, but it is replaced by a primitive Plow in  subsequent centuries.Around this time, a round stone tower, now preserved to about 8.5 meters high and 8.5 meters in diameter is built in Jericho.
        Walled city of Jericho Pottery develops Use of Metals  Jericho is not the oldest
        stronghold in the world, but it is the first with fortified features, including 26-foot high towers, built at a time when men are still hunters and ceramics do not yet exist. Rules of marriage and descent to ensure landownership, to establish social ties for defense. Fired pottery. Spinning and weaving.
Peas are cultivated in the eartern Mediterranean    

7,000    EUROPE. Un asentamiento prehistórico de más de 7 mil años de antigüedad fue descubierto en el sur de París, cerca del Sena, anunció el miércoles el Intituto Nacional de Investigaciones Arqueológicas Preventivas (INRAP). El sitio, el más antiguo jamás hallado en la capital francesa, data del Mesolítico (9 mil a 5 mil años antes de nuestra era); fue ocupado por cazadores y recolectores, que dejaron una gran cantidad de puntas de flechas de sílex de 1 a 3 cm, un percutor para tallar el sílex, raspadores de ese mismo material para trabajar las pieles, restos de cenizas y huesos de animales.Los pueblos que vivían en esa época eran nómades y cazaban ciervos, jabalíes o corzos.Según la responsable de las excavaciones, Benedicte Souffi, la zona estudiada, que se extiende por unos 5.000 m2, situada en la parte sur de la capital francesa, debió ser ocupada en varias ocasiones.Se supone que las tribus nómades llegaban hasta ese lugar para obtener el sílex de los aluviones del Sena, y tallaban allí mismo las puntas de flechas que fijaban luego con resina a una varilla.Entre los objetos encontrados, los arqueólogos recogieron "fragmentos de huesos que permitirán afinar la datación y determinar las especies que eran cazadas".
       


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6,500    Beans are cultivated in Syria and Cyprus.

6,000    EUROPE. Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Hungary

        Neoloithic period

6,000    -5000 BC, had
              BRITAIN important effects: migration became more difficult and remained for long impossible to large numbers. Thus Britain developed insular characteristics, absorbing and adapting rather than fully participating in successive continental cultures. And within the island geography worked to a similar end; the fertile southeast was more receptive of influence from the adjacent continent than were the less-accessible hill areas of the west and north. Yet in certain periods the use of sea routes brought these too within the ambit of the continent.
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    5,000 (7,000 years ago): late Neolithic civilizations, invention of the wheel and spread of proto-writing. Almonds, apricots, cherries peaches and plums are grown from Turkey to Europe. Mulberries are found from the Caspian and Iran to Scotland.

5,000 Onions cultivated at Jericho
.
5,000    AMERICAS. Chile and Peru Introduction of irrigation. Cultivation of potatoes. 
    Rising sea level severs last land bridge between Europe and the Continent.

    Sea divides Beitain from the rest of Europe

    First settlements in Sumer

5,000    BC NEOLITH. Bananas and plantains, which were first domesticated in Southeast Asia, most likely Papua New Guinea, were re-domesticated in Africa possibly as early as 5,000 years ago. Asian yams and taro were also cultivated in Africa.[16]Prof. Fred Wendorf and Dr. Romuald Schild, of the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University, originally thought to have found evidence of early agriculture in Upper Paleolithic times at Wadi Kubbaniya, on the Kom Ombos plateau, of Egypt, including a mortar and pestle, grinding stones, several harvesting implements and charred wheat and barley grains—which may have been introduced from outside the region. AMS dating since their first reports has invalidated their hypothesis.Many such grinding stones are found with the early Egyptian Sebilian and Mechian cultures and evidence has been found of a neolithic domesticated crop-based economy dating around 5000 BC. Smith writes: "With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that many Late Paleolithic peoples in the Old World were poised on the brink of plant cultivation and animal husbandry as an alternative to the hunter-gatherer's way of life". Unlike the Middle East, this evidence appears as a "false dawn" to agriculture, as the sites were later abandoned, and permanent farming then was delayed until 4500 BC with the Tasian and Badarian cultures and the arrival of crops and animals from the Near East.Agriculture in the Americas

5000 BC AFRICA. TUNISIA. Etymology of TunisThe word Tunisia is derived from Tunis, known to the Ancient Greeks as Tynes, the capital city of modern-day Tunisia. The name Tunis can be attributed to different origins. It may be associated with the Phoenician goddess Tanith (aka Tunit), or to the Berber root ens which means "to lie down".In the native Arabic, the same name is used for both country and city:  and only by context can one tell the difference.The name of the country in English, with its Latinate suffix -ia, evolved from the French Tunisie. This name was introduced by French geographers and historians in the early 19th century as part of their efforts to give names to their newly occupied territories and protectorates. The French derivative Tunisie was adopted in some European languages with slight modifications, introducing a distinctive name to designate the country. Other languages' versions of the name remained untouched, such as the Spanish Túnez.History of TunisiaAntiquityThe history of human culture in Tunisia goes back thousands of years. Early farming methods reached the Nile Valley from the Fertile Crescents region in about 5000 BC. From there, farming spread to the Maghreb by about 4000 BC. The humid coastal plains of central Tunisia were home to the early agricultural communities populated by the ancestors of the Berber tribes.At the beginning of recorded history, Tunisia was inhabited by Berber tribes. Its coast was settled by Phoenicians starting as early as the 10th century BC. The Carthaginian PeriodThe city of Carthage was founded in the 9th century BC by settlers from Tyre, now in modern day Lebanon. Legend says that Dido founded the city in 814 BC, as retold by the Greek writer Timaeus of Tauromenium. The settlers of Carthage brought their culture and religion from the Phoenicians and other Canaanites.

5000 BC 7000 AGO POLYNESIA. These people, according to linguistic and archaeological evidence, originated from aborigines in Taiwan as tribes whose natives were thought to have arrived through South China about 8,000 years ago to the edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia, although they are different from the Han Chinese who now form the majority of people in China and Taiwan. In fact Taiwan, previously inhabited mostly by non-Han aborigines, was Sinicized via large-scale migration accompanied with assimilation during the 17th century.Grinding stones discovered from archaeology in SamoaIn the archaeological record there are well-defined traces of this expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with a degree of certainty.

 
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4236     First date of Egyptian calendar

4,000    AMERICAS. Eskimos and Aleuts in Alaska originally from Siberia
    Danubians become seafarers along the Atlantic
    Potters wheel introduced. Trade
    Egypt and Mesopotamia become organized into states
    YangShao rice farming culture in China
4000- BC- 4000  The wooden plow is being used in central Europe. Agriculture has spread to what today is Britain and Ireland.

4000  Some agricultural hubs have come into being in southern Scandinavia. A Danish science magazine, Videnskab, in the year 2013 will write: " The people in these hubs had a different approach to the flint axe than the contemporary hunter-gatherers did. This indicates that the first Scandinavian farmers moved from the south and that it wasn't local hunter-gatherers that got the grand idea to begin farming."

4000  It is hypothesized that in the Eurasian steppes, horses have begun to be domesticated.

3600  In southwest Asia, copper is being mixed with tin to produce a metal harder than copper: bronze. Around this time the Sumerians create a system of writing that is for enumurating – counting.

3500  Sumerians have migrated to Mesopotamia and have taken over villages and the agriculture of others. Food surpluses are allowing a diversity of occupations to develop: soldier, farmer, craftsperson, merchant. Individual possession of land has been replacing communal possession.

3500  What is today known as the Sahara Desert begins forming in North Africa. People flee from drought to the Nile River, where they trap water for irrigation and begin an intense agriculture in what is otherwise desert.

3500  Settlements exist in what today is northern Israel.

3500  In what today is Kazakhstan, people are riding, milking and eating horses.

3300 A man dies crossing the mountain range known today as the Alps. In 1991 CE his body will be found and he will be given the nickname "Ötzi" (ice man). A Computed Tomography (CT) scan of his body will find an arrowhead embedded in his back that was unhealed, indicating it may have been a factor in his death.

3100  In the Fertile Crescent (an area which encompasses what is now Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq), objects made of conch shells are imported from what is today Pakistan. Transport costs leave the items of trade exclusive to those elites who possess the wealth to pay for them.

 

 

3000  In what today is western Finland, people were chewing a gummy, sugarless birch bark tar for use as an adhesive, but which also had antiseptic properties. It helped fight gum infections and chewing after meals helped fight tooth decay.

3000  Among the Sumerians, democratic assemblies are giving way to the authority of kings. Priesthood is becoming distinct from working alongside others in the fields. Field labor is described as deserved subservience to the gods. Hardship is seen as a product of sin. People and animals are still sacrificed to gods. Floods are common and a story of a great flood exists. Trade and wealth are pursued. Competition for power between the kings of city-states produces wars of conquest. The warrior tradition continues with men dominating women. With commerce, cuneiform writing develops.

3000  The Persian Gulf is a major artery of commerce. The ways of Mesopotamians are spreading to Egypt and Greece.

3000  Writing has developed in Egypt believed by some scholars in modern times to have been derived from the Sumerians. Words and ideas but not sound are represented by the most simple of pictures – pictographs.

3000  Egypt is united through warfare. There, human and animal sacrifices continue. Egyptians have many gods but Egypt has little rain and no myth of a flood. The rule of Egyptian kings is claimed to be associated with the gods. Kings are believed descended from the gods and more deserving than common people.

2700  The Sumerians have expanded their writing, marks on clay tablets that represent syllables of their spoken langage: phonological writing.

2700  It is estimated that around this time Minoan civilization, on the island of Crete, begins – built by seagoing tradesmen. Rule is to be by the wealthy with a well-organized bureaucracy. Workmen will produce fine vases, sheet metal, tweezers, stonework and other artifacts.

2700  In the Americas, corn, beans, chilies and squash are among cultivated plants.

2600  Agricultural people give rise to the city-settlement of Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley in what today is India.

2600  In the Middle East, oxen are pulling wooden plows, cutting deeper into soil.

2500  In the Fertile Crescent, the new imports are ceramic jars, copper tools and jewelry. Transportation costs make these items of trade too expensive for all but wealthy elites. Common people are still using stone tools.

2500-2000  Farmers appear in what today are the Philippines and eventually in what today is Indonesia. They are said to have had the Dapenkeng culture style of pottery.

2300  Indo-Europeans move into southern Greece conquering the current population and making themselves into an aristocracy over those who had migrated there many centuries before. These latest migrants are to be known as the Mycenae Greeks, who have gods similar to other Indo-Europeans, including a father god of the sky called Zeus, whom they believe has power over the entire world.

2300  In what today is England, the stone monument Stonehenge is built. (Carbon dating performed in the year of 2008.)

2250  The Mycenae Greeks are in contact with sea-going tradesmen, the Minoans of Crete – a commercial society ruled by the wealthy.

2200  Troy, a coastal town in Asia Minor, known as Troy II among archaeologists (a second level settlement with numerous others to be built on top in coming centuries) is destroyed by fire.

2200  A Semite to be known as Sargon the Great takes power in the Sumerian city of Kish. He conquers in the name of the Sumerian god Enlil and builds an empire across Mesopotamia and Syria.

2200  The settlements in what today is northern Israel have been abandoned.

2150  The empire of Sargon's grandson, Naramsim, is overrun by migrating Gutiens. Naramsin's subjects blame their misfortune on their having angered their gods.

2130  Reduced waters in the Nile are accompanied by political upheaval. Instability within the royal families of Egypt have ended previous dynasties, and now an eighth dynasty of kings loses power. Two hundred years of political chaos has begun. Common folks attack the rich and local lords assume power independent of any king.

timeline 12,000-4001 | timeline 2000 to 1001

    4000   BC BRITAIN with the introduction of  agriculture by Neolithic immigrants from the coasts of western and possibly northwestern Europe. They were pastoralists as well as tillers of the soil.  Tools were commonly of flint won by mining, but axes of volcanic rock were also traded by prospectors exploiting distant outcrops. The dead were buried in communal  graves of two main kinds: in the west, tombs were built out of stone and concealed under mounds of rubble; in the stoneless eastern areas the dead were buried under long barrows (mounds of earth), which normally contained timber structures. Other evidence of religion comes from enclosures (e.g.,  Windmill Hill, Wiltshire), which are now believed to have been centres of ritual and of seasonal tribal feasting. From them developed, late in the 3rd  millennium, more clearly ceremonial ditch-enclosed earthworks known as henge monuments. Some, like Durrington Walls, Wiltshire, are of great size and enclose subsidiary timber circles. British Neolithic
    culture thus developed its own individuality.
_____________________________________________________________________________

    Bronze Age.

4,000    MESOAMERICA. productos cultivados empiezan a converstirse en base de la dieta con el desarrollo de la agriclutura los hombres se hicieron sedentarios construyeron la sprimeras aldeas. Desarrollaron la ceramica. La cesteria, la alfareria, y la domesticacion de los animales.Las primeras ciudades Por el perfeccionamiento de las tecnicas agricolas crecio la produccion de cultivos.La poblacion aumenta. Algunos individuos comenzaron a tener privilegios.   Las aldeas se convirtieron en ciudades. En ellas habitaron gobernanates, sacerdotes, comerciantes, artesanos, agricultores
    
4000- Six thousand years ago, American Indians had been living throughout North America for thousands of years. They followed a lifestyle based hunting, fishing, and gathering that was determined in part by the environment. In the coastal regions, for example, Indian people subsisted on a marine diet, while in other areas plant food were more important. In some areas, the people followed a seasonal nomadic round travelling to different areas to gather specific resources. In other areas, where resources were abundant, such as the coastal areas, there was relatively little nomadism.

At this time six thousand years ago there were probably several hundred distinct Indians groups with their own languages, religions, and cultural patterns. Archaeologists often refer to this time period as the Archaic. In an article in the Utah Historical Quarterly Alan Schroedl writes:


"The name Archaic is not meant to imply a backward or outmoded style of life; on the contrary, the Archaic lifeway was the most dynamic and flexible mode of adaptation that ever developed in the New World."
During the Archaic, there was a great deal of regional specialization. However, the archaeological record for this time is a bit spotty with many geographic areas blank in terms of archaeological knowledge. .



California and Oregon:

In California, Indian people fashioned the Running Man geoglyph on the shore of Searles Lake. Geoglyphs are earthen images which were made by scraping away the stable dark desert pavement to reveal the lighter soil underneath (these are also called intaglios or engravings) or by placing boulders and/or large cobbles to form figures. The rock alignment which forms the figure is about 9 feet long.

In California, the culture which archaeologists call Martis expanded eastward across the Sierra Nevada where it became the cultural ancestor of the Washo Indians.

In California, Indian people were living near the present-day Hoopa Reservation. They were using wide-stemmed projectile points, scraping tools, and milling implements.

Indian people established a fowling and fishing station on Nightfire Island on Lower Klamath Lake in Oregon.

Washington and Idaho:

In Washington, immigrants from the Great Basin moved into the Five Mile Rapids area bringing with them new kinds of projectile points and other objects.

In Idaho, Indian people began to live in the Island Park Reservoir area.

At an Indian graveyard near the Little Salmon River in Idaho, 22 people were buried.

The Southwest:

The period which archaeologists call Black Rock began in Utah. According to archaeologists C. Melvin Aikens and David B. Madsen in an article in the Handbook of North American Indians:


"In conjunction with a dramatic increase in occupation sites during the early portion of this period, there was an apparent broadening of settlement patterns with a growing emphasis on the exploitation of upland zones."
In Utah, Indian people were using Spotten Cave at the south end of Utah Valley. In an article in Utah Historical Quarterly, archaeologist Joel Janetski writes:

"Spotten Cave was likely used by Archaic peoples as a temporary stopover as they moved from the Goshen Valley bottoms to the uplands of Long Ridge or the Wasatch Front."
In the Colorado River Plateau area of Utah and Arizona, Indian people were making representational petroglyphs which archaeologists refer to as the Glen Canyon Linear Style. The figures include shamanistic humans as well as animals and some abstract elements.
In Colorado, the period which archaeologists call the Castle Valley Phase began. This phase was characterized by a decrease in population as a result of people moving into Utah.

The Northeast:

In Massachusetts, Indian people were using the Middleborough site as a ceremonial site. Among the artifacts which they left at the site were thousands of paint stones: soft rocks, primarily of hematite and graphite, that can be scratched or ground into powder and then mixed with fats to make paints. These paints were then applied to the skin and to clothing as decoration. In an article in American Archaeology Jennifer Weeks reports:


"Other ceremonial items included pebbles polished by wear, quartz crystals, and slabs of arkose, a type of local sandstone."
While there were no burials at this site, burials in nearby Wapanucket have graves which are lined with the slabs of arkose.
In Maine, Indian people were using a weir to harvest fish from Sebasticook Lake.

Southeast:

In the Southeast populations began to increase at about this time.

In Tennessee, Indian people created a pictograph deep in a cave where there is no light. The art depicts a human and a quadruped. In an article in American Archaeology, Melissa Montoya writes:


"This pictograph is the oldest of hundreds of pieces of cave art and open-air rock art that make up a large scale composition in which prehistoric people altered their physical landscape in accordance with their spiritual beliefs."
In Louisiana, Indian people constructed two mounds at Monte Sano Bayou. Mound A is a conical structure 6 meters high. It was built in a single construction episode. Both mounds were built to mark places where the cremation of select individuals had taken place.
Arctic and Alaska:

In the arctic region, Inuit prehistory began with the Arctic Small Tool Tradition. This was a technology which was characterized by hafted small chisel-like blades which were used for working wood, bone, and ivory. Steve Langdon, in his book The Native People of Alaska, writes:


"Because of its distribution, this tool tradition is considered characteristic of the earliest Eskimo population."
In Alaska, the Ocean Bay Tradition began at the Larsen Bay site.
Illinois and Missouri:

In Illinois, the people who were living at Helton village the Koster site were harvesting fish in large numbers. They were smoking part of the fish harvest to preserve it for use in the winter months. Their village covered about six acres and had a population of 100 to 150 people. In addition to harvesting fish, the Helton village people also hunted mammals, such as deer, take waterfowl, and gathered plants and nuts. They wove grasses into mats and cloth and they tanned hides to make leather items.  

In Missouri, Indian people built a village of 10 log homes. Each of the homes was about 15 by 17 feet in size. The population of the village was about 100. They were cooking food in an underground oven and they had underground storage pits for food.

Yellowstone National Park:

In Wyoming, Indian people were using the Fishing Bridge Point site in present-day Yellowstone National Park. Archaeologist Douglas MacDonald, in his book Montana Before History: 11,000 Years of Hunter-Gatherers in the Rockies and Plains, writes:


"The presence of Early Archaic sites on the Yellowstone Plateau shows that Early Archaic hunter-gatherers moved into the uplands, at least during the warmer months, to hunt animals and collect the plethora of plant resources available around the shores of Yellowstone Lake."
    
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    3760    MIDDLE EAST First date of Jewish calendar

    3700    Sahara climate becomes drier

3500    Animal traction opens up Europe to trade
        Wines made from dates, figs, cereals.

    3,500    BC NEOLITH.  New World Crops  Corn, beans andsquash were domesticated in Mesoamerica around 3500 BC. Potatoes and manioc were domesticated in South America. In what is now the eastern United States, Native Americans domesticated sunflower, sumpweed and goosefoot around 2500 BC.3,500BC NEOLITH. Knap ofHowar farmstead on a site occupied from 3500 BC to 3100 BCThe term Neolithic Revolution was coined in the 1920s by Vere Gordon Childe to describe the first in a series of agricultural revolutions in Middle Eastern history. The period is described as a "revolution" to denote its importance, and the great significance and degree of change affecting the communities in which new agricultural practices were gradually adopted and refined.The beginning of this process in different regions has been dated from perhaps 8,000 BC in Melanesia to 2,500 BC in Subsaharan Africa, with some considering the developments of 9000-7000 BC in the Fertile Crescent to be the most important. This transition everywhere seems associated with a change from a largely nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life to a more settled, agrarian-based one, with the inception of the domestication of various plant and animal species—depending on the species locally available, and probably also influenced by local culture.There are several competing (but not mutually exclusive) theories as to the factors that drove populations to take up agriculture. The most prominent of these are  The Oasis Theory, originally proposed by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, popularized  by Vere Gordon Childe in 1928 and summarised in Childe's book Man Makes  Himself.[6] This theory maintains that as the climate got drier due to the   Atlantic depressions shifting northward, communities contracted to oases where  they were forced into close association with animals, which were then  domesticated together with planting of seeds. However, today this theory has little support amongst archaeologists because climate data for the time  actually shows that at the time, the climate of the region was getting wetter  rather than drier. The Hilly Flanks hypothesis, proposed by Robert Braidwood in 1948, suggests that agriculture began in the hilly flanks of the Taurus and Zagros mountains, where the climate was not drier as Childe had believed, and fertile land supported a variety of plants and animals amenable to domestication. The Feasting model by Brian Hayden suggests that agriculture was driven by ostentatious displays of power, such as giving feasts, to exert dominance. This required assembling large quantities of food, which drove agricultural technology. The Demographic theories proposed by Carl Sauer and adapted by Lewis Binford and Kent Flannery posit an increasingly sedentary population that expanded up to the carrying capacity of the local environment and required  more food than could be gathered. Various social and economic factors helped  drive the need for food. The evolutionary/intentionality theory, developed by David Rindos and others, views agriculture as an evolutionary adaptation of plants and humans. Starting with domestication by protection of wild plants, it led to specialization of location and then full-fledged domestication. Ronald Wright's book and Massey Lecture Series A Short History of Progress makes a case for the development of agriculture coinciding with an increasingly stable climate. The case was extended to current issues of global warming/climate change presenting the thought that perhaps a major effect of  increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere could very well be a shift to a less stable and more unpredictable climate. Such a shift could impact agriculture in profound ways.  The postulated Younger Dryas impact event, claimed to be in part responsible for megafauna extinction, and which ended the last ice age, could have provided circumstances that required the evolution of agricultural societies for humanity to survive. The agrarian revolution itself is a reflection of  typical overpopulation by certain species following initial events during extinction eras; this overpopulation itself ultimately propagates the  extinction event. In contrast to the Paleolithic (2.6 million years ago to 10,000 BC) in which several hominid species existed, only one (Homo sapiens) reached the Neolithic. Domestication of plantsNeolithic grind stone for processing grainOnce agriculture started gaining momentum, cereal grasses (beginning with emmer, einkorn and barley), and not simply those that would favour greater caloric returns through larger seeds, were selectively bred. Plants that possessed traits such as small seeds or bitter taste would have been seen as undesirable. Plants that rapidly shed their seeds on maturity tended not to be gathered at harvest, thus not stored and not seeded the following season; years of harvesting selected for strains that retained their edible seeds longer. Several plant species, the "pioneer crops" or Neolithic founder crops, were the earliest plants successfully manipulated by humans. Some of these pioneering attempts failed at first and crops were abandoned, sometimes to be taken up again and successfully domesticated thousands of years later: rye, tried and abandoned in Neolithic Anatolia, made its way to Europe as weed seeds and was successfully domesticated in Europe, thousands of years after the earliest agriculture. Wild lentils present a different challenge that needed to be overcome: most of the wild seeds do not germinate in the first year; the first evidence of lentil domestication, breaking dormancy in their first year, was found in the early Neolithic atJerf el-Ahmar, (in modern Syria), and quickly spread south to the Netiv HaGdud site in the Jordan Valley. This process of domestication allowed the founder crops to adapt and eventually become larger, more easily harvested, more dependable in storage andmore useful to the human population.

    3500 Ötzi the Iceman (pronounced ['œtsi] ( listen)), Similaun Man, and Man from Hauslabjoch are modern names for a well-preserved natural mummy of a man who lived about 5,300 years ago. The mummy was found in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy. The nickname comes from the Ötztal (Ötz valley), the Italian Alps in which he was discovered. He is Europe's oldest natural human mummy, and has offered an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Europeans. His body and belongings are displayed in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy.Discovery Ötzi the Iceman while still frozen in the glacier, photographed by Helmut Simon upon the discovery of the body in September 1991Ötzi was found by two German tourists from Nuremberg, Helmut and Erika Simon, and excavated by German archaeologist Herbert Hetzel on 19 September 1991; the body was at first thought to be a modern corpse. Lying on its front and frozen in ice below the torso, it was crudely removed from the glacier by the Austrian authorities using a small jackhammer (which punctured the hip of the body) and ice-axes using non-archaeological methods. In addition, before the body was removed from the ice, people were allowed to see it, and some took portions of the clothing and tools as souvenirs. The body was then taken to a morgue in Innsbruck where its true age was ascertained.Surveys in October 1991 showed that the body had been located 92.56 metres (101 yd) inside Italian territoryCoordinates: 46°46'44?N 10°50'23?E? / ?46.77889°N 10.83972°E? / 46.77889; 10.83972. Since 1998 it has been on display at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, the capital of South Tyrol.Scientific analysesThe corpse has been extensively examined, measured, X-rayed, and dated. Tissues and intestinal contents have been examined microscopically, as have the items found with the body. In August 2004, frozen bodies of three Austro-Hungarian soldiers killed during the Battle of San Matteo (1918) were found on the mountain of San Matteo in Trentino. One body was sent to a museum in the hope that research on how the environment affected its preservation would help unravel Ötzi's past and future evolution.BodyBy current estimates, at the time of his death Ötzi was approximately 1.65 metres (5 ft 5 in) tall, weighed about 50 kilograms (110 lb; 7.9 st) and was about 45 years of age. When his body was found, it weighed 13.750 kg.Because the body was covered in ice shortly after his death, it had only partially deteriorated. Analysis of pollen, dust grains and the isotopic composition of his tooth enamel indicates that he spent his childhood near the present village of Feldthurns, north of Bolzano, but later went to live in valleys about 50 kilometres further north.[8] His lungs were blackened, probably from breathing the smoke of campfires. Analysis by Franco Rollo's group at the University of Camerino has shown that Ötzi's mitochondrial DNA belongs to the K1 subcluster of the mitochondrial haplogroup K, but that it cannot be categorized into any of the three modern branches of that subcluster. Rollo's group published Ötzi's complete mtDNA sequence in 2008.        Ötzi the Iceman, now housed at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, ItalyAnalysis of Ötzi's intestinal contents showed two meals (the last one consumed about eight hours before his death), one of chamois meat, the other of red deer and Herb bread. Both were eaten with grain as well as roots and fruits. The grain from both meals was a highly processed einkorn wheat bran, quite possibly eaten in the form of bread. In the proximity of the body, and thus possibly originating from the Iceman's provisions, chaff and grains of einkorn and barley, and seeds of flax and poppy were discovered, as well as kernels of sloes (small plumlike fruits of the blackthorn tree) and various seeds of berries growing in the wild. Hair analysis was used to examine his diet from several months before.Pollen in the first meal showed that it had been consumed in a mid-altitude conifer forest, and other pollens indicated the presence of wheat and legumes, which may have been domesticated crops. Pollen grains of hop-hornbeam were also discovered. The pollen was very well preserved, with the cells inside remaining intact, indicating that it had been fresh (a few hours old) at the time of Ötzi's death, which places the event in the spring. Einkorn wheat is harvested in the late summer, and sloes in the autumn; these must have been stored from the previous year.In 2009, a CAT scan revealed that the stomach had shifted upward to where his lower lung area would normally be. Analysis of the contents revealed the partly digested remains of ibex meat, confirmed by DNA analysis, suggesting he had a meal less than two hours before his death. Wheat grains were also found.High levels of both copper particles and arsenic were found in Ötzi's hair. This, along with Ötzi's copper axe which is 99.7% pure copper, has led scientists to speculate that Ötzi was involved in copper smelting.By examining the proportions of Ötzi's tibia, femur and pelvis, Christopher Ruff has determined that Ötzi's lifestyle included long walks over hilly terrain. This degree of mobility is not characteristic of other Copper Age Europeans. Ruff proposes that this may indicate that Ötzi was a high-altitude shepherd.Using modern 3-D technology, a facial reconstruction has been created for the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. It shows Ötzi looking old for his 45 years, with deep-set brown eyes, a beard, a furrowed face, and sunken cheeks. He is depicted looking tired and ungroomed.HealthÖtzi apparently had whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), an intestinal parasite. During CT scans, it was observed that three or four of his right ribs had been cracked when he had been lying face down after death, or where the ice had crushed his body. One of his fingernails (of the two found) shows three Beau's lines indicating he was sick three times in the six months before he died. The last incident, two months before he died, lasted about two weeks.Also, it was found that his epidermis, the outer skin layer, was missing, a natural process from his mummification in ice. Ötzi's teeth showed considerable internal deterioration from cavities. These oral pathologies may have been brought about by his grain-heavy, high carbohydrate diet.Tattoos Reconstruction of how Ötzi may have looked when alive (Museum Bélesta, Ariège, France)Ötzi had several carbon tattoos including groups of short, parallel, vertical lines to both sides of the lumbar spine, a cruciform mark behind the right knee, and various marks around both ankles. Radiological examination of his bones showed "age-conditioned or strain-induced degeneration" in these areas, including osteochondrosis and slight spondylosis in the lumbar spine and wear-and-tear degeneration in the knee and especially the ankle joints.It has been speculated that these tattoos may have been related to pain relief treatments similar to acupressure or acupuncture. If so, this is at least 2000 years before their previously known earliest use in China (c. 1000 BC).Clothes and shoes An artist's impression of Ötzi's right shoe Replicas of Ötzi's clothes, Naturhistorisches Museum WienÖtzi's clothes were sophisticated. He wore a cloak made of woven grass and a coat, a belt, a pair of leggings, a loincloth and shoes, all made of leather of different skins. He also wore a bearskin cap with a leather chin strap. The shoes were waterproof and wide, seemingly designed for walking across the snow; they were constructed using bearskin for the soles, deer hide for the top panels, and a netting made of tree bark. Soft grass went around the foot and in the shoe and functioned like modern socks. The coat, belt, leggings and loincloth were constructed of vertical strips of leather sewn together with sinew. His belt had a pouch sewn to it that contained a cache of useful items: a scraper, drill, flint flake, bone awl and a dried fungus.The shoes have since been reproduced by a Czech academic, who said that "because the shoes are actually quite complex, I'm convinced that even 5,300 years ago, people had the equivalent of a cobbler who made shoes for other people". The reproductions were found to constitute such excellent footwear that it was reported that a Czech company offered to purchase the rights to sell them.However, a more recent hypothesis by British archaeologist Jacqui Wood says that Ötzi's "shoes" were actually the upper part of snowshoes. According to this theory, the item currently interpreted as part of a 'backpack' is actually the wood frame and netting of one snowshoe and animal hide to cover the face.Tools and equipment Ötzi's flint knife and its sheathOther items found with the Iceman were a copper axe with a yew handle, a flint-bladed knife with an ash handle and a quiver of 14 arrows with viburnum and dogwood shafts. Two of the arrows, which were broken, were tipped with flint and had fletching (stabilizing fins), while the other 12 were unfinished and untipped. The arrows were found in a quiver with what is presumed to be a bow string, an unidentified tool, and an antler tool which might have been used for sharpening arrow points. There was also an unfinished yew longbow that was 1.82 metres (72 in) long.In addition, among Ötzi's possessions were berries, two birch bark baskets, and two species of polypore mushrooms with leather strings through them. One of these, the birch fungus, is known to have antibacterial properties, and was likely used for medicinal purposes. The other was a type of tinder fungus, included with part of what appeared to be a complex firestarting kit. The kit featured pieces of over a dozen different plants, in addition to flint and pyrite for creating sparks.Ötzi's copper axe was of particular interest, as it is the only complete prehistoric axe so far discovered. 60 centimetres (24 in) long, the axe's haft was made from yew tree bark, while the handle of the axe was made from yew branch and leather binding. The copper axe blade extended out of the leather binding and was 9.5 cm long. Ötzi lived 5,300 years ago, and humans were not thought to have discovered copper for another 1,000 years, forcing archaeologists to re-date the copper age.Genetic analysisA group of scientists have sequenced Ötzi's full genome and promised to reveal it in 2011. Dr. Eduard Egarter-Vigl said in an interview that the Y-DNA of Ötzi belongs to the subclade G2a4. Analysis of his mitochondrial DNA has shown that Ötzi belongs to the K1 subclade, but cannot be categorized into any of the three modern branches of that subclade (K1a, K1b or K1c). The new subclade has provisionally been named K1ö for Ötzi. Multiplex assay study was able to confirm that the Iceman's mtDNA belongs to a new European mtDNA clade with a very limited distribution amongst modern data sets. He is most closely related to southern Europeans, particularly geographically isolated populations of Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. DNA analysis also showed him at high risk of atherosclerosis and the presence of the DNA sequence of Borrelia burgdorferi making him the earliest human with Lyme disease. Cause of death The Ötzi memorial on Tiesenjoch, near the Similaun mountain, where Ötzi the Iceman was found, in the Ötztal AlpsInitial speculationIt was initially believed that Ötzi died from exposure during a winter storm. Later it was speculated that Ötzi may have been a victim of a ritual sacrifice, perhaps for being a chieftain. This explanation was inspired by theories previously advanced for the first millennium B.C. bodies recovered from peat bogs such as the Tollund Man and the Lindow Man.Theories involving struggle followed by cold deathIn 2001 X-rays and a CT scan revealed that Ötzi had an arrowhead lodged in his left shoulder when he died, and a matching small tear on his coat.[35] The discovery of the arrowhead prompted researchers to theorize Ötzi died of blood loss from the wound, which would likely have been fatal even if modern medical techniques had been available. Further research found that the arrow's shaft had been removed before death, and close examination of the body found bruises and cuts to the hands, wrists and chest and cerebral trauma indicative of a blow to the head. One of the cuts was to the base of his thumb that reached down to the bone but had no time to heal before his death. Currently it is believed that death was caused by a blow to the head, though researchers are unsure if this was due to a fall, or from being struck with a rock by another person. Unpublished and thus unconfirmed DNA analyses claim they revealed traces of blood from four other people on his gear: one from his knife, two from the same arrowhead, and a fourth from his coat. Interpretations of these findings were that Ötzi killed two people with the same arrow, and was able to retrieve it on both occasions, and the blood on his coat was from a wounded comrade he may have carried over his back. Ötzi's unnatural posture in death (frozen body, face down, left arm bent across the chest) suggests that the theory of a solitary death from blood loss, hunger, cold and weakness is untenable. Rather, before death occurred and rigor mortis set in, the Iceman was turned on to his stomach in the effort to remove the arrow shaft.The DNA evidence suggests that he was assisted by companions who were also wounded; pollen and food analysis suggests that he was out of his home territory. The copper axe could not have been made by him alone. It would have required a group tribal effort to mine, smelt and cast the copper axe head. This may indicate that Ötzi was part of an armed raiding party involved in a skirmish, perhaps with a neighboring tribe, and this skirmish had gone badly. When the Iceman's mitochondrial DNA was analyzed by Franco Rollo and his colleagues, it was discovered that he had genetic markers associated with reduced fertility. It has been speculated that this may have affected his social acceptance, or at least that his infertility could have had social implications within his tribal group, which could have played a role in the chain of events that led to the confrontation.Burial theoryIn 2010, it was proposed that Ötzi died at a much lower altitude and was buried higher in the mountains, as posited by archaeologist Alessandro Vanzetti of the Sapienza University of Rome and his colleagues. According to their study of the items found near Ötzi and their locations, it is possible that the iceman may have been placed above what has been interpreted as a stone burial mound but was subsequently moved with each thaw cycle that created a flowing watery mix driven by gravity before being re-frozen.While archaeobotanist Klaus Oeggl of the University of Innsbruck agrees that the natural process described probably caused the body to move from the ridge that includes the stone formation, he pointed out that the paper provided no compelling evidence to demonstrate that the scattered stones constituted a burial platform. Moreover, biological anthropologist Albert Zink argues that the iceman's bones display no dislocations that would have resulted from a downhill slide and that the intact blood clots in his arrow wound would show damage were the body carted up the mountain.In either case, the burial theory does not contradict the possibility of a violent cause of death as stated in the preceding theories.Legal disputeItalian law entitled the Simons to a finders' fee from the South Tyrolean provincial government of 25% of the value of Ötzi. In 1994 the authorities offered a "symbolic" reward of 10 million lire (€5,200), which the Simons turned down. In 2003, the Simons filed a lawsuit which asked a court in Bolzano to recognize their role in Ötzi's discovery and declare them his "official discoverers". The court decided in the Simons' favor in November 2003, and at the end of December that year the Simons announced that they were seeking US$300,000 as their fee. The provincial government decided to appeal.In addition, two people came forward to claim that they were part of the same mountaineering party that came across Ötzi and discovered the body first:Magdalena Mohar Jarc, a Slovenian actress, who alleged that she discovered the corpse first, and shortly after returning to an alpine house, asked Helmut Simon to take photographs of Ötzi.Sandra Nemeth, from Switzerland, who contended that she found the corpse before Helmut and Erika Simon, and that she spat on Ötzi to make sure that her DNA would be found on the body later. She asked for a DNA test on the remains, but experts believed that there was little chance of finding any trace.The rival claims were heard by a Bolzano court. The legal case angered Mrs. Simon, who alleged that neither woman was present on the mountain that day.This position is supported by a detailed description of the Iceman's discovery by Austrian researcher Elisabeth Rastbichler-Zissernig. In 2005, Mrs. Simon's lawyer said: "Mrs. Simon is very upset by all this and by the fact that these two new claimants have decided to appear 14 years after Ötzi was found."In 2004, Helmut Simon died. Two years later, in June 2006, an appeals court affirmed that the Simons had indeed discovered the Iceman and were therefore entitled to a finder's fee. It also ruled that the provincial government had to pay the Simons' legal costs. After this ruling, Mrs. Erika Simon reduced her claim to €150,000. The provincial government's response was that the expenses it had incurred to establish a museum and the costs of preserving the Iceman should be considered in determining the finder's fee. It insisted it would pay no more than €50,000. In September 2006, the authorities appealed the case to Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation.On 29 September 2008 it was announced that the provincial government and Mrs. Simon had reached a settlement of the dispute, under which she would receive €150,000 in recognition of Ötzi's discovery by her and her late husband and the tourist attractions. 

    3500     BC GAZA.Antiquity (3500 BC to 16th Century)Before the age of 3000 BC Gaza was a settlement area for groups from Egypt. Around 3500 BC the Tell es-Sakan site was built. It's around 5km in the south of today's Gaza city. It was a city for the administration of the southern part of Canaan by the Egypt.[3] Around 3000 BC the urban development of Gaza started.Around 3000 BC the Canaanites developed various urban centres.[1] Tell al-'Ajjul, located at the northern bank of Wadi Gaza, was the political capital of the region. Most of the artwork found in the area consisting of pottery, alabaster and bronze works are part of the exhibtion of the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem.
    3599- FAR EAST  - A Panorama of Near Eastern Civilization in Pre-Classical Timesby Sabatino Moscati, Rizzoli, New York, N.Y., 1991 Three millennia before classical Greece and Rome flourished, Ancient Near Eastern civilization reached its apogee.  Indeed, many of the fundamental aspects of civilized life began in the Ancient Near Eastern regions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria-Palestine, and Anatolia.  While the Greeks developed certain "modern-day" societal inventions such as philosophy, secularized drama, and abstract science and mathematics, the Greeks inherited many of their myths, writing, international trade, and urbanization from the Ancient Near East; hence much of Western culture derives from these archaic civilizations.While specific Near Eastern cultures—including the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Hittites—have been treated individually by numerous authors, there are few like Sabatino Moscati, who attempt to survey the Ancient Near East as a whole.  Indeed Moscati discusses the Ancient Near East from about 3500 B.C.—when the Sumerians arrived in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley—to 330 B.C.—when Alexander the Great put an end to the autonomy of the region by defeating the Persians.Thus, to organize the diverse subject matter in The Face of the Ancient Orient, Moscati divides the civilizations of the Ancient Near East into three classes:  the "components," the "catalysts," and the Persians.(1)The components include the major civilizations that made autonomous contributions to their neighboring cultures—primarily the Egyptians and Sumerians, since the cultures of the Babylonians and Assyrians were largely patterned on the Sumerian model.  Actually, the Egyptians too were profoundly indebted to the Sumerians for their writing and crafts.  The earliest known Egyptian relief, for example, depicts a Sumerian Gilgamesh motif of a bearded king wrestling with lions.  Thus Sumer was undeniably a seminal—if not the seminal—ancient civilization.(2)The catalysts are ancient civilizations that were of minor political importance, but that were responsible for the spread of component-culture society.  These civilizations include the Hurrians, the Hittites, the Hebrews, and the Mycenaean Greeks, all of whom possessed large merchant and explorer/military classes of citizens who were instrumental in dispersing the Mesopotamian cultural traits to neighboring states.  Thus, subsequent Western civilizations frequently owed their conceptions of politics, weaponry, clothing, military strategy, languages, arts and religious pantheons and customs to the Ancient Sumerians, who initially inculcated their traits into the catalyst civilizations.(3)The Persians ultimately conquered the entire region and created a civilization that synthesized the divergent cultures of the Ancient Near East.Living in prosperous city-states bordered by fertile, well irrigated farms, the Sumerians and their anonymous predecessors developed all the basic tools and skills required by an urban society, including:  wheeled vehicles (such as chariots) and the potter's wheel; the architectural dome, vaults and arches; the cylinder seal, used to reproduce both written documents and artistic designs; the sexagesimal system of numeration (which we still use when we divide the circle into 360 degrees); and, most importantly, cuneiform script, from which all other writing systems derive.With the development of cuneiform writing, the Ancient Near Easterners founded the institution of the edubba, or scribal school, and created the first legal codes, as well as most of the literary forms known in ancient times:  epic poetry, proverbs, lamentations and love poems.  In fact the only literary forms developed in the ancient world which were not invented by the Sumerians were Greek-inspired mathematical proofs, philosophical discourses, and sustained historical narratives.  The Hebrew narratives of the Old Testament, Moscati surmises, were probably elaborations of previously existing forms; Biblical passages concerning the great flood, Cain and Abel, the tower of Babel, and the Job-motif, he says, were borrowed directly from Sumerian mythology. Sumeria, Moscati believes, was the birthplace of civilization:  ... Its literary works, its laws, and its artistic creations provide the basis for all the succeeding civilizations of Western Asia, in which we shall find them copied, adapted, and worked over, often being marred rather than improved in the process.  Thus, with the possible exception of Egyptian religion, Moscati argues that later religions of the Ancient Near East, including Judaism and Christianity, derive most of their form and content from Sumerian beliefs. Sumerian mythology revolved around a pantheon headed by four creating goddesses and three astral deities.  Just like the Biblical Yaweh's, the names of the four creating goddesses—led by the great Ninhursag—possessed magical powers:  to effect change, a Sumerian needed only to conceive of the change and then pronounce the deity's name.  While the names of all the male deities were similarly imbued, An, Enlil and Enki formed the "Mesopotamian Trinity."  From these early beliefs, Moscati contends, the various gods (creators, patron beings, judges, war and love gods, the original "dying-and-rising savior god," and so forth) of the successive and scattered cultures of the Near East were born—albeit with new names reflecting the individual dogmas of the society. Not only religious beliefs but also religious rituals and customs of the Babylonians, Hurrians, Hittites and Hebrews were based on Sumerian mythology, often with only minor modifications.  For instance, the Babylonian creation epic Enuma elish was recited annually at the New Year's Festival in Babylon and acted out by King Marduk.  With only minor adjustments in style of dress and manner of speech, Marduk took the role of Babylon's patron-god the son of Enki, who was actually the Sumerian god of water and wisdom. Similarly, in the Prologue to the Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian adaptation of earlier Sumerian legal codes, it is stated that Hammurabi received the laws from the Babylonian sun-god Shamash. The Babylonians Adapting the cuneiform script to their own Semitic language known as Akkadian, the Babylonians deliberately preserved the literature of the Sumerians.  And, in at least one instance, they improved upon it.  The elegantly crafted Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh tells of mythical King of Uruk who befriended the wild man Enkidu, with whom, after Enkidu's death, he shared a series of adventures in a futile quest for eternal life.  Gilgamesh has long been considered the supreme literary achievement of the Ancient Near East.Over the centuries, the Babylonians also surpassed the Sumerians in their understanding and use of mathematics—in which they introduced the quadratic equation—and in the study of astronomy.  The Babylonians, however, relied more heavily on divination (foretelling future events through signs) than the Sumerians; the two methods that the Babylonians favored entailed of the examination of animal livers and the practice of astrology.  Although divination and other superstitious beliefs clearly impeded scientific and medical advancement in Babylonian society, it nevertheless managed to arouse an increase in astronomical scholarship. The Egyptians Egypt's great "component" civilization developed in conjunction with Sumer and its successors.  Mesopotamia also influenced Egypt during certain crucial stages in its evolution.  The Egyptian pyramid, for instance, derived much of its form from the Sumerian and Babylonian primary architectural monuments, the ziggurats.  Pyramids and ziggurats, however, had different functions:  ziggurats served as elevated platforms for the worship of the gods, while the pyramids encased a royal tomb.  Actually, though, the differing functions were determined more by political ideology than by religious belief, inasmuch as in Egypt the reigning Pharaoh was regarded quite literally as a god. The institution of divine kingship accounts for another difference between Egyptian and Mesopotamian society:  the absence of written laws.  In Egypt the person of the Pharaoh was the immediate source of all legal validity.  As a god, the decrees of the Pharaoh had the status of law without any further justification. Indeed, Moscati attributes what he calls the "optimism" of the Egyptians to their institution of divine kingship coupled with their belief in a glorious afterlife:  ... In Mesopotamia the king ...  belongs to the human plane ...  In Egypt, on the other hand, the king is a god descended among men.  Hence the difference in the attitude to life:  in Mesopotamia the constant anxiety, the fear lest the supreme will should remain uncomprehended and the harmony between the two spheres should be marred; in Egypt, a happy serenity, due to resignation to the predestined order which descends from on high without any break in transmission. Not surprisingly, then, Egyptian civilization became as rich as that of Mesopotamia.  In fact, in the arts, Egypt may well have surpassed both Sumerian and Babylonian proficiency.  Outside of the arts, however, Egypt's influence on other cultures was not nearly so profound as Sumer's.  In religion, for example, the Egyptians were never as systematic as the Sumerians.  Egyptian cosmologies never enjoyed universal acceptance.  Hence it is impossible to provide any consistent summary of Egyptian belief.  And while some aspects of Egyptian religion—such as the cult of Isis and Osiris, which were similar to the Sumerian cult of Dumuzi and Inanna—were adopted by other cultures, Egyptian mythology proved far less influential than its tidier, more systematic Sumerian counterpart. Another reason why Egypt's culture was not widely adopted elsewhere was that it maintained a "defensive posture."  From about 2800 B.C.  until the Persian conquest of Egypt in 525 B.C., the Egyptians, under the rule of a single monarch, were both able and inclined to remain aloof, a stance which Mesopotamian peoples certainly never aspired to. The "Catalyst" Civilizations and the Persians Around 1500 B.C.  the mountain-dwelling Hurrians—the forerunners of Iraq's Khurds—established a state known as Mitanni in northern Mesopotamia, which enjoyed favorable relations with the Egyptian Empire until it was overthrown by the Hittites in 1365 B.C.  The Hittites rapidly appropriated and adopted the culture of their vassal state and, as a result, much of Hittite mythology is ultimately of Sumerian or Babylonian origin. Two other "catalyst" groups that contributed to the Ancient Near East were the Biblical Canaanites, or Phoenicians, and the Persians, who, for a few centuries, united all of the Near East under a single imperial rule. It is, perhaps, least misleading generally to refer to the Semitic peoples of Syria-Palestine—as opposed to, for example, the region's Hurrians or Hittites—as Canaanites, reserving the term Phoenician for those Canaanites who lived in seafaring coastal towns like Ugarit and Tyre.  Given this usage we can confidently say that a phonetic alphabet was first employed by Canaanites—who were not necessarily Phoenician—sometime in the second millennium B.C.  Subsequently, the use of such an alphabet was introduced to Western peoples, such as the Greeks, by Phoenicians, who were the most important maritime traders in the Eastern Mediterranean until well into the Hellenistic Age (c.  323 to 27 B.C.).  And as a race of seafaring merchants, the Phoenicians facilitated not only a dispersal of basic goods but the spread of ideas among the diverse cultures of the eastern Mediterranean. Finally, for almost two centuries from 525 to 332 B.C., the Persians united the entire region under sovereign Achaemenian kings.  Intellectually and culturally, the Persians themselves had little to contribute.  Pragmatically, however, their impact was enormous:  they pursued a deliberate policy of religious toleration; they standardized the coinage that had been introduced into the region by the Lydians; and they built an extensive network of roads, including the famous royal road from Sardis to Susa, which facilitated an unprecedented level of trade between all the regions of the Ancient Near East.

3372    AMERICAS.     First date of Maya calendar

3200    Written language invented in Sumer, Uruk, Mesopotamia

3200    IRAN.Achaemenian Empires

3150 BC INFANTICIDE Beatrix Midant-Reynes describes human sacrifice as having occurred at Abydos in the early dynastic period (c. 3150-2850 BCE), while Jan Assmann asserts there is no clear evidence of human sacrifice ever happening in Ancient Egypt. CarthageMain article: Carthaginian - Child Sacrifice QuestionAccording to Shelby Brown, Carthaginians, descendants of the Phoenicians, sacrificed infants to their gods. Charred bones of hundreds of infants have been found in Carthaginian archaeological sites. One such area harbored as many as 20,000 burial urns. Skeptics suggest that the bodies of children found in Carthaginian and Phoenician cemeteries were merely the cremated remains of children that died naturally

3100 BC STONEHENGE. EtymologyThe Oxford English Dictionary cites Ælfric's 10th-century glossary, in which henge-cliff is given the meaning "precipice", or stone, thus the stanenges or Stanheng "not far from Salisbury" recorded by 11th-century writers are "supported stones". William Stukeley in 1740 notes, "Pendulous rocks are now called henges in Yorkshire...I doubt not, Stonehenge in Saxon signifies the hanging stones." Christopher Chippindale's Stonehenge Complete gives the derivation of the name Stonehenge as coming from the Old English words st n meaning "stone", and either hencg meaning "hinge" (because the stone lintels hinge on the upright stones) or hen(c)en meaning "hang" or "gallows" or "instrument of torture". Like Stonehenge's trilithons, medieval gallows consisted of two uprights with a lintel joining them, rather than the inverted L-shape more familiar today.The "henge" portion has given its name to a class of monuments known as henges. Archaeologists define henges as earthworks consisting of a circular banked enclosure with an internal ditch. As often happens in archaeological terminology, this is a holdover from antiquarian usage, and Stonehenge is not truly a henge site as its bank is inside its ditch. Despite being contemporary with true Neolithic henges and stone circles, Stonehenge is in many ways atypical – for example, at over 7.3 metres (24 ft) tall, its extant trilithons supporting lintels held in place with mortise and tenon joints, make it unique.Early history Plan of Stonehenge in 2004. After Cleal et al. and Pitts. Italicised numbers in the text refer to the labels on this plan. Trilithon lintels omitted for clarity. Holes that no longer, or never, contained stones are shown as open circles. Stones visible today are shown colouredMike Parker Pearson, leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project based at Durrington Walls, noted that Stonehenge appears to have been associated with burial from the earliest period of its existence:Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument's use and demonstrates that it was still very much a domain of the dead. Stonehenge evolved in several construction phases spanning at least 1,500 years. There is evidence of large-scale construction on and around the monument that perhaps extends the landscape's time frame to 6,500 years. Dating and understanding the various phases of activity is complicated by disturbance of the natural chalk by periglacial effects and animal burrowing, poor quality early excavation records, and a lack of accurate, scientifically verified dates. The modern phasing most generally agreed to by archaeologists is detailed below. Features mentioned in the text are numbered and shown on the plan, right.Before the monument (8000 BC forward)Archaeologists have found four, or possibly five, large Mesolithic postholes (one may have been a natural tree throw), which date to around 8000 BC, beneath the nearby modern tourist car-park. These held pine posts around 0.75 metres (2 ft 6 in) in diameter which were erected and eventually rotted in situ. Three of the posts (and possibly four) were in an east-west alignment which may have had ritual significance; no parallels are known from Britain at the time but similar sites have been found in Scandinavia. Salisbury Plain was then still wooded but 4,000 years later, during the earlier Neolithic, people built a causewayed enclosure at Robin Hood's Ball and long barrow tombs in the surrounding landscape. In approximately 3500 BC, a Stonehenge Cursus was built 700 metres (2,300 ft) north of the site as the first farmers began to clear the trees and develop the area.Stonehenge 1 (ca. 3100 BC) Stonehenge 1. After Cleal et al.The first monument consisted of a circular bank and ditch enclosure made of Late Cretaceous (Santonian Age) Seaford Chalk, measuring about 110 metres (360 ft) in diameter, with a large entrance to the north east and a smaller one to the south. It stood in open grassland on a slightly sloping spot. The builders placed the bones of deer and oxen in the bottom of the ditch, as well as some worked flint tools. The bones were considerably older than the antler picks used to dig the ditch, and the people who buried them had looked after them for some time prior to burial. The ditch was continuous but had been dug in sections, like the ditches of the earlier causewayed enclosures in the area. The chalk dug from the ditch was piled up to form the bank. This first stage is dated to around 3100 BC, after which the ditch began to silt up naturally. Within the outer edge of the enclosed area is a circle of 56 pits, each about a metre (3'3") in diameter, known as the Aubrey holes after John Aubrey, the 17th-century antiquarian who was thought to have first identified them. The pits may have contained standing timbers creating a timber circle, although there is no excavated evidence of them. A recent excavation has suggested that the Aubrey Holes may have originally been used to erect a bluestone circle. If this were the case, it would advance the earliest known stone structure at the monument by some 500 years. A small outer bank beyond the ditch could also date to this period.Stonehenge 2 (ca. 3000 BC)Evidence of the second phase is no longer visible. The number of postholes dating to the early 3rd millennium BC suggest that some form of timber structure was built within the enclosure during this period. Further standing timbers were placed at the northeast entrance, and a parallel alignment of posts ran inwards from the southern entrance. The postholes are smaller than the Aubrey Holes, being only around 0.4 metres (16 in) in diameter, and are much less regularly spaced. The bank was purposely reduced in height and the ditch continued to silt up. At least twenty-five of the Aubrey Holes are known to have contained later, intrusive, cremation burials dating to the two centuries after the monument's inception. It seems that whatever the holes' initial function, it changed to become a funerary one during Phase 2. Thirty further cremations were placed in the enclosure's ditch and at other points within the monument, mostly in the eastern half. Stonehenge is therefore interpreted as functioning as an enclosed cremation cemetery at this time, the earliest known cremation cemetery in the British Isles. Fragments of unburnt human bone have also been found in the ditch-fill. Dating evidence is provided by the late Neolithic grooved ware pottery that has been found in connection with the features from this phase.Stonehenge 3 I (ca. 2600 BC) Stonehenge from the heelstone in 2007 with the 'Slaughter Stone' in the foreground Stonehenge at sunset in 2004 Stonehenge in the late afternoon in 2008. Plan of the central stone structure today. After Johnson 2008 Fisheye image of Stonehenge showing the circular layout Graffiti on the sarsen stones. Below are ancient carvings of a dagger and an axeArchaeological excavation has indicated that around 2600 BC, the builders abandoned timber in favour of stone and dug two concentric arrays of holes (the Q and R Holes) in the centre of the site. These stone sockets are only partly known (hence on present evidence are sometimes described as forming ‘crescents'); however, they could be the remains of a double ring. Again, there is little firm dating evidence for this phase. The holes held up to 80 standing stones (shown blue on the plan), only 43 of which can be traced today. The bluestones (some of which are made of dolerite, an igneous rock), were thought for much of the 20th century to have been transported by humans from the Preseli Hills, 150 miles (240 km) away in modern-day Pembrokeshire in Wales. Another theory that has recently gained support is that they were brought much nearer to the site as glacial erratics by the Irish Sea Glacier.[13] Other standing stones may well have been small sarsens, used later as lintels. The stones, which weighed about four tons, consisted mostly of spotted Ordovician dolerite but included examples of rhyolite, tuff and volcanic and calcareous ash; in total around 20 different rock types are represented. Each monolith measures around 2 metres (6.6 ft) in height, between 1 m and 1.5 m (3.3–4.9 ft) wide and around 0.8 metres (2.6 ft) thick. What was to become known as the Altar Stone (1), is almost certainly derived from either Carmarthenshire or the Brecon Beacons and may have stood as a single large monolith.The north-eastern entrance was widened at this time, with the result that it precisely matched the direction of the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset of the period. This phase of the monument was abandoned unfinished, however; the small standing stones were apparently removed and the Q and R holes purposefully backfilled. Even so, the monument appears to have eclipsed the site at Avebury in importance towards the end of this phase.The Heelstone (5), a tertiary sandstone, may also have been erected outside the north-eastern entrance during this period. It cannot be accurately dated and may have been installed at any time during phase 3. At first it was accompanied by a second stone, which is no longer visible. Two, or possibly three, large portal stones were set up just inside the north-eastern entrance, of which only one, the fallen Slaughter Stone (4), 4.9 metres (16 ft) long, now remains. Other features, loosely dated to phase 3, include the four Station Stones (6), two of which stood atop mounds (2 and 3). The mounds are known as "barrows" although they do not contain burials. Stonehenge Avenue, (10), a parallel pair of ditches and banks leading 2 miles (3.2 km) to the River Avon, was also added. Two ditches similar to Heelstone Ditch circling the Heelstone (which was by then reduced to a single monolith) were later dug around the Station Stones.Stonehenge 3 II (2600 BC to 2400 BC)During the next major phase of activity, 30 enormous Oligocene-Miocene sarsen stones (shown grey on the plan) were brought to the site. They may have come from a quarry, around 25 miles (40 km) north of Stonehenge on the Marlborough Downs, or they may have been collected from a "litter" of sarsens on the chalk downs, closer to hand. The stones were dressed and fashioned with mortise and tenon joints before 30 were erected as a 33 metres (108 ft) diameter circle of standing stones, with a ring of 30 lintel stones resting on top. The lintels were fitted to one another using another woodworking method, the tongue and groove joint. Each standing stone was around 4.1 metres (13 ft) high, 2.1 metres (6 ft 11 in) wide and weighed around 25 tons. Each had clearly been worked with the final visual effect in mind; the orthostats widen slightly towards the top in order that their perspective remains constant when viewed from the ground, while the lintel stones curve slightly to continue the circular appearance of the earlier monument. The inward-facing surfaces of the stones are smoother and more finely worked than the outer surfaces. The average thickness of the stones is 1.1 metres (3 ft 7 in) and the average distance between them is 1 metre (3 ft 3 in). A total of 75 stones would have been needed to complete the circle (60 stones) and the trilithon horseshoe (15 stones). Unless some of the sarsens have since been removed from the site, the ring appears to have been left incomplete. The lintel stones are each around 3.2 metres (10 ft), 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) wide and 0.8 metres (2 ft 7 in) thick. The tops of the lintels are 4.9 metres (16 ft) above the ground.Within this circle stood five trilithons of dressed sarsen stone arranged in a horseshoe shape 13.7 metres (45 ft) across with its open end facing north east. These huge stones, ten uprights and five lintels, weigh up to 50 tons each. They were linked using complex jointing. They are arranged symmetrically. The smallest pair of trilithons were around 6 metres (20 ft) tall, the next pair a little higher and the largest, single trilithon in the south west corner would have been 7.3 metres (24 ft) tall. Only one upright from the Great Trilithon still stands, of which 6.7 metres (22 ft) is visible and a further 2.4 metres (7 ft 10 in) is below ground.The images of a 'dagger' and 14 'axeheads' have been carved on one of the sarsens, known as stone 53; further carvings of axeheads have been seen on the outer faces of stones 3, 4, and 5. The carvings are difficult to date, but are morphologically similar to late Bronze Age weapons; recent laser scanning work on the carvings supports this interpretation. The pair of trilithons in the north east are smallest, measuring around 6 metres (20 ft) in height; the largest, which is in the south west of the horseshoe, is almost 7.5 metres (25 ft) tall.This ambitious phase has been radiocarbon dated to between 2600 and 2400 BC,slightly earlier than the Stonehenge Archer, discovered in the outer ditch of the monument in 1978, and the two sets of burials, known as the Amesbury Archer and the Boscombe Bowmen, discovered 3 miles (4.8 km) to the west. At about the same time, a large timber circle and a second avenue were constructed 2 miles (3.2 km) away at Durrington Walls overlooking the River Avon. The timber circle was orientated towards the rising sun on the midwinter solstice, opposing the solar alignments at Stonehenge, whilst the avenue was aligned with the setting sun on the summer solstice and led from the river to the timber circle. Evidence of huge fires on the banks of the Avon between the two avenues also suggests that both circles were linked, and they were perhaps used as a procession route on the longest and shortest days of the year. Parker Pearson speculates that the wooden circle at Durrington Walls was the centre of a 'land of the living', whilst the stone circle represented a 'land of the dead', with the Avon serving as a journey between the two.Stonehenge 3 IV (2280 BC to 1930 BC)This phase saw further rearrangement of the bluestones. They were arranged in a circle between the two rings of sarsens and in an oval at the centre of the inner ring. Some archaeologists argue that some of these bluestones were from a second group brought from Wales. All the stones formed well-spaced uprights without any of the linking lintels inferred in Stonehenge 3 III. The Altar Stone may have been moved within the oval at this time and re-erected vertically. Although this would seem the most impressive phase of work, Stonehenge 3 IV was rather shabbily built compared to its immediate predecessors, as the newly re-installed bluestones were not well-founded and began to fall over. However, only minor changes were made after this phase.Stonehenge 3 V (1930 BC to 1600 BC)Soon afterwards, the north eastern section of the Phase 3 IV bluestone circle was removed, creating a horseshoe-shaped setting (the Bluestone Horseshoe) which mirrored the shape of the central sarsen Trilithons. This phase is contemporary with the Seahenge site in Norfolk.After the monument (1600 BC on)The last known construction at Stonehenge was about 1600 BC (see 'Y and Z Holes'), and the last usage of it was probably during the Iron Age. Roman coins and medieval artefacts have all been found in or around the monument but it is unknown if the monument was in continuous use throughout prehistory and beyond, or exactly how it would have been used. Notable is the massive Iron Age hillfort Vespasian's Camp built alongside the Avenue near the Avon. A decapitated 7th century Saxon man was excavated from Stonehenge in 1923.[16] The site was known to scholars during the Middle Ages and since then it has been studied and adopted by numerous groups.Function and constructionMain article: Theories about Stonehenge See also: Archaeoastronomy and Stonehenge In the Mesolithic period, two large wooden posts were erected at the site.
    Today, they are marked by circular white marks in the middle of the car park.Stonehenge was produced by a culture that left no written records. Many aspects of Stonehenge remain subject to debate. This multiplicity of theories, some of them very colourful, are often called the "mystery of Stonehenge".There is little or no direct evidence for the construction techniques used by the Stonehenge builders. Over the years, various authors have suggested that supernatural or anachronistic methods were used, usually asserting that the stones were impossible to move otherwise. However, conventional techniques using Neolithic technology have been demonstrably effective at moving and placing stones of a similar size. Proposed functions for the site include usage as an astronomical observatory, or as a religious site.More recently two major new theories have been proposed. Professor Geoffrey Wainwright OBE, FSA, president of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and Professor Timothy Darvill, OBE of Bournemouth University have suggested that Stonehenge was a place of healing – the primeval equivalent of Lourdes.[17] They argue that this accounts for the high number of burials in the area and for the evidence of trauma deformity in some of the graves. However they do concede that the site was probably multifunctional and used for ancestor worship as well. Isotope analysis indicates that some of the buried individuals were from other regions. A teenage boy buried approximately 1550 BC was raised near the Mediterranean Sea; a metal worker from 2300 BC dubbed the "Amesbury Archer" grew up near the alpine foothills of Germany; and the "Boscombe Bowmen" probably arrived from Wales or Brittany, France.[19] On the other hand, Professor Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University has suggested that Stonehenge was part of a ritual landscape and was joined to Durrington Walls by their corresponding avenues and the River Avon. He suggests that the area around Durrington Walls Henge was a place of the living, whilst Stonehenge was a domain of the dead. A journey along the Avon to reach Stonehenge was part of a ritual passage from life to death, to celebrate past ancestors and the recently deceased.[15] It should be pointed out that both explanations were mooted in the 12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth (below), who extolled the curative properties of the stones and was also the first to advance the idea that Stonehenge was constructed as a funerary monument. Whatever religious, mystical or spiritual elements were central to Stonehenge, its design includes a celestial observatory function, which might have allowed prediction of eclipse, solstice, equinox and other celestial events important to a contemporary religion Modern historyFolklore The Heelstone"Heel Stone," "Friar's Heel" or "Sun-Stone"The Heel Stone lies just outside the main entrance to the henge, next to the present A344 road. It is a rough stone, 16 feet (4.9 m) above ground, leaning inwards towards the stone circle. It has been known by many names in the past, including "Friar's Heel" and "Sun-stone". Today it is uniformly referred to as the Heel Stone or Heelstone. When one stands within Stonehenge, facing north-east through the entrance towards the heel stone, one sees the sun rise above the stone at summer solstice.A folk tale, which cannot be dated earlier than the seventeenth century, relates the origin of the Friar's Heel reference.The Devil bought the stones from a woman in Ireland, wrapped them up, and brought them to Salisbury plain. One of the stones fell into the Avon, the rest were carried to the plain. The Devil then cried out, "No-one will ever find out how these stones came here!" A friar replied, "That's what you think!," whereupon the Devil threw one of the stones at him and struck him on  the heel. The stone stuck in the ground and is still there. Some claim "Friar's Heel" is a corruption of "Freyja's He-ol" from the Nordic goddess Freyja and the Welsh word for track. The Heel Stone lies beside the end portion of Stonehenge Avenue.A simpler explanation for the name might be that the stone heels, or leans.The name is not unique; there was a monolith with the same name recorded in the 19th century by antiquarian Charles Warne at Long Bredy in Dorset.[21]Arthurian legend A giant helps Merlin build Stonehenge. From a manuscript of the Roman de Brut by Wace in the British Library (Egerton 3028). This is the oldest known depiction of Stonehenge.In the 12th century, Geoffrey of Monmouth included a fanciful story in his work Historia Regum Britanniae that attributed the monument's construction to Merlin.[22] Geoffrey's story spread widely, appearing in more and less elaborate form in adaptations of his work such as Wace's Norman French Roman de Brut, Layamon's Middle English Brut, and the Welsh Brut y Brenhinedd. According to Geoffrey, Merlin directed its removal from Ireland, where it had been constructed on Mount Killaraus by Giants, who brought the stones from Africa. After it had been rebuilt near Amesbury, Geoffrey further narrates how first Ambrosius Aurelianus, then Uther Pendragon, and finally Constantine III, were buried inside the ring of stones. In many places in his Historia Regum Britanniae Geoffrey mixes British legend and his own imagination; it is intriguing that he connects Ambrosius Aurelianus with this prehistoric monument as there is place-name evidence to connect Ambrosius with nearby Amesbury.According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, the rocks of Stonehenge were healing rocks, called the Giant's dance, which giants brought from Africa to Ireland for their healing properties. Aurelius Ambrosias (5th century), wishing to erect a memorial to the 3,000 nobles, who had died in battle with the Saxons and were buried at Salisbury, chose Stonehenge (at Merlin's advice) to be their monument. So the King sent Merlin, Uther Pendragon (Arthur's father), and 15,000 knights to Ireland to retrieve the rocks. They slew 7,000 Irish but, as the knights tried to move the rocks with ropes and force, they failed. Then Merlin, using "gear" and skill, easily dismantled the stones and sent them over to Britain, where Stonehenge was dedicated. Shortly after, Aurelius died and was buried within the Stonehenge monument, or "The Giants' Ring of Stonehenge".In another legend of Saxons and Britons, in 472 the invading king Hengist invited Brythonic warriors to a feast, but treacherously ordered his men to draw their weapons from concealment and fall upon the guests, killing 420 of them. Hengist erected the stone monument—Stonehenge—on the site to show his remorse for the deed.16th century to presentMain article: Recent history of Stonehenge With farm carts, ca. 1885Stonehenge has changed ownership several times since King Henry VIII acquired Amesbury Abbey and its surrounding lands. In 1540 Henry gave the estate to the Earl of Hertford. It subsequently passed to Lord Carleton and then the Marquis of Queensbury. The Antrobus family of Cheshire bought the estate in 1824. During World War I an aerodrome had been built on the downs just to the west of the circle and, in the dry valley at Stonehenge Bottom, a main road junction had been built, along with several cottages and a cafe. The Antrobus family sold the site after their last heir was killed serving in France during the First World War. The auction by Knight Frank & Rutley estate agents in Salisbury was held on 21 September 1915 and included "Lot 15. Stonehenge with about 30 acres, 2 rods, 37 perches of adjoining downland." [c. 12.44 )Sunrise over Stonehenge on the summer solstice, 21 June 2005Cecil Chubb bought the site for £6,600 and gave it to the nation three years later. Although it has been speculated that he purchased it at the suggestion of—or even as a present for—his wife, in fact he bought it on a whim as he believed a local man should be the new owner.In the late 1920s a nation-wide appeal was launched to save Stonehenge from the encroachment of the modern buildings that had begun to appear around it.[25] By 1928 the land around the monument had been purchased with the appeal donations, and given to the National Trust in order to preserve it. The buildings were removed (although the roads were not), and the land returned to agriculture. More recently the land has been part of a grassland reversion scheme, returning the surrounding fields to native chalk grassland.Neopaganism The 1905 mass initiation ritual held by the Ancient Order of Druids at Stonehenge. 10th Battalion, CEF marches past during the First World War. Preservation work can be seen taking place on the stones which are propped up by timbers.Throughout the twentieth century, Stonehenge began to be revived as a place of religious significance, this time by adherents of Neopagan and New Age beliefs, particularly the Neo-druids: the historian Ronald Hutton would later remark that "it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it."[27] The first such Neo-druidic group to make use of the megalithic monument was the Ancient Order of Druids, who performed a mass initiation ceremony there in August 1905, in which they admitted 259 new members into their organisation. This assembly was largely ridiculed in the press, who mocked the fact that the Neo-druids were dressed up in costumes consisting of white robes and fake beards. Between 1972 and 1984, Stonehenge was the site of a Stonehenge Free Festival. After the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985 this use of the site was stopped for several years, and currently ritual use of Stonehenge is carefully controlled.Setting and accessAs motorised traffic increased, the setting of the monument began to be affected by the proximity of the two roads on either side – the A344 to Shrewton on the north side, and the A303 to Winterbourne Stoke to the south. Plans to upgrade the A303 and close the A344 to restore the vista from the stones have been considered since the monument became a World Heritage Site. However, the controversy surrounding expensive re-routing of the roads have led to the scheme being cancelled on multiple occasions. On 6 December 2007, it was announced that extensive plans to build Stonehenge road tunnel under the landscape and create a permanent visitors' centre had been cancelled.[30] On 13 May 2009, the government gave approval for a £25 million scheme to create a smaller visitors' centre and close the A344, although this was dependent on funding and local authority planning consent.[31] On 20 January 2010 Wiltshire Council granted planning permission for a centre 2.4 km (1.5 miles) to the west and English Heritage confirmed that funds to build it would be available, supported by a £10m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.[32] Approval is still needed for the closure of the A344 and two nearby byways, which are popular with off-road enthusiasts and whose objections may further jeopardise the scheme.When Stonehenge was first opened to the public it was possible to walk amongst and even climb on the stones, but the stones were roped off in 1977 as a result of serious erosion.[35] Visitors are no longer permitted to touch the stones, but are able to walk around the monument from a short distance away. English Heritage does, however, permit access during the summer and winter solstice, and the spring and autumn equinox. Additionally, visitors can make special bookings to access the stones throughout the year.The current access situation and the proximity of the two roads has drawn widespread criticism, highlighted by a 2006 National Geographic survey. In the survey of conditions at 94 leading World Heritage Sites, 400 conservation and tourism experts ranked Stonehenge 75th in the list of destinations, declaring it to be "in moderate trouble".Archaeological research and restoration 17th century depiction of StonehengeThroughout recorded history Stonehenge and its surrounding monuments have attracted attention from antiquarians and archaeologists. John Aubrey was one of the first to examine the site with a scientific eye in 1666, and recorded in his plan of the monument the pits that now bear his name. William Stukeley continued Aubrey's work in the early 18th century, but took an interest in the surrounding monuments as well, identifying (somewhat incorrectly) the Cursus and the Avenue. He also began the excavation of many of the barrows in the area, and it was his interpretation of the landscape that associated it with the Druids[38] Stukeley was so fascinated with Druids that he originally named Disc Barrows as Druids' Barrows. The most accurate early plan of Stonehenge was that made by Bath architect John Wood in 1740.[39] His original annotated survey has recently been computer redrawn and published.[40] Importantly Wood's plan was made before the collapse of the southwest trilithon, which fell in 1797 and was restored in 1958. An early photograph of Stonehenge taken July 1877William Cunnington was the next to tackle the area in the early 19th century. He excavated some 24 barrows before digging in and around the stones and discovered charred wood, animal bones, pottery and urns. He also identified the hole in which the Slaughter Stone once stood. At the same time Richard Colt Hoare began his activities, excavating some 379 barrows on Salisbury Plain before working with Cunnington and William Coxe on some 200 in the area around the Stones. To alert future diggers to their work they were careful to leave initialled metal tokens in each barrow they opened.In 1877 Charles Darwin dabbled in archaeology at the stones, experimenting with the rate at which remains sink into the earth for his book The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms. Print of Stonehenge, 1895William Gowland oversaw the first major restoration of the monument in 1901 which involved the straightening and concrete setting of sarsen stone number 56 which was in danger of falling. In straightening the stone he moved it about half a metre from its original position.[40] Gowland also took the opportunity to further excavate the monument in what was the most scientific dig to date, revealing more about the erection of the stones than the previous 100 years of work had done. During the 1920 restoration William Hawley, who had excavated nearby Old Sarum, excavated the base of six stones and the outer ditch. He also located a bottle of port in the slaughter stone socket left by Cunnington, helped to rediscover Aubrey's pits inside the bank and located the concentric circular holes outside the Sarsen Circle called the Y and Z Holes. The monument from a similar angle in 2008 showing the extent of reconstructionRichard Atkinson, Stuart Piggott and John F. S. Stone re-excavated much of Hawley's work in the 1940s and 1950s, and discovered the carved axes and daggers on the Sarsen Stones. Atkinson's work was instrumental in furthering the understanding of the three major phases of the monument's construction.In 1958 the stones were restored again, when three of the standing sarsens were re-erected and set in concrete bases. The last restoration was carried out in 1963 after stone 23 of the Sarsen Circle fell over. It was again re-erected, and the opportunity was taken to concrete three more stones. Later archaeologists, including Christopher Chippindale of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge and Brian Edwards of the University of the West of England, campaigned to give the public more knowledge of the various restorations and in 2004 English Heritage included pictures of the work in progress in its book Stonehenge: A History in Photographs.In 1966 and 1967, in advance of a new car park being built at the site, the area of land immediately northwest of the stones was excavated by Faith and Lance Vatcher. They discovered the Mesolithic postholes dating from between 7000 and 8000 BC, as well as a 10-metre (33 ft) length of a palisade ditch – a V-cut ditch into which timber posts had been inserted that remained there until they rotted away. Subsequent aerial archaeology suggests that this ditch runs from the west to the north of Stonehenge, near the avenue.Excavations were once again carried out in 1978 by Atkinson and John Evans during which they discovered the remains of the Stonehenge Archer in the outer ditch,[45] and in 1979 rescue archaeology was needed alongside the Heel Stone after a cable-laying ditch was mistakenly dug on the roadside, revealing a new stone hole next to the Heel Stone.In the early 1980s Julian Richards led the Stonehenge Environs Project, a detailed study of the surrounding landscape. The project was able to successfully date such features as the Lesser Cursus, Coneybury henge and several other smaller features.In 1993 the way that Stonehenge was presented to the public was called 'a national disgrace' by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. Part of English Heritage's response to this criticism was to commission research to collate and bring together all the archaeological work conducted at the monument up to this date. This two year research project resulted in the publication in 1995 of the monograph Stonehenge in its landscape, which was the first publication presenting the complex stratigraphy and the finds recovered from the site. It presented a rephasing of the monument.More recent excavations include a series of digs held between 2003 and 2008 known as the Stonehenge Riverside Project, led by Mike Parker Pearson. This project mainly investigated other monuments in the landscape and their relationship to the stones — notably Durrington Walls, where another ‘Avenue' leading to the River Avon was discovered. The point where the Stonehenge Avenue meets the river was also excavated, and revealed a previously unknown circular area which probably housed four further stones, most likely as a marker for the starting point of the avenue. In April 2008 Professor Tim Darvill of the University of Bournemouth and Professor Geoff Wainwright of the Society of Antiquaries, began another dig inside the stone circle to retrieve dateable fragments of the original bluestone pillars. They were able to date the erection of some bluestones to 2300 BC,[2] although this may not reflect the earliest erection of stones at Stonehenge. They also discovered organic material from 7000 BC, which, along with the Mesolithic postholes, adds support for the site having been in use at least 4,000 years before Stonehenge was started. In August and September 2008, as part of the Riverside Project, Julian Richards and Mike Pitts excavated Aubrey Hole 7, removing the cremated remains from several Aubrey Holes that had been excavated by Hawley in the 1920s, and re-interred in 1935.[47] A licence for the removal of human remains at Stonehenge had been granted by the Ministry of Justice in May 2008, in accordance with the Statement on burial law and archaeology issued in May 2008. One of the conditions of the licence was that the remains should be reinterred within two years and that in the intervening period they should be kept safely, privately and decently.A new landscape investigation was conducted in April 2009. A shallow mound, rising to about 40 cm (16 inches) was identified between stones 54 (inner circle) and 10 (outer circle), clearly separated from the natural slope. It has not been dated but speculation that it represents careless backfilling following earlier excavations seems disproved by its representation in 18th- and 19th-century illustrations. Indeed, there is some evidence that, as an uncommon geological feature, it could have been deliberately incorporated into the monument at the outset.[11] A circular, shallow bank, little more than 10 cm (4 inches) high, was found between the Y and Z hole circles, with a further bank lying inside the "Z" circle. These are interpreted as the spread of spoil from the original Y and Z holes, or more speculatively as hedge banks from vegetation deliberately planted to screen the activities within.In July 2010, the Stonehenge New Landscapes Project discovered what appears to be a new henge less than 1 km (0.62 miles) away from the main site.[50]On 26 November 2011, archaeologists from University of Birmingham announced the discovery of evidence of two huge pits positioned within the Stonehenge Cursus pathway, aligned in celestial position towards midsummer sunrise and sunset when viewed from the Heel Stone.[51][52] The new discovery is part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project which began in the summer of 2010.[53] The project uses non-invasive geophysical imaging technique to reveal and visually recreate the landscape. According to the team leader Professor Vince Gaffney, this discovery may provide a direct link between the rituals and astronomical events to activities within the Cursus at Stonehenge.On 18 December 2011, geologists from University of Leicester and the National Museum of Wales announced the discovery of the exact source of the rock used to create Stonehenge's first stone circle. The researchers have identified the source as a 70-metre (230 ft) long rock outcrop called Craig Rhos-y-Felin

3100     BCWriting invented in Mesopotamia.  The main use, and probable motivation for its development, is for keeping accounts.

3100    AFRICA    Menes unites kingdom of upper and lower Egypt, founding 1st dynasty
        Gradually the nomes start to unite among themselves and two kingdoms emerge- the Southern and the Northern Kingdoms. Conflict develops and Menes unites all of Egypt under his rule. State power is established in the country, in the hands of the nobility and the large landowners.

        INDIA. Starting around 3000 BC, Hinduism, one of the oldest religions still practiced today, began to take form.[93] Others soon followed. The invention of writing enabled complex societies to arise: record-keeping and libraries served as a storehouse of knowledge and increased the cultural transmission of information. Humans no longer had to spend all their time working for survival—curiosity and education drove the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. Various disciplines, including science (in a primitive form), arose. New civilizations sprang up, traded with one another, and engaged in war for territory and resources: empires began to form. By around 500 BC, there were empires in the Middle East, Iran, India, China, and Greece, approximately on equal footing; at times one empire expanded, only to decline or be driven back later.

                        3000    Written records in AFRICA, Mesopotamia, India and China
    Citrus fruits are grown in China.

3000    Windmill Hill culture in Britain.
3000BCThe first states of sorts were those of early dynastic Sumer and early dynastic
Egypt, which arose from the Uruk period and Predynastic Egypt respectively at
approximately 3000BCE.[1] Early dynastic Egypt was based around the Nile River
in the north-east of Africa, the kingdom's boundaries being based around the
Nile and stretching to areas where oases existed.[2] Early dynastic Sumer was
located in southern Mesopotamia with its borders extending from the Persian Gulf
to parts of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.[1]
By 2500 BCE the Indian civilization, located in the Indus Valley had formed. The
civilization's boundaries extended 600KM inland from the Arabian Sea.
3000     - c. 2000 BCDevelopment of Banking in Mesopotamia.  Banking originates in Babylonia out of the activities of temples and  palaces which provided safe places for the storage of valuables. Initially  deposits of grain are accepted and later other goods including cattle,  agricultural implements, and precious metals.

3000    BC. PALESTINE. By the early Bronze Age (300-0 - 220-0 BCE) independent Canaanite city-states situated in plains and coastal regions and surrounded by mud-brick defensive walls were established and most of these cities relied on nearby agricultural hamlets for their food needs.Archaeological finds from the early Canaanite era have been found at Tel Megiddo, Jericho, Tel al-Far'a (Gaza), Bisan, and Ai (Deir Dibwan/Ramallah District), Tel an Nasbe (al-Bireh) and Jib (Jerusalem).The Canaanite city-states held trade and diplomatic relations with Egypt and Syria. Parts of the Canaanite urban civilization were destroyed around 230-0 BCE, though there is no consensus as to why. Incursions by nomads from the east of the Jordan River who settled in the hills followed soon thereafter.The urge to accumulate surplus for barter engenders a new attitude toward prisoners taken in inter-tribal warfare. Prisoners had been killed or absorbed into the Clan, but now they are forced to work for their conquerors.

AFRICA.       
 Slavery develops in the oldest known civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Introduction of private property, cattle and slaves. Gradually the land, too becomes private property, then the tools for cultivating it as well. Inequality results; slaves and free men, rich  and poor. There begins to emerge a type of nobility and a council of elders. Family ties begin to play a less important role. Territorial communities spring up as the Clans disintegrate. Development of the State based on classes (those who own land tools and slaves but do no work themselves, those  (crafstmen and peasants) who own the implements of their labor, and those who own nothing and are obliged to work for others.

    Ploughing with wooden yokes
    Wheeled vehicles
    Discovery of alloys
        Bricks first used in AFRICA and Assyria.Phoenicians settle along east Mediterranean

    WindmillHill culture in Britain

    3,000    BC NEOLITH. A Sumerian Harvester's sickle dated to 3000 BCFigs, barley and, most likely, oats were cultivated in the Jordan Valley, represented by the early Neolithic site of Gilgal, where in 2006[15] archaeologists found caches of seeds of each in quantities too large to be accounted for even by intensive gathering, at strata dateable c. 11,000 years ago. Some of the plants tried and then abandoned during the Neolithic period in the Ancient Near East, at sites like Gilgal, were later successfully domesticated in other parts of the world.Once early farmers perfected their agricultural techniques, their crops would yield surpluses that needed storage. Most hunter gatherers could not easily store food for long due to their migratory lifestyle, whereas those with a sedentary dwelling could store their surplus grain. Eventually granaries were developed that allowed villages to store their seeds for longer periods of time. So with more food, the population expanded and communities developed specialized workers and more advanced tools.The process was not as linear as was once thought, but a more complicated effort, which was undertaken by different human populations in different regions in many different ways.Agriculture in Asia

3,000     Carrots are cultivated in Afghanistan, Turkestan and the Hindu Kush.
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    2950    Menesh unites Egyptianian kingdoms.Upper and lower Egypt, Nile Valley and delta.Capital at Memphis.Founds the Thinite dynasty.
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2800    AFRICA. Founding of Old Kingdom.from 3d to 6th dynasties.
    The activity of the Egyptians is still mainly agriculture. Land is cultivated by peasant communes and admnistrated by a council of elders. They organize the payment of taxes and recruit labor for royal projects. Slaves are used in the large estates belonging to the king's courtiers or on land belonging to the temples. Pharaos wield enormous power. Their chief advisors (viziers) supervise storehouses for grain. Gold, vineyards, the round up of oxen, military affairs and sacrifices to be managed. All have large staffs of scribes.
2800 -
2800bc - The history of Egypt as an autonomous, sovereign state begins around 2800 B.C.  and ends with the Persian conquest in 525 B.C.  Because of the sheer span of its history, then, it is difficult to give an adequate account of the ascent and ultimate decline of Egypt—nor a sufficient feeling for the great influence its culture has had on the world—in a single volume.  Steindorff and Seele solve this problem in their masterpiece When Egypt Ruled the East by focusing on the period of the New Kingdom (1546 to 1085 B.C.), while treating the Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom more as preface, and the Decline (1085 to 322 B.C.), as epilogue.  Their strategy has merit, since Egypt's most famous and colorful characters date from this period.  Moreover, because the period is so rich, the authors can treat several aspects of Egyptian culture—such as religion, art, and hieroglyphic writing—topically.  On the other hand, the reader should be aware that some very colorful aspects of Egyptian culture belong to earlier periods.  In particular, the Great Pyramids of Giza were built for Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (before 2500 B.C.); these remarkable edifices were already "ancient" when the New Kingdom began.

    Man crosses land bridge between Asia and North America

    Migrations of herdsmen through Eastern Europe

    CELTS. The prehistoric Beaker culture (2800 – 1900 BC) has often been pointed at as ancestral to the Celtic people. This people derive from the western extremity of Corded Ware in the Netherlands, where otherwise marginal groups took advantage of their contacts by sea and rivers and started a diaspora of North West European culture from Ireland to the Carpatian Basin and south along the Atlantic coast and following the Rhone valley until Portugal, North Africa and Sicily, even penetrating northern and central Italy. [18] The new international trade routes opened by the Beaker people where there to remain and the culture was succeeded by a number of Bronze Age cultures, among them the Unetice culture (Central Europe), ca. 2300 BC, and by the Nordic Bronze Age, a culture of Scandinavia and northernmost Germany-Poland, ca. 1800 BC. Almost all of this areas emerge to history as Celtic. Bodmer(1992)[19] suggested that the Celtic populations of Britain trace their origins to an early settlement of the British Isles by Paleolithic Europeans, rather than by a later migration from central Europe in the first millennium B.C., also associated with the spread of the Celtic culture.


        Agean civilizations begins in the Cycladic islandsbetween Greece, Anatolia and Crete.Pomegranets are found in northern Persia.

    2830 - ASIA ( Book of Changes) The ancient Chinese I Ching, or Book of Changes, as it is known in the west, is said to explain all possible phenomena in the universe.  Scholars consider it one of the first efforts made by the human mind to place itself within a cosmic schema.  Formally attributed to the Chinese sage Fu Hsi (2953-2838 BCE), its origin stretches back to mythical antiquity.  Most scholars now maintain that the older layers of the book, as we know them today, assumed their present form in the century before Confucius (circa 600 BCE). Nearly all that is greatest and most significant in the five-plus thousand years of Chinese cultural history has either taken its inspiration from this book, or has exerted an influence on the interpretation of its text.  While Eastern in origin, interest in it continues to spread throughout the Western world.I, which means "change" in Chinese, comprises the essential theme of the book.  First set down in the dawn of history as a book of oracles, the I Ching deepened in meaning when ethical values were attached to its oracular pronouncements.  As such, it became considered a book of wisdom, eventually one of the Five Classics of Confucianism, and provided the common source for both Confucianist and Taoist philosophy.  The I Ching was the main source of inspiration for great minds such as Lao-tse and Confucius; the latter is said to have spent the last years of his life studying the wisdom contained within its pages.The I Ching has been described by Western scientists and philosophers as an early example of Chinese "parascience," meaning that it incorporated scientific principles but applied them to a broader sense of understanding.  It considers change—rather than stability—as the root principle of virtually all things, tangible or spiritual.  Contrary to traditional Western precepts that time and space are constant and unchanging, Eastern mystics perceived that nothing is absolute or changeless—a notion since validated by modern science.Text Overview:At the core of the I Ching are sixty-four different hexagrams.  Each hegagram is comprised of six divided and/or undivided horizontal lines stacked upon each other like lines on a page.  These hexagrams are universal symbols which represent microcosms of key phenomena within our universe.  Each hexagram is inseparably related to the others and is given a name which reveals its unique characteristics.The hexagrams are accompanied by a text known as t'uan, or judgment. This judgment is based on the observable nature of the hexagram—that is, the various arrangements of divided and undivided lines which ascertain the situation at that moment in time so that the proper action can be taken.  Thus, the I Ching serves as a manual for predicting the future.The word I, derived from an ancient pictogram depicting a round head, a sinuous body, and a number of legs, originally meant "lizard."  The lizard was believed to move about from one place to another and change from one moment to another.  Again, this concept of changeableness is a central idea in the I Ching.The sun and the moon—two fundamental forces which rule the world—also signify change in the I Ching.  Both heavenly bodies move along ever-changing, but repeatable cycles—the moon waxes and wanes, the sun's light and position in the sky varies throughout the year bringing about the change in seasons.  Also, since the sun governs the day and the moon governs the night, day and night are different, yet inseparable conditions.  In the I Ching, the concepts of yin and yang—where light is symbolized by yang and darkness by yin—play a key role.  Yin and yang symbolize the dynamic balance of opposites that exists in the world, and the constant interplay between these opposites.  For example, some darkness is found in light and vice versa; similarly, every person is a mixture of both good and evil.  And since the opposites found in the universe (light and dark, good and evil) constantly "interchange," yin (darkness) and yang (light) suggest that nothing is absolute."One yin and one yang [combined] are called the Way [Tao]."  In short, yin and yang are the foundations for all change, and represent duality, or the paradoxical nature of all things.For this reason, the hexagrams can be used to interpret the future, since the future constantly unfolds to change.  While change is inevitable and often beyond our control, it does follow its own patterns.  Therefore, if we can learn to understand these patterns, we can predict future changes.Changes have three basic characteristics.  The first characteristic of change is change via unity or division; anything can be changed when it is added to or taken from.  The second is called transformation, which is the essence of life and death, birth and decay.  And the third characteristic of change is changelessness (constancy)—change presupposes constancy, since the process of change itself is ever-constant.  A running river, for example, is a metaphor for this third characteristic, in that the same river is constantly flowing, but different water flows by every moment; thus, the river is both changing and constant.  Such is the nature of yin and yang.The eight trigrams—pictures made with three lines—of the pa kua represent the fundamental ways that yin and yang can be combined to represent all possible situations of the universe.  Three broken and/or unbroken lines are combined to make each picture, commonly representing interactions between opposites such as heaven and earth, mother and son, water and dryness, creativity and receptivity.  When the trigrams are doubled—by arranging two trigrams vertically—they comprise hexagrams.  Hexagrams are like atoms in that they comprise all matter and motions of the universe.  Like atoms, they are microcosms of the universe:  "The I Ching contains the measure of heaven and earth."Each line of yin or yang comprises the crucial structure of each hexagram.  A change in a single line from yin to yang, or vice versa, involves a change in the entire hexagram.  Thus, by perceiving a change in a single line, the outcome of the entire hexagram can be predicted since processes usually move in a chain of events, or occurrences.  And since hexagrams represent the universe (its shape, movement and ethereal nature), the future can be foreseen through a profound understanding of the symbols.  When one learns to understand the way things proceed, and can recognize where one resides along that chain at any given moment, then one can predict what will follow.  Change, therefore, is not meaningless but subject to universal law—Tao.Besides change, two other themes prove fundamental to the I Ching:  ideas and the judgments.  The theory of ideas behind the I Ching considers the eight trigrams as images of states of change rather than as images of objects.  That is, they are representational ideas.  Both Lao-tse and Confucius considered every event in the visible world as the effect of an idea-image from the unseen world.  This philosophical perspective maintains that everything which happens on earth is merely the reproduction, or echo, of an event that has already occurred in a world beyond our sense perception.  This perspective maintains that while humans live on the earthly plane, their lives are constantly effected by a higher plane.  The I Ching enables one to perceive present events in a clearer perspective and, ultimately, from the present moment, view the entire chain of events forward into the future and back through the past.  The I Ching explains itself this way:  The holy sages surveyed all the possible rules of change and movements under heaven.  They contemplated the forms and phenomena, and made the representations of them, which were summarized in the symbols [hexagrams].Lastly, the judgments prove fundamental to the I Ching because they clothe the images in words; they bring a tangible understanding to the various concepts and outline proper action for the future.  Based on the concept of change and relying on the assumption that linear images (trigrams and hexagrams) can accurately represent cosmic, unseen conditions, the judgments are the text that outline and discuss this phenomena in a way accessible to a person's psyche.  If asking the oracle about whether a certain action should be taken (e.g., travel, work, relationships), the judgments—along with the line readings—can indicate whether a given action will bring good fortune or misfortune, praise or humiliation.  The judgments allow readers to see and understand the "bigger picture" when it comes to cause and effect, and can thus help to free them from the tyranny of events—what some Eastern religions refer to as "Karma."The Oracle:Originally, the I Ching was a collection of linear signs to be used as oracles.  In antiquity, oracles were everywhere in use; the oldest among them confined themselves to simple "yes" and "no" responses.  This type of oracular pronouncement seems to be the basis for the I Ching—"yes" indicated by an unbroken line and "no" by a broken line.  Over time, greater differentiation came to be desired, and double, then triple lines came into being, giving us the eight trigrams.  These eight trigrams came to be conceived as images of all that happened in heaven and on earth.  As well, these were considered to be in a state of continual transition, with one changing into another, and so on.  In order to achieve a still greater multiplicity, these eight images were combined with one another to form the sixty-four hexagrams.In addition to the law of change and to the images representing states of change, the judgments describe the proper course of action.  Technically, when the judgments were added to the sixty-four symbols, the I Ching was born.  Around approximately 1150 B.C.E., Chinese King Wen and his son, the Duke of Chou, brought about this modification.  They endowed the hitherto mute hexagrams and lines, from which the future had to be divined as an individual matter in each case, with definite counsels for correct conduct.  Thus the individual came to share in shaping fate.  If one understands the movement of events and receives wise counsel in reference to personal actions concerning them, then a person can be more successful in his own life.Inquiries about specifics in a person's life depend, to a large extent, upon how one's individual psyche interprets the hexagram and the accompanying text.  The I Ching allows for individual interpretation and intuition.  The I Ching, therefore, could be considered a mirror to an intuitive aspect of the unconscious mind—what the ancient Greeks and Romans called the Daemon, or kindred spirit.  Hence, "All individuals are not equally fitted to consult the oracle," explained Carl Jung.  "It requires a clear and tranquil mind, receptive to the cosmic influences hidden in the humble divining [oracle]."While the I Ching presupposes that each moment is the product of cosmic influences which are expressed through all things, the reader does not need to necessarily believe in such things to benefit from the wisdom contained within.  The I Ching can be used for meditative purposes by the agnostic as well.  Either with the oracle or without it, the book can be consulted and meditated upon, appreciating the poetic beauty of its language and for the philosophical wisdom it provides.A typical I Ching oracle might read:Preponderance of the small.  Success.Perseverance furthers.Small things may be done; great things should not be done ...It is not well to strive upward,It is well to remain below ...Reminding us that all things change the I Ching counsels that we must remember to be sensitive to these happenings, and know that they are inevitable.  The I Ching, in its wisdom, recognizes that life is always in flux.  If we can remember this fact, then we can respond wisely to each unique situation as it occurs.
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    2780    AFRICA. Zoser becomes ruler of Egypt. His physician Imhotep designs the pyramid at Saqqara


    2750    PERSIA. Gilgamesh king of  Uruk, Sumeria.  Gilgamesh, according to the Sumerian king list, was the fifth king of Uruk (Early Dynastic II, first dynasty of Uruk), the son of Lugalbanda, ruling circa 2700 BCE. He is also the central character in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which says that his mother was Ninsun, (whom some call Rimat Ninsun), a goddess. Gilgamesh is described as two-thirds god and one-third human, making him one of the first superhuman characters in recorded history.According to another document, known as the "History of Tummal", Gilgamesh, and eventually his son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, located in Tummal, a block of the Nippur city. In Mesopotamian mythology, Gilgamesh is credited with having been a demigod of superhuman strength who built a great wall to defend his people from external threats. Cuneiform references.  In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is said to have ordered the creation of the legendary walls of Uruk. An alternative version has Gilgamesh, towards the end of the story, boasting to Urshanabi, the ferryman's wife, that the city's walls were built by the Seven Sages. In historical times, Sargon of Akkad claimed to have destroyed these walls to prove his military power.Fragments of an epic text found in Me-Turan (modern Tell Haddad) relate that Gilgamesh was buried under the waters of a river at the end of his life. The people of Uruk diverted the flow of the Euphrates River crossing Uruk for the purpose of burying the dead king within the riverbed. In April 2003, a German expedition discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk - including, where the Euphrates once flowed, the last resting place of its King Gilgamesh.  Despite the lack of direct evidence, most scholars do not object to consideration of Gilgamesh as a historical figure, particularly after inscriptions were found confirming the historical existence of other figures associated with him: kings Enmebaragesi and Aga of Kish. If Gilgamesh were a historical king, he probably reigned in about the 26th century BC. Some of the earliest Sumerian texts spell his name as Bilgames. Initial difficulties in reading cuneiform resulted in Gilgamesh making his re-entrance into world culture in 1891 as "Izdubar".  In most texts, Gilgamesh is written with the determinative for divine beings (DINGIR)- but there is no evidence for a contemporary cult, and the Sumerian Gilgamesh myths suggest the deification was a later development (unlike the case of the Akkadian god-kings). Historical or not, Gilgamesh became a legendary protagonist in the Epic of Gilgamesh.The name Gilgamesh appears once in Greek, as "Gilgamos". The story is a variant of the Perseus myth: The King of Babylon determines by oracle that his grandson Gilgamos will kill him, and throws him out of a high tower. An eagle breaks his fall, and the infant is found and raised by a gardener. The Gilgamesh flood tablet XI contains additional story material besides the flood. The flood story was included because in the story the flood hero Utnapishtim is granted immortality by the gods and that fits the immortality theme of the Gilgamesh Epic. In Tablet XI Gilgamesh meets Utnapishtim, who tells him about the great flood and reluctantly gives him a chance for immortality. He tells Gilgamesh that if he can stay awake for six days and seven nights he will become immortal. However, Gilgamesh falls asleep and Utnapishtim tells his wife to bake a loaf of bread for every day he is asleep so that Gilgamesh cannot deny his failure. When Gilgamesh wakes up, Utnapishtim decides to tell him about a plant that will rejuvenate him. Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh that if he can obtain the plant from the bottom of the sea and eat it he will be rejuvenated, be a younger man again. Gilgamesh obtains the plant, but doesn't eat it immediately because he wants to share it with other elders of Uruk. He places the plant on the shore of a lake while he bathes and it is stolen by a serpent who loses his old skin and thus is reborn. Gilgamesh, having failed both chances, returns to Uruk, where the sight of its massive walls provokes him to praise this enduring work of mortal men. Gilgamesh realizes that the way mortals can achieve immortality is through lasting works of civilization and culture. The Epic of Atrahasis provides additional information on the flood and flood Atrahasis III ii, lines 40-47 the flood hero was at a banquet when the storm and flood began: "He invited his people...to a banquet... He sent his family on board. They ate and they drank. But he (Atrahasis) was in and out. He could not sit, could not crouch, for his heart was broken and he was vomiting gall."Atrahasis tablet III iv, lines 6-9 clearly identify the flood as a local river flood: "Like dragonflies they [dead bodies] have filled the river. Like a raft they have moved in to the edge [of the boat]. Like a raft they have moved in to the riverbank." The sentence "Like dragonflies they have filled the river." was changed in Gilgamesh XI line 123 to: "Like the spawn of fishes, they fill the sea." We can see the mythmaker's hand at work here, changing a local river flood into an ocean deluge.Other orial changes were made to the Atrahasis text in Gilgamesh that removed any suggestion that the "gods" may have been people with human needs. For example, Atrahasis OB III, 30-31 "The Anunnaki, the great gods [were sitt]ing in thirst and hunger" was changed in Gilgamesh XI, 113 to "The gods feared the deluge." Sentences in Atrahasis III iv were omitted in Gilgamesh, e.g. "She was surfeited with grief and thirsted for beer" and "From hunger they were suffering cramp." Alternative TranslationsAs with most translations, especially from an ancient dead language, scholars may differ on the meaning of ambiguous sentences.For example, line 57 in Gilgamesh XI is usually translated (with reference to the boat) "ten rods the height of her sides."[5] or "its walls were each 10 times 12 cubits in height".[6] A rod was a dozen cubits and a Sumerian cubit was about 20 inches. Hence these translations imply the boat was about 200 feet high which would be impractical with the primitive technology in Gilgamesh's time (about 2700 BC). One problem with these translations is nowhere in line 57 is there an Akkadian word for "height". The sentence literally reads "Ten dozen-cubits each I-raised its-walls."[7] A similar example from an unrelated house building tablet reads: "he shall build the wall [of the house] and raise it four ninda and two cubits." This measurement (about 83 feet) obviously means wall length not height.[8]Line 142 in Gilgamesh XI is usually translated "Mount Ni ir held the boat, allowing no motion." Ni ir (with a dot under the s) is often spelled Nimush. The Akkadian words translated "Mount Ni ir" are "KUR-ú KUR ni- ir". The word KUR was a Sumerian word and could mean hill or country. The first KUR is followed by a phonetic complement -ú which indicates that KUR-ú is 27502750    to be read in Akkadian as šadú (hill) and not as m tu (country). Since šadú (hill) could also be translated as mountain in Akkadian and scholars knew the Biblical expression Mount Ararat, it has become customary to translate šadú as mountain or mount. But the flood hero was Sumerian according to the Sumerian king list and in Sumerian the word KUR meant hill or country, not mountain. Therefore KUR-ú should be translated as hill. The second KUR lacks a phonetic complement and is therefore read in Akkadian as m tu (country). Hence, the entire clause reads "The hill/mound country ni ir held the boat". Ni ir is usually transliterated as a proper name, because of the KUR sign that precedes ni ir and the absence of a case ending on ni ir. But ni ir may have been derived from ni irtu which meant hidden, inaccessible, secluded, and secret. Hence the clause can be read as "A mound [in] inaccessible country held the boat." A sand bar in a marsh would qualify. This is an ambiguous sentence and we cannot be sure that it means inaccessible mound. But likewise we cannot be sure that it means Mount Nimush.Lines 146-147 in Gilgamesh XI are usually translated "I ... made sacrifice, incense I placed on the peak of the mountain." Similarly "I poured out a libation on the peak of the mountain." But Kovacs provides this translation of line 156: "I offered incense in front of the mountain-ziggurat." Parpola provides the original Akkadian for this sentence: "áš-kun sur-qin-nu ina UGU ziq-qur-rat KUR-i"   Áš-kun means I-placed; sur-qin-nu means offering; ina means on; UGU means top-of; ziq-qur-rat means temple tower; and KUR-i means hill-like. Ziggurat KUR-i is a construct-genitive phrase in which KUR-i can be interpreted as an adjective modifying ziggurat. Parpola's glossary (page 145) defines ziq-qur-rat as "temple tower, ziggurat" and refers to line 157 so there is no doubt that he translates ziq-qur-rat as temple tower in this context. The sentence literally reads "I placed an offering on top of a hill-like temple-tower." A ziggurat was an elevated platform or temple tower where priests made offerings to the temple god. The top of a temple ziggurat was a place where sacrificial food was cooked for the priests to eat. Most translators disregard ziq-qur-rat and say it was a metaphor for peak and is therefore redundant and can be ignored. There is no authority for this other than previous translations of line 157. Why most translators disregard the clear meaning of this sentence is not clear. Kovacs' translation implies that the flood hero's offering was at a ziggurat. One of the Sumerian cities with a ziggurat was Eridu located west of an arm of the Persian Gulf known as the apsû. The only ziggurat at Eridu was at the temple of the god Ea (Enki), known as the apsû-house. In Gilgamesh XI, line 42 the flood hero said "I will go down [the river] to the apsû to live with Ea, my Lord." The flood hero "placed an offering on top of a hill-like temple-tower" at the temple of the god Ea in the city of Eridu, on an arm of the Persian Gulf, near the place where the boat grounded.Lines 189-192 (lines 198-201) in Gilgamesh XI are usually translated "Then god Enlil came aboard the boat. He took hold of my hand and brought me on board. He brought aboard my wife and made her kneel at my side. Standing between us, he touched our foreheads to bless us." In the first sentence "Then dingir-kabtu came aboard the boat" the Akkadian determinative dingir is usually translated as "god", but can also mean "priest"  Dingir is usually translated as god because there is another Akkadian word  nu that is translated priest. Dingir-kabtu literally means "divine important-person". Translating this as Enlil is the translator's conjecture. In the context of "Standing between us, he touched our foreheads to bless us." this is clearly an act of a priest, not a god.The standard version was found in the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. It was written in standard Babylonian, a dialect of Akkadian that was only used for literary purposes. This version was standardized by Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 BCE and 1000 BCE out of the older versions to one official one. This was a common process in this time and Gilgamesh was no exception. The standard and earlier Akkadian versions are differentiated based on the opening words, or incipit. The older version begins with the words "Surpassing all other kings", while the standard version's incipit is "He who saw the deep" (ša nagbu am ru). The Akkadian word nagbu, "deep", is probably to be interpreted here as referring to "unknown mysteries". However, Andrew George believes that it refers to the specific knowledge that Gilgamesh brought back from his meeting with Uta-Napishti: he gains there knowledge of the realm of Ea, whose cosmic realm is seen as the fountain of wisdom. In general, interpreters feel that Gilgamesh was given knowledge of how to worship the gods, of why death was ordained for human beings, of what makes a good king, and of the true nature of how to live a good life. The eleventh (XI) tablet contains the flood myth that was mostly copied from the Epic of Atrahasis.The twelfth tablet is appended to the epic representing a sequel to the original eleven, and was most probably added at a later date. This tablet has commonly been omitted until recent years. It has the startling narrative inconsistency of introducing Enkidu alive, and bears seemingly little relation to the well-crafted and finished 11 tablet epic; indeed, the epic is framed around a ring structure in which the beginning lines of the epic are quoted at the end of the 11th tablet to give it at the same time circularity and finality. Tablet 12 is actually a near copy of an earlier tale, in which Gilgamesh sends Enkidu to retrieve some objects of his from the Underworld, but Enkidu dies and returns in the form of a spirit to relate the nature of the Underworld to Gilgamesh - an event which seems to many superfluous given Enkidu's dream of the underworld. The story starts with an introduction of Gilgamesh of Uruk, the greatest king on earth,two-thirds god and one-third human, as the strongest King-God who ever existed. The introduction describes his glory and praises the brick city walls of Uruk. The people in the time of Gilgamesh, however, are not happy. They complain that he is too harsh and abuses his power by sleeping with women before their husbands do, so the goddess of creation Aruru creates the  wild-man Enkidu. Enkidu starts bothering the shepherds. When one of them complains to Gilgamesh the king sends the woman Shamhat who might have been a priestess/prostitute (a nad tu or hierodule in Greek). The body contact with Shamhat civilizes Enkidu, and after several nights, he is no longer a wild  beast who lives with animals. In the meanwhile, Gilgamesh has some strange  dreams, his mother Ninsun explains them by telling that a mighty friend will come to him. Enkidu and Shamhat leave the wilderness for Uruk to attend a wedding. When Gilgamesh comes to the party to sleep with the bride, he finds his way blocked by Enkidu. Enkidu and Gilgamesh fight each other. After a mighty battle, Gilgamesh breaks off from the fight (or defeats Enkidu in other versions, this portion is missing from the Standard Babylonian version but is supplied from other versions). Gilgamesh proposes to travel to the Cedar Forest to cut some great trees and kill a demon Humbaba for their glory. Enkidu objects but can not convince his friend. They seek the wisdom of the Elder Council, but Gilgamesh remains stubborn. Enkidu gives in and both prepare to journey to Cedar Forest. Gilgamesh tells his mother, who complains about it, but then asks the sun-god Shamash for support and gives Enkidu some advice. She also adopts Enkidu as her second son. Gilgamesh and Enkidu journey to the Cedar Forest. On the way, Gilgamesh has five bad dreams, but due to the bad construction of the tablet, they are hard to reconstruct. Enkidu, each time, explains the dreams as a good omen. When they reach the forest Enkidu becomes afraid again and Gilgamesh has to encourage him. When the heroes finally run into Humbaba, the demon/ogre guardian of the trees, the monster starts to offend them. This time, Gilgamesh is the one to become afraid. After some brave words of Enkidu the battle commences. Their rage separated Syria mountains from the Lebanon. Finally Shamash sends his 13 winds to help the two heroes and Humbaba is defeated. The monster begs Gilgamesh for his life, and Gilgamesh pities the creature. Enkidu, however, gets mad with Gilgamesh and asks him to kill the beast. Humbaba then turns to Enkidu and begs him to persuade his friend to spare his life. When Enkidu repeats his request to Gilgamesh, Humbaba curses them both before Gilgamesh puts an end to it. When the two heroes cut a huge tree, Enkidu makes a huge door of it for the gods and lets it float down the river. Gilgamesh rejects the sexual advances of Anu's daughter, the goddess Ishtar, because of what happened to her previous lovers like Dumuzi. Ishtar asks her father Anu to send the "Bull of Heaven" to avenge the rejected sexual advances. When Anu rejects her complaints, Ishtar threatens to raise the dead. Anu becomes scared and gives in. The bull of heaven is a plague for the lands. Apparently the creature has something to do with drought because, according to the epic, the water disappeared and the vegetation drought. Whatever the case, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, this time without divine help, slay the beast and offer its heart to Shamash. When they hear Ishtar cry out in agony, Enkidu tears off the bull's hindquarter and throws it in her face and threatens her. The city Uruk celebrates, but Enkidu has a bad dream detailed in the next tablet. In the dream of Enkidu, the gods decide that somebody has to be punished for killing the Bull of Heaven and Humbaba, in the end they decide to punish Enkidu. All of this is much against the will of Shamash. Enkidu tells Gilgamesh all about it, then curses the door he made for the gods. Gilgamesh is shocked and goes to temple to pray to Shamash for the health of his Friend. Enkidu then starts to curse the trapper and Shamhat because now he regrets the day that he became human. Shamash speaks from the heaven and points out how  unfair Enkidu is; he also tells him that Gilgamesh will become a shadow of his former self because of his death. Enkidu regrets his curses and blesses Shamhat. He becomes more and more ill and describes the Netherworld as he is dying. Gilgamesh delivers a lamentation for Enkidu, offering gifts to the many gods, in order that they might walk beside Enkidu in the netherworld. Gilgamesh sets out to avoid Enkidu's fate and makes a perilous journey to visit Utnapishtim and his wife, the only humans to have survived the Great Flood who were granted immortality by the gods, in the hope that he too can attain immortality. Along the way, Gilgamesh passes the two mountains from where the sun rises, which are guarded by two scorpion-beings. They allow him to proceed and he travels through the dark where the sun travels every night. Just before the sun is about to catch up with him, he reaches the end. The land at the end of the tunnel is a wonderland full of trees with leaves of jewels. Gilgamesh meets the alewyfe Siduri and tells her the purpose of his journey. Siduri attempts to dissuade him from his quest but sends him to Urshanabi the ferryman to help him cross the sea to Utnapishtim. Urshanabi is in the company of some stone-giants. Gilgamesh considers them hostile and kills them. When he tells Urshanabi his story and asks for help. He is told that he just killed the only creatures able to cross the Waters of Death. The waters of death are not to be touched, so Utshanabi commands him to cut 300 trees and fashion them into oars so that they can cross the waters by picking a new oar each time. Finally they reach the island of Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim sees that there is someone else in the boat, and asks Gilgamesh who he is. Gilgamesh tells him his story and asks for help, but Utnapishtim reprimands him because fighting the fate of humans is futile and ruins the joy in life. Gilgamesh argues that Utnapishtim is not different from him and asks him his story, why he has a different fate. Utnapishtim tells him about the great flood. His story is a summary of the story of Atrahasis (see also Gilgamesh flood myth) but skips the previous plagues sent by the gods. He reluctantly offers Gilgamesh a chance for immortality, but questions why the gods would give the same honour as himself, the flood hero, to Gilgamesh and challenges Gilgamesh to stay awake for six days and seven nights first. However, just when Utnapishtim finishes his words Gilgamesh falls asleep. Utnapishtim ridicules the sleeping Gilgamesh in the presence of his wife and tells her to bake a loaf of bread for every day he is asleep so that Gilgamesh cannot deny his failure.
       When Gilgamesh, after six days and seven nights discovers his failure, Utnapishtim is furious with him and sends him back to Uruk with Urshanabi in exile. The moment that they leave, Utnapishtim's wife asks her husband to have mercy on Gilgamesh for his long journey. Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh of a plant at the bottom of the ocean that will make him young again. Gilgamesh obtains the plant by binding stones to his feet so he can walk the bottom of the sea. He does not trust the plant and plans to test it on an old man's back when he returns to Uruk. Unfortunately he places the plant on the shore of a lake while he bathes, and it is stolen by a serpent who loses his old skin and thus is reborn. Gilgamesh weeps in the presence of Urshanabi. Having failed at both opportunities, he returns to Uruk, where the sight of its massive walls prompts him to praise this enduring work to Urshanabi. Note that the content of the last tablet is not connected with previous ones. Gilgamesh complains to Enkidu that his ball-game-toys fell in the underworld. Enkidu offers to bring them back. Delighted, Gilgamesh tells Enkidu what he must and must not do in the underworld in order to come back. Enkidu forgets the advice and does everything he was told not to do. The underworld keeps him. Gilgamesh prays to the gods to give him his friend back. Enlil and Sin don't bother to reply but Enki and Shamash decide to help. Shamash cracks a hole in the earth and Enkidu jumps out of it. The tablet ends with Gilgamesh questioning Enkidu about what he has seen in the underworld. The story doesn't make clear if Enkidu reappears only as a ghost or really comes alive again. Gilgamesh tells his mother Ninsun about two nightmares he had. His mother explains that they mean that a friend will come to Uruk. In the meanwhile Enkidu and his woman (here called Shamshatum) are making love. She civilizes him in company of the shepherds by offering him human food. Enkidu helps the shepherd by guarding the sheep. They go to Uruk to marry but Gilgamesh want to  use his privileges to sleep with Shamshatum first. Enkidu and Gilgamesh battle but Gilgamesh breaks off the fight. Enkidu praises Gilgamesh as special person. The tablet is broken here but it seems that Gilgamesh has offered the plan to go the cedar forest to cut trees and kill Humbaba. Enkidu protests, he knows Humbaba and is aware of his power. Gilgamesh talks Enkidu into it with some words of encouragement but Enkidu remains reluctant. They start preparation and call for the elders. The elders also protest but after Gilgamesh talks to them they wish him good luck. Fragments from two different versions/tablets that tell how Enkidu encourages Gilgamesh to slay Humbaba. When Gilgamesh does so thay cut some trees and find the dwellings of the Annunaki. Enkidu cuts a door of wood for Enlil and let it float down the Euphrates. Gilgamesh argues with Shamash the futility of his quest. The tablet is damaged. We then find Gilgamesh talking with Siduri about his quest and his travel to Ut-Napishtim (here called Uta-na'ishtim). Siduri also questions his goals. Another hole in the text. Gilgamesh has smashed the stone creatures and talks to the ferryman Urshanabi (here called Sur-sunabu). After a short discussion Sur-sunabu asks Gilgamesh to cut 300 oars so that they may cross the waters of dead without the stone creatures. The rest of the tablet is damaged.

    2727    The first recorded use of marijuana as medicine was in a Chinese pharmacopoeia
    
2700    AFRICA. Khufu (Cheops) rules Egypt and builds the great Pyramid at Giza
Pharaos of the old kingdom invade Sinai and Nubia, bringing rich booty to Egypt, including malachite, gold, ivory, ebony and prisoners who are made slaves. Seventy pyramids survive, The largest is the pyramid of Cheops, which is 475 feet high and approximately 2,400 feet square. It requires 2,300 stone blocks each weighing two tons. It takes 20 years to build. Workers are conscripted at the rate of 100,000 every three months.

2700    Rhubarb cultivated in China.
_____________________________________________________________

        2697    Huang Ti the Yellow Emperor comes to the throne in China

2620    Completion of the great pyramid at Saqqara, built by Imhotep.

2600 BC-Assyria is named for its original capital, the
 ancient city of Aššur (a.k.a. Ashur) which dates to c. 2600
 BC (located in what is now the Saladin Province of northern
Iraq), originally one of a number of Akkadian city states in
Mesopotamia. In the late 24th century BC, Assyrian kings
were regional leaders only, and subject to Sargon of Akkad,
who united all the Akkadian Semites and Sumerian-speaking
peoples of Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Empire, which
lasted from c. 2334 BC to 2154 BC. Following the fall of the
Akkadian Empire c. 2154 BC,[1] and the short lived
succeeding Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur which ruled
southern Assyria, Assyria regained full independence. The
history of Assyria proper is roughly divided into three
periods, known as Old Assyrian, Middle Assyrian and
Neo-Assyrian. These terms are in wide use in Assyrologand
roughly correspond to the Middle Bronze Age, Late Bronze
Age and Early Iron Age, respectively. In the Old Assyrian
period, Assyria established colonies in Asia Minor and the
Levant and, under king Ilushuma, it asserted itself over
southern Mesopotamia. From the late 19th century BC,
Assyria came into conflict with the newly created state of
Babylonia, which eventually eclipsed the older
Sumero-Akkadian states in the south, such as Ur, Isin, Larsa
and Kish.Assyria experienced fluctuating fortunes in the
Middle Assyrian period. Assyria had a period of empire
under Shamshi-Adad I and Ishme-Dagan in the 19th and
18th centuries BC. Following this, it found itself under
Babylonian and Mitanni-Hurrian domination for short
periods in the 18th and 15th centuries BC respectively, and
another period of great power occurred with the rise of the
Middle Assyrian Empire (from 1365 BC to 1056 BC), which
included the reigns of great kings, such as Ashur-uballit I,
Arik-den-ili, Tukulti-Ninurta I and Tiglath-Pileser I. During
this period, Assyria overthrew Mitanni and eclipsed both the
Hittite Empire and Egyptian Empire in the Near East.
Beginning with the campaigns of Adad-nirari II from 911
BC,[2] it again became a great power over the next three
centuries, overthrowing the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt
and conquering Egypt,[2] Babylonia, Elam, Urartu/Armenia,
Media, Persia, Mannea, Gutium, Phoenicia/Canaan, Aramea
(Syria), Arabia, Israel, Judah, Edom, Moab, Samarra,
Cilicia, Cyprus, Chaldea, Nabatea, Commagene, Dilmun, the
Hurrians, Sutu and Neo-Hittites, driving the Ethiopians and
Nubians from Egypt,[2] defeating the Cimmerians and
Scythians and exacting tribute from Phrygia, Magan and
Punt among others.[2]After its fall (between 612 BC and
605 BC), Assyria remained a province and geo-political
entity under the Babylonian, Median, Achaemenid, Seleucid,
Parthian, Roman and Sassanid empires until the Arab
Islamic invasion and conquest of Mesopotamia in the
mid-7th century, when it was finally dissolved, after which
the remnants of the Assyrian people (by now Christians)
gradually became a minority in their homeland.[3]
Early Assyria 2600-2335 BC Assyria in the Akkadian
Empire and Neo-Sumerian Empires Old Assyrian Kingdom
Dynasty of Puzur-Ashur I - 2025-1809 BC Assyrian Empire
of Shamshi-Adad I, 1809 BC - 1750 BC Assyria under
Babylonian domination, 1750 - 1732 BCAssyrian Adaside
dynasty 1732 - 1451 BCAssyria in decline, 1450-1393 BC
Middle Assyrian Empire 1392-1056 BC 6.1 Assyrian
expansion and empire 1392–1056 BC
Assyria in the Ancient Dark Ages, 1055-936 BC
Assyrian recovery 7.1 Society in the Middle Assyrian period
Neo-Assyrian Empire 911-627 BC 8.1 Expansion, 911-627
BCDownfall, 626-605 BCAssyria after the empire 9.1
Achaemenid Assyria, Athura, Assuristan, Assyria province,
Adiabene, Osroene and Hatra 9.1.1 Achaemenid Assyria
(549 - 330 BC)Seleucid Assyria
Parthian Assyria (150 BC - 116 AD) - Adiabene (69
BC - 117 AD)Roman Assyria (116 AD - 118 AD)
Parthian Assyria restored (119 AD - 225 AD), Osroene,
Hatra Sassanid Assyria (Assuristan (226 AD - circa 650 AD)
Assyrians after Assyria 10.1 Germany and West Africa
theoriesAssyrian religion LanguageArts and sciences
Assyria was also sometimes known as Subartu prior to the
rise of the city state of Ashur and, after its fall, from 605 BC
through to the late 7th century AD variously as Athura and
also referenced as Atouria[4] according to Strabo, Syria
(Greek), Assyria (Latin) and Assuristan. The term Assyria
can also refer to the geographic region or heartland where
Assyria, its empires and the Assyrian people were (and still
are) centered. The modern Assyrian Christian (AKA
Chaldo-Assyrian) ethnic minority in northern Iraq, north east
Syria, south east Turkey and north west Iran are the
descendants of the ancient Assyrians (see Assyrian
continuity)Pre-history of AssyriaIn prehistoric times, the
region that was to become known as Assyria (and Subartu)
was home to a Neanderthal culture such as has been found at
the Shanidar Cave. The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria
were the Jarmo culture c. 7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, the
centre of the Hassuna culture, c. 6000 BC.
During the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural
symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Semitic
Akkadians throughout Mesopotamia, which included
widespread bilingualism.[7] The influence of Sumerian (a
language isolate, i.e. not related to any other language) on
Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all areas, from
lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic,
morphological, and phonological convergence.[7] This has
prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the
3rd millennium BC as a sprachbund.[7]


 


 Letter sent by the high-priest Lu'enna to the king of Lagash
(maybe Urukagina), informing him of his son's death in
combat, c. 2400 BC, found in Girsu.
Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken
language of Mesopotamia somewhere after the turn of the
3rd and the 2nd millennium BC (the exact dating being a
matter of debate),[8] but Sumerian continued to be used as
a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in
Mesopotamia until the 1st century AD.The cities of Assur
(also spelled Ashur or Aššur) and Nineveh, together with a
number of other towns and cities, existed since at least
before the middle of the 3rd millennium BC (c. 2600 BC),
although they appear to have been Sumerian-ruled
administrative centres at this time, rather than independent
states.According to some Judaeo-Christian writers, the city
of Ashur was founded by Ashur the son of Shem, who was
deified by later generations as the city's patron god.
However, it is not among the cities said to have been
founded by him in Genesis 10:11-12.

Assyrian tradition lists an early Assyrian king named Ushpia
as having dedicated the first temple to the god Ashur in the
city in the 21st century BC. It is highly likely that the city
was named in honour of its patron Assyrian god with the
same name.

Classical datingGeorge Syncellus in his Chronographia
quotes a fragment from Julius Africanus which dates the
founding of Assyria to 2284 BC.[9] The Roman historian
Velleius Paterculus citing Aemilius Sura states that Assyria
was founded 1995 years before Philip V was defeated in 197
BC (at the Battle of Cynoscephalae) by the Romans.[10] The
sum therefore 197 + 1995 = 2192 BC for the foundation of
Assyria. Diodorus Siculus recorded another tradition from
Ctesias, that dates Assyria 1,306 years before 883 BC (the
starting date of the reign of Ashurnasirpal II) and so the sum
883 + 1306 = 2189 BC.[11] The Chronicle of Eusebius
provides yet another date for the founding of Assyria, with
the accession of Ninus, dating to 2057 BC, but the Armenian
translation of the Chronicle puts this figure back slightly to
2116 BC. Another classical dating tradition found in the
Excerpta Latina Barbari dates the foundation of Assyria,
under Belus, to 2206 BC.Early Assyria 2600-2335 BC

The city of Ashur, together with a number of other Assyrian
cities, seem to have been established by 2600 BC, however
it is likely that they were initially Sumerian dominated
administrative centres. In c. the late 26th century BC,
Eannatum of Lagash, then the dominant Sumerian ruler in
Mesopotamia, mentions "smiting Subartu" (Subartu being
the Sumerian name for Assyria). Similarly, in c. the early
25th century BC, Lugal-Anne-Mundu the king of the
Sumerian state of Adab lists Subartu as paying tribute to
him.Of the early history of the kingdom of Assyria, little is
positively known. In the Assyrian King List, the earliest king
recorded was Tudiya. In initial archaeological reports from
Ebla, it appeared that Tudiya's existence was confirmed with
the discovery of a tablet where he concluded a treaty for the
operation of a karum in Eblaite territory, with "king" Ibrium
of Ebla (who is now known to have been the vizier of Ebla
for king Ishar-Damu). This entire reading is now
questionable, as several scholars have more recently argued
that the treaty in question was not with king Tudiya of
Asshur at all, but rather with the unnamed king of an
uncertain location called "Abarsal".

Tudiya was succeeded on the list by Adamu and then a
further thirteen rulers (Yangi, Shuhlamu, Harharu, Mandaru,
Imshu, Harshu, Didanu, Hanu, Zuabu, Nuabu, Abazu, Belu
and Azarah). Nothing concrete is yet known about these
names, although it has been noted that a Babylonian tablet
listing the ancestral lineage of Hammurabi seems to include
the same names from Tudiya through Nuabu in a heavily
corrupted form.The earliest kings, such as Tudiya, who are
recorded as kings who lived in tents, may have been
independent Akkadian semi-nomadic pastoralist rulers.[2]
These kings at some point became fully urbanised and
founded the city state of Ashur.[12]

Assyria in the Akkadian Empire and Neo-Sumerian Empires
During the Akkadian Empire (2334–2154 BC) the
Assyrians, like all the Akkadian Semites (and also the
Sumerians), became subject to the dynasty of the city state
of Akkad, centered in central Mesopotamia. The Akkadian
Empire founded by Sargon the Great, claimed to encompass
the surrounding "four quarters". The region of Assyria, north
of the seat of the empire in central Mesopotamia had also
been known as Subartu by the Sumerians, and the name
Azuhinum in Akkadian records also seems to refer to
Assyria proper. Assyrian rulers were subject to Sargon and
his successors, and the city of Ashur became a regional
administrative center of the Empire, implicated by the Nuzi
tablets. During this period, the Akkadian-speaking Semites
of Mesopotamia came to rule an empire encompassing not
only Mesopotamia itself but large swathes of Asia Minor,
ancient Iran, Elam, the Arabian Peninsula, Canaan and
Syria.Assyria seems to have already been firmly involved in
trade in Asia Minor by this time; the earliest known
reference to Anatolian karums in Hatti, was found on later
cuneiform tablets describing the early period of the
Akkadian Empire (c. 2350 BC). On those tablets, Akkadian
traders in Burushanda implored the help of their ruler,
Sargon the Great, and this appellation continued to exist
throughout the Assyrian Empire for about 1,700 years. The
name "Hatti" itself even appears in later accounts of his
grandson, Naram-Sin, campaigning in Anatolia.
Assyrian and Akkadian traders spread the use of writing in
the form of the Mesopotamian cuneiform script to Asia
Minor and The Levant.However, towards the end of the
reign of Sargon the Great, the Assyrian faction rebelled
against him; "the tribes of Assyria of the upper country—in
their turn attacked, but they submitted to his arms, and
Sargon settled their habitations, and he smote them
grievously".The Akkadian Empire was destroyed by
economic decline and internal civil war, followed by attacks
from barbarian Gutian people in 2154 BC.
The rulers of Assyria during the period between c. 2154 BC
and 2112 BC once again became fully independent, as the
Gutians are only known to have administered southern
Mesopotamia. However, the king list is the only information
from Assyria for this period.
Most of Assyria briefly became part of the Neo-Sumerian
Empire (or 3rd dynasty of Ur) founded in c. 2112 BC.
Sumerian domination extended as far as the city of Ashur,
but appears not to have reached Nineveh and the far north of
Assyria. One local ruler (shakkanakku) named Zariqum
(who does not appear on any Assyrian king list) is listed as
paying tribute to Amar-Sin of Ur. Ashur's rulers appear to
have remained largely under Sumerian domination until the
mid-21st century BC (c. 2050 BC); the king list names
Assyrian rulers for this period and several are known from
other references to have also borne the title of shakkanakka
or vassal governors for the neo-Sumerians.
Old Assyrian KingdomThe first written inscriptions by
'urbanised' Assyrian kings appear in the mid-21st century
BC, after they had shrugged off Sumerian domination. The
land of Assyria as a whole then consisted of a number of city
states and small Semitic Akkadian kingdoms, some of which
were initially independent of Assyria. The foundation of the
first major temple in the city of Ashur was traditionally
ascribed to king Ushpia who reigned c. 2050 BC, possibly a
contemporary of Ishbi-Erra of Isin and Naplanum of
Larsa.[14] He was reputedly succeeded by kings named
Apiashal, Sulili, Kikkiya and Akiya (died c. 2026 BC), of
whom little is known, apart from much later mentions of
Kikkiya conducting fortifications on the city walls, and
building work on temples in Ashur.The main rivals,
neighbors or trading partners to early Assyrian kings during
the 22nd, 21st and 20th centuries BC would have been the
Hattians and Hurrians to the north in Asia Minor, the
Gutians and Turukku to the east in the Zagros Mountains of
northwest Iran, the Elamites to the southeast in what is now
south central Iran, the Amorites to the west in what is today
Syria, and their fellow Sumero-Akkadian city-states of
southern Mesopotamia such as Isin, Kish, Ur and Larsa.[2]
Like many city-states in Mesopotamian history, Ashur was,
to a great extent, an oligarchy rather than a monarchy.
Authority was considered to lie with "the City", and the
polity had three main centres of power — an assembly of
elders, a hereditary ruler, and an eponym. The ruler presided
over the assembly and carried out its decisions. He was not
referred to with the usual Akkadian term for "king", šarrum;
that was instead reserved for the city's patron deity Assur, of
whom the ruler was the high priest. The ruler himself was
only designated as "the steward of Assur" (iššiak Assur),
where the term for steward is a borrowing from Sumerian
ensi(k). The third centre of power was the eponym
(limmum), who gave the year his name, similarly to the later
archons and consuls of Classical Antiquity. He was annually
elected by lot and was responsible for the economic
administration of the city, which included the power to
detain people and confiscate property. The institution of the
eponym as well as the formula iššiak Assur lingered on as
ceremonial vestiges of this early system throughout the
history of the Assyrian monarchy.[15]Dynasty of
Puzur-Ashur I - 2025-1809 BCIn approximately 2025 BC
(long chronology), Puzur-Ashur I (perhaps a contemporary
of Shu-ilishu of Larsa and Samium of Isin) is speculated (on
the basis of his name being Akkadian rather than Hurrian) to
have overthrown Kikkiya and founded a new dynasty which
was to survive for 216 years. His descendants left
inscriptions mentioning him regarding the building of
temples to gods such as Ashur, Adad and Ishtar in Assyria.
The length of his reign is unknown.
Shalim-ahum (died c. 2009 BC) succeeded the throne at a
currently unknown date. He left inscriptions in archaic Old
Assyrian regarding the construction of a temple dedicated to
the god Ashur, and the placement of beer vats within it.
Ilushuma[16] (c. 2008–1975 BC) took the throne in c. 2008
BC, and is known from his inscription (extant in several
copies) where he claims to have "washed the copper" and
"established liberty" for the Akkadians in Sumerian
city-states as far as the Persian Gulf. This was at first taken
to imply that he made military campaigns into Southern
Mesopotamia, however more recent scholarship has taken
the view that the inscription means he supplied these areas
with copper from Hatti, and that the word used for "liberty"
(adduraru) is usually in the context of exemption fromtariffs.
 ____________________________________

    2575 BCConstruction of the Great Pyramid at Giza Given the limited range of uses of money in certain ancient civilizations,  the completion of large-scale and long-term projects was usually based on detailed state planning, often involving slavery. Similarly, the much later but rigidly hierarchical civilization of the Incas in Peru managed  without money at all.

2500    Micronesia
    Farmers till the fertile land of the Indus valley. 
    Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro
    Earlt Minoan civilzation in Crete.
    Foundation of Knossos
_____________________________________________________________

                2369    Unification of Mesopotamia by Akaad

2350    Sumerian empire founded
    Yao Dynasty in China
                  Sargon the Great of Akkad begins conquest of Sumeria,
    founding the first great empire.

    2300   AFRICA                          -     Harkhuf,  makes four journeys south into Africam bringing back ivory, ebony, incense, grain, panthers and even dancing pygmies:  "My lord sent me," Harkhuf writes, "together with my father ...  in order to explore a road to this country [of the south].  I did it in only seven months and I brought all [kinds of] gifts from it ...  I was very greatly praised for it."

2300 BC, BRITAIN changes were introduced by the  Beaker folk from the Low Countries and the middle Rhine. These people buried their dead in individual graves, often with the drinking vessel that gives their culture its name.The earliest of them still used flint; later groups, however, brought a knowledge of metallurgy and were responsible for the exploitation of gold and copper deposits in Britain and Ireland. They may also have introduced an Indo-European language. Trade was dominated by the chieftains of Wessex, whose rich graves testify to their success. Commerce was far-flung, in one direction to Ireland and Cornwall and in the other to central Europe and the Baltic, whence amber was imported. Amber bead spacers from Wessex have been found in the shaft graves at Mycenae in Greece. It was, perhaps, this prosperity that enabled the Wessex chieftains to construct the remarkable monument of shaped sarsens (large sandstones) known as  Stonehenge III. Originally a late Neolithic henge, Stonehenge was uniquely transformed in Beaker times with a circle of large bluestone monoliths transported from southwest Wales. Little is known in detail of the early and middle Bronze Age. Because of present ignorance of domestic sites, these periods are mainly defined by technological advances and changes in tools or weapons. In general, the southeast of Britain continued in close contact with the continent and the
    north and west with Ireland.

________________________________________________________________________________

2250    - c. 2150 BC.  Cappadocian rulers guarantee quality of silver ingots  The state guarantee, probably of both the weight and the purity of her silver ingots, helps their wider acceptance as money.

2250    Yu shun emperor of China

    2200 BC  PALESTINE. In the Middle Bronze Age (220-0 - 150-0 BCE), Canaan was influenced by the surrounding civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, and Syria. Diverse commercial ties and an agriculturally based economy led to the development of new pottery forms, the cultivation of grapes, and the extensive use of bronze.   Burial customs from this time seemed to be influenced by a belief in the afterlife.Political, commercial and military events during the Late Bronze Age period

    2200    BC  YEMEN.   History of YemenBetween 2200 BC and the 6th century AD, Yemen was part of the Sabaean, Awsanian, Minaean, Qatabanian, Hadhramawtian, Himyarite, and several other kingdoms, which controlled the lucrative spice trade. It was known to the ancient Romans as Arabia Felix ("Happy Arabia") because of the riches its trade generated. Augustus attempted to annex it, but the expedition failed.In the 3rd century and again in the early seventh century, many Sabaean and Himyarite people migrated out of the land of Yemen to North Africa and the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula following the destruction of the Ma'rib Dam (sadd Ma'rib). In the 7th century, Islamic caliphs began to exert control over the area. After the caliphate broke up, the former North Yemen came under the control of imams of various dynasties, usually of the Zaidi sect, who established a theocratic political structure that survived until modern times.Egyptian Sunni caliphs occupied much of North Yemen throughout the eleventh century.

2200    Hsia dynasty founded in China

    Jomon culture in Japan
_____________________________________________________________________________

2150    AFRICA.    Middle Kingdom .  Middle kingdom of Egypt beginning with VIIth dynasty. Large scale works are undertaken to extend irrigation. Tarde and crafts flourish. Peasant communes are stratified, large sections of the peasantry are impoverished.

                  2100    Empire of Ur.____________________________________________________________________________

2070    CHINA. Dynasties in Chinese history and Chinese sovereign. Chinese tradition names the first dynasty Xia, but it was considered mythical until scientific excavations found early bronze-age sites at Erlitou in Henan Province.  Archaeologists have since uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and  tombs in locations cited as Xia's in ancient historical texts, but it is impossible to verify that these remains are of the Xia without written records from the period.
2000- BC- 000  In the Fertile Crescent the use of copper tools has become widespread. There is a shift to a more scarce metal for use as money: silver.

2000  Near what today is Haifa, Israel, at least two neolithic dwellers are infected with tuberculosis.

2000  Another wave of settlements is about to begin into what today is northern Israel.

2000  Give or take a century or two, Malay people begin migrating from the Asian mainland, across the ocean, to join others on Indonesian islands, bringing with them the cultivation of rice and domesticated animals. People called Mon migrate from Central Asia to the southern tip of Burma, where they begin growing rice. People leave the Mulucca Islands and migrate eastward to islands north of Australia.

1950  The Sumerians have been overrun by Amorites and are to disappear as a recognizable people. Their writings, stories and gods are to endure. Sumerian language is to be what Latin will be in Europe in early modern times.

1900  Egypt is united again, followed by the rule of Pharaoh Amenemhet I. Common people have failed to win political power, and local lords are subservient again to one king, but common people and lords have won recognition of having an afterlife like kings. And more importance is given by all to the goddess of justice, Ma'at.

1800  Migrants in magnificent little boats reach Micronesia.

1800  An Amorite king at Babylon, Hammurabi, extends his empire from the Persian Gulf to the city of Haran. He builds roads, creates a postal system and sees himself as conqueror of the world. Babylon is lush with agriculture. In the name of his god of justice, Hammurabi gives his subjects laws about mistreatment of each other.  

1750  Along the Yellow River (Huang He), conquerors start building what would be known as the Shang civilization, eventually to stretch four or five hundred miles. The main concern of the Shang kings is power. They take slaves and practice human sacrifice to please the gods they fear. Women are subservient to men. Shang kings claim to be descended from ancestors who reside in heaven. Canals are dug for irrigation.

1750  A literate people move through Canaan, take control of some cities there, and then they conquer northern Egypt. They have horses and light-weight chariots and introduce the Egyptians to the wheel, new musical instruments, new techniques for making bronze and pottery, new kinds of crops, new gods and new weapons of war. The Egyptians call them Hyksos.

1700  Rainfall declines in the Indus Valley and Mohenjo-daro civilization disappears. By now Indo-European hunter-gatherers and farmers have moved into Sweden and have learned to endure winters there.

1700  Between now and 1500 BCE, small pit house villages appear in the Tucson Basin and probably in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. In these villages, archaeologists will find the remains of maize (corn) "ubiquitous." (History of the Ancient Southwest, Stephen H. Lekson, p 41.)

1680  In Egypt, leavened bread is being baked.

1600  Among Hebrew families (the likes of Isaac, Jacob and his wife Rachel) the males rule. Women are regarded as the propery of their fathers or husbands and act only with their consent. Men are allowed serveral wives. A man can easily divorce a wife by putting her out of the house, but a wife was not allowed to divorce her husband. Marriages occurred around the age of thirteen for boys and girls.

1593  Hittites from Asia Minor, with horses and lightweight chariots, sack Babylon, ending the dynasty that had been created by Hammurabi. Then they withdraw.

1525  The Egyptians drive the Hyksos from their land. The Egyptian king, Thutmose I, and his subjects pursue the Hyksos through Canaan and into Syria.

1500  Aryan nomads with horses and light-weight chariots packed in their wagons drop out of the mountains eastward into the Indus valley. They bring with them their sacred hymns and oral history – stories that express their desire to please the gods, including their god Dyaus Pitar (Sky Father).

 

 

1480  Hurrians, from the Zagros Mountains, dominate the city of Mari, on the upper Euphrates, and Nuzi, a thriving commercial center. They have overrun and dominate the Assyrians. And around this time they battle the Egyptians who are still in the north around Syria.

1457 (May 9) Egypt's army led by Pharaoh Thutmose III battles a Canaanite coalition led by the King of Kadesh: the Battle of Megiddo. The Egyptians rout of the Canaanites forces. It will be described by Wikipedia as "the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail," including body count, and the "first recorded use of the composite bow."

1420  Around now, Mycenae Greeks invade and conquer Crete. Minoan civilization will fade.

1400  Give or take a century or so, along the humid coast of southeastern Mexico, Olmec civilization begins.

1400  In Egypt a water clock is invented.

1350   The Egyptian king, Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) rules. He tries to force his subjects to worship the god Aton, whom he believes is the god of the universe. Egypt has withdrawn from Syria and Canaan.

1300  The Assyrians have benefited from the decline of the Hurrians, and they control all of Mesopotamia.

1300  Sometime around now, give or take three or four centuries, people having what anthropologists describe as the Lapita culture begin to sail from islands in the Bismarck Archipelago (just east of New Guinea), eastward into the Pacific. Lapita culture includes pottery, domesticated pigs, dogs and chickens, root and tree crops and fishing.

1300  Writing has appeared in Shang civilization, with characters partly pictorial and partly phonetic, and bronze casting has developed.

1279  Ramses II becomes King of Egypt, in his early twenties. The early part of his reign will focus on building cities, temples and monuments.

1250  Sedentary villages of agriculturalists are in what today is the middle of Mexico's far north.

    1250- MOSES- Known for Prophet Spouse(s) Zipporah Children Gershom Eliezer  Parent(s) Amram (father) Jochebed (mother)  Relatives Aaron (brother) Miriam (sister)  Moses Hebrew:, Modern Moshe Tiberian Mošéh ISO 259-3 Moše; Syriac:  Moushe; Arabic:  Musa; Greek:  Moÿses in both the Septuagint and the New Testament) is a prophet in Abrahamic religions. According to the Hebrew Bible, he was a former Egyptian prince who later in life became a religious leader and lawgiver, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed. Also called Moshe Rabbenu in Hebrew  lit. "Moses our Teacher"), he is the most important prophet in Judaism.[2][3] He is also an important prophet in Christianity and Islam, as well as a number of other faiths.

The existence of Moses, as well as the veracity of the Exodus story, is disputed among archaeologists and Egyptologists, with experts in the field of biblical criticism citing logical inconsistencies, new archaeological evidence, historical evidence, and related origin myths in Canaanite culture.[4][5][6] Other historians maintain that the biographical details and Egyptian background attributed to Moses imply the existence of a historical political and religious leader who was involved in the consolidation of the Hebrew tribes in Canaan towards the end of the Bronze Age.

According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in a time when his people, the Israelites, an enslaved minority, were increasing in numbers and the Egyptian Pharaoh was worried that they might ally with Egypt's enemies.[7] Moses' Hebrew mother, Jochebed, secretly hid him when the Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Israelites. Through the Pharaoh's daughter (identified as Queen Bithia in the Midrash), the child was adopted as a foundling from the Nile river and grew up with the Egyptian royal family. After killing an Egyptian slavemaster (because the slavemaster was smiting a Hebrew), Moses fled across the Red Sea to Midian, where he encountered the God of Israel speaking to him from within a "burning bush which was not consumed by the fire" on Mount Horeb (which he regarded as the Mountain of God).

God sent Moses back to Egypt to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery. Moses said that he could not speak with assurance or eloquence,[8] so God allowed Aaron, his brother, to become his spokesperson. After the Ten Plagues, Moses led the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they based themselves at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, Moses died within sight of the Promised Land.

Rabbinical Judaism calculated a lifespan of Moses corresponding to 1391–1271 (120 years) BCE;[9] Jerome gives 1592 BCE,[10] and Ussher 1571 BCE as his birth year.[11][note 1]


 


Moses' name was given to him by Pharaoh's daughter: "He became her son, and she named him Moshe (Moses)".[14] This name may be either Egyptian or Hebrew. If connected to an Egyptian root, via msy "to be born" and ms, "a son", it forms a wordplay: "he became her son, and she named him Son." There should, however, be a divine element to the name Moses (bearers of the Egyptian name are the "son of" a god, as in Thutmose, "son of Thoth"), and his full name may therefore have included the name of one of the Egyptian gods. Most scholars agree that the name is Egyptian, and that the Hebrew etymology is a later interpretation, but if the name is from a Hebrew root then it is connected to the verb "to draw out": "I drew him (masha) out of the water," states Pharaoh's daughter, possibly looking forward to Moses at the well in Midian, or to his role in saving Israel at the Red Sea.[15]

Biblical narrative
The Israelites had settled in the Land of Goshen in the time of Joseph and Jacob, but a new pharaoh arose who oppressed the children of Israel. At this time Moses was born to his father Amram, son of Kohath the Levite, who entered Egypt with Jacob's household; his mother was Jochebed (also Yocheved), who was kin to Kohath. Moses had one older (by seven years) sister, Miriam, and one older (by three years) brother, Aaron.[note 2]

Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children born be drowned in the river Nile, but Moses' mother placed him in an ark and concealed the ark in the bulrushes by the riverbank, where the baby was discovered and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. One day after Moses had reached adulthood he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew. Moses, in order to escape Pharaoh's death penalty, fled to Midian (a desert country south of Judah).

There, on Mount Horeb, God revealed to Moses his name YHWH (probably pronounced Yahweh) and commanded him to return to Egypt and bring his Chosen People (Israel) out of bondage and into the Promised Land (Canaan).[note 3] Moses returned to carry out God's command, but God caused Pharaoh to refuse, and only after God had subjected Egypt to ten plagues did Pharaoh relent. Moses led the Israelites to the border of Egypt, but there God hardened Pharaoh's heart once more, so that he could destroy Pharaoh and his army at the Red Sea Crossing as a sign of his power to Israel and the nations.

From Egypt, Moses led the Israelites to Mount Sinai, where he was given ten commandments from God, written on stone tablets. However, since Moses remained a long time on the mountain, some of the people feared that he might be dead, so they made a golden statue of a calf and worshipped it, thus disobeying and angering God and Moses. Moses, out of anger, broke the tablets, and later ordered the elimination of those who had worshipped the golden statue, which was melted down and fed to the idolaters. He also wrote the ten commandments on a new set of tablets. Later at Mount Sinai, Moses and the elders entered into a covenant, by which Israel would become the people of YHWH, obeying his laws, and YHWH would be their god. Moses delivered laws of God to Israel, instituted the priesthood under the sons of Moses' brother Aaron, and destroyed those Israelites who fell away from his worship. In his final act at Sinai, God gave Moses instructions for the Tabernacle, the mobile shrine by which he would travel with Israel to the Promised Land.

From Sinai, Moses led the Israelites to the Desert of Paran on the border of Canaan. From there he sent twelve spies into the land. The spies returned with samples of the land's fertility, but warned that its inhabitants were giants. The people were afraid and wanted to return to Egypt, and some rebelled against Moses and against God. Moses told the Israelites that they were not worthy to inherit the land, and would wander the wilderness for forty years until the generation who had refused to enter Canaan had died, so that it would be their children who would possess the land.

When the forty years had passed, Moses led the Israelites east around the Dead Sea to the territories of Edom and Moab. There they escaped the temptation of idolatry, received God's blessing through Balaam the prophet, and massacred the Midianites, who by the end of the Exodus journey had become the enemies of the Israelites. Moses was twice given notice that he would die before entry to the Promised Land: in Numbers 27:13, once he had seen the Promised Land from a viewpoint on Mount Abarim, and again in Numbers 31:1 once battle with the Midianites had been won.

On the banks of the Jordan, in sight of the land, Moses assembled the tribes. After recalling their wanderings he delivered God's laws by which they must live in the land, sang a song of praise and pronounced a blessing on the people, and passed his authority to Joshua, under whom they would possess the land. Moses then went up Mount Nebo to the top of Pisgah, looked over the promised land of Israel spread out before him, and died, at the age of one hundred and twenty. More humble than any other man (Num. 12:3), "there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom YHWH knew face to face" (Deuteronomy 34:10). The New Testament states that after Moses' death, Michael the Archangel and the devil disputed over his body (Jude 1:9). Moses is honoured among Jews today as the "lawgiver of Israel", and he delivers several sets of laws in the course of the four books. The first is the Covenant code, Exodus 19–24, the terms of the covenant which God offers to Israel at the foot of Sinai. Embedded in the covenant are the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20:1–17) and the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 20:22–23:19).[18] The entire Book of Leviticus constitutes a second body of law, the Book of Numbers begins with yet another set, and the Book of Deuteronomy another.

Moses has traditionally been regarded as the author of those four books and the Book of Genesis, which together comprise the Torah, the first and most revered section of the Jewish Bible.

Sources

Apart from a few scattered references elsewhere in the Jewish scriptures, all that is known about Moses comes from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.[19] The majority of scholars date these four books to the Persian period, 538-332 BCE.[20]

No Egyptian sources mention Moses or the events of Exodus-Deuteronomy, nor has any archeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure.  The Moses Window at the Washington National Cathedral depicts the three stages in Moses' life.
Non-biblical writings about Jews, with references to the role of Moses, first appear at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, from 323 BCE to about 146 BCE. Shmuel notes that "a characteristic of this literature is the high honour in which it holds the peoples of the East in general and some specific groups among these peoples."[22]:1102

In addition to the Judeo-Roman or Judeo-Hellenic historians Artapanus, Eupolemus, Josephus, and Philo, a few non-Jewish historians including Hecataeus of Abdera (quoted by Diodorus Siculus), Alexander Polyhistor, Manetho, Apion, Chaeremon of Alexandria, Tacitus and Porphyry also make reference to him. The extent to which any of these accounts rely on earlier sources is unknown.[22]:1103 Moses also appears in other religious texts such as the Mishnah (c. 200 CE), Midrash (200–1200 CE),[23] and the Qur'an (c. 610–653).

The figure of Osarseph in Hellenistic historiography is a renegade Egyptian priest who leads an army of lepers against the pharaoh and is finally expelled from Egypt, changing his name to Moses.

In Hecataeus

The earliest existing reference to Moses in Greek literature occurs in the Egyptian history of Hecataeus of Abdera (4th century BCE). All that remains of his description of Moses are two references made by Diodorus Siculus, wherein, writes historian Arthur Droge, "he describes Moses as a wise and courageous leader who left Egypt and colonized Judaea."[24]:18 Among the many accomplishments described by Hecataeus, Moses had founded cities, established a temple and religious cult, and issued laws:

After the establishment of settled life in Egypt in early times, which took place, according to the mythical account, in the period of the gods and heroes, the first ... to persuade the multitudes to use written laws was Mneves [Moses], a man not only great of soul but also in his life the most public-spirited of all lawgivers whose names are recorded.[24]:18

Droge also points out that this statement by Hecataeus was similar to statements made subsequently by Eupolemus.[24]:18

In Artapanus

The Jewish historian Artapanus of Alexandria (2nd century BCE), portrayed Moses as a cultural hero, alien to the Pharaonic court. According to theologian John Barclay, the Moses of Artapanus "clearly bears the destiny of the Jews, and in his personal, cultural and military splendor, brings credit to the whole Jewish people."[25]

Jealousy of Moses' excellent qualities induced Chenephres to send him with unskilled troops on a military expedition to Ethiopia, where he won great victories. After having built the city of Hermopolis, he taught the people the value of the ibis as a protection against the serpents, making the bird the sacred guardian spirit of the city; then he introduced circumcision. After his return to Memphis, Moses taught the people the value of oxen for agriculture, and the consecration of the same by Moses gave rise to the cult of Apis. Finally, after having escaped another plot by killing the assailant sent by the king, Moses fled to Arabia, where he married the daughter of Raguel [Jethro], the ruler of the district."[26]

Artapanus goes on to relate how Moses returns to Egypt with Aaron, and is imprisoned, but miraculously escapes through the name of YHWH in order to lead the Exodus. This account further testifies that all Egyptian temples of Isis thereafter contained a rod, in remembrance of that used for Moses' miracles. He describes Moses as 80 years old, "tall and ruddy, with long white hair, and dignified."

Some historians, however, point out the "apologetic nature of much of Artapanus' work,"[27]:40 with his addition extra-biblical details, as with references to Jethro: The non-Jewish Jethro expresses admiration for Moses' gallantry in helping his daughters, and chooses to adopt Moses as his son.[27]:133

In Strabo

Strabo, a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher, in his Geography (c. 24 CE), wrote in detail about Moses, whom he considered to be an Egyptian who deplored the situation in his homeland, and thereby attracted many followers who respected the deity. He writes, for example, that Moses opposed the picturing of the deity in the form of man or animal, and was convinced that the deity was an entity which encompassed everything – land and sea:[22]:1132


35. An Egyptian priest named Moses, who possessed a portion of the country called the Lower Egypt, being dissatisfied with the established institutions there, left it and came to Judaea with a large body of people who worshipped the Divinity. He declared and taught that the Egyptians and Africans entertained erroneous sentiments, in representing the Divinity under the likeness of wild beasts and cattle of the field; that the Greeks also were in error in making images of their gods after the human form. For God [said he] may be this one thing which encompasses us all, land and sea, which we call heaven, or the universe, or the nature of things. ...

36. By such doctrine Moses persuaded a large body of right-minded persons to accompany him to the place where Jerusalem now stands. ...[28]

In Strabo's writings of the history of Judaism as he understood it, he describes various stages in its development: from the first stage, including Moses and his direct heirs; to the final stage where "the Temple of Jerusalem continued to be surrounded by an aura of sanctity." Strabo's "positive and unequivocal appreciation of Moses' personality is among the most sympathetic in all ancient literature." [22]:1133 His portrayal of Moses is said to be similar to the writing of Hecataeus who "described Moses as a man who excelled in wisdom and courage."[22]:1133

Egyptologist Jan Assmann concludes that Strabo was the historian "who came closest to a construction of Moses' religion as monotheism and as a pronounced counter-religion." It recognized "only one divine being whom no image can represent ... [and] the only way to approach this god is to live in virtue and in justice."[29]:38

In Tacitus

The Roman historian Tacitus (ca. 56–120 CE) refers to Moses by noting that the Jewish religion was monotheistic and without a clear image. His primary work, wherein he describes Jewish philosophy, is his Histories (ca. 100), where, according to Murphy, as a result of the Jewish worship of one God, "pagan mythology fell into contempt."[30] Tacitus states that, despite various opinions current in his day regarding the Jews' ethnicity, most of his sources are in agreement that there was an Exodus from Egypt. By his account, the Pharaoh Bocchoris, suffering from a plague, banished the Jews in response to an oracle of the god Zeus-Amun.

A motley crowd was thus collected and abandoned in the desert. While all the other outcasts lay idly lamenting, one of them, named Moses, advised them not to look for help to gods or men, since both had deserted them, but to trust rather in themselves, and accept as divine the guidance of the first being, by whose aid they should get out of their present plight.[31]

In this version, Moses and the Jews wander through the desert for only six days, capturing the Holy Land on the seventh.[31]

In Longinus

The Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, influenced Longinus, who may have been the author of the great book of literary criticism, On the Sublime, although the true author is still unknown for certain. However, most scholars agree that the author lived in the time of Augustus or Tiberius, the first and second Roman Emperors.

The writer quotes Genesis in a "style which presents the nature of the deity in a manner suitable to his pure and great being," however he does not mention Moses by name, but instead calls him "the Lawgiver of the Jews." Besides its mention of Cicero, Moses is the only non-Greek writer quoted in the work, and he is described "with far more admiration than even Greek writers who treated Moses with respect, such as Hecataeus and Strabo.[22]:1140

In Josephus

In Josephus' (37 – c. 100 CE) Antiquities of the Jews, Moses is mentioned throughout. For example Book VIII Ch. IV, describes Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple, at the time the Ark of the Covenant was first moved into the newly built temple:


When King Solomon had finished these works, these large and beautiful buildings, and had laid up his donations in the temple, and all this in the interval of seven years, and had given a demonstration of his riches and alacrity therein; ... he also wrote to the rulers and elders of the Hebrews, and ordered all the people to gather themselves together to Jerusalem, both to see the temple which he had built, and to remove the ark of God into it; and when this invitation of the whole body of the people to come to Jerusalem was everywhere carried abroad, ... The Feast of Tabernacles happened to fall at the same time, which was kept by the Hebrews as a most holy and most eminent feast. So they carried the ark and the tabernacle which Moses had pitched, and all the vessels that were for ministration to the sacrifices of God, and removed them to the temple. ... Now the ark contained nothing else but those two tables of stone that preserved the ten commandments, which God spake to Moses in Mount Sinai, and which were engraved upon them ...[32]

According to Feldman, Josephus also attaches particular significance to Moses' possession of the "cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice." He also includes piety as an added fifth virtue. In addition, he "stresses Moses' willingness to undergo toil and his careful avoidance of bribery. Like Plato's philosopher-king, Moses excels as an educator."[27]:130

In Numenius

Numenius, a Greek philosopher who was a native of Apamea, in Syria, wrote during the latter half of the 2nd century CE. Historian Kennieth Guthrie writes that "Numenius is perhaps the only recognized Greek philosopher who explicitly studied Moses, the prophets, and the life of Jesus ..."[33]:194 He describes his background:


Numenius was a man of the world; he was not limited to Greek and Egyptian mysteries, but talked familiarly of the myths of Brahmins and Magi. It is however his knowledge and use of the Hebrew scriptures which distinguished him from other Greek philosophers. He refers to Moses simply as "the prophet", exactly as for him Homer is the poet. Plato is described as a Greek Moses.[33]:101

In Justin Martyr

The Christian saint and religious philosopher Justin Martyr (103–165 CE) drew the same conclusion as Numenius, according to other experts. Theologian Paul Blackham notes that Justin considered Moses to be "more trustworthy, profound and truthful because he is older than the Greek philosophers."[34] He quotes him:


I will begin, then, with our first prophet and lawgiver, Moses ... that you may know that, of all your teachers, whether sages, poets, historians, philosophers, or lawgivers, by far the oldest, as the Greek histories show us, was Moses, who was our first religious teacher.[34]

Historicity


 


 Memorial of Moses, Mount Nebo, Jordan
The tradition of Moses as a lawgiver and culture hero of the Israelites can be traced to the Deuteronomist source, corresponding to the 7th-century BCE Kingdom of Judah. Moses is a central figure in the Deuteronomist account of the origins of the Israelites, cast in a literary style of elegant flashbacks told by Moses. The mainstream view is that the Deuteronomist relies on earlier material that may date to the United Monarchy, so that the biblical narrative would be based on traditions that can be traced roughly to the 10th century BCE, or about four centuries after the supposed lifetime of Moses. By contrast, Biblical minimalists such as Philip Davies and Niels Peter Lemche regard the Exodus as a fiction composed in the Persian period or even later to give hope of return to Canaan for a Diaspora community, without even the memory of a historical Moses.[35][36] Given this possible late composition it would seem that the figure of Moses may be a composite drawn from a number of different sources.

The question of the historicity of the Exodus (specifically, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, identification of whom would connect the biblical narrative to Egyptological chronology) has long been debated, without conclusive result. There were at least two periods in Egyptian history in which Asiatic Semites were expelled from Egypt. One was associated with the expulsion of the Semitic Hyksos at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. The second was following the commencement of the reign of Setnakhte at the end of the 19th Dynasty. Manetho seems to confuse the two, for instance, in a distorted account reported in Josephus, he supposedly states that Moses was originally Osarseph, a renegade priest, who led a band of lepers out of Avaris (referred to as Raamses in the Bible).(Exodus 1:11) Osarseph, may be a memory of a shadowy visier, originally from Syria (Hurru), known as Yursu (self-made), who came to prominence as Chancellor Bay just prior to the second event. Pi Ramesses may be the "store city" Raamses mentioned in Exodus, which was the capital of the Egyptian Empire in the 19th to end of the 20th Dynasty of Egypt, giving quite a specific date to the Egyptian part of Exodus.

Some scholars, like Kenneth Kitchen and Frank Yurko suggest that there may be a historical core beneath the Exodus and Sinai traditions, even if the biblical narrative dramatizes by portraying as a single event what was more likely a gradual process of migration and conquest. Thus, the motif of "slavery in Egypt" may reflect the historical situation of imperialist control of the Egyptian Empire over Canaan over the period of the Thutmosides down to the revolt against Merenptah and Rameses III, after which it declined gradually during the 12th century under the pressure from the Sea Peoples and the general Bronze Age collapse: Israel Finkelstein points to the appearance of settlements in the central hill country around 1200 as the earliest of the known settlements of the Israelites.[37]

A cyclical pattern to these highland settlements, corresponding to the state of the surrounding cultures, suggests that the local Canaanites combined an agricultural and nomadic lifestyles, particularly under Aramaean and Neo-Hittite influence. When Egyptian rule collapsed after the invasion of the Sea Peoples, the central hill country could no longer sustain a large nomadic population, so they went from nomadism to sedentism.[38] Canaanite refugees from the lowlands seem to have fused with Shasu, nomadic Aramaean elements, using pithoi cisterns for the capture of water, hillside terracing and other elements from the Aegean and Western Anatolian "Peoples of the Sea", living in scattered hamlets and avoding the husbandry of pigs, suggesting a new type of culture in the region.

However, Finkelstein states in the same book that at the earlier time proposed by most scientists for the Exodus, based upon the Biblical chronology 400 years prior to the reign of King David, Egypt was at the peak of its glory, with a series of fortresses guarding the borders and checkpoints watching the roads to Canaan. That means an exodus of the scale of over 600,000 soldiers described in the Torah would have been impossible.[39] This implies a total civilian population, with women and children, of over a million, which would have numbered between a third and a half of the total Egyptian population at the time.

While the general narrative of the Exodus and the conquest of the Promised Land may be remotely rooted in historical events, the figure of Moses as a leader of the Israelites in these events cannot be substantiated.[40][41][42][43] William Dever agrees with the Canaanite origin of the Israelites but allows for the possibility of some immigrants from Egypt among the early hilltop settlers, leaving open the possibility of a Moses-like figure in Transjordan ca 1250-1200.[44]

Martin Noth holds that two different groups experienced the Exodus and Sinai events, and each group transmitted its own stories independently of the other one, writing that "The biblical story tracing the Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan resulted from an editor's weaving separate themes and traditions around a main character Moses, actually an obscure person from Moab."[45] Given the existence of a Moabite king Mesha, etymologically identical to the Hebrew Moshe, it is possible that there was a memory of a culture hero who was associated with the end of Egyptian influence at Timna during the late Bronze Age.[46]

The "Kenite hypothesis", originally suggested by Cornelius Tiele in 1872, supposes that the figure of Moses is a reflection of a historical Midianite priest of Yahweh, whose cult was introduced to Israel from southern Canaan (Edom, Moab, Midian) by the Kenites. This idea is based on an old tradition (recorded in Judges 1:16, 4:11) that Moses' father-in-law was a Midianite priest of Yahweh, as it were preserving a memory of the Midianite origin of the deity. While the role of the Kenites in the transmission of the cult is widely accepted, Tiele's view on the historical role of Moses finds less support in modern scholarship.[47]

William Albright held a more favorable view towards the traditional views regarding Moses, and accepted the essence of the biblical story, as narrated between Exodus 1:8 and Deuteronomy 34:12, but recognized the impact that centuries of oral and written transmission have had on the account, causing it to acquire layers of accretions.[45]

Recently Aidan Dodson,[48] M. Georg[49] and R. Krauss[50] all suggest that the story of Moses as a Prince of Egypt may contain a distorted memory of Pharaoh Amenmesses. In texts written after his disappearance Amenmesses "was explicitly denied any royal status – being simply 'Mose' and perhaps also 'enemy'. … Indeed, it has been suggested that Amenmesses' memory has survived in a far more universal way, in that his career was transmogrified into the Old Testament story of Jewish law-giver, Moses." Dodson concludes "… this connection is beyond proof and such a survival of Amenmesses into world consciousness remains but an intriguing possibility".

Tablets of the Law

There is a wealth of stories and additional information about Moses in the Jewish apocrypha and in the genre of rabbinical exegesis known as Midrash, as well as in the primary works of the Jewish oral law, the Mishnah and the Talmud. Moses is also given a number of bynames in Jewish tradition. The Midrash identifies Moses as one of seven biblical personalities who were called by various names.[54] Moses' other names were: Jekuthiel (by his mother), Heber (by his father), Jered (by Miriam), Avi Zanoah (by Aaron), Avi Gedor (by Kohath), Avi Soco (by his wet-nurse), Shemaiah ben Nethanel (by people of Israel).[55] Moses is also attributed the names Toviah (as a first name), and Levi (as a family name) (Vayikra Rabbah 1:3), Heman,[56] Mechoqeiq (lawgiver)[57] and Ehl Gav Ish (Numbers 12:3).[58]

Jewish historians who lived at Alexandria, such as Eupolemus, attributed to Moses the feat of having taught the Phoenicians their alphabet,[59] similar to legends of Thoth. Artapanus of Alexandria explicitly identified Moses not only with Thoth / Hermes, but also with the Greek figure Musaeus (whom he called "the teacher of Orpheus"), and ascribed to him the division of Egypt into 36 districts, each with its own liturgy. He named the princess who adopted Moses as Merris, wife of Pharaoh Chenephres.[60]

Ancient sources mention an Assumption of Moses and a Testimony of Moses. A Latin text was found in Milan in the 19th century by Antonio Ceriani who called it the Assumption of Moses, even though it does not refer to an assumption of Moses or contain portions of the Assumption which are cited by ancient authors, and it is apparently actually the Testimony. The incident which the ancient authors cite is also mentioned in the Epistle of Jude.

To Orthodox Jews, Moses is called Moshe Rabbenu, `Eved HaShem, Avi haNeviim zya"a: "Our Leader Moshe, Servant of God, Father of all the Prophets (may his merit shield us, amen)".[61] In the orthodox view, Moses received not only the Torah, but also the revealed (written and oral) and the hidden (the `hokhmat nistar teachings, which gave Judaism the Zohar of the Rashbi, the Torah of the Ari haQadosh and all that is discussed in the Heavenly Yeshiva between the Ramhal and his masters). He is also considered the greatest prophet.[62]

Arising in part from his age, but also because 120 is elsewhere stated as the maximum age for Noah's descendants (one interpretation of Genesis 6:3), "may you live to 120" has become a common blessing among Jews.

Christianity


 


 Moses appeared at the Transfiguration of Jesus
For Christians, Moses—mentioned more often in the New Testament than any other Old Testament figure—is often a symbol of God's law, as reinforced and expounded on in the teachings of Jesus. New Testament writers often compared Jesus' words and deeds with Moses' to explain Jesus' mission. In Acts 7:39–43, 51–53, for example, the rejection of Moses by the Jews who worshiped the golden calf is likened to the rejection of Jesus by the Jews that continued in traditional Judaism.

Moses also figures in several of Jesus' messages. When he met the Pharisee Nicodemus at night in the third chapter of the Gospel of John, he compared Moses' lifting up of the bronze serpent in the wilderness, which any Israelite could look at and be healed, to his own lifting up (by his death and resurrection) for the people to look at and be healed. In the sixth chapter, Jesus responded to the people's claim that Moses provided them manna in the wilderness by saying that it was not Moses, but God, who provided. Calling himself the "bread of life", Jesus stated that He was provided to feed God's people.

Moses, along with Elijah, is presented as meeting with Jesus in all three Gospel accounts of the Transfiguration of Jesus in Matthew 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9, respectively. Later Christians found numerous other parallels between the life of Moses and Jesus to the extent that Jesus was likened to a "second Moses." For instance, Jesus' escape from the slaughter by Herod in Bethlehem is compared to Moses' escape from Pharaoh's designs to kill Hebrew infants. Such parallels, unlike those mentioned above, are not pointed out in Scripture. See the article on typology.

His relevance to modern Christianity has not diminished. Moses is considered to be a saint by several churches; and is commemorated as a prophet in the respective Calendars of Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, and Lutheran churches on September 4.[63] He is commemorated as one of the Holy Forefathers in the Calendar of Saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church on July 30.


Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (colloquially called Mormons) generally view Moses in the same way that other Christians do. However, in addition to accepting the biblical account of Moses, Mormons include Selections from the Book of Moses as part of their scriptural canon.[64] This book is believed to be the translated writings of Moses, and is included in the Pearl of Great Price.[65]

Latter-day Saints are also unique in believing that Moses was taken to heaven without having tasted death (translated). In addition, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery stated that on April 3, 1836, Moses appeared to them in the Kirtland Temple in a glorified, immortal, physical form and bestowed upon them the "keys of the gathering of Israel from the four parts of the earth, and the leading of the ten tribes from the land of the north."[66]

Islam


Moses is mentioned more in the Quran than any other individual and his life is narrated and recounted more than that of any other prophet.[67] In general, Moses is described in ways which parallel the Islamic prophet Muhammad,[68] and "his character exhibits some of the main themes of Islamic theology," including the "moral injunction that we are to submit ourselves to God."

Moses is defined in the Qur'an as both prophet (nabi) and messenger (rasul), the latter term indicating that he was one of those prophets who brought a scripture and law to his people.

Huston Smith (1991) describes an account in the Qur'an of meetings in heaven between Moses and Muhammad, which Huston states were "one of the crucial events in Muhammad's life," and resulted in Muslims observing 5 daily prayers.[69]

Most of the key events in Moses' life which are narrated in the Bible are to be found dispersed through the different Surahs of Qur'an, with a story about meeting Khidr which is not found in the Bible.[67]

In the Moses story related by the Qur'an, Jochebed is commanded by God to place Moses in an ark and cast him on the waters of the Nile, thus abandoning him completely to God's protection.[67][70] Pharaoh's wife Asiya, not his daughter, found Moses floating in the waters of the Nile. She convinced Pharaoh to keep him as their son because they were not blessed with any children.

The Qur'an's account has emphasized Moses' mission to invite the Pharaoh to accept God's divine message[71] as well as give salvation to the Israelites.[67][72] According to the Qur'an, Moses encourages the Israelites to enter Canaan, but they are unwilling to fight the Canaanites, fearing certain defeat. Moses responds by pleading to Allah that he and his brother Aaron be separated from the rebellious Israelites. After which the Israelites are made to wander for 40 years.[73]

 

In the Baha'i Faith, Moses is considered a messenger from God who is considered equally authentic as those sent in other eras.[74] An epithet of Moses in Baha'i scriptures is Interlocutor of God.[75] Moses is further described as paving the way for Baha'ullah and his ultimate revelation, and a teacher of truth, whose teachings were in line with the customs of his time.


1213  Ramses II dies, in his eighties.

1207  On a stele in Egypt, Pharoah Merenptah memorializes his victories in Canaan. [Authors of the Bible, Fred Glynn.]  

1200  Tribal peoples from Central Asia had been moving westward with their herds, running from droughts. They are pushing other tribal peoples into Asia Minor. Hittites are overrun and begin to disappear as a recognizable people. Waves of illiterate migrants overrun Greece, beginning a "dark age" there. Brown-skinned people begin migrating eastward into Polynesia, to the Tonga and Samoan islands.

1200  The Anasazi, or Ancient Pueblo Peoples, have moved to around where the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico will meet.

1200  In China, aristocrats are concerned with their status and they keep records of their family tree, Common common people had no surnames and no pedigree and did not participate in ancestor worship. Unlike aristocrats, marriage among them was without formality and without state or religious sanction. Aristocrats looked down on this with disdain, but wealthy married men felt free to buy a girl from a commoner family and keep her as a concubine. The father selling his daughter made a little money and may have felt that he was getting rid of another mouth to feed and someone whose labor he did not need. For common people, unlike aristocrats, there were no individualized family surnames. All families in a village might have the same surname.

1177  People in boats, perhaps escaping from invasions into Greece, raid the coast of Egypt and are driven off. They land farther east and are to be known as Philistines.

1050  A century or so after the arrival of the Philistines, Hebrews, occupying hilly regions in the Land of Canaan, combine their forces for the first time and confront an army of Philistines near the Philistine outpost at Aphek, and they lose the battle.

1010  The Hebrew David conquers and subjugates Amorities – also known as Canaanites. David has acquired some Canaanite culture and is a man of his time.

timeline 4000-2001 | timeline

    2000 BC- AFRICA.- The Egyptian Book of the Dead, a collection of ancient Egyptian writings which refer to the afterlife, outlines how one can attain immortality within the Egyptian cosmology.  Little can be said of the work's exact origins.  According to Egyptian scholar Sir E.A.  Wallis Budge, keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum and author of the acclaimed The Book of the Dead (Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, London, 1960), "If the known facts be examined it is difficult not to arrive at the conclusion that many of the beliefs found in the Book of the Dead were either voluntarily borrowed from some nation without [and] introduced into Egypt ...  by some conquering immigrants who made their way into the country from Asia, either by way of the Red Sea or across the Arabian peninsula."  This conclusion was made by interpreting the manner in which burials were made during this ancient period.The oldest known method of burial in Egypt involved placing the bodies of the deceased on their left sides with their heads facing south.  From these pre-dynastic times up to around 640 B.C.E.—which preceded the practice of mummification—preserved corpses were often dismembered in order to economize on space.Since antiquity, the development of writing, along with a growing concern about immortality, helped catalogue and refine the religious beliefs contained in The Book of the Dead.  These beliefs were formally drafted during the eighteenth-century dynasty (2000-1500 B.C.E.) Before that time, as far back as the first dynasty (3500-3000 B.C.E.), the prayers, words and ceremonies were recited by memory.The creeds taught in The Book of the Dead are said to have come from the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, whose brother, the god-man, was king Osiris.  After Osiris was killed and mutilated by his brother, Set, by way of instructions from the god Thoth, his sisters embalmed his body and covered it with amulets to protect it from all harm in the world beyond the grave.  Isis and Nephthys, before interring the body, also recited a magical formulae, an intricate song/chant, endowing Osiris with everlasting life.  In so doing, the sisters embraced and performed the most important ceremony in The Book of the Dead, the guide to immortality.  As a result, Osiris was miraculously brought back to life.  The central claim of the writings is that through closely following the prescribed rituals—by means of reciting magical names and words during the ceremonies—the departed dead will be protected from calamities of every kind.The numerous individual chapters of The Book of the Dead are collectively titled the "Chapters of Coming Forth by Day."  These chapters have been meticulously composed, outlining all knowledge necessary to ensure salvation for the dead.  Down through the myriad dynasties, the chapters were re-edited into various "Recensions" which, over the centuries, were then combined in three "entities."  The Helopolitan Recension, for example, used during the fifth and sixth dynasties, is found inscribed in hieroglyphs inside pyramids of this period.  The Theban Recension was written on papyrus and painted on sarcophagi (coffins) from the 18th to the 22nd Dynasties.  The beliefs and customs of succeeding generations contributed to the construction of these various revisions (Recensions), believed to be divine in origin.Text Overview:The life and example set by the legendary god-man Osiris is the key to the entire Book of the Dead.  It was universally believed that Osiris was of divine origin, a man sent down to live on earth in a material body.  Not much is known of his life, but following his death, Osiris' body "neither decayed nor rotted away."  The Book of the Dead tells of the joy to be had (represented by the rejuvenation of the physical body) in the afterlife:I shall live, I shall live.  I shall grow, I shall grow.  I shall wake up in peace; I shall not putrefy; my intestines shall not perish; I shall not suffer from every defect; mine eye shall not decay, the form of my visage shall not disappear; mine ear shall not become deaf; my head shall not be separated from my neck; my tongue shall not be carried away; my hair shall not be cut off; and no baleful injury shall come upon me.  My body shall be [restored] and it shall neither fall into decay or be destroyed upon this earth.The goddess Nut, guardian of heaven, was specifically given the task of bolstering and strengthening the body in the world beyond the grave:Make ye me strong!  The goddess Nut hath joined together the bones of my neck and back, even as they were in the time that is past ...Untold generations lived and died patterning themselves after Osiris, the "king of eternity, the lord of the everlasting, who passeth through millions of years in his existence."  As it is written:The dead rise up to see thee, Osiris, they breathe the air and they look upon thy face when the disk riseth on its horizon; their hearts are at peace inasmuch as they behold thee, O thou who art Eternity and Everlastingness.Most of the facsimiles depicting Osiris' mummified image show him wearing a white crown and holding a snake-like staff, emblematic of sovereignty and dominion.  At times, however, he is represented wearing ordinary vestment.  This dual-garbed corpse implies that individual dead should be buried in whatever clothing would befit the activities they will enjoy in the afterworld.  Provisions such as gifts and food were placed in the coffin to accompany and accommodate the needs of the deceased, as he journeyed to join his soul with Osiris, or the divine sun god Ra: Ra receiveth thee, soul in heaven, body in earth ...  Thine essence is in heaven, thy body is in the earth ...  Thy soul is in heaven before Ra, thy double hath that which should be given unto it with the gods, thy spiritual body is glorious among the spirits of fire, and thy material body [the khat] is established in the underworld [grave].Egyptians believed that, rising from the body's entombed remains, a spiritual body would emerge; like a butterfly surfacing from a cocoon, the dead body would metamorphose into a glorious being or essence, becoming like that of Osiris or Ra—a perfected form that would enable the person to drive away evil.  Osiris would then reward the beautified, mummified dead by bestowing upon them his own spiritual form, the immortal body, called sahu.Apart from the sahu was the ka, or "double," an abstract individuality possessing the attributes of the person to whom it belonged that could roam about at will:  May my soul come forth and walk hither and thither and whithersoever it pleaseth.  Only by way of a double could the dead partake of the food that had been prepared for the meandering journey across the river tuot, beyond which lay the kingdom of the dead.The ba, or combined heart and soul, was connected to the ka; this essence of being often lived with either Ra or Osiris in heaven.  The ba was said to assume both a material and an immaterial form, and was able to fly and bring air and food to the mummified body.  The ab, or heart, was closely associated with the soul, embodying the source of good and evil in humankind.  It was also believed to be the center of the spiritual feeling and thought.  The khaibit, or shadow, also had an existence outside the body and could go wherever it pleased.  In all ways, the dead not only hoped to be free from earth's chains—protected, again, through magical words, chants, and rites from Rerek, serpent of the underworld, and his evil followers—but also to become as Osiris, protected from all evil:...  Get thee back, thou crocodile-fiend Sui; thou shalt not advance to me, for I live by reason of the magical words which I have by me ...  O keep not captive my soul, O keep not ward over my shadow, but let a way be opened for my soul and for my shadow, and let them see the Great God in the shrine of the day of the judgement of souls, and let them recite the utterances of Osiris, whose habitations are hidden, to those who guard the members of Osiris, and who keep ward over the spirits, and who hold captive the shadows of the dead who would work evil against me.The khu, or spiritual soul, seems to have been regarded as an ethereal being connected with the ba or heart-soul.  Other bodies included sekhem, a person's power or vital force; ren, a person's "other," secret name, a key word that was to be preserved in the heavens and used as a password to enter in; and the sahu, the spiritual body which sprang from the material body.  Each of these bodies awaited judgement in the Judgement Hall of Osiris.  Soon after death, those who were condemned in judgement for having wrought evil works were devoured by the Eater of the Dead, and ceased to exist.  Those not condemned, having performed "good acts," were spared being consumed and took their place next to Osiris and Ra, where they enjoyed everlasting life and happiness in conjunction with Ra and Osiris:  I am crowned king of the gods, I shall not die a second time in the Other World ...  [My wish is that] I may be as Osiris, greatly favored of the beautiful god, and beloved of the lord of the world.Another key component affecting the happiness of the dead were the magical formulae included in the funereal ceremonies.  These formulae consisted, in part, of repeatedly chanting the names of specific gods and other supernatural beings.  Every phrase spoken was followed by either a prayer—thereby bringing about a good effect— or a curse—a way to bring about harm to an insulted object.  Good words were inscribed on amulets and wax human figures (representing persons the living wished to influence); these charms gave them power to carry out good acts on behalf of loved ones.  Conversely, bad words were meant to bring evil down upon evil individuals.  If a foe approached by ship, for instance, the right words and acts directed upon an amulet or wax person were said to sink the vessels and drown the enemy.  On the other hand, if a person wished to dream of a certain goddess in order to converse with her, he or she must fashion a female wax figure embodiment and recite certain words in sequence, thus bringing the dream down from the heavens.Most importantly, throughout the eternities these magical formulae were fundamental to ensuring that the soul of the departed would take its place beside Ra and Osiris, there to possess a life of happiness ever after.The various renderings of The Book of the Dead—a figurative "songbook" to the Gods, an intricate appeal to immortals to bestow the blessings of immortality, and a praise to the all-powerful god-humans who protect all human souls—were the lifeblood of Egyptian worship.  This life, to them, was a mere step toward the afterlife.  And for the Egyptian living, it was an esteemed wish to live with the gods when death finally came:May my name be proclaimed, and may it be found upon the board of the table of offerings ...  may there be made ready for me a seat in the boat of the Sun on the day when the god goeth forth; and may I be received into the presence of Osiris in the land of victory.

____________________________________________________________
    2000 Domestication of llamas and alpacas in PERU. Lake Titicaca and Junin.
    Domestcation of the dromedary in Arabia.
    Domestican of the Bactrian in Iran and Turkestan.

2000    Mummies have been found in Central Asia! Though these curious Caucasian mummies in the deserts of western China were first discovered by Western archaeologists in the early 20th century, they were considered anomalies---perhaps just ancient travelers or immigrants. Over the past   thirty years Chinese archeologists have unearthed hundreds more of these mummified Caucasoids (as well as abundant skeletal remains amounting to  thousands of ancient individuals) in the Tarim basin of Central Asia. The Tarim is in the huge Taklamakan desert in the western Chinese province of  Xinjiang, formerly known as eastern Turkestan. Today the ancient Chinese texts which speak of legendary tall people with  red hair and green eyes (formerly denigrated as mere "myths") are being  reinterpreted. They are not just imaginary tales as has been assumed until  recently, but they tell of the very real Tocharian-branch Indo-European  people, relatives of the Celts and Scythians, who possibly controlled the Silk Road during Middle and Egyptian New Kingdom times, and down to the Classical Greek era. They certainly would have been involved in the  transmission of technology and culture between East and West at a very  early date.The time span of the Central Asian Caucasoids is from 2500 BC to 400

        The Scythians' centers of culture revolved around sacred initiation and  burial sites. They sometimes conquered and plundered major city-states and kingdoms (notably of China and Mesopotamia, and even fought with the New Kingdom Egyptians). They, and their descendants, held sway throughoutcentral Asia for over 2,500 years (probably from 2100 BC to ca. 1000 AD)until the rise of the Mongols.
        They generally spurned agriculture and permanent construction or architecture. Their nomadic herding culture was horse-centered and they  exploited abundant natural surface deposits of gold. The impressive  Scythian burials nearly always contain gold artifacts and ornaments (if they have not been plundered previously when excavated).Another very similarly tattooed frozen body was discovered nearby at Ukok in 1994, this one a twenty-five year old woman, a "warrior-priestess" who had several tattoos in an identical style. Buried in splendor with her  horse, this woman seems to have been a living archetype of Epona, the  Euro-Celtic horse-goddess. One of her tattoos is so similar to one of the chieftan's as to have been applied by the same artist, or one working from the same pattern. Considering that possibility is what makes the following real interesting:The Scythians used the first transfer patterns, 2500 years ago. Close  scrutiny of a felt silhouette cut-out from Pazyryk, found by Rudenko in 1947, reveals it to be an identical match with one of the tattoos on the  famous warrior found the same year. [Felt artifact published in The Ancient Art of Northern Asia This ram with reversed hind-quarters (considered a Scythian artistic  convention to represent a dead animal) is on his upper right arm. No doubt  the felt was impregnated with vegetable dye, applied and allowed to stain  the skin with the image by direct wet transfer. This pattern making craft  is seen today in the Chinese folk art of paper cut silhouettes, many of  which are still represent the ever popular animal motifs. The felt silhouette was found in the same mound as the tattooed chief.Another very important fact about the tattooed chieftan is that his penis was tattooed. The Soviets never published this information, but it was  revealed by one Russian archaeologist from that dig in a private conversation with a very diligent and highly respected American  researcher, an expert on the Scythians. There are no pictures of his penile unit unfortunately, but Lyle Tuttle assures us that he has seen the mummy and the words "My Name" are tattooed on its prick in Scythian. Sure, Lyle. 

    2000     SYRIA. Phillippus Araps, Roman Emperor -detail of Syrian 100 pound note.During the second millennium BC, Syria was occupied successively by Canaanites, Phoenicians, and Arameans as part of the general disruptions and exchanges associated with the Sea Peoples. The Hebrews eventually settled south of Damascus, in the areas later known as Israel and Judah; the Phoenicians settled along the coast of Israel, as well as in the west (Lebanon), which was already known for its cedars. Egyptians, Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Hittites variously occupied the strategic ground of Syria during this period; the land between their various empires being marsh. Eventually, the Persians took Syria as part of their hegemony of Southwest Asia; this dominion was transferred to the Ancient Macedonians after Alexander the Great's conquests and, thence, to the Romans and the Byzantines.In the Roman period, the great city of Antioch (called the Athens of the East at that time) was the capital of Syria and one of the largest cities in the world, with a total estimated population of 500,000. Antioch was one of the major centres of trade and industry in the ancient world. The population of Syria, during the Early Roman Empire, was only exceeded in the 19th century; this, along with its vast wealth, made Syria, in its heyday, one of the most important of the Roman provinces. In the 3rd century Syria was home to Elagabalus, a Roman emperor of the Severan dynasty who reigned from 218 to 222. Elagabalus's family held hereditary rights to the priesthood of the sun god El-Gabal, of whom Elagabalus was the high priest at Emesa (modern Homs) in Syria.

2000    IRAN. The names Ariana (Aryânâ) were used to describe the region where the Iranian Plateau is found.  Dozens of pre-historic sites across the Iranian plateau point to the existence of ancient cultures and urban settlements, centuries before the earliest civilizations arose in nearby Mesopotamia. The Indo-Iranian culture probably originated in Central Asia. The Andronovo culture is strongly suggested as the candidate for the common Indo-Iranian culture ca. 2000 BCE. Proto-Iranians first emerged following the separation of Indo-Iranians, and are traced to the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia. Aryan, (Proto-Iranian) tribes arrived in the Iranian plateau in the third and second millennium BC, probably in more than one wave of emigration. Further separation (due to migration) of Proto-Iranians, into an "Eastern" and a "Western" group, is attested in the form of Avestan, an Eastern Old Iranian language that was used to compose the sacred hymns and canon of Zoroastrian Avesta. And Old Persian, which appears primarily in the
        inscriptions, clay tablets, seals of the Achaemenid era

2000         Abraham migrates from Ur in Mesopotamia.        Israelite origins Abraham, son of Terah, settles in Hebron (Canaan, Palestine).  Abraham is the father of Judaism, Christianity and  Islam.  Jacob takes Hebrews from Canaan to Egypt. Lot is  the  son  of Haran. Nahor is the son of Terah         Abraham as his prophet.  God makes a covenant with Abraham that his posterity would be         a chosen people.  Through Abraham, God promises that a Messiah will come to bless the whole world and redeem humanity from sin.  Following God's injunction, Abraham travels from Ur, in Mesopotamia, to Canaan, the Promised Land. However, Abraham needs to learn certain lessons of faith and obedience.  As a test of faith, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his firstborn son Isaac on the altar.  Just as Abraham is about to sacrifice his son, an angel from God intervenes—Abraham's obedience and faith have been manifest.
    The Land of Israel, known in Hebrew as Eretz Yisrael, has been sacred to the Jewish people since the time of the biblical patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Bible has placed this  period in the early 2nd millennium BCE.  According to the Torah, the Land of Israel was promised to the Jews as their homeland,   and the sites holiest to Judaism are located there. Around the 11th century BCE, the first of a series of Jewish kingdoms and states established rule over the region; these Jewish kingdoms and states ruled intermittently for the following one thousand years.  Between the time of the Jewish kingdoms and the 7th-century Muslim conquests, the Land of Israel fell under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Sassanian, and Byzantine rule   Jewish presence in the region dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE and the resultant large-scale expulsion of Jews. Nevertheless, a continuous Jewish  presence in Palestine was maintained, although the main Jewish population shifted from the Judea region to the Galilee;  the Mishna and part of the Talmud, among Judaism's most important religious texts, were composed in Israel during this period.   The Land of Israel was captured from the Byzantine Empire around 636 CE during the initial Muslim conquests. Control of the region transferred between the Umayyads,  Abbasids,  and Crusaders over the next six centuries, before falling in the hands of the Mamluk Sultanate, in 1260. In 1516, the Land of Israel became a part of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region until the 20th century.

Tobias Conrad Lotter, Geographer. Augsburg, Germany, 1759The Hebrew Bible calls the region Canaan , while the area occupied by Israelites is designated Israel (Yisrael). The name "Land of the Hebrews" , Eretz Ha-Ivrim) is also found, as well as several poetical names: "land flowing with milk and honey", "land that [God] swore to your fathers to assign to you", "Holy Land", "Land of the Lord", and the "Promised Land".The Land of Canaan is given a precise description in (Numbers 34:1) as including all of Lebanon, as well (Joshua 13:5). The wide area appears to have been the home of several small nations such as the Canaanites, Hebrews, Hittites, Amorrhites, Pherezites, Hevites and Jebusites.According to Hebrew tradition, the land of Canaan is part of the land given to the descendants of Abraham, which extends from the Nile to the Euphrates River (Genesis 15:18). This land is said to include an area called Aram Naharaim, which includes Ur Kasdim in modern Turkey, where Abraham's father was born.In Exodus 13:17, "And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt."The events of the Four Gospels of the Christian Bible take place entirely in the Holy Land.In the Qur'an, the term  ("Holy Land", Al-Ard Al-Muqaddasah) [19] is mentioned at least seven times. It is clearly stated in the Qur'an (Chapter 5: 20-21) that the Holy Land was given to the Jewish people: "Moses said to his people: O my people! Remember the bounty of God upon you when He bestowed prophets upon you , and made you kings and gave you that which had not been given to anyone before you amongst the nations. O my people! Enter the Holy Land which God has written for you, and do not turn tail, otherwise you will be losers."   History of Israel, History of Palestine A dwelling unearthed at Tell es-Sultan.  Paleolithic and Neolithic periods (1000000 - 5000 BCE)500,00    PALESTINE. Human  remains found at El-'Ubeidiya, 2 miles (3 km) south of Lake Tiberias date back as early as 500,000 ago. The discovery of the "Palestine Man" in the Zuttiyeh Cave in Wadi Al-Amud near Safad in 1925 provided some clues to human development in the area.In the caves of Shuqba in Ramallah and Wadi Khareitun in Bethlehem, stone, wood and animal bone tools were found and attributed to the Natufian culture 


2000    Judaism.  A religion whose  adherents were mainly Hebrews.  It  is formed in the first millennium BC. The Old Testament is the recompiling of  sacred books, and contains vestiges of animal, plant and spirit worship.  In addition to the worship of the only God  (Jehovah), it is distinguished by its theory of the chosen people, a theory used to encourage nationalism  and to keep believers away from the class struggle. It is characterized by  a belief in the coming of  the Divine Savior (Messiah), in the uselessness of  fighting  against oppression, against the hope of being freed from suffering, and in reaching the most supreme happiness only with the aid of a supernatural power.  It creates in the believers a feeling of their own guilt, of weakness, of insignificance before God. It intimidates believers with hellfire and overwhelms them with a network of mandatory religious observances  and prohibitions.  Some reforms were made in the  XIX century.  The clerics endeavor to bring Judaism into the modern world.  Judaism has been recognized as the official  religion  in Israel, where it is utilized by the bourgeoisie and the clerics to identify with the reactionary theory of Zionism..

2000    bc    PALESTINE.       3'rd millennium BC : The Canaanites were the earliest known inhabitants of Palestine. They became urbanized and lived in city-states, one of which  was Jericho . They developed an alphabet. Palestine's location at the center of routes linking three continents made it the meeting place for religious and cultural influences from Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Asia  Minor. It was also the natural battleground for the great powers of the region and subject to domination by adjacent empires, beginning with Egypt in the 3d millennium BC.

    2000    BC. BANKING.   The first banks were probably the religious temples of the ancient world, and were probably established in the third millennium B.C. Banks probably predated the invention of money. Deposits initially consisted of grain and later other goods including cattle, agricultural implements, and eventually precious metals such as gold, in the form of easy-to-carry compressed plates. Temples and palaces were the safest places to store gold as they were constantly attended and well built. As sacred places, temples presented an extra deterrent to would-be thieves. There are extant records of loans from the 18th century BC in Babylon that were made by temple priests/monks to merchants.By the time of Hammurabi's Code, banking was well enough developedto justify the promulgation of laws governing banking operations. Ancient Greece holds further evidence of banking. Greek temples, as well as private and civic entities, conducted financial transactions such as loans, deposits, currency exchange, and validation of coinage. There is evidence too of credit, whereby in return for a payment from a client, a moneylender in one Greek port would write a credit note for the client who could "cash" the note in another city, saving the client the danger of carting coinage with him on his journey.

        MONEY. Money did not begin with gold coins and evolve into a sophisticated accounting system. It began as an accounting system and evolved into the use of precious metal coins. Money as a "unit of account" (a tally of sums paid and owed) predated money as a "store of value" (a commodity or thing) by two millennia; the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations using these accounting-entry payment systems lasted not just hundreds of years (as with some civilizations using gold) but thousands of years. Their bank-like ancient payment systems were public systems—operated by the government the way that courts, libraries, and post offices are operated as public services today.In the payment system of ancient Sumeria, goods were given a value in terms of weight and were measured in these units against each other. The unit of weight was the "shekel," something that was not originally a coin but a standardized measure. She was the word for barley, suggesting the original unit of measure was a weight of grain. This was valued against other commodities by weight: So many shekels of wheat equaled so many cows equaled so many shekels of silver, etc. Prices of major commodities were fixed by the government; Hammurabi, Babylonian king and lawmaker, has detailed tables of these. Interest was also fixed and invariable, making economic life very predictable.Grain was stored in granaries, which served as a form of "bank." But grain was perishable, so silver eventually became the standard tally representing sums owed. A farmer could go to market and exchange his perishable goods for a weight of silver, and come back at his leisure to redeem this market credit in other goods as needed. But it was still simply a tally of a debt owed and a right to make good on it later. Eventually, silver tallies became wooden tallies became paper tallies became electronic tallies. 
        Aryans begin invasion of Indus Valley

2,000     Bronze Age in Northern Europe.

     Jomon culture flourishes in Japan

2024    Mesopotamia invaded by Amorites and Elamites

    Lettuce cultivated along the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates.
    Black pepper cultivated in Pakistan's Indus valley.

               Civilizations practicing slavery emerge in Asia Minor

    Founding of the Babylonian Kingdom, and its Golden Age under Hammurab                Alphabetic writing, the Sinaitic script

2000    Bronze age- warrior aristocracy

           Polynesian migration

2000- EARLY BIBLE STORIES

2000    BC ENGLAND. Stonehenge, thought to have been erected C.2500-2000  BC  Archaeological evidence indicates that what was later southern Britannia was colonised by humans long before the rest of the British Isles because of its more hospitable climate between and during the various ice ages of the distant past.The first historical mention of the region is from the Massaliote Periplus, a sailing manual for merchants thought to date to the 6th century BC, although cultural and trade links with the continent had existed for millennia prior to this. Pytheas of Massilia wrote of his trading journey to the island around 325 BC.Later writers such as Pliny the Elder (quoting Timaeus) and Diodorus Siculus (probably drawing on Poseidonius) mention the tin trade from southern Britain, but there is little further historical detail of the people who lived there.Tacitus wrote that there was no great difference in language between the people of southern Britannia and northern Gaul and noted that the various nations of Britons shared physical characteristics with their continental neighbours.
 
        Hadrian's Wall viewed from Vercovicium Roman Britain (Britannia)

    2000 BC.    ETHIOPIA Sabaean influence is now thought to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with the Ethiopian civilization of D?mt or some other proto-Aksumite state.After the fall of D?mt in the fourth century BC, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms, until the rise of one of these kingdoms
 
    2000 CHINAThe neolithic Shimao Ruins are believed to be the biggest prehistoric city ruins found in China. The find has had a significant impact in changing historical studies about Chinese civilisation.Located at the northern brim of the Yellow Plateau in Shaanxi Province, an enormous ancient city ruin covers four square kilometres - the largest city ruins found from the Neolithic period in China. The ruins are considered to encompass an imperial city, an inner city and an outer city. Remains of palaces, houses, tombs, sacrificial altars and handicraft workshops are scattered around the site. The Neolithic Shimao Ruins are believed to be the biggest prehistoric city ruins found in China. The dig began in 2011, and archaeologists have made discoveries dating back over 4,000 years, redefining China's history of building city walls. Jade knives and other objects have also been unearthed."Defences built alongside the city walls were thought to date back to the Spring and Autumn period, in the 5-8 century BC. But this discovery has redefined that history," said Sun Zhouyong, a researcher at Shaanxi Archaeology and Research Institute.70 to 80 skulls from young women have also been found. It is believed they were killed and subsequently buried in a mass grave here. "The skulls show signs of being hit and burned. This collective burial might also have something to do with the founding ceremony of the city," Sun said.The Shimao city ruins will go down in history as one of the definitive archaeological finds of the century thus far. Its significance cannot be underestimated, as it redefines previous studies on the Chinese civilisation.

              The Neolithic Shimao Ruins are believed to be the biggest prehistoric city  ruins found in China.

      Rare painted bronze ware excavated in central China 2013-07-16
      Ancient Chinese grains unearthed, possibly 2,000 years old  2013-07-15
     Fragment of 4,500-year-old sphinx raises questions 2013-07-12
      Carved symbols in Zhejiang date back 5,000 years 2013-07-11
 
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1950    Sesostris I of Egypt invades Canaan end of Empire of Ur

1925    the Hittites conquer Babylon
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1860    Construction of Stonehenge begins in Britain
1830    First dynasty of Babylonian kings

1800-                - The origins of Ancient Greek civilization  Bernal rejects the theory that Greek civilization was founded by Aryan settlers from Central Europe; that theory (which Bernal calls the Aryan model) became generally accepted during the 19th century. Bernal defends instead what he calls the Ancient model; the name refers to the fact that both Egyptian and Phoenician influences on the Greek world were widely accepted in Antiquity.Bernal discusses Aeschylus's play The Suppliants, which describes the arrival in Argos from Egypt of the Danaids, daughters of Danaus. Cadmus was believed to have introduced the Phoenician alphabet to Greece. Herodotus also mentions Eastern influences.Thucydides did not, which Bernal explains with his  wish to set up a sharp distinction between Greeks and barbarians. Plutarch attacked Herodotus' view that the Greeks had learned from barbarians. Yet Alexander the Great was very interested in Egypt; Plutarch himself wrote a work On Isis and Osiris, part of the Moralia, which is major source on Egypt. Admiration for Egypt was widespread in the Hellenistic and Roman civilizations, especially in the Neoplatonic school. Hermeticism was based on writings attributed to Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus, the so-called Hermetica or Hermetic corpus. These pro-Egyptian currents influenced Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as Renaissance figures such as Copernicus, Ficino and Giordano Bruno. Demonstrated in 1614 that the Hermetic corpus was not very ancient at all and originated in late antiquity, though more recent scholarship has established that parts of it do probably have a Pharaonic origin. Casaubon's textual analysis partly discredited the Hermetic corpus, but Bernal maintained that respect for Ancient Egypt survived and contributed to the Enlightenment in the 18th century. The Freemasons are particularly relevant.Bernal traces thus the influence from the Ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians to the Ancient Greeks, and a tradition of acknowledgement of those links from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. Bernal uses linguistic evidence to support his claim of a link between Ancient Greece and earlier Egyptians and Phoenicians civilizations. It is widely accepted that the Classical Greek language arose from the Proto-Greek language with influences from the Anatolian languages that were spoken nearby, and the culture is assumed to have developed from a comparable amalgamation of elements.However, Bernal emphasizes African elements in Ancient Near Eastern culture and denounces the alleged Eurocentrism of 19th and 20th century research, including the very slogan "Ex Oriente Lux" of Orientalists which, according to Bernal, betrays "the Western appropriation of ancient Near Eastern culture for the sake of its own development"  Bernal proposes instead that Greek evolved from the contact between an Indo-European language and culturally influential Egyptian and Semitic languages.[3] He cites many examples of Egyptian or Semitic roots for Greek words, including some words with currently accepted Indo-European etymologies. Bernal places the introduction of the Greek alphabet (unattested before 750 BC) between 1800 and 1400 BC, and the poet Hesiod in the tenth century.The ideologies of classical scholarship The first volume of Black Athena describes in detail how the Ancient model acknowledging Egyptian and Phoenician influences on Greece came under attack during the 18th and 19th centuries. Bernal concentrates on four interrelated forces: the Christian reaction, the idea of progress, racism and Romantic Hellenism. The Christian reaction. Already Martin Luther had fought the Church of Rome with the Greek Testament. Greek was seen as a sacred Christian tongue which Protestants could plausibly claim was more Christian than Latin. Many French students of Ancient Greece in the 17th century were brought up as Huguenots.The study of Ancient Greece especially in Protestant countries created an alliance between Greece and Protestant Christianity which tended to exclude other influences.The idea of progress. The antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia had previously made those civilizations particularly worthy of  admiration, but the emergence of the idea of progress portrayed later civilizations as more advanced. Earlier cultures came to be seen as based on superstition and dogmatism.Racism. European colonialism gradually increased the self-awareness of Europeans as whites. Egyptians were black and Phoenicians came to be seen as Semitic people, and therefore akin to Jews. Ancient Greeks could be perceived as whites. Romantics saw humans as essentially divided in national or ethnic groups. The German philosopher Herder encouraged Germans to be proud of their origins, their language and their national characteristics or national genius. Romantics longed for small, virtuous and "pure" communities in remote and cold places: Switzerland, North Germany and Scotland. When considering the past, their natural choice was Greece. The Philhellenic movement led to new archaeological discoveries as well contributing to the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman empire. Most Philhellenes were Romantics and Protestants.The book also ignited a debate in the academic community.. The claims made in Black Athena were heavily questioned inter alia in Black Athena Revisited (1996), a collection of essays edited by Mary Lefkowitz and her colleague Guy MacLean .  Edith Hall compares Bernal's thesis to the myth of the Olympian gods overwhelming the Titans and Giants, thought of as a historical recollection of Homo sapiens taking over from Neanderthal man. Others have challenged the lack of archaeological evidence for Bernal's thesis.  Egyptologist James Weinstein points out that there is very little evidence that the ancient Egyptians were a colonizing people in the third millennium and second millennium BC.[10] Furthermore, there is no evidence for Egyptian colonies of any sort in the Aegean world.
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1792     - c. 1750 BCReign of Hammurabi in BabylonThe Code of Hammurabi includes laws governing banking operations. c. 1200 BCCowries used as money in China.   The Chinese character for "money" originally represented a cowrie shell.  Cowries have been used as money in many different places at different  periods. In parts of Africa they were used for this purpose as recently as  the middle of the 20th century.

    170 BC. In general, the Code of Hammurabi established the law as a force much like William Blake's "tyger" in "Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright": it has a "fearful symmetry." How many times have you heard the phrase, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"? That is shorthand for these sections of the Code of Hammurabi: 196. If a man has knocked out the eye of a patrician, his eye shall be knocked out. . . . 200. If a patrician has knocked out the tooth of a man that is his equal, his tooth shall be knocked out. The Code of Hammurabi explicitly set separate laws for patricians, a/k/a the 1%, and plebians, a/k/a the 99%. Patricians enjoyed the full protection of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Plebians did not.  198. If [a man] has knocked out the eye of a plebian . . . he shall pay one mina of silver. 199. If he has knocked out the eye of a patrician's servant . . . he shall pay half [of the servant's] value [to the patrician]. . . . 201. If [a patrician] has knocked out the tooth of a plebian, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver. (Today, a mina of silver would be worth about $600.) 202-204. If a man has smitten the privates  of a man higher in rank than he, he shall be scourged with sixty blows of an ox-hide scourge, in the assembly. If a [patrician] has smitten the privates of a patrician of his own rank, he shall pay one mina of silver. If a plebian has smitten the privates of a plebian, he shall pay ten shekels of silver. (A shekel of silver today would be worth about $10.) 209-213. If a man has struck a free woman with child, and has caused her to miscarry, he shall pay ten shekels for her miscarriage . . . . If it be the daughter of a plebian that has miscarried through his blows, he shall pay five shekels of silver. . . . If he has struck a man's maid and caused her to miscarry, he shall pay two shekels of silver.  The law itself becomes a means - a very powerful means - of discrimination. And in many respects, it already is.  The tax code.   Banking law.  Abortion laws. The laws on marriage equality.And whose hands are "the wrong hands"? How about the hands of a gentleman who has never had to dirty his hands at any time during his entire life? A gentleman "to the manor born"? The spiritual heir to Thurston Howell, III?

    1780  BC-  This  period  refers to the time of the writing of the Book of Genesis Terah  takes  his  people out of Mari (Ur, Sumer, Babylonia) to Canaan (Palestine). The Hapiru are the later Hebrews.

1760    Shang Dynasty in China

        AFRICA. Large scale revolts in Egypt of peasants, artesans and slaves. Pharaoh is obliged to abdicate and the large landowners are driven from their palaces.  Mummies of former kings are looted and cast out of tombs and pyramids. Royal granaries and teasure houses are captured and foodstuffs and valuables are distributed among the people. All tax and tribute documents are destroyed. "The earth whirled like a potter's wheel" because the poor take up residnece in the houses of the rich, don their garments and force the lords to work for them.

1730    The Hyksos, a Semitic tribe, begin conquest of Egypt, founding the 15th dynasty.

                      1700-1570    Hyksos enslavement of Egypt

1728    Accession of Hammurabi the great of Babylon, author of code of laws.

1725     to 1600 B.C., AFRICA. Hyksos set up their capital at Avaris in the Nile Delta.  The Hyksos are a nomadic Asian tribe.   Since they have numerous fortified settlements in Palestine, and  scholars believe they must  be either Semites or Hurrians.  The fact that they are skilled in the use of horses and chariots suggests they are a military aristocracy like the Hurrians.  During the first century of Hyksos rule, a new line of Egyptian kings, skilled in the new arts of warfare, arises in Thebes.  At first these Theban kings are vassals of the Hyksos.

        THE ROYAL HOUSE OF THEBES. Zeus (Io) begat Epaphus who had Lybia (Poseidon) . They begat Agenor who had two children, Cadmus (Harmonia)  and Europa (Zeus). Cadmus had five children, Autonoe (begat Actaeon) , Ino(behat Melicertes) , Agave, Semele (begat Dyonisus withZeus)  and Polydorus (begat Labdacus). Agave begat Pentheus, who begat Menoeceus, who begat Creon and Jocasta (Laius) Creon had two children, Menoeceus II and Haemon. Jocasta (Oedipus) had four children, Eteocles, Polyneices, Antigone, and Ismene. Europa (Zeus) begat Rhadamanthus and Minos (Pasiphae).  Minos had four children, Androgeus, Ariadne Phaedra (Theseus) and Catreus. Catreus begat Aerope (Atreus) who who had two children, Agamemnon  (Clytemnestra) and Menelaus (Helen.) Clytemnestra had three children, Orestes, Iphigenia and Electra. Helen begat Hermione. Tantalus (Zeus) had two children, Pelops (Hippodamia) and Niobe.  Pelops had three children, Atreus (Aerope) Thuestes and Pittheus. Thuestes begat Aegystus. Pittheus begat Aethra (Aegeus) who behat Theseus, who begat Hippolitus.

1725 -

1725 BC - Steindorff and Seele begin their history with the Hyksos invasion and the subsequent war of liberation.  The Hyksos, foreign invaders who ruled northern Egypt from about 1725 to 1600 B.C., set up their capital at Avaris in the Nile Delta.  Nobody knows exactly who the Hyksos were.  Since they had numerous fortified settlements in Palestine, however, scholars believe they must have been either Semites or Hurrians.  The fact that they were skilled in the use of horses and chariots suggests they were a military aristocracy like the Hurrians.  In any case, during the first century of Hyksos rule, a new line of Egyptian kings, skilled in the new arts of warfare, arose in Thebes.  At first these Theban kings were vassals of the Hyksos, but by about 1600 B.C.  the Theban ruler Sekenrere rebelled against his Hyksos overlords.  From his mummified remains we know that Sekenrere met a violent end, having sustained blows to his left jaw and forehead, as well as a blow to the head so severe that it fractured his skull, exposing the brain.
Sekenrere's sons, Kamose and Ahmose, carried on a war of liberation against the Hyksos in the city of Avaris and their Nubian allies in the far south.  Kamose, who died young, laid siege to Avaris, but failed to capture it.  The younger son Ahmose succeeded in capturing the city and, once having driven the Hyksos out of the land, in pursuing them to Sharuhen, their stronghold in southern Palestine.  After a three-year siege, Sharuhen fell as well, so that the victory over the Hyksos in Egypt was complete.  Having defeated the Hyksos in the north, Ahmose attacked their Nubian allies, restoring Egyptian rule in the south as well.

                      1730    Hyksos rule Egypt

    1728    Accession of Hammurabi the Great of Babylon, author of the code of laws.
    Leeks cultivated in Babylon.

    1,700PALESTINE. The Jewish Kingdoms of Ancient Judah and Israel  The archeological record indicates that the Jewish people evolved out of native Cana'anite peoples and invading tribes. Some time between about 1800 and 1500 B.C., it is thought that a Semitic people called Hebrews (hapiru) left Mesopotamia and settled in Canaan. Canaan was settled by different tribes including Semitic peoples, Hittites, and later Philistines, peoples of the sea who are thought to have arrived from Mycenae, or to be part of the ancient Greek peoples that also settled Mycenae. According to the Bible, Moses led the Israelites, or a portion of them, out of Egypt. Under Joshua, they conquered the tribes and city states of Canaan. 
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    1600    GREECE. The ancient Greek or Achaean states of the Peloponnesus have reached a high level of development. The largest City-states are Mycenae, Tiryns in Argolis, and Pylos in Messenia.Slavery was practiced. Greeks hold sway through the Balkan peninsula and Aegean islands, including Crete. They carry on a lively trade with Cyprus, Egypt and Phoenicia.

1600    Eighteen allusions to mythic Tiresias, noted by Luc Brisson,  fall into three groups: one, in two episodes, recounts Tiresias' sex-change and his encounter with Zeus and Hera; a second group recounts his blinding by Athena; a third, all but lost, seems to have recounted the misadventures of Tiresias. Tiresias was a prophet of Apollo. According to the mythographic compendium Bibliotheke,  different stories were told of the cause of his blindness, the most direct being that he was simply blinded by the gods for revealing their secrets. An alternate story told by the poet Pherecydes was followed in Callimachus' poem "The Bathing of Pallas"; in it, Tiresias was blinded by Athena after he stumbled onto her bathing naked.  His mother, Chariclo, a nymph of Athena, begged Athena to undo her curse, but the goddess could not; instead, she cleaned his ears,  giving him the ability to understand birdsong, thus the gift of augury. On Mount Cyllene in the Peloponnese,  as Tiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes, he hit the pair a smart blow with his stick. Hera was not pleased, and she punished Tiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children, including Manto, who also possessed the gift of prophecy. According to some versions of the tale, Lady Tiresias was a prostitute of great renown. After seven years as a woman, Tiresias again found mating snakes; depending on the myth, either she made sure to leave the snakes alone this time, or, according to Hyginus, trampled on them. As a result, Tiresias was released from his sentence and permitted to regain his masculinity. This ancient story is recorded in lost lines of Hesiod.  In a separate episode,  Tiresias was drawn into an argument between Hera and her husband Zeus, on the theme of who has more pleasure in sex: the man, as Hera claimed; or, as Zeus claimed, the woman, as Tiresias had experienced both. Tiresias replied "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only."  Hera instantly struck him blind for his impiety. Zeus could do nothing to stop her, but he did give Tiresias the gift of foresight  and a lifespan of seven lives. Stripped of its narrative, anecdotal and causal connections, the mythic figure of Tiresias combines several archaic elements: the blind seer; the impious interruption of a natural rite (whether of a bathing goddess or coupling serpents); serpents and staff (Caduceus); a holy man's double gender (shaman); and competition between deities. Tiresias's background, fully male and then fully female, was important, both for his prophecy and his experiences. Also, prophecy was a gift given only to the priests and priestesses. Therefore, Tiresias offered Zeus and Hera evidence and gained the gift of male and female priestly prophecy. How he obtained his information varied: sometimes, like the oracles, he would receive visions; other times he would listen for the songs of birds, or ask for a description of visions and pictures appearing within the smoke of burnt offerings, and so interpret them. Tiresias makes a dramatic appearance in the Odyssey, book XI, in which Odysseus calls up the spirits of the dead (the nekyia). "So sentient is Tiresias, even in death," observes Marina Warner  "that he comes up to Odysseus and recognizes him and calls him by name before he has drunk the black blood of the sacrifice; even Odysseus' own mother cannot accomplish this, but must drink deep before her ghost can see her son for himself".As a seer, "Tiresias" was "a common title for soothsayers throughout Greek legendary history" (Graves 1960, 105.5). In Greek literature, Tiresias's pronouncements are always gnomic but never wrong. Often when his name is attached to a mythic prophecy, it is introduced simply to supply a personality to the generic example of a seer, not by any inherent connection of Tiresias with the myth: thus it is Tiresias who tells Amphytrion of Zeus and Alcmena and warns the mother of Narcissus that the boy will thrive as long as he never knows himself. This is his emblematic role in tragedy (see below). Like most oracles, he is generally extremely reluctant to offer the whole of what he sees in his visions.

    In Hellenistic and Roman times Tiresias' sex-change was embroidered upon and expanded into seven episodes, with appropriate amours in each, probably written by the Alexandrian Ptolemaeus Chennus, but attributed by Eustathius to Sostratus. Tiresias is presented as a complexly liminal figure, with a foot in each of many oppositions, mediating between the gods and mankind, male and female, blind and seeing, present and future, and this world and the Underworld. Tiresias and Thebes Tiresias appears as the name of a recurring character in several stories and Greek tragedies concerning the legendary history of Thebes. In The Bacchae, by Euripides, Tiresias appears with Cadmus, the founder and first king of Thebes, to warn the current king Pentheus against denouncing Dionysus as a god. Along with Cadmus, he dresses in women's clothing to go up the mountain to worship Dionysus with the Theban women. In Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Oedipus, the king of Thebes, calls upon Tiresias to aid in the investigation of the killing of the previous king Laius. At first, Tiresias refuses to give a direct answer and instead hints that the killer is someone Oedipus really does not wish to find. However, after being provoked to anger by Oedipus' accusation first that he has no foresight and then that Tiresias had had a hand in the murder, he reveals that in fact it was Oedipus himself who had (unwittingly) committed the crime. Outraged, Oedipus throws him out of the palace, but then afterwards realizes the truth. Oedipus had handed over the rule of Thebes to his sons Eteocles and Polynices but Eteocles refused to share the throne with his brother. Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes recounts the story of the war which followed. In it, Eteocles and Polynices kill each other, and Megareus kills himself because of Tiresias' prophecy that a voluntary death from a Theban would save the city. Tiresias also appears in Sophocles' Antigone. Creon, now king of Thebes, refuses to allow Polynices to be buried. His niece, Antigone, defies the order and is caught; Creon decrees that she is to be buried alive. The gods express their disapproval of Creon's decision through Tiresias. However, Antigone has already hanged herself rather than be buried alive. When Creon arrives at the tomb where she is to be interred, his son, Haemon who was betrothed to Antigone, attacks Creon and then kills himself. When Creon's wife, Eurydice, is informed of her son and Antigone's deaths, she too takes her own life. Tiresias and his prophecy are also involved in the story of the Epigoni. Death. Tiresias died after drinking water from the tainted spring Tilphussa, where he was struck by an arrow of Apollo. After his death he was visited in the underworld by Odysseus, to whom he gave valuable advice concerning the rest of his voyage, specifically concerning the cattle of Helios, advice which Odysseus' men did not follow, to their peril. Qe-Ra-Si-Ja At Knossos, in a Late Minoan IIIA context (fourteenth century BC), seven Linear B texts mention an entity, unattested elsewhere as yet, called qe-ra-si-ja and, once, qe-ra-si-jo. If this title had survived the fall of LMIII Crete, then it could have evolved into *Terasias in Doric Greek.My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart,until, in our own despair,against our will,comes wisdomthrough the awful grace of God.

    1600 - by Sophocles I(c. 496 - 406 B.C.)Type of work:Tragic, poetic Greek dramaSetting: Thebes, a city of ancient Greece Principal characters: Oedipus, King of Thebes Jocasta, his mother...  and finally his wifeTeiresias, a blind prophet Creon, Oedipus' brother-in-lawA ChorusPlay Overview: [The original 5th-century B.C. Greek audience was assumed to be familiar with the background of the play.] Laius and Jocasta were King and Queen of the Great City of Thebes. But it had been prophesied that their son would grow up to kill Laius, his own father, and then marry Jocasta, his own mother. Fearing the divination's fulfillment, Laius and Jocasta delivered Oedipus, their infant son, to a servant, with orders that he be killed. The servant bore the babe into the wilderness, but couldn't bring himself to carry out the command. Instead, he turned the child over to a Corinthian herdsman, who in turn passed the little boy on to Polybus, King of Corinth - who adopted him as his own. Oedipus was thus raised to believe that he was the natural son of Polybus.But Oedipus' life began to unravel the day he overheard an oracle repeat to him the unthinkable prophecy: he would someday kill his father and marry his mother. Supposing that Polybus was his real father, Oedipus determined to leave Corinth so as not to remain anywhere near Polybus. In his travels, Oedipus came to a place where three roads converged. There he became caught up in a violent argument with a band of travelers. He managed to kill all but one of his attackers, but remained oblivious to the tragic irony of this triumph: among the men he had slain was Laius, his true father. Later, the oracular prophecies completed their awful and ironic cycle of fulfillment when Oedipus undertook a mission to save Thebes, still acknowledged as his native city, from the predations of a dire female monster, the Sphinx. Of all the unlucky heroes to make the attempt, Oedipus alone was able to answer the riddle that was posed mockingly to all travelers along the Theban roadside by the winged lion-woman: "What goes first on four legs, then on two, and then on three?"  The Sphynx had ravenously devoured all those brave and foolhardy souls who regaled her with exotic answers; but Oedipus, with the simple rejoinder "Man," gained the power to finally destroy her. The grateful populace of the city quickly acclaimed him as King, and in time, he met, fell in love with, and married his own mother, Jocasta. Of course Jocasta had no idea that her new young husband was the son she had sent off to be killed as an infant; nor did Oedipus realize that the loathsome prophecy had now at last been fulfilled.[As the play begins, the story of how Oedipus discovers his "crimes" unfolds.]In Thebes, a dreadful plague had struck. The citizens assembled to appeal to King Oedipus to curb the disease, and Oedipus reassured them that Creon, Jocasta's brother, had gone to Delphi to ask the great Apollo how the plague might be ended.When Creon finally returned, he brought startling news: Apollo had declared that the scourge had come upon the city because the very man who had murdered King Laius years before was now a resident of Thebes. Apollo further swore that the plague would endure until the murderer was exposed and exiled from the city.Oedipus, wholly unaware that he himself was the one who had struck down Laius, vowed to discover the identity of the murderer at all costs:...  Now I reign, holding the power which he had held before me, having the selfsame wife and marriage bed - and if his seed had not met barren fortune, we should be linked by offspring from one mother; but as it was, fate leapt upon his head, [and I shall search] to seize the hand which shed that blood.Oedipus' first step was to call in Teiresias, a blind soothsayer of renowned wisdom. When the King questioned Teiresias as to the identity of Laius' murderer, the prophet first claimed that he did know the man's name, but then hesitated: "I shall never reveal...  I will not hurt you or me." Still Oedipus pressed, and Teiresias finally relented. "You are the slayer whom you seek," he sadly disclosed; "And dreaded foot shall drive you from this land. You who now see straight shall then be blind."Oedipus, furious at the suggestion of his guilt, berated the prophet, who retorted by insisting that Oedipus was yet blind to the truth and would soon learn of his guilt. Oedipus angrily dismissed the sightless old man, accusing him of conspiring with Jocasta's brother, Creon, to overthrow him.Afterwards, Jocasta unfolded to Oedipus the complete circumstances about the earlier prophecy, but maintained that it could not have come to pass - Laius had not been killed by his son, but by a band of robbers "at a place where three roads meet."When Oedipus heard this he was stunned; quietly he told Jocasta how he himself had once killed a man at such a place. For the first time, both mother and son began to suspect that the words of Teiresias might be true.Their suspicions were soon allayed, however, when a messenger arrived from Corinth with the news that Polybus had died. Oedipus and Jocasta were ecstatic; this meant that the whole chain of prophecy was false; since Oedipus had not killed his own father, there was no reason to believe the oracle's contention that he had also slain Jocasta's first husband. But when the king and queen explained their expressions of joy and relief to the messenger, this man imparted some disquieting news: "Oh, you did not know?" he said, in effect. "Polybus was not your natural father: you were adopted. It was said that a Theban herdsman found you as a baby on a hillside. He gave you to me, and I presented you to the childless King Polybus, who adopted you . "Oedipus was horrified by this account, and immediately sent for the herdsman, who told him the full story of the servant and child he had dealt with years before. The now aged servant was then called forth. Naturally, he was reluctant to confess the truth; but urged on by Oedipus, he blurted out the tale of how Jocasta and Laius had ordered him to take their infant son into the country and slay him, and how he had not found the heart to do the deed.At that moment, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place: Oedipus was the infant of whom they spoke; Jocasta, his wife, was also his mother, who had long ago turned him over to be killed; and the man he had slain at the crossroads was none other than his true father. At the awful realization that she had actually been an accomplice to the fulfillment of the holy and terrible prophecy she had so diligently sought to thwart, Jocasta rushed to her room. By the time Oedipus broke down the heavily bolted doors, it was too late: he saw his wife - his mother - "hung by her neck, from twisted cords, swinging to and fro." In agony, Oedipus cut down her body, tore the broaches from her clothes, and with them, put out his eyes, screaming,No more shall you behold the evils I have suffered and  done. Be dark from now on, since you saw before, What you should not, and knew not what you should! Miserable and repentant, Oedipus was led out of Corinth into exile by Creon, who became king in his stead. And the merciless Theban plague at last came to an end.Commentary:It would be hard to find a play that has been more universally praised than Oedipus Rex ("King Oedipus"). Aristotle considered it the model tragedy, and that opinion has been widely held to the present day. No drama before or since has managed to so successfully combine a rapid, compelling plot, superb characterization, and elegant poetry into  such a tight bundle.The tragedy of Oedipus Rex is not so much that Oedipus commits two horrible crimes; after all, he was fated to do so, and committed them unknowingly. It is, rather, that he, like his doomed parents before him, ran headlong into the destiny he was trying to defy, and then compounded his evils by his imperious refusal to believe the prophet's declaration of his guilt. Pride was his downfall. The Greeks had a distinct word for this: "Hubris," a heroically foolish defiance; the feeling that one is beyond the reaches of authority or convention.Oedipus Rex is notable for its use of dramatic irony: everybody in the audience knows from the start that Oedipus himself is the guilty party he seeks out for punishment. The viewers' enjoyment comes as they see and hear the facts accumulate, bit by bit, until it suddenly dawns on Oedipus that he is his father's murderer. The irony is heightened by blind Teiresias' many tauntings and the chorus' musical references to "seeing the light." Oedipus, though his physical eyes can see, is blind to the truth; and when he finally does come to see the truth, ironically, he blinds himself.The first and final - and most tragic and triumphant - irony, however, lies in the implicit acknowledgment that the very quality of Hubris (Oedipus' arrogance in defying cosmic and priestly authority, fate and prophecy) is the same quality that enabled him to earlier confront and defeat the Sphinx and to save an oppressed city. Oedipus, then, is a hero who pits his pride against both gods and fate in the mold of Prometheus (whose downfall was caused by his sharing the gift of fire with man) and another heroine, Cassandra, who was cursed with the blessing of prophecy. And indeed, most Greek dramas carry this theme of human paradox. Perhaps the symbolism of the Sphinx, who haunts the background of Oedipus Rex with her simple yet terrible riddle, says all that is necessary: The true enigma of the universe lies not in any exotic intergalactic phenomenon; the greatest mystery begins and ends with man

1600    AFRICA.  the Theban ruler Sekenrere rebelled against his Hyksos overlords.  From his mummified remains we know that Sekenrere met a violent end, having sustained blows to his left jaw and forehead, as well as a blow to the head so severe that it fractured his skull, exposing the brain. Sekenrere's sons, Kamose and Ahmose, carried on a war of liberation against the Hyksos in the city of Avaris and their Nubian allies in the far south.  Kamose, who died young, laid siege to Avaris, but failed to capture it.  The younger son Ahmose succeeded in capturing the city and, once having driven the Hyksos out of the land, in pursuing them to Sharuhen, their stronghold in southern Palestine.  After a three-year siege, Sharuhen fell as well, so that the victory over the Hyksos in Egypt was complete.  Having defeated the Hyksos in the north, Ahmose attacked their Nubian allies, restoring Egyptian rule in the south as well.
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1500    BC  3500 AGO POLYNESIA. It is thought that roughly 3,500 years ago, the Lapita culture appeared in the Bismarck Archipelago, northwest Melanesia. This culture is argued to have either been developed there or, more likely, to have spread from China/Taiwan. The most eastern site for Lapita archaeological remains recovered so far through archaeology in Samoa is at Mulifanua on Upolu. The Mulifanua site, where 4,288 pottery shards have been found and studied, has a true age of circa 3,000 BP based on C14

1570    Hyksos driven out.
        Temple of Amun at Karnak begun.   
        Beginningbof the New Kingdom in Egypt. Hyksos driven out of the Temple of Amun at Karnak begun.

1570    AFRICA. New Kingdom the Ennead of Heliopolis, whose chief god was Atum or Atum-Rathe Ogdoad of Hermopolis,  where the chief god was Thoth the Khnum-Satet-Anuket triad of Elephantine, whose chief god was Chnum the Amun-Mut-Chons triad of Thebes, whose chief god was Amun. the Ptah-Sekhmet-Nefertem triad of Memphis, unusual in that the gods were unconnected before the triad was formalized, where the chief god was Ptah. A stele depicting two triads of godsOne aspect of ancient Egyptian religion is that deities sometimes played different, and at times conflicting, roles. As an example, the lioness Sekhmet being sent out by Ra to devour the humans for having rebelled against him, but later on becoming a fierce protectress of the kingdom, life in general, and the sick. Even more complex is the roles of Set. Judging the mythology of Set from a modern perspective, especially the mythology surrounding Set's relationship with Osiris, it is easy to cast Set as the arch villain and source of evil. This is wrong, however, as Set was earlier playing the role of destroyer of Apep, in the service of Ra on his barge, and thus serving to uphold Ma'at (Truth, Justice, and Harmony). Origin myths. The Egyptians believed that in the beginning, the universe was filled with the dark waters of chaos. The first god, Re-Atum, appeared from the Water as the land of Egypt appears every year out of the flood waters of the Nile. Re-Atum spat and out of the spittle came out the gods Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture). The world was created when Shu and Tefnut gave birth to two children: Nut (Sky) and Geb (the Earth). Humans were created when Shu and Tefnut went wandering in the dark wastes and got lost. Re-Atum sent his eye to find them. On reuniting, his tears of joy turned into people.Geb and Nut copulated, and upon Shu's learning of his children's fornication, he separated the two, effectively becoming the air between the sky and ground. He also decreed that the pregnant Nut should not give birth any day of the year. Nut pleaded with Thoth, who on her behalf gambled with the moon-god Yah and won five more days to be added onto the then 360-day year. Nut had one child on each of these days: Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus-the-Elder. Osiris, by different accounts, was either the son of Re-Atum or Geb, and king of Egypt. His brother Set represented evil in the universe. He murdered Osiris and himself became the king. After killing Osiris, Set tore his body into pieces, but Isis rescued most of the pieces for burial beneath the temple. Set made himself king, but was challenged by Osiris's son - Horus. Set lost and was sent to the desert. He became the god of terrible storms. Osiris was mummified by Isis and became god of the dead. Horus became the king and from him descended the pharaohs.Another version, this one by Plutarch , states that Set made a chest that only Osiris could fit into. He then invited Osiris to a feast. Set made a bet that no one could fit into the chest. Osiris was the last one to step into the chest, but before he did, Set asked if he could hold Osiris's crown. Osiris agreed and stepped into the chest. As he lay down, Set slammed the lid shut and put the crown on his own head. He then set the chest afloat on the Nile. Isis did not know of her husband's death until the Wind told her. She then placed her son in a safe place and cast a spell so no one could find him. When she searched for her husband, a child told her a chest had washed up on the bank and a tree had grown up. The tree was so straight the king had used it for the central pillar of his new palace. Isis went and asked for her husband's body and it was given to her. The god of the underworld told her that Osiris would be a king, but only in the underworld.
        The ancient Greeks believed that their gods and goddesses were the origins of the Egyptian deities. According to ancient Greek Mythology, during the period of time when the titan Typhon was free to roam the earth, all of the Greek gods except for Hermes and Zeus fled from Greece to Egypt. While in Egypt many of the gods took on the shape or form of animals as a means to hide themselves from the wrath of Typhon. Thus they related, the Egyptian deities were born.
        Death Egypt had a highly developed view of the afterlife with elaborate rituals for preparing the body and soul for an eternal life after death. Beliefs about the soul and afterlife focused heavily on preservation of the body. This was because they believed that the vitality or double, the ka, was still associated with the body after death and it was necessary for the ka to be reunited with the ba, the spirit or soul, to support the akh, hoped to ascend to the heavens and take its place among the stars. This meant that embalming and mummification were practised, in order to preserve the individual's identity in the afterlife. Originally the dead were buried in shallow pits in the searing hot sand, at times wrapped in reed mats, which caused the remains to dry quickly, preventing decomposition. Later, they started constructing subterranean tombs with wood or sun-baked bricks, and a process of mummification was developed around the Fourth Dynasty, mostly for the benefit of the pharaohs and their relatives. Most inner organs were removed through an incision in the abdomen, while the brain was scooped out through a nostril after breaking the thin bone encasing it. The cavities were washed and packed with natron, then the whole body was covered in natron and left to dry. Since it was a stoneable offense to harm the body of the Pharaoh, even after death, the person who made the incision in the abdomen with a rock knife was ceremonially chased away and had rocks thrown at him.After removing the natron, the bodies were coated inside and out with resin to preserve them, then wrapped with linen bandages, embedded with religious amulets and talismans. In the case of royalty, the mummy was usually placed inside a series of nested coffins, the outermost of which was a stone sarcophagus. The intestines, lungs, liver, and the stomach were preserved separately and stored in canopic jars protected by the four sons of Horus. The heart was left in place because it was thought to be the home of the soul. The standard length of the mummification process was seventy days. If during the Old Kingdom embalmment was reserved for a selected few, it became available to wider sections of society as time went by. Animals were also mummified, sometimes thought to have been pets of Egyptian families, but more frequently or more likely, they were the representations of deities. The ibis, crocodile, cat, Nile perch, falcon, and baboon can be found in perfect mummified forms. During the Ptolemaic Period, animals were especially bred for the purpose.
        The Book of the Dead was a series of almost two hundred spells represented as sectional texts, songs, and pictures written on papyrus, individually customized for the deceased, which were buried along with the dead in order to ease their passage into the underworld. In some tombs, the Book of the Dead has also been found painted on the walls, although the practice of painting on the tomb walls appears to predate the formalization of the Book of the Dead as a bound text. One of the best examples of the Book of the Dead is The Papyrus of Ani, created around 1240 BC, which, in addition to the texts themselves, also contains many pictures of Ani and his wife on their journey through the land of the dead. After a person dies their soul is led into a hall of judgment in Duat by Anubis (god of mummification) and the deceased's heart, which was the record of the morality of the owner, is weighed against a single feather representing Ma'at (the concept of truth and order). If the outcome is favorable, the deceased is taken to Osiris, god of the afterlife, in Aaru, but the demon Ammit (Eater of Hearts) – part crocodile, part lion, and part hippopotamus – destroys those hearts whom the verdict is against, leaving the owner to remain in Duat. A heart that weighed less than the feather was considered a pure heart, not weighed down by the guilt or sins of one's actions in life, resulting in a favorable verdict; a heart heavy with guilt and sin from one's life weighed more than the feather, and so the heart would be eaten by Ammit. An individual without a heart in the afterlife in essence, did not exist as Egyptians believed the heart to be the center of reason and emotion as opposed to the brain which was removed and discarded during mummification. Many times a person would be buried with a "surrogate" heart to replace their own for the weighing of the heart ceremony.
         The monotheistic period Pharaoh Akhenaten and his family praying to AtenA short interval of monotheism (Atenism) occurred under the reign of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), focused on the Egyptian sun deity Aten. The Aten is typically shown as a sun disk with rays coming out of all sides. Akhenaten built a new capital at Amarna with temples for the Aten. This was a symbolic act as Akhenaten wanted a place of worship for the Aten that was not tainted by the visage of other deities. The religious change survived only until the death of Akhenaten, and the old religion was quickly restored during the reign of Tutankhamun, Akhenaten's son by his wife, Kiya. Tutankhamun and several other post-restoration pharaohs were erased from the history, because they were regarded as heretics.Akhenaten's reasons for religious reform were political. By the time of Akhenaten's reign, the god Amun had risen to such a high status that the priests of Amun had become even more wealthy and powerful than the pharaohs. However, it may be that Akhenaten was influenced by his family members, particularly his wife or mother (Dunham, 1963, p. 4; Mertz, 1966, p. 269). There was a certain trend in Akhenaten's family toward sun-worship. Toward the end of the reign of Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, Aten was depicted increasingly often. Some historians have suggested that the same religious revolution would have happened even if Akhenaten had never become pharaoh at all. This seems unlikely given the violent reaction that followed Akhenaten's death. Many details of Akhenaten's revolution remain a mystery. After the death of Akhenaten, his son, the famous Tutankhamun reinstated the polytheistic (pantheon) religion that was in place before the time of the Aten. After the fall of the Amarna dynasty, the original Egyptian pantheon survived more or less as the dominant religion, until the establishment of Coptic Christianity and later Islam, even though the Egyptians continued to have relations with the other monotheistic cultures (e.g. Hebrews). Egyptian mythology put up surprisingly little resistance to the spread of Christianity, sometimes explained by claiming that Jesus was originally a syncretism based predominantly on Horus, with Isis and her worship becoming Mary and veneration. Horus was born on Decemeber 25th the  birth of the son of the Sun at the winter solstice, born of a virgin, had a star in the East (Sirius). Was adored by three kings, (the three stars in the belt of Orion) was a teacher at age 12. He was baptized and had a ,imistry at 30. He had 12 disciples. He performed miracles, was called lamb of god and the light. Was crucified, dead for three days, and resurrected. 

        In Egyptian myth, Horus gained his authority by being anointed by Anubis, who had his own cult, and was regarded as the main anointer; the anointing made Horus into Horus karast, written in Egyptian as ?r ?rst, "anointed/embalmed Horus".[3] ?rst is a false cognate of Greek chrisma "unguent" whence the title Christos is derived. Tom Harpur of the University of Toronto suggests that Christos was chosen by the Hellenistic Jewish authors of the Septuagint (centered in Alexandria) as a translation of Mašía? because of this similarity. Gerald Massey (1907) compares in particular the embalming of Jesus described in Matthew 26:12 and John 19:39,40 as "making the Christ as the anointed-mummy previous to interment" and refers to Tertullian's claim that the name of the Christians derives from this unction received by Jesus.Worship of Isis, Horus' mother, was a prominent cult, and there exists a proposal that this is the basis of veneration of Mary, and more particularly Marian Iconography. How, or whether or not, the two relate, however, is uncertain.The nativity of Christ is similar in some respects to that of Ra, the Sun, in Egyptian mystery religion. Ra is given virginal birth by Neith, who was impregnated by Kneph, the "breath of life", and who had her fate foretold to her by Thoth. A sound-alike to Mary, similar to the case of krst above, is the title of "beloved", mery, frequently bestowed on Neith. Plutarch states that the Egyptian kneph translates to Greek pneuma, the term for the Holy Spirit. Amenhotep III applied this myth to his wife and the birth of his son, Akhenaten, who was consequently identified as Horus.Since Horus was said to be the sky, it was natural that he soon was considered also to contain the sun and moon. It became said that the sun was one of his eyes and the moon the other, and that they traversed the sky when he, a falcon, flew across it. Thus he became known as Harmerty - Horus of two eyes. Later, the reason that the moon was not so bright as the sun was explained by a new tale, known as the contestings of Horus and Set, originating as a metaphor for the conquest of Upper Egypt by Lower Egypt in about 3000 B.C. In this tale, it was said that Set, the patron of Upper Egypt, and Horus, the patron of Lower Egypt, had battled for Egypt brutally, with neither side victorious, until eventually the deities sided with Horus.A painting of the god Ra-Horakhty wearing the symbol for Wadjet, the cobra sun deity, as a crown - typically the symbol remains, but the names of the deities performing the function change as new cults ariseAs Horus was the ultimate victor he became known as Harsiesis, Heru-ur or Har-Wer ( 'Horus the Great'), but more usually translated as Horus the Elder. In the struggle Set had lost a testicle, explaining why the desert, which Set represented, is infertile. Horus' left eye also had been gouged out, which explained why the moon, which it represented, was so weak compared to the sun. It also was said that during a new-moon, Horus had become blinded and was titled Mekhenty-er-irty ( 'He who has no eyes'), while when the moon became visible again, he was re-titled Khenty-irty ( 'He who has eyes'). While blind, it was considered that Horus was quite dangerous, sometimes attacking his friends after mistaking them for enemies.Ultimately, as another sun god, Horus became identified with Ra as Ra-Herakhty , literally Ra, who is Horus of the two horizons. However, this identification proved to be awkward, for it made Ra the son of Hathor, and therefore a created being rather than the creator. And, even worse, it made Ra into Horus, who was the son of Ra, i.e. it made Ra his own son and father, in a standard sexually-reproductive manner, an idea that would not be considered comprehensible to the Egyptians until the Hellenic era. Consequently Ra and Horus never completely merged into a single falcon-headed sun god.Nevertheless the idea of making the identification persisted as with most of the symbols used in ancient Egyptian religion, and Ra continued to be depicted as falcon-headed. Likewise, as Ra-Herakhty, in an allusion to the Ogdoad creation myth, Horus was occasionally shown in art as a naked boy with a finger in his mouth sitting on a lotus with his mother, Hathor. In the form of a youth, Horus was referred to as Neferhor. This is also spelled Nefer Hor, Nephoros or Nopheros  meaning 'The Good Horus'.In an attempt to resolve the conflict in the myths, Ra-Herakhty was occasionally said to be married to Iusaaset, which was said to be his shadow, having previously been Atum's shadow, before Atum was identified as Ra, in the form Atum-Ra, and thus of Ra-Herakhty when Ra was also identified as a form of Horus. In much earlier myths Iusaaset, meaning: (the) great (one who) comes forth, was seen as the mother and grandmother of all of the deities. In the version of the Ogdoad creation myth used by the Thoth cult, Thoth created Ra-Herakhty, via an egg, and so was said to be the father of Neferhor. Conception. Horus,'Shen rings' in his grasp Isis had Osiris' body returned to Egypt after his death; Set had retrieved the body of Osiris and dismembered it into 14 pieces which she scattered all over Egypt. Thus Isis went out to search for each piece which she then buried. This is why there are many tombs to Osiris. The only part she did not find in her search was the genitals of Osiris which were thrown into a river by Set. She fashioned a substitute penis after seeing the condition it was in once she had found it and proceeded to have intercourse with the dead Osiris which resulted in the conception of Horus the child. [4] Conqueror of Set. By the Nineteenth dynasty, the previous brief enmity between Set and Horus, in which Horus had ripped off one of Set's testicles, was revitalised as a separate tale. According to Papyrus Chester-Beatty I, Set was considered to have been homosexual and is depicted as trying to prove his dominance by seducing Horus and then having intercourse with him. However, Horus places his hand between his thighs and catches Set's semen, then subsequently throws it in the river, so that he may not be said to have been inseminated by Set. Horus then deliberately spreads his own semen on some lettuce, which was Set's favorite food (the Egyptians thought that lettuce was phallic). After Set has eaten the lettuce, they go to the deities to try to settle the argument over the rule of Egypt. The deities first listen to Set's claim of dominance over Horus, and call his semen forth, but it answers from the river, invalidating his claim. Then, the deities listen to Horus' claim of having dominated Set, and call his semen forth, and it answers from inside Set. In consequence, Horus is declared the ruler of Egypt .Brother of Isis. When Ra assimilated Atum into Atum-Ra, Horus became considered part of what had been the Ennead. Since in this version Atum had no wife and produced his children by masturbating de facto, Hathor was easily inserted as the mother of the previously "motherless" subsequent generation of children. However, Horus did not fit in so easily, since if he was identified as the son of Hathor and Atum-Ra in the Ennead, he would then be the brother of the primordial air and moisture, and the uncle of the sky and earth, between which there was initially nothing, which was not very consistent with his being the sun. Instead, he was made the brother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys, as this was the only plausible level at which he could meaningfully rule over the sun and the pharaoh's kingdom. It was in this form that he was worshipped at Behdet as Har-Behedti (also abbreviated Bebti).Since Horus had become more and more identified with the sun since his identification as Ra, his identification as also being the moon suffered, so it was possible for the rise of other moon deities, without complicating the system of belief too much. Consequently, Chons became a new moon god. Thoth, who also had been a moon god, became much more associated with secondary mythological aspects of the moon, such as wisdom, healing, and peace making. When the cult of Thoth arose in power, Thoth was inserted into new versions of the earlier myths, making Thoth the one whose magic caused the semen of Set and Horus to respond--in the tale of the contestings of Set and Horus, for example.Thoth's priests went on to explain how it could be possible that in older myths there were five children of Geb and Nut. They said that Thoth had prophesied the birth of a great king of the gods and so Ra, afraid of being usurped, had cursed Nut with not being able to give birth on any day in the year. In order to remove this curse, Thoth proceeded to gamble with Chons, winning 1/72nd of moonlight from him. Prior to this time in Egyptian history, the calendar had 360 days. The Egyptian calendar was reformed around this time and gained five extra days, so a new version of the myth was used to explain the five children of Nut. 1/72 portion of moonlight for each day corresponded to five extra days, and so the new tale states that Nut was able to give birth to her five children again, one on each of these extra days. Mystery religion. Since recognition of Horus as the son of Osiris was only in existence after Osiris's death, and because Horus, in an earlier guise, was the husband of Isis, in later traditions, it came to be said that Horus was the resurrected form of Osiris. Likewise, as the form of Horus before his death and resurrection, Osiris, who had already become considered a form of creator when belief about Osiris assimilated that about Ptah-Seker, also became considered to be the only creator, since Horus had gained these aspects of Ra.Eventually, in the Hellenic period, Horus was, in some locations, identified completely as Osiris, and became his own Father, since this concept was not so disturbing to Greek philosophy as it had been to that of ancient Egypt. In this form, Horus was sometimes known as Heru-sema-tawy (?r.w sm? t?.wy 'Horus, Uniter of Two Lands').Part of a menat necklace said to depict Hariesis (Horus) extending a sistrum in front of the goddess SekhmetBy assimilating Hathor—who had herself assimilated Bat, who was associated with music and in particular, the sistrum—Isis was likewise, thought of in some areas in the same manner. This particularly happened amongst the groups who thought of Horus as his own father, and so Horus, in the form of the son, amongst these groups often became known as Ihy (alternately: Ihi, Ehi, Ahi, Ihu), meaning "sistrum player", which allowed the confusion between the father and son to be side-stepped. A supplicant depicted on an Egyptian menat necklace is said to depict Hariesis (Horus) extending a sistrum in front of the goddess Sekhmet, an earlier sun deity who also was seen as an aspect of Hathor.The combination of this, now rather esoteric new mythology, with the philosophy of Plato, which was becoming popular on the Merranean shores, lead to the tale becoming the basis of a mystery religion. Many Greeks, and those of other nations, who encountered the faith, thought it so profound that they sought to create their own, modelled upon it, but using their own deities. This led to the creation of what was effectively one religion, which was, in many places, adjusted to reflect, albeit superficially, the local mythology although it substantially adjusted them. The new religion is known to modern scholars as that of Osiris-Dionysus.Images from the temple at Luxor described as associating Amenhotep III's relationship with his wife, Great Royal Wife Tiye by depicting a legend of the birth of Ra, in which (reading from left to right) the ibis-headed Thoth announced to Neith, the primordial waters, that she would become pregnant with Ra (the new king of heaven). In the next image, the impregnation of Neith was achieved by Kneph (on her left) and Hathor (on her right) applying the ankh, thereby leaving Neith "ever virgin". To the right are images of the subsequent birth over a birth brick, as well as the praise raised to the child by Neith's courtiers and fellow deities. The form of Ra at this point was Ra-Amun, who was becoming identified as Horus. The child of Tiye, who consequently is described as being Ra/Horus through this association with the legend, went on to become Akhenaten, when pharaoh.

    1500 BC Los entierros descubiertos por arqueólogos de Egipto y España, pertenecían a dignatarios de dinastía XVII. (Foto: Rusia today)1 0 0 0En la colina de Dra Abu el-Naga, en Luxor, antigua Tebas, en Egipto, fueron descubiertos los entierros de cuatro dignatarios de la dinastía XVII que existió en este país en el Segundo Periodo Intermedio (entre 1800 y 1550 antes de nuestra era).Los entierros descubiertos por arqueólogos de Egipto y España, pertenecían a dignatarios de dinastía XVII. (Foto: Rusia today) Arqueólogos españoles y egipcios, descubrieron recientemente un entierro
perteneciente a cuatro dignatarios de la dinastía XVII, que se realizaron hace tres mil 500 años atrás y que se encontraban en la colina de Dra Abu el-Naga, en Luxor, antigua Tebas, en Egipto.Esta dinastía existió en Egipto en el Segundo Periodo Intermedio (entre 1800 y 1550 antes de nuestra era), época en la que había gran complejidad política debido a que los gobernantes, de origen sirio-palestino en su gran mayoría, no controlaban todo el territorio y el poder efectivo lo ejercían los mandatarios locales.Los enterramientos, fueron descubiertos durante las campañas excavación para
estudiar los restos de la dinastía XVII del Antiguo Egipto y de los primeros
años de la dinastía XVIII, lo que que se enmarcar en el proyecto hispano-egipcio Djehuty, liderado por el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas(CSIC) de España.Sumado a esto, durante esta campaña arqueológica se desenterró el ataúd intacto de un niño que vivió hace unos tres mil 550 años, así como un conjunto de shabtis y linos funerarios de otro niño, el príncipe Ahmose-sapair, que vivió en la transición de la dinastía XVII a la XVIII.Esta serie de hallazgos confirman, según Galán, que la colina de Dra Abu el-Naga, en el extremo norte de la necrópolis de la antigua Tebas, era el cementerio de la familia real de la dinastía XVII y de comienzos de la XVIII, así como de sus principales cortesanos.

1569    BC TURKIC. There were apparently many of the latter. At the end of the Xia Dynasty, about 1569 BC by the Shi Ji's reckoning, the Chinese founded a city, Bin, among the Rong tribe of barbarians. In 1269 the Rong and the Di forced the relocation of Bin. About 1169 the Quanyishi tribe was attacked by the Zhou Dynasty, which in 1159 forced all the barbarians into "the submissive wastes" north of the Jing and Luo Rivers. In 969 BC "King Mu attacked the Dog Rong and brought back with him four white wolves and four white deer ...." The early Turkic peoples believed that shamans could shape-shift into wolves.

    1546    AFRICA.  Ahmose was succeeded by his son Amenhotep I, the first pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty.  Unlike the Egypt of the Old or Middle Kingdom, the Egypt of the New Kingdom was an imperial power with a standing, professional army equipped with chariots, archers and bronze weapons.Amenhotep was succeeded by his son Thutmose I, who is generally regarded as the founder of the Egyptian Empire and the first pharaoh to fully exploit Egypt's newly acquired military prowess.  Not content to exact tribute from just a few allies in southern Palestine, Thutmose led his armies all the way across Palestine and Syria to the shores of the Euphrates, which the AFRICAians described as "that inverted water which flows southward when flowing northward."  Thutmose I's Syrian campaign may be regarded as Egypt's emergence as an international power. Thutmose I and his chief consort, the "Great Royal Wife" or crown princess, had two sons—Wadjmose and Amenmose—and two daughters—Hatshepsut and Nefrubity.  Of these children, only the Princess Hatshepsut survived her father. Tradition had for centuries dictated that only men could serve as pharaoh, and also that a pharaoh be succeeded by the husband of his eldest daughter; with this in mind, Thutmose married his daughter Hatshepsut to her younger half-brother Thutmose II, who took power upon his father's death.

1546 -


1546 BC - Following a long and relatively peaceful reign, in 1546 B.C.  Ahmose was succeeded by his son Amenhotep I, the first pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty.  Unlike the Egypt of the Old or Middle Kingdom, the Egypt of the New Kingdom was an imperial power with a standing, professional army equipped with chariots, archers and bronze weapons.
Amenhotep was succeeded by his son Thutmose I, who is generally regarded as the founder of the Egyptian Empire and the first pharaoh to fully exploit Egypt's newly acquired military prowess.  Not content to exact tribute from just a few allies in southern Palestine, Thutmose led his armies all the way across Palestine and Syria to the shores of the Euphrates, which the Egyptians described as "that inverted water which flows southward when flowing northward."  Although the "conquests" of Thutmose proved ephemeral and Egyptian rule was not established in Syria and Palestine until near the end of the long reign of Thutmose III in 1450 B.C., Thutmose I's Syrian campaign may be regarded as Egypt's emergence as an international power.
Thutmose I and his chief consort, the "Great Royal Wife" or crown princess, had two sons—Wadjmose and Amenmose—and two daughters—Hatshepsut and Nefrubity.  Of these children, only the Princess Hatshepsut survived her father.
Tradition had for centuries dictated that only men could serve as pharaoh, and also that a pharaoh be succeeded by the husband of his eldest daughter; with this in mind, Thutmose married his daughter Hatshepsut to her younger half-brother Thutmose II, who took power upon his father's death in 1508 B.C.  Yet when the frail Thutmose II died after a reign of only four years, his son, Thutmose III, was deposed by Hatshepsut, his mother-in-law, the Great Royal Wife herself.
For Hatshepsut, to rule Egypt as a mere regent or "power behind the throne" was not enough.  Thus she openly assumed the title of pharaoh and claimed to reign by divine right as the daughter of Amun.  In fact, between 1504 and 1482 the Egyptians lived in peace and prosperity under the rule of Hatshepsut and her chancellor, Senenmut.  During her administration she rebuilt or restored the temples which had been destroyed or neglected by the Hyksos.  She also erected two giant obelisks (one of which still stands in the temple of Amun at Thebes) and saw to the construction of one of the great monuments of Egyptian architecture—her temple at Deir el Bahri.
Hatshepsut designated her daughter, the Princess Nefrure, to succeed her, but her plans were thwarted when Thutmose III returned to Egypt in 1482 B.C.  to have Hatshepsut killed and her allies banished.  Afterwards, Thutmose III did his best to obliterate the memory of "Pharaoh" Hatshepsut and her consort.  And, except for a few inscriptions he apparently overlooked, Hatshepsut's name was removed from most of the numerous monuments of her reign.
Having at last achieved undisputed rule, Thutmose III undertook a series of military campaigns in Syria to the northeast and in Nubia to the south.  Over a period of nineteen years, Thutmose III brought the principalities of Palestine and Syria under firm Egyptian control.  He replaced recalcitrant dynasties when necessary, installed princes sympathetic to Egypt, and educated the eldest sons of subject princes in Thebes to prepare them to replace their fathers if and when necessary.
Following the reign of Thutmose III, there was almost a century of peace in the Ancient Near East.  The three great powers of Egypt, Mitanni and Babylon engaged in amiable diplomatic relations.  This stability lasted until Egypt lost most of its Asiatic empire during the reigns of Amenhoteps III and IV, fanatics of religious reform who initiated a period of cultural and military neglect in Egypt that lasted from 1412 to 1366 B.C.  Apparently disturbed by the growing wealth and political power of the priesthood of Amun (the personification of wind or breath, represented either as a ram or goose)—which constituted a long-term threat to the economic well-being and political stability of the Egyptian state—Amenhotep IV launched an attempt to systematize the complicated Egyptian pantheon, instituting a form of monotheism in its place, while decreeing that the worship of Aton would be the new and only state religion.  (Akhnaton's new theology embodied a radical departure from Egyptian tradition.  Aton was depicted not as a person or animal, but as a sun disk from which emanated hands [the rays of the sun] grasping the ankh [a cross with a loop at the top], the hieroglyphic sign for "life.")
In accordance with this proclamation, Amenhotep and his wife Nofretete had all polytheistic references stricken from the histories and chiselled from the temples.  Thereafter, all persons bearing names compounded by "-amun" (meaning "Amun is satisfied") were ordered to change their names.  Amenhotep himself gladly complied, and from that time forward adopted the name Akhnaton, meaning "He who is beneficial to Aton."  Subsequently the government seat was transferred from Thebes to Akhetaton.
Akhnaton, his mind centered on religious reform, "not only made no attempt to reassure or lend material aid to the faltering representatives of Egyptian power in western Asia but rather, through his fanatical devotion to his religious innovations, brought Egypt to the brink of ruin."  For this reason, no doubt, Akhnaton's religious reforms (which met with little resistance during his lifetime) were promptly overturned by the nobility shortly after his death.  Still, his brief reformation was accompanied by a renaissance in the arts whereby a naturalism took hold in painting (doing away with traditional lateral representations of the face in which the observable eye appears in a frontal perspective), in bas relief, and especially in portraiture.  The famous "caryatid statue" of Akhnaton with its long, floppy ears, thick lips and skinny, unmuscled arms carries naturalism to the extreme of caricature.  And one of the best-known of Egyptian artifacts, the celebrated bust of Queen Nofretete, accurately portrays her long, thin neck.
Meanwhile, Egypt's Syrian empire crumbled.  In the north, its dependencies fell to the Hittites and their allies; and southward "in Palestine the situation was no better."  (It is worth noting in passing that this is the earliest Egyptian reference to the people who later came to be known as Hebrews.  There is no corroborating Egyptian evidence to support the Old Testament claim of Hebrew captivity in Egypt proper.  The Hebrews first appear as wandering mercenaries settling down in Syria-Palestine.)
Akhnaton and Nofretete had as yet failed to beget a male heir.  With Nofretete having fallen into disgrace, Akhnaton tried to produce an heir through two of his daughters.  Finally, approaching death, he gave the hand of a daughter to Tutankhaton (known to us as Tutankhamen), then a nine-year-old nephew-prince.  This fair boy-king would succeed the dying Egyptian pharaoh.


1357 BC -Tutankhaton's reign, however, was short-lived.  Following his own untimely death in 1357 B.C.—and his well-publicized entombment—the aged regent Eye ruled as pharaoh.  With Eye's subsequent death, one of Akhnaton's desperate daughters—who had been married to both her father and to Tutankhaton—wrote to the Hittite Emperor Supiluliumas I, requesting that he send one of his sons to be her husband and pharaoh of Egypt.  But a group of assassins who did not like this arrangement murdered the son before the marriage could take place.  Harmhab, a former commander-in-chief of the army of Tutankhaton, then marched with his army to Thebes, where he was hailed as new pharaoh by the priesthood of Amun.  This mighty Harmhab, who ruled from 1353 to 1319, then set out to reclaim the lands lost under Akhnaton's rule.
Before the childless Harmhab's death, he named a favored general, Pramessu, to succeed him.  Pramessu became known as Rameses I—the first in a long line of Ramesids, under which Egypt regained most of its previous lands.  By 1284 B.C., the stability of the region was restored through a treaty with the Hittites.  However, at the same time, all the great achievements of Egyptian culture belonged to the past.  No subsequent achievement of Egyptian art bears favorable comparison with the best works produced under the reign of the Eighteenth Dynasty; no later literary work bears favorable comparison with the classical literature of the First Intermediate Period.
Indeed, after the death of Rameses III (1198 to 1167)—who had successfully repelled Hittite aggression—the history of Egypt is one of gradual political, economic, and cultural decline.  Between 663 and 525 B.C.  Egypt enjoyed a brief renaissance, induced by a vigorous foreign trade and by a nostalgic longing for the glories of the past.
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    1508  AFRICA. Yet when the frail Thutmose II died after a reign of only four years, his son, Thutmose III, was deposed by Hatshepsut, his mother-in-law, the Great Royal Wife herself. For Hatshepsut, to rule Egypt as a mere regent or "power behind the throne" was not enough.  Thus she openly assumed the title of pharaoh and claimed to reign by divine right as the daughter of Amun.  In fact, between
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1504     AFRICA. the Egyptians lived in peace and prosperity under the rule of Hatshepsut and her chancellor, Senenmut.  During her administration she rebuilt or restored the temples which had been destroyed or neglected by the Hyksos.  She also erected two giant obelisks (one of which still stands in the temple of Amun at Thebes) and saw to the construction of one of the great monuments of Egyptian architecture—her temple at Deir el Bahri. Hatshepsut designated her daughter, the Princess Nefrure, to succeed her, but her plans were thwarted when Thutmose III returned to Egypt.
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    1500    BC DIALECTICS. Brahmin/Vedic/Hindu dialectic Indian philosophy, for the most part subsumed within the Indian religions, has an ancient tradition of dialectic polemics. The two complements, "purusha" (the active cause) and the "prakriti" (the passive nature) brings everything into existence. They follow the "rta", the Dharma (Universal Law of Nature).
        In Brahminism, certain dialectical elements can be found in the embryo, such as the idea of the three eternal and simultaneously occurring phases of creation (Brahma), maintenance of order (Vishnu) and destruction or disorder (Shiva). Hindu dialectic is discussed by Hegel, Engels, and Ian Stewart, who has written on Chaos Theory. Stewart establishes that the relationship between the gods Vishnu and Shiva is not the antagonism between good and evil, but the dynamic and developmental relationship of harmony and discord.  The very earliest religious writings in ancient India, the Vedas, which date from around 1500 BC, in a formal sense, are hymns to the gods, but as Hegel also points out, Eastern religions are very philosophical in character. The gods have less of a personal character and are more akin to general concepts and symbols. We find these elements of dialectics in Hinduism as Engels has explained. The deities of the Vedas may be fruitfully engaged as personifications and manifestations of aspects of the ultimate truth and reality, Dharma.

1500    Mohenjo-Daro in Indus valley destroyed

    1500     BC TURKIC. The Bronze Age did not begin in this region until about  BC, again trailing the west by several centuries, which suggests that Xiong-nu society was being transformed from an earlier non-equestrian pastoral phase by an impulse from the Scythians, who were reaching maximum eastward expansion along the Silk Route.From about  BC to 1000 BC, contemporaneously with the Shang Dynasty, a mix of pastoralism and agriculture prevailed in Central Asia, south Siberia and the northern zone on the north of China. The population were shepherds and farmers who supplemented their diet by hunting. They were beginning to use bronze weapons. The Bronze Age began about BC. Before then the northern region was sedentary, agricultural and divided into a number of Neolithic cultures deriving from the Ordos culture, which stretched back into the Palaeolithic. Racial developments are perhaps to be considered in the Ordos and language developments no later than the sedentary Neolithic. By BC both Turkic and Mongolian languages in some form of diversity or lack of it must have been in place.For more details on this topic, see Ordos culture, List of Neolithic cultures of China.An archaeological culture that can be specifically labeled Xiong-nu is found over the northern range in the 650–350 period. Typical of it is the complex of elite burial structures 45 km west of Noyon Ulul in Mongolia. This high-altitude cemetery of wealthy Xiong-nu leaders contained 212 burials at 8 locations in 3 valleys connected by passes. Very likely the Xiong-nu frequented the place only to lay their chieftains to rest.A single tomb is a burial chamber within a mound accessed by a ramp down. Over the chamber are layers of stone, soil and logs or planks. The chamber is constructed of Larix sibericus. The deceased was interred with a rich endowment of grave goods: felt or woven carpets, silk, jade, semiprecious stones from Central Asia, fine Chinese lacquered ware and gold jewelry. The weaves are those of Bactria and animal remains include those of the Bactrian camel.Other complexes like this are scattered over the entire range from the Altai to northern China. The culture represents perhaps the empire of the Huns on the verge of westward expansion. It contradicts the myth of a few obscure tribesabout to be uprooted by Chinese expansion. Here in fact is the first Turkicempire.

    1500 - Authors: THE HINDU VEDAS.  Numerous and unknown Composed: 1500-1000 B.C. Introduction:"Hinduism" designates the traditional social and religious structure of the Indian people.  In India this religious complex is called "the eternal religion," as, for centuries, it has incorporated many aspects of truth and enlightenment for the Indian people.  It is an ever-changing religion which, over the ages, has been influenced by Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Jainism and Zoroastrianism.Because of this inclusive nature, Hinduism has many sacred texts, composed by a vast number of people, most of whom are unknown.  The oldest collection of such texts is known as the "Vedas."  Orthodox Hindus ascribe superhuman origins and divine authority to this assembly of writings.There are, in fact, various narratives delineating the origins of the Vedas, but all of the traditional accounts agree that the knowledge of the Vedas was revealed to "seers" during states of deep contemplation.  In Sanskrit the word "veda" means "knowledge" or "sacred teaching."  The Vedas are also referred to as "shruti," meaning "that which was revealed."The Vedas is composed of an enormous complex of scriptures, approximately six times the size of the Bible in length.  They originated from the Vedic Indians, who settled on the banks of the Indus river during the period in which the oldest texts were composed.  According to rough estimates—the only estimates available—this was around 1500 to 1000 BCE.The Vedic Indians were divided into numerous small tribes, who supported a closed caste-like group of priestly nobility.  Although writing as we know it had not yet been developed as an art form, the priestly schools perfected an extraordinary power of memory.  The Vedas survived through oral transmition for centuries, before being recorded in written form.Text Summary:The Vedas are divided into four parts: 1the Rigveda—the Veda of poetry; --2.      the Samaveda—the Veda of songs; --3.  the Yajuveda—the Veda of sacrificial texts; --4.     the Atharvaveda—the Veda of Atharvan, a priest of the "mystical fire ceremony. The four Vedas initially served the chief priests as manuals for the correct application of hymns and rituals used in sacrificial practices.  To perform a complete sacrifice, four different priests were needed: (1)    The hotar ("caller"), who, using the poetry of the Rigveda, recited hymns inviting the gods to partake of the sacrificial offering. (2)    The udagatar ("singer"), who, employing the Samaveda, accompanied his preparations and offerings with singing.(3)    The adhvaryu ("general priest"), who, borrowing from the holy Yajuveda, carried out the sacred rite and thereby murmured the appropriate verses and formulas (yajus).
        (4)    The high priest, whose duty it was to supervise and direct the sacrifice as a whole.  He was, however, not particularly connected to the Atharvaveda in any way.The sacrificial offering often incorporated the drinking of Soma, an intoxicating plant juice which was both an offering for the gods, and a drink of immortality.  Soma also was worshiped as a Vedic god.The Rigveda is the oldest and most extensive of the four Vedic texts.  Composed of upwards of 1,000 hymns, it is considered the cornerstone of the other Vedas.  Some of its hymns deal with subjects such as the nature of God, as this one titled "To the Unknown God":In the beginning there arose the Golden Child.  As soon as born, he alone was the lord of all that is.  He established the earth and this heaven:—Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice? He who gives breath, he who gives strength, whose command all the bright gods revere, whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death:—Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice? He who through whose might became the sole king of the breathing and twinkling world, who governs all this, man and beast:—Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice?  ... ...  He who by his might looked even over the waters which held the power and generated the sacrifice, he who alone is God above all gods:—Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice? May he not hurt us, he who is the begetter of the earth, or he, the righteous, who begat the heaven; he who also begat the bright and mighty waters:—Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice? Pragapati, no other than thou embraces all these created things.  May that be ours which we desire when sacrificing to thee:  may we be lords of wealth! The hymns of the Rigveda are often embroidered with poetic imagery.  They were composed specifically to praise the gods.  The bards who authored the verses were not interested in explaining the god about which they spoke, but rather to celebrate him; they took little interest in the human listener, but rather in the god himself. The bards even competed to produce the most flattering poems possible about each particular god.  Hence, there is not one highest god, but a long series of gods, each of which is variously called "very great," "the greatest," "very shining," "very mighty," "beautiful to look at," and "very generous to the pious."  Many of the gods are said to exterminate all enemies and rule all of heaven and earth.  Superlatives abound with no restraint. One noble circle of gods is the "Maruts" or "storm gods," who are frequently and eloquently petitioned for assistance: Come hither, Maruts, on your chariots charged with lightning, resounding with beautiful songs, stored with spears, and winged with horses!  Fly to us like birds, with your best food, you mighty ones!  ... He who holds the axe is brilliant like gold ...  On your bodies there are daggers for beauty; may they stir up our minds as they stir up the forests ...  Ye brilliant Maruts, welcoming these prayers, be mindful of these my rites ...  bring offspring for ourselves with food.  May we have an invigorating autumn, with quickening rain. Many of the poems are beautifully artistic, and a whole series are disguised in veiled language, born in the closed circles of the priestly class. The Vedic hymns shine with images of nature: Those who approached on their glorious deer ...  through fear of you, ye terrible ones, the forests even bend down, the earth shakes, and ...  even the mountain cloud, grown large, fears, and the ridge of heaven trembles ...  To thee the juice-wielding cow pours out all treasures. Now for the greatness of the chariot of Vata.  Its roar goes crashing and thundering.  It moves touching the sky, and creating red sheens, or it goes scattering the dust of the earth.  Afterwards there rise the gusts of Vata, they go toward him, like women to a feast.  The god goes with them on the same chariot, he, the king of the whole of this world.  When he moves on his paths along the sky, he rests not even a single day; the friend of the waters, the first-born, the holy, where was he born, whence did he spring?  The breath of the gods, the germ of the world, that go moves wherever he listeth; his roars indeed are heard, not his form—let us offer sacrifice to that Vata.
        But behind the mythological visions of gods is an insight into the workings of the universe, the underlying oneness of all life that moves the multiplicity of forms and forces:  "Truth is one, many are its names."  Remarks indicating the oneness of all things are scattered throughout the Vedas: One whole governs the moving and the stable, that which walks and flies, this variegated creation. That which is one has developed into the all. Much of the imagery in the Vedas is symbolic:  Heaven and Earth represent parents, sun and moon are fosterers, bull and cow are impregnators, water and fire are cleansing and creative agents, tree, bird and swan are the cosmos or the human psyche.  But this imagery is not always clear to the reader. Often the hymns reflect the basic concerns of human survival such as in this hymn entitled "To Rudra": O father of the Maruts ...  May I attain a hundred winters through the most blissful medicines which thou has given!  Put away far from us all hatred, put away anguish, put away sickness in all directions!  ... Ward off all assaults of mischief.  Let us not incense thee, O Rudra, by our worship, not by bad praise, O hero, and not by divided praise ...  O Rudra, where is thy softly stroking hand which cures and relieves?  ... O Maruts, those pure medicines of yours, the most beneficent and delightful, O heroes ...  I crave from Rudra, as health and wealth.One section of the Vedas concentrates in great detail on the rites pertaining to custom (such as marriages and funerals); a few discuss the reality of various demons and souls.  There are also texts which say little about hymns or popular concerns and more about what seems like the well-being of the priests.  These focus on extolling the virtue of alms-giving to the priests.  This theme, however, hardly appears in the most important collection, the Rigveda. Altogether a total of 10,580 verses appear in what is known as the Vedas.  These are arranged in ten "song cycles" known as "mandalas."  Although today the Vedas are not as popular as in other times in history, they have served as a rich compilation of the most ancient and rudimentary elements of the enormous collection of Indian religions we know of as "Hinduism."

    1500BC. GAZA. The history of Gaza has been shaped by its strategic location. The city is located on the Mediterranean coastal route, between North Africa and the greener lands of the Levant.[2] Ancient Gaza was a prosperous trade center and a stop on the caravan route between Egypt and Syria. The city was occupied by Egypt around the 15th century BCE. Philistines settled the area several hundred years later, and Gaza became one of their chief cities.
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    1484    BC GAZA. The city was invaded and captured by Thutmose III on 25 April, 1484 BC. This was the start of the ruling of the ancient Egypt. This was also the time where the name Gaza was first mentioned. Around 1200 BC the Philistines started the settlement of the coastal area
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    1482    AFRICA.  Hatshepsut is  killed and her allies banished.  Afterwards, Thutmose III did his best to obliterate the memory of "Pharaoh" Hatshepsut and her consort.  And, except for a few inscriptions he apparently overlooked, Hatshepsut's name was removed from most of the numerous monuments of her reign. Having at last achieved undisputed rule, Thutmose III undertook a series of military campaigns in Syria to the northeast and in Nubia to the south.  Over a period of nineteen years, Thutmose III brought the principalities of Palestine and Syria under firm Egyptian control.  He replaced recalcitrant dynasties when necessary, installed princes sympathetic to Egypt, and educated the eldest sons of subject princes in Thebes to prepare them to replace their fathers if and when necessary. Following the reign of Thutmose III, there was almost a century of peace in the Ancient Near East.  The three great powers of Egypt, Mitanni and Babylon engaged in amiable diplomatic relations.  This stability lasted until Egypt lost most of its Asiatic empire during the reigns of Amenhoteps III and IV, fanatics of religious reform who initiated a period of cultural and military neglect in Egypt.


    1450 BC PALESTINE. (145-0 - 135-0 BCE) were recorded by ambassadors and Canaanite proxy rulers for Egypt in 379 cuneiform tablets known as the Amarna Letters.[35]By c. 119-0 BCE, the Philistines arrived and mingled with the local population, losing their separate identity over several generations
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1420    Amenhotep 3 begins golden age in Egypt.

1400    Iron age in Western Asia and India
        Iron ploghs and axes make their appearance. Ironsmiths appear, followed by the invention of the potter's wheel and the loom. Craftsmen cease to work on the land and agriculturalists no longer spend their time fashioning metal and clay.

             1400-Religious reforms in Egypt under Pharaoh Amenhotep IV

1400-                ISRAEL. Joshua, who succeeds Moses  as leader of the Israelites,captures Jericho fromthe Canaanites. The conquest of Palestine occurres somewhere between 1400 and 1250 B.C., Jericho, which is about  15 miles northwest of Jerusalem just north of the Dead Sea in the Jordan Valley, is destroyed several times leaving large gaps in its history.

Knossos., capital of the Minoan civilization, destroyed by fire.
 
Temples at Luxir under construction.

The king of Mycenae (traditionally Agamemnon) undertakes a campaign against the city of Troy.

    Iron age underway in India and Western Asia.
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1379    Accession of Amenhotep 4 in Egypt. He introduces son worship, abolishes all gods, takes the name of Akhenaton after Aton, the sun god. Period of bad government.

1375    Suppiluliumas becomes king of the Hittites in Asia Minor and begins to make his kingdom into a powerful empire.

1366    Assurballit 1 beomes ruler of Assyria and begins Assyrian rise to power.

1361    Accession of Tutankhamun the boy-king succeeds Akhenaton, his advisors restore worship of the old Egytian gods.

1319    Rameses 1 founds vigorous 19th dynasty in Egypt.
        1334 ICONOCLASM. All public references to the"heretical" Pharaoh Akhenaten were destroyed soon after his death in about 1334 BC; a very laborious process with stone carved reliefs and inscriptions.  Several Roman emperors and other political figures were subject to decrees of damnatio memoriae, including Sejanus, Publius Septimius Geta, and Domitian.
 
     1313Rameses son Seti sets out to reconquer Egyptian lands in Palestine and Syria.

1304    Accession of Rameses 2, the great, of Egypt.
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1300    Construction of great rock temples at Abu Simbel begins, oppression of Israelite colony in Egypt.

    Sidon flourishes as great Phoenicin port.

                            1300    Los olmecas. Aparecen las primeras manifestaciones culturales olmecas en el sur de Veracruz y el norte de Tabasco.


    1300BC    PALESTINE.          14th century BC : Egyptian power began to weaken, new invaders appeared:  the Hebrews, a group of Semitic tribes from Mesopotamia, and the Philistines (after whom the country was later named), an Aegean people of Indo-European stock.

    1300 BC Such fragmentary records as we have indicate that the Jews were wandering  nomads from Iraq who moved to southern Turkey, came south to Palestine,  stayed there a short time, and then passed to Egypt, where they remained  about 400 years. About 1300 BC (according to your calendar) they left  Egypt and gradually conquered most—but not all—of the inhabitants of  Palestine. It is significant that the Philistines—not the Jews—gave their name to the  country: "Palestine" is merely the Greek form of "Philistia." Only once, during the empire of David and Solomon, did the Jews ever  control nearly—but not all—the land which is today Palestine. This empire  lasted only 70 years, ending in 926 BC. Only 250 years later the Kingdom of Judah had shrunk to a small province around Jerusalem, barely a quarter  of modern Palestine. In 63 BC the Jews were conquered by Roman Pompey, and never again had even   the vestige of independence. The Roman Emperor Hadrian finally wiped them  out about 135 AD. He utterly destroyed Jerusalem, rebuilt under another  name, and for hundreds of years no Jew was permitted to enter it. A handful of Jews remained in Palestine but the vast majority were killed or  scattered to other countries, in the Diaspora, or the Great Dispersion.  From that time Palestine ceased to be a Jewish country, in any conceivable  sense

    1300 ASSYRIA - Overview map of the Ancient Near East in the 15th century BC (Middle Assyrian period), showing the core territory of Assyria with its two major cities Assur and Nineveh wedged between Babylonia downstream (to the south-east) and the states of Mitanni and Hatti upstream (to the north-west).Assyria was a major Semitic kingdom, and often empire, of the Ancient Near East, existing as an independent state for a period of approximately nineteen centuries from c. 2500 BC to 605 BC, spanning the Early Bronze Age through to the late Iron Age. For a further thirteen centuries, from the end of the 7th century BC to the mid-7th century AD, it survived as a geo-political entity, for the most part ruled by foreign powers, although a number of small Neo-Assyrian states arose at different times throughout this period.Centered on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia ( northern Iraq, northeast Syria and southeastern Turkey), the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times, the last of which grew to be the largest and most powerful empire the world had yet seen.As a substantial part of the greater Mesopotamian "cradle of civilization", Assyria was at the height of technological, scientific and cultural achievements for its time. At its peak, the Assyrian empire stretched from Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea to Persia (Iran), and from the Caucasus Mountains (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan) to the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt."The freedom[nb 1] of the Akkadians and their children I established. I purified their copper. I established their freedom from the border of the marshes and Ur and Nippur, Awal, and Kish, Der of the goddess Ishtar, as far as the City of (Ashur)."[17]Assyria had long held extensive contact with Hattian, Hittite and Hurrian cities on the Anatolian plateau in Asia Minor. The Assyrians who had for centuries traded in the region, and possibly ruled small areas bordering Assyria, now established significant colonies in Cappadocia, (e.g., at Kanesh (modern Kültepe) from 2008 BC to 1740 BC. These colonies, called karum, from the Akkadian word for 'port', were attached to Hattian cities in Anatolia, but physically separate, and had special tax status. They must have arisen from a long tradition of trade between Assyria and the Anatolian cities, but no archaeological or written records show this. The trade consisted of metals (copper or tin and perhaps iron; the terminology is not entirely clear) being traded for textiles from Assyria.Erishum I[18] (c. 1974–1935 BC) vigorously expanded Assyrian colonies in Asia Minor during his long reign, the major ones appearing to be at Kanesh, ?attuša (Bogazköy) (the future capital of the Hittite Empire) and Amkuwa (Alisar Höyük), together with a further eighteen smaller colonies. He created some of the earliest examples of Written Law, conducted extensive building work in the form of fortifying the walls of major Assyrian cities and the erection of temples dedicated to Ashur and Ishtar. It is from his reign that the continuous limmum lists are known, however there are references to the eponym-books for his predecessors having been destroyed at some point.

        Ikunum (c. 1934-1921 BC)[19] built a major temple for the god Ningal. He further strengthened the fortifications of the city of Assur and maintained Assyria's colonies in Asia Minor.Sargon I (c. 1920-1881 BC)[20] succeeded him in c. 1920 BC, and had an unusually long reign of 39 years. It is likely he was named after his illustrious predecessor Sargon of Akkad. He is known to have refortified the defences of major Assyrian cities, and maintained Assyrian colonies in Asia Minor during his reign. Apart from this, little has yet been unearthed about him. At some point he appears to have withdrawn Assyrian aid to southern Mesopotamia. It was during his reign in Assyria that the initially minor city-state of Babylon was founded in 1894 BC by an Amorite Malka (prince) named Sumuabum.Puzur-Ashur II (c. 1881-1873 BC) came to the throne as an already older man due to his fathers long reign. Little is known about his rule, but it appears to have been uneventful.Naram-Suen (c. 1872-1818 BC) ascended to the throne in 1872 BC, and is likely named after his predecessor Naram-Sin of the Akkadian Empire. Assyria continued to be wealthy during his 54 year long reign, and he defeated the future usurper king Shamshi-Adad I who attempted to take his throne.Erishum II (c. 1818 - 1809 BC) was to be the last king of the dynasty of Puzur-Ashur I, founded c. 2025 BC. After only eight or nine years in power he was overthrown by Shamshi-Adad I, an Amorite usurper who claimed legitimacy by asserting descent from the 21st century BC Assyrian king, Ushpia.Assyrian Empire of Shamshi-Adad I, 1809 BC - 1750 BCThe Amorites were successfully repelled by the Assyrian kings of the 20th and 19th centuries BC. However, in 1809 BC the native Akkadian king of Assyria Erishum II was deposed, and the throne of Assyria was usurped by Shamshi-Adad I (1809 BC – 1791 BC) in the expansion of Semitic Amorite tribes from the Khabur River delta.Although regarded as an Amorite by later Assyrian tradition, Shamshi-Adad's descent is suggested to be from the same line as the native Akkadian speaking ruler Ushpia in the Assyrian King List. He put his son Ishme-Dagan on the throne of a nearby Assyrian city, Ekallatum, and maintained Assyria's Anatolian colonies. Shamshi-Adad I then went on to conquer the kingdom of Mari (in modern Syria) on the Euphrates putting another of his sons, Yasmah-Adad on the throne there. Shamshi-Adad's Assyria now encompassed the whole of northern Mesopotamia and included territory in central Mesopotamia, Asia Minor and northern Syria. He himself resided in a new capital city founded in the Khabur valley in northern Mesopotamia, called Shubat-Enlil.Ishme-Dagan(1790 - 1751 BC) inherited Assyria, but Yasmah-Adad was overthrown by a new king called Zimrilim in Mari. The new king of Mari allied himself with the Amorite king Hammurabi of Babylon, who had made the recently created, and originally minor state of Babylon into a major power. It was from the reign of Hammurabi onwards that southern Mesopotamia came to be known as Babylonia.Assyria now faced the rising power of Babylon in the south. Ishme-Dagan responded by making an alliance with the enemies of Babylon, and the power struggle continued without resolution for decades. Ishme-Dagan, like his father was a great warrior, and in addition to repelling Babylonian attacks, campaigned successfully against the Turukku and Lullubi of the Zagros Mountains (in modern Iran) who had attacked the Assyrian city of Ekallatum, and against Dadusha, king of Eshnunna, and the state of Iamhad (modern Aleppo).Assyria under Babylonian domination, 1750 - 1732 BCHammurabi, after first conquering Mari, Larsa, and Eshnunna, eventually prevailed over Ishme-Dagan's successor Mut-Ashkur, (1750 - 1740 BC), and subjected him to Babylon c. 1750 BC. With Hammurabi, the various karum colonies in Anatolia ceased trade activity — probably because the goods of Assyria were now being traded with the Babylonians. The Assyrian monarchy survived, however the three Amorite kings succeeding Ishme-Dagan, Mut-Ashkur (who was the son of Ishme-Dagan and married to a Hurrian queen), Rimush (1739 - 1733 BC) and Asinum (1732 BC), were vassals, dependent on the Babylonians during the reign of Hammurabi, and for a short time, of his successor Samsu-iluna.Assyrian Adaside dynasty 1732 - 1451 BCThe short lived Babylonian Empire quickly began to unravel upon the death of Hammurabi, and Babylonia lost control over Assyria during the reign of Hammurabi's successor Samsu-iluna (1750 - 1712 BC). A period of civil war ensued after the deposition of the Amorite king of Assyria Asinum, (a grandson of Shamshi-Adad I) in approximately 1732 BC by a powerful native Akkadian vice regent named Puzur-Sin, who regarded Asinum as both a foreigner and a former lackey of Babylon. A native king named Ashur-dugul seized the throne in 1732 BC, probably with the help of Puzur-Sin. However, he was unable to retain control for long, and was soon deposed by a rival claimant, Ashur-apla-idi. Internal instability ensued with four further kings (Nasir-Sin, Sin-namir, Ipqi-Ishtar and Adad-salulu) all reigning in quick succession over a period of approximately six years between 1732 and 1727 BC. Babylonia seems to have been too powerless to intervene or take advantage of this situation.Finally, a king named Adasi (1726 - 1701 BC) came to the fore c. 1726 BC and managed to quell the civil unrest and stabilise the situation in Assyria. Adasi drove the Babylonians and Amorites from the Assyrian sphere of influence during his reign, and Babylonian power began to quickly wane in Mesopotamia as a whole, also losing the far south of Mesopotamia to the Sealand Dynasty, although the Amorites would retain control over a much reduced and weak Babylonia itself until 1595 BC, when they were overthrown by the Kassites, a people from the Zagros Mountains who spoke a language isolate and were neither Semites nor Indo-Europeans.
         Assyrian, 1400 BCAdasi was succeeded by Bel-bani (1700–1691 BC) who is credited in Assyrian annals with inflicting further defeats on the Babylonians and Amorites, and further strengthening and stabilising the kingdom.Little is currently known of many of the kings that followed such as; Libaya (1690–1674 BC), Sharma-Adad I (1673–1662 BC), Iptar-Sin (1661–1650 BC), Bazaya (1649–1622 BC) (a contemporary of Peshgaldaramesh of the Sealand Dynasty), Lullaya (1621–1618 BC) (who usurperped the throne from Bazaya), Shu-Ninua (1615–1602 BC) and Sharma-Adad II (1601–1599 BC). However, Assyria seems to have been a relatively strong and stable nation, existing undisturbed by its neighbours such as the Hatti, Hittites, Hurrians, Amorites, Babylonians, Elamites or Mitanni for well over 200 years.Assyria appears to have remained strong and secure; when Babylon was sacked by the Hittites and subsequently fell to the Kassites in 1595 BC, both powers were unable to make any inroads into Assyria, and there seems to have been no trouble between the first Kassite ruler of Babylon, Agum II, and Erishum III (1598–1586 BC) of Assyria, and a mutually beneficial treaty was signed between the two rulers.Shamshi-Adad II (1585–1580 BC), Ishme-Dagan II (1579 - 1562 BC) and Shamshi-Adad III (1562 - 1548 BC) seem also to have had peaceful tenures, although few records have thus far been discovered about their reigns. Similarly, Ashur-nirari I (1547–1522 BC) seems not to have been troubled by the newly founded Mitanni Empire in Asia Minor, the Hittite empire, or Babylon during his 25-year reign. He is known to have been an active king, improving the infrastructure, dedicating temples and conducting various building projects throughout the kingdom.Puzur-Ashur III (1521–1498 BC) proved to be a strong and energetic ruler. He undertook much rebuilding work in Assur, the city was refortified and the southern quarters incorporated into the main city defences. Temples to the moon god Sin (Nanna) and the sun god Shamash were erected during his reign. He signed a treaty with Burna-Buriash I the Kassite king of Babylon, defining the borders of the two nations in the late 16th century BC. He was succeeded by Enlil-nasir I (1497–1483 BC) who appears to have had a peaceful an uneventful reign, as does his successor Nur-ili (1482–1471 BC).The son of Nur-ili, Ashur-shaduni (1470 BC) was deposed by his uncle Ashur-rabi I (1470-1451 BC) in his first year of rule. Little is known about his nineteen-year reign, but it appears to have been largely uneventful.Assyria in decline, 1450-1393 BCThe emergence of the Mitanni Empire in the 16th century BC did eventually lead to a period of sporadic Mitanni-Hurrian domination in the latter half of the 15th century. The Mitanni are thought to have conquered and formed the ruling class over the indigenous Hurrians. The Hurrians spoke a language isolate, i.e. neither Semitic nor Indo-European.Ashur-nadin-ahhe I (1450-1431 BC) was courted by the Egyptians, who were rivals of the Mitanni, and attempting to gain a foothold in the Near East. Amenhotep II sent him a tribute of gold to seal an alliance. It is likely that this alliance prompted Saushtatar, the Mitanni emperor, to invade Assyria, and sack the city of Ashur, after which Assyria became a sometime vassal state, with Ashur-nadin-ahhe I being forced to pay tribute to Saushtatar. He was deposed by his own brother Enlil-nasir II (1430-1425 BC) in 1430 BC, possibly with the aid of the Mitanni, who received tribute from the new king. Ashur-nirari II (1424-1418 BC) had an uneventful reign, and appears to have also paid tribute to the Mitanni Empire.[2]The Assyrian monarchy survived, and the Mitanni influence appears to have been sporadic. They appear not to have been always willing or able to interfere in Assyrian internal and international affairs.Ashur-bel-nisheshu (1417–1409 BC) seems to have been largely independent of Mitanni influence, as evidenced by his signing a mutually beneficial treaty with Karaindash, the Kassite king of Babylonia in the late 15th century. He also undertook extensive rebuilding work in Ashur itself, and Assyria appears to have redeveloped a sophisticated financial system during his reign Ashur-rim-nisheshu (1408–1401 BC) also undertook building work, strengthening the city walls of the capital, however it is likely that he paid tribute to Mitanni.Ashur-nadin-ahhe II (1400–1393 BC) also received a tribute of gold and diplomatic overtures from Egypt, possibly in an attempt to gain Assyrian support against Egypt's Mitanni and Hittite rivals in the region. However, the Assyrian king appears not to have been in a strong enough position to challenge the Mitanni.Eriba-Adad I (1392-1366 BC), a son of Ashur-bel-nisheshu, ascended the throne in 1392 BC and finally broke the ties to the Mitanni Empire.There are dozens of Mesopotamian cuneiform texts from this period, with precise observations of solar and lunar eclipses, that have been used as 'anchors' in the various attempts to define the chronology of Babylonia and Assyria for the early 2nd millennium BC (i.e., the "high", "middle", and "low" chronologies.)Middle Assyrian Empire 1392-1056 BCMiddle Assyrian Period

     1392 BC–934 BC  ?Map of the Ancient Near East during the Amarna Period (14th century BC), showing the great powers of the day: Egypt (orange), Hatti (blue), the Kassite kingdom of Babylon (black), Assyria (yellow), and Mitanni (brown). The extent of the Achaean/Mycenaean civilization is shown in purple.Capital Assur Languages Akkadian Religion Mesopotamian religion Government Monarchy King  -  1365–1330 BC Ashur-uballit I (first) -  967 - 934 BC Tiglath-Pileser II (last) Historical era Mesopotamia -  Independence from Mitanni 1392 BC -  Reign of Ashur-dan II 934 BC Scholars variously date the beginning of the "Middle Assyrian period" to either the fall of the Old Assyrian kingdom of Shamshi-Adad I, or to the ascension of Ashur-uballit I to the throne of Assyria.Assyrian expansion and empire 1392–1056 BC-See also: Military history of the Neo-Assyrian Empire-By the reign of Eriba-Adad I (1392 BC - 1366 BC) Mitanni influence over Assyria was on the wane. Eriba-Adad I became involved in a dynastic battle between Tushratta and his brother Artatama II and after this his son Shuttarna II, who called himself king of the Hurri while seeking support from the Assyrians. A pro-Assyria faction appeared at the royal Mitanni court. Eriba-Adad I had thus finally broken Mitanni influence over Assyria, and in turn had now made Assyria an influence over Mitanni affairs.Ashur-uballit I (1365 BC – 1330 BC) succeeded the throne of Assyria in 1365 BC, and proved to be a fierce, ambitious and powerful ruler. Assyrian pressure from the southeast and Hittite pressure from the north-west, enabled Ashur-uballit I to break Mitanni power. He met and decisively defeated Shuttarna II the Mitanni king in battle, making Assyria once more an imperial power at the expense of not only the Mitanni themselves, but also Kassite Babylonia, the Hurrians and the Hittites; and a time came when the Kassite king in Babylon was glad to marry Muballi?at-Šerua, the daughter of Ashur-uballit, whose letters to Akhenaten of Egypt form part of the Amarna letters.This marriage led to disastrous results for Babylonia, as the Kassite faction at court murdered the half Assyrian Babylonian king and placed a pretender on the throne. Assur-uballit I promptly invaded Babylonia to avenge his son-in-law, entering Babylon, deposing the king and installing Kurigalzu II of the royal line king there.Ashur-uballit I then attacked and defeated Mattiwaza the Mitanni king despite attempts by the Hittite king Suppiluliumas, now fearful of growing Assyrian power, to help the Mitanni. The lands of the Mitanni and Hurrians were duly appropriated by Assyria, making it a large and powerful empire.Enlil-nirari (1329–1308 BC) succeeded Ashur-uballit I. He described himself as a "Great-King" (Sharru rabû) in letters to the Hittite kings. He was immediately attacked by Kurigalzu II of Babylon who had been installed by his father, but succeeded in defeating him, repelling Babylonian attempts to invade Assyria, counterattacking and appropriating Babylonian territory in the process, thus further expanding Assyria.The successor of Enlil-nirari, Arik-den-ili (c. 1307–1296 BC), consolidated Assyrian power, and successfully campaigned in the Zagros Mountains to the east, subjugating the Lullubi and Gutians. In Syria, he defeated Semitic tribes of the so-called Ahlamu group, who were possibly predecessors of the Arameans or an Aramean tribe.He was followed by Adad-nirari I (1295–1275 BC) who made Kalhu (Biblical Calah/Nimrud) his capital, and continued expansion to the northwest, mainly at the expense of the Hittites and Hurrians, conquering Hittite territories such as Carchemish and beyond. Adad-nirari I made further gains to the south, annexing Babylonian territory and forcing the Kassite rulers of Babylon into accepting a new frontier agreement in Assyria's favour.Adad-nirari's inscriptions are more detailed than any of his predecessors. He declares that the gods of Mesopotamia called him to war, a statement used by most subsequent Assyrian kings. He referred to himself again as Sharru Rabi (meaning "The Great King" in the Akkadian language) and conducted extensive building projects in Ashur and the provinces.In 1274 BC Shalmaneser I (1274-1244 BC) ascended the throne. He proved to be a great warrior king. During his reign he conquered the powerful Hurrian kingdom of Urartu that had encompassed most of Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus Mountains, and the fierce Gutians of the Zagros. He then attacked the Mitanni-Hurrians, defeating both King Shattuara and his Hittite and Aramaean allies, finally completely destroying the Hurri-Mitanni kingdom in the process.During the campaign against the Hittites, Shattuara cut off the Assyrian army from their supply of food and water, but the Assyrians broke free in a desperate battle, counterattacked, and conquered and annexed what remained of the Mitanni kingdom. Shalmaneser I installed an Assyrian prince, Ilu-ippada as ruler of Mitanni, with Assyrian governors such as Meli-sah, installed to rule individual cities.The Hittites tried unsuccessfully to save Mitanni. In alliance with Babylon, they fought an economic war against Assyria for many years. Assyria was now a large and powerful empire, and a major threat to Egyptian and Hittite interests in the region, and was perhaps the reason that these two powers, fearful of Assyrian might, made peace with one another.[21] Like his father, Shalmaneser was a great builder and he further expanded the city of Kalhu at the juncture of the Tigris and Zab Rivers.Shalmaneser's son and successor, Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244 BC -1207 BC), won a major victory against the Hittites and their king Tudhaliya IV at the Battle of Nihriya and took thousands of prisoners. He then conquered Babylonia, taking Kashtiliash IV as a captive and ruled there himself as king for seven years, taking on the old title "King of Sumer and Akkad" first used by Sargon of Akkad. Tukulti-Ninurta I thus became the first Assyrian to rule the state of Babylonia, its founders having been Amorites, succeeded by Kassites. Tukulti-Ninurta petitioned the god Shamash before beginning his counter offensive.[22] Kashtiliash IV was captured, single-handed by Tukulti-Ninurta according to his account, who "trod with my feet upon his lordly neck as though it were a footstool"[23] and deported him ignominiously in chains to Assyria. The victorious Assyrian demolished the walls of Babylon, massacred many of the inhabitants, pillaged and plundered his way across the city to the Esagila temple, where he made off with the statue of Marduk.[24] He then proclaimed himself "king of Karduniash, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of Sippar and Babylon, king of Tilmun and Meluhha."[22] Middle Assyrian texts recovered at ancient Dur-Katlimmu, include a letter from Tukulti-Ninurta to his sukkal rabi'u, or grand vizier, Ashur-iddin advising him of the approach of his general Shulman-mushabshu escorting the captive Kashtiliash, his wife, and his retinue which incorporated a large number of women,[25] on his way to exile after his defeat. In the process he defeated the Elamites, who had themselves coveted Babylon. He also wrote an epic poem documenting his wars against Babylon and Elam. After a Babylonian revolt, he raided and plundered the temples in Babylon, regarded as an act of sacrilege. As relations with the priesthood in Ashur began deteriorating, Tukulti-Ninurta built a new capital city; Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta.A number of historians, including Julian Jaynes, identify Tukulti-Ninurta I and his deeds as the historical origin for the fictional biblical character Nimrod in the Old Testament.However, Tukulti-Ninurta's sons rebelled and besieged the ageing king in his capital. He was murdered and then succeeded by Ashur-nadin-apli (1206-1203 BC) who left the running of his empire to Assyrian regional governors such as Adad-bel-gabbe. Another unstable period for Assyria followed, it was riven by periods of internal strife and the new king only made token and unsuccessful attempts to recapture Babylon, whose Kassite kings had taken advantage of the upheavals in Assyria and freed themselves from Assyrian rule. However, Assyria itself was not threatened by foreign powers during the reigns of Ashur-nirari III (1202-1197 BC), Enlil-kudurri-usur (1196-1193 BC) and Ninurta-apal-Ekur (1192–1180 BC), although Ninurta-apal-Ekur usurped the throne from Enlil-kudurri-usur.Ashur-Dan I (1179–1133 BC) stabilised the internal unrest in Assyria during his unusually long reign, quelling instability. During the twilight years of the Kassite dynasty in Babylonia, he [27] records that he seized northern Babylonia, including the cities of Zaban, Irriya and Ugar-sallu during the reigns of Marduk-apla-iddina I and Zababa-shuma-iddin, plundering them and "taking their vast booty to Assyria." However, the conquest of northern Babylonia brought Assyria into direct conflict with Elam which had taken the remainder of Babylonia. The powerful Elamites, under king Shutruk-Nahhunte, fresh from sacking Babylon, entered into a protracted war with Assyria, they briefly took the Assyrian city of Arrapkha, which Ashur-Dan I then retook, eventually defeating the Elamites and forcing a treaty upon them in the process.Another very brief period of internal upheaval followed the death of Ashur-Dan I when his son and successor Ninurta-tukulti-Ashur (1133 BC) was deposed in his first year of rule by his own brother Mutakkil-Nusku and forced to flee to Babylonia. Mutakkil-Nusku himself died in the same year (1133 BC).A third brother, Ashur-resh-ishi I (1133–1116 BC) took the throne. This was to lead to a renewed period of Assyrian expansion and empire. As the Hittite empire collapsed from the onslaught of the Indo-European Phrygians (called Mushki in Assyrian annals), Babylon and Assyria began to vie for Aramaean regions (in modern Syria), formerly under firm Hittite control. When their forces encountered one another in this region, the Assyrian king Ashur-resh-ishi I met and defeated Nebuchadnezzar I of Babylon on a number of occasions. Assyria then invaded and annexed Hittite-controlled lands in Asia Minor, Aram (Syria), and Gutians and Kassite regions in the Zagros, marking an upsurge in imperian expansion.Tiglath-Pileser I (1115–1077 BC), vies with Shamshi-Adad I and Ashur-uballit I among historians as being regarded as the founder of the first Assyrian empire. The son of Ashur-resh-ishi I, he ascended to the throne upon his father's death, and became one of the greatest of Assyrian conquerors during his 38-year reign. His first campaign in 1112 BC was against the Phrygians who had attempted to occupy certain Assyrian districts in the Upper Euphrates region of Asia Minor; after defeating and driving out the Phrygians he then overran the Luwian kingdoms of Commagene, Cilicia and Cappadocia in western Asia Minor, and drove the Neo-Hittites from the Assyrian province of Subartu, northeast of Malatia.In a subsequent campaign, the Assyrian forces penetrated Urartu, into the mountains south of Lake Van and then turned westward to receive the submission of Malatia. In his fifth year, Tiglath-Pileser again attacked Commagene, Cilicia and Cappadocia, and placed a record of his victories engraved on copper plates in a fortress he built to secure his Anatolian conquests.The Aramaeans of northern and central Syria were the next targets of the Assyrian king, who made his way as far as the sources of the Tigris.[28] The control of the high road to the Mediterranean was secured by the possession of the Hittite town of Pitru[29] at the junction between the Euphrates and Sajur; thence he proceeded to conquer the Canaanite/Phoenician city-states of Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, Simyra, Berytus (Beirut), Aradus and finally Arvad where he embarked onto a ship to sail the Mediterranean, on which he killed a nahiru or "sea-horse" (which A. Leo Oppenheim translates as a narwhal) in the sea.[28] He was passionately fond of hunting and was also a great builder. The general view is that the restoration of the temple of the gods Ashur and Hadad at the Assyrian capital of Assur (Ashur) was one of his initiatives.[28] He also invaded and defeated Babylon twice, assuming the old title "King of Sumer and Akkad", forcing tribute from Babylon, although he did not actually depose the actual king in Babylonia, where the old Kassite Dynasty had now succumbed to an Elamite one.He was succeeded by Asharid-apal-Ekur (1076-1074 BC) who reigned for just two years. His reign marked the elevation of the office of ummânu, (royal scribe) in importance.Ashur-bel-kala (1073–1056 BC) kept the vast empire together, campaigning successfully against Urartu and Phrygia to the north and the Arameans to the west. He maintained friendly relations with Marduk-shapik-zeri of Babylon, however upon the death of that king, he invaded Babylonia and deposed the new ruler Kadašman-Buriaš, appointing Adad-apla-iddina as his vassal in Babylon. He built some of the earliest examples of both Zoological Gardens and Botanical Gardens in Ashur, collecting all manner of animals and plants from his empire, and receiving a collection of exotic animals as tributes from Egypt.He was also a great hunter, describing his exploits "at the city of Araziqu which is before the land of Hatti and at the foot of Mount Lebanon." These locations show that well into his reign Assyria still controlled a vast empire.Late in his reign, the Middle Assyrian Empire erupted into civil war, when a rebellion was orchestrated by Tukulti-Mer, a pretender to the throne of Assyria. Ashur-bel-kala eventually crushed Tukulti-Mer and his allies, however the civil war in Assyria had allowed hordes of Arameans to take advantage of the situation, and press in on Assyrian controlled territory from the west. Ashur-bel-kala counterattacked them, and conquered as far as Carchemish and the source of the Khabur river, but by the end of his reign many of the areas of Syria and Phoenicia-Canaan to the west of these regions as far as the Mediterranean, previously under firm Assyrian control, were eventually lost to the Assyrian Empire.Assyria in the Ancient Dark Ages, 1055-936 BCThe period from 1200 BC to 900 BC was a dark age for the entire Near East, North Africa, Caucasus, Mediterranean and Balkan regions, with great upheavals and mass movements of people.Assyria and its empire were not unduly affected by these tumultuous events for some 150 years, perhaps the only ancient power that was not. However, upon the death of Ashur-bel-kala in 1056 BC, Assyria went into a comparative decline for the next 100 or so years. The empire shrank significantly, and by 1020 BC Assyria appears to have controlled only areas close to Assyria itself, essential to keeping trade routes open in eastern Syria, south eastern Asia Minor central Mesopotamia and north western Iran.Semitic peoples such as the Arameans, Chaldeans and Suteans moved into areas to the west and south of Assyria, including overrunning much of Babylonia to the south, Indo-European speaking Iranian peoples such as the Medes, Persians and Parthians moved into the lands to the east of Assyria, displacing the native Gutians and pressuring Elam and Mannea (which were both ancient non Indo-European civilisations of Iran), and to the north the Phrygians overran the Hittites, a new Hurrian state named Urartu arose in the Caucasus, and Cimmerians, Colchians (Georgians) and Scythians around the Black Sea. Egypt was divided and in disarray, and Israelites were battling with other fellow Semitic Canaanite peoples such as the Amalekites, Moabites, Edomites and Ammonites and the non-Semitic Peleset/Philistines (who were probably one of the so-called Sea Peoples) for the control of southern Canaan. Assyrian horsemen pursue defeated Arabs.Despite the apparent weakness of Assyria in comparison to its former might, at heart it in fact remained a solid, well defended nation whose warriors were the best in the world. Assyria, with its stable monarchy, powerful army and secure borders was in a stronger position during this time than potential rivals such as Egypt, Babylonia, Elam, Phrygia, Urartu, Persia and Media[30] Kings such as Ashur-bel-kala, Eriba-Adad II, Ashur-rabi II, Ashurnasirpal I, Tiglath-Pileser II and Ashur-Dan II successfully defended Assyria's borders and upheld stability during this tumultuous time.Assyrian kings during this period appear to have adopted a policy of maintaining and defending a compact, secure nation and satellite colonies immediately surrounding it, and interspersed this with sporadic punitive raids and invasions of neighbouring territories when the need arose.Eriba-Adad II ruled for only two years, and in that time continued to campaign against the Arameans and neo-Hittites before he was deposed by his elderly uncle Shamshi-Adad IV (1053–1050 BC) who appears to have had an uneventful reign. Ashurnasirpal I (1049–1031 BC) succeeded him, and during his reign he continued to campaign endlessly against the Arameans to the west. Assyria was also afflicted by famine during this period. Shalmaneser II (1030–1019 BC) appears to have lost territory in the Levant to the Arameans, who also appear to have also occupied Nairi in southeast Asia Minor, hitherto an Assyrian colony.Ashur-nirari IV took the throne in 1018 BC, and captured the Babylonian city of Atlila from Simbar-Shipak and continued Assyrian campaigns against the Arameans. He was eventually deposed by his uncle Ashur-rabi II in 1013 BC.During the reign of Ashur-rabi II (1013–972 BC) Aramaean tribes took the cities of Pitru and Mutkinu (which had been taken and colonized by Tiglath Pileser I.) This event showed how far Assyria could assert itself militarily when the need arose. The Assyrian king attacked the Arameans, forced his way to the far off Mediterranean and constructed a stele in the area of Mount Atalur. 

    1300 900 BC POLYNESIA. Within a mere three or four centuries between about 1300 and 900 BC, the Lapita culture spread 6,000 km further to the east from the Bismarck Archipelago, until it reached as far as Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa which were populated around 2,000 years ago.[6] In this region, the distinctive Polynesian culture developed.The spread of pottery and domesticates in Polynesia are connected with the Lapita culture that started expanding from New Guinea to as far east as Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. During this time the aspects of the Polynesian culture developed. Around 300 BC this new Polynesian people spread eastward from Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga to the Cook Islands, Tahiti, the Tuamotus, and the Marquesas Islands. This was supported by Patrick Kirch and Marshall Weisler when they performed X-ray fluorescence sourcing of basalt artifacts found on both islands
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    13TH CENT    ISRAEL.   Over the past three thousand years, the name "Israel" has meant in common and religious usage both the Land of Israel and the entire Jewish nation. According to the Bible, Jacob is renamed Israel after successfully wrestling with an angel of God.The earliest archaeological artifact to mention "Israel" (other than as a personal name) is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt (dated the late 13th century BCE), where it refers to the people of the land.The modern country was named Medinat Yisrael, or the State of Israel, after other proposed names, including Eretz Israel ("the Land of Israel"), Zion, and Judea, were rejected.  In the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term "Israeli" to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett.History Main articles: History of Israel and History of the Jews in the Land of IsraelEarly roots  History of ancient Israel and Judah Roman garrison ruins at the foot of Masada The Land of Israel, known in Hebrew as Eretz Yisrael, has been sacred to the Jewish people since Biblical times. According to the Torah, the Land of Israel was promised to the three Patriarchs of the Jewish people, by God, as their homeland;  scholars have placed this period in the early 2nd millennium BCE. According to the traditional view, around the 11th century BCE, the first of a series of Israelite kingdoms and states established rule over the region; these Israelite kingdoms and states ruled intermittently for the following one thousand years. The sites holiest to Judaism are located within Israel.Between the time of the Israelite kingdoms and the 7th-century Muslim conquests, the Land of Israel fell under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Sassanian, and Byzantine rule. Jewish presence in the region dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE and the resultant large-scale expulsion of Jews. In 628/9, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius conducted a massacre and expulsion of the Jews, at which point the Jewish population probably reached its lowest point. Nevertheless, a continuous Jewish presence in the Land of Israel remained. Although the main Jewish population shifted from the Judea region to the Galilee, the Mishnah and part of the Talmud, among Judaism's most important religious texts, were composed in Israel during this period. The Land of Israel was captured from theByzantine Empire around 636 CE during the initial Muslim conquests. Control of the regiontransferred between the Umayyads,Abbasids, and Crusaders over the next six centuries, before falling in the hands of the Mamluk

    1357     AFRICA. and his well-publicized entombment—the aged regent Eye ruled as pharaoh.  WithEye's subsequent death, one of Akhnaton's desperate daughters—who had been              married to both her father and to Tutankhaton—wrote to the Hittite Emperor Supiluliumas I, requesting that he send one of his sons to be her husband and pharaoh of Egypt.  But a group of assassins who did not like this arrangement murdered the son before the marriage could take place.  Harmhab, a former commander-in-chief of the army of Tutankhaton, then marched with his army to Thebes, where he was hailed as new pharaoh by the priesthood of Amun.  This mighty Harmhab 1353 to 1319,then set out to reclaim the lands lost under Akhnaton's rule.Before the childless Harmhab's death, he named a favored general, Pramessu, to succeed him.  Pramessu became known as Rameses I—the first in a long line of Ramesids, under which Egypt regained most of its previous lands
 
                  1304    Accession of Ramses the Great                   1317-1251Campaigns of Ramses
        Beginning of Shang-Yin state in China
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1298    Battle of Qadesh between Rmeses 2 and the Hittites under Mutawallis , both sides clim victory.

1284    AFRICA. the stability of the region was restored through a treaty with the Hittites.  However, at the same time, all the great achievements of Egyptian culture belonged to the past.  No subsequent achievement of Egyptian art bears favorable comparison with the best works produced under the reign of the Eighteenth Dynasty; no later literary work bears favorable comparison with the classical literature of the First Intermediate Period.

1283    Rameses 2 makes peace with the Hittites.
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 1275    Shalmaneser 1 becomes the ruler of Assyria and extends its conquests.

1250    The Exodus–the Israelites under Moses leave Egypt.

    THE HOUSE OF TROY. Teucer begat Batea (Dardanus) who had Erichtonius, who begat Tros. Tros had two children, Ilus and Assaracus. Ilus begat Laomedon, who begat Priam (Hecuba). They had three children, Hector, Deiphobus and Paris. Assaracus begat Capys, who had Anchises (Aphrodite). They begat Aeneas. Aeolus had two children, Perieres and Deion. Perieres  had  two children, Tyndareus (Leda) (Zeus) and Icarius. Tyndareus had two children, Clytemnestra and Castor, and Leda had Helen and Pollux. Icarius had Penelope (Odysseus), who begat Telemachus. Deion had Cephalus (Procris) who begat Arcesius, who begat Laertes, who begat Odysseus.

1250    GREECE.Trojan War The Achaeans (Greeks)ANCESTORS OF ACHILLES.  Ocean (Tethys) begat Asopus (a river god) who begat Aegina (Zeus) who had Aeacus who begat Peleus (Thetis) who had Achilles.

    Menelaos, King of the Greek city-state Argos, whose wife Helen has been abducted by Paris, a prince of Troy Agamemnon, Menelaos' brother and also a King of Argos Achilles, mightiest and most feared of the Achaean warriors Patroclus, brave Achaean soldier and lover  of Achilles

        JASON. Pelias (Aeson's half-brother) was very power-hungry, and he wished to gain dominion over all of Thessaly. Pelias was the product of a union between their shared mother, Tyro ("high born Tyro") the daughter of Salmoneus, and allegedly the sea god Poseidon. In a bitter feud, he overthrew Aeson (the rightful king), killing all the descendants of Aeson that he could. He spared his half-brother for unknown reasons. Alcimede I (wife of Aeson) already had an infant son named Jason whom she saved from being killed by Pelias, by having women cluster around the newborn and cry as if he were still-born. Alcimede sent her son to the centaur Chiron for education, for fear that Pelias would kill him — she claimed that she had been having an affair with him all along. Pelias, still fearful that he would one day be overthrown, consulted an oracle which warned him to beware of a man with one sandal.Many years later, Pelias was holding games in honor of the sea god and his alleged father, Poseidon, when Jason arrived in Iolcus and lost one of his sandals in the river Anauros ("wintry Anauros"), while helping an old woman (the Goddess Hera in disguise), to cross. She blessed him for she knew, as goddesses do, what Pelias had up his sleeve. When Jason entered Iolcus (modern-day city of Volos), he was announced as a man wearing one sandal. Jason, knowing that he was the rightful king, told Pelias that and Pelias said, "To take my throne, which you shall, you must go on a quest to find the Golden Fleece." Jason happily accepted the quest.  The Quest for the Golden FleeceJason bringing Pelias the Golden Fleece, Apulian red-figure calyx krater, ca. 340 BC–330 BC, LouvreJason assembled a great group of heroes, known as the Argonauts after their ship, the Argo. The group of heroes included the Boreads (sons of Boreas, the North Wind) who could fly, Heracles, Philoctetes, Peleus, Telamon, Orpheus, Castor and Pollux, Atalanta, and Euphemus.The Isle of LemnosThe isle of Lemnos is situated off the Western coast of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). The island was inhabited by a race of women who had killed their husbands. The women had neglected their worship of Aphrodite, and as a punishment the goddess made the women so foul in stench that their husbands couldn't bear to be near them. The men then took concubines from the Thracian mainland opposite, and the spurned women, angry at Aphrodite, killed all the male inhabitants while they slept. The king, Thoas, was saved by Hypsipyle, his daughter, who put him out to sea sealed in a chest from which he was later rescued. The women of Lemnos lived for a while without men, with Hypsipyle as their queen.During the visit of the Argonauts the women mingled with the men creating a new "race" called Minyae. Jason fathered twins with the queen. Heracles pressured them to leave as he was disgusted by the antics of the Argonauts. He hadn't taken part, which is truly unusual considering the numerous affairs he had with other women. CyzicusAfter Lemnos the Argonauts landed among the Doliones, whose king Cyzicus treated them graciously. The Argonauts departed, losing their bearings and landing again at the same spot that night. In the darkness, the Doliones took them for enemies and they started fighting each other. The Argonauts killed many of the Doliones, among them the king Cyzicus. Cyzicus' wife killed herself. The Argonauts realized their horrible mistake when dawn came.MysiaWhen the Argonauts reached Mysia, they sent some men to find food and water. Among these men was Heracles' servant, Hylas. The nymphs of the stream where Hylas was collecting were attracted to his good looks, and pulled him into the stream. Heracles returned to his Labors, but Hylas was lost forever. Others say that Heracles went to Colchis with the Argonauts and he got the Golden Girdle of the Amazons and slew the Stymphalian Birds at that time.Phineas and the HarpiesSoon Jason reached the court of Phineas of Salmydessus in Thrace. Phineas had been given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, but was later given the choice of being blind and having a long life, or having sight and having a short life, for revealing to humans the deliberations of the gods. He chose to be blind. Helios the sun god sent the Harpies, creatures with the body of a bird and the head of a woman, to prevent Phineas from eating any more than what was necessary to live, because he was enraged that Phineas had chosen to live in a continual state of darkness than live in the sun he provided. Jason took pity on the emaciated king and killed the Harpies when they returned (In other versions Calais and Zetes chase the Harpies away). In return for this favor, Phineas revealed to Jason the location of Colchis and how to pass the Symplegades, or The Clashing Rocks, and then they parted. T he SymplegadesThe only way to reach Colchis was to sail through the Symplegades (Clashing Rocks), huge rock cliffs that came together and crushed anything that traveled between them. Phineas told Jason to release a dove when they approached these islands, and if the dove made it through, to row with all their might. If the dove was crushed, he was doomed to fail. Jason released the dove as advised, which made it through, losing only a few tail feathers. Seeing this, they rowed strongly and made it through with minor damage at the extreme stern of the ship. From that time on, the clashing rocks were forever joined leaving free passage for others to pass.The Arrival in Colchis Jason and the SnakeJason arrived in Colchis (modern Black Sea coast of Georgia) to claim the fleece as his own. King Aeetes of Colchis promised to give it to him only if he could perform three certain tasks. Presented with the tasks, Jason became discouraged and fell into depression. However, Hera had persuaded Aphrodite to convince her son Eros to make Aeetes's daughter, Medea, fall in love with Jason. As a result, Medea aided Jason in his tasks. First, Jason had to plow a field with fire-breathing oxen, the Khalkotauroi, that he had to yoke himself. Medea provided an ointment that protected him from the oxen's flames. Then, Jason sowed the teeth of a dragon into a field. The teeth sprouted into an army of warriors. Medea had previously warned Jason of this and told him how to defeat this foe. Before they attacked him, he threw a rock into the crowd. Unable to discover where the rock had come from, the soldiers attacked and defeated one another. His last task was to overcome the sleepless dragon which guarded the Golden Fleece. Jason sprayed the dragon with a potion, given by Medea, distilled from herbs. The dragon fell asleep, and Jason was able to seize the Golden Fleece. He then sailed away with Medea. Medea distracted her father, who chased them as they fled, by killing her brother Apsyrtus and throwing pieces of his body into the sea; Aeetes stopped to gather them. In another version, Medea lured Apsyrtus into a trap. Jason killed him, chopped off his fingers and toes, and buried the corpse. In any case, Jason and Medea escaped.Return journeyOn the way back to Iolcus, Medea prophesised to Euphemus, the Argo's helmsman, that one day he would rule Libya. This came true through Battus, a descendant of Euphemus. Zeus, as punishment for the slaughter of Medea's own brother, sent a series of storms at the Argo and blew it off course. The Argo then spoke and said that they should seek purification with Circe, a nymph living on the island called Aeaea. After being cleansed, they continued their journey home.SirensChiron had told Jason that without the aid of Orpheus, the Argonauts would never be able to pass the Sirens — the same Sirens encountered by Odysseus in Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. The Sirens lived on three small, rocky islands called Sirenum scopuli and sang beautiful songs that enticed sailors to come to them, which resulted in the crashing of their ship into the islands. When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew his lyre and played music that was more beautiful and louder, drowning out the Sirens' bewitching songs.TalosThe Argo then came to the island of Crete, guarded by the bronze man, Talos. As the ship approached, Talos hurled huge stones at the ship, keeping it at bay. Talos had one blood vessel which went from his neck to his ankle, bound shut by only one bronze nail (as in metal        casting by the lost wax method). Medea cast a spell on Talos to calm him; she removed the bronze nail and Talos bled to death. The Argo was then able to sail on.Jason returnsMedea, using her sorcery, claimed to Pelias' daughters that she could make their father younger by chopping him up into pieces and boiling the pieces in a cauldron of water and magical herbs. She demonstrated this remarkable feat with a sheep, which leapt out of the cauldron as a lamb. The girls, rather naively, sliced and diced their father and put him in the cauldron. Medea did not add the magical herbs, and Pelias was dead.[It should be noted that Thomas Bulfinch has an antecedent to the interaction of Medea and the daughters of Pelias. Jason, celebrating his return with the Golden Fleece, noted that his father was too aged and infirm to participate in the celebrations. He had seen and been served by Medea's magical powers. He asked Medea to take some years from his life and add them to the life of his father. She did so, but at no such cost to Jason's life. {See Thomas Bulfinch, page 134; compare to Shakespeare's witches in Macbeth.} Pelias' daughters saw this and wanted the same service for their father.] Pelias' son, Acastus, drove Jason and Medea into exile for the murder, and the couple settled in Corinth.Treachery of JasonIn Corinth, Jason became engaged to marry Creusa (sometimes referred to as Glauce), a daughter of the King of Corinth, to strengthen his political ties. When Medea confronted Jason about the engagement and cited all the help she had given him, he retorted that it was not she that he should thank, but Aphrodite who made Medea fall in love with him. Infuriated with Jason for breaking his vow that he would be hers forever, Medea took her revenge by presenting to Creusa a cursed dress, as a wedding gift, that stuck to her body and burned her to death as soon as she put it on. Creusa's father, Creon, burned to death with his daughter as he tried to save her. Then Medea killed the two boys that she bore to Jason, fearing that they would be murdered or enslaved as a result of their mother's actions. When Jason came to know of this, Medea was already gone; she fled to Athens in a chariot sent by her grandfather, the sun-god Helios.Later Jason and Peleus, father of the hero Achilles, attacked and defeated Acastus, reclaiming the throne of Iolcus for himself once more. Jason's son, Thessalus, then became king.Because he broke his vow to love Medea forever, Jason lost his favor with Hera and died lonely and unhappy. He was asleep under the stern of the rotting Argo when it fell on him, killing him instantly. The manner of his death was due to the deities cursing him for breaking his promise to Medea.In classical literatureEpic poetryThough some of the episodes of Jason's story draw on ancient material, the definitive telling, on which this account relies, is that of Apollonius of Rhodes in his epic poem Argonautica, written in Alexandria in the late 3rd century BC.Another Argonautica was written by Gaius Valerius Flaccus in the late 1st century AD, comprising of eight books in length. The poem ends abruptly with the
        request of Medea to accompany Jason on his homeward voyage. It is unclear if part of the epic poem has been lost, or if it was never finished. A third version is the Argonautica Orphica, which emphasizes the role of Orpheus in the story.Jason is briefly mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy. He appears in the Canto XVIII. In it, he is seen by Dante and his guide Virgil being punished in Hell's Eighth Circle (Bolgia 1) by being driven to march through the circle for all eternity while being whipped by devils. He is included among the seducers (possibly for his seduction and subsequent uncare of Medea).DramaThe story of Medea's revenge on Jason is told with devastating effect by Euripides in his tragedy Medea.Non-fictionThe mythical geography of the voyage of the Argonauts has been connected to specific geographic locations by Livio Stecchini,[1] but his theories have not been widely adopted. MEDEA by Euripides(c.  479 - 406 B.C.) Type of work:Lyric tragedySetting:Corinth; ancient GreecePrincipal characters:Medea, princess of CorinthJason, Medea's husbandCreon, King of CorinthA chorus of Corinthian women, observers in the dramaPlay Overview:Prologue:  Medea, a princess and a sorceress from the Black Sea kingdom of Colchis, fell in love with Jason of the Argonauts when he sailed to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece from Medea's father, King Aeetes.  Aeetes had agreed to surrender the fleece to Jason, on the condition that he perform a series of impossible feats.  Abetted by Medea's sorcery, Jason successfully accomplished the tasks her father had set.When Medea's father discovered he had been deceived, Medea also assisted Jason's escape, killing her brother and scattering his body parts in the sea to slow her father's pursuit.  Such was her devotion to Jason.In Iolchus, Jason's hereditary kingdom, Medea also helped him retaliate against his uncle Pelias, who had usurped Jason's right to his father's throne.  Again through the use of sorcery, Medea persuaded Pelias' daughters to kill him.  As a result, Medea and Jason were banished.  Now, ten years later, living as exiles in Corinth with their two children, Medea heard that Jason had resolved to abandon her and the children in order to marry the daughter of Creon, King of Corinth.Medea's nurse stood in front of their house, listening to Medea weep, and brooding on the devastation Jason's plans had caused.  Not only would Medea and her children be abandoned by Jason, but they would also be banished from Corinth:  Creon feared Medea would take revenge on his daughter if she stayed near.As the nurse remembered the burden of betrayal, murder, and exile which Medea had borne for Jason, she became afraid.  Medea, she knew, had a violent, passionate heart; she would not "put up with the treatment she [was] getting."  What frightened the nurse even more, however, was the thought that Medea might harm her children:  earlier she had seen Medea "blazing her eyes at them, as though she meant some mischief."Meanwhile, a chorus of Corinthian women gathered outside Medea's house, hoping they might console her.  But Medea's pain was beyond comfort, and as the chorus listened to her wail, they began to think that "this passion of hers moves her to something great."Before long, Medea appeared and began a long, impassioned speech in which she reflected not only on her own grief, but on the grievous conditions of women throughout the world.  "We women," she said, "are the most unfortunate creatures."  Medea, however, had one burden the others did not:  she had no escape, neither a family nor a home in which to take refuge from her sufferings.  Because of this, she asked the women in the chorus for a "service":If I can find the means or devise any schemeTo pay my husband back for what he has done tome—Him and his father-in-law and the girl who married him—Just to keep silent.  For in other ways a womanIs full of fear, defenseless, dreads the sight of coldSteel; but, when once she is wronged in the matter of love,No other soul can behold so many thoughts ofblood.The chorus knew that Medea's grievance against Jason was justified, and agreed to remain silent about her desire for re 0 e.  They kept this promise even when Creon arrived to see to it personally that Medea and her children were banished at once from Corinth.  "I will not return home," he said, "until you are cast from the boundaries of my land."Medea pleaded with Creon.  Exile for her, she said, was of little concern; the banishment of her children, however, was most grievous.  Jason, she informed Creon, had made no provision for the children.  For their sake, she needed time to plan where they would go.  "Allow me," she begged, "to remain here just for this one day."Against his better judgment, Creon granted Medea's request, and left her to her preparations—which turned out to be murderous.  With her extra day, she told the chorus, "I will make dead bodies of three of my enemies—father, the girl, and the husband."When Jason arrived, he was angry at Medea.  It was her violent temper that had been the cause of her banishment, he said.  Her reaction to his plans to marry the princess had been unreasonable and provocative.  If she could only see that his marriage served the "best and truest interest" of everyone concerned, he continued, then she would not now find herself in exile, and "life would have been good."  As for now, Jason said, "I wish to help you and the children in every way, but you refuse what is good for you.  Obstinately, you push away your friends.  You are sure to suffer for it."Medea was incensed by his words; she had never before heard such a self-justifying, specious argument.  "Enjoy your wedding," she sneered.  With the help of God, she told him, "you will make the kind of marriage that you will regret."  At this, Jason left her, and the chorus lamented the suffering incurred "when love is in excess."She would, she told the chorus, send her children to Jason's bride with a gift, "a finely woven dress and a golden diadem."  When Jason's bride put on the dress, she would die from poison in the fabric.  Then she unfolded the further gory details of her plan:I weep to think of what deed I have to doNext after that; for I shall kill my own children.My children, there is none who can give them safety,When I have ruined the whole of Jason's house,I shall leave the land and flee from the murder of myDear children, and I shall have done a dreadful deed.The chorus women were horrified to hear that Medea's vengeance included the murders of her own children.  Can you, they asked Medea in unison, "have the heart to kill your own flesh and blood?""Yes," Medea replied, "for this is the best way to wound my husband."Medea, setting her plan in motion, sent word to Jason that she wished to speak with him on an urgent matter.  When Jason returned, she pretended to be contrite.  She had gravely erred, she told him, but had "come to a better understanding now."  Moreover, she wanted to make amends—to him, to his new bride, and to his father-in-law, Creon.  She asked only two things:  first, that Jason persuade his bride and father-in-law to permit her children to remain in Corinth; and second, as a demonstration of her good faith, that Jason take the children to the palace to convey a gift to his new bride.Jason, moved by Medea's appeals, consented to fulfill her final requests.  Then Medea called her children from the house:Go children, go together to that rich palace,Be suppliants to the new wife of your father,My lady, beg her not to let you be banished.And give her this dress.After Jason and the children departed, Medea awaited the fulfillment of the first part of her scheme.  Soon the children returned to her, along with news that their banishment had been lifted.  Not long after, however, a messenger arrived from the palace, accusing Medea of having "done a dreadful thing," and telling her to flee at once.  Jason's new bride, the messenger said, "is dead, only just now, and Creon dead, too, her father, by your poisons."  Medea answered:  "The finest words you have spoken.  Now and hereafter, I shall count you among my benefactors and friends."  Then she surprised the messenger even more by asking him to recount in detail how they had died:  "You will delight me twice as much again if you say they died in agony."The messenger related the entire horrifying story of how the princess' initial delight in the golden dress had gradually turned to terror, of how the poison had caused her flesh to drop away from her bones, and of how her father—seeing his daughter's corpse—had fallen on it and cried out, "O my poor child," before he himself succumbed to the poison.When the account was finished, Medea turned to the chorus and said, "Women, my task is fixed:  quickly as I may to kill my children, and start away from this land."  Medea disappeared into the house, and a minute later the two children shrieked.  At that moment, Jason returned—and to his horror, the chorus told him, "Your children are dead, and by their mother's own hand."Jason began to pound on the house's bolted doors.  Medea appeared on the balcony, standing in a chariot drawn by two winged dragons and holding the bodies of the two children.  "Why do you batter these gates," she asked, "seeking the corpses and for me who did the deed?"Medea and Jason began to quarrel and curse one another for the bitterness and pain each believed the other had caused.  "I loved them, you did not," Medea accused.  "You loved them, and killed them," Jason charged.  "To make you feel pain," Medea justified.Jason then begged Medea to let him "touch my boys' delicate flesh."  But Medea refused.  "I will not," she said.  "Your words are wasted."  She then flew away in her chariot, first to bury her children at Hera's temple, and then to Athens, where she would be safe.  The chorus, stunned by the events they had witnessed, could only lament:Many things the godsAchieve beyond our judgment.  What we thoughtIs not confirmed and what we thought not godContrives.  And so it happens in this story.Commentary:The puzzlingly cool reception afforded the Medea when it was first exhibited may be explained by its extraordinary raw power.  Then, as now, the play seems to unsettle and subvert our notions of the family and, by extension, the community as a whole.Other great tragedies, of course, accomplish similar moments of corrosion and pollution of familial bonds, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare's King Lear, for instance.  Unlike these great tragedies of family and state, however, Euripides' Medea offers its audience neither antidote nor consolation for the ruin of civilized life which the play unveils.It is difficult to think of a more problematical character than Medea:  on the one hand, she is a resourceful, loyal, and—because she is so clearly wronged by Jason—sympathetic character; on the other hand, she is—as the author of her children's murders—monstrously repugnant, the very embodiment of moral degeneracy.  In violating the sacred maternal bond, she acts without regard to human nature.  Because she represents a beyond-human passion, she is also beyond understanding.Interestingly, the murders of Medea's children are not without precedent; indeed, she seems to have the uncanny ability to penetrate and pollute the very core of a family with murder.  Earlier, she accomplishes the ruin of her father through the murder of her brother.  Then, in Iolchus, she manages to induce the daughters of Pelias to murder their father.  Finally, of course, by poisoning Creon's daughter, she causes the daughter to unintentionally poison her father.  In each case, the bonds of a family are quite literally murdered from within.Medea is also unsettling, powerful, and precarious because it tears apart the legend of the mythic, invincible hero.  In the traditional myth, Jason is a character of heroic proportions, one who can accomplish impossible feats.  Here, however, he is unmasked as a fraud, a "hero" who has accomplished nothing without the aid of Medea's sorcery.If there is any attempt by Euripides to frame or interpret the dramatic course of action, it is in the enigmatic remarks of the chorus that close the play:  "What we thought, is not confirmed, and what we thought not, god contrives ...

1250 BC -
        Principal characters:Agamemnon, King of Argos and victor of the Trojan War Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, Queen of Argos, and sister to Helen of Tro Orestes, their son Cassandra, daughter of Priam (the defeated King of Troy), priestess of Apollo, and captured mistress of Agamemnon Aegisthus, cousin to Agamemnon and—in her husband's absence—Clytemnestra's lover The Chorus, a group of elders who had remained in Argos, too old to fight in the Trojan War Play Overview: The Trojan War at last entered its tenth year—the year in which prophets had foretold that Troy would fall to Agamemnon and his Greek legion. In the Greek city of Argos, Queen Clytemnestra had posted a watchman to look for the beacon-fire that would herald the long-awaited victory.  Night after night, the watchman had perched on the palace rooftop, studying the drift of stars and brooding on the troubled fortunes of the House of Atreus.  Among all the royal families of Greece, the House of Atreus had suffered the most.  From its very beginnings, the family had lived under a curse which had moved generations of its descendants to commit unspeakable acts of savagery and violence. Agamemnon's father, Atreus, seeking retribution on his brother Thyestes for having seduced his wife, had tricked him into attending a banquet feast featuring the flesh of Thyestes' own children.  And even Iphigenia, Agamemnon's young daughter, had been sacrificed at the altar by her father as an oblation to obtain favorable sailing winds to Troy. Now, these many years later, Clytemnestra remained bent on revenge against her husband for the death of her daughter.  First, she had banished their only son, Orestes, forbidding him ever to return to Argos.  She also took as her lover and co-conspirator Agamemnon's cousin Aegisthus, who, as the surviving son of Thyestes, had his own motives for revenge against Agamemnon. One night just before dawn, the watchman at Argos saw the anticipated beacon-fire light the sky.  He excitedly called from his post for Clytemnestra to "rise with instant shout and sing."  Awakened, Clytemnestra did not sing. In the streets of Argos a chorus of the city's old men, not yet having heard the news, were gathered near the palace to sing a lament for the ten years of death and destruction initiated by Helen's abduction.  They also sang of Iphigenia's bloody sacrifice and of Clytemnestra's desire to avenge her daughter's death. As the men sang, they caught sight of Clytemnestra outside the palace.  Accompanied by her servants, she lighted altar fires and burned incense.  Finally, one of the ancient ones turned to Clytemnestra and asked, "Is it good and certain news you have, or is it only wished-for thinking with your sacrifice?"Clytemnestra then related the blessed tidings; the beacon had signaled Argos' victory over Troy.  To the old men, of course, she did not reveal that the beacon was also her sign to prepare to exact her revenge on their returning King. At last a messenger appeared at the palace gates to announce that Agamemnon had just laid anchor in Argos.  The news gladdened the chorus; but their melody was also filled with foreboding.  Once again, their song took up the uneasy themes of Troy's destruction and the unending cycle of jealousy, savagery and violence passed down from generation to generation in the House of Atreus. Agamemnon finally arrived in the city.  Attired in his royal splendor, he drove his chariot to the palace gates.  Behind him came a procession of wagons loaded with Trojan treasure, including his captive Trojan mistress, the princess Cassandra, the most prized treasure of all.  "Welcome!  I say on work well done," exclaimed one of the old men.  For a moment, Agamemnon considered the group of ancients from his chariot, but failed to see the chorus' pleasure at his return was mixed with apprehension.  When they hinted at the corruption that lay in wait for him within the palace, Agamemnon chose to focus instead on his own glory, on the "fat reek of wealth" and victory he had brought home. Then Clytemnestra appeared at the palace gates to greet her husband.  Concealing her treachery beneath a smile, she stroked Agamemnon's vanity by complaining how lonely and frightened she had been during her husband's long leave.  Then hoping that Agamemnon would not see something amiss by Orestes' absence, the Queen quickly explained that their son's departure from Argos was to avoid possible danger caused by unrest among the people.  Then she sought to coax her husband down from his chariot and into the sumptuous banquet that awaited him in the palace:And now, my lord, dear head, come down. Step from your car;But not upon our common earth:Not the foot, my king, that trod down Troy. At first, Agamemnon was reluctant to step down upon the purple carpet Clytemnestra's servants had spread.  Such a ritual welcome was reserved for the gods; to accept the honor would be sacrilege.  Consumed, however, by his own ego—and his mind turned to "his choice flower," Cassandra, who still awaited his bidding in the chariot—he finally stepped down. As Agamemnon, after embracing the ceremonial welcome, entered the palace, Clytemnestra followed closely behind, silently invoking Zeus' help in enacting her vengeance.  However, her prayer was interrupted by the thought of Cassandra.  Returning to the chariot, she addressed her rival.  "Down from the car," Clytemnestra demanded.  Then, with a threatening note in her voice, she warned, "From you I can expect only what is proper."  Finally, losing patience with the proud and uncooperative mistress, Clytemnestra swept back into the palace. Still standing silently in the wagon, Cassandra, a priestess of Apollo cursed with the gift of prophecy, understood all too well what she could expect from Clytemnestra.  The chorus, pitying the beautiful mistress—who they likened to a "freshly captured animal"—tried to console her; with a song of compassion they gently tried to persuade Cassandra to come down from the chariot.  And, as the hymn sprang from their lips, she began to speak as if in a trance.  First she foretold that she would be sacrificed, then turned her attention to the horrible past of the House of Atreus: Full of family butcheries: Dangling with horrors; Human slaughterhouse ... "I shall go, and do, and dare to die," she then pronounced, and then stepped down from the chariot. The old men marvelled.  By now they, too, perceived her impending fate, and watched in awe as she made her way to the palace gates.  "How do you step with courage to the altar's stone?"  they asked.  Then, before entering, Cassandra turned to the elders and made a final appeal: One more, one word—but not my dirge. In the sun's last light I ask the sun: "Let my slayers pay the price of me in blood— A dying slave, poor easy prey." As the palace gates closed behind the young prophetess, the chorus took up a lament—but they were interrupted a few moments later by the sound of a blood-chilling scream.  "O-o!  I am hit ...  mortally hit ...  within."  One last wail sounded from the palace doors—and the old men recognized the voice of their King.  Before they had time to act, however, the palace gates swung open.  There, over the bloody corpses of Agamemnon and Cassandra, stood Clytemnestra, her hands and robes dripping with gore:..  I struck him twice, And with a double groan His limbs went loose, he fell. I was on him with a third—"thanksgiving"—stroke: To Zeus of the world below, the keeper of the dead. So he went down, Life pumping out of him With gurgling murderous spurts of blood Which hit me with a black-ensanguined drizzle. Oh it freshened me like drops from heaven .... Suddenly, Aegisthus, who until then had kept himself hidden, strutted into view.  "O sweet day of justice ushered in!"  he cried, proclaiming that his father, whom Agamemnon's father had served "the meat of [Thyestes'] own children," was finally avenged. The gore and Aegisthus' gloating stunned the ancient ones.  He would suffer "a rain of stones and curses from the people," they warned in verse.  Aegisthus, though, would have none of it, and was about to order his guards to kill the elders, when Clytemnestra, her lust for revenge at last satiated, stepped between them.  "Let us work no further evil," she coolly advised. Aegisthus, momentarily calmed by Clytemnestra's words, promised the old men that their insolence would result very soon in a visit "full of vengeance."  Unfazed by these threats, the chorus replied, "Not if fortune guides Orestes here and brings him home at last." Their revenge on Agamemnon completed, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus began their reign in Argos—a reign darkened from the first, however, by the prophecy of Orestes' return. Commentary: Agamemnon, originally composed by Aeschylus (ES-chuh-luhs) as part of a tetralogy—the Oresteia—or cycle of four plays, and first performed for a competition in 458 B.C.  at the festival of Dionysus, where it was awarded first prize.  Only three of these plays—all of them tragedies—are still in existence:  Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.  The fourth play, a comedy entitled Proteus, was lost.  Presumably, it would have relieved the dramatic tension accumulated in the tragedies. Agamemnon is, chronologically, the first of the plays.  The theme of retribution, which the play enacts both in political and personal dimensions, is not simply a matter of right and wrong.  Indeed, none of the principal characters acts solely from choice.  Agamemnon's ten-year campaign against Troy, for instance, is waged not only to avenge Helen's abduction, but (on the larger stage where the gods act out their pleasures) to satisfy Zeus' desire to punish the House of Priam.  In this sense, Agamemnon is merely an instrument through which Zeus and Athena play out their passions.  The same may also be said of Clytemnestra and the murderous revenge she takes on her husband. The Oresteia—named for Orestes, the banished son whose return is darkly prophesied at the end of Agamemnon—is considered the greatest lyric tragedy of all time.  As the critic W.B.  Stanford said, the golden age of Greece produced two enduring monuments:  the Parthenon and the Oresteia.  Enthusiasts have called the plays no less than a parable of human progress, a map of our psyche in its difficult passage from spiritual darkness to truth and light, from guilt to acceptance, from barbarism to civilization. A key question introduced in "Agamemnon," then, is where will the cycle of darkness and vengeance lead?  And, perhaps more importantly, how can this destruction be put to an end?  This latter question, which touches on the very nature and significance of retribution and guilt, is elaborated and finally resolved as the other plays unfold.
       
1260 - The Trojans
     Paris, a Trojan prince, and abductor of the beautiful Helen Hector, Paris' brother, powerful Trojan warrior Priam, King of Troy and father of Paris and Hector Krypeisand Briseis, two women Various gods and goddesses, each alternately favoring one side   or the other According to legend, Homer was blind and lived on the island of Chios.  He crafted his works in the Ionian dialect of ancient Greece . The Iliad focuses on events late in the Trojan War, a ten-year conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans which started when Prince Paris of Troy abducted Queen Helen, an Achaean woman famous for her beauty.  King Menelaos, Helen's enraged husband, amassed Achaean troops and laid siege to Troy.  The story line begins during the war's tenth year of conflict. In response to the snatching of Queen Helen, the Achaeans have just kidnaped two comely maidens, Briseis and Kryseis, from towns near Troy; Kryseis was taken by King Agamemnon and Briseis was taken by the warrior Achilles. As the fighting proceeds, the mythological gods also become important characters in the story,        and influence the outcome of events at every
        turn.Hundreds of Achaean warriors lay dying in "transfixing pain" from a plague brought on by the archer god Apollo in response to a plea from Kryseis' grieving father.  Soon an Achaean diviner came to prophesy that the plague would not abate unless the woman was returned.  When he heard this news, King Agamemnon flew into a frenzy.  "You visionary of hell," he thundered at the diviner, "never have I had fair play in your forecasts."  Still, Agamemnon finally agreed to return Kryseis, but only under the condition that he be given Achilles' prize, the charming Briseis.  Now it was Achilles'    turn to be outraged.  "You thick-skinned, shameless greedy fool!"  the proud warrior confronted his king.  Then he swore to fight in the Achaean cause no more, and even beseeched Zeus, the supreme god, to intervene instead on behalf of the Trojans.True to his word, when fighting broke out again Achilles remained in camp.  The Trojan who first came out to battle was Prince Paris, who, as Helen's abductor, was responsible for starting the war.  He sported "a cowl of leopard skin ...  a longsword at his hip [and] two spears capped in pointed bronze."  When Menelaos caught sight of him, he vowed, "I'll cut him to bits, adulterous dog!"  Before he could do so, however, Paris changed his mind and retreated behind Trojan lines.  His brother, the famed warrior Hector, regarded him contemptuously.  "Paris, the great lover, a gallant sight!"  he sneered.  Thus humiliated, the cowering Paris announced that he would engage Menelaos in a personal duel for Helen and that the outcome would decide the war. Menelaos agreed to his rival's challenge.  Paris came out aggressively, but Menelaos quickly gained the advantage, pouncing on the prince in such a way that he lay "choked by the chin strap" of his own helmet.  At that moment, however, the goddess Aphrodite intervened.  She "hid[Paris] in mist / and put him down in his own fragrant chamber." "Beyond question, Menelaos is victorious," Agamemnon proclaimed.  But the Trojans renewed the conflict, with mortal foes "going for one another like wolves ...  / whirling upon each other, man to man," until countless combatants, "prone in the dust, were strewn beside each other."  The brave Achaean warrior Diomedes was struck by an arrow in the shoulder; but, although "spirits of blood ...  stained his knitted shirt," he did not collapse.  "Courage, Diomedes.  Press the fight," the goddess Athena urged him, and Diomedes strode furiously back into battle.  After slaughtering many of his foes, he was assailed by the warrior Pandaros.  "Guided by Athena," Diomedes managed to strike Pandaros' "nose beside the eye / and shatter his white teeth:  his tongue / the brazen spearhead severed, tip from root, / then plowing on came out beneath his chin." Zeus had long since forbidden the gods and goddesses to aspire to sway men's fate.  Nevertheless, many of them did choose to intervene at one time or another.  When the balance of power tipped in favor of the Achaeans, Hector returned from the battlefield to the city to entreat his mother, Queen Hekabe, to make a sacrificial offering to "Athena, Hope of Soldiers."  Then he kissed his child and bade an emotional farewell to his wife Andromache.  "Unquiet soul," he said to her, do not be too distressed by thoughts of me.  You know no man dispatches  me into the undergloom against my fate;  no mortal, either, can escape his fate coward or brave man, once he comes to be. Andromache tearfully drew away from her husband's embrace; she was certain that he would not "be delivered from Achaean fury."  But Hector, a soldier before a husband, met Paris by the gateway of Troy and rejoined the battle. Meanwhile, Achilles, who was still angry with his king, pleaded to Zeus to give success to the enemy.  As a result, Zeus sent thunder and "burning flashes of lightning against the Achaean army."  All of the Achaeans despaired to see this fearful omen at the hand of Zeus.  "Board ship for our own fatherland!"  ordered Agamemnon, with tears trickling from his eyes.  "Retreat!  / We cannot hope any longer to take Troy."  The king's advisors were shocked by this order of withdrawal and suggested a final maneuver before giving up:  that Agamemnon make peace with Achilles and make use of his services.  Agamemnon consented to the gambit and dispatched an embassy to speak with Achilles.  The great warrior, however, shunned the embassy and ignored their request, announcing that he still planned to "sail homeward" the following day.That night "Agamemnon lay beyond sweet sleep, and cast about in tumult of the mind," still looking for some way to avoid defeat.  He thus decided to confer with a wise old man named Nestor "and see / what plan if any could be formed with him ...  " Sure enough, the old man devised a ruse to help his king:  Patroclus, Achilles' good friend and sweet lover, would go to battle wearing the great warrior's armor in an effort to demoralize the Trojans.  Patroclus, weary of war and anxious to break his enemy's spirit, readily agreed to Nestor's scheme.The next day, when "Achilles," the great champion, appeared on the field of battle, the Trojans were stunned and terrified.  But Apollo descended to allay Trojan fears and to address the imposter:  "Back, Patroclus, lordly man!  Destiny will not let this fortress town / of Trojans fall to you!"  Obedient to the god, Patroclus "retired, a long way off," but not beyond the range of Hector, whose spear struck Patroclus "low in the shank" and killed him.  The Trojans then removed Patroclus' battle gear and began desecrating his body. When news of his lover Patroclus' death reached Achilles, he "tore his hair with both hands [and] gave a dreadful cry":I must reject this life, my heart tells me, reject the world of men, if Hector does not feel my battering spear tear the life out of him, making him pay in his own blood for the slaughter of Patroclus! The "lame god" Hephaistos, a designer of superior armor, undertook to outfit Achilles for the task at hand, creating for the warrior a magnificently crafted set of shield and armor.  Girding the armor and taking up his shield, Achilles himself appeared on the field and "all the Achaeans gave a roar of joy."  By now they had managed to reclaim Patroclus' body and fierce warfare had continued unabated.  Agamemnon made amends with Achilles by returning Briseis to him, and before charging into battle, the two men sacrificed a boar to Zeus.  With the aid of the gods, Achilles would not taste defeat. After killing many brave Trojans, Achilles reached the gateway of the city, where Hector awaited him.  When King Priam saw his son about to engage the mighty Achilles in battle, he begged Hector to withdraw:  "Cut off as you are, alone, dear son, / don't try to hold your ground against this man, / or soon you'll meet the shock of  doom ...  " Achilles advanced "like the implacable god of war."  At first Hector fled from him, and three times did the three men circle the walls of Troy.  Finally, Hector turned and faced his enemy:  "Now my soul would have me stand and fight, / whether I kill you or am killed."  Achilles, the superior combatant, aimed his spear and "drove his point straight through the tender neck" of Hector, who was dressed in the armor Achilles had given Patroclus.  "I beg you by your soul and by your parents," Hector whispered to Achilles before he died, "do not let the dogs feed on me." The Achaeans gathered around the slain prince, "and no one came who did not stab the body."  Priam wept at the defilement of his son's corpse.  "Why could he not have died where I might hold him?"  he lamented.  Unmoved by the father's grief, Achilles persisted in heaping vengeance upon his fallen foe: Behind both feet he pierced  the tendons, heel to ankle.  Rawhide cords he drew through both and lashed them to his chariot, letting the man's head trail.  Stepping aboard, bearing the great trophy of the arms, he shook the reins, and whipped the team ahead  into a willing run.  A dustcloud rose above the furrowing body; the dark tresses flowed behind, and the head so princely once dragged  back in dust ...Returning to the Achaean camp, Achilles left "Hector's body / to lie full-length in dust ...  " Thus it lay for eleven nights.  As the twelfth day dawned, Zeus lost patience with Achilles' mad vengeance and sent his messengers to "beg [Achilles'] mercy" in accepting "ransom for the body."  Afterward, Priam visited the Greek champion, who finally took pity on the anguished old man.  His rage exhausted, Achilles ordered Hector's body bathed and rubbed with oil before it was returned to Troy: Then in a grave dug deep they placed it  and heaped it with great stones ... / So they performed the funeral rites of Hector, tamer of horses.

1250 -

50—BC THE AENEID- Type of work: Epic poem Setting:
        Carthage, Sicily, and Italy; ca.  1250 B.C., after the Trojan War and the destruction of Troy Principal characters Aeneas, son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the love goddess Venus, and the leader of the Trojan exiles after the fall of Troy Juno, the sister and wife of the supreme god Jupiter, and Aeneas' principal divine nemesis Dido, the queen and founder of Carthage and, for a year, Aeneas' lover Latinus, the king of Latium and the father of Lavinia, who is fated to marry Aeneas Turnus, an Italian king who wages war against the Trojans Deiphobe, the Prophetess of Cumae who guides Aeneas through the underworld Commentary: Written in the twilight years of Augustus Caesar's reign, the Aeneid recounts in epic form Aeneas' wanderings from the ruins of Troy to his settlement in Italy.  The story was left unfinished at Virgil's death.  Despite its lack of closure, however, it has remained a central work in our literary canon for over two thousand years.  And with Robert Fitzgerald's superb English translation, the Aeneid continues to exert a vital influence on literature today.The seeds of Virgil's plot are borrowed from Book XX of The Iliad.  There, just as the Greek champion Achilles is about to kill Aeneas in combat, the sea god Poseidon (or Neptune, as he was called by the Romans) intercedes and spirits Aeneas out of harm's way, for, as Poseidon knows, Aeneas and his descendants are fated to be "lords over the Trojans born hereafter." Story Overview: The goddess Juno loved Carthage above all cities.  She knew, however, that Fate had decreed that Rome, which had not yet been founded, would rise up and destroy Carthage in the Punic Wars.  Moreover, she knew that the great Trojan warrior-leader Aeneas, whose Italian descendants were destined to build Rome, had just set sail with his fleet from Sicily. Embittered by Fate, Juno conspired with the wind god Aeolus to send a storm that would make Aeneas' "long ships founder!"  But before Aeolus could complete his task, the sea god Neptune intervened and calmed the waters.  "Gale-worn," Aeneas laid anchor off the coast of Libya.  Although several of his ships had been separated by the storm, Aeneas ordered the remaining Trojans ashore to make a feast of venison and wine. The next day, Aeneas and his friend Achates set off to explore "the strange new places" along the coast.  Midway through a forest, they encountered Aeneas' own mother Venus, disguised as a Libyan huntress.  Venus related to them a brief history of Carthage and its founding queen, Dido.  Then, before leaving them, she pointed out the road to Carthage and cloaked them "in grey mist" so that no one would "see or accost them" along the way. Thus enshrouded, Aeneas and Achates entered Carthage and toured the city.  Among its marvels, they were particularly struck by Dido's majestic temple, which was decorated with panels depicting "the Trojan battles in the old war, now known throughout the world."  Their wonder, however, soon faded when Dido herself appeared, followed by the captains of the missing Trojan ships. Dido welcomed the shipwrecked Trojans, also expressing her disappointment that Aeneas was not also present.  And even as she said this, the mist around Aeneas and Achates vanished.  "Before your eyes I stand," he addressed the queen, "the same one you look for."  Pleased, Dido arranged a banquet that night to honor the Trojans. Aeneas, meanwhile, sent word back to his ships that his son Ascanius should attend the banquet.  Venus, seizing on Ascanius' imminent arrival as an opportunity to protect Aeneas, plotted with Cupid:  disguised as Ascanius, Cupid would attend the banquet and cast a spell on Dido so she would fall in love with Aeneas.  The trick worked, and that evening after feasting, an impassioned Dido asked Aeneas to tell his story of the "ruin" of Troy and his years of "wandering all the lands and all the seas." Reluctantly, Aeneas agreed.  When he had finished his tale of the Trojan Horse and the ruin it had brought him—the murder of his wife Creusa on their final night in Troy, the leveling of his country to ashes, and, in Sicily, the death of his father Anchises—Dido "ached [with] longing" for Aeneas and felt as if an "inward fire [was] eating her away."  Aeneas, for his part, was equally beguiled by Dido's beauty and charms.  Looking on, Juno and Venus decided that a union between the unrequited lovers would be mutually advantageous.  Thus Juno caused a thunderstorm, which drove the pair into a secluded cave—there, to consummate their love. Jupiter, incensed that Aeneas was now living with Dido in Carthage, dispatched his messenger Mercury with a warning:  "If future histories and glories do not affect you," he told Aeneas, "Think of the expectations of your heir ...  to whom the Italian realm, the land of Rome, are due."  Sobered by Jupiter's reprimand, Aeneas made secret preparations to make "the fleet ready for the sea." Dido, having uncovered Aeneas' deceit, built a funeral pyre and threatened to take her own life if he left her.  Jupiter, meanwhile, dispatched Mercury with a second warning, and, with this reproach fresh in his ears, Aeneas set sail late that night.  At dawn, when Dido awakened and learned that Aeneas was gone, she cursed him and his descendants, climbed her pyre, and killed herself.  And at sea, Aeneas looked "far astern" at Carthage, where, flaring on the horizon, he could see the blaze of Dido's pyre. Back in Sicily, Aeneas sponsored Olympic games to observe the anniversary of his father's death.  That night, Anchises appeared to Aeneas in a dream and informed him that he should sail for Italy.  Once there, Anchises continued, Aeneas should seek out the Prophetess at Cumae, who would escort him to the underworld, where Anchises would reveal to Aeneas his fate. Following his father's instructions, Aeneas sailed to Cumae and met with this esteemed prophetess, Deiphobe.  There was a tree, she told Aeneas, sacred to Juno, whose "deep shade" concealed "the golden bough."  This bough, which he would need to leave as an offering in the underworld, would be broken off "willingly" if he was "called by fate." That evening, Aeneas returned to the Sibyl with the golden bough, and, together, they descended into the underworld.  She first led him to the river Acheron, where they presented the golden bough to Charon, the ferryman who transported dead souls across the river.  Crossing to the other shore, they continued their journey and, as night drew near, arrived finally at Elysium, where Anchises awaited them. "Have you come at last?"  Anchises wept with joy.  "Your sad ghost impelled me," answered Aeneas, at which he tried three times to embrace his father—but each time Anchises "slipped through his hands, weightless as wind and fugitive as dream."  The father and son made their way to a secluded grove, where Anchises pointed to a mass of souls gathered by the river Lethe.  "Souls," intoned Anchises, "for whom a second body is in store." As together they traversed among these disembodied souls, Anchises identified some of the "famous children" Aeneas' line would produce:  Romulus, the fabled founder of Rome, and Julius and Augustus Caesar, who would "bring once again an Age of Gold."  When the pair had "viewed it all," Anchises spoke briefly of the glory and wars that awaited Aeneas, and how he "might avoid or bear each toil to come."  Then, after bidding his father farewell, Aeneas and Deiphobe made their way back "to the upper world." Transformed and revitalized by the revelations of his fate, Aeneas returned to his ships at Cumae and sailed for Latium, the land where, as his father had foretold, he and his descendants would fulfill their destinies. Shortly after they made landfall, Aeneas and the Trojans were greeted by Latinus, the king of Latium.  Immediately, Latinus recognized that Aeneas was the foreign prince the oracles had decreed would conquer Latium and marry his daughter Lavinia.  "Children of that stock," he knew, "will see all earth turned Latin at their feet, governed by them, as far as on his rounds the sun looks down on Ocean, East or West."  Thus, to propitiate the Fates, Latinus offered his daughter Lavinia in marriage to Aeneas. Meanwhile, Juno, rancorous because Aeneas now stood at the threshold of his destiny, unleashed the Fury Allecto to stir up enmity between the Latins and the Trojans.  Juno accomplished her end by inspiring the Italian prince Turnus, Lavinia's principal suitor, to raise an army against Aeneas. Rumors of impending war quickly spread throughout Latium, and Turnus soon commanded a large army anxious to expel the Trojans.  While Aeneas enlisted the aid of the city-states Pallanteum and Etruria, Juno convinced Turnus to "raise the flag of war" over Laurenteum, Latium's capital city.  "Now," Juno said, "is the time to sound the call for cavalry and war-cars, now!" Apprised of the war, Jupiter called a council of the gods on Mount Olympus and made it clear to both Juno and Venus that he would not tolerate further interference.  "The effort each man makes," Jupiter proclaimed, "will bring luck or trouble"; the Latins and Trojans would settle their dispute according to "the Fates." In the meantime, Aeneas returned to the Trojan camps with new allies.  In one of the battles that followed, Pallas, the son of the Pallenteum king Evander, was killed by Turnus and stripped of his armor.  Aeneas, lamenting the loss, swore revenge and sought Turnus out on the battlefield. As the war dragged on, Turnus fell into disfavor among the Italians, and members of his council suggested that he fight Aeneas himself.  "Come, sir," one prince taunted him, "if any fighting blood is in you, any native legacy from Mars, go face the man who calls you out to combat!"  After the Italian cavalry suffered another major defeat, Turnus reluctantly agreed to confront Aeneas:  Lavinia, he declared, would marry the victor. With their respective armies watching from either side, Aeneas and Turnus met in the field.  A battle, however, soon erupted between the armies, and as the conflagration spread, Aeneas was struck by an arrow.  While he retired behind battle lines to dress his wound, Turnus slaughtered a large number of Trojans in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Aeneas, now recovered, saw—and took—the opportunity to seize the undefended capital Laurenteum.  When Turnus learned that Aeneas occupied the city, he again challenged him, and with the same terms as before:  that the victor would marry Lavinia. As the two champions met on the battlefield one last time, Jupiter reminded the gods that only Fate should determine the outcome of their combat.  After dodging a stone, Aeneas threw his spear and hit Turnus, who fell to the ground.  Seeing he was now defeated, Turnus asked Aeneas to "return me, or my body ...  to my own kin." For a moment, Aeneas pitied his toppled foe and considered sparing his life.  However, when he caught sight of the "swordbelt" at Turnus' side, the same weapon that had been stripped from his friend Pallas' body, the sight of this "trophy" brought on rage.  "This wound," he cried at Turnus, "will come from Pallas:  Pallas makes this offering, and from your criminal blood exacts his due."  With that, Aeneas "sank his blade in fury in Turnus's chest.  Then all the body slackened in death's chill, and with a groan for that indignity, his spirit fled into the gloom below."

    GREECE. .THE ODYSSEY

    1240-30 B.C., 10 years after the fall of Troy  Greek islands; c. Principal characters: Odysseus,   King of Ithaca and hero of the Trojan War Penelope, Queen of Ithaca and wife of    Odysseu Athena, goddess of war Zeus, supreme god of Olympus Hermes, messenger of Zeus Calypso, a beautiful sea nymph Polyphemus, a Cyclops and the son of Poseidon Circe, a beautiful goddess and enchantress Ten years after the Trojan War had ended, Odysseus, one of the great Greek heroes, languished on Ogygia, island of the sea nymph Calypso.  Calypso, who was in love with Odysseus, had for seven years held him captive, refusing all appeals for release. Pitying the plight of Odysseus, the goddess Athena called an Olympian council in the hopes of persuading her father Zeus to allow Odysseus to return home to Penelope, his wife, in Ithaca.  Zeus agreed, and dispatched his messenger Hermes to Ogygia, ordering Calypso to release Odysseus.  Reluctantly, Calypso relented and outfitted Odysseus with provisions and a small boat.  And finally the homesick Odysseus again set sail for Ithaca.  Poseidon, however, was enraged that the Olympian council had met in his absence only to rule in favor of Odysseus' release, so he sent a storm that shipwrecked Odysseus on the Phaeacian coast.Meanwhile in Ithaca, Penelope was besieged by a group of marauding suitors.  Led by Antinous, the suitors had encamped in the palace, and as they ate and drank their way through Odysseus' stores of food and wine, they informed Penelope that they would not leave until she selected a new husband from among them.Having been washed ashore naked and unconscious, Odysseus awakened to find the beguiling Princess Nausica and her maids drying the palace laundry.  By this stroke of good fortune, Odysseus was not only clothed but made welcome by Queen Arete and King Alcinous, who promised to give the stranger safe passage home.The next night at a palace banquet, the Phaeacian court poet Demodocus unwittingly sang of heroic feats achieved during the Trojan War.  Deeply moved, Odysseus wept into his cloak.  Seeing this, Alcinous asked his guest why the song had made him so distraught, and, for the first time, Odysseus revealed to his hosts his true identity.  At Alcinous' request, then, Odysseus agreed to tell the story of his ten years of wandering. After the Trojan War, Odysseus began his story, he and his fellow Ithacans—like all the other Greek heroes of the War—had set sail for home.  They first laid anchor at Ismarus, which he and his men then sacked and plundered.  With their ships loaded with Ismarian wine, they then sailed on.  Before reaching their next port of call, however, they were blown off course to the land of the Lotus-eaters.  There, some of his crew ate the lotus and fell under its lethargic spell, wanting nothing more than "to stay forever, browsing on that native bloom forgetful of their homeland."  Forcing the crew members back to their ships, Odysseus again set sail.They next laid anchor in the land of the Cyclops, a race of one-eyed giants who lived in isolated mountain caves.  Odysseus, taking his twelve best men, decided to explore the regions inland.  During the expion, they came upon the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus, which, they discovered, contained a large cache of cheese. Against the wishes of his crew, Odysseus decided to await Polyphemus' return and to trade his Ismarian wine for the Cyclops' cheese.  When Polyphemus finally appeared with his flock of sheep, however, it was only to seal off the cave entrance with a huge stone, whereupon he snatched up two Greek crewmen "in his hands like squirming puppies to beat their brains out, spattering the floor.  Then he dismembered them and made his meal, gaping and crunching like a mountain lion—everything:  innards, flesh, and marrow bones." Odysseus, known for his cunning, soon devised an escape plan.  He offered Polyphemus several casks of wine—gifts, he reminded Polyphemus—that came from Nobody.  "Nobody," Odysse repeated.  "Mother, father, and friends, everyone calls me Nobody."  After the Cyclops had passed out, drunk, Odysseus sharpened a large pole, laid its point in the fire, and assisted his men in driving the smoldering stake into the Cyclops' eye.  "Nobody, Nobody's tricked me," Polyphemus cried out.  "Nobody's ruined me!"  Blinded, Polyphemus swore he'd avenge himself—but after he had pastured his sheep.  Then, unsealing the cave, he let his sheep pass beneath his hands one by one, so as to ensure that none of his Greek meals were escaping.          Again outwitting Polyphemus, Odysseus and his crew tied themselves to the bellies of the animals and delivered themselves, undetected, out of the cave. After returning to their ships, Odysseus called out to Polyphemus as he shepherded his sheep, taunting him and acknowledging that it was he who had blinded the giant.  "Cyclops," he shouted, "if ever mortal man inquire how you were put to shame and blinded tell him Odysseus, raider of cities, took your eye:  Laertes' son, whose home's on Ithaca!"  In frustration, Polyphemus called on his father Poseidon to curse Odysseus:  "Let him lose all companions, and return under strange sail to bitter days at home."  And Poseidon heard his son's pitiful request, and thereafter Odysseus and his crew were to be plagued by one catastrophe after another, including contrary winds, the slaughter of many of his crewmen, and the wreckage of a number of his ships. On one occasion, having sailed to Aeaea, the land of the goddess and enchantress Circe, several of the crew were given a drug by their hostess that transformed them into swine.  Odysseus, after much pleading, managed to persuade Circe to release his men from the spell—while himself falling prey to her charm and beauty and deciding to remain as her lover. A year later, prompted by the complaints of his crew, Odysseus once more made ready to sail for Ithaca.  These plans were interrupted when Circe informed Odysseus that he first had to make a trip into the underworld for a consultation with the blind prophet Teresias.  Thus Odysseus, following Circe's instructions, steered his ship to the edge of the world, where Hades lay in perpetual darkness, and after offering up suitable sacrifices, Teresias appeared.  The  prophet, reading Odysseus' future, alerted him of        those suitors who, even at that time, were pursuing his dear Penelope, predicted his ultimate victory over them, and prophesied that Odysseus would die a peaceful death in old age.   When Odysseus and his crew sailed back to Aeaea, Circe warned them of the many perils presented by the return voyage, the most serious of which concerned her father, the sun god Hyperion.  In passing his island, she said, Odysseus was under no circumstances to allow his crew to eat the sacred cattle of the sun.  Forewarned, Odysseus departed Aeaea for good. As Circe had predicted, they passed the Sirens, whose captivating songs had been the undoing of so many sailors; then they sailed on through the narrow straits inhabited by the monsters Scylla and Charybdis; and, finally, having lost all but one ship, they reached the island of the sun god Hyperion, where the exhausted party laid anchor. Weak from hunger, Odysseus' crew killed and ate several of Hyperion's cattle.  Although they managed to leave the island intact, Hyperion soon discovered the slaughter of his cattle.  Enraged, he sent a storm that claimed every soul except Odysseus, who was washed ashore on Ogygia.  There, he spent the next seven years as Calypso's captive. At this point, Odysseus ended his story; for his efforts Alcinous and Arete rewarded him with bounteous treasure from the palace coffers.  And that night, just as they had promised, the generous king and queen put him on a Phaeacian ship bound for Ithaca. On board, Odysseus fell into a deep sleep, only to wake the next morning on a beach with his treasure beside him.  Momentarily, Odysseus believed that the Phaeacians had tricked him and left him marooned on yet another foreign shore.  Athena, however, appeared and convinced Odysseus that he was in fact on the island of Ithaca.  She then revealed to the intrepid voyager her plan to take revenge on Penelope's obstinate suitors. Thus it was that Odysseus, disguised in beggar's clothes, went to the farmhouse of Eumaeus, one of his old family retainers, where he was offered food and a bed. Three days later, Odysseus, still disguised as an old beggar, paid a visit to his palace.  The suitors, in the midst of a feast, mocked and derided him.  Biding his time, Odysseus covertly set aside the weapons he would soon be needing and secured the rest; lastly, he instructed the women servants to lock themselves in their rooms. Later that night, Penelope, thinking once more of ways to discourage her rapacious suitors, devised what she considered an impossible feat of strength:  she would consent to marry whoever among them could string Odysseus' bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axes, she announced.  Then she returned to her room.  Each suitor attempted and failed even to string the bow.  Finally, Odysseus asked if he could try.  To the roars of laughter, Odysseus picked up the bow, applied its string, and sent an arrow whistling through the air.  The arrow's flight was checked only after piercing the twelve axes. Throwing off his disguise, Odysseus sent his next arrow into Antinous' throat, initiating a slaughter that did not cease until every suitor lay slain.Upstairs in her room, Penelope was informed that Odysseus and the old beggar were one and the same, and that he had killed every last one of the greedy suitors.  Finally, the pair were reunited. Now from his breast into his eyes the ache\ of longing mounted, and he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea. Few men can keep alive through a big surf to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:  and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms round him pressed as though forever. As Teresias had foretold, the couple lived happily into old age.

        Klytaemnestra has killed her husband Agamemnon on his return from theTrojan war for the sake of her lover Aegisthos; but Orestes, her son          byAgamemnon,
        avenges the death of his father by killing his mother.Therefore he is persecuted by the Erinyes, the demonic protectors ofmaternal law, according to which the murder of a mother is the most horrible, inexpiable crime. But Apollo, who has instigated Orestes to this act by his oracle, and Athene, who is invoked as arbitrator--the two deities representing the new paternal order of things--protect him. Athene gives a hearing to both parties. The whole question is summarized in the ensuing debate between Orestes and the Erinyes. Orestes claims that Klytemnaestra has committed a twofold crime: by killing her husband she has killed his father. Why do the Erinyes persecute him and not her who is far more guilty?The reply is striking:"She was not related by blood to the man whom she slew."The murder of a man not consanguineous, even though he be the husband of the murderess, is expiable, does not concern the Erinyes; it is only their duty to prosecute the murder of consanguineous relatives. According to maternal law, therefore, the murder of a mother is the most heinous and inexpiable crime. Now Apollo speaks in defense of Orestes.Athene then calls on the areopagites--the jurors of Athens--to vote;  the votes are even for acquittal and for condemnation. Thereupon Atheneas president of the jury casts her vote in favor of Orestes and acquits him. Paternal law has gained a victory over maternal law, the deities of the "younger generation," as the Erinyes call them, vanquish the latter.These are finally persuaded to accept a new office under the new order of things.

    1200 --BC - by Euripides  (c.  479-406 B.C.)Type                 work:Satyr-playSetting: Sicilian coast, c.  1100-1200 B.C.Principal characters:Cyclops, a huge one-eyed monster named Polyphemus -Silenus, a bald old man, enslaved by the Cyclops-Bacchus, the god of wine (also known as Dionysus)-Chorus of satyrs, attendants of Bacchus, who have some physical attributes of horses and goats-Odysseus, the mythical hero-king who fought at Troy-Play Overview:In front of a cave near Mt.  Etna, an elderly man named Silenus appeared dressed in a "filthy tunic."  He carried with him the rake he used "to scour the cave" of the beastly Cyclops, who had enslaved Silenus and his companions the satyrs, taking them captive after their ship veered too close to shore.  Now it fell upon poor Silenus to tend his new master's flock of sheep, clean his quarters, and prepare the "loathsome dinners" of the monstrous son of Poseidon.How Silenus wished to serve Bacchus again instead of the "godless Cyclops"!  In reality, though, the free-spirited Bacchus had played an unwitting hand in Silenus' awful fate:  the great goddess Hera had planned to sell Bacchus, god of revelry and wine, to certain Lydian pirates who wanted him for their slave.  Hearing of this, the faithful Silenus and crew of satyrs had set sail to warn their master.  Ill-fatedly, the one-eyed, man-eating Cyclops had snatched them off their storm-tossed ship."No Bacchus here," one of the festivity-starved satyrs exclaimed, returning with the Cyclops' flock.  Accompanied by his brother woodland deities, he moved quickly as he herded the headstrong animals.  Surveying the horizon, Silenus spotted something remarkable:  "a Greek ship drawn up on the shore," and approaching the cave, the ship's crew, led by the famed Odysseus."We must have come to the city of Bacchus," said the captain to his seamen as he drew close enough to recognize the half-human, pointy-eared satyrs.  "I am Odysseus of Ithaca," he greeted Silenus, "King of the Cephallenians."  Silenus, assuming his usual fondness for merriment, mocked the hero.  "I've heard of you.  A glib sharper, Sisyphus's bastard."  The mighty Odysseus retorted, "I am he.  Keep your abuse to yourself."  Then he explained that he had been returning from the Trojan War when his ship had been blown off course by "wind and storm."  Where, he asked Silenus, had he landed?  "No man inhabits here," old Silenus sighed in reply.  A "Shepherd Cyclops" governed the island, a one-eyed beast who liked to "feast on human flesh."At the mention of feasting, Odysseus, utterly famished after his ordeal at sea, ignored the intended warning and asked if the satyrs could get him something to eat in return for wine.  The offer of wine delighted Silenus and his satyrs.  He quickly ran into the cave to find Odysseus and his crew some food, returning loaded with wicker baskets of cheese and mutton.  However, before he would give the provisions to Odysseus, he asked to test the wine-flask by taking a swig to seal their bargain. But the thirsty Silenus was thwarted from drinking even a drop of his wine, which would have initiated a night of riotous celebration.  At that moment, the Cyclops, wielding a monumental club, came into view.  "Where can we run?"  Odysseus asked.  When Silenus instructed him to go into the cave, Odysseus bellowed, "Are you mad?  Right into the trap?"  Despite Silenus' assurances that there were safe "hiding-places" inside, Odysseus crowed, "Never!"; having withstood ten thousand Phrygians at Troy, rather than cower behind a rock, he would either die honorably or live gloriously.Untroubled by such lofty ideals, Silenus and the satyrs scrambled into hiding.  In terrible majesty, the Cyclops thundered with a gale-force voice, "Here.  Here.  What's going on?  What's this uproar?  Why this Bacchic hubbub?  There's no Bacchus here, no bronze clackers or rattling castanets!"Spotting the Greeks, the incredulous Cyclops roared, "Have pirates or thieves taken the country?"  His face now pleasantly flushed with wine, Silenus crept out of the cave to speak to his master.  This band of strangers had beaten him, he lied, because he would not let them "rob" the Cyclops.  Hearing this, Odysseus also came out of hiding.  "O noble son of the sea-god," he begged, "[don't] murder men who come to your cave as friends.... Shipwrecked men," he continued, were customarily "clothed and protected" by their hosts.  Besides, Odysseus and his crew were valiant warriors who had "preserved" the temples of Cyclops's father, Poseidon.  In typical sharp manner, Silenus interrupted Odysseus' grandiose speech:  "A word of advice, Cyclops.  If you eat all of his flesh and chew on his tongue, you'll become eloquent and very glib.""I don't give a damn for my father's shrines," the Cyclops barked.  "Why did you think I would?"  Nor did the mighty and self-serving Cyclops fear "Zeus's thunder" or offer sacrifices to the gods.  Why should he?  He served "the greatest god of all":  his own belly.  He had no patience with "little laws—damn the lot of them!"  He would "go right on indulging himself."  And just now, as he marched his tasty morsel captives into his cave, he wanted to indulge himself by eating Odysseus.A short while later, Odysseus escaped and stumbled back outside.  "Zeus, how can I say what I saw in that cave?"  he cried.  Indeed, he had witnessed "unbelievable horrors."  Cyclops had put "a cauldron of brass" over the fire; next, "this damned cook of Hades" had "slit the throat" of one of Odysseus' men, before bashing out the brains of another on a rock.  Finally, the vile beast had hacked away at their flesh with a terrible cleaver and "put the pieces to roast on the coals."In horror, quick-witted Odysseus had offered the Cyclops wine after he had finished his "awful meal" and "let out a staggering belch."  The Cyclops had "drained it off in one gulp," thanking Odysseus for his generosity, exclaiming, "You are the best of guests!"Taking advantage of the foolish monster's gleeful intoxication, Odysseus had quickly slipped out of the cave, whereupon an idea had occurred to him.  "Listen to my plan," Odysseus told the satyrs, who eagerly awaited any chance for escape.  Odysseus would continue to ply the gullible Cyclops with wine until he fell into a drunken sleep.  Then he would sharpen the trunk of an olive tree with his sword and heat it in the Cyclops' own cooking fire.  Once the tip caught fire, Odysseus would plunge the burning spear into the monster's eye.  "May I lend a hand at this ritual?"  one of the satyrs asked eagerly.  "You must," Odysseus replied.  "The brand is huge.  You all must lift."A moment later, the Cyclops reappeared at the entrance to his cave.  "Mamama.  Am I crammed with wine!"  he slurred.  "How I love the fun of a feast!"  Then, turning to Odysseus, he said, "Here, here, my friend, hand me the flask."Only too happy to oblige, Odysseus gave him more wine and, bolstering his stratagem, explained that he himself had "spent a lot of time" enjoying Bacchus' sweet refreshment.  Surely, the god Bacchus was superior to all in "blessing the lives of men."  "At least he makes very tasty belching," the monster allowed.  Still, he wondered sluggishly, "How can a god bear to live in a flask?"  Odysseus answered, "Wherever you put him, he's quite content.  That's the kind of god he is:  hurts no one."  "I'm so drunk nothing could hurt me," the Cyclops said.  Now, speaking in mock regard, Silenus urged the monster, "Lie down there; stretch yourself out on the ground."  Cyclops eagerly complied.As Cyclops situated himself into a heap near the mouth of the cave, he asked Odysseus his name.  "Nobody is my name," Odysseus answered glibly.  Then he asked, pointing out how he had thus far attended to the ogre's desire, "But how will you reward me?"  "I will eat you last of all your crew," the Cyclops snapped back at him.  Then guzzling a bit more wine, he exclaimed, "Mama.  What a wizard the vine must be!"Suddenly pulling himself to his feet, the Cyclops reached out and snatched up Silenus.  "With him I'll sleep," he proclaimed.  Startled, Silenus cried out a the lumbering monster dragged him into the cave, "I'm done for, children.  Foul things await me.""Rip out the eye of the Cyclops!"  one of the satyrs bravely prodded Odysseus.  Yet, when Odysseus told the flighty satyrs that it was time to begin their work, each on in turn back-stepped and cowered.  "We're too far away to reach his eye," one said.  "And just this moment we've gone lame," another interjected.  "I knew from the first what sort you were," Odysseus sneered at them; "at least cheer on my men," he entreated the satyrs as he boldly stepped into the cave.  Immediately the satyrs began a rallying dance, shouting wildly, "Go!  Go!  As hard as you can!""Owwww!"  the wounded Cyclops' shriek drowned out their cheering.  "My eye is scorched to ashes!"  he cried as he came reeling blindly out of the cave, blood gushing from where his single eye once stared.  "Nobody wounded me," the Cyclops howled.  "Nobody blinded me.""How could nobody make you blind?"  the mischievous satyrs wondered."You mock me," the Cyclops uttered, groping on the ground in search of his attackers.  "Where is Nobody?"  he demanded again.  Just then Odysseus and his crew emerged from the cave.  "Out of your reach," he mocked.  "Looking after the safety of Odysseus," he said, too proud to refrain from revealing his true identity.  "Have you changed your name?"  the Cyclops asked skeptically.  Odysseus, secure in the distance he kept from the sightless, raging beast, replied, "You have had to pay for your unholy meal.""Ah!  The old oracle has been fulfilled," the defeated Cyclops finally sighed.  Indeed, the oracle had foretold that Odysseus would come from Troy and blind the Cyclops.  But, the monster recalled loudly, this Odysseus would have to pay for his deed by roaming the seas for many years."Much I care!"  Odysseus retorted.  He would board his ship, sail for home, and take along the merry-making satyrs—who would henceforth serve only Bacchus--.Commentary:"Cyclops" is one of Euripides's later plays, and was probably intended as the final piece in a quartet.  The identities of the other three tragedies are not known, though translator William Arrowsmith believes that Hecuba may be among them.  Beyond this uncertainty, it is agreed that "Cyclops" was intended as a "satyr-play."  (In fact, it is the only surviving example of this genre.) Always appearing after three tragedies in Greek drama, satyr-plays capped off a day's viewing in the Athenian theater.  While little is known about the function of these tragi-comedies, invariably they included a chorus of fun-loving satyrs.  Led by the elderly and jocose Silenus, the choral satyrs wore horses'—or occasionally goats'—ears and tails, and represented Dionysus (Bacchus), god of wine and revelry.  Because satyr-plays depicted both carnal and spiritual aspects of existence, writers used techniques of both classical comedy and drama.The ribaldry of the Cyclops and the cruelty and pride of Odysseus receive equal attention and carry equal weight in the play's dramatic structure.  Presumably, both characters were equally capable of eliciting an emotional response from a classical Greek audience.Today, perhaps, we tend to respond more forcefully to Odysseus' brutal gouging-out of the Cyclops' eye than we do to the Cyclops' outlandish buffoonery; whereas a classical audience may well have found more of note in the beast's swaggering taunts and drunkenness.  Not only did he fall under the divine influence of Bacchus' intoxicating grapes, the Cyclops, in his own right, was revered in Greek myth as the child of both Earth and Heaven—and he, along with haughty Odysseus, perhaps are meant to tender tellingly modern characterizations of human nature.

    1250 - - THE ILIAD - by Homer(c.  9thcenturyB.C.)Type          of work:Epic Greek poemSetting:Troy;                 Principal characters;  The Achaeans (Greeks) Menelaos,        King of the Greek city-state Argos, whose wife Helen     has been abducted by Paris, a prince of   Troy  Agamemnon, Menelaos' brother and also a King of ArgosAchilles, mightiest and most feared of the Achaean warriors Patroclus, brave Achaean soldier and lover of Achilles The Trojans Paris, a Trojan prince, and abductor of the beautiful Helen Hector, Paris' brother, a powerful Trojan warrior Priam, King of Troy and father of Paris and Hector Krypeis and Briseis, two women Various gods and goddesses, each alternately favoring one  side or the other  Commentary: Since the age of Classical Greece, Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey have been revered  by the West almost as sacred texts.  Throughout the ages, his epics have inspired a multitude of other great works in painting, sculpture, music, dance, and other literature. Homer himself remains a baffling figure.  According to legend, he was blind and lived on the island of Chios.  All that can be said with certainty about the West's most celebrated poet is that he crafted his works in the Ionian dialect of ancient Greece. It is not difficult to see why The Iliad and The Odyssey are considered two of the greatest prototypes of world literature.  They possess what the critic Harold Bloom has called an "uncanny sublimity."  That is, they have about them an imaginative and spiritual grandeur that competes not only "for the consciousness of Western nations," as Bloom says, but also as that consciousness—in its most powerful and instinctual form.

1250 -     -- BC by Euripides (480-405 B.C.) Type of work:
        Tragic drama Setting: Troy, an ancient Phrygian city in northwest Asia Minor; c.  1250 B.C.Principal characters:Poseidon, god of the seaHecuba, the wife of Priam, slain King of TroyParis, Hecuba and Priam's princely sonTalthybius, a Greek messengerCassandra, daughter of Hecuba and a priestess of ApolloAndromache, daughter-in-law to HecubaAstayanax, Andromache's sonMenelaus, a Greek king and pillager of TroyHelen, the wife of Menelaus, mistress of Paris, and the woman over whom the Trojan War was foughtPlay Overview:Before Prince Paris' birth, his mother, Hecuba, Queen of Troy, had a strange dream:  she would give birth to a torch that someday would engulf Troy in flames.  As a result, when Paris was born, Hecuba abandoned the newborn in the wilderness so that her dream foretelling the destruction of Troy would not prove prophetic.  But a passing shepherd saved Paris and raised him as his son.One day, many years later, three goddesses—Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera—appeared before young Paris, requesting that he judge which of them was most beautiful.  When Paris chose Aphrodite, she promised to help him win Helen, the fairest woman in the world.  But Helen was already married to Menelaus, King of Argos.  This fact, however, did not stop Paris, as he pursued the lovely Helen, captured her, and carried her back to Troy.  To exact revenge, the Greeks laid siege to the city.For ten years the war dragged on.  Finally, sequestering their best Greek soldiers inside a gigantic wooden horse set outside Troy—which the Trojans hauled inside the gates—the Greeks entered the city, ravaged "the gods' shrines" leaving the Trojan king, Priam, "dead upon the altar steps" of the blood-drenched temple, Priam's son dead at his side, and set Troy aflame, just as Hecuba had seen in her dream.  Greece had claimed the victory.Just before dawn, the sea god Poseidon appeared to Hecuba, who did not look up through her weeping.  Poseidon also lamented Troy's desolation:  "I built the towers of stone around this town of Troy, Apollo with me—and straight we raised them true by line and plummet—goodwill for them has never left my heart, My Trojans and their city."  Then Poseidon corrected himself, for the city consisted of little more than smoke and ashes.  He lamented the Trojan women taken to Greece as slaves, and acknowledged Hecuba's "many tears for many griefs."  Her husband and all her sons, including Paris, had been killed in the siege; her daughter Cassandra, a priestess of Apollo, would be given to the great King Agamemnon; and—as yet unknown to Hecuba—her daughter Polyxena now lay dead on the grave of Achilles, her Greek lover.As he turned to leave, Athena, the goddess of war, stood by.  She had come to convince Poseidon to combine his might with hers in aid of the Trojans.  Recalling her long animosity toward Troy and Paris—who had once proclaimed Aphrodite more beautiful than Athena—Poseidon marvelled, "What!  Now—at last?  Has that long hatred left you?"Athena explained that one of the Greeks had desecrated the temple dedicated to her.  With thoughts of revenge, she now revealed what she wanted from Poseidon:Your part, to make your sea-roads roar—wild waves and whirlwinds,while dead men choke the winding bay.Poseidon agreed.  Moments later, both were gone.As dawn finally broke, Queen Hecuba slowly and painfully rose from her bed.  Her thoughts again turned to her old age, her family's death, and her city's loss.  "All was nothing—nothing, always," she said, overcome with bitterness.  Who was to blame?  Helen—"a thing of loathing, shame"—had precipitated all this misery.  At her cries, the doors of the huts began to open and other women emerged to remind Hecuba that she was not alone in her grief; they also mourned their dead and feared their enslavement by the Greeks.Suddenly a unit of Greek soldiers appeared.  From among them stepped a messenger to address Hecuba.  This soldier, Talthybius, had met her before, on those times when he had carried "messages to Troy from the Greek camp."  The Greeks had indeed drawn lots for the Trojan women, and Hecuba' daughter Cassandra, once a priestess of Apollo, now belonged to Agamemnon.  Hecuba was stunned.  She could not believe it—her daughter served Apollo only and would remain "a virgin, always."  That, the messenger explained, was precisely the reason Agamemnon had chosen her.  Andromache, Talthybius continued, the widow of her son Hector, had been selected by Achilles' son.Finally the old Queen asked about her own fate.  Whose slave would she become?  "The King of Ithaca, Odysseus," the messenger replied.  Then turning to the soldiers, Talthybius ordered them to bring Cassandra from her hut; she would be taken at once.  Hecuba, however, blocked their path, vehemently affirming that Cassandra had gone mad.Just then, Cassandra opened the door to her hut.  She wore a garland in her hair and a priestess' dress.  Holding a torch in her hand, she stepped into the morning light.  "Fly, dancing feet," she said.  "Oh, joy, oh, joy!"  Then, seeing Hecuba there, she invited her, "Dance, Mother, come."  Cassandra implored her mother not to grieve:  the Trojans, not the Greeks, had earned the greater honor, for to die in defense of their own people was "to die well."  What's more, her marriage to the Greek Agamemnon would "be bloodier than Helen's"; she would "lay his house as low" as he had theirs and "make him pay for all."  Talthybius had heard enough.  "Now you," he said angrily to Cassandra, "you know your mind is not quite right.  Come with me to the ship now."  At this, a command from an enemy, Cassandra addressed the Trojan dead.  "You ...  " she said, "I shall come to you a victor."As one chariot bore Cassandra away, another approached bearing Hecuba's daughter-in-law Andromache from Troy.  Andromache stepped down from the chariot with her young son Astayanax and informed Hecuba that another of her daughters, Polyxena, was also dead.  Even so, Andromache contended, Polyxena had more to celebrate than she.  Hecuba, however, was unconvinced:  Andromache at least still had a son at her side, one who might someday return in victory to rebuild Troy.  "Death," Hecuba pronounced, "is empty—life has hope."Soon, Talthybius returned with his soldiers.  From the expression of anguish on his face, the women could see that something awful was about to happen.  "I feel you [are] kind," Andromache told him.  "But you have not got good news."  For a long moment the Greek messenger could not bring himself to speak.  "Your child," he finally gestured at her grandson, Astayanax, "must die.  There, now you know.""O God," Andromache wept.  "There is no measure to my pain."  Then Talthybius explained, as gently as he could, that Astayanax would be flung from a high wall of the city.  At this, Andromache cradled the boy in her arms, moaning in deepest anguish.  "Don't cling to him," Talthybius said.  It would only make it worse.  The Greeks would eventually become angry and deny Astayanax a proper burial.Talthybius pried Astayanax from the grandmother's trembling arms and directed the soldiers to lead him away.  A messenger, Talthybius reflected, "should be a man who feels no pity"—and he was not such a man.  The soldiers led Andromache to the chariot and drove away.  The women, looking on, dazed, were beyond even weeping.Next, King Menelaus arrived on horseback.  He had waged this war not for his wife, he proclaimed, but for the sake of her captor.  Turning then to one of his soldiers, he ordered, pointing to Helen, "Seize her and drag her out by that long blood-drenched hair."  Hearing this, the embittered Hecuba became ecstatic:  "Kill her, Menelaus?  You will?  Oh, blessings on you."When Helen appeared before Menelaus and the women of Troy, she was trembling slightly, but still beautiful, still radiant.  "Am I to live or die?"  she asked her husband.  "Unanimous," he assured her:  everyone wanted to see her die.It was Paris and Aphrodite who were responsible for her abduction, Helen protested.  "I lived a slave.""No one with any sense will listen to you," Hecuba snapped, reminding her how she had been "mad with love" for Paris, and how she had demanded her "insolent way" for vanity's sake.  "Kill her," Hecuba demanded of Menelaus.Menelaus assured the old queen that he would.  When Helen, fearing for her life, insisted it "was the gods, not me," Menelaus would not listen.  Instead, ordering his soldiers to escort her to the ship, he rode away.Talthybius soon returned with the dead boy in his arms.  Hecuba took her grandson and, holding him close and lifting his lifeless hands in her own, spoke softly over his body:Dear hands, the same dear shape your father'shad,how loosely now you fall.  And dear proud lipsforever closed.  False words you spoke to mewhen you would jump into my bed, call mesweet namesand tell me, Grandmother, when you are dead,I'll cut off a lock of hair and lead my soldiers allto ride out past your tomb.Not you, but I, old, homeless, childless,must lay you in your grave, so young,so miserably dead.The Trojan women gently took the child from Hecuba's arms and laid him on his father Hector's shield.  Just as Andromache had requested before her ship set sail, the boy's body was covered with flowers and draped in linen.  Then the women lifted the shield and carried the boy to his grave.  Behind them, nothing was left of the beloved city Troy but dust and flames."Farewell, dear city," a woman said.  "Farewell, my country, where once my children lived."Commentary:Edith Hamilton called "The Trojan Women" the "most savage piece of antiwar literature ever written."  Indeed, few works approach the play's bitterly caustic condemnation of war."The Trojan Women" contains little dramatic action.  Instead, the play broods lyrically on the emptiness of the Greek victory at Troy.  The slaying of Astayanax, Hecuba's grandson, for example, dehumanizes Talthybius and his Greek conquerors more than it does the Trojans.  Worse yet, Helen of Troy, the cause of the war, is condemned to die.  Thus—with the exception of Helen—it is Troy's women, not Greece's men, who are the real victors, for they retain both their lives and their humanity.  As Hecuba says, "Death is empty—life has hope."Originally the third play of a tetralogy performed in a 415 B.C.  competition in Athens, the production won second prize, an honor that belies the chilly reception Athenians gave it.  Its performance came only a few months after the Greeks had committed atrocities against the inhabitants of Melos, a tiny island in the Aegean.  Athens had invited Melos to join it in an alliance.  When Melos declined, expressing its desire to remain neutral, Athens seized the island, systematically killed all its men, and enslaved its women and children.  Paralleling the Melian atrocities, "The Trojan Women" no doubt touched a raw nerve.Euripides depicts Troy's decimation with a graphic realism never before seen in Greek drama.  Sophocles, Euripides' contemporary fellow playwright—and rival—reportedly evaluated the differences in their writing.  He, Sophocles judged, showed men as they ought to be, while Euripides showed men as they are.
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1232-    Israelites in Canaan. Rameses 2's son Merneptah defeats them in battle.    

1230    - -  AFRICA. Hebrews  are  led out of AFRICAN slavery under Moses back to  Canaan.  They  invade  Canaan  (Israel) under Joshua who makes the walls of Jericho fall miraculously.  Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt.  Moses goes to Pharaoh and demandes that the people be freed from bondage, but Pharaoh refuses.  Thus, God brings down ten successive plagues upon the Egyptians, the last of which kills all firstborn males throughout the land.  This plague leads to the institution of the Passover: The firstborn son of every believing Israelite family is spared death ("passed over" by the destroying angel) if the blood of a sacrificed lamb (symbolic of the coming Christ's sacrifice) is painted over the doorway.  Death visits all who are not "under the blood." Pharaoh, whose eldest son dies in the plague, finally allows the Israelites to leave.  But his anger is again kindled, and he sends his army to slaughter the departing Israelites, who find themselves caught between the Red Sea and the AFRICAn army.  Miraculously, God parts the waters of the Red Sea, delivers them "dry-shod" through the channel, and destroys Pharaoh's pursuing army.  Despite this deliverance and many other blessing given them by God, the children of Israel often complain about their hardships. They journey eastward to Mount Sinai, where God gives Moses Ten Commandments:1.Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 2.Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image ... 3.Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain ... 4.  Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy ... 5. Honour thy father and thy mother ... 6. Thou shalt not kill. 7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 8. Thou shalt not steal. 9.Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. 10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's [possessions]

        Time of the Torah.


Before 1200 ADYearNameSummary

    1238    BCRamses-Hattusili TreatyTreaty between the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite monarch Hattusili III after the Battle of Kadesh.
 
1200     ISRAEL. The period of the Judges. Gideon of Manasseh.  The first historical mention of the word "Israel" is in the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt (dated the late 13th century BCE), although scholars disagree on whether it refers to a people or a homeland. The modern country was named Medinat Yisrael, or the State of Israel, after other proposed names, including Eretz Israel, Zion, and Judea, were rejected. In the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term "Israeli" to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett

1200 BC ZIONISM.  Implicitly then, there was a land from which Jews  were exiled and to which they understood that they belonged. Jews had lived in "Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel, called "Palestine" by the Romans and Greeks) since about 1200  B.C.E. The land of Israel was at a crossroads of the Middle East and the Mediterranean and was therefore conquered many times: by Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians,
    Persians, Seleucid Greeks and Romans, as well as invading Philistines. Of these, only the Jews made the land into their national home. Jewish national culture, fused with religion, centered around the geography,
      seasons and history of the land and of the Jews in the land. The Jews created the Old Testament Bible- The Tanach, which described their history and the history of the land, and their connection to it. The Bible formed
       the backbone of Jewish culture and later was to form the backbone of  Western Christian culture, so that the entire world recognized the connection between the Jews and their land. When the Romans conquered Palestine, and Jews were exiled to the Diaspora, the connection to the land was preserved in the Bible, and in prayers that daily called for the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and it was expressed in the writings of medieval poets. In the Diaspora, religion became the medium for preserving Jewish culture and Jewish ties to the ancient land land of the Jews. Jews prayed several times a day for the rebuilding of the temple, celebrated agricultural feasts and called for rain according to the seasons of ancient, sunny Eastern Mediterranean land of Israel  Israel, even in the farthest frozen  reaches of Russia. The ritual plants of Sukkoth were imported from the  Holy Land at great expense. A Holy-Land centered tradition persisted in Diaspora thought and writing. This tradition may be called "proto-nationalist" because there was no nationalism in the modern sense in those times. It was not only religious or confined to hoping for messianic redemption, but consisted of longing for the land of Israel.
    
1200 BC PALESTINE. Iron Age (1200 - 330 BCE)Pottery remains found in Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gat, Ekron and Gaza decorated with stylized birds provided the first archaeological evidence for Philistine settlement in the region. The Philistines are credited with introducing iron weapons and chariots to the local population. Developments in Palestine between 1250 and 900 BCE have been the focus of debate between those who accept the Old Testament version on the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes, and those who reject it. Niels Peter Lemche, of the Copenhagen School of Biblical Studies, submits that the picture of ancient Israel "is contrary to any image of ancient Palestinian society that can be established on the basis of ancient sources from Palestine or referring to Palestine and that there is no way this image in the Bible can be reconciled with the historical past of the region."Others point to King David's Palace, the sacrificial site at Shechem  and the Merneptah Stele,and Mesha Stele  among others, as providing some archaeological evidence of a nation that bears a resemblance to the Biblical Israel.Though there is a debate over whether the Hebrews arrived to Canaan from Egypt, or emerged from among the local population existent there at the time, these events are generally dated to between the 13th and 12th centuries BCE.  According to Biblical tradition, the United Kingdom of Israel was established by the Hebrew tribes with Saul as its first king in 1020 BCE.  In 1000 BCE, Jerusalem was made the capital of King David's kingdom and it is believed that the First Temple was constructed in this period by King Soloman. By 930 BCE, the united kingdom split to form the northern Kingdom of Israel, and the southern Kingdom of Judah.PALESTINE. Archaeological evidence indicates that the late 13th, the 12th and the early 11th centuries BCE witnessed the foundation of perhaps hundreds of insignificant, unprotected village settlements, many in the mountains of Palestine.  From around the 11th century BCE, there was a reduction in the number of villages, though this was counterbalanced by the rise of certain settlements to the status of fortified townships.There was an at least partial Egyptian withdrawal from Palestine in this period, though it is likely that Bet Shean was an Egyptian garrison as late as the beginning of the 10th century BCE. The socio-political system was characterized by local patrons fighting other local patrons, lasting until around the mid-9th century BCE when some local chieftains were able to create large political structures that exceeded the boundaries of those present in the Late Bronze Age.

1230BC    PALESTINE. Joshua conquered parts of Palestine. The conquerors settled in  the hill country, but they were unable to conquer all of Palestine.

1230 BC - by Homer (c.  8th century B.C.)Type of work:Epic poem Setting: Greek islands; c.  1240-30 B.C., 10 years after the fall of Troy Principal characters: Odysseus, King of Ithaca and hero of the Trojan WarPenelope, Queen of Ithaca and wife of Odysseus Athena, goddess of war Zeus, supreme god of Olympus Hermes, messenger of Zeus Calypso, a beautiful sea nymph Polyphemus, a Cyclops and the son of Poseidon Circe, a beautiful goddess and enchantressStory Overview: Ten years after the Trojan War had ended, Odysseus, one of the great Greek heroes, languished on Ogygia, island of the sea nymph Calypso.  Calypso, who was in love with Odysseus, had for seven years held him captive, refusing all appeals for release.Pitying the plight of Odysseus, the goddess Athena called an Olympian council in the hopes of persuading her father Zeus to allow Odysseus to return home to Penelope, his wife, in Ithaca.  Zeus agreed, and dispatched his messenger Hermes to Ogygia, ordering Calypso to release Odysseus.  Reluctantly, Calypso relented and outfitted Odysseus with provisions and a small boat.  And finally the homesick Odysseus again set sail for Ithaca.  Poseidon, however, was enraged that the Olympian council had met in his absence only to rule in favor of Odysseus' release, so he sent a storm that shipwrecked Odysseus on the Phaeacian coast.Meanwhile in Ithaca, Penelope was besieged by a group of marauding suitors.  Led by Antinous, the suitors had encamped in the palace, and as they ate and drank their way through Odysseus' stores of food and wine, they informed Penelope that they would not leave until she selected a new husband from among them.Having been washed ashore naked and unconscious, Odysseus awakened to find the beguiling Princess Nausica and her maids drying the palace laundry.  By this stroke of good fortune, Odysseus was not only clothed but made welcome by Queen Arete and King Alcinous, who promised to give the stranger safe passage home.The next night at a palace banquet, the Phaeacian court poet Demodocus unwittingly sang of heroic feats achieved during the Trojan War.  Deeply moved, Odysseus wept into his cloak.  Seeing this, Alcinous asked his guest why the song had made him so distraught, and, for the first time, Odysseus revealed to his hosts his true identity.  At Alcinous' request, then, Odysseus agreed to tell the story of his ten years of wandering.After the Trojan War, Odysseus began his story, he and his fellow Ithacans—like all the other Greek heroes of the War—had set sail for home.  They first laid anchor at Ismarus, which he and his men then sacked and plundered.  With their ships loaded with Ismarian wine, they then sailed on.  Before reaching their next port of call, however, they were blown off course to the land of the Lotus-eaters.  There, some of his crew ate the lotus and fell under its lethargic spell, wanting nothing more than "to stay forever, browsing on that native bloom forgetful of their homeland."  Forcing the crew members back to their ships, Odysseus again set sail.They next laid anchor in the land of the Cyclops, a race of one-eyed giants who lived in isolated mountain caves.  Odysseus, taking his twelve best men, decided to explore the regions inland.  During the expedition, they came upon the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus, which, they discovered, contained a large cache of cheese.Against the wishes of his crew, Odysseus decided to await Polyphemus' return and to trade his Ismarian wine for the Cyclops' cheese.  When Polyphemus finally appeared with his flock of sheep, however, it was only to seal off the cave entrance with a huge stone, whereupon he snatched up two Greek crewmen "in his hands like squirming puppies to beat their brains out, spattering the floor.  Then he dismembered them and made his meal, gaping and crunching like a mountain lion—everything:  innards, flesh, and marrow bones."Odysseus, known for his cunning, soon devised an escape plan.  He offered Polyphemus several casks of wine—gifts, he reminded Polyphemus—that came from Nobody.  "Nobody," Odysseus repeated.  "Mother, father, and friends, everyone calls me Nobody."  After the Cyclops had passed out, drunk, Odysseus sharpened a large pole, laid its point in the fire, and assisted his men in driving the smoldering stake into the Cyclops' eye.  "Nobody, Nobody's tricked me," Polyphemus cried out.  "Nobody's ruined me!"Blinded, Polyphemus swore he'd avenge himself—but after he had pastured his sheep.  Then, unsealing the cave, he let his sheep pass beneath his hands one by one, so as to ensure that none of his Greek meals were escaping.  Again outwitting Polyphemus, Odysseus and his crew tied themselves to the bellies of the animals and delivered themselves, undetected, out of the cave.After returning to their ships, Odysseus called out to Polyphemus as he shepherded his sheep, taunting him and acknowledging that it was he who had blinded the giant.  "Cyclops," he shouted, "if ever mortal man inquire how you were put to shame and blinded tell him Odysseus, raider of cities, took your eye:  Laertes' son, whose home's on Ithaca!"  In frustration, Polyphemus called on his father Poseidon to curse Odysseus:  "Let him lose all companions, and return under strange sail to bitter days at home."  And Poseidon heard his son's pitiful request, and thereafter Odysseus and his crew were to be plagued by one catastrophe after another, including contrary winds, the slaughter of many of his crewmen, and the wreckage of a number of his ships.On one occasion, having sailed to Aeaea, the land of the goddess and enchantress Circe, several of the crew were given a drug by their hostess that transformed them into swine.  Odysseus, after much pleading, managed to persuade Circe to release his men from the spell—while himself falling prey to her charm and beauty and deciding to remain as her lover.A year later, prompted by the complaints of his crew, Odysseus once more made ready to sail for Ithaca.  These plans were interrupted when Circe informed Odysseus that he first had to make a trip into the underworld for a consultation with the blind prophet Teresias.  Thus Odysseus, following Circe's instructions, steered his ship to the edge of the world, where Hades lay in perpetual darkness, and after offering up suitable sacrifices, Teresias appeared.  The prophet, reading Odysseus' future, alerted him of those suitors who, even at that time, were pursuing his dear Penelope, predicted his ultimate victory over them, and prophesied that Odysseus would die a peaceful death in old age.  When Odysseus and his crew sailed back to Aeaea, Circe warned them of the many perils presented by the return voyage, the most serious of which concerned her father, the sun god Hyperion.  In passing his island, she said, Odysseus was under no circumstances to allow his crew to eat the sacred cattle of the sun.  Forewarned, Odysseus departed Aeaea for good.As Circe had predicted, they passed the Sirens, whose captivating songs had been the undoing of so many sailors; then they sailed on through the narrow straits inhabited by the monsters Scylla and Charybdis; and, finally, having lost all but one ship, they reached the island of the sun god Hyperion, where the exhausted party laid anchor.Weak from hunger, Odysseus' crew killed and ate several of Hyperion's cattle.  Although they managed to leave the island intact, Hyperion soon discovered the slaughter of his cattle.  Enraged, he sent a storm that claimed every soul except Odysseus, who was washed ashore on Ogygia.  There, he spent the next seven years as Calypso's captive.At this point, Odysseus ended his story; for his efforts Alcinous and Arete rewarded him with bounteous treasure from the palace coffers.  And that night, just as they had promised, the generous king and queen put him on a Phaeacian ship bound for Ithaca.On board, Odysseus fell into a deep sleep, only to wake the next morning on a beach with his treasure beside him.  Momentarily, Odysseus believed that the Phaeacians had tricked him and left him marooned on yet another foreign shore.  Athena, however, appeared and convinced Odysseus that he was in fact on the island of Ithaca.  She then revealed to the intrepid voyager her plan to take revenge on Penelope's obstinate suitors.Thus it was that Odysseus, disguised in beggar's clothes, went to the farmhouse of Eumaeus, one of his old family retainers, where he was offered food and a bed.Three days later, Odysseus, still disguised as an old beggar, paid a visit to his palace.  The suitors, in the midst of a feast, mocked and derided him.  Biding his time, Odysseus covertly set aside the weapons he would soon be needing and secured the rest; lastly, he instructed the women servants to lock themselves in their rooms.Later that night, Penelope, thinking once more of ways to discourage her rapacious suitors, devised what she considered an impossible feat of strength:  she would consent to marry whoever among them could string Odysseus' bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axes, she announced.  Then she returned to her room.  Each suitor attempted and failed even to string the bow.  Finally, Odysseus asked if he could try.  To the roars of laughter, Odysseus picked up the bow, applied its string, and sent an arrow whistling through the air.  The arrow's flight was checked only after piercing the twelve axes.Throwing off his disguise, Odysseus sent his next arrow into Antinous' throat, initiating a slaughter that did not cease until every suitor lay slain.Upstairs in her room, Penelope was informed that Odysseus and the old beggar were one and the same, and that he had killed every last one of the greedy suitors.  Finally, the pair were reunited:Now from his breast into his eyes the acheof longing mounted, and he wept at last,his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons Of  sea.Few men can keep alive through a big surfto crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beachesin joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind: and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,her white arms round him pressed as though forever.As Teresias had foretold, the couple lived happily into old age.Commentary:"Where shall a man find sweetness to surpass his own home and his parents?"  Odysseus asks in Book IX.  This is the question that inaugurates the tale of Odysseus' wanderings and, in a larger sense, the quest that forms the narrative structure of The Odyssey.  Odysseus' answer is a pained one, made all the more so because the way back to his island home is vexed by the sea god Poseidon:  "In far lands," Odysseus answers, the wanderer "shall not [find the sweetness of home], though he find a house of gold."  In this respect, writes the critic Harold Bloom, Odysseus the wanderer is confronted with two choices:  "heroic endurance or death."This powerful theme begins with the Odyssey and recurs in some of the great masterpieces of Western literature.  Virgil's The Aeneid, for instance, borrows this theme of nostalgia—of an exile's longing for a nostos, or home.  Similarly, in our own times, Joyce's Ulysses (the Latin name for Odysseus) takes up Homer's theme with the character of Leopold Bloom, the archetypal wandering Jew.

1200 BC- TROILUS AN CRESSIDA - by William Shakespeare(1564-1616)Type of work:Tragic dramaSetting:Troy, an ancient Phrygian city in north-west Asia minor; c.  1250 B.C.Principal characters:Troilus, a Prince of TroyCressida, a Trojan maiden, second only in beauty to HelenPandarus, Cressida's uncle, a disease-ridden Trojan lordHector, a Prince of Troy, General of the Trojan army, and Troilus' eldest brotherUlysses, a Greek commanderAchilles, Ajax and Diomedes, noble commanders of the Greek army, Achilles being the most skillful in battlePlay Overview:It was the seventh year of the Trojan War.  Helen, whose abduction from her husband Menelaus had caused the Greeks to lay siege to Troy, remained with her Trojan abductor Paris behind the city's walls.  For the first time since the war began, Greeks and Trojans alike were questioning their motives and their resolve to fight.The Greek army had fallen into chaos.  Although in numbers they were superior to the Trojans, their morale had so deteriorated over the years that any possibility of victory now appeared to be extremely remote.  As Ulysses, one of the Greek commanders, noted to King Agamemnon, they lacked unity and order.  It was their own disarray that was defeating them:  "Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength."Agamemnon quizzed the General as to how the Greeks might remedy the situation, and Ulysses replied quite simply:  "Achilles."  Achilles was the Greeks' champion warrior.  The problem was, however, that he refused to fight.  He was in love with the Trojan Princess Polyxena, and Polyxena's mother, Queen Hecuba, had made her daughter's suitor promise that he would not take part in the siege.  Somehow, Ulysses concluded, Achilles and his Myrmidon soldiers must be humbled and roused to come to Greece's aid.The Trojans, on the other hand, had begun to wonder aloud whether Helen merited their years of suffering.  The Greeks had once more sent an emissary to Troy, asking King Priam to deliver Helen over to them and thus end the war.  Priam was now seriously considering this possibility; even his eldest son, Prince Hector, was forced to admit that his sister-in-law Helen was "not worth what she doth cost—The keeping."The young, idealistic Trojan Prince Troilus, however, vehemently disagreed.  He contended that once a wife was taken she could not "honorably" be surrendered.  But Troilus, as he argued with his father and brother against returning Helen to the Greeks, was perhaps motivated by his own fortunes in love.  His brother Paris, after all, had managed both to capture Helen in Argos, and, against heavy odds, bring her back to Troy.  Troilus, by contrast, had fallen in love with the beautiful Cressida, a Trojan native.  But in spite of the fact that Cressida was within arm's reach, Troilus had been unable to win her affections.  Indeed, Cressida appeared to be wholly unaware of his existence.Against this uncertain backdrop—the fortunes of love entangled with those of war—Cressida's uncle, the diseased and decrepit Pandarus, pleaded with Troilus not to lose hope.  Troilus by now had grown impatient with Pandarus' attempts to bring him and Cressida together, and Pandarus took offense at this attitude, complaining of "small thanks for my labor."  Nevertheless, he persisted, taking every opportunity to promote Troilus' interests with his niece.  "[Have] you any eyes?"  Pandarus asked Cressida, "Do you know what a man is?  Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?"Cressida, for her part, pretended to be unmoved by her uncle's appeals—although, in fact, she held Troilus in some regard.  She considered this feigned lack of interest to be a necessary tactic in love.  A man's passions and desires could be more fully aroused, she had discovered, when she pretended to withhold her own.  It was a simple but effective strategy.  "Things won are done," she thought.  "Men prize the thing ungained ...  "This strategy, however, was neither unique to Cressida nor confined merely to games of love; variations of it were also applied to games of war.  The Greeks' petition for Helen's release had been answered by a summons from Hector that each army's best soldier meet in single combat—a development that led back to the Greeks' quandary with Achilles, since Hector's challenge had clearly been intended for this heroic son of a goddess and a king.After some debate, however, it was decided that Ajax—not Achilles—should meet Hector.  "Ajax employed," reasoned Ulysses, "plucks down Achilles' plumes."In Troy, meanwhile, Pandarus had at last succeeded in persuading Cressida to meet with Troilus.  Troilus was ecstatic.  "Expectation," he told Pandarus, "whirls me round.  Th' imaginary relish is so sweet / That it enchants my sense."  The night's tryst disappointed neither of the lovers.  When morning finally broke, Cressida turned to Troilus and ruefully complained, "Night hath been too brief."  The liaison was briefer, though, than even she could have imagined, for that very night Cressida's father—who years earlier had defected to the Greeks—had authored an agreement by which Cressida would be exchanged for a Trojan prisoner of war.  This agreement of exchange was a fait accompli:  the Greek commander Diomedes appeared at that moment to escort her to her father's tent.  The distraught pair pledged their mutual love, and, as a token of enduring faithfulness, Troilus gave Cressida his sleeve and promised her that somehow, no matter what the dangers to him, he would visit her every night in the Greek encampment.  Then Cressida was led off to her father.By now, Achilles had heard of Hector's challenge—and that Agamemnon had selected Ajax for the match.  He took this news as an insult; Ajax was a fool.  "What, are [my] deeds forgot?"  he asked Ulysses.  Inwardly, Ulysses smiled.  His strategy with Achilles—like Cressida's with Troilus—seemed to be working.  His reply now pressed the ploy carefully home:Those scraps are good deeds past, which aredevouredAs fast as they are made, forgot as soonAs done.  Perseverance, dear my lord,Keeps honor bright.  To have done, is to hangQuite out of fashion ...Much as he loathed it, that evening there was nothing Achilles could do but watch as the enemy armies assembled outside Troy for the match between their respective champions.Hector, who had hoped to meet Achilles on the field, was greatly dismayed to find Ajax in his place:  he had not expected that the Greeks would choose his own cousin as his foe.  After parrying a few sword thrusts, he honorably declined to continue the match against the son of his mother's sister.  The Greeks and Trojans, it was decided, would enjoy a brief respite and feast each other that night.  Tomorrow the war would resume.That night, Achilles invited Hector to his tent.  He had finally given in to the calls to fight, and, as he told his friend Patroclus, this would be an opportunity to size up his foe.  "I'll heat his blood with Greekish wine tonight," he said, "which with my scimitar I'll cool tomorrow."Troilus also found in this unforeseen turn of events a wonderful opportunity:  now he could see Cressida.  But as he approached the tent of his beloved, he heard voices from within.  It was Cressida and Diomedes, who, earlier that same morning, had introduced himself as her escort from Troy.  Yet here he was in her tent, and here she was trying to persuade him not to leave, calling after him—in a plaintive voice—"Sweet honey Greek."Cressida and Diomedes were having what appeared to be a lovers' quarrel—and the quarrel appeared to revolve around the sleeve Troilus had given her that morning as a pledge and token of his love.  Cressida had obviously given the sleeve to Diomedes but now wanted it back.  Diomedes refused, and was now demanding to know whose sleeve it was.  "Tomorrow," Diomedes said, "I'll wear it on my helmet, and grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it."Troilus was stunned by these words, utterly crushed by Cressida's fickle, duplicitous nature.  This both was and was not his Cressida, he thought.  Turning to Ulysses, he swore that the next day, when the Trojans again met the Greeks on the battlefield, he would have his revenge on Diomedes:Much as I do Cressid love,So much by weight hate I her Diomed;That sleeve is mine that he'll bear on his helmet;Were it a casque composed by Vulcan's skill,My sword should bite it.As the next day's campaign wore to its close, the fighting—as usual during the last several years' battles—yielded neither side the advantage.  Troilus had found and fought Diomedes on the field, but, apart from Troilus' losing his horse, nothing conclusive had come of their confrontation.Hector, who had been victorious all day, was preparing to retire from the field.  He had just disarmed himself and turned toward Troy when Achilles reappeared.  The two had met on the battlefield earlier that day.  After parrying only a short time, though, Achilles had asked Hector's permission to withdraw; he was too tired, he said, to fight on.  Now, however, presented with such an easy target, Achilles ordered his Myrmidon spearmen to kill Hector.  He then tied the dead Hector to the tail of his horse and, in full view of the returning Trojans, dragged the dishonored body through the fields.All of Troy was grief-stricken.  All swore vengeance on the Greeks for the cowardly and treacherous act Achilles had committed.  Troilus passed slowly through the gates of Troy, and, as he entered the city, heard Pandarus call out to him, "But hear you, hear you!"  He looked up and called back to Pandarus, "Hence, broker, lackey!  Ignominy and shame pursue thy life, and live aye thy name."Commentary:One of Shakespeare's most elusive and least performed works, "Troilus and Cressida" occupies a peculiar place in the Shakespearian canon:  variously classified as a history, a comedy, and a tragedy, the play turns on an unusual, highly contrapuntal—and strangely frustrating—double plot.  The first plot line concerns the Trojan War and revolves primarily around the characters of Hector and Achilles; the second is the love story involving Troilus and Cressida.  What makes this double plot both intriguing and, finally, unsatisfying is that both sides of the story have what A.P.  Rossiter calls a "false bottom"; that is, each plot line builds dramatic tension and rises to a climax, creating expectations which the play's action then refuses to fulfill.The tension, for instance, that builds around the long anticipated combat scenes between the opposing champions Hector and Achilles is deflated not once, but twice.  Similarly, the love story between Troilus and Cressida turns out to climax not in resolution, but instead in duplicity, deception and disillusionment.  Even the dramatic tension that builds after Troilus and Diomedes pledge to take revenge on each other is deflated, neither fulfilling his pledge.By the play's end, the Greeks have finally obtained an apparent advantage over Troy.  It is, however, an ill-gotten advantage.  Contrary to the tradition of the Homeric epic, Hector's death is achieved not through heroic combat but through a cowardly act of murder."Troilus and Cressida" is a brilliant play, characterized by its biting and caustic wit.  Still, there are no heroes in this tragedy.  Indeed, Shakespeare, perhaps anticipating the existentialist pessimism of the twentieth century on this Elizabethan drama, gives the last word to the sickly Pandarus, who turns to address the audience, first to bewail his own misfortunes, and second, in an unnerving gesture, "to bequeath you my diseases."


1200 BC TURKEY.Portion of the legendary walls of Troy (VII), identified as the site of theTrojan War (ca. 1200 BCE)The Anatolian peninsula (also called Asia Minor), comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest continually inhabited regions in the world due to its location at the intersection of Asia and Europe. The earliest Neolithic settlements such as Çatalhöyük (Pottery Neolithic), Çayönü (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A to Pottery Neolithic), Nevali Cori (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), Hacilar (Pottery Neolithic), Göbekli Tepe (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A) and Mersin are considered to be among the earliest human settlements in the world.  The settlement of Troy starts in the Neolithic and continues into the Iron Age. Through recorded history, Anatolians have spoken Indo-European, Semitic and Kartvelian languages, as well as many languages of uncertain  affiliation. In fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical center from which the Indo-European languages have radiated.

    Sufi whirling dervishesTurkey has a very diverse culture that is a blend of various elements of the Oguz Turkic and Anatolian, Ottoman (which was itself a continuation of both Greco-Roman and Islamic cultures), and Western culture and traditions which started with the Westernization of the Ottoman Empire and continues today. This mix is a result of the encounter of Turks and their culture with those of the peoples who were in their path during their migration from Central Asia to the West. As Turkey successfully transformed from the religion-based former Ottoman Empire into a modern nation-state with a very strong separation of state and religion, an increase in the methods of artistic expression followed. During the first years of the republic, the government invested a large amount of resources into fine arts, such as museums, theatres, and architecture. Because of different historical factors playing an important role in defining the modern Turkish identity, Turkish culture is a product of efforts to be "modern" and Western, combined with the necessity felt to maintain traditional religious and historical values.

1200 BC CYRENAICA.  AFRICA. LIBYA. Greek colonyDuring the Ramesside period (13th century BC), the Libu and the Meshwesh were tribes of the area of Cyrenaica which are mentioned in Egyptian records as making frequent incursions into the New Kingdom of Egypt.

1200     BC BRITAIN there is clearer evidence for agriculture in the south; the farms consisted of
    circular huts in groups with small oblong fields and stock enclosures. This type of farm became standard in Britain down to and into the Roman period. From the 8th century onward, expansion of continental  Urnfield and  Hallstatt groups brought new people (mainly the  Celts) to Britain; they came at first, perhaps, in small prospecting groups, but soon their influence spread, and new settlements developed. Some of the earliest  hill forts in Britain were constructed in this period (e.g., Beacon Hill, near Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire; or Finavon, Angus); though formally belonging to the late Bronze Age, they usher in the succeeding period.
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1193    Troy destroyed by Greeks after a prolonged siege.

1188    Rameses 3 becomes the ruler of Egypt 20th Dinasty founded with the capital at Tanis.
1184 AC Según la leyenda, la ciudad fue fundada por Menesteo, rey ateniense que participó en la guerra de Troya. Cuando terminó la guerra y volvía a casa, le habían asaltado su trono y tuvo que emigrar. Navegando sin ningún destino fue a parar justo a la desembocadura del río Guadalete y fundó la ciudad, Puerto de Menesteo. Este hecho histórico tuvo lugar en el 1184 o 1183 a.C, ya que la guerra de Troya tuvo lugar entre los años 1194 y 1184 a.C, aproximadamente unos 3.200 años. Según algunos arqueólogos la primera Gadir, como primera aglomeración urbana o centro de negocios, se construyó en lo que hoy es el Castillo de Doña Blanca, dejando lo que hoy es Cádiz como recinto sagrado y su posterior utilización como casco urbano a los s.VII-VI. El Puerto de Santa María es conocido como La Ciudad de los Cien Palacios, aunque el paso del tiempo y la dejadez han provocado que muchos de estos elegantes edificios hayan quedado prácticamente en la ruina. Producto de la actividad comercial con la América Española o Indias en los siglos XVII y XVIII se levantaron en la localidad auténticos palacios adaptados a las necesidades de los grandes comerciantes que también recibían el nombre de Cargadores de Indias. Tiene como patron a San Sebastián y a San Francisco Javier, como patrona Nuestra Señora de los Milagros. En la actualidad se llevan a cabo importantes proyectos en la ciudad, como la construcción de un segundo puente, la reforma del antiguo ayuntamiento, y la remodelación del centro de la ciudad. Toponimia La leyenda atribuye la fundación de la ciudad a un caudillo ateniense, Menesteo, que después de la guerra de Troya fundó una ciudad que llevaría su nombre, Puerto de Menesteo.

1175    Invasion of Egypt by confederation of  peoples including Philistines, Greeks, Sardinians, and Sicilians. Defeted by Rmeses 3.

1170    Growing power of newly independent Phoenician cities, especially Tyre.

1125    The Israelites, a confederation of Hebrew tribes, finally defeated the Canaanites but found the struggle with the Philistines more difficult . Philistines had established an independent state on the southern coast of Palestine and controlled the Canaanite town of Jerusalem. Nebuchadrezzar I, king of Babylon, holds of renewed attacks by the Assyrians.

    1122    GREECE.     Invasion of Greece by the Dorians.  Lengthy process of infiltration destroy the Achaean centers of culture, the people are killed or taken into captivity, the Dorian invaders gradually conquer Thessaly, Peloponnesus and the islands.

Chou Empire in China. Emperor Wu Wang establishes the Chou Dynasty and the deudal system in China.

1116    Tiglathpileser I becomes ruler of Assyria, fights off invasions from the north and conquers Babylon.
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        Homeric period in Greece
        Aryan tribes enter northern Iran
        Rise of Kingdom of Urartu
    Phoenician towns flourish
    Urartu at its Zenith
    High watermark of Assyrian power

1100 -  Phillistines (Palestinians) invade Canaan

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    1065New Kingdom in Egypt.ends with death of Ramses XI. Smendes, a rich merchant, becomes Pharao and founds the XXIst dynasty.

1050    The New Kingdom in AFRICA Conquests of Pharaoh Tuthmosis III
         Hittite Kingdom in Asia Minor at its height
    Achaean period in Greece
        GREECE. The Homeric period.. Homeric society develops after the Dorian conquest and represent the dark ages. A natural economy is practiced. The people are engaged mainly in cultivation and stock breeding. Old trade centers have collapsed and trade is mostly barter. Social relations are patriarchal, retaining many relics of the clans. Herary nobility plays an important part.Side by side live the peasants. The landless peasants are no more than farm laborers. slaves are few and mainly employed in the household. Each tribe has a leader who leads into battle and functions As high priest. His power is limited by a council of elders.

1050- Dorians invade Peloponnesus Israel conquered    by        the Phillistines at Shiloh
    Samuel, the last of the judges.
       Beginning of Shang-Yin state in China
10        50 BC     PALESTINE : Philistines with there superior in military organization and using iron weapons, they severely defeated the Israelites about 1050 BC .

1045    Codron, last king of Athens is killed.
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1020    ISRAEL.     Saul, king of Israel
        Saul the first King of Israel.  Although an effective military leader, Saul was unequipped to        be Israel's spiritual leader.  After disregarding God's command to "utterly to destroy"             the   Amalekites and their possessions, Samuel anointed  David to replace Saul. 
        Samuel anoints David as Saul's successor. The Lord said to Samuel, "How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill your horn with oil,  go, I will send you Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for me a king among his sons." Samuel said, "How can I go?  if Saul hears it, he will kill me."  The Lord said, "Take an heifer with you,  say, I have  come to sacrifice to the Lord. Call Jesse to the sacrifice,  I will show you what you shall do. You shall anoint  whom I name to you". Samuel did  what  the Lord said, and came to Bethlehem.  The elders of the town trembled at his coming, and said, "Do you come peaceably?" He said, "Peaceably. I have  come to sacrifice to the Lord. Sanctify yourselves,  come with me  to the sacrifice."  He  sanctified Jesse  and his sons,  called them to the sacrifice. It came to pass,  that he looked on Eliab, and said, "Surely the Lord's anointed is before him." But the Lord said to Samuel, "Look  not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him. For the Lord sees not as man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. "Then Jesse called Abinadab,  made him pass before Samuel.  He said, "Neither has the Lord chosen him." Then Jesse made Shammah  pass by.  He said, "Neither has the Lord chosen him." Again, Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel.  Samuel said to Jesse, "The Lord has not chosen these. " Samuel said to Jesse, "Are  all your children here?"  He said, "There remains yet  the youngest, he keeps the sheep."  Samuel said to Jesse, "Send and  fetch him, for we will not sit down till he comes". He sent, and  brought him in. Now he was in full bloom,  with a beautiful countenance,  goodly to look at.  The Lord said, "Arise, anoint him,  for this is he." Then Samuel took the horn of oil,  anointed him in the midst of his brethren. The spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah.  But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul,  an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. Saul's servants said  to him, "Now, an evil spirit from God troubles you. Let our lord now command  your servants, who are before you, to seek out a man, who is a cunning player on an harp. It shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon you, that he shall play with his hand, and you shall be well." Saul said to his servants, "Provide me now a man that can play well,  bring him to me." Then one of the servants answered, and said, " I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is cunning in playing,  a mighty valiant man,  a man of war,  prudent in matters,  a handsome boy,  the Lord is with him." Wherefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, "Send me David your son, who is with the sheep." Jesse then took a donkey  laden with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a young goat, and sent them by David his son to Saul. David came to Saul,  stood before him. He loved him greatly;  he became his armor-bearer. Saul sent to Jesse, saying, "Let David, I pray you, stay with me; for he has found favor in my sight." It came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp,  played with his hand,  so Saul was refreshed,  was well,  the evil spirit departed from him.
        David and Goliath. Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle. They were gathered together at Shochoh, which belongeth to Judah,  pitched between Shochoh  Azekah, in Ephes-dammim. Saul and  the men of Israel were gathered together,  pitched by the valley of Elah,  set to battle in array against the Philistines. The Philistines stood on a mountain on the one side,  Israel stood on a mountain on the other side.  There was a valley between them. There went out of the camp a champion of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and  a span.  He had an helmet of brass upon his head,  he was armed with a coat of mail. The weight of the coat was five thousand  shekels of brass.  He had greaves of brass upon his legs,  a target of brass between his shoulders.  The staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam;  his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. One man bearing a shield went before him. He stood and cried to the armies of Israel,  to them, "Why are you come out to set your battle in array? Am I not a Philistine,  you servants to Saul? Choose you a man for you,  let him come down to face  me. If he is able to fight with me,  to kill me, then will we be your servants. But if I  kill him, then shall you be our servants, and serve us."  The Philistine said, "I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together." When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed, and greatly afraid. The Philistine drew near morning and  evening,  presented  himself for forty days. David rose up early in the morning, and   went, as Jesse had called  him; He came to the trench, as the host was going forth to the fight, and shouted for the battle. For Israel , the Philistines had put the battle in array, army against army. David left his carriage in the hands of the keeper of the carriage,  ran into the army,  came and saluted his brethren. As he talked with them,  there came up the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath, out of the armies of the Philistines. He spoke according to the same words.  David heard them. All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him, and were sore afraid. The men of Israel said, "Have you seen this man that has come up? Surely he has  come up to defy Israel. It shall be, that the man who kills him, the king, will enrich him with great riches,  will give him his daughter,  make his father's house free in Israel."  David spoke to the men that stood by him, saying, "What shall be done to the man that kills  this Philistine,  takes away the reproach from Israel?  For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?"  Eliab his eldest brother heard when he spoke to the men;  Eliab's anger was kindled against David,  he jeered, "Why did you come down here?  With whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride,  the naughtiness of your heart; for you have come down that you might see the men in battle."  David said, "What have I  done now? Is there not a cause?" He turned from him toward another, and spoke to them in the same way. When the words were heard which David spoke, they repeated them before Saul, who sent for him. David said to Saul: "Let no man's heart fail because of him; I  will go  fight with this Philistine." Saul said to David, "You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him. For you are but a youth,  and he is a man of war." David said  to Saul, "I  kept my  father's sheep, and there came a lion,  and took a lamb out of the flock. I went out after him, struck  him, pulled it out of his mouth.  when he again arose against me,  I caught him by his beard,  smote him, and killed  him. I slew both the lion and a bear. This uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God." David said moreover, "The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion,  out of the paw of the bear,  will deliver me out of  the  hand of this Philistine."  Saul said to David, "Go then,  the Lord be with you." Saul armed David with his armor, He put an helmet of brass upon his head; also he armed him with a coat of mail.  David girded his sword upon his armor,  he tried  to go, but could not.  David said to Saul, "I cannot go with these; for I have not proved them."  David took them off him. He took his staff in his hand,  chose five smooth stones out of the brook,  put them in a shepherd's bag which he had, with  his sling  in his hand. He drew near to the Philistine. The Philistine came on and  drew near to David; The man that bared the shield went before him. When the Philistine looked about, and  saw David, he disdained him. for he was but a youth,  ruddy, and of a fair countenance. The Philistine said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come to me with staves?"  The Philistine cursed David by his gods.  The Philistine said to David, "Come to me,  I will give your flesh to the fowls of the air,  to the beasts of the field." Then said David to the Philistine, "You come  to me with a sword,  with a spear,  with a shield,  but I come to you in the name of the Lord, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day will the Lord deliver you into my hand;  I will smite you,  take your head from you; I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day to the fowls of the air,  to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. All this assembly shall know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's,  he will give you into our hands."  It came to pass, when the Philistine arose, and  drew nigh to meet David, and  David  ran toward the army to meet the Philistine. David put his hand  in his bag,  took  a stone,  slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, so that the stone sunk into his forehead; He fell upon his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and  a stone,  smote the Philistine, and  killed him; but there was no sword in the hand of David. Therefore David ran,  stood upon the Philistine,  took his sword,  drew it out of the sheath and  cut off his head.  When the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled.  The men of Israel and  of Judah arose,  shouted,  pursued the Philistines, until they  came to the valley,  to the gates of  Ekron.  The wounded Philistines fell down by the way to Shaaraim, even to Gath,  to Ekron. The children of Israel returned from chasing after the Philistines,  they spoiled their enemies's tents. David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jerusalem;  but he put his armor in his tent.  As David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him,  brought him before Saul with the head of the Philistine in his hands.
        Saul becomes jealous of David.  It came to pass, by the time  David  had finished  speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan, son of Saul who was listening,  was knit with the soul of David,  Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul took him on that day, but would not  let David  go any  more back  to the house of his father, Jesse. Then Jonathan and David made a solemn pact with each other, because Jonathan  loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David,  his garments, even to his sword,  to his bow, and  to his girdle. David went out wherever Saul sent him, and behaved wisely.  Saul set him over to the men of war,  he was accepted by  all the people,  also by Saul's servants. It came to pass as they came, when David  returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all cities of Israel, singing  dancing, to meet king Saul, with tambourines, with joy,  with instruments of music. The women answered one another as they played,  saying that  " Saul has slain his thousand,  David his ten thousand."  Saul was very angry,  the saying displeased him; He said, "They have ascribed to David ten thousand,  to me they have ascribed but a thousand.  What else is left to have now but the kingdom?" Saul watched  David from that day  forward. It came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul.  He went around talking to himself in  the house.  David played his harp with his hand, as at other times.  There was a javelin in Saul's hand. Saul cast the javelin; for he said, "I will smite David and pin him to the wall with it."  Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him, and had departed from Saul. Therefore Saul to remove him,  made him his captain;  David behaved himself wisely in all his ways;  the Lord was with him. When Saul saw that he behaved very wisely, he was afraid of him. But all Israel and  Judah loved David, because he went out among them. Saul said to David, "My elder daughter Merab, her will I give you to wife. All I ask is that you be  valiant for me, and fight the Lord's battles." For Saul said, "Let not my hand  be upon him, but let the hand of the Philistines take care of him."  But David did not  want Merab, and " to Saul, "Who am I?  What is my life, or my father's family in Israel, that I should be son in law to the king?" It came to pass at the time when Merab,  Saul's daughter should have been given to David, that she was given to Adriel the Meholathite to wife instead.  Michal Saul's daughter also loved David.  Saul  said, "I will give him to her, that she may be a snare to him, and  that the hand of the Philistines may be against him." Wherefore Saul said to David, "You shall this day be my son in law by marrying my other daughter." Saul called  his servants, saying, "Talk to  David secretly,  say,  the king has delight in you,  all his servants love you. Now therefore be the king's son in law."  Saul's servants spoke those words in the ears of David.  David answered, "Does it seem to you a light thing,  to be a king's son in law, seeing that I am a poor man,  lightly esteemed?"  The servants of Saul told him what David had  answered. Saul said, "Thus shall you say to David, The king desires not any dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king's enemies."  But all Saul really sought was to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines. When his servants told David these words, it pleased David well to be the king's son in law.  David arose and  went, he with his men, and slew two hundred  Philistines.   David brought their foreskins,  they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's son in law.  Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife. Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David, and that Michal loved him. Saul was yet the more afraid of David;  Saul became David's permanent enemy. Then the princes of the Philistines went forth.  It came to pass, after they went forth, that David behaved himself more wisely than all the servants of Saul; so that his name was much revered. 
        Saul persecutes David,  Jonathan intervenes. Saul spoke to Jonathan his son,  to all his servants, that they should kill David. But Jonathan delighted much in David.  Jonathan told David, saying, "Saul my father seeks to kill you. Now therefore, I pray you, take heed  until the morning, go to a hiding  place,  hide yourself..  I will go out to the field where you go.  I will commune with my father of you;  what I see, that I will tell you."  Jonathan spoke well of David to Saul his father,  said to him, "Let not the king sin against his servant, David; because he has not sinned against you,  because his works have been very good to you, for he did not put his life in his hand, and kill  the Philistine?  The Lord wrought a great salvation for all Israel. You saw it, and did  rejoice. Why  then will you sin against innocent blood, to kill David without a cause?"  Saul listened to the voice of Jonathan.  Then Saul swore, "As the Lord lives, he shall not be killed." Jonathan went to  David, and  brought David to Saul,  he was in his presence, as in times past.         There was war again.  David went out,  fought with the Philistines,  slew them with a great slaughter;  they fled from him. And once more  the evil spirit from the Lord was upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand.  David played the harp with his hand. Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin; but he slipped away out of Saul's presence,  he smote the javelin into the wall.  David fled,  escaped into the  night.  Saul also sent messengers to David's house, to watch him,  to kill him in the morning.  Michal,  David's wife told him, " If you save not your life tonight, tomorrow you shall be killed." So Michal let David down through a window and he  escaped. Michal took an image,  laid it in the bed,  put a pillow of goats' hair for his bolster, and covered it with a blanket. When Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, "He is sick." Saul sent the messengers again to see David, saying, "Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him." When the messengers came  in,   there was an image in the bed, with a pillow of goats' hair for his bolster. Saul said to  Michal, "Why have you deceived me so,  sent away my enemy, that he is escaped?"  So David fled,  escaped, and came to Samuel in Ramah, and  told him all that Saul had done to him.  This was told to Saul, saying, "David is at Naioth in Ramah." Saul sent messengers to take David.  Samuel was standing as appointed over them, the spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul,  they also prayed. When this  was told to Saul, he sent other messengers,  they prayed likewise.  Saul sent messengers again the third time,  they prayed also. Then he himself went  to Ramah, and came to a great well that is in Sechu.  He asked, "Where are Samuel and David?"  One said, "They are at Naioth in Rama."  He went there.  The spirit of God was upon him also,  he went on, and  prayed, until he came to Naioth in Ramah. He stripped off his clothes,  prayed before Samuel in like manner,  lay down naked all that day  all that night, which made them wonder, Is Saul also among the prophets?
            David and Jonathan     David fled from Naioth in Ramah, and came  before Jonathan and said, "What have I done? What is my guilt?  What is my sin before your father, that he seeks  my life?"  Jonathan  said to him, "God forbid; you shall not die.  My father will do nothing either great or small, unless he tells me about it."  David swore moreover, "Your father certainly knows  that I have found grace in your eyes;" He said, "Let not Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved, but truly as the Lord lives,  as your soul lives, there is but a step between me  death."  Then said Jonathan to David, "I will do for you anything you want." David said to Jonathan, "Tomorrow is the new moon,  I should not fail to sit with the king at supper. But let me go in the evening, that I may hide myself in the field to the third day. If your father misses  me, then say, David earnestly asked leave of me that he might run to Bethlehem, his city, for there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the family. If he says, It is well; I, your servant, shall have peace. But if he is very angry, then be sure that he is plotting evil.  Therefore you shall deal kindly with me, for you have brought me into a pact of the Lord with you. In any case, if there is guilt in me, kill me yourself, for why should you bring me to your father? Jonathan said, " Far be it from you, for if I knew certainly that my father wished you harm, then would not I tell it to you?"  Then said David to Jonathan, "Who shall tell me? Or what if your father answers you roughly?"  Jonathan said to David, "Come,  let us go out into the field."  They went out both of them into the field and were together. Jonathan said to David, "When I have sounded my father about tomorrow any time, or the third day,  if there be good toward David, then I won't send you a message, but if it pleases my father to do you evil, then I will send it to you, and send you away, that you may go in peace.  You shall not only while I am alive  show me the kindness of the Lord, but also you shall not cut off your love for me forever." So Jonathan again made a pact  with  David, saying,  "Let the Lord even require it at the hand of David's enemies." Jonathan caused David to swear again, because he loved him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul. Then Jonathan said to "David, Tomorrow is the new moon.  you shall be missed, because your seat will be empty. When you have stayed three days, then you shall go down quickly,  come to the place where you did  hide yourself.  When the business is  in hand, I shall remain by the stone Eel. I will shoot three arrows on the side, as though I shot at a mark.  I will send a lad, saying, go, find out the arrows. If I expressly say to the lad,  the arrows are on this side of you, take them,  then you can come. But if I say thus to the young man,  the arrows are beyond you,  go your way,  for the Lord has sent you away. And as far as  the matter which you and  I have spoken of,  the Lord be between you and  me for ever." So David hid himself in the field.  when the new moon was come, the king sat down to supper. The king sat upon his seat, as at other times, even upon a seat by the wall.  Jonathan arose, and Abner sat by Saul's side.  David's place was empty. Nevertheless Saul spoke not any thing that day, for he thought, "Something has happened to  him, he is not clean; surely he is not clean."  It came to pass on the next day, which was the second day of the month, that David's place was empty.  Saul said to Jonathan, "Why has not the son of Jesse come to eat meat, neither yesterday, nor today?" Jonathan answered, David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Bethlehem. He said, "Let me go, I pray you; for our family has a sacrifice in the city;  my brother  has asked me to be there.  Now  if I have found favor in your eyes, let me get away, I pray you, to see my brethren. Therefore he comes not to the king's table." Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said to him, "You son of that perverse and rebellious woman, you think I don't know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own  confusion,  to the confusion of your mother's nakedness? For as long as the son of Jesse lives upon the ground, you shall not be established, nor will you have your kingdom.  Now send and fetch him to me, for he shall surely die."  Jonathan answered Saul his father, "Why should  he be slain? What has he done?" Saul cast a javelin at him to smite him. whereby Jonathan knew that it was determined that   his father was  to kill David. So Jonathan arose from the table in fierce anger, and ate nothing  the second day of the month  for he was grieved for David, because his father had tried to shame him.  It came to pass in the morning, that Jonathan went out into the field at the time appointed with David, taking a little lad with him. He said to his lad, "Run, find out now the arrows which I shoot." As the lad ran, he shot an arrow beyond him. When the lad had come to the place of the arrow, Jonathan cried after him, and said, "Is not the arrow beyond you?" Then  Jonathan cried after the lad, "Make speed,  stay not."  Jonathan's lad gathered up the arrows,  and came to his master.  Jonathan gave his artillery to his lad, and said to him, "Go, carry them to the city." As soon as the lad was gone, David arose out of his hiding place,  fell on his face to the ground,  bowed himself three times.  They wept one with another, they kissed one another, until David exceeded himself. Jonathan said to David, "Go in peace, for as much as we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying,  The Lord be between me you,  between my seed and your seed for ever, you must leave."  David then  arose and  departed.  Jonathan went back  into the city.
            Saul pursues David. Then they told David, saying,   "The Philistines fight against Keilah,  they rob the threshing floors." Therefore David inquired of the Lord, saying, "Shall I go and kill these Philistines?"  the Lord said "Yes, go and save Keilah." David's men said to him, " We are afraid here in Judah. How much more then if we go to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines?"  Then David asked  of the Lord yet again.  The Lord answered, "Go down to Keilah,  for I will deliver the Philistines into your hand." So David and his men went to Keilah,  fought with the Philistines, took  away their cattle, killed  them with a great slaughter. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah. It came to pass, when Abiathar, the son of Ahimelech, fled to David in Keilah, that he came down with a religious apron  in his hand. Saul had been told  that David had come to Keilah, and  Saul said, "God has delivered   him  into my hands;  for he is shut in,  by entering  into a  town that has gates and bars." Saul called all the people together to war, to go down to Keilah, to attack  David and  his men. David knew that Saul was secretly plotting against him.  He said to Abiathar the priest, "Bring here the ephod." Then David prayed; " O Lord God of Israel, I  have  certainly heard that Saul wants  to come to Keilah, to destroy the city for my sake, if they don't turn me over to him. Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hands? Will Saul come down?  I beseech you, give me your answer."  The Lord said, "He will come down". Then said David, "Will the men of Keilah deliver me  my men into the hands of Saul?"  the Lord said, "They will deliver you up." Then David and  his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah, and went into exile.  David lived  in the wilderness in strongholds,  remained in a mountain in the wilderness of Ziph.  Saul looked for  him every day, but God delivered him not into his hand. David saw that Saul had come out to take  his life.  Then Jonathan   went to David into the wood, to strengthen  his hand in God. He said to him, "Fear not, for the hand  of my father shall not find you;  you shall be king over Israel, and  I shall be next to you; my father knows that too."  The  two pledged themselves to each other before the Lord. David remained  in the wood,  Jonathan went back  to his house. Then the Ziphites came up to Saul in Gibeah, saying, "Does not  David hide himself with us in strongholds in the wood, in the hill of Hachilah, which is on the south of Jeshimon? Now therefore, O king, come down according to all the desire of your soul, our part shall be to deliver him into your hands."  Saul said, "Blessed shall you be by the Lord; for you have compassion for me. Go, I pray you, prepare,  know and  see the place where he  is, and who has seen him there. For  he is cunning. See therefore,  take knowledge of all the lurking places where he hides himself,  come  again to me with the certainty, and   I will go with you.  It shall come to pass, if he is in the land, that I will search him out throughout all the  thousands  of Judah" They arose,  went to Ziph for Saul,  but David by then was with his men  in the wilderness of Maon, in the plain on the south of Jeshimon. When Saul heard that, he went after David in the wilderness of Maon. Saul went on this side of the mountain,  David  his men were on that side of the mountain.  David tried to make a getaway for fear of Saul; for Saul and  his men surrounded David and his men to take them. But there came a messenger to Saul, saying, "Come quickly; for the Philistines have invaded the land." Then  Saul returned from pursuing  David, and went against the Philistines. From then on  they called that place Selahammahlekoth. David left that place to dwell in strong holds at Engedi.
            David again spares Saul. The Ziphites again came to Saul in  Gibeah, saying, "Does not David hide himself in the hill of Hachilah, which is before Jeshimon?"  Then Saul arose, and  went down to the wilderness of Ziph, having three  chosen men of Israel with him, to seek David in the wilderness of Ziph. Saul pitched his tent in the hill of Hachilah, which is before Jeshimon. But David was living  in the wilderness.   He saw that Saul came after him into the wilderness. David therefore sent out spies. David arose,  came to the place where Saul had pitched his camp.  David beheld the place where Saul lay, and Abner the son of Ner, the captain of his host.  Saul lay in the trench, the people pitched round about him. Then answered David  said to Ahimelech the Hittite,  to Abishai the son of Zeruiah, brother to Joab, saying, "Who will go down with me to Saul to the camp?"  Abishai said, "I will go down with you." So David and Abishai came to the people by night. Saul lay sleeping in the trench,  his spear stuck in the ground at his bolster. Abner and the people lay round about him. Then said Abishai to David, "God has delivered your enemy into your hands  this day. Now therefore let me kill  him, I pray you." David said to Abishai, "Destroy him not. for who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord's anointed, and be guiltless?" David said furthermore, "As the Lord lives, the Lord shall kill  him; or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle, and perish. The Lord forbids that I should stretch forth my hand against the Lord's anointed. but, I pray you, take you now the spear that is at his bolster,  the jug of water, and let us go." So David took the spear,  the cruse of water from Saul's bolster. No man saw it, nor knew it, neither did they awake, because a deep sleep from the Lord had  fallen upon them. Then David went over to the other side,  stood on the top of an hill afar off; a great space being between them. David cried to the people,  to Abner the son of Ner, saying, "Will you not answer, Abner?" Then Abner answered and said, "Who are you that calls to the king?" David said to Abner, "Are not you a valiant man?  Who is like to you in Israel?  Why  then have you not protected your lord the king? For someone  came  in to destroy the king your lord. This is not a good thing that you have done. As the Lord lives, you are worthy to die, because you have not kept your master safe. Now see where the king's spear is, and  the cruse of water that was at his bolster." Saul knew David's voice, "He said, Is this your voice, my son David?" David said, "It is my  voice, my lord, O king." He said, "Why  does my lord thus pursue after his servant? What have I done? What evil is in my hand? Now therefore, I pray you, let my lord the king hear my words. If the Lord has stirred you up against me, let him accept an offering. But if they be the children of men, cursed be they before the Lord; for they have driven me out this day from being in a state of grace with the Lord, saying,  Go, serve other gods. Now therefore, let not my blood fall to the earth before the face of the lord. for the king of Israel has come out to seek a flea, as when one  hunts a partridge in the mountains." Then said Saul, "I have sinned. Return, my son David. for I will no more do you harm, because my soul was precious in your eyes this day.  I have played the fool,  have erred exceedingly." David answered  said, "The king's spear!  Let one of the young men come over  fetch it. The Lord render to every man his righteousness,  his faithfulness, for the Lord delivered you into my hands today, but I would not stretch forth my hand against the Lord's anointed. As your life was worth much  this day in my eyes, so let my life be worth much  in the eyes of the Lord.  Let him deliver me out of all pain." Then Saul said to David, "Blessed be you, my son David. you shall both do great things, and you shall  prevail." So David went on his way, and Saul returned to his place.
            David hears of the death of Saul and Jonathan. Now it came to pass that David, exiled among the Philistines, had  returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites.  David had stayed  two days in Ziklag; It came even to pass on the third day, that  a man came out of the camp of  Saul with his clothes  rent,  earth upon his head. And  so it was, when he came to David, that he fell to the earth,  and did obeisance. David said to him, "Where do you come from?"  He answered, "Out of the camp of Israel have I escaped." David said to him, "What happened? I pray you, tell me."  He answered, "That the people have fled from the battle,  many of the people also have fallen  dead;  Saul and Jonathan his son are dead also." David said to the young man that told him, "How do you know   that   Jonathan his son and Saul are dead?" The young man said, "As I happened by chance upon mount Gilboa,  Saul leaned upon his spear; and  lo, the chariots and  horsemen followed  hard after him. When he looked behind him, he saw me, and called to me.  I answered, "Here am I."  He said to me, Who are you?  I answered him, I am an Amalekite. He said to me again, Stand, I pray you, upon me, and  kill me,  for I am dying, but there is still life in me. So I stood upon him, and slew him, because I was sure that he could not live after what had befallen him. I took the crown that was upon his head,  the bracelet that was on his arm,  have brought them here  to my lord." 
            Then David took hold of his clothes, and tore them; as did  all the men that were with him. They mourned,  wept, and  fasted until evening, for Saul,  for Jonathan his son,  for the people of the Lord, for the house of Israel; because they were fallen by the sword. David asked  the young man, "Who are you?"  He answered, "I am the son of a stranger, an Amalekite." David said to him, "How is it that  you were not afraid to stretch forth your hand  to destroy the Lord's anointed?" David called one of the young men, and said, "Go,  fall upon him and kill him."  David said to him, "Your blood be upon your head; for your mouth has testified against you, saying, I have slain the Lord's anointed." David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and Jonathan.  "The beauty of Israel is slain upon your high places. How have the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph. Mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain, upon you, nor fields of offerings, for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, and the shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil. From the blood of the slain,  the bow of Jonathan did not turn  back,  the sword of Saul did not return empty. Saul and  Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives,  in their death they were not divided. They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. Daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, and other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of  battle! O Jonathan, you were  slain in your high place. I am torn asunder  for you, my brother Jonathan. Very dear  have you been to me, my beloved. Your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women. How  the mighty have fallen,  the weapons of war perished!"

        David, as a young man, had first shown his favor with God by defeating the giant Philistine, Goliath, using only             a sling. David, eager to merge the northern and southern tribes, proclaimed  centrally-located           Jerusalem the political and religious capitol of a united Israel.  Both a skilled   statesman  and    an effective general, he defeated the Philistines and expanded the kingdom into a vast empire While David's great sin—sending Uriah, one of his generals, to the front lines to die so  that        he could marry Bathsheba, Uriah's wife—did not cost him the throne, God promised  David          that the sword would bedevil his family forever.  However, God also promised David that         through his descendants, a Messiah would come to redeem Israel and the rest of the world from sin.

10    00Saul is killed at battle of Gilboa, succeeded by David, first as king of Judah, later as king of Israel . After a campaign, David captures Jerusalem and makes it his capital.

1000    INDIA. Rig Veda, religious text is compiled.
1000BCE- 1000  Shang rule is overthrown by rugged nomadic warriors. A new dynasty of Zhou kings rule. They claim that in heaven their gods have ousted the rule of the Zhang gods. A shortage of rainfall sends Aryan tribes from the Indus Valley to the plains of the Ganges Valley. Aryan tribal kings have been changing from elected leaders to autocratic rulers, allying themselves with the priesthood and associating themselves and their power with their gods. People in western Africa are clearing portions of tropical forest with stone axes. They plant yams, harvest fruits and palm nuts and keep goats. In eastern Africa, south of the Sahara, cattle raising is spreading alongside people who farm.

1000  Findings of Lapita pottery will tell athropologists that by now people originally from the Bismarck Archipelago have passed through Melanesia and have reached Tonga.

970  King David is succeeded by his son Solomon. Hebrews are writing a Phoenician language that includes words of Sumerian origin and have learned stories carried by that language. Religious toleration prevails as it had under David. Solomon has temples built for his wives, who worship gods other than the Hebrew god, Yahweh. Solomon has a temple constructed for Yahweh.

928  Around this year, King Solomon dies.  

900  A writer, to be known as J, because he or she describes God as Jahweh, has or will soon write stories about the creation of Israel from 250 to 100 years before. (See Authors of the Bible, Fred Glynn, p.52.)

900  The Maya are migrating into the lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula, where they will grow beans, maize, chili peppers and squash.

900  Findings of Lapita pottery will tell anthropologists that people originally from the Bismarck Archipelago passed through Melanesia, and the earliest Lapita archeological site in Polynesia, in the Tonga Islands, begins. Lapita culture exists also in the Samoan Islands.

900  In India, traditional stories have been put into writing called the Vedas – Veda meaning wisdom. Those opposed to this form of communicating their religion are ignored. The Vedas are considered an infallible source of timeless and revealed truth. In the coming century the writings called Upanishads begin, by persons interested in the relations between self and universe, an addition to Hinduism often associated with the Vedas and beyond Hinduism's routines of ritual sacrifices – a collection of as many as two hundred books to be written across two centuries. One writer will speculate as to how many gods really exist and he will conclude that there is really only one god.

The Middle East, including Edom, around 830 BCE
Kingdoms in the Middle East, including Edom, around 830 BCE
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Middle East and Assyrian Empire, 800 to 671 BCE
Middle East, Egypt, Judah and Assyrian Empire, 800 to 671 BCE
click to enlarge
 

900  Canaanites called Phoenicians are the leading seafaring traders in the Mediterranean Area. They are influenced linguistically by the Egyptians. The Phoenician alphabet, called by some a Proto-Canaanite alphabet, is spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world. See a modern replica of a Phoenician trading ship at http://looklex.com/e.o/slides/phoenician_boat01.jpg

853  King Ahab of Israel, allied with the Phoenicians and with Damascus, defeats the empire-building Assyrians at QarQar in Syria.

815  The city of Carthage, on the coast of North Africa, is founded by Phoenicians from the city of Tyre.

800  In the coming century, Edom comes into existence as a social and political entity.

776  People on mainland Greece are trading again with peoples east of them, and the writing that disappeared with the invasions of previous centuries reappears. A sense of religious community has developed among Greece's aristocrats, and, beginning in 776, aristocrats from various city-states hold mid-summer religious festivals at Olympia. Greeks believe Olympia to be the center of the world and the home of the gods. In this century, the poet Homer reworks oral history on the Trojan War into writing. Called the Iliad, Homer's work is about an age of heroes. He praises warrior society and describes all as the doing of the gods.

771  Chuanrong tribesmen overrun Zhou civilization. Zhou kings rule in name only as the Zhou empire fragments into various power centers.

753  The year Roman legend claims Romulus and Remus founded Rome.

730  Nubians again invade Egypt. The Nubian king, Piankhi, moves his capital to Memphis and starts Egypt's 25th dynasty. An Egyptianization of Nubian culture is beginning, including the use of Egyptian writing. Egyptian is to be the official language of Nubian government, and gods among the Nubians acquire Egyptian names.

721  Assyria overruns Israel, disperses the Israelites and takes thousands as slaves. Israel as a nation vanishes. The Assyrians see their god, Assur, as having given them victory over the god of the Hebrews. Assyria's army moves through Judea, conquers Egypt in 676 and establishes the greatest of empires to date. The great Assyrian god, Assur, is seen as having defeated the Hebrew god, Yahweh. As with some other peoples, Hebrews see suffering as punishment for sin.

700  Aryan migrations into the Ganges Valley are over or coming to an end. Cities are rising in the Ganges Valley. Traders, merchants, landlords and money lending appear. In the coming century, Indians trade with the Assyrian Empire, Arabia and with the Chinese. In the West the Lydians are the first to make coins.

675  In the coming decades, rebellions against kings occur in various Greek city-states. Kings are replaced by cliques of wealthy men – oligarchies. During the political turmoil people will find relief in a new religious cult that promotes everlasting life, community and emotional abandon. Its god is Dionysus, a god of fertility and vegetation. Men of wealth and power fear that worship of Dionysus might disrupt the order upon which they depend, but most Greeks hold onto the gods with whom they grew up, and many believed more in reason than in letting their emotions lead them to an acceptance of promises of eternal bliss.

660  Legendary founding of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.

655  Egypt breaks away from Assyrian rule. Soon cities in Canaan also break away, and Phoenicia begins ignoring Assyrian directives.

 

 

640  With the end of Assyrian rule comes a resurgence of worship of the god Yahweh. King Josiah and Yahwist priests move against worshippers of other gods. The priests claim that a scroll has been found in a secret archive within Solomon's temple, a scroll signed by Moses. The scroll is used as a weapon against rival worship. An official intolerance rises that had not been the policy of kings David, Solomon, Jeroboam, Ahab and others. The practices of rival worship are forbidden: witchcraft, sorcery, using omens, worshiping images of gods in wood or stone, orgiastic fertility festivals, human sacrifices and temple rituals involving prostitution and homosexuality. Homosexuality is labeled an abomination.

623  A Chaldean army drives north from around Sumer and expels the Assyrians from Babylon.

612  The Medes and Chaldeans overrun Assyria's capital, Nineveh. Its walls are broken by siege engines that Assyria introduced centuries before. Assyrian communities, more than two thousand years old, are obliterated.

598  The Chaldeans overrun Jerusalem and Judah, while driving the Egyptians back to Egypt.

593  An Egyptian army sacks the Nubian city of Napata, along the upper Nile. Nubians push into Meroe.

587  Jerusalem rebels against Chaldean rule. The Chaldeans burn the city and tear down its walls and Solomon's temple. They round up about forty thousand from Judah as captives, including political leaders and high priests, and take them to their capital, Babylon.

585  A solar eclipse occurs that was predicted by a wealthy Greek man of leisure, an engineer and thinker, Thales, 39. Thales believes in the gods but is interested in the nature of things apart from magic. He theorizes that the world is in essence water. He mentors Anaximander, who rejects his ideas and develops a more complex theory about nature and change.

550  In Persia, the Zoroastrian religion explicity forbids slavery.

550  The Greek Pythagoras studies the movements of celestial bodies and mathematics. He blends his observations with Greek religion into what he believes is a theological coherence.

547  A Persian, Cyrus II, is expanding his empire and overthrows King Croesus of Lydia, in Asia Minor.

539  Cyrus conquers Babylon. There the captive high priests of Yahweh worship are liberated and see Cyrus as an agent of Yahweh. They expect Cyrus to inflict Yahweh's vengeance upon the wicked Babylonians. But Cyrus fails to punish Babylon. He honors Babylon's gods and disappoints the priests.

530  The Greek Xenophanes rejects mysticism, divine revelations and Pythagoras. He describes the gods of Homer as morally bankrupt. All they have taught men, he says, is theft, adultery and mutual deceit. He ridicules seeing gods as human-like and says that if oxen, horses or lions had hands to make images of their gods they would fashion them in their own image. He speculates that the earth stretches infinitely in all directions, that the earth is infinitely deep and that air extends infinitely upwards. He imagines a god as a central force in the universe but not human-like in shape, thought or emotions: a god that is everywhere and everything, a god that is the whole universe. And his belief that god is nature and nature is god leaves him open to the charge that he believes in no god at all.

517  Darius extends Persian rule through the Khyber Pass to the Indus River. The Persians still rule in Egypt, Asia Minor and everywhere in between, including Jerusalem.

510  Confucius is around forty. The use of iron has brought a higher productivity in agriculture in China, followed by a greater rise in population, urban growth and new wealth, and this has loosened social stratification. Confucius attributes the ills of his time to people neglecting the rituals or performing incorrectly the rituals of the early Zhou kings. Unlike other scholars of his time who become reclusive, Confucius tries to teach proper respect.

509  Roman nobles fed up with their Etruscan king drive him from power. The city of Rome becomes independent of the Etruscans and a republic.

508  In Athens, Greece, progressive members of the upper class unite with commoners in a popular rising against an oligarchy supported by Sparta. A democracy of sorts is created. Slavery in Athens lives on. Women in Athens are subject to custody of their fathers, their husbands, and, when they are widowed, their sons.

501  The Greek philosopher from the city of Ephesus, Heraclitus, is around forty. Rather than dwell on harmony, he sees conflict as a part of nature. He sees conflict producing change, and, recognizing conflicting interests, he introduces objectivity and compromise into deciding questions of justice.

timeline 2000-1001 | 5th Century

10    00-500 BCTool currencies adopted in China  These were metal models of valuable implements that had previously been  accepted in commercial exchanges, e.g. spades, hoes and knives.
 
10    00ETHIOPIA. Ethiopia is one of the oldest nations in the world,  and Africa's Second-most populous nation.  It has yielded some of the oldest traces of humanity,making it an important area in the history of human evolution. Recent studies claim that the vicinity of present-day Addis Ababa was the point from which human beings migrated around the world. Ethiopian dynastic history is traditionally held to have begun with the reign of    Emperor Menelik I in 1000 BC.  The roots of the Ethiopian state are similarly deep, dating with unbroken continuity to at least the Aksumite Empire (which adopted the name "Ethiopia" in the 4th century) and its predecessor state, D`mt (with early 1st millennium BC roots), after a period of decentralized power.
    
10    00IRAN. The term Iran (     ) in modern Persian derives from the Proto-Iranian term Ary n m first attested in Zoroastrianism's Avesta tradition.[17] As in Zoroaster's lifetime, differing dates for Avestan have been proposed; scholarly consensus floats around 1000 BCE (roughly contemporary to the Brahmana period of Vedic Sanskrit). Ariya- and Airiia- are also attested as an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions. The term  r n from Middle Persian  r n, Pahlavi  yr n, is found at the inscription that accompanies the investiture relief of Ardashir I at Naqsh-e Rustam.[18] In this inscription, the king's appellation in Middle Persian contains the term  r n (Pahlavi:  ry n), while in the Parthian language inscription that accompanies it, Iran is mentioned as ary n. In Ardashir's time  r n retained this meaning, denoting the people rather than the state.Notwithstanding this inscriptional use of  r n to refer to the Iranian peoples, the use of  r n to refer to the empire is also attested by the early Sassanid period. An inscription of Shapur I, Ardashir's son and immediate successor, apparently "includes in  r n regions such as Armenia and the Caucasus which were not inhabited predominantly by Iranians."[19] In Kartir's inscriptions the high priest includes the same regions in his list of provinces of the antonymic An r n.[19] Both  r n and ary n comes from the Proto-Iranian term Ary n m, (Land) of the (Iranian) Aryas. The word and concept of Airyanem Vaejah is present in the name of the country Iran (Lit. Land of the Aryans) where Iran ( r n), is modern-Persian of the word Ary n .
        Zoroaster -  Avestan Zarathustra Avestan Zara?uštra is generally accepted to derive from an Old Iranian *zarat-uštra-, which is in turn "perhaps"[1] a zero-grade form of *zarant-uštra-. Subject then to whether Zara?uštra derives from *zarat-uštra- or from *zarant-uštra-, several interpretations have been proposed: Greek Zoroástris.Greek Zoroástres has motivated attempts to reconstruct an intermediate Old Western Iranian variant of Avestan Zara?uštra from which the European forms could then derive.  "Traditional date" originates in the period immediately following Alexander's conquest of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BCE. The Seleucid kings who gained power following Alexander's death instituted an "Age of Alexander" as the new calendrical epoch. This did not appeal to the Zoroastrian priesthood who then attempted to establish an "Age of Zoroaster." To do so, they needed to establish when Zoroaster had lived, which they accomplished by counting back the length of successive generations[7] until they concluded that Zoroaster must have lived "258 years before Alexander." This estimate then re-appeared in the 9th-12th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition,[c] which in turn gave the date doctrinal legitimacy. Since the Old Avestan language of Gathas (that are attributed to the prophet himself) is still very close to the Sanskrit of the Rigveda, it seemed plausible that the Gathas and Rigveda could not be more than a few centuries apart. Since the Rigvedic compositions could be fairly accurately dated to about the 13th/14th century BCE, and because the Old Avestan was less (but only slightly less) archaic than that of the Rigveda, it followedthat the oldest surviving portions of the Avesta date to around 1000 BCE (+/- one century)This 9th/10th century BCE date is now almost universally accepted amongIranists, who in recent decades have also found that the social customs described in the Gathas roughly coincides with what is known of other pre-historical peoples of that period. Supported by this historical evidence, the "Traditional date" can be conclusively ruled out, and the discration can to some extent supported by the texts themselves: The Gathas describe a society of bipartite (priests and herdsmen/farmers) nomadic pastoralists with tribal structures organized at most as small kingdoms. This contrasts sharply with the view of Zoroaster having lived in an empire, at which time society is attested to have had a tripartite structure (nobility/soldiers, priests, and farmers).Although a slightly earlier date (a century or two) has been proposed on the grounds that the texts do not reflect the migration onto the Iranian Plateau, it is just as possible that Zoroaster lived in a one of the rural societies that  remained where they were.Zoroaster; portrayed here in a popular Parsi Zoroastrian depiction. This image emerged in the 18th century, the result of an Indian Parsi Zoroastrian artist's imagination under European influence. It quickly became a popular icon, and is now regarded by many Indian Zoroastrians as being historically based.Yasna 9 & 17 cite the Ditya River in Airyanem Vaejah (Middle Persian Eran Wej) as Zoroaster's home and the scene of his first appearance. Nowhere in the Avesta (both Old and Younger portions) is there a mention of the Achaemenids or of any West Iranian tribes such as the Medes, Persians, or even Parthians.However, in Yasna 59.18, the zara?uštrotema, or supreme head of the Zoroastrian riesthood, is said to reside in 'Ragha'. In later Zoroastrian tradition, this Avestan Ragha - along with a slew of other places - appear as locations in Western Iran. While Medea does not figure at all in the Avesta (the westernmost location noted in scripture is Arachosia), the Bundahišn, or "Primordial Creation," (20.32 and 24.15) puts Ragha in Medea (medieval Rai). However, in Avestan, Ragha is simply a toponym meaning "plain, hillside."[8] The same text identifies Eran Wej with medieval Aran (in historical Caucasian  Albania, present-day Azerbaijan).In the 10th century, the Muslim writer al-Shahrastani (who  originated from Shahristan, present-day Turkmenistan) proposed (again) that Zoroaster's father was from Atropatene (also in Medea) and his mother was from Rai. Coming from a reputed scholar of religions, this was a serious blow for the various regions who all claimed that Zoroaster originated from their homelands, some of which then decided that Zoroaster must then have then been buried in their regions or composed his Gathas there or preached there.By the late 20th century the consensus has settled on an origin in Eastern Iran and/or Central Asia (to include present-day Afghanistan): Gnoli proposed Sistan (though in a much wider scope than the present-day province) as the homeland of Zoroastrianism; Frye voted for Bactria and Chorasmia;[11] Khlopin suggests the Tedzen Delta in present-day Turkmenistan.[12] Sarianidi considered the BMAC region as "the native land of the Zoroastrians and, probably, of Zoroaster himself."[13] Boyce includes the steppes of the former Soviet republics.[14] The medieval "from Media" hypothesis is no longer taken seriously, and Zaehner has even suggested that this was a Magi-mediated issue to garner legitimacy, but this has been likewise rejected by Gershevitch and others.The 2005 Encyclopedia Iranica article on the history of Zoroastrianism summarizes the issue with "while there is general agreement that he did not live in western Iran, attempts to locate him in specific regions of eastern Iran, including Central Asia, remain tentative."Information about the life of Zoroaster derives primarily from the Avesta, that is, from Zoroastrian scripture of which the Gathas - the texts attributed to Zoroaster himself - are a part. These are complemented by legends from the traditional Zoroastrian texts of the 9th-12th century The Gathas contain allusions to personal events, such as Zoroaster's triumph over obstacles imposed by competing priests and the ruling class. They also indicate he had difficulty spreading his teachings, and was even treated with ill-will in his mother's hometown. They also describe familial events such as the marriage of his daughter, at which Zoroaster presided.In the texts of the Younger Avesta (composed many centuries after the Gathas), Zoroaster is depicted wrestling with the daevas and is tempted by Angra Mainyu to renounce his faith (Yasht 17.19; Vendidad 19).The Spenta Nask, the 13th section of the Avesta, is said to have a description of the prophet's life. However, this text has been lost over the centuries, and it survives only as a summary in the seventh book of the 9th century Denkard. Other 9th-12th century stories of Zoroaster, as in the Shahnama, are also assumed to be based on earlier texts, but must be considered to be primarily a collection of legends. The historical Zoroaster, however, eludes categorization as a legendary character.Collectively, scripture and tradition provide many rote details of his life, such as a record of his family members: His father was Pourushaspa Spitama, son of Haechadaspa Spitama, and his mother was Dughdova. He and his wife Hvovi had three daughters, Freni, Pourucista, and Triti; and three sons, Isat Vastar, Uruvat-Nara, and Hvare Ci?ra. Zoroaster's great-grandfather Haechataspa was the ancestor of the whole family Spitama, for which reason Zoroaster usually bears the surname Spitama. His wife and children, and a cousin named Maidhyoimangha, were his first converts after his illumination from Ahura Mazda at age 30.According to Yasnas 5 & 105, Zoroaster prayed for the conversion of King Vištaspa, who appears in the Gathas as a historical personage. In legends, Vištaspa is said to have had two brothers as courtiers, Frašaoštra and Jamaspa, and to whom Zoroaster was closely related: his wife, Hvovi, was the daughter of Frashaoštra, while Jamaspa was the husband of his daughter Pourucista. The actual role of intermediary was played by the pious queen Hutaosa. Apart from this connection, the new prophet relied especially upon his own kindred (hvaetuš).Zoroaster's death is not mentioned in the Avesta. In Shahnama 5.92,[16] he is said to have been murdered at the altar by the Turanians in the storming of Balkh. PhilosophyIn his revelation, the poet sees the universe as the cosmic struggle between aša "truth" and druj "lie". The cardinal concept of aša - which is highly nuanced and only vaguely translatable - is at the foundation of all other Zoroastrian doctrine, including that of Ahura Mazda (who is aša), creation (that is aša), existence (that is aša) and Free Will, which is arguably Zoroaster's greatest contribution to religious philosophy.The purpose of humankind, like that of all other creation, is to sustain aša. For humankind, this occurs through active participation in life and the exercise of good thoughts, words and deeds.The name Zoroaster was famous in classical antiquity, and a number of different Zoroasters - all described as having occult powers - appear in historiographic accounts.

        Jain dialectic.  Jain philosophy, Anekantavada, and SyadvadaAnekantavada and Syadvada are the sophisticated dialectic traditions developed by the Jains to arrive at truth. As per Jainism, the truth or the reality is perceived differently from different points of view, and that no single point of view is the complete truth.  Jain doctrine of Anekantavada states that an object has infinite modes of existence and qualities and, as such, they cannot be completely perceived in all its aspects and manifestations, due to inherent limitations of the humans. Only the Kevalins - the omniscient beings - can comprehend the object in all its aspects and manifestations, and that all others are capable of knowing only a part of it. Consequently, no one view can claim to represent the absolute truth. According to Jains, the ultimate principle should always be logical and no principle can be devoid of logic or reason.  Thus one finds in the Jain texts, deliberative exhortations on any subject in all its facts, may they be constructive or obstructive, inferential or analytical, enlightening or destructive.  Syadvada is the theory of conditioned predication which provides an expression to anekanta by recommending that epithet Syad be attached to every expression.   Syadvada is not only an extension of Anekanta ontology, but a separate system of logic capable of standing on its own force. The Sanskrit etymological root of the term Syad is "perhaps" or "maybe", but in context of syadvada, it means "in some ways" or "from a perspective." As reality is complex, no single proposition can express the nature of reality fully. Thus the term "syat" should be prefixed before each proposition giving it a conditional point of view and thus removing any dogmatism in the statement.  Since it ensures that each statement is expressed from seven different conditional and relative view points or propositions, it is known as theory of conditioned predication. These seven propositions also known as saptabhangi are:  syad-asti – "in some ways it is"  syad-nasti - "in some ways it is not" syad-asti-nasti - "in some ways it is and it is not" syad-asti-avaktavya? - "in some ways it is and it is indescribable" syad-nasti-avaktavya? - "in some ways it is not and it is indescribable" syad-asti-nasti-avaktavya? - "in some ways it is, it is not and it is indescribable" syad-avaktavya? - "in some ways it is indescribable"

10    00In Pliny's Natural History, Zoroaster is said to have laughed on the day of his birth. He lived in the wilderness and enjoyed exploring it from a young age. Plutarch compares him with Lycurgus and Numa Pompilius (Numa, 4). Plutarch, drawing partly on Theopompus, speaks of Zoroaster in Isis and Osiris: In this work, the prophet is empowered by trust in his God and the protection of his allies. He faces outward opposition and unbelief, and inward doubt.In the post-classical era  Zoroaster was known as a sage, magician, and miracle-worker in post-Classical Western culture. Though almost nothing was known of his ideas until the late 18th century, by that time his name was already associated with lost ancient wisdom. Zoroaster appears as "Sarastro" in Mozart's opera Die Zauberflöte, which has been noted for its Masonic elements, where he represents moral order (cf. Asha) in opposition to the "Queen of the Night."Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire promoted research into Zoroastrianism in the belief that it was a form of rational Deism, preferable to Christianity.
        With the translation of the Avesta by Abraham Anquetil-Duperron, Western scholarship of Zoroastrianism began.Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche fictionalized the historical figure in his seminal work Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) (1885). Nietzsche presents Zoroaster as a returning visionary who repudiates the designation of good and evil and thus marks the observation of the death of God. Nietzsche asserted  that he chose Zoroaster as a vehicle for his ideas because the historical prophet had been the first to proclaim the opposition between "good" and "evil."Manichaeism considered Zoroaster to be a figure (as Hermes, Plato, Buddha and Jesus also) in a line of prophets, which Mani (210–277) proclaimed he was the final successor of. Zoroaster's ethical dualism is - to an extent - incorporated in Mani's doctrine, which viewed the world as being locked  in an epic battle between opposing forces of good and evil. Manicheanism also incorporated other elements of Zoroastrian tradition, but these are unrelated to Zoroaster's own teachings. Zoroaster appears in the Bahá'í Faith as a "Manifestation of God," one of a line of prophets who have progressively revealed the Word of God to a gradually maturing humanity. Zoroaster thus shares an exalted station with Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, Muhammad, the Báb, and the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, Bahá'u'lláh.  Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, saw Bahá'u'lláh as the fulfillment of a post-Sassanid Zoroastrian prophecy that saw a return of Sassanid emperor Bahram:  Shoghi Effendi also stated that Zoroaster lived roughly 1,000 years before Jesus.

    1000    PALESTINE. Based on biblical traditions, it is estimated that king David conquered Jerusalem about 1000 B.C. and established an Israelite kingdom over much of Canaan including parts of Transjordan. The kingdom was divided into Judea in the south and Israel in the north following the death of David's son, Solomon. Jerusalem remained the center of Jewish sovereignty and of Jewish worship whenever the Jews exercised sovereignty over the country in the subsequent period, up to the Jewish revolt in 133 AD. PALESTINE.          2'rd millennium BC : Egyptian hegemony and Canaanite autonomy were constantly challenged by such ethnically diverse invaders as the Amorites, Hittites, and Hurrians. These invaders, however, were defeated by the Egyptians and absorbed by the Canaanites, who at that time may have  numbered about 200000.PALESTINE.David, Israel's great king, finally defeated the Philistines, and they eventually assimilated with the Canaanites . The unity of Israel and the feebleness of adjacent empires enabled David to establish a large independent state, with its capital at Jerusalem.

    Artichokes are cultivated among the Greeks and Romans.

    1000    BC POLYNESIA. Polynesia is generally defined as the islands within the Polynesian Triangle although this does not cover the geographic spread and settlement of Polynesian people across a greater area. Geographically, and oversimply, the Polynesian Triangle may be seen with its corners at Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island.The other main island groups located within the Polynesian triangle are Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Niue, Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia.There are also small outlier Polynesian enclaves in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, The Caroline Islands, and in Vanuatu. An island group with strong Polynesian cultural affinities outside of this great triangle is Rotuma situated north of the Fijian islands; the people of Rotuma have an apparently Polynesian phenotype but speak a non-Polynesian language. Some of the Lau Islands to Fiji's southeast have strong historic amd cultural links with Tonga.However, in essence, Polynesia is an anthropological term referring to one of the three parts of Oceania (the others being Micronesia and Melanesia) whose pre-colonial population generally belongs to one ethno-cultural family as a result of centuries of maritime migrations.Island groups Cook's Bay on Moorea, French PolynesiaThe following are the islands and island groups, either nations or subnational territories, that are of native Polynesian culture or where archaeological evidence indicates Polynesian settlement in the past.[2] Some islands of Polynesian origin are outside the general triangle that geographically defines the region.Main PolynesiaAmerican Samoa (overseas United States territory) Cook Islands (self-governing state in free association with New Zealand) Easter Island (called Rapa Nui in Rapa Nui, politically part of Chile) French Polynesia ("overseas territory", a territory of France) Fiji Hawaii (a state of the United States) New Zealand (independent nation)  Niue (self-governing state in free association with New Zealand) Norfolk Island (an Australian External Territory) Pitcairn Islands (a British Overseas Territory) Samoa (independent nation) Tokelau (overseas dependency of New Zealand) Tonga (independent nation) Tuvalu (independent nation) Wallis and Futuna (overseas territory of France) Polynesian outliersIn MelanesiaAnuta (in the Solomon Islands) Mele (in Vanuatu) Bellona Island (in the Solomon Islands) Emae (in Vanuatu) Nuguria (in Papua New Guinea) Nukumanu (in Papua New Guinea) Ontong Java (in the Solomon Islands) Pileni (in the Solomon Islands) Rennell (in the Solomon Islands) Sikaiana (in the Solomon Islands) Takuu (in Papua New Guinea) Tikopia (in the Solomon Islands) In MicronesiaKapingamarangi (in the Federated States of Micronesia) Nukuoro (in the Federated States of Micronesia) History of the Polynesian peopleMainstream theories Face on Lapita pottery sherd from Nenumbo site in the Solomon Islands in the 1970's. Researcher was Roger C Green while at the University of Auckland. The fragment which measures 3 inches across is thought to date back to 1000 BC.[3]The Polynesian people are considered to be by ancestry a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people and the tracing of Polynesian languages places their prehistoric origins in the Malay Archipelago.

    1000    BC 3000 AGO. POLYNESIA. There are three theories regarding the spread of humans across the Pacific to Polynesia. These are outlined well by Kayser et al. (2000)[4] and are as follows:Express Train model: A recent (c. 3,000 years ago) expansion out of Southeast Asia, predominantly Taiwan, via Melanesia but with little genetic admixture between those migrating and the existing native population, reaching western Polynesian islands around 2,000 years ago. This theory is supported by the majority of current genetic, linguistic, and archaeological data. Entangled Bank model: Supposes a long history of cultural and genetic interactions amongst southeast Asians, Melanesians, and already-established Polynesians. Slow Boat model: Similar to the express-train model but with a longer hiatus in Melanesia along with admixture, both genetically, culturally and linguistically with the local population. This is supported by the Y-chromosome data of Kayser et al. (2000), which shows that all three haplotypes of Polynesian Y chromosomes can be traced back to Melanesia Between about 3000 and 1000 BC speakers of Austronesian languages spread throughout the islands of Southeast Asia.

    10    00- AMERICAS. Dr. I. Lehr Brisbin Jr., a Senior Research Ecologist at the University of Georgia's        Savannah River Ecology Lab, first came across a Carolina Dog while working at the Savannah River site.Horace, a stray white dog with brown markings, was wandering the site's boundary when he caught Brisbin's attention. Brisbin, who had seen many rural dogs chained to the back of porches and doghouses, assumed this was just a normal stray. Many of these dogs roamed the woods and would turn up in humane traps, and Brisbin began to wonder how many more of these were in the wild. On a hunch, he went to the pound and was surprised by the resemblance the dog had to dingos.Evidence of ancient roots Physical Some ancient paintings and rock art of Native Americans depict dogs that have physical traits similar to those of
        Carolina Dogs. Carolina Dogs also have a ginger-colored coat that is found on other wild dogs, including Australian Dingoes and Korea's native dog, the Jindo. Also, fossils of the dogs of Native Americans exhibit similar bone structures to Carolina Dogs. Brisbin found a resemblance between 2,000-year-old skulls and those of the Carolina Dogs, but concluded that there was too large a difference to prove any connection.Along with this, DNA testing has pointed to a link.Height: 17-24 inches (45–61 cm.) Weight: 30-65 pounds (15–20 kg.) Dixie DingoBehavior. In the 1980s, most Carolina Dogs were moved to captivity for study. Female dogs had three estrus cycles in quick succession, which settled into seasonal reproductive cycles when there was an abundance of puppies. Brisbin noted that this was most likely to ensure quick breeding before diseases, like heartworm, take their toll. Some pregnant dogs also dug dens in which to give birth. After they gave birth or while pregnant, the dog would carefully push sand with her snout to cover her excrement. Excellent at locating and catching small mammals e.g. shrews and mice, using a pouncing technique similar to a fox. The dogs also dug "snout pits", or hundreds of tiny holes in the dirt that perfectly fit their muzzles during this time. More female dogs dug them than males.Carolina Dog / American Dingo Carolina dog "Hunter" that participated in DNA testing to establish ancient origin of the speciesIn the wild, Carolina Dogs lived in sparsely settled land instead of the highly populated areas stray dogs commonly occupied. When hunting, Carolina Dogs used an effective pack formation. They hunted snakes using a whip-like motion, and preyed on small and medium-sized mammals such as raccoons. Carolina Dogs were first noted on the Savannah River Site which by design was
        depopulated and secured of all trespass and traffic for decades beginning in 1950. The Savannah River Site was also one of two sites secluding South Carolina's remnant deer population at the time of the discovery of the Carolina dog.Temperament American Dingos are natural runners. They have excellent noses that help them hunt wild animal, when in the wild. They need lots of daily excercise and space to run around if you are going to keep them as a pet. They need to be exposed to a lot of social activity from a young age. Once they are trained enough they make excellent family dogs.DNA testingThe pr eliminary DNA testing may provide a link between primitive dogs and Carolina Dogs. Brisbin stated, "We grabbed them out of the woods based on what they look like, and if they were just dogs their DNA patterns should be well distributed throughout the canine family tree. But they aren't. They're all at the base of the tree, where you would find very primitive dogs." This wasn't conclusive, but it did spark interest into more extensive DNA testing. The ancient Asian origin of the Carolina Dog was confirmed in 2012. Carolina dogs mitochondrial DNA carried mainly haplotypes (37%) that were unique and closest to East Asian dogs. Others were shared with Chinese non-breed dogs or a Japanese breed dog and the rest were non-specific European but universal haplotypes. Breed recognition and domestication Carolina DogCarolina Dogs can be registered with the American Rare Breed Association and the United Kennel Club. ARBA includes the breed in its "Spitz and Primitive Group", which includes primitives such as the dingo and Canaan Dog. The UKC has classified them as a pariah dog, a class which includes other primitive breeds such as the Basenji of Africa and the Thai Ridgeback.The word pariah is derived from a Tamil word, first used in English in 1613, to refer to the lowest level of the traditional Indian caste system; in English, it is used to mean "a social outcast". The Indian feral dog was considered an outcast as well. The term "pariah" when referring to feral or wild dogs of the Indian feral dog type is sometimes replaced with primitive, in the sense of "relating to an earliest or original stage or state" or "being little evolved from an early ancestral type".It is assumed that dogs placed in "pariah" or "primitive" groups are of an older type than other modern dog breeds.

HUNDREDS OF YEARS
____________________________________________________________

994        Teutons move westward to Rhine.

961                    ISRAEL. After a period of internal strife, David's son Solomon took the throne.  Israel soon flourished in power, influence, wealth, and glory.  Solomon, while not a military leader,   as      a wise political leader.  He brought order to the nation and pursued an aggressive building program, including an elaborate temple and various fortifications.  Funded by heavy taxes  and            built through forced labor, however, Solomon's great buildings alienated his own people, and            eventually    he fell into idolatry (the worship of idols or "heathen" gods).  But despite the               failings of their leaders, God continued to guide his people toward the fulfillment of thepromise made to Abraham.Through David and Solomon emerged some of the Old            Testament's most powerful verse.  David's twenty-third Psalm reads:  The Lord is my  shepherd; I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:  he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul ...  Yea, though I walk through the valley   the        shadow of death, I will fear no evil:  for thou art with me ...Solomon's Proverbs are renowed for     their insight and spiritual direction:  Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean   not             unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy     paths.     (Prov.  3:5-6) A soft answer turneth wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.  (Prov.  15:1), Samuel, Saul, Jonathan, David, Solomon.

953 BC- Queen of Sheba. Slavery. Ethiopia

953    Dedication of the temple at Jerusalem, built by Solomon with help and materials from Hiram of Tyre.

950     BCQueen of Sheba visits Solomon and they exchange gifts The Biblical account of their encounter is probably the best known example of competitive gift exchange.
950 BC INFANTICIDE. Child skeletons with the marks of sacrifice have been found also in Egypt dating 950-720 BCE. In Carthage "[child] sacrifice in the ancient world reached its infamous zenith." Besides the Carthaginians, other Phoenicians, and the Canaanites, Moabites and Sepharvites offered their first-born as a sacrifice to their gods.Ancient Egypt In Egyptian households, at all social levels, children of both sexes were valued and there is no evidence of infanticide. The religion of the Ancient Egyptians forbade infanticide and during the Greco-Roman period they rescued abandoned babies from manure heaps, a common method of infanticide by Greeks or Romans, and were allowed to either adopt them as foundlings or raise them as slaves, often giving them names such as "copro -" to memorialise their rescue. Strabo considered it a peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child must be reared. Diodorus indicates infanticide was a punishable offence. Egypt was heavily dependent on the annual flooding of the Nile to irrigate the land and in years of low inundation severe famine could occur with breakdowns in social order resulting, notably between 930-1070 AD and 1180-1350 AD. Instances of cannibalism are recorded during these periods but it is unknown if this happened during the pharaonic era of Ancient Egypt.

935    Revival of Assyria begins with the ascension of Assurdan II. By 860 he and his successors have restablished Assyrian boundaries.

922      -- BC     PALESTINE: Under David's son and successor, Solomon, Israel enjoyed peace and prosperity , but at his death in 922 BC the kingdom was divided into Israel in the north and Judah in the south Death of Solomon, succeded by his son, Rehoboam. Rebellion against Rehoboam's rule led by Jeroboam, kingdom split into Judah in the south under Rehoboam, and Israel in the north.

    922    The disruption of the monarchy. Accession of Solomon's son, Rehoboam., becomes king of the south (Judah) while Jeroboam is king of the north (Israel).

    900     B.C.  and A.D.  200.  After the Nok reign, in-migration of Africans from the east resulted in a government that strictly controlled the indigenous artistic population. 

900    Israel the dynasty of Baasha.

900 ASSYRIA- Ashur-resh-ishi II (971-968 BC) in all likelihood a fairly elderly man due to the length of his father's reign, had a largely uneventful period of rule, concerning himself with defending Assyria's borders and conducting various rebuilding projects within Assyria.Tiglath-Pileser II (967- 936 BC) succeeded him, and reigned for 28 years. He maintained the policies of his recent predecessors, but appears to have had an uneventful reign.Assyrian recoveryAshur-Dan II (935–912 BC) oversaw a marked economic and organisational upturn in the fortunes of Assyria, laying the platform for it to once again forge an empire. He is recorded as having made successful punitive raids outside the borders of Assyria to clear Aramean and other tribal peoples from the regions surrounding Assyria in all directions. He concentrated on rebuilding Assyria within its natural borders, from Tur Abdin to the foothills beyond Arbela, he built government offices in all provinces, and created a major economic boost by providing ploughs throughout the land, which yielded record grain production.Society in the Middle Assyrian periodAssyrian troops return after victory.Assyria had difficulties with keeping the trade routes open. Unlike the situation in the Old Assyrian period, the Anatolian metal trade was effectively dominated by the Hittites and the Hurrians. These people now controlled the Mediterranean ports, while the Kassites controlled the river route south to the Persian Gulf.The Middle Assyrian kingdom was well organized, and in the firm control of the king, who also functioned as the High Priest of Ashur, the state god. He had certain obligations to fulfill in the cult, and had to provide resources for the temples. The priesthood became a major power in Assyrian society. Conflicts with the priesthood are thought to have been behind the murder of king Tukulti-Ninurta I.The main Assyrian cities of the middle period were Ashur, Kalhu (Nimrud) and Nineveh, all situated in the Tigris River valley. At the end of the Bronze Age, Nineveh was much smaller than Babylon, but still one of the world's major cities (population c. 33,000). By the end of the Neo-Assyrian period, it had grown to a population of some 120,000, and was possibly the largest city in the world at that time.[32] All free male citizens were obliged to serve in the army for a time, a system which was called the ilku-service. A legal code was produced during the 14th and 13th centuries which, among other things, clearly shows that the social position of women in Assyria was lower than that of neighbouring societies. Men were permitted to divorce their wives with no compensation paid to the latter. If a woman committed adultery, she could be beaten or put to death. It's not certain if these laws were seriously enforced, but they appear to be a backlash against some older documents that granted things like equal compensation to both partners in divorce. The women of the king's harem and their servants were also subject to harsh punishments, such as beatings, mutilation, and death. Assyria, in general, had much harsher laws than most of the region. Executions were not uncommon, nor were whippings followed by forced labour. Some offenses allowed the accused a trial under torture/duress. One tablet that covers property rights has brutal penalties for violators. A creditor could force debtors to work for him, but not sell them.Assyrians skinning or flaying their prisoners alive
The Middle Assyrian Period is marked by the long wars fought during this period that helped build Assyria into a warrior society. The king depended on both the citizen class and priests in his capital, and the landed nobility who supplied the horses needed by Assyria's military. Documents and letters illustrate the importance of the latter to Assyrian society. Assyria needed less artificial irrigation than Babylon, and horse-breeding was extensive. Portions of elaborate texts about the care and training of them have been found. Trade was carried out in all directions. The mountain country to the north and west of Assyria was a major source of metal ore, as well as lumber. Economic factors were a common casus belli.Assyrian architecture, like that of Babylonia, was influenced by Sumero-Akkadian styles (and to some degree Mitanni), but early on developed its own distinctive style. Palaces sported colourful wall decorations, and seal-cutting (an art learned from Mittani) developed apace. Schools for scribes taught both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian, and Sumerian and Akkadian literary works were often copied with an Assyrian flavour. The Assyrian dialect of Akkadian was used in legal, official, religious, and practical texts such as medicine or instructions on manufacturing items. During the 13th to 10th centuries, picture tales appeared as a new art form: a continuous series of images carved on square stone steles. Somewhat reminiscent of a comic book, these show events such as warfare or hunting, placed in order from the upper left to the lower right corner of the stele with captions written underneath them. These and the excellent cut seals show that Assyrian art was beginning to surpass that of Babylon. Architecture saw the introduction of a new style of ziggurat, with two towers and colorful enameled tiles.Neo-Assyrian Empire 911-627 BC Map of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its expansions.Main articles: Neo-Assyrian Empire and Military history of the Neo-Assyrian EmpireThe Neo-Assyrian Empire is usually considered to have begun with the accession of Adad-nirari II, in 911 BC, lasting until the fall of Nineveh at the hands of the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Medes/Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians in 612 BC.Expansion, 911-627 BCWhen the ancient Dark Ages, which for Assyria lasted from 1050 to 912 BC finally lifted, the world had changed dramatically. Ancient kingdoms such as Assyria, Babylonia, Elam and Egypt still endured, the Hittites did also, in the form of smaller Neo-Hittite states, and a number of new states had arisen during this tumultuous time, such as; Persia, Media, Parthia, Mannea, Israel, Urartu, Phrygia, Lydia, Chaldea, the Aramean and Phoenician states of the Levant, Doric Greece, Putria (Libya), Colchia, Tabal, Nubia/Kush, and other nations and peoples; such as Judah, Scythia, Cimmeria, Samarra, Ethiopia, the Suteans, Nabateans, Armenians and Arabs were to emerge in the following centuries.However, it was the ancient state of Assyria which would once more rise to prominence, and Assyria was to meet and defeat these new peoples, together with old foes, over the coming three centuries.[34]Beginning with the campaigns of Adad-nirari II (911-892 BC), Assyria once more became a great power, growing to be the greatest empire the world had yet seen. The new king firmly subjugated the areas that were previously only under nominal Assyrian vassalage, conquering and deporting troublesome Aramean, Neo-Hittite and Hurrian populations in the north to far-off places. Adad-nirari II then twice attacked and defeated Shamash-mudammiq of Babylonia, annexing a large area of land north of the Diyala River and the towns of Hit and Zanqu in mid Mesopotamia. Later in his reign, he made further gains against King Nabu-shuma-ukin I of Babylonia.
His successor, Tukulti-Ninurta II (891-884 BC) consolidated Assyria's gains and expanded into the Zagros Mountains in modern Iran, subjugating the newly arrived Persians and Medes as well as pushing into central Asia Minor. Assyrian attack on a town with archers and a wheeled battering ram, 865–860 BCAshurnasirpal II (883–859 BC) was a fierce and ruthless ruler who advanced without opposition through Aram and Canaan (modern Syria) and Asia Minor as far as the Mediterranean and conquered and exacted tribute from Aramea, Phrygia and Phoenicia among others. Ashurnasirpal II also repressed revolts among the Medes and Persians in the Zagros Mountains, and moved his capital to the city of Kalhu (Calah/Nimrud). The palaces, temples and other buildings raised by him bear witness to a considerable development of wealth, science, architecture and art. He also built a number of new heavily fortified towns, such as Imgur-Enlil (Balawat), Tushhan, Kar-Ashurnasirpal and Nibarti-Ashur. Ashurnasirpal II also had a keen interest in Botany and Zoology; collecting all manner of plants, seeds and animals to be displayed in Assyria.Shalmaneser III (858–823 BC) attacked and reduced Babylonia to vassalage, and defeated Aramea, Israel, Urartu, Phoenicia, the Neo-Hittite states and the Arabs, forcing all of these to pay tribute to Assyria. Shalmanesser III fought the Battle of Qarqar against an alliance of 12 nations (including Egypt, Israel, Hamath, Phoenicia, the Arabs, Arameans, and neo Hittites among others). His armies penetrated to The Caucasus, Lake Van and the Taurus Mountains; the Hittites of Carchemish were compelled to pay tribute, and the kingdoms of Hamath and Aram Damascus were subdued. In 831 BC, he received the submission of the Georgian kingdom of Tabal. He consolidated Assyrian control over the regions conquered by his predecessors and, by the end of his 27-year reign, Assyria was master of Mesopotamia, The Levant, western Iran, Israel, Jordan and much of Asia Minor. Due to old age, in the last 6 years of his reign he passed command of his armies to the "Turtanu" (General) Dayyan-Assur.Jehu, king of Israel, bows before Shalmaneser III of Assyria, 825 BC
However, his successor, Shamshi-Adad V (822-811 BC), inherited an empire beset by civil war in Assyria. The first years of his reign saw a serious struggle for the succession of the aged Shalmaneser. The revolt, which had broken out by 826 BC, was led by Shamshi-Adad's brother Assur-danin-pal. The rebellious brother, according to Shamshi-Adad's own inscriptions, succeeded in bringing to his side 27 important cities, including Nineveh. The rebellion lasted until 820 BC, preventing Assyria expanding its empire further until it was quelled. Later in his reign, Shamshi-Adad V successfully campaigned against both Babylonia and Elam, and forced a treaty in Assyria's favour on the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi I. In 814 BCE, he won the battle of Dur-Papsukkal against the Babylonian king Murduk-balassu-iqbi, and went on to subjugate the Aramean, Sutean and Chaldean tribes newly settled in parts of Babylonia.He was succeeded by Adad-nirari III (810- 782 BC), who was merely a boy. The Empire was thus ruled by his mother, the famed queen Semiramis (Shammuramat), until 806 BC. Semiramis held the empire together, and appears to have campaigned successfully in subjugating the Persians and Medes during her regency, leading to the later Iranian myths and legends surrounding her.In 806 BC, Adad-nirari III took the reins of power from Semiramis. He invaded the Levant and subjugated the Arameans, Phoenicians, Philistines, Israelites, Neo-Hittites, Moabites and Edomites. He entered Damascus and forced tribute upon its Aramean king Ben-Hadad III. He next turned eastward to Iran, and subjugated the Persians, Medes and the pre Iranian Manneans, penetrating as far north east as the Caspian Sea. He then turned south, forcing Babylonia to pay tribute. His next targets were the Chaldean and Sutu tribes, who had settled in the far south eastern corner of Mesopotamia, whom he conquered and reduced to vassalage. Then the Arabs in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula to the south of Mesopotamia were invaded, vanquished and forced to pay tribute also.A lamassu from the palace of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin.Adad-nirari III died prematurely in 782 BC, which led to a temporary period of stagnation within the empire. Assyria continued its military dominance, however Shalmaneser IV (782 - 773 BC) himself seems to have wielded little personal authority, and a victory over Argishti I, king of Urartu at Til Barsip is accredited to an Assyrian General ('Turtanu') named Shamshi-ilu, who does not even bother to mention his king. Shamshi-ilu also scored victories over the Arameans and Neo-Hittites, and again, takes personal credit at the expense of his king.Ashur-dan III ascended the throne in 772 BC. He proved to be a largely ineffectual ruler who was beset by internal rebellions in the cities of Ashur, Arrapkha and Guzana; and his personal authority was checked by powerful generals, such as Shamshi-ilu. He failed to make any further gains in Babylonia and Aram (modern Syria). His reign was also marred by Plague and an ominous Solar Eclipse and, as with his predecessor, military victories were credited to Shamshi-ilu.Ashur-nirari V became king in 754 BC, the early part of his reign seems to have been one of permanent internal revolution, and he apprears to have barely left his palace in Nineveh. However later in his reign he led a number of successful campaigns in Asia Minor and the Levant. He was deposed by Tiglath-pileser III in 745 BC bringing a resurgence to Assyrian expansion.Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BC) initiated a renewed period of Assyrian expansion; Urartu, Persia, Media, Mannea, Babylonia, Arabia, Phoenicia, Israel, Judah, Samaria, Nabatea, Chaldea, Cyprus, Moab, Edom and the Neo-Hittites were subjugated, Tiglath-Pileser III was declared king in Babylon and the Assyrian empire was now stretched from the Caucasus Mountains to Arabia and from the Caspian Sea to Cyprus. Tiglath-Pileser III had reorganised the Assyrian army into the first professional fighting force in history, and greatly improved the civil administration of his empire, setting the template for all future ancient empires[36] Tiglath-Pileser III introduced Mesopotamian Eastern Aramaic as the Lingua Franca of Assyria and its vast empire, whose descendant dialects survive to this day.Shalmaneser V (726-723 BC) consolidated Assyrian power during his short reign, and repressed Egyptian attempts to gain a foothold in the near east, defeating and driving out Pharaoh Piye from the region. He is mentioned in Biblical sources as having conquered the Samaritans, and being responsible for deporting the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel to Assyria. Relief showing a lion hunt, from the north palace of Nineveh, 645-635 BCSargon II (722-705 BC) maintained the empire, driving the Cimmerians and Scythians from Iran, where they had invaded and attacked the Persians and Medes, who were vassals of Assyria. Mannea, Cilicia Cappadocia and Commagene were conquered, Urartu was ravaged, and Babylon, Aram, Phoenicia, Israel, Arabia, Cyprus, and the famed Midas, (king of Phrygia) were forced to pay tribute. His stele has been found as far west as Larnaca in Cyprus. Sargon II conquered Gurgum, Milid, the Georgian state of Tabal, and all of the Hittite kingdoms of the Taurus Mountains. Egypt once again attempted to gain ground in the region by supporting Israel's rebellion against the empire but Sargon II crushed the uprising, and Piye was once more routed and driven back over the Sinai. Sargon II was killed in 705 BC while on a punitive raid against the Cimmerians, and was succeeded by Sennacherib.Sennacherib (705-681 BC), a ruthless ruler, defeated the Greeks who were attempting to gain a foothold in Cilicia, and then defeated and drove the Nubian ruled Egyptians from the Near East where the Nubian Pharaoh Taharqa had fomented revolt against Assyria. Babylon revolted, and Sennacherib laid waste to the city, defeating its Elamite and Chaldean allies in the process. He sacked Israel, subjugated the Samaritans and laid siege to Judah, forcing tribute upon it. He installed his own son Ashur-nadin-shumi as king in Babylonia. He maintained Assyrian domination over the Medes, Manneans and Persians to the east, Asia Minor and the southern Caucasus to the north and north west, and the Levant, Phonecia and Aram in the west. Sennacherib's palace and garden at Nineveh have been proposed as the archetype of the Hanging Garden of Babylon.[38] Sennacherib was murdered by his own sons (according to the Bible the sons were named Adrammelech, Abimelech and Sharezer) in a palace revolt, apparently in revenge for the destruction of Babylon, a city sacred to all Mesopotamians, including the AssyriansJudean captives being led away into slavery by the Assyrians after the siege of Lachish in 701 BCEsarhaddon (680-669 BC) expanded Assyria still further, campaigning deep into the Caucasus Mountains in the north, breaking Urartu completely in the process. Tiring of Egyptian interference in the Assyrian Empire, Esarhaddon decided to conquer Egypt. He crossed the Sinai Desert, and invaded and took Egypt with surprising ease and speed, driving its foreign Nubian/Kushite and Ethiopian rulers out and destroying the Kushite Empire in the process. He expanded the empire as far south as Arabia and Dilmun (modern Bahrain or Qatar).Esarhaddon also completely rebuilt Babylon during his reign, bringing peace to Mesopotamia as a whole. The Babylonians, Egyptians, Elamites, Cimmerians, Scythians, Persians, Medes, Manneans, Arameans, Chaldeans, Israelites, Phoenicians and Urartians were vanquished and regarded as vassals and Assyria's empire was kept secure. He imposed a so-called Vassal Treaty upon his Persian and Median subjects, forcing them to submit in advance to his chosen successor, Ashurbanipal.[39] Esarhaddon died whilst preparing to leave for Egypt to once more eject the Nubians, who were attempting to encroach on the southern part of the country. This task was successfully completed by his successor, Ashurbanipal.Under Ashurbanipal (669-627 BC), Assyrian domination spanned from the Caucasus Mountains in the north to Nubia, Egypt and Arabia in the south, and from Cyprus and Antioch in the west to Persia in the east.He was an unusually educated man for his time, being able to read and write in Akkadian, Aramaic and Sumerian, and having a proficient understanding of Astronomy and Mathematics, as well as military, civil and political aptitude. He built the famed Library of Ashurbanipal which contained a multitude of ancient texts from all over Mesopotamia, and was the first library in history to classify works in order of genre.Ashurbanipal's brutal campaign against Susa in 647 BCE is recorded in this relief.Ashurbanipal finally destroyed Elam once and for all, and smashed a rebellion led by his own brother Shamash-shum-ukin, who was the Assyrian king of Babylon, exacting savage revenge on the coalition of Chaldeans, Nabateans, Arameans, Sutu, Arabs and Elamites who had supported him. An Assyrian governor named Kandalanu was installed to rule Babylonia on Ashurbanipal's behalf.Ashurbanipal easily crushed the Nubian/Cushite king Tantamani, who had attempted to invade Assyrian-controlled Egypt. Tantamani was chased back into Nubia by a pursuing Assyrian army, and was never again to pose a threat. Egypt, Persia, Media, Phrygia, Elam, Urartu, Lydia, Babylonia, Chaldea, Scythia and Cimmeria were regarded as vassals of Ashurbanipal.He built vast libraries and initiated a surge in the building of temples and palaces. After the crushing of the Babylonian revolt, Ashurbanipal appeared master of all he surveyed. To the east, Elam was devastated and prostrate before Assyria, the Manneans and the Iranian Persians and Medes were vassals. To the south, Babylonia was occupied, the Chaldeans, Arabs, Sutu and Nabateans subjugated, the Nubian empire destroyed, and Egypt paid tribute. To the north, the Scythians and Cimmerians had been vanquished and driven from Assyrian territory, Urartu (Armenia), Phrygia, Corduene and the neo Hittites were in vassalage, and Lydia pleading for Assyrian protection. To the west, Aramea (Syria), the Phoenicians, Israel, Judah, Samarra and Cyprus were subjugated, and the Hellenised inhabitants of Caria, Cilicia, Cappadocia and Commagene paid tribute to Assyria.Assyria conquered the 25th dynasty Egypt (expelling its Nubian/Kushite dynasty) as well as Babylonia, Chaldea, Elam, Media, Persia, Urartu, Armenia, Phoenicia, Aramea/Syria, Phrygia, the Neo-Hittite States, the Hurrian lands, Arabia, Gutium, Israel, Judah, Samarra, Moab, Edom, Corduene, Cilicia, Mannea and parts of Ancient Greece (such as Cyprus), and defeated and/or exacted tribute from Scythia, Cimmeria, Lydia, Nubia, Ethiopia and others.At its height, the Empire encompassed the whole of the modern nations of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Palestine and Cyprus, together with large swathes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Sudan, Libya, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.Assyria now appeared stronger than ever. However, the long struggle with Babylonia and Elam and their allies, and the constant campaigning over three centuries to control and expand its vast empire in all directions, left Assyria exhausted. It had been drained of wealth and manpower; the devastated provinces could yield nothing to supply the needs of the imperial exchequer, it was difficult to find sufficient troops to garrison the huge empire, and after the death of Ashurbanipal severe civil unrest broke out in Assyria itself, and the empire began to unravel.Downfall, 626-605 BCThe Assyrian Empire was severely crippled following the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC — the nation and its empire descending into a prolonged and brutal series of civil wars involving three rival kings, Ashur-etil-ilani, Sin-shumu-lishir and Sin-shar-ishkun. Egypt quietly detached itself from Assyria, though retained friendly relations.Ashur-etil-ilani came to the throne in 626 BC, and was immediately beset by a series of internal civil wars. He was deposed in 623 BC, after four years of bitter fighting by Sin-shumu-lishir, an Assyrian Turtanu (General) who also occupied and claimed the throne of Babylon in that year. In turn, Sin-shumu-lishir was deposed as ruler of Assyria and Babylonia after a year of warfare by Sin-shar-ishkun (622 - 612 BC) — who was then himself faced with constant violent rebellion in the Assyrian homeland.This situation led to wholesale revolution in Babylonia, and during his reign many Assyrian colonies to the west, east and north similarly took advantage and ceased to pay tribute to Assyria, most significantly the Medes, Persians, Scythians, Cimmerians and Arameans.The Scythians and Cimmerians took advantage of the bitter fighting among the Assyrians to raid Assyrian colonies, with hordes of horse borne marauders ravaging parts of Asia Minor and the Caucasus, where the vassal king of Urartu begged his Assyrian overlord for help in vain. They also raided the Levant, Israel and Judah (where Ashkalon was sacked by the Scythians) and all the way into Egypt. The Iranic peoples (the Medes, Persians and Parthians), aided by the previous Assyrian destruction of the hitherto dominant Elamites of Ancient Iran, also took advantage of the upheavals in Assyria to coalesce into a powerful Median dominated force which destroyed the pre-Iranic Assyrian vassal kingdom of Mannea and absorbed the remnants of the also pre-Iranic Gutians and Kassites of the Zagros Mountains and the Caspian Sea. In Aram (modern Syria) and Phoenicia, the various Aramean and Phoenician states quietly reasserted their independence, and in western Asia Minor and eastern Mediterranean, the Lydians, Greeks, Cilicians and Luwian states did the same. Armenians and Colchians (Georgians) also began to establish themselves in parts of the Caucasus.By 620 BC, Nabopolassar, a previously unknown Malka of the Chaldean people from the far southeast of Mesopotamia, had claimed the city of Babylon and much of Babylonia in the confusion. Sin-shar-ishkun amassed a large army to eject Nabopolassar from Babylon, however, yet another revolt broke out in Assyria proper, forcing the bulk of his army to turn back, where they promptly joined the rebels in Nineveh. Similarly, Nabopolassar was unable to make any inroads into Assyria despite its weakened state, being repelled at every attempt, and the next four years saw bitter fighting in the heart of Babylonia itself, as the Assyrians tried to wrest back control. However, Nabopolassar entered into an alliance with the Median king Cyaxares the Great, who had taken advantage of the upheavals in Assyria to free the Iranian peoples from Assyrian vassalage and unite the Iranian Medes, Persians and Parthians, together with the remnants of the pre-Iranian Elamites, Gutians and Manneans, into a powerful Median-dominated force. The Babylonians, Chaldeans, Medes and Persians, together with the Scythians and Cimmerians to the north, attacked Assyria in 616 BC, sacking the city of Kalhu. After four years of bitter fighting, Nineveh itself was finally sacked in 612 BC, after a prolonged siege followed by house to house fighting. Sin-shar-ishkun was killed defending his capital.Despite the loss of almost all of its major cities, and in the face of overwhelming odds, Assyrian resistance continued. Ashur-uballit II (612- 605? BC) took the throne amid the street by street fighting in Nineveh, and refused a request to bow in vassalage to Nabopolassar, Cyaxares and their allies. He managed to break out of Nineveh and successfully fight his way to the northern Assyrian city of Harran, he took the city and founded it as a new capital which he managed to hold for five years. However, Harran too was eventually over run in 608 BC.Egypt, itself a former Assyrian colony whose current dynasty had been installed as puppet rulers by the Assyrians, then came to Assyria's aid, possibly in fear that without Assyrian protection they would be next to succumb. Ashur-uballit II and Necho of Egypt made a failed attempt to recapture Harran in 608 BC. The next three years saw the remnants of the Assyrian army and their Egyptian allies vainly attempting to eject the invaders from Assyria. In 605 BC, the Babylonians and Medes defeated the Assyrians and Egyptians at Carchemish, bringing an end to Assyria as an independent political entity, although it was to launch major rebellions against the Achaemenid Empire in 546 BC and 520 BC, and remained a geo-political region and colonised province until the late 7th century AD.The fate of Ashur-uballit II remains unknown, his Limmu Lists end after the fall of Harran, and it is possible he was either killed at this time, at the battle of Carshemish in 605 BC, or simply disappeared into obscurity.Assyria after the empireAchaemenid Assyria, Athura, Assuristan, Assyria province, Adiabene, Osroene and HatraMost of Assyria was ruled by Babylon from 605 BC until 539 BC, the northern reaches being ruled first by the Medes and then from 549 BC by their successors, the Persians. In a twist of fate, Nabonidus the last king of Babylon was himself an Assyrian from Harran; however, apart from plans to dedicate religious temples in that city, Nabonidus showed little interest in rebuilding Assyria. Nineveh and Kalhu remained in ruins, conversely a number of towns and cities such as Arrapkha, Guzana and Harran remained intact, and Assur and Arbela were not completely destroyed, as is attested by their later revival. However, Assyria spent much of this period in a degree of devastation following its fall.Achaemenid Assyria (549 - 330 BC)After this, it was ruled by the Persian Achaemenid Empire (as Athura) from 549 BC to 330 BC (see Achaemenid Assyria). Between 546 and 545 BC, Assyria rebelled against the new Persian Dynasty, which had usurped the previous Median dynasty. The rebellion was eventually quashed by Cyrus the Great.Assyria seems to have recovered dramatically, and flourished during this period. It became a major agricultural and administrative centre of the Achaemenid Empire, and its soldiers were a mainstay of the Persian Army.[40] In fact, Assyria even became powerful enough to raise another full-scale revolt against the Persian empire in 520-519 BC.The Persians had spent centuries under Assyrian domination, and Assyrian influence can be seen in Achaemenid art, infrastructure and administration. Early Persian rulers saw themselves as successors to Ashurbanipal, and Mesopotamian Aramaic was retained as the lingua franca of the empire for over two hundred years.[41] Nineveh was never rebuilt however, and 200 years after it was sacked Xenophon reported only small numbers of Assyrians living amongst its ruins.Seleucid AssyriaIn 330 BC, Assyria fell to Alexander the Great, the Macedonian Emperor from Greece; it thereafter became part of the Seleucid Empire and was renamed Syria, a Hurrian, Luwian and Greek corruption of Assyria.[42] It is from this period that the later Syria Vs Assyria naming controversy arises, the Seleucids applied the name not only to Assyria itself, but also to the lands to the west (Aram modern Syria), which had been part of the Assyrian empire. When they lost control of Assyria, the name Syria survived and was applied only to the land of Aramea to the west that had once been part of the Assyrian empire. This was to lead to both the Assyrians from Mesopotamia and Arameans and Phoenicians from the Levant being dubbed Syrians in Greco-Roman culture.During Seleucid rule, Assyrians ceased to hold the senior military and civil positions they had enjoyed under the Achaemenids, being largely replaced by Greeks. The Greek language also replaced Mesopotamian East Aramaic as the lingua franca of the empire, although this did not affect the Assyrian population themselves, who were not Hellenised during the Seleucid era.During the Seleucid period in southern Mesopotamia, Babylon was gradually abandoned in favour of a new city named Dura Seleucus, bringing an end to Babylonia.Parthian Assyria (150 BC - 116 AD) - Adiabene (69 BC - 117 AD)By 150 BC, Assyria was largely under the control of the Parthian Empire, once more as Athura (the Mesopotamian East Aramaic word for Assyria). The Parthians seem to have exercised only loose control over Assyria. Temples to the native gods of Assyria were resurrected in many towns and cities. A number of independent Neo-Assyrian states arose, the most notable being Adiabene (69 BC - 117 AD). Adiabene was described by historian Georges Roux as a virtual resurrection of

    900    aC. Las primeras aldeas Mayas surgen en Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Belice, Guatemal y Honduras. Los Olmecas Construyeron los primeros centros ceremoniales. Esculpieron estelas y cabezas colosales.
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884        Centralizaed government in Assyria

876    ARABIA. The Omride Dynasty

854    Ahab of Israel. Ben Hadad of Damscus and Irkhuleni of Hamath lead an allied army to halt Shalmaneser III's advance, supported by Egypt and Jehosaphat of Judeah.

    842  -  Jezebel  tries to erect a cult to Baal in Samaria. Elijah and Elisha banish Baal and return Jehovah to power Athaliah, the dowager queen, seizes power and destroys the Davidic house. Jehu, an Israelite soldier, leads a rebellion against Ahab's son Jehoram, founding a new dynasty in Israel.

842    The Dynasty of Jehu

814    The Phoenicians found Carthage near the North African colony of Utica.

810    Sammuramat (Semiramis) rules Assyria as regent for her son Adad-Nirari III

800   Foundation of Carthage in Tunisia
         Composition of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

    800 INFANTICIDE. CARTHAGE.  History and pre-historyThe practice of infanticide has taken many forms. Child sacrifice to supernatural figures or forces, such as the one practiced in ancient Carthage, may be only the most notorious example in the ancient world. Anthropologist Laila Williamson notes that "Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule."A frequent method of infanticide in ancient Europe and Asia was simply to abandon the infant, leaving it to die by exposure (i.e. hypothermia, hunger, thirst, or animal attack). Infant abandonment still occurs in modern societies. In at least one island in Oceania, infanticide was carried out until the 20th century by suffocating the infant, while in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in the Inca Empire it was carried out by sacrifice
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    700- BC-  Abandoned- 612 BC - Events- Battle of Nineveh (612 BC) Nineveh (English pronunciation: / Akkadian: Ninwe; Classical Syriac: ; Arabic:  Ninawa Hebrew:  Ninewe; Greek:  Nineue; Naynuwa; Persian:  Latin: Nineve) is an abandoned Assyrian city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It was the largest city in the world for some fifty years[1] until, after a bitter period of civil war in Assyria itself, it was sacked by an unusual coalition of former subject peoples, the Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Chaldeans, Scythians and Cimmerians in 612 BC. Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, in the Ninawa Governorate of Iraq. The origin of the name Nineveh is obscure. Possibly it meant originally the seat of Ishtar, since Nina was one of the Babylonian names of that goddess. The ideogram means "house or place of fish," and was perhaps due to popular etymology (comp. Aramaic "nuna," denoting "fish").Geography Ancient Nineveh's mound-ruins of Kouyunjik and Nabi Yunus are located on a level part of the plain near the junction of the Tigris and the Khosr Rivers within an area of 750 hectares (1,900 acres)[3] circumscribed by a 12-kilometre (7.5 mi) brick rampart. This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins overlaid in parts by new suburbs of the city of Mosul.Nineveh was an important junction for commercial routes crossing the Tigris. Occupying a central position on the great highway between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, thus uniting the East and the West, it received wealth from many sources, so that it became one of the greatest of all the region's ancient cities,[5] and the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.History Nineveh was one of the oldest and greatest cities in antiquity. The area was settled as early as 6000 BC and, by 3000 BC, had become an important religious center for worship of the Assyrian goddess Ishtar. The early city (and subsequent buildings) were constructed on a fault line and, consequently, suffered damage from a number of earthquakes. One such event destroyed the first temple of Ishtar, which was then rebuilt in 2260 BC by the Akkadian king Manishtusu. Texts from the Hellenistic period and later offered an eponymous Ninus as the founder of Nineveh, although there is no historical basis for this. The historic Nineveh is mentioned during the reign of Shamshi-Adad I in about 1800 BC as a centre of worship of Ishtar, whose cult was responsible for the city's early importance. The goddess's statue was sent to Pharaoh Amenhotep III of Egypt in the 14th century BC, by orders of the king of Mitanni. The Assyrian city of Nineveh became one of Mitanni's vassals for half a century until the early 14th century BC, when the Assyrian king Ashur-uballit I reclaimed it in 1365 BC while overthrowing the Mitanni Empire and creating the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BC).There is no large body of evidence to show that Assyrian monarchs built at all extensively in Nineveh during the 2nd millennium BC; it appears to have been originally an "Assyrian provincial town". Later monarchs whose inscriptions have appeared on the high city include Shalmaneser I and Tiglath-Pileser I, both of whom were active builders in Assur (Ashur). Nineveh had to wait for the Neo-Assyrian Empire, particularly from the time of Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883–859 BC) onward, for a considerable architectural expansion. Thereafter successive monarchs such as Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal kept in repair and founded new palaces, temples to Sîn, Ashur, Nergal, Shamash, Ninurta, Ishtar, and Nabiu of Borsippa.  Refined low-relief section of a bull-hunt frieze from Nineveh, alabaster, c. 695 BC (Pergamon Museum), Berlin. The king hunting lion from the North Palace, Nineveh seen at the British Museum. It was Sennacherib who made Nineveh a truly magnificent city (c. 700 BC). He laid out new streets and squares and built within it the famous "palace without a rival", the plan of which has been mostly recovered and has overall dimensions of about 503 by 242 metres (1,650 ft × 794 ft). It comprised at least 80 rooms, many of which were lined with sculpture. A large number of cuneiform tablets were found in the palace. The solid foundation was made out of limestone blocks and mud bricks; it was 22 metres (72 ft) tall. In total, the foundation is made of roughly 2,680,000 cubic metres (3,505,308 cu yd) of brick (approximately 160 million bricks). The walls on top, made out of mud brick, were an additional 20 metres (66 ft) tall. Some of the principal doorways were flanked by colossal stone door figures weighing up to 30,000 kilograms (30 t); they included many winged lions or bulls with a man's head. These were transported 50 kilometres (31 mi) from quarries at Balatai and they had to be lifted up 20 metres (66 ft) once they arrived at the site, presumably by a ramp. There are also 3,000 metres (9,843 ft) of stone panels carved in bas-relief, that include pictorial records documenting every construction step including carving the statues and transporting them on a barge. One picture shows 44 men towing a colossal statue. The carving shows three men directing the operation while standing on the Colossus. Once the statues arrived at their destination the final carving was done. Most of the statues weigh between 9,000 and 27,000 kilograms (19,842 and 59,525 lb).The stone carvings in the walls include many battle scenes, impalings and scenes showing Sennacherib's men parading the spoils of war before him. He also bragged about his conquests: he wrote of Babylon "Its inhabitants, young and old, I did not spare, and with their corpses I filled the streets of the city." He later wrote about a battle in Lachish "And Hezekiah of Judah who had not submitted to my yoke...him I shut up in Jeruselum his royal city like a caged bird. Earthworks I threw up against him, and anyone coming out of his city gate I made pay for his crime. His cities which I had plundered I had cut off from his land." At this time the total area of Nineveh comprised about 7 square kilometres (1,730 acres), and fifteen great gates penetrated its walls. An elaborate system of eighteen canals brought water from the hills to Nineveh, and several sections of a magnificently constructed aqueduct erected by Sennacherib were discovered at Jerwan, about 65 kilometres (40 mi) distant.[10] The enclosed area had more than 100,000 inhabitants (maybe closer to 150,000), about twice as many as Babylon at the time, placing it among the largest settlements worldwide.Some scholars believe that the Garden which Sennacherib built next to his palace, with its associated irrigation works, comprised the original Hanging Gardens of Babylon.Nineveh's greatness was short-lived. In around 627 BC after the death of its last great king Ashurbanipal, the Neo-Assyrian empire began to unravel due to a series of bitter civil wars, and in 616 BC Assyria was attacked by its former vassals, the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians. In about 616 BC Kalhu was sacked, the allied forces eventually reached Nineveh, besieging and sacking the city in 612 BC, following bitter house-to-house fighting, after which it was razed to the ground. Most of the people in the city who could not escape to the last Assyrian strongholds in the north and west were either massacred or deported out of the city and into the countryside. Many unburied skeletons were found by the archaeologists at the site. The Assyrian empire then came to an end by 605 BC, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its colonies between them.Following the defeat in 612 BC, the site remained largely unoccupied for centuries with only a scattering of Assyrians living amid the ruins until the Sassanian period, although Assyrians continue to live in the surrounding area to this day. The city is mentioned again in the Battle of Nineveh in 627 AD, which was fought between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire of Persia near the ancient city. From the Arab conquest 637 AD until modern time the city of Mosul on the opposite bank of the river Tigris became the successor of ancient Nineveh.Biblical Nineveh In the Bible, Nineveh is first mentioned in Genesis 10:11: "Ashur left that land, and built Nineveh". Some modern English translations interpret "Ashur" in the Hebrew of this verse as the country "Assyria" rather than a person, thus making Nimrod, rather than Ashur, as the builder of Nineveh.Nineveh was the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire (2 Kings 19:36) and was the home of King Sennacherib, King of Assyria, during the Biblical reign of King Hezekiah BIBLE STORYand the prophetic career of Isaiah. According to scripture, Nineveh was also the place where Sennacherib died at the hands of his two sons, who then fled to the vassal land of `rrt Urartu. (Isa. 37:37-38). The book of the prophet Nahum is almost exclusively taken up with prophetic denunciations against this city. Its ruin and utter desolation are foretold (Nahum 1:14; 3:19, etc.). Its end was strange, sudden, tragic. (Nahum 2:6–11) According to the Bible, it was God's doing, his judgment on Assyria's pride (Jonah Nah). In fulfillment of prophecy, God made "an utter end of the place". It became a "desolation". Zephaniah also (2:13–15) predicts its destruction along with the fall of the empire of which it was the capital. Nineveh is also the setting of the Book of Tobit.The Book of Jonah, set in the days of the Assyrian empire, describes it (Jonah 3:3ff; 4:11) as an "exceedingly great city of three days journey in breadth". But it is also possible that it took three days to cover all its neighborhoods by walking, which would match the size of ancient Nineveh. The ruins of Kouyunjik, Nimrud, Karamles and Khorsabad form the four corners of an irregular quadrangle. The ruins of Nineveh, with the whole area included within the parallelogram they form by lines drawn from the one to the other, are generally regarded as consisting of these four sites. The book of Jonah depicts Nineveh as a wicked city worthy of destruction. God sent Jonah to preach to the Ninevites of their coming destruction, and they fasted and repented because of this. As a result, God spared the city; when Jonah protests against this, God states He is showing mercy for the population who are ignorant of the difference between right and wrong ("who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand" [12]) and the animals in the city. Nineveh's repentance and salvation from evil is noted in the Gospel of Matthew (12:41) and the Gospel of Luke (11:32). To this day, oriental churches of the Middle East commemorate the three days Jonah spent inside the fish during the Fast of Nineveh. The faithful fast by refraining from food and drinks. Churches encourage followers to refrain from meat, fish and dairy products. Classical  history Before the great archaeological excavations in the 19th century, there was almost no historical knowledge of the great Assyrian empire and of its magnificent capital. Other cities that had perished, such as Palmyra, Persepolis, and Thebes, had left ruins to mark their sites and tell of their former greatness; but of this city, imperial Nineveh, not a single vestige seemed to remain, and the very place on which it had stood became only matter of conjecture. In the days of the Greek historians Ctesias and Herodotus, 400 BC, Nineveh had become a thing of the past; and when Xenophon the historian passed the place in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand the very memory of its name had been lost. It was buried out of sight. In his History of the World (written c. 1616) Sir Walter Raleigh erroneously asserted (attributing the information to Johannes Nauclerus c. 1425 – 1510), that Nineveh had originally had the name Campsor before Ninus supposedly rebuilt it. This was still regarded as correct information when news of Layard's discoveries (see below) reached the west. Archaeology 1851 sketch of Layard's expedition removing a Lamassu1849 sketch of Layard's expedition transporting a LamassumMany of Nineveh's archeological remains were transported to the major museums of the 19th century, including the British museum and the LouvreExcavation historyIn 1842, French Consul General at Mosul, Paul-Émile Botta began to search the vast mounds that lay along the opposite bank of the river. The Arabs whom he employed in these excavations, to their great surprise, came upon the ruins of a building at the mound of Khorsabad, which, on further exploration, turned out to be the royal palace of Sargon II, which was largely explored for sculptures and other precious relics.


 


             Bronze lion from Nineveh.In 1847 the young British adventurer Sir Austen Henry Layard explored the ruins.  In the Kuyunjik mound Layard rediscovered in 1849 the lost palace of Sennacherib with its 71 rooms and colossal bas-reliefs. He also unearthed the palace and famous library of Ashurbanipal with 22,000 cuneiform clay tablets. Most of Layard's material was sent to the British Museum, but two large pieces were given to Lady Charlotte Guest and eventually found their way to the Metropolitan Museum.  The study of the archaeology of Nineveh reveals the wealth and glory of ancient Assyria under kings such as Esarhaddon (681–669 BC) and Ashurbanipal (669–626 BC).The work of exploration was carried on by George Smith, Hormuzd Rassam (himself an Assyrian), and others, and a vast treasury of specimens of Assyria was incrementally exhumed for European museums. Palace after palace was discovered, with their decorations and their sculptured slabs, revealing the life and manners of this ancient people, their arts of war and peace, the forms of their religion, the style of their architecture, and the magnificence of their monarchs.  The mound of Kouyunjik was excavated again by the archaeologists of the British Museum, led by Leonard William King, at the beginning of the 20th century. Their efforts concentrated on the site of the Temple of Nabu, the god of writing, where another cuneiform library was supposed to exist. However, no such library was ever found: most likely, it had been destroyed by the activities of later residents. The excavations started again in 1927, under the direction of Campbell Thompson, who had already taken part in King's expeditions.  Some works were carried out outside Kouyunjik, for instance on the mound of Nebi Yunus, which was the ancient arsenal of Nineveh, or along the outside walls. Here, near the northwestern corner of the walls, beyond the pavement of a later building, the archaeologists found almost 300 fragments of prisms recording the royal annals of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal, beside a prism of Esarhaddon which was almost perfect. After the Second World War, several excavations were carried out by Iraqi archaeologists. From 1951 to 1958 Mohammed Ali Mustafa worked the site. The work was continued from 1967 through 1971 by Tariq Madhloom. Some additional excavation occurred by Manhal Jabur in 1980, and Manhal Jabur in 1987. For the most part, these digs focused on Nebi Yunus. Most recently, British archaeologist and Assyriologist Professor David Stronach of the University of California, Berkeley conducted a series of surveys and digs at the site from 1987 to 1990, focusing his attentions on the several gates and the existent mudbrick walls, as well as the system that supplied water to the city in times of siege. The excavation reports are in progress. Archaeological remains Today, Nineveh's location is marked by two large mounds, Kouyunjik and Nabi Yunus "Prophet Jonah", and the remains of the city walls (about 12 kilometres (7 mi) in circumference). The Neo-Assyrian levels of Kouyunjik have been extensively explored. The other mound, Nabi Yunus, has not been as extensively explored because there is an Arab Muslim shrine dedicated to that prophet on the site. Kuyunjik - The ruin mound rises about 20 metres (66 ft) above the surrounding plain of the ancient city. It is quite broad, measuring about 800 by 500 metres (2,625 ft × 1,640 ft). Its upper layers have been extensively excavated and several Neo-Assyrian palaces and temples have been found there. A deep sounding by Max Mallowan revealed evidence of habitation as early as the 6th millennium BC. Today, there is little evidence of these old excavations other than weathered pits and earth piles. In 1990, the only Assyrian remains visible were those of the entry court and the first few chambers of the Palace of Sennacherib. Since that time, the palace chambers have received significant damage by looters due to the turmoil in the area. Portions of relief sculptures that were in the palace chambers in 1990 were seen on the antiquities market by 1996. Photographs of the chambers made in 2003 show that many of the fine relief sculptures there have been reduced to piles of rubble. Bull man excavated at Nebi Yunus by Iraqi archaeologistsNebi Yunus - located about 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) south of Kuyunjik, is the secondary ruin mound at Nineveh. On the basis of texts of Sennacherib, the site has traditionally been identified as the "armory" of Nineveh, and a gate and pavements excavated by Iraqis in 1954 have been considered to be part of the "armory" complex. Excavations in 1990 revealed a monumental entryway consisting of a number of large inscribed orthostats and "bull-man" sculptures, some apparently unfinished. City wall and gates Simplified plan of ancient Nineveh showing city wall and location of gateways. The ruins of Nineveh are surrounded by the remains of a massive stone and mudbrick wall dating from about 700 BC. About 12 km in length, the wall system consisted of an ashlar stone retaining wall about 6 metres (20 ft) high surmounted by a mudbrick wall about 10 metres (33 ft) high and 15 metres (49 ft) thick. The stone retaining wall had projecting stone towers spaced about every 18 metres (59 ft). The stone wall and towers were topped by three-step merlons. The city wall was fitted with fifteen monumental gateways. In addition to serving as checkpoints on entering and exiting the city, these structures were probably used as barracks and armories. With the inner and outer doors shut, the gateways were virtual fortresses. The bases of the walls of the vaulted passages and interior chambers of the gateway were lined with finely cut stone orthostats about 1 metre (3 ft) high. A stairway led from one of the interior chambers to the top of the mudbrick wall.Five of the gateways have been explored to some extent by archaeologists: Mashki Gate Translated "Gate of the Watering Places", it was perhaps used to take livestock to water from the River Tigris which currently flows about 1.5 kilometres (0.9 mi) to the west. It has been reconstructed in fortified mudbrick to the height of the top of the vaulted passageway. The Assyrian original may have been plastered and ornamented. Nergal Gate Named for the god Nergal, it may have been used for some ceremonial purpose, as it is the only known gate flanked by stone sculptures of winged bull-men (lamassu). The reconstruction is conjectural, as the gate was excavated by Layard in the mid-19th century, and reconstructed in the mid-20th century.Adad Gate Restored Adad Gate Adad Gate is named for the god Adad. A reconstruction was begun in the 1960s by Iraqis, but was not completed. The result is a mixture of concrete and eroding mudbrick, which nonetheless does give one some idea of the original structure. The excavator left some features unexcavated, allowing a view of the original Assyrian construction. The original brickwork of the outer vaulted passageway is well exposed, as is the entrance of the vaulted stairway to the upper levels. The actions of Nineveh's last defenders can be seen in the hastily built mudbrick construction which narrows the passageway from 4 to 2 metres (13 to 7 ft).Shamash Gate Eastern city wall and Shamash Gate. Named for the Sun god Shamash, it opens to the road to Arbil. It was excavated by Layard in the 19th century. The stone retaining wall and part of the mudbrick structure were reconstructed in the 1960s. The mudbrick reconstruction has deteriorated significantly. The stone wall projects outward about 20 metres (66 ft) from the line of main wall for a width of about 70 metres (230 ft). It is the only gate with such a significant projection. The mound of its remains towers above the surrounding terrain. Its size and design suggest it was the most important gate in Neo-Assyrian times.Halzi Gate Near the south end of the eastern city wall. Exploratory excavations were undertaken here by the University of California expedition of 1989–90. There is an outward projection of the city wall, though not as pronounced as at the Shamash Gate. The entry passage had been narrowed with mudbrick to about 2 metres (7 ft) as at the Adad Gate. Human remains from the final battle of Nineveh were found in the passageway. Threats to Nineveh The site of Nineveh is exposed to decay of its reliefs by a lack of proper protective roofing, vandalism and looting holes dug into chamber floors.[34] Future preservation is further compromised by the site's proximity to constantly expanding suburbs.In an October 2010 report titled Saving Our Vanishing Heritage, Global Heritage Fund named Nineveh one of 12 sites most "on the verge" of irreparable destruction and loss, citing insufficient management, development pressures and looting as primary causes.

700 - Nubian pyramids in Meroe.
        The Kingdom of Kush was an ancient Nubian state centered on the confluences of the Blue Nile, White Nile and River Atbara. It was established after the Bronze Age collapse and the disintegration of the New Kingdom of Egypt, centered at Napata in its early phase.After King Kashta ("the Kushite") invaded Egypt in the 8th century BC, the Kushite kings ruled as Pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt for a century before being defeated and driven out by the Assyrians. At the height of their glory, the Kushites conquered an empire that stretched from what is now known as South Kordofan all the way to the Sinai. King Piye attempted to expand the empire into the Near East, but was thwarted by the Assyrian king Sargon II. The Kingdom of Kush is mentioned in the Bible as having saved the Israelites from the wrath of the Assyrians, although disease among the besiegees influenced the failure to take the city.The war that took place between King Taharqa and the Assyrian King Sennacherib was a decisive event in western history, with the Nubians being defeated in their attempts to gain a foothold in the Near East by Assyria. Sennacherib's successor Esarhaddon went further, and invaded Egypt itself, deposing Taharqa and driving the Nubians from Egypt entirely. Taharqa fled back to his homeland where he died two years later. Egypt became an Assyrian colony; however, king Tantamani, after succeeding Taharqa, made a final determined attempt to regain Egypt. Esarhaddon died while preparing to leave the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in order to eject him. However, his successor Ashurbanipal sent a large army into southern Egypt and routed Tantamani, ending all hopes of a revival of the Nubian Empire. During Classical Antiquity, the Nubian capital was at Meroë. In early Greek geography, the Meroitic kingdom was known as Ethiopia (a term also used earlier by the Assyrians when encountering the Nubians). The civilization of Kush was among the first in the world to use iron smelting technology. The Nubian kingdom at Meroe persisted until the 4th century AD. After the collapse of the Kushite empire several states emerged in its former territories, among them Nubia.

783    Jeroboam II King of Israel (to 748) period of prosperity.

776    First Olympic games in Greece.
    
        Greeks and Romans. Adult homosexual practices  in Greece and Rome were not well thought of.  Physical perfection was worshiped, and it found its mythology  in the goddess Hermaphrodite, divine fusion of a beautiful pubescent male body and a nymph.    Love  toward  adolescents and homosexual practices were based on sexual education  and in the esthetic  ideals of  purity and  perfection.  When  youths reached adulthood they practiced  heterosexual life systematically., and did not look upon  women with distaste.  On the contrary,  Romans glorified  virility and felt  repugnance toward weak  and effeminate men.    Even so, slaves, the key part of a system built  upon the blood of millions of beings,  alienated from their own personhood,  were considered something like  "instruments that could speak". The use of their bodies was one more form of exploiting them.  In Greece,  homosexualism prevailed only among the slave-owning class, and in times of the Roman Empire it becomes an extension of male prostitution. Homosexualism existed among  homosexual patricians, within significant class limits.  During the  crisis of the Empire,  prostitution of  men and children  was more frequent than that of  women, to the point  that those who exploited them did not have  to pay taxes.  From the exception, it became the rule.  Homosexuality was exploited by slave owners and  promiscuity and  constitute an  historical form of the class crisis, turning into a contradiction inimical to the progress of society. Virtues of marriage, fidelity and fatherhood were preserved by the common  people. The slaves in the Spartacus  rebellion  established a community of heterosexuals based on relations of comradeship.

     771 - BC -  China, under the Chou Dynasty (c.  771 BCE) was characterized by a prolonged state of violence and disunity.  When its capital fell to barbaric rule, the Dynasty was forced to relocate to the east, resulting in the Dynasty's split into the "East Chou" and the "West Chou."  This division fostered several competing philosophies that addressed the political concerns at hand, and advanced ideas which captured the minds of men such as Lao Tzu and Confucius, whose teachings comprise the dogma of Taoism and Confucianism. Confucius and his disciples cultivated a world-view that was essentially humanistic.  Taoism is less humanistic in that it stresses inactivity and passiveness; the universe will evolve with or without human interference.  Further, the Taoist position maintains that what is seen is not reality:  "The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful; yet this is only the ugly; the whole world recognizes the good as the good; yet this is only the bad.  (taken from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching).  In a word, Taoists assert that we mistake appearance for reality. In contrast, Confucian thought regards appearance and reality to be closely related.  In short, what one sees is real.  In addition, since Confucianism is concerned with benevolence on both the individual and political level, undertakings that are passive or non-contentious are thought of as useless. Central to Confucian ideas are The Analects (miscelaneous writings) , also known as the lun yu.  Confucius (551-479 BCE) was an older contemporary of Lao Tzu.  Confucianism grew out of a violent period in China, where warring factions divided the country.  Yet the time of Confucius saw an abatement of this barbarous imperial rule. One of Confucius' primary beliefs was that a man must think for himself.  This notion was coupled with the concept of "chun tzu," a term which represents the ideal man whose character embodies benevolence and whose acts are in accordance with rightness.  Like the Tao Te Ching, Analects heavily concerns itself with the art of politics, but further avouches that politics is only an extension of a society's individual morals. Text Overview: Confucius traveled to a number of different states within China, in an attempt to spread his ideals.  However, he was largely unsuccessful.  His teachings centered on moral character, primarily Virtue (te) and the Way (tao).  Virtue, which is in part a gift from Heaven, is what makes up a person's character; the Way represents the path of a particular person in question; thus, one individual's Way was separate and distinct from another's.  According to Confucius: I set my heart on the way, base myself on Virtue, lean upon benevolence for support and take my recreation in the arts. Benevolence (jen, or good will), related to Virtue and pivotal to Confucian behavior, is dependent upon one's own efforts.  The goal is to become as "good" an individual as possible, ignoring petty worries about success or failure.  Confucius did not forecast success either in this world or the next, for as he "did not understand even life," how could he "understand death"?  Hence, there is no assurance of an afterlife in Analects.  Instead, benevolence is observed for its own sake. The most elevated individual, according to Confucius, is the "sage" (shang jen).  This rare, utmost benevolent man—indeed, a man who has advanced beyond benevolence—even causes Confucius to ask:  "How dare I claim to be a sage or a benevolent man?"  He was once asked:  "If there were a man who gave extensively to the common people and brought help to the multitude, what would you think of him?  Could he be called benevolent?"  To which Confucius replied:  "It is no longer a matter of benevolence with such a man.  If you must describe him, `sage' is, perhaps, the right word."  Further, Confucius declared, "I have no hopes of becoming a sage," though he did acknowledge that such men exist. Lower down on this benevolence scale is the "good" man (shan jen).  Good men commonly labor in government, for they are responsible for doing good works: How true is the saying that after a state has been ruled by good men it is possible to get the better of cruelty and do away with killing. Below the good man is the "complete" man.  Such a person "remembers what is right at the sight of profit and is ready to lay down his life in the face of danger."  Such terms are used in Analects to describe the gentleman (chun tzu), or the benevolent man, who, according to Confucius approaches the ideal moral character that is within easy reach of all men (certainly only a few can become sages or governors, to work for the common good of the people, but all men can aspire to be gentlemen).  Gentlemen include those in authority, as opposed to "small" men (hiao jen), those who are ruled.  Gentlemen possess a highly cultivated moral character; small men do not.  Benevolence, then, is the gentleman's most important quality: If the gentleman forsakes jen (benevolence), in what way can he make a name for himself?  The gentleman never deserts benevolence, not even for as long as it takes to eat a meal.  If he hurries and stumbles, one may be sure that it is in benevolence that he does so.The message of benevolence, then, is as follows:  Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire. The method of benevolence is called shu, which is one aspect of the way of the Master.  The other aspect is known as chung, or "doing one's best."  It is through chung that a person puts into practice what he has discerned by the method of shu.  When asked of the way in which a subject should treat his ruler, for instance, Confucius replies: The ruler should employ the services of his subjects in accordance with the rites.  A subject should serve his ruler by doing his best. The rites referred to also involve shu and chung, and direct the gentleman's behavior both personally and politically.  It follows that one must do good in the personal and family realm just as he would in the political, and vice-versa: While at home hold yourself in a respectful attitude; when serving in an official capacity be reverent; when dealing with others do your best.  These are qualities that cannot be put aside, even if you go and live among the barbarians. The culmination of this devout respectfulness and reverence is love for one's fellow man.  The Confucian basis of morality is grounded on this natural, sincere love.  And the love shared between father and son, Confucius felt, is the driving force of morality in society: Being good as a son and obedient as a young man is, perhaps, the root of a man's character. In other words, one merely takes the goodness discovered within the family and extends it to the common people.  Thus, the gentleman achieves benevolence—"is generous and caring ...  and is just." There are other virtues which the gentleman possesses.  Among them are wisdom ("intelligence," or chih) and courage (yung): The man of wisdom is never in two minds; the man of benevolence never worries; a man of courage is never afraid. A man possessing wisdom can always distinguish between right and wrong.  However, a man whose wisdom is blended with courage, rules over others.  Confucius says, "I was not born with knowledge, but ...  I am quick to seek it."  In short, according to Analects, to know is to "say you know when you know, and to say you do not know when you do not, that is knowledge."  The effect of such honest self-appraisal would be that "where a gentleman is ignorant, one would expect him not to offer any opinion."  However, Confucius warns that courage and wisdom can prove to be double-edged swords.  Thus, morality is higher than they both: For the gentleman it is morality that is supreme.  Possessed of courage but devoid of morality, a gentleman will make trouble while a small man will be a brigand. Another highly touted virtue is hsin, which, translated, denotes trustworthiness, or being true to one's word.  Hsin includes promise-keeping and matching one's words with deeds, for "the gentleman is ashamed of his word out-stripping his deed," and "claims made immodestly are difficult to live up to."  Therefore, the gentleman "puts his words into action before allowing his words to follow his action." Two additional virtues put forth in Analects are reverence (ching) and respectfulness (kung).  Ching is the awareness of one's huge responsibility to promote the welfare of the common people, and is connected with sacrifice.  To follow kung is to do away with insult and humiliation.  The gentleman is "respectful towards others and observant of the rites ...  of morality"; furthermore, he is "respectful when it comes to his [personal] demeanor."  Consequently, if a person possesses kung, treating others with respect, it is impossible for others to address him with disdain. It is with these virtues that the gentleman/ ruler/Emperor conducts the affairs of government, as mandated by the command of Heaven (t'ien ming).  In fact, it is a major concern of Heaven that the welfare of the people be maintained; thus, the Emperor must rule in virtue and by the Decree of Heaven.  If he should rule for his own sake, Heaven will withdraw the decree, and he will be deposed. The Emperor is most humble in his high station: [The Emperor] stands in awe of three things.  He is in awe of the Decree of Heaven.  He is in awe of great men.  He is in awe of the words of the sages.  The small man, being ignorant of the Decree of Heaven, does not stand in awe of it.  He treats great men with insolence and the words of the sages with derision. Hence, t'ien ming (Heaven's decree) is what a man ought to do—which may differ from what another man "ought" to do.  Ming (fate, fortune), however, is concerned with Destiny, and the bringing about of what will come to pass.  Whereas t'ien ming's "Heavenly decree" is understandable and must be obeyed by the gentleman, ming is a mystery best left alone.  T'ien ming, for instance, may decree that someone be executed for committing a crime; it is decreed by law and Heaven that he must die, and the action "ought" to be carried out.  Ming, on the other hand, would rule in instances such as an earthquake or flood; and, if something is destined to be, according to Confucius, it is futile try to change the natural course of events. The ruler, then, should focus on those areas where he can make a difference:  the morality and welfare of the common people (min).  The ruler, in order to merit trust, must provide the people with "enough food, give them enough arms"; but, "when there is no trust, the common people will have nothing to stand on." In further advising rulers, Confucius recommends: In administering your government, what need is there for you to kill?  Just desire the good yourself and the common people will be good.  The virtue of the gentleman is like wind; the virtue of the small man is like grass.  Let the wind blow over the grass and it is sure to bend.Truly, it is this exceptional regard for the commoner—the peasant, the laborer, the farmer, the beggar—that constitutes a central thread of Confucius' Analects.  Throughout, the importance of proper government cannot be overstated. Though the teachings of Confucius are in some ways agnostic, and often pessimistic, his central, highly humanistic points are encouraging:  Man thinks for himself and strives to promote benevolence in his family and government; the ruler, again in benevolence, follows the Decree of Heaven in guiding the common people, whom he loves as if they were his own family members; and, since benevolence fuels the goodness of society, it is Confucius' wish that all men, both great and small, will come to fathom and profit by this simple human quality.

771    CHINA. China, under the Chou Dynasty (c.  771 BCE) was characterized by a prolonged state of violence and disunity.  When its capital fell to barbaric rule, the Dynasty was forced to relocate to the east, resulting in the Dynasty's split into the "East Chou" and the "West Chou."  This division fostered several competing philosophies that addressed the political concerns at hand, and advanced ideas which captured the minds of men such as Lao Tzu and Confucius, whose teachings comprise the dogma of Taoism and Confucianism.Confucius and his disciples cultivated a world-view that was essentially humanistic.  Taoism is less humanistic in that it stresses inactivity and passiveness; the universe will evolve with or without human interference.  Further, the Taoist position maintains that what is seen is not reality:  "The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful; yet this is only the ugly; the whole world recognizes the good as the good; yet this is only the bad.  (taken from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching).  In a word, Taoists assert that we mistake appearance for reality.In contrast, Confucian thought regards appearance and reality to be closely related.  In short, what one sees is real.  In addition, since Confucianism is concerned with benevolence on both the individual and political level, undertakings that are passive or non-contentious are thought of as useless.Central to Confucian ideas are The Analects, also known as the lun yu.  The reviewer's task could be manifold. One aspect could be the attraction of the reader's attention to that part of the book that he might gloss over without understanding its centrality, or at least importance, for the narrative. And this would be  the case with Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China on several ancient classical Chinese philosophers: Chuang Tzu and Mencius and those who in the book are called "the realists".  Chuang Tzu, one of the leading proponents of Taoism, would most likely be appreciated by  Western readers; this would especially be the case in the 1960s during what could be called the hippie era. The reason is clear: Taoism is a sort of  existential philosophy, or religion if you wish  It is absolutely asocial and, in a way,  relativistic. The proponents assume that a person has no social  obligations and should accept life as it is with a  major focus on internal tranquility. In this  content stage - calmly acceptive of all vicissitudes of life - the person should wait for  death, with no promise of the afterlife. Death is  lapsing into nothingness; but this is the great consolation for the dead, who have no troubles. While the premises of Taoism could well be accepted by the Western reader, one might remember   Zen Buddhism with its quite similar philosophy so  popular in the 1960s and much blended with Taoism   in Chinese thought; the case would be more complicated with Mencius, the leading Confucianist. Indeed, while Westerners, especially the hippies   of the 1960s, could well be interested in Taoism,  others, those who look for "eternal" China, the template for thousands of years of the country' existence, would look at the work of Mencius. Indeed, for the majority of those foreigners who  have just a superficial knowledge of China or even  the Chinese themselves, Confucianism is the very embodiment of China, its "external" spiritual  framework regardless of all influences of imported  creeds, from Marxism to Western liberalism.  Confucianism emphasizes the hierarchy and mutual  responsibilities between rulers and rulers and the  proponents of the creed visualized the state as a  big, well-organized, family. In Arthur Waley's view, it was a fig leaf of the regime at best and  the unworkability of the creed was actual acknowledged by Confucius himself. Both Taoism and Confucianism are among the most,if not the most, popular philosophies coming from  China. Still, as the author of Three Ways of  Thought in Ancient China notes, they, paradoxically enough, had never played a substantial role in shaping Chinese political culture and Chinese history. Waley notes that   there was no Chinese dynasty, were no Chinese  rulers, who actually ruled according to not just  Taoist principles - Taoism was, in fact, an asocial teaching - but even Confucianism, which,  formerly had been a state ideology and the basis  for civil-service exams until the end of imperial  rule. The story presented in Waley's book provides a   good example of the unworkability of Confucianism  with its noble calling. According to the story,  Confucius was informed about a certain bandit who  defied all the major values that Confucius  believed and are the very foundation of any   society; and he believed that he could easily persuade the bandit to abandon this way of life. Despite the warning, Confucius indeed approached  the bandit and tried to convince him that he would live a much happier life if he would abandon his amoralism and criminality. The bandit was hardly convinced, and the sage barely escaped with his  life. One might note that the same story was true  of Plato, who barely escaped from a despot whom he  tried to convince that following the virtuous life  would be in his best interests. Confucianism was   unworkable, the author states, regardless of the  fact that Confucianism with its moral underpinning had been a fig leaf for Chinese monarchs for  millennia. It was not Confucianism but "realism" that was the driving force of the Chinese  authoritarian/totalitarian states. It had been  really a functional philosophy, at least from the author's point of view. The "realists" were  the ideologists of the totalitarian  regime.  The author notes that many of the ideas of the  "realists" look like quotations from current  newspapers.  The first  edition of Waley's book emerged in 1939, the year  of the beginning of World War II, a time when most  of Eurasia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was controlled by totalitarian regimes. "Realists" discarded any supreme moral guidance of  individual life. Similar to Taoists, "realists" were relativists, or, to be precise, immoralists,   at least at first glance. In the context of their views, everything that was ordered by the state  should be done and those who believed in eternal  moral guidance - as was the casen  with Confucianism - should be exterminated. The   state, in their view, had no other goal but   itself. Economic vitality was essential for the  survival of the state, and this required that the  majority of the people engage in agriculture. The state's other major function was endless   expansion. So those who were not engaged in food  production should be engaged in war. And the  realists provided advice to the ruler on how to  push the people to engage in these activities. One  could assume that "realism" was the philosophy of  self-seeking Machiavellians who, similar to the  author of The Prince, provided advice to the ruler  on how to keep power, mostly for the sake of  power. There is a clear temptation to look at "realism"  from this perspective. One should remember that some realists provided detailed advice to the  courtiers/advisers of the ruler as to how to keep  the ruler's confidence and save their job and life. Still, if one would look closer at the realists' program, it is not Machiavellianism, as  it is usually understood. The realists' program  actually implied concern with public interest.  Their emphasis on agricultural activity is related to the basic necessities of any ancient state,  actually any state - the provision of the food  supply for the people. It was especially important in a society where the food supply was unreliable. The other emphasis on the state's expansion is actually related to the other basic need of the  ancient states: a strong sense of security, both external and internal. Both attributes were  essential for the survival of the people, not just the state. The actual concern with public good was also seen  in other advice of the "realists". According to  this advice, the ruler should actually be  withdrawn from exercising power, at least should  play no role in making decisions in concrete  matters. The realists pointed out that the ruler should not engage in the direct rule of the realm, for he could not make decisions that would benefit  the state. The reason for this is simple enough: The ruler is a person who is subject to whims, influence and  emotion. The law, created under the direct  influence of the ruler, should be independent from  him, ensuring that the state's actions are the    most beneficial to the ruler and the state and   actually the majority. But if these actions are   beneficial for the majority, why should society be  ruled by a despot formally not bound by anything? The point here is that as the "realists" noted,  average people, the masses in general, hardly  understand their long-term common interests and would never sacrifice their personal or group  interests to those of the society/state as a  whole, especially if results are not observable   early on. In the realists' view, the state should   be focused on two major functions: war and food   production. While war and related expansion are  related with security, both internal and external,  agriculture is essential for the food supply for  the country. All of this is essential not just for  the survival of the state but for the survival of the people. Moreover, despite external similarities between the ideas of the "realists" and totalitarian  thinkers/practitioners of the 19th and 20th  centuries, rightfully admitted by Waley, they are  actually a different species from one important   perspective. While totalitarian rulers of   modernity had some grand, preconceived goals - the triumph of the "master race" as a manifestation of  millenarian eugenics, the creation of an ideal worldwide society - communism or the worldwide  khalifat - "realists" had no such abstract goal. Their drive was very practical - the basic  survival of both the state and the people and the  assumption that people could not survive witho  the state and state-imposed duties upon the majority. People could well understand this, but it led to  no practical action. One of the leading "realists"  noted with an air of irony that one could not find  in any house many books on agriculture, but  actually quite a few on the rice paddies were  seen. Each house had a copy of Sun Tzu's Art of  War; still no one wanted to fight. It was only  terror, fear of the most ferocious punishment, or fear of attack, however contrived,  that  could prompt the people to follow the demands of  the state. Only brutal power and fear of the most  serious punishment would compel the people to follow the rules. Thus, as one could assume, the  "realists" despite their external immoralism  became in essence great moralists, for they  actually called upon the ruler to save the people  from themselves. What was the implication of the works of the  "realists" for China? One might note that despite  the fact that they were the ideologists of China's  unification by Qin Shi Huang, the role of realists   - not often discussed either inside or outside   China - could not be compared to the influence of   Confucianism. Yet "realism", actually the   totalitarian regimes of the Oriental type, where  everything belonged to the empire/state, not only   has profound implications for China but,  paradoxically enough, has quite positive implications. The despotic design of the "realists", the foundation of Oriental despotism, was discarded in  the 19th and early 20th centuries when Westerners pointed to the Orientalist political/economic culture as the reason for China falling behind the  West. This led Chinese intellectuals and politicians to search for Western templates that  could elevate China to the level of Western power.  Some picked up Western democracy and the market. Others - Marxists - also planned for the  future in the context of a democratic regime.  Still, Marxists asserted that true grassroots democracy could be achieved only by the  socialization of private property. When these principles were applied to real life in China -  and of course elsewhere - the results were quite  different from the Marxist dream of the 19th  century. Instead of a democratic regime, a system  quite similar to that designed by the "realists"  emerged. And the leaders of Red China - Mao Zedong   first of all - immediately reinterpreted the  realists' political/philosophical dictums.What was seen as a backward philosophy was  reinterpreted as a leap to the future. It was thus  assumed that a peculiar "Qin Shi Huangism" of a  sort, with absolute power of the state over   economic and sociopolitical life, is a peculiar  form of modernity. And this was not just an  intellectual ploy. Indeed, centralized power,  state control over the high command of the economy and the emphasis on stability regardless of what  it takes, made it possible for China to make  tremendous economic progress and navigate through  economic crises much better than most of the  countries of the West. Still, despite this fact, "realism" - the tradition of Oriental despotism, which is at the  core of China's prosperity and should be the basic  framework of the country in the foreseeable future  - was rejected by the majority of Westerners.  For this reason, most readers of the book would pay attention to Taoists and Confucianists but not to "realists",  regardless of the reviewer's assumption that they  should pay much more attention to them than to the  noble calls of Mencius and Chuang Tzu.

770    Eastern Chou Dynasty (to 256).

769    The reign of Uzziah

    769    BC TURKIC. In 769 Marquis Shen of the Zhou enlisted the assistance of the Dog Rong in rebelling against the emperor You. The barbarians did not then withdraw but took Jiaohuo between the Jing and Wei Rivers and from there went marauding into central China, but were driven out. In 704 the Mountain Barbarians marauded through Yan, and in 660 BC attacked the Zhou emperor Xiang in Luo. He had discarded a barbarian queen. The barbarians put another on the throne. They went on plundering until driven out in 656 BC.Subsequently the Chinese drove out the Di and subordinated all the Xiong-nu (temporarily at least). Around 456 BC the Chinese took Dai from them. The Yiqu tribe tried building fortifications but lost them to the Chinese in this period of their expansion. Here the detail of the narrative multiplies concerning the rise of the Qin Dynasty, which is no doubt mainly historical rather than legendary. The Qin kept the Xiong-nu at bay. Equestrian pastorals of the northeastGrassland in Inner MongoliaThe physical characteristics of populations of Turkic language speakers stretch across a range as wide as the land they inhabit. The Turkic peoples in Eastern Europe look European with the exception of some Crimean Tatars and Turkics in the Caucasus (Kumyks, Nogays, etc.) who look European+Northeast Asian, while Turkics in the Middle East resemble the peoples of the Middle East, those in Central Asia mostly look mixed but have mostly northeast Asian features and Turkics in northeast Asia resembles populations in that region. In trying to answer such questions as what "race" were the Proto-Turkic speakers neither anthropometric nor genetic studies have been of much assistance to date. What few DNA analyses have been done arrive at the problem as an answer: affinity to primarily western populations in the west, eastern in the east, and a mixture on a gradient from east to west or vice versa in between.[2] These biological circumstances suggest racial evolution over the region is earlier than can be considered in the time of the distribution of languages; i.e., the languages may have evolved among populations thatwere already mixed.


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753    Traditional founding of Rome
    ROME. In Alba Longa, Rhea Silvia, a vestal virgin,  gave birth to twin boys, and the king commanded that they be drowned. A slave carried them to the river in a basket and set it on the water. They were cast ashore under a fig tree where a she wolf found them and suckled them. The children were then take in by a shepherd, who reared them and named them Romulus and Remus. When the twins grew up they founded a new city, but Romulus slew Remus and became king. Rome is named after its first king.

    750    MIGRATIONS. From about 750 BC, the Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling colonies in all directions. In Europe two waves of migrations dominate demographic distributions, that of the Celtic people, and the later Migration Period from the east. Other examples are small movements like ancient Scots moving from Hibernia to Caledonia and Magyars into Pannonia (modern-day Hungary). Turkic peoples spread across most of Central Asia into Europe and the Middle East between the 6th and 11th centuries. Recent research suggests that Madagascar was uninhabited until Austronesian seafarers from Indonesia arrived during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. Subsequent migrations from both the Pacific and Africa further consolidated this original mixture, and Malagasy people emerged

    750 -     Amos says Israelites will suffer for their unrighteousness.

    750    BC GERMANY.  History of Germany and Names of GermanyThe English word "Germany" derives from the Latin word Germania. The name "Germania" came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it from a Gallic term for the peoples east of the Rhine that probably meant "neighbour".Germanic tribes Germanic peoples, Germania, and List of country name etymologiesExpansion of the Germanic tribes 750 BC – AD 1.The ethnogenesis of the Germanic tribes is assumed to have occurred during the Nordic Bronze Age, or at the latest, during the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and northern Germany, the tribes began expanding south, east and west in the 1st century BC, coming into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul as well as Iranian, Baltic, nd Slavic tribes in Eastern Europe. Little is known about early Germanic history, except through their recorded interactions with the Roman Empire, etymological research and archaeological finds.[14]Under Augustus, the Roman General Publius Quinctilius Varus began to invade Germania (a term used by the Romans to define a territory running roughly from the Rhine to the Ural Mountains), and it was in this period that the Germanic tribes became familiar with Roman tactics of warfare while maintaining their tribal identity.


748    The last days of Israel
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746    Tiglath Pilesar III rules Assyria

743    SPARTA begins the first Messenian War to conquer Messenia- to 716

735    BC THE BIBLE According to Isaiah 17:1, "Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a  heap of ruins", but in fact Damascus is considered among the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world.The apologists response to this criticism is that this verse
        refers to the destruction of Damascus as a strong capitalof Syria. This was fulfilled duringtheSyro-EphraimiteWar. The prophecy perhaps
        datesfrom about 735 BC,when Damascus and Israelwere
         allied against Judah (Isaiah 7:1). Damascus was taken by Tiglath-Pileser in 732, and Samaria by Sargon in 721.The passage is consistent with 2 Kings 16:9, which states that Assyria defeated the city and exiled the civilians to Kir.

    734    BC GAZA. Under the rule of the Neo-Assyrians Gaza had to pay a tribute in 734 BC. The Neo-Assyrians were followed by the Neo-Babylonian domination.[1]The attack of the Cambyses I was resisted in 529 BC. Later the Greek established a trading post around 520 BC. Some hundred years later the first coins were minted on the Athens model was around 380 BC

732    Assyrians overthrow Damascus
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722    BC THE BIBLE According to Jeremiah 42:17, Jews who choose to live in Egypt will all die and leave no remnant. But history shows that Jews continued to live there for centuries, later establishing a cultural center at Alexandria. A Jewish  community exists at Alexandria even to this day.According to apologists, a more thorough look at the surrounding text suggests that Jeremiah is stating that no refugees who flee to Egypt would return to Israel except for few fugitives. Jeremiah 42-44 had relevance mainly to the group of exiles who fled to Egypt. It emphasizes that the future hopes of a restored Israel lay elsewhere than with the exiles to Egypt. Isaiah and Jeremiah (Isaiah 27:12-13, Jeremiah 1:23, Jeremiah 3:18, and  Jeremiah 33:7) predicted the return of the exiles taken from Israel by the  Assyrians in 722 BC. It never happened. Following the conquest of the northern  kingdom by the Assyrians in 721 BC, the 10 tribes were gradually assimilated  by other peoples and thus disappeared from history.

722     BC    PALESTINE. The Assyrian emperor Sargon II called the region the Palashtu in his Annals. By the time of Assyrian rule in 722 BCE, the Philistines had become 'part and parcel of the local population',   and prospered under Assyrian rule during the seventh century despite occasional rebellions against their overlords. In 60-4 BCE, when Assyrian troops commanded by the Babylonian empire carried off significant numbers of the population into slavery, the distinctly Philistine character of the coastal cities dwindled away,  and the history of the Philistine people effectively ended.Between 722 and 720 BCE, the northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrian Empire and the Hebrew tribes - thereafter known as the (Lost Tribes) - were exiled.   In 586 BCE, Judah was conquered by the Babylonians and Jerusalem and the First Temple destroyed.  Most of the surviving Hebrews, and much of the other local population, were deported to Babylonia. PALESTINE. The Assyrians conquered Israel in 722 or 721 B.C. The Babylonians conquered Judah around 586 B.C.  They destroyed Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, and exiled a large number of Jews.  About 50 years later, the Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylonia. Cyrus allowed a group of Jews from Babylonia to rebuild Jerusalem and settle in it. However, a large number of Jews remained in Babylonia, forming the first Jewish Diaspora. After the reestablishment of a Jewish state or protectorate, the Babylonian exiles maintained contact with authorities there.  JEWS.   In 722 BCE, the Assyrians under Shalmaneser V conquered the (Northern)Kingdom of Israel and many Israelites were deported to Khorasan. Since then, for over 2,700 years, the Persian Jews have lived in the territories of today's Iran.  After the overthrow in 588 BCE of the kingdom of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, (see Babylonian captivity), and the deportation of a considerable portion of its inhabitants to Mesopotamia, the Jews had two principal cultural centers: Babylonia and the land of Israel .Although a majority of the Jewish people, especially the wealthy families, were to be found in Babylonia, the existence it led there, under the successive rules of the Achaemenids, the Seleucids, the Parthians, and the Sassanians, was obscure and devoid of political influence. The poorest but most fervent element among the exiles returned to Judaea during the reign of the Achaemenids. There, with the reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem as its center, it organized itself into a community, animated by a remarkable religious ardor and a tenacious attachment to the Torah, which thenceforth constituted the focus of its identity. No sooner had this little nucleus increased in numbers with the accession of recruits from various quarters, than it awoke to a consciousness of itself, and strove for political enfranchisement.  After numerous vicissitudes, and especially owing to internal dissensions in the Seleucid dynasty, on the one hand, and to the interested support of the Romans, on the other, the cause of Jewish independence finally triumphed. Under the Hasmonean princes, who were at first high priests and then kings, the Jewish state displayed even a certain luster, and annexed several territories. Soon, however, discord in the royal family, and the growing disaffection of the pious, the soul of the nation, toward rulers who no longer evinced any appreciation of the real aspirations of their subjects, made the Jewish nation an easy prey to the ambition of the Romans, the successors of the Seleucids. In 63 BCE, Pompey invaded Jerusalem, and Gabinius subjected the Jewish people to tribute.  Early diaspora populations  As early as the middle of the 2nd century BCE, the Jewish author of the third book of the Oracula Sibyllina, addressing the "chosen people," says: "Every land is full of thee and every sea." The most diverse witnesses, such as Strabo, Philo, Seneca, Luke (the author of the Acts of the Apostles), Cicero, and Josephus, all mention Jewish populations in the cities of the Mediterranean. See also History of the Jews in India and History of the Jews in China for pre-Roman (and post-) diasporac populations.King Agrippa I, in a letter to Caligula, enumerates among the provinces of the Jewish diaspora almost all the Hellenized and non-Hellenized countries of the Orient; and this enumeration is far from being complete, as Italy and Cyrene are not included. The epigraphic discoveries from year to year augment the number of known Jewish communities. There is only scant information of a precise character concerning the numerical significance of these diverse Jewish conglomerations; and this must be used with caution. After the Land of Israel and Babylonia, it was in Syria, according to Josephus, that the Jewish population was the densest; particularly in Antioch, and then in Damascus, in which latter place, at the time of the great insurrection, 10,000 (according to another version 18,000) Jews were massacred. Philo gives the number of Jewish inhabitants in Egypt as 1,000,000; one-eighth of the population. Alexandria was by far the most important of the Jewish communities, the Jews in Philo's time were inhabiting two of the five quarters of the city. To judge by the accounts of wholesale massacres in 115, the number of Jewish residents in Cyrenaica, at Cyprus, and in Mesopotamia were also large. In Rome, at the commencement of the reign of Caesar Augustus, there were over 7,000 Jews: this is the number that escorted the envoys who came to demand the deposition of Archelaus. Finally, if the sums confiscated by the governor Lucius Valerius Flaccus in the year 62/61 BCE represented the tax of a didrachma per head for a single year, it would imply that the Jewish population of Asia Minor numbered 45,000 adult males, for a total of at least 180,000 persons.  Post-Roman Diaspora   Roman destruction of Judea
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721     BC    PALESTINE.     : When nearby empires resumed their expansion, the divided  Israelites could no longer maintain their independence . Israel fell to Assyria Assyrians wipe out Israel. Mass deportation of Israelis.

715    The reign of Hezekiah

710    Assyrians destroy kingdom of Chaldea

705    Sennacherib King of Assyria (to 682)Capital at Nineveh.
 
700 BC - by William Shakespeare(1564 - 1616)Type of work:Tragic DramaSetting:  Medieval EnglandPrincipal characters:Lear, King of BritainCordelia, his faithful daughterRegan and Goneril, his two mean-spirited daughtersThe Dukes of Cornwall and Albany, their husbandsThe Earl of GloucesterEdmund, the Earl's treacherous sonEdgar, the Earl's true son (later disguised as a madman)The Duke of Kent, Cordelia's loyal helperLear's Fool, a comical characterStory Overview:England's aged King Lear had chosen to renounce his throne and divide the kingdom among his three daughters. He promised the greatest portion of the empire to whichever daughter proved to love him most. Goneril lavished exaggerated praise on her father; Regan even outdid her sister with a wordy show of hollow affection. Cordelia, however, refused to stoop to flattery, and insisted that she loved her father no more and no less than was his due. Lear exploded at what seemed to him her untenderness and immediately disowned her. Moreover, Lear banished the Duke of Kent from the castle for defending Cordelia.Two suitors had come to  the British court to seek Cordelia's hand: the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France. After Lear had disinherited Cordelia, Burgundy suddenly lost interest in her - he aspired to a wealthy bride. The King of France, however, was delighted by Cordelia's honesty and immediately asked for her hand. They departed for France, without Lear's blessing, and Cordelia's part of the kingdom was divided between Goneril and Regan, who were all too happy at their sister's fall from grace. Furthermore, these two daughters decided that Lear had succumbed to a sort of senility, and they set upon a plan to exploit his weakness to their own advantage. Meanwhile, in the Earl of Gloucester's castle, Edmund, Gloucester's bitter and cunning illegitimate son, was fretting over his father's preference toward the legitimate brother, Edgar. Edmund now forged a letter in which Edgar supposedly expressed his intent to murder their father. Gloucester immediately believed the letter and fled in distress from the palace. Then Edmund, in mock concern, went and warned his brother that someone had turned Gloucester against him. Edgar, too good at heart to suspect his brother's treachery, accepted the story and escaped to the forest. Thus, with two clever strokes, Edmund had managed to supplant his brother in his father's affections.After dividing his kingdom, Lear decided to lodge for a time at Goneril's palace. Now that she had her half of his kingdom, however, she no longer feigned love for him. In fact, she so distained her father that she ordered her servants to mistreat and insult him. Accordingly, her servants began to deal with him as a senile old man rather than as a king. In the meantime, the banished Duke of Kent disguised himself and presented himself to the king at Goneril's palace. Lear failed to recognize the disguise and hired Kent as a servant. Then, with the help of the King's Fool (whose biting jibes and puns provide some of the finest moments in all literature), Kent began hinting to Lear that he had acted unwisely in dealing with Cordelia, until the King began to perceive his folly. As Goneril continued to humiliate him, Lear, bemoaning his fate ("How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child!"), determined to move on to Regan's household. He did not know that Regan was at that moment on her way to visit Gloucester. (In fact, all of the characters were now converging on Gloucester's castle). Near Gloucester, Edgar, still convinced that his life was in peril from his father, lingered in a local wood, disguised as a madman - Tom o' Bedlam. Soon Regan and her husband, the Duke of Cornwall, arrived at Gloucester. They were followed by King Lear not long after. When Goneril and her household also appeared, the two sisters united to disgrace their father, ordering him to dismiss all his servants. But this humiliation proved too much for the old King, who, in a fit of anger and shame, rushed out of the castle into a furious storm, where he wandered about madly, screaming and cursing. Their plan having succeeded, the daughters locked the doors behind him.Then follows a most famous and stirring scene: Lear raged and cursed in the midnight storm, with his frightened Fool cowering beside him, uttering the most biting and ironic jokes, while Kent watched in disbelief. Fortunately, Gloucester found them and led them to a little hovel, where they encountered Edgar, still disguised as Tom o'Bedlam and pretending derangement. Lear, now half mad himself, set about conducting a bizarre mock trial of his daughters, with Kent, the Fool, and Edgar all serving in his "court." (The mixture of Lear's denunciations, Edgar's incoherent chatter, the Fool's punning and ironic commentary, and Kent's astonished silence, create a superb scene of absurdity and despair).Meanwhile, Kent had heard that Cordelia, back in France, was preparing to ship a small army across the English Channel to rescue Lear. But Edmund, who had also got wind of this news, hinted to Regan's husband, the Duke of Cornwall, that Gloucester planned to side with Lear and the French army against Regan and Goneril. Cornwall was furious, and agreed to avenge himself on innocent Gloucester. (Very convenient for Edmund, of course, as he would inherit his father's earldom!)It was now a race against time: could Gloucester, Edgar, Kent and Lear hold out against the treachery of Edmund, Regan, Goneril and Cornwall until help arrived from France? They devised a plan to flee to Dover, there to await the coming of Cordelia and the French troops. King Lear managed to make his escape in time, drawn by Kent in a litter, but Gloucester was not so lucky - Cornwall caught him, jabbed out both his eyes, then thrust him through the castle gates to "let him smell his way to Dover." Crawling about blindly, the earl bumped into none other than his own son, Edgar, still pretending to be insane. Edgar agreed to lead his father - who remained unapprised of his true identity - to Dover, though and Gloucester bitterly complained: "Tis the time's plague when madmen lead the blind."While Kent with Lear and Edgar with Gloucester were making their separate ways to Dover, a love affair brewed among the villains. Goneril had become infatuated with the diabolical Edmund, who returned with her to her palace. There she fell into a bitter argument with her husband, the Duke of Albany, who vehemently chastised Goneril for her mistreatment of Lear. Albany also informed his wife that Cornwall had been killed - struck down by one of Gloucester's servants. Suddenly a frightening thought paralyzed Goneril: now that her sister was a widow, would she too pursue Edmund and his rising star? This fear was soon confirmed when Regan sent a message to the castle professing her love for Edmund, followed by an invitation to join forces with her. Since Albany's sympathies were now with Lear, Goneril was forced to watch in frustrated rage as her sister and Edmund set out together with their cohorts against the expected invasion.In the mean time, at Dover, Kent met with the French officials while Cordelia sent doctors to treat her father, who, by that time, was mentally and physically spent. But Lear refused to meet with Cordelia; he had come to understand his injuries against his loyal daughter and now felt too ashamed to see her.On his journey to Dover, the blind Gloucester had grown more and more distressed. At last he implored Edgar to guide him to the brink of a cliff so that he could throw himself off. But Edgar fooled him into thinking the level ground was actually the top of a ridge. And when Gloucester fell forward onto the ground, as if jumping from a cliff, Edgar changed his voice, pretending to be a passerby at the cliff's base. He assured his father that he had seen him fall from the dizzy height and survive - he'd seen a miracle! Gloucester believed the tale and accepted the "miracle" as a sign that he was meant to live.Now Lear, who had been delirious before he was finally rescued by Cordelia, fell into a deep sleep. On awakening, he found himself purged of his madness and begged Cordelia's forgiveness. Their reconciliation complete, they were ready to join with Kent and the French army against Edmund and his forces.But Cordelia's troops were defeated, and Edmund sent orders that Lear and his daughter be executed. Meanwhile, Regan had collapsed in death, poisoned by her own jealous sister. (Goneril herself would later die by suicide.) Just at that moment Edgar burst in on the scene, engaged his brother Edmund in combat, and dealt him a mortal wound. He then cast off his disguise and revealed his true identity to his dying brother, also reporting that Gloucester, their father, had died a few hours before. Edmund, apparently touched by the news of his father's death, confessed that he had ordered the executions of Lear and Cordelia, and dispatched a messenger to stop them. It was, alas, too late - Lear entered, carrying the body of his beloved daughter, then he too fell and died, broken-hearted. Only Albany, Kent, and Edgar survived. It fell to these last two to jointly rule the shattered nation.Commentary:Since King Lear's setting is pre-Christian Britain, some readers chafe under the sort of nihilistic fatalism that colors the characters' thinking ("As flies to wanton boys we are to the gods...  "). And truly, it's hard to think of any other play so vast, passionate and bitter as this. The work is unusually demanding on the reader or spectator, with so many prominent figures suffering so much for so long, only, in the end, to find so little redemption.True, there is a good deal of humor throughout the play, especially in the lightning-fast wisecracks and puns of the Fool and in the cryptic babble of Edgar masquerading as a madman. But even the humor has a steady, grim undertone. The main plot is marvelously conceived. Just as Lear mistakenly believes that Cordelia has wronged him and his other daughters have served him, so Gloucester jumps to the conclusion that Edgar opposes him and Edmund defends him - when in both cases precisely the opposite is true. The horrific consequences of these misjudgments intertwine and drive the action along.

700    -400 BC BRITAIN saw a succession of small migrations, and the newcomers mingled easily with existing inhabitants. Yet the greater availability of iron facilitated land clearance and thus the growth of population. The earliest ironsmiths made daggers of the Hallstatt type but of a distinctively British form. The settlements were also of a distinctively British type, with the traditional round house, the "Celtic" system of farming with its small fields, and storage pits for grain. Thus Britain absorbed the newcomers.

700    BC TURKIC.  Concerning the cultural genesis of the Huns, the Cambridge Ancient History of China asserts: "Beginning in about the eighth century BC, throughout inner Asia horse-riding pastoral communities appeared, giving origin to warrior societies." These were part of a larger belt of "equestrian pastoral peoples" stretching from the Black Sea to Mongolia known to the Greeks as thScythians.[3] The Scythians on the west were Iranian, the last of the Indo-Europeans to descend in an unbroken line from the Proto-Indo-Europeans on their original range. The communities of the northern belt north of China were the Proto-Xiongnu. Their mode of life was indistinguishable from that of the other Scyths: nomadic life on horseback, temporary camps in portable yurts furnished with rugs and tapestries richly decorated with the ornate animal style.

700    Cuumbers, pumpkins, marrows and squash are cultivated in India.
    Leaf beets are cultivated in Babylon.
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689    Assyrians destroy Babylon

687     BCCrude "coins" invented in Lydia (according to Herodotus) Herodotus criticises the gross commercialism of the Lydians who are not  only the first people to coin money but also the first to open permanent  retail shops.

687 -     Manasseh, King of Judah, successor to Hezekiah.

683    Athens ends rule of hereditary kings, replaces them with nine archons chosen each year from among the nobles.

682    Judah surrenders to Assyria (to 627)

669    Assurbanipal rules as king of Assyria . In 663 sacks Thebes in Egypt.

660    Founding of Byzantium
    The reign of Josiah

650-Scythian and Cimmarian raiders sweep over Syria and Palestine. Sparta conuers rebellious subjects.

640 - c. 630 BCThe first true coins produced in Lydia.  The earliest coins made in Lydia, Asia Minor, consisted of electrum, a naturally occurring amalgam of gold and silver

642 -     Manasseh dies as a puppet of the Assyrians.

650    BC TURKIC. The period is dated 650–350 BC and runs contemporaneously from the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period through the Warring States Period of Chinese history.The Warring States Period is the start of the Iron Age in China, some centuries after it began in the west. A previous transitional period, 1000 BC - 650 BC, was entirely within the Bronze Age, contemporaneously with the western Zhou Dynasty and early Spring and Autumn of China. China was expanding then but the Chinese of the northern frontier must have been encountering "aristocratic warrior elites" who were not equestrian nomads but were "increasingly more specialized pastoralists." Their metallurgy was the best of the region and was comparable to that in the west.

650 GRECO PERSIAN WARS. GreeceThe style of warfare between the Greek city-states, which dates back until at least 650 BC (as dated by the 'Chigi vase'), was based around the hoplite phalanx supported by missile troops. The 'hoplites' were heavy infantrymen usually drawn from the members of the middle-classes (in Athens called the zeugites), who could afford the equipment necessary to fight in this manner. The heavy armour usually included a breastplate or a linothorax, greaves, a helmet, and a large round, concave shield (theAspis or Hoplon).Hoplites were armed with long spears (the doru), which were significantly longer than Persian spears, and a sword (the xiphos). The heavy armour and longer spears made them superior in hand-to-hand combat and gave them significant protection against ranged attacks. Lightly armed skirmishers, the psiloi also consisted a part of Greek armies growing in importance during the conflict; at the Battle of Plataea, for instance, they may have formed over half the Greek army. Use of cavalry in Greek armies is not reported in the battles of the Greco-Persian Wars. Naval warfareAt the beginning of the conflict, all naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean had switched to the trireme, a warship powered by three banks of oars. The most common naval tactics during the period were ramming (triremes were equipped with a ram at the bows), or boarding by ship-borne marines. More experienced naval powers had also by this time begun to use a manoeuver known as diekplous. It is not entirely clear what this was, but it probably involved sailing into gaps between enemy ships and then ramming them in the side.The Persian naval forces were primarily provided by the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Cilicians and Cypriots. Other coastal regions of the Persian empire would contribute ships throughout the course of the wars.

652    IRAN.From the fall of the Sassanid Dynasty to the Safavid Empire (648–330 BC), and further unification between peoples and cultures. After Cyrus's death, his son Cambyses continued his father's work of conquest, making significant gains in Egypt. A power struggle followed Cambyses' death and, despite his tenuous connection to the royal line, Darius was declared king
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626    Chaldean general Nabopolassar seizes the throne of Babylon and declares the country independent of Assyria.

    621-- King  Josiah  la    unches reform at Jerusalem to
        worship one single God, Yahweh. Dracon issues Athens  first written     laws, noted for their severity.

620 - Josiah Jehoiakim, Zedekiah

    612    --Nineveh destroyed by Medes, Babylonians and Scythians.

612     BC THE BIBLE Unlike the Kingdom of  Judah, which was able to return from its Babylonian Captivity in 537 BC, the 10 tribes of the Kingdom of Israel never had a foreign edict granting  permission to return and rebuild their homeland. Assyria has long since   vanished, its capital, Nineveh, destroyed in 612 BC.However, according to apologists, Luke 2:36 records that the prophetess Anna, daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher, was living as a widow in the sanctuary ministering to God with and fastings and petitions night and day. Thus, at least some (tiny) portion of Israel returned, since it was unlikely that a lone female would return to the land of Israel unaccompanied by kinsmen as safe escort.  Although the exiled Israelites from the Northern kingdom did not return from Assyria, apologists maintain that it must be considered that these passages also contain the expectation of the messianic days. Theologians point out that in Isaiah 27:12-13 Euphrates and the Wadi of Egypt represent the northern and southern borders of the Promised Land in its widest extent (Genesis 15:18) and thus they refer these verses to the return of the Israelites to Jerusalem in the last days, in the messianic time. Israelites will be gathered from wherever they have been expelled from the north, Assyria, to the south, Egypt. Jeremiah's prophecy of Israel's and Judah's return from the north in Jeremiah 3:18 is preceded by the request of Yahweh to the Israelites to come back (verse 14). After fulfilling this condition God will increase their number and none will miss the ark of the covenant (verse 16). All nations will then honour the Lord (verse 17). Consequently Christian scholars refer verse 18 to messianic times when there will be a kingdom united as in the days of David and Solomon.  Jeremiah 31 should be seen in context with chapter 30. Some scholars argue that these chapters were written early in Jeremiah's ministry and refer to Northern Israel. Later these poems were updated and referred to Judah as well, probably by Jeremiah himself, when it was realized that Judah had passed through similar experiences to those of Israel. The Book of Consolation (Jeremiah 30:1—31:40) reaches his final, messianic scope in the establishment of a New Covenant between Yahweh and the House of Israel and the House of Judah. Isaiah 19:17 predicted that "the land of Judah shall be a terror unto Egypt".  It never happened.According to theologians the statement that the "land of Judah" will terrify the Egyptians is not a reference to a large army from Judah attacking Egypt, but a circumlocution for the place where God lives; it is God and his plans that will terrify Egypt. Verse 17 has to be understood in its context. The second "in that  day" message from verse 18 announces the beginning of a deeper relationship between God and Egypt, which leads to Egypt's conversion and worshiping God (verses 19-21). The last "in that day" prophecy (verses 23-25) speaks about Israel, Assyria and Egypt as God's special people, thus, describing eschatological events.

609    End of Assyrian empire The fall of Judah

608    Necho of Egypt defeats and kills Josiah, king of Judah, at the battle of Megiddo.

605    BC THE BIBLE But already F.F. Bruce solved this problem explaining that when Nebuchadnezzar, son of king Nabopolassar, was put in charge over a part of his forces, he defeated Necho in the battle of Carchemish 605 BC. In this situation his father Nabopolassar died. BeforNebuchadnezzar as heir apparent returned to Babylon he settled the affairs in the Asiatic countries bordering the Egyptian frontier, which means also Judah, and took captives from several countries as, for example, also from the Jews. Jeremiah prophesied that the body of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, would be   desecrated after his death (Jeremiah 22:18-19, Jeremiah 36:30-31). However,  his death was recorded in 2Kings 24:6 where it says that "Jehoiakim slept with  his fathers". This is a familiar Bible expression that was used to denote a   peaceful death and respectful burial. David slept with his fathers (1 Kings  2:10) and so did Solomon (1 Kings 11:43). On the other hand, 2Chronicles  36:5-6 states that Nebuchadnezzar came against Jehoiakim, bound him in   fetters, and carried him to Babylon. Judging from the treatment Zedekiah was   accorded when the Babylonians bound him and carried him away to Babylon  (Jeremiah 52:9-11), one might justifiably argue that his body probably was  desecrated after his death. Jeremiah, however, predicted that Jehoiakim's own  people would be his desecraters, that his own people would not accord him   lamentations appropriate for a king, that his own people would cast his body   "out beyond the gates of Jerusalem".

605    Nebuchadrezzar II rules Babylon .to 561. Defeats Necho and Egyptians at Carcemish in Syria. Judah comes under Babylonian rule.
 
605    BC THE BIBLE Isaiah spoke of a prophecy God made to Ahaz, the King of Judah that he would not be harmed by his enemies (Isaiah 7:1-7), yet according to 2 Chronicles, the king of Aram and Israel did conquer Judah (2 Chronicles 28:1-6).In Isaiah (Isaiah 7:9) the prophet says clearly that a prerequisite for the fulfillment of the prophecy is that Ahaz stands firm in his faith. According to F.F. Bruce, this means that he should trust God and not seek military help in the Assyrians, which Ahaz nevertheless did.  Jeremiah predicts 70 years (Jeremiah 29:10) for the Babylonian exiles, but  they only lasted 59 years. Christian apologists point out that the first wave of captivity took place under King Jehoiakim of Judah already in 605 BC Since the captivity terminated at 538 BC when Cyrus the Great after conquering Babylon permitted the Jews to return to Palestine, the total duration of the exile would be 67 years. However, whether this prophecy was fulfilled or not is not a question of the exact duration of the Babylonian exile. Jeremiah gave a round number that indicate that it will not last forever, but God promises that the Jews will return, on the other hand they should not expect this in the close future. It will take one to two generations. In predicting Jerusalem's fall to Babylon, Jeremiah prophesied that Zedekiah, the king of Judah, would "die in peace" (Jeremiah 34:2-5). However, according  to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 52:9-11, he was put in prison until the day of his death.Apologists answered that Zedekiah did not suffer the same terrible death as all the other nobles of Judah did when Nebuchadnezzar killed them in Riblah. Jeremiah also told Zedekiah in his prophecy that he would have to go to Babylon, which means that he will be imprisoned. We do not have any historical record of what happened with Zedekiah in Babylon and a peaceful death is not ruled out.Prophetess Huldah prophesied that Josiah would die in peace (2 Kings  22:18-20), but rather than dying in peace, as the prophetess predicted, Josiah  was probably killed at Megiddo in a battle with the Egyptian army (2  Chronicles 35:20-24).Apologists respond that the prophecy of Huldah was partially fulfilled because Josiah did not see all the disaster the Babylonians brought over Jerusalem and Judah. The prophetess expressed clearly that because of Josiah's repentance he will be buried in peace. But the king did not keep his humble attitude. As mentioned in 2 Chronicles (2 Chronicles 35:22), he did not listen to God's command and fought against the Egyptian pharao Necho. Most probably he did this "opposing the faithful prophetic party". Prophecy in the biblical sense is except in some very few cases never a foretelling of future events but it wants to induce the hearers to repent, to admonish and to encourage respectively; biblical prophecy includes almost always a conditional element.Map showing the borders of the Promised Land, based on God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:18-21: In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites,And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims,And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. According to Genesis and Deuteronomy (Genesis 15:18, 17:8 and Deuteronomy  1:7-8), Abraham and his descendants, the Israelites will unconditionally  (Deuteronomy 9:3-7) own all the land between the Nile River and the Euphrates  River for an everlasting possession. But a critic says it never happened, that  they never owned all that land forever.An apologists response would be that a reading of Davidic conquests tells of the Israelite occupation of all the promised lands. F.F. Bruce writes: David's sphere of influence now extended from the Egyptian frontier on the Wadi el-Arish (the "brook of Egypt") to the Euphrates; and these limits remained the ideal boundaries of Israel's dominion long after David's empire  had disappeared.Acts 7:5 and Hebrews 11:13 are taken out of context if used as evidence against the fulfillment of these prophecies. Stephen does not state in Acts that the prophecy was not fulfilled. Moreover, it does not seem any problem for him to mention side by side the promise to Abraham himself and that Abraham did not get even a foot of ground. This becomes understandable with the concept of corporate personality. Jews are familiar with identifying individuals with the group they belong to. H. Wheeler Robinson writes that  Corporate personality is the important Semitic complex of thought in which  there is a constant oscillation between the individual and the group—family,  tribe, or nation—to which he belongs, so that the king or some other  representative figure may be said to embody the group, or the group may be  said to sum up the host of individuals.The letter to the Hebrews speaks about the promise of the heavenly country (Hebrews 11:13-16).

600     BC ASIA MINOR. Pythius operates as a merchant banker in Asia Minor.  Pythius, who operates throughout western Asia Minor at the beginning of  the 5th century BC, is the first banker in the area of Greece and Asia  Minor of whom we have records. Many of the early bankers in Greek city  states were Greek city states were "metics" or foreign residents.

600    CHINESE COINS. -300 BCRound, base metal coins invented in China. The date is uncertain but these were probably at least roughly  contemporary with the development of coinage in the West, and possibly  much earlier. Being made of base metal the Chinese coins were of  relatively low value and therefore inconvenient for expensive purchases. 600 - c. 570 BCUse of coins spreads rapidly from Lydia to Greece Aegina (c. 595 BC), Athens (c. 575 BC), and Corinth (c. 570 BC) start to  mint their own coins. Prior to the introduction of coinage the Athenians  had used iron spits or elongated nails as money.

600    Windmills grind corn in Persia

600    IRAN.Achaemenid era (c. 600 BC to 300 BC).Examples of Old Persian have been found in present-day Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt.Nomadic Iranian tribes settled across the Iranian plateau and by the 1st millennium BC, Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians populated the western part, while Cimmerians, Sarmatians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Iranian Pashtuns and Baloch began to settle on the eastern edge, on the mountainous frontier of northwestern India and in to what is now Balochistan. Others, such as the Scythian tribes spread as far west as the Balkans and as far east as Xinjiang.The establishing of the Median dynasty (728–550 BC) culminated in the first Iranian Empire. The Medes are cred with the foundation of Iran as a nation and empire, the largest of its day, until Cyrus the Great established a unified empire of the Medes and Persians leading to the Achaemenid Empire

    600    ETHIOPIAThe ruins of the temple at Yeha dates to the 7th or 8th century BC.Around the eighth century BC, a kingdom known as D?mt was established in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, with its capital at Yeha in northern Ethiopia. Most modern historians consider this civilization to be a native African one, although Sabaean-influenced due to the latter's hegemony of the Red Sea,   while others view D?mt as the result of a mixture of "culturally superior" Sabaeans and indigenous peoples.  However, Ge'ez, the ancient Semitic language of Ethiopia, is now thought not to have derived from Sabaean (also South Semitic). There is evidence of a Semitic-speaking presence in Ethiopia and Eritrea at east as early as 600     BC Early traces of a heliocentric model are found in several anonymous Vedic Sanskrit texts composed in ancient India before the 7th century BCE. Additionally, in the sixth century the Indian astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata anticipated elements of Copernicus's work, although he did not maintain heliocentrism.

    600    BC.CYRENAICA. AFRICA. LIBYA.    Cyrenaica was colonized by the Greeks from the 7th century BCE. The oldest and most important foundation was that of Cyrene, established in 631 BCE by colonists from the island Thera, who had left the island because of a famine.Their commander Aristoteles took the Libyan name Battos.His dynasty, the Battaid, maintained itself in spite of heavy resistance by the Greeks in neighbouring cities.The east of the province was called Marmarica (no major city), but the important part was in the west, comprising five cities, hence known as the Pentapolis: Cyrene (near the modern village of Shahat) with its port of Apollonia (Marsa Susa), Arsinoe or Taucheira (Tocra), Euesperides or Bernice (near modern Benghazi), Balagrae (Al Bayda) and Barce (Al Marj) – of which the chief was the eponymous Cyrene.[2] The term "Pentapolis" continued to be used as a synonym for Cyrenaica. In the south the Pentapolis faded into the Saharan tribal areas, including the pharaonic oracle of Ammonium.In 525 BCE, after taking Egypt, the Persians took the Pentapolis. They were followed by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, who received tribute from these cities after he took Egypt.[2] The Pentapolis was formally annexed by Ptolemy I Soter and it passed to the diadoch dynasty of the Lagids, better known as the Ptolemaic dynasty. It briefly gained independence under Magas of Cyrene, stepson of Ptolemy I, but was reabsorbed into the Ptolemaic empire after his death. It was separated from the main kingdom by Ptolemy VIII and given to his son Ptolemy Apion, who, dying without heirs in 96 BCE, bequeathed it to the Roman Republic.Creta et Cyrenaica, Praetorian prefecture of the East, and Diocese of Egypt (Late Antiquity)Creta et Cyrenaica within the Roman Empire in the 2nd century Map of      Cyrenaica and      Marmarica in the Roman era

600    BC TRIPOLITANIA. AFRICA. LIBYA. Detailed map of Tripolitania In the old system, Tripolitania included Tripoli, the capital city of Libya and a vast northwestern portion of the country; in the subsequent systems, the sha'biyah of Tripoli has become much smaller than the original Tripolitania, including merely the city of Tripoli and its immediate surroundings. Because the city and the sha'biyah are nowadays almost coextensive, the term "Tripolitania" has more historical than contemporary value. In Arabic the same word  is used for both the city and the region, and that word, used alone, would be understood to mean only the city; in order to designate Tripolitania in Arabic, a qualifier such as "state", "province" or "sha'biyah" is required.The system of administrative divisions that included Tripolitania was abolished in the early 1970s in favor of a system of smaller-size municipalities or baladiyat (singular baladiyah). The baladiyat system was subsequently changed many times and has lately become the "Sha'biyat" system. The region that was Tripolitania is now composed of several smaller baladiyat or sha'biyat – see administrative divisions in Libya.The city of Oea, on the site of modern Tripoli, was founded by the Phoenicians in the 7th century BC. It was conquered by the Greek rulers of Cyrenaica, who were in turn displaced by the Carthaginians. The Greek name  "three
    cities" referred to Oea, Sabratha and Leptis Magna. The Roman Republic captured Tripolitania in 146 BC, and the area prospered under during the Roman Empire period. The Latin name Regio Tripolitania dates to the 3rd century.


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600     BC BRITAIN saw the building of many large hill forts; these suggest the existence of powerful chieftains and the growth of strife as increasing population created pressures on the land.
    CELTS. The Celts had an indigenous polytheistic religion and culture. During the Iron Age Celtic culture was spread from the Iberian Peninsula to Turkey and ancient Iberia at Caucasus, but their ultimate origin is a subject of controversy. Traditionally, scholars have placed the Celtic homeland in what is now southern Germany and Austria, associating the earliest Celtic peoples with the Hallstatt culture. However, modern linguistic studies seem to point to a north Balkan origin. The expansion of the Roman Empire from the south and the Germanic tribes from the north and east spelt the end of Celtic culture on the European mainland where Brittany alone maintained its Celtic language and identity. The known names of Celtic peoples are given in the list of Celtic tribes.The development of Christianity in Ireland and Britain brought an early medieval renaissance of Celtic art between 400 and 1200, only ended by the Norman Conquest of Ireland in the late 12th century. Notable works produced during this period include the Book of Kells and the Ardagh Chalice. Antiquarian interest from the 17th century led to the term 'Celt' being extended, and rising nationalism brought Celtic revivals from the 19th century in areas where the use of Celtic languages had continued.The term "Celt"has been adopted as a label of self-identity for a variety of peoples and often refers to groups who speak a Celtic language. However, it does not seem to have been used to refer to Celtic language speakers as a whole before the 18th century. Prior to that, the term , "Celt" was primarily used by Greeks and Romans as a label for groups of people who were distinguished from others by their cultural characteristics.The first literary reference to the Celtic people, as  (?eltoi) is by the Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus in 517 BC; he locates the Keltoi tribe in Rhenania (West/Southwest Germany). The next Greek reference to the Keltoi is by Herodotus in the mid 5th century. He says that "the river Ister [Danube] begins from the Keltoi and the city of Pyrene and so runs that it divides Europe in the midst (now the Keltoi are outside the Pillars of Heracles and border upon the Kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those who have their dwelling in Europe)". This confused passage was generally later interpreted as implying that the homeland of the Celts was at the source of the Danube not in Spain/France. However, this was mainly because of the association of the Hallstatt and La Tene cultures with the Celts.According to Greek mythology,  (Celtus) was the son of Heracles and  (Keltine), the daughter of  (Bretannus).  Celtus became the eponymous ancestor of Celts. In Latin Celta came in turn from Herodotus' word for the Gauls, Keltoi. The Romans used Celtae to refer to continental Gauls, but apparently not to Insular Celts. The latter were long divided linguistically into Goidhels and Brythons (see Insular Celtic languages), although other research provides a more complex picture Regions of England such as Cumbria and Devon likewise retain some Celtic influences, yet haven't retained a Celtic language (even Cornwall became fully English-speaking during the 18th century) and are therefore not categorised as Celtic regions or nations. Cornish aside, the last attested Celtic language native to England was Cumbric, spoken in Cumbria and southern Scotland and which may have survived until the 13th century, but was most likely dead by the eleventh. As in the case of Cornish, there have been recent attempts to recreate it, based on medieval miracle plays and other surviving sources.
    Another area of Europe associated with the Celts is France, which traces its roots to the Gauls. In Scotland, the Gaelic language traces at least some of its roots to migration and settlement by the Irish Dál Riata/Scotti. The settlement of Germanic immigrants in the lowlands—among other things—reduced the spread of the Gaelic language which was supplanting Brythonic in Scotland; this has meant that Scots-Gaelic-speaking communities survive chiefly in the country's northern and western fringes.Miranda Green, author of Celtic Goddesses, describes archaeologists as finding "a certain homogeneity" in the traditions in the area of Celtic habitation including Britain and Ireland — she sees the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland as having become thoroughly Celticised by the time of the Roman arrival, mainly through spread of culture rather than a movement of people.In his book Iron Age Britain, Barry Cunliffe concludes that "...there is no evidence in the British Isles to suggest that a population group of any size migrated from the continent in the first millennium BC...". Modern archaeological thought tends to disparage the idea of large population movements without facts to back them up, a caution which appears to be vindicated by some genetic studies. In other words, Celtic culture in the Atlantic Archipelago and continental Europe could have emerged through the peaceful convergence of local tribal cultures bound together by networks of trade and kinship — not by war and conquest. This type of peaceful convergence and cooperation is actually relatively common among tribal peoples; other well known examples of the phenomenon include the Six Nations of the Iroquois League and the Nuer of East Africa. He argues that the ancient Celts are thus best depicted as a loose and highly diverse collection of indigenous tribal societies bound together by trade, a common druidic religion, related languages, and similar political institutions — but each having its own local traditions.
    Gaul(s)" and Latin Gallus or Galli might be from an originally Celtic ethnic or tribal name (perhaps borrowed into Latin during the early 400s BC Celtic expansions into Italy). Its root may be the Common Celtic *galno, meaning "power" or "strength". Greek Galatai (see Galatia in Anatolia) seems to be based on the same root, borrowed directly from the same hypothetical Celtic source which gave us Galli (the suffix -atai is simply an ethnic name indicator).The English form Gaul comes from the French Gaule and Gaulois, which is the traditional rendering of Latin Gallia and Gallus, -icus respectively. However, the diphthong au points to a different origin, namely a Romance adaptation of the Germanic *Walha-. See Gaul: Name.Welsh" originates from word wælisc, which is anglo-saxon for foreigner.  Though it may be Germanic in origin, it may still ultimately have a Celtic source. Possibly the result of an early transition from (in the 4th century BC) of the Celtic tribal name Volcae into early Germanic (becoming the Proto-Germanic *Walh-, "foreigner of the Roman lands" and the suffixed form *-walhisk). The Volcae were one of the Celtic peoples that for two centuries barred the southward expansion of the Germanic tribes in what is now central Germany on the line of the Harz mountains and into Saxony and Silesia. None of Europe's subsequent historic upheavals - even catastrophic wars and famines - has seriously dented the old pattern set by the influx of farmers. The Goths, Huns and Romans have come and gone without any significant impact on the ancient gene map of Europe. However, modern genetic studies have shown that the original spread of modern man across Europe took place more than 20,000 years ago and re-expanded from refuges after the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago. It now seems likely that the farmers from the Middle East did not generally displace the hunter-gatherers but that farming was slowly adopted by the latter. However, the association of the Indo-European language family with farming remains unproven.The Y-chromosomes of populations of the Atlantic Celtic countries have been found in several studies to belong primarily to haplogroup R1b, which implies that they are descendants of the first people to migrate into north-western Europe from the Iberian refuge after the last major ice age. According to the most recently published studies of European haplogroups, around half of the current male population of that portion of Eurasia is a descendant of the R1b haplogroup(subgroup of Central Asian haplogroup K). Haplotype R1b exceeds 90% of Y-chromosomes in parts of Wales, Ireland, Portugal and Spain
    The question of the original homeland of the Celts has caused much controversy, with many competing theories. The Celtic language family is a branch of the larger Indo-European family, which leads some scholars to a hypothesis that the original speakers of the Celtic proto-language may have arisen in the Pontic-Caspian steppes (see Kurgan). It is not generally accepted, however, that Celtic became differentiated from other branches of Indo-European at such an early stage. By the time speakers of Celtic languages enter history around 600 BC, they were already split into several language groups, and spread over much of Central Europe, the Iberian peninsula, Ireland and Britain. Some scholars think that the Urnfield culture of northern Germany and the Netherlands represents an origin for the Celts as a distinct cultural branch of the Indo-European family. This culture was preeminent in central Europe during the late Bronze Age, from ca. 1200 BC until 700 BC, itself following the Unetice and Tumulus cultures. The Urnfield period saw a dramatic increase in population in the region, probably due to innovations in technology and agricultural practices. The Greek historian Ephoros of Cyme in Asia Minor, writing in the fourth century BC, believed that the Celts came from the islands off the mouth of the Rhine who were "driven from their homes by the frequency of wars and the violent rising of the sea".The spread of iron-working led to the development of the Hallstatt culture directly from the Urnfield (c. 700 to 500 BC). Proto-Celtic, the latest common ancestor of all known Celtic languages, is considered by this school of thought to have been spoken at the time of the late Urnfield or early Hallstatt cultures, in the early first millennium BC.The spread of the Celtic languages to Iberia, Ireland and Britain would have occurred during the first half of the 1st millennium, the earliest chariot burials in Britain dating to ca. 500 BC. Over the centuries they developed into the separate Celtiberian, Goidelic and Brythonic languages. Whether Goidelic and Brythonic are descended from a common Insular-Celtic language, or reflect two separate waves of migration, is disputed.The Hallstatt culture was succeeded by the La Tène culture of central Europe, and during the final stages of the Iron Age gradually transformed into the explicitly Celtic culture of early historical times. Celtic river-names are found in great numbers around the upper reaches of the Danube and Rhine, which led many Celtic scholars to place the ethnogenesis of the Celts in this area. Others however believe that the fact that the La Tène culture is too late to explain the original Celtic homeland; rather its extent demonstrates the subsequent spread of a pre-existing Celtic culture throughout Switzerland, Austria, southern and central Germany, northern regions of Italy, eastern France, Bohemia, Moravia, Portugal, Slovakia and parts of Hungary and Ukraine. The technologies, decorative practices and metal-working styles of the La Tène were certainly influential on the continental Celts, but they were highly derivative from the Greek, Etruscan and Scythian decorative styles with whom the La Tène settlers frequently traded. Britain and Ireland. Tribes of Wales at the time of the Roman invasion. Exact boundaries are conjectural.  A large portion of the indigenous populations of Britain and Ireland today may be partially descended from the ancient peoples that have long inhabited these lands, before the coming of Celtic and later Germanic peoples, language and culture. Little is known of their original culture and language, but remnants may remain in the names of some geographical features, such as the rivers Clyde, Tamar and Thames, whose etymology is unclear but almost certainly derive from a pre-Celtic substrate. By the Roman period, however, most of the inhabitants of the isles of Ireland and Britain were speaking Goidelic or Brythonic languages, close counterparts to Gallic languages spoken on the European mainland.Historians explained this as the result of successive invasions from the European continent by diverse Celtic-speaking peoples over the course of several centuries. The Book of Leinster, written in the twelfth century, but drawing on a much earlier Irish oral tradition, states that the first Celts to arrive in Ireland were from Spain. In 1946 the Celtic scholar T. F. O'Rahilly published his extremely influential model of the early history of Ireland which postulated four separate waves of Celtic invaders. It is still not known what languages were spoken by the peoples of Ireland and Britain before the arrival of the Celts.Celtic dagger found in Britain.Later research indicated that the culture may have developed gradually and continuously between the Celts and the indigenous "Basque" people of Britain. In Ireland little archaeological evidence was found for large intrusive groups of Celtic immigrants, suggesting to historians such as Colin Renfrew that the native late Bronze Age inhabitants gradually absorbed European Celtic influences and language. Although archaeological evidence has often been proved unreliable in the past. It should also be noted that genetic evidence proves that most Celtic people of coastal and northern Ireland have little traces of R1b genes, therefore indicating that when the Celts came to Ireland, the absorption of the indigenous inhabitants was regional (mainly central). Some recent studies have suggested that, contrary to long-standing beliefs, the Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons) did not wipe out the Romano-British of England but rather, over the course of six centuries, conquered the native Brythonic people of what is now England and south-east Scotland and imposed their culture and language upon them (this may also be the case with the Celts and basques of Ireland), much as the Gaels may have spread over Northern Britain. Still others maintain that the picture is mixed and that in some places the indigenous population was indeed wiped out while in others it was assimilated. According to this school of thought the populations of Yorkshire, East Anglia, Northumberland and the Orkney and Shetland Islands are those populations with the fewest traces of ancient (Celtic) British continuation.
    Gaul. At the dawn of history in Europe, the Celts in present-day France were known as Gauls to the Romans. Gaul probably included Belgium and Switzerland. Their descendants were described by Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars. Eastern Gaul was the centre of the western La Tene culture. In later Iron Age Gaul, the social organisation was similar to that of the Romans, with large towns. From the third century, BC the Gauls adopted coinage, and texts with Greek characters are known in southern Gaul from the second century.Greek traders founded Massalia in about 600BC, with exchange up the Rhone valley, but trade was disrupted soon after 500BC and re-oriented over the Alps to the Po valley in Italy.
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598    ISRAEL. The prophets Daniel and Ezekiel —who went into exile with Judah's last king, Jehoiakim—recorded the period of Israelite captivity.  Those who were faithful to God during their captivity were blessed.  God preserved three men who were cast into a fiery furnace for refusing to bow down and worship idols.  A young man named Daniel likewise was cast into a den of lions for worshipping the Lord, and he was also saved.  This Daniel, who grew to become both a statesman and a prophet, eventually rose from royal hostage to third in command in Babylon.----But a leading scholar says it confirms his theory that some Jewish sects before Christ believed a messiah would save them - but not before he was killed and brought back to life after three days. Israel Knohl, Professor of Biblical Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says one line of the text tells the 'prince of princes' slain by the evil government, 'in three days you shall live'. He suggests the story refers to the death of a Jewish prince called Simon who led a revolt against King Herod. Daniel Boyarin, of the University of California at Berkeley, said that there was growing evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day. 

598     BC THE BIBLE Apologists proposal for a partial solution: In the 7th year of his reign, in the month of Kislev (December/January  598/97), Nebuchadnezzar himself left Babylon and undertook the subjection of  rebellious Judah. In that same month, King Jehoiakim died in Jerusalem. (On  the basis of a comparison with 2 Kings 24:6,8,10ff, with the Babylonian  Chronicle, Wiseman 73, lines 11-13, Kislev is the ninth month. In the twelfth   month, Adar, Jerusalem was taken. Jehoiachin's reign falls in these three   months.) It is not impossible that he was murdered by a political faction who  thereby sought more mild treatment for their country. His 18-year old son   Jehoiachin was raised to the throne (2 Kings 24:8). Three months later  Jerusalem was entirely surrounded by Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to the city of Judah (al-ya-ahu-du), and on the second day of the month of Adar   he comquered the city and took its king prisoner.Also F.F. Bruce writes that Jehoiakim died in Juda before the siege of Jerusalem began. This would mean that Jehoiakim was desecrated after his death and in this way the prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled. The passage in 2 Chronicles 36:5-6 does not speak explicitly about Jehoiakim's death. Thus, it can be seen as a parallel to Daniel 1:1-2 which speaks about an event in the lifetime of the king of Judah (see paragraph above). 2 Kings 24:6, nevertheless, remains unclear.  Part of the desecration prophecy was that Jehoiakim would "have no one to sit  upon the throne of David" (Jeremiah 36:30), but this too was proven false.  Upon Jehoiakim's death, his son Jehoiachin "reigned in his stead" for a period   of three months and ten days (2Chronicles 36:8-9, 2Kings 24:6-8). Also, there  are biblical genealogies that purport to show Jehoiakim as a direct ancestor  of Jesus (1 Chronicles 3:16-17, Matthew 1:11-12).Apologists say that if Jehoiakim had not been killed by his own people, on the condition that this supposition is true (see preceding paragraph), in all likelihood, Jehoiakim would have been put to death by the Babylonians. The Israelites anticipated what Nebuchadnezzar intended to do. In this case, most probable, Jehoiakim's son Jehoiachin would not have become king and Jeremiah's prophecy would have been fulfilled in its full sense. Jehoiachin's successor, Zedekiah, was no descendant of Jehoiakim, but his brother.The double reckoning of Jehoiachin in Matthew 1:11-12 is made possible by the fact that the same Greek name can translate the two similar Hebrew names Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin.In this way in verse 11 Jehoiakim and in verse 12 Jehoiachin is meant. The verse Jeremiah 36:30 says that Jehoiakim's descendants will not be kings in Judah anymore. This does not mean that he cannot be an ancestor of the Messiah. Science and the BibleThe Bible and archaeology. The Bible and history and Biblical archaeology. According to one of the world's leading Biblical archaeologists, William G. Dever,"Archaeology certainly doesn't prove literal readings of the Bible...It calls them into question, and that's what bothers some people. Most people really  think that archaeology is out there to prove the Bible. No archaeologist thinks so." From the beginnings of what we call biblical archeology,  perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to  use archeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought  to work. William Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of  the "archeological revolution." Well, the revolution has come but not in the   way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archeology   raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the   New Testament than it provides answers, and that's very disturbing to some  people.Dever also wrote:  Archaeology as it is practiced today must be able to challenge, as well as  confirm, the Bible stories. Some things described there really did happen, but  others did not. The Biblical narratives about Abraham, Moses, Joshua and  Solomon probably reflect some historical memories of people and places, but  the 'larger than life' portraits of the Bible are unrealistic and contradicted  by the archaeological evidence.... I am not reading the Bible as Scripture… I am in fact not even a theist. My view all along—and especially in  the recent books—is first that the biblical narratives are indeed 'stories,'  often fictional and almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they  contain some valid historical information...Tel Aviv University archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog wrote in the Haaretz newspaper: This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of   Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did  not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12  tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is that the united monarchy  of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to  many that the God of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the  monarchy and not at Mount Sinai. Regarding the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said: "Really, it's a myth,"... "This is my career as an archaeologist. I should   tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem."

597     BC THE BIBLE The prophet Daniel states that in the third year of the reign of King   Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah (Daniel 1:1-2). The third year of  Jehoiakim's reign was 605 BC, at which time Nebuchadnezzar was not yet king of   Babylon. It was in 597 BC that Nebuchadnezzar takes Jerusalem, by then   Jehoiakim had died.Apologists respond that this is not a prophecy but a statement. Daniel 1:1 is a problem of dating.
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597 - Judahites deported to Babylon as slaves.
    Greek colonization at its height
    Florescence of Greek cities in Asia Minor
    Greek reasoningThe works of Homer, written in the eighth century BC, contain mythic stories that use gods to explain the formation of the world. However, only two centuries later, late in the sixth century BC, Xenophanes of Colophon began to question the Homeric accounts of the creation of nature and the gods. He wrote: "Homer and Hesiod attribute all things to the gods that among men are shame   and a disgrace" (frag. 11).  "God is one, greatest among gods and among men, in no way like men in form and  thought" (frag. 23).  "If oxen and horses and lions had hands or could paint and make things with  their hands like men, then they would paint the forms of gods and make their  bodies each according to their own shapes, horses like horses, oxen like oxen"  (frag. 15).According to David Furley, "the basis of [Xenophanes'] criticism appears to havebeen that he saw an inconsistency between the concept of god as something different from man, and the stories told about the gods, which made them behave as men do." In the same period, other Greek thinkers began to develop theories about the nature of the world that suggest that they believed that there were regularities in nature and that humans could use reasoning to develop a consistent story about the nature of the world. Thales of Miletus, c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC, proposed that all is water. Anaximenes of Miletus, c. 585 BC – c. 525 BC, claimed that air is the source of everything. Aristotle is, so far as we know, the first writer to give an extended, systematic treatment of the methods of human reasoning. He identified two major methods of reasoning, analysis and synthesis. In the first, we try to understand an object by looking at its component parts. In the second, we try to understand a class of objects by looking at the common properties of each object in that class. Aristotle developed what is known as syllogistic logic, which makes it possible to analyse reasoning in a way that ignores the content of the argument and focuses on the form or structure of the argument. In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle begins by pointing out that: "[If] no pleasure is a good, neither will any good be a pleasure." He then argues that this argument is an example of a rule of reasoning of the following form:  Premise: "Aristotle is Greek" and "All Greeks are human" Conclusion: "Aristotle is Human" Aristotle points out that by understanding the reasoning involved in this type of argument, we can know that whatever the As and Bs are, we can reach the same conclusion about the relationship between them. This is a simple and straightforward argument, but it is a sign of an amazing leap in understanding and research into reason and was the beginning of the development of formal logic.

    Rise of the empire of the Medes

    Etruscans extend their power over Latium
    596 BC ROME. Early Rome was the time of Kings. There were six kings           after  Romulus, the  last           three
        descendants of the Etruscan tribe of Tarquins. The penultimate king, Servius Tullius,     introduced social reform, dividing up the population and territory into four districts. The        population was also divided up into five classes. The poorest citizens were outside these              categories and were called proletarii. The rich (relics of the clan system) were the ones who        could afford to be centuria for the national levy, and who enjoyed all political privileges. At        the Popular Assembly the people were respresented by the centuria and each centuria had one vote

Rise of Persia

Spread of Buddhism in India

    596. 536BC THE BIBLE Another example is Isaiah's prophecy about Cyrus the Great. Traditionally, the entire book of Isaiah is believed to pre-date the rule of Cyrus by about 120 years. These particular passages (Isaiah 40-55, often referred to as Deutero-Isaiah) are believed by most modern critical scholars to have been added by another author toward the end of the Babylonian exile (ca. 536 BC).[43] Whereas Isaiah 1-39 (referred to as Proto-Isaiah) saw the destruction of Israel as imminent, and the restoration in the future, Deutero-Isaiah speaks of the destruction in the past (Isa 42:24-25), and the restoration as imminent (Isa 42:1-9). Notice, for example, the change in temporal perspective from (Isa 39:6-7), where the Babylonian Captivity is cast far in the future, to (Isa 43:14), where the Israelites are spoken of as already in Babylon. Unfulfilled propheciesFurther information: Bible prophecyThe Bible also contains prophecies that are disputed, includingThe Book of Joshua said that God would, without fail, drive out the Jebusites and Canaanites, among others(Joshua 3:9-10). We are told in Joshua 11:3-14,  that Jebusites were among a listing of other peoples whom Joshua, "cut down  until they had not a single survivor." (Joshua 11:8) "Their cities were destroyed," (Joshua 11:12) and the people living there were "put to the sword, destroying them all". The Israelites then "plundered the cities," (Joshua 11:14) .However, according to Joshua 15:63, and Joshua 17:12-13, those tribes were not driven out.Later in Joshua 21:43-45 we are told :"So the LORD gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their  forefathers, and they took possession of it and settled there. The LORD gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their forefathers. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the LORD handed all their enemies over to them. Not one of all the LORD's good promises to the house of  Israel failed; every one was fulfilled."However, the Book of Judges said that only part of the country was conquered "after the death of Joshua" and the Canaanites were still a group to be reckoned with(Judges 1:21, Judges 3:5).Apologists argue that it is true that the Israelites could not drive out all Canaanite tribes in the lifetime of Joshua. According to F.F. Bruce there remained even several Canaanite fortified positions strung along the Plain of Jezreel, from the Mediterranean coast to the Jordan and the stronghold of Jerusalem as a Canaanite (Jebusite) enclave.The book of Joshua, with the above mentioned passages and the book of Judges (chapter 1) delineate which towns could not be defeated, and that the Israelites had to accept Canaanites living next to them. This supports the contention that the Bible does not palliate historical facts but reports what happened even if it causes tensions concerning prophecy and its fulfillment. On the other hand we have to see that the main content of this prophecy was fulfilled because the Israelites could occupy Canaan by defeating its inhabitants although the complete seizure took place only in the time of monarchy (David defeated the Jebusites in Jerusalem and made it the capital of his empire.

594                                            Solon's reforms in Athens. Solon becomes sole Archon. Introduces new, milder laws to replace those of Dracon, creates a court of citizens and reforms election of magistrates

587    -586  -  Vanquished  Jews  deported to Babylon. Nebuchadrezzar takes Jerusalem

    586    Babylonians capture JerusalemNebuchadrezzar II of Babylon sacks Jerusalem, and takes the people of Judah into Babylon in captivity.  He begins building the hanging gardens of Babylon. BCPALESTINE Judah was conquered by Babylonia, which destroyed Jerusalem and exiled most of the Jews living there. Nebuchadnezzar entered Jerusalem. The Temple was sacked and set fire to, and razed to the ground. The Royal Palace and all the great houses were destroyed, the population carried off in chains to Babylon. And they lamented on their long march into exile.
568    BC LEBANON.THE BIBLE Tyre harbour Ezekiel predicts that the ancient city of Tyre will be utterly destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and "made a bare rock" that will"never be rebuilt" (Ezekiel 26:1, 26:7-14, 26:32). However, Tyre withstood Nebuchadrezzar's siege for 13 years, ending in a compromise in which the royal family was taken into exile but the city survived intact.Apologists note that the prophecy states that "many nations" wouldaccomplish the destruction of Tyre, and claim that this refers to later conquerors (Ezekiel 26:3), but skeptics counter that this was a reference to the "many nations" of Nebuchadrezzar's multinational force (Nebuchadrezzar was described by Ezekiel as "king of kings", i.e., an overking, a ruler over many nations), and that subsequent conquerors didn't permanently destroy Tyre either (it is now the fourth-largest city in Lebanon). Ezekiel himself admitted later that Nebuchadnezzar could not defeat Tyre (Ezekiel 29:18). A prophet does not only utter God's word without own consideration, but plays a part in communicating God's will. Ezekiel seems to have overstepped this responsibility by exaggerating the punishment for Tyre. Ezekiel said Egypt would be made an uninhabitedwasteland for forty years  (Ezekiel 29:10-14), and Nebuchadrezzar would be allowed to plunder it (Ezekiel  29:19-20) as compensation for his earlier failure to plunder Tyre (see above).  However, the armies of Pharaoh Amasis II defeated the Babylonians. History  records that this Pharaoh (also known as Ahmose II) went on toenjoy a long  and prosperous reign; Herodotus writes that: It is said that it was during the reign of Ahmose II that Egypt attained its highest level of prosperity both in respect of what the river gave the land  and in respect of what the land yielded to men and that the number of  inhabited cities at that time reached in total 20,000.The prophecy in chapter 29 dates in December 588—January 587. 20 years later, in the year 568, Nebuchadnezzar attacked Egypt. F.F. Bruce writes still more exactly that the Babylonien king invaded Egypt already after the siege of Tyre 585—573 BC and replaced the pharao Hophra (Apries) by Amasis:The siege of Tyre was followed by operations against Egypt itself. Hophra was  defeated, deposed and replaced by Amasis, an Egyptian general. But in568 BC Amasis revolted against Nebuchadnezzar, who then invadedand occupied part of the Egyptian frontier lands.Flavius Josephus even writes in his Antiquities, citing the 4th century Greek writer Megasthenes that Nebuchadnezzar had control of all northern Africa unto present day Spain:Megasthenes also, in his fourth book of his Accounts of India, makes mention of these things, and thereby endeavors to show that this king (Nebuchadnezzar) exceeded Hercules in fortitude, and in the greatness of his actions; for he saith that he conquered a great part of Libya and Iberia.On the other hand Nebuchadnezzar makes no mention of this campaign against Egypt in his inscriptions, at least that are currently known. It is too simple to argue with Herodotus, especially because his credibility was ever since contested.  The forty years are not to understand as an exact number. This figure became a significant period of chastisement to the Hebrews remembering the forty years in the desert after the exodus from Egypt.

    567-367- ROME. Plebeians are declared eligible for the post of Roman consul, leveling the rights  of          patricians and rich plebeians and merging the two groups. This creates a new aristo         cracy  which comes to be known as the nobility. The nobility soon assumes all political power and        the Senate becomes  its obedient tool. The vast mass of poor plebeians meanwhile have        gained nothing and has become even more impoverished.

563    The Buddha is born, prince Siddartha Gautama to 483

560    INDIA. Indian reasoning Indian logicTwo of the six Indian schools of thought deal with logic: Nyaya and Vaisheshika. The Nyaya Sutras of Aksapada Gautama constitute the core texts of the Nyaya school, one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy. This realist school developed a rigid five-member schema of inference involving an initial premise, a reason, an example, an application and a conclusion. The idealist Buddhist philosophy became the chief opponent to the Naiyayikas. Nagarjuna, the founder of the Madhyamika "Middle Way" developed an analysis known as the "catuskoti" or tetralemma. This four-cornered argumentation systematically examined and rejected the affirmation of a proposition, its denial, the joint affirmation and denial, and finally, the rejection of its affirmation and denial. But it was with Dignaga and his successor Dharmakirti that Buddhist logic reached its height. Their analysis centered on the definition of necessary logical entailment, "vyapti", also known as invariable concomitance or pervasion. To this end a doctrine known as "apoha" or differentiation was developed. This involved what might be called inclusion and exclusion of defining properties. The difficulties involved in this enterprise, in part, stimulated the neo-scholastic school of Navya-Nyaya, which developed a formal analysis of inference in the 16th century.

560 GRECO PERSIAN WARS. The famous Lydian king Croesus succeeded his father Alyattes in around 560 BC and set about conquering the other Greek city states of Asia Minor.The Persian prince Cyrus led a rebellion against the last Median king Astyages in 553 BC. Although the Persians had been, until this point, a rather backward and irrelevant part of the Median empire, Cyrus was a grandson of Astyages and was moreover supported by part of the Median aristocracy. By 550 BC, the rebellion was over, and Cyrus had emerged victorious, founding the Achaemenid Empire in place of the Median kingdom in the process.[32] Croesus saw the disruption in the Median Empire and Persia as an opportunity to extend his realm and asked the oracle of Delphi whether he should attack them. The Oracle  replied the famously ambiguous answer that "if Croesus was to cross the Halys he would destroy a great empire". Blind to the ambiguity of this prophecy, Croesus attacked the Persians, but was eventually defeated and Lydia fell to Cyrus.

559    Cyrus the Great founds Persian empire

    The Achaemenid Empire, 559 BC–330 BCAlexander of Macedon - referred to as "the accursed" in the Zoroastrian Middle Persian Book of Arda Viraz - invaded Achaemenid territory

551    Birth of Con Fu Tze to 497Confucius (551-479 BCE) was an older contemporary of Lao Tzu.  Confucianism grew out of a violent period in China, where warring factions divided the country.  Yet the time of Confucius saw an abatement of this barbarous imperial rule.
    One of Confucius' primary beliefs was that a man must think for himself.  This notion was coupled with the concept of "chun tzu," a term which represents the ideal man whose character embodies benevolence and whose acts are in accordance with rightness.  Like the Tao Te Ching, Analects heavily concerns itself with the art of politics, but further avouches that politics is only an extension of a society's individual morals.Confucius traveled to a number of different states within China, in an attempt to spread his ideals.  However, he was largely unsuccessful.  His teachings centered on moral character, primarily Virtue (te) and the Way (tao).  Virtue, which is in part a gift from Heaven, is what makes up a person's character; the Way represents the path of a particular person in question; thus, one individual's Way was separate and distinct from another's.  According to Confucius:I set my heart on the way, base myself onVirtue, lean upon benevolence for support and take my recreation in the arts.Benevolence (jen, or good will), related to Virtue and pivotal to Confucian behavior, is dependent upon one's own efforts.  The goal is to become as "good" an individual as possible, ignoring petty worries about success or failure.  Confucius did not forecast success either in this world or the next, for as he "did not understand even life," how could he "understand death"?  Hence, there is no assurance of an afterlife in Analects.  Instead, benevolence is observed for its own sake.The most elevated individual, according to Confucius, is the "sage" (shang jen).  This rare, utmost benevolent man—indeed, a man who has advanced beyond benevolence—even causes Confucius to ask:  "How dare I claim to be a sage or a benevolent man?"  He was once asked:  "If there were a man who gave extensively to the common people and brought help to the multitude, what would you think of him?  Could he be called benevolent?"  To which Confucius replied:  "It is no longer a matter of benevolence with such a man.  If you must describe him, `sage' is, perhaps, the right word."  Further, Confucius declared, "I have no hopes of becoming a sage," though he did acknowledge that such men exist.Lower down on this benevolence scale is the "good" man (shan jen).  Good men commonly labor in government, for they are responsible for doing good works:How true is the saying that after a state has been ruled by good men it is possible to get the better of cruelty and do away with killing.Below the good man is the "complete" man.  Such a person "remembers what is right at the sight of profit and is ready to lay down his life in the face of danger."  Such terms are used in Analects to describe the gentleman (chun tzu), or the benevolent man, who, according to Confucius approaches the ideal moral character that is within easy reach of all men (certainly only a few can become sages or governors, to work for the common good of the people, but all men can aspire to be gentlemen).  Gentlemen include those in authority, as opposed to "small" men (hiao jen), those who are ruled.  Gentlemen possess a highly cultivated moral character; small men do not.  Benevolence, then, is the gentleman's most important quality:If the gentleman forsakes jen (benevolence), in what way can he make a name for himself?  The gentleman never deserts benevolence, not even for as long as it takes to eat a meal.  If he hurries and stumbles, one may be sure that it is in benevolence that he does so.The message of benevolence, then, is as follows:  Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.The method of benevolence is called shu, which is one aspect of the way of the Master.  The other aspect is known as chung, or "doing one's best."  It is through chung that a person puts into practice what he has discerned by the method of shu.  When asked of the way in which a subject should treat his ruler, for instance, Confucius replies:The ruler should employ the services of his subjects in accordance with the rites.  A subject should serve his ruler by doing his best.The rites referred to also involve shu and chung, and direct the gentleman's behavior both personally and politically.  It follows that one must do good in the personal and family realm just as he would in the political, and vice-versa:While at home hold yourself in a respectful attitude; when serving in an official capacity be reverent; when dealing with others do your best.  These are qualities that cannot be put aside, even if you go and live among the barbarians.The culmination of this devout respectfulness and reverence is love for one's fellow man.  The Confucian basis of morality is grounded on this natural, sincere love.  And the love shared between father and son, Confucius felt, is the driving force of morality in society:Being good as a son and obedient as a young man is, perhaps, the root of a man's character.In other words, one merely takes the goodness discovered within the family and extends it to the common people.  Thus, the gentleman achieves benevolence—"is generous and caring ...  and is just."There are other virtues which the gentleman possesses.  Among them are wisdom ("intelligence," or chih) and courage (yung):The man of wisdom is never in two minds; the man of benevolence never worries; a man of courage is never afraid.A man possessing wisdom can always distinguish between right and wrong.  However, a man whose wisdom is blended with courage, rules over others.  Confucius says, "I was not born with knowledge, but ...  I am quick to seek it."  In short, according to Analects, to know is to "say you know when you know, and to say you do not know when you do not, that is knowledge."  The effect of such honest self-appraisal would be that "where a gentleman is ignorant, one would expect him not to offer any opinion."  However, Confucius warns that courage and wisdom can prove to be double-edged swords.  Thus, morality is higher than they both:For the gentleman it is morality that is supreme.  Possessed of courage but devoid of morality, a gentleman will make trouble while a small man will be a brigand.Another highly touted virtue is hsin, which, translated, denotes trustworthiness, or being true to one's word.  Hsin includes promise-keeping and matching one's words with deeds, for "the gentleman is ashamed of his word out-stripping his deed," and "claims made immodestly are difficult to live up to."  Therefore, the gentleman "puts his words into action before allowing his words to follow his action."Two additional virtues put forth in Analects are reverence (ching) and respectfulness (kung).  Ching is the awareness of one's huge responsibility to promote the welfare of the common people, and is connected with sacrifice.  To follow kung is to do away with insult and humiliation.  The gentleman is "respectful towards others and observant of the rites ...  of morality"; furthermore, he is "respectful when it comes to his [personal] demeanor."  Consequently, if a person possesses kung, treating others with respect, it is impossible for others to address him with disdain.It is with these virtues that the gentleman/ ruler/Emperor conducts the affairs of government, as mandated by the command of Heaven (t'ien ming).  In fact, it is a major concern of Heaven that the welfare of the people be maintained; thus, the Emperor must rule in virtue and by the Decree of Heaven.  If he should rule for his own sake, Heaven will withdraw the decree, and he will be deposed.The Emperor is most humble in his high station:[The Emperor] stands in awe of three things.  He is in awe of the Decree of Heaven.  He is in awe of great men.  He is in awe of the words of the sages.  The small man, being ignorant of the Decree of Heaven, does not stand in awe of it.  He treats great men with insolence and the words of the sages with derision.Hence, t'ien ming (Heaven's decree) is what a man ought to do—which may differ from what another man "ought" to do.  Ming (fate, fortune), however, is concerned with Destiny, and the bringing about of what will come to pass.  Whereas t'ien ming's "Heavenly decree" is understandable and must be obeyed by the gentleman, ming is a mystery best left alone.  T'ien ming, for instance, may decree that someone be executed for committing a crime; it is decreed by law and Heaven that he must die, and the action "ought" to be carried out.  Ming, on the other hand, would rule in instances such as an earthquake or flood; and, if something is destined to be, according to Confucius, it is futile try to change the natural course of events.The ruler, then, should focus on those areas where he can make a difference:  the morality and welfare of the common people (min).  The ruler, in order to merit trust, must provide the people with "enough food, give them enough arms"; but, "when there is no trust, the common people will have nothing to stand on."In further advising rulers, Confucius recommends:In administering your government, what need is there for you to kill?  Just desire the good yourself and the common people will be good.  The virtue of the gentleman is like wind; the virtue of the small man is like grass.  Let the wind blow over the grass and it is sure to bend.Truly, it is this exceptional regard for the commoner—the peasant, the laborer, the farmer, the beggar—that constitutes a central thread of Confucius' Analects.  Throughout, the importance of proper government cannot be overstated.Though the teachings of Confucius are in some ways agnostic, and often pessimistic, his central, highly humanistic points are encouraging:  Man thinks for himself and strives to promote benevolence in his family and government; the ruler, again in benevolence, follows the Decree of Heaven in guiding the common people, whom he loves as if they were his own family members; and, since benevolence fuels the goodness of society, it is Confucius' wish that all men, both great and small, will come to fathom and profit by this simple human quality.

    Buddhism.  Its founder is considered Siddhartha Gautama, who  was proclaimed the Illuminated.  He was born in northern India  in the VI century BC, during the formation of slavery in the large states.  It considers  human life to be nothing but suffering, whose  causes are found hidden in  desires and passions, and which must be overcome.   Life is reduced to having  religious aspirations and to carrying on a virtuous life, in order to be freed of every desire and to reach the state of Nirvana, which is the conscious removal of all earthly desires.   It supposes that the salvation of  man does not depend on his  belonging to a caste (including that of  the slaves) nor of the sacrifices that he has  made  to the divinity, but only if he has consecrated himself  to a virtuous life.  Buddha condemns Brahmanism because it gives  privileges of the God-Brahmins.  Its social program excludes any transformation and is limited to proclaiming personal salvation, the employment of non-violence against evil and self-perfectability in the  moral sphere.  In later centuries,  salvation came to depend on the divinity.  With the development of feudal dispersion, Buddhism lost much of  its importance. Some countries are trying to resuscitate it and turn it into a national religion...

550    BC THE BIBLE On the other hand it can be mentioned that the Persian king Cyrus after overthrowing Media in 550 BC did not treat the Medes as a subject nation.  Instead of treating the Medes as a beaten foe and a subject nation, he had   himself installed as king of Media and governed Media and Persia as a dual   monarchy, each part of which enjoyed equal rights.Jeremiah prophesied at the height of the Median empire's power, and thus he was probably influenced to see the Medes as the nation that will conquer Babylon.
       
    Several proposals were brought forth for "Darius the Mede" out of which one says that Cyrus the Great is meant in Daniel 5:31.  Jehoiakim prophecies


550     BCLydians produce separate gold and silver coinsDuring the reign of Croesus the Lydians began to produce coins of pure  metal instead of electrum. This is the world's first bimetallic coinage. Electrum 1/6 stater, from LydiaAccording to the Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, the Lydians were the first people to have used gold and silver coinage.

He was almost correct. The earliest coins are found mainly in the parts of modern Turkey that formed the ancient kingdom of Lydia, but are made from a naturally occurring mixture of gold and silver called electrum.

These coins were first produced in the seventh century BC and had a design on one side only; the other was marked with simple punches.

A Strict weight system
Gold croesid coin, from Lydia
Although irregular in size and shape, these early electrum coins were minted according to a strict weight-standard. The denominations ranged from one stater (weighing about 14.1 grams) down through half-staters, thirds, sixths, twelfths, 1/24ths and 1/48ths to 1/96th stater (about 0.15gm).

It cannot have been easy to tell some of the smaller denominations apart. We must assume that for many transactions the coins were weighed rather than counted.

The spread of electrum coinage
Electrum stater with a seal, from Phocaea, Ionia (modern Turkey)
From Lydia electrum coinage soon spread to the Greek cities of coastal Asia Minor. From there it reached the Greeks of the islands and the mainland.

It is often difficult to tell where a particular coin was produced, because none of these early coins was inscribed with a place-name. Educated guesses are possible, however. One type of coin has the design of a seal on its obverse. The Greek for seal is 'phoce' and the coins are usually attributed to the Greek city of Phocaea.

Names on electrum coins
Electrum stater inscribed with the name of Phanes, from Western Asia Minor (modern Turkey)
Some of the earliest Lydian electrum coins are inscribed with names in ancient Lydian script. Two individuals are known: Walwel and Kalil. It is unclear whether these are names of kings or just rich men who produced the earliest coins.

The earliest legend in Greek on an electrum coin reads 'I am the badge of Phanes'. We cannot be certain who this Phanes was, but it seems that he was placing his badge on coins as a guarantee The pot-hoard from the Temple of Artemis, Asia Minor (modern Turkey)of their quality.

The earliest coin hoard
The earliest known hoard of electrum coins (and thus the earliest known coin hoard) was found during the British Museum excavations of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in 1904-5. The hoard consisted of 19 coins which had been placed in a small pot and buried alongside another 74 coins in the foundations of the temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, in about 600 BC.

550    Cyrus of Persia subdues Medes

547Cyrus conquers Armenia and Capadoccia
       Croesus King of Lydia is captured by the Persians As a
       result, use of coins spreads to Persia. Unlike the Greek.
       the  Persians use mainly gold coins in preference to
       silver. Athenian Owls producedThese coins are first
       produced by the tyrant Peisistratus, using silver from the
       Laurion mines 25 miles south of Athens     

    546    Cyrus II conquers Lydia. Battle of Sradis. Croesus, last king of lYida, defeated by Cyrus. Persians overrun Asia Minor.

    539    PERSIA. Cyrus, ruler of Persia, to conquer Babylon and to decree that Judah was to retur to the land of Israel; the Jews began to rebuild their country.  The first returning exiles reconstructed the temple, but it was a poor substitute for Solomon's glorious edifice.  Seventy-five years later, Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem's walls, a feat accomplished despite the opposition of Samaria and Ammon. Greeks defeat Charatgenians in battle. Cyrus conquers Babylonia and makes Judah and Phoenicia into Persian provinaces. PALESTINE.     : Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylonia and he permitted the Jews to return to Judea, a district of Palestine. Under Persian rule  the Jews were allowed considerable autonomy. They rebuilt the walls of  Jerusalem and codified the Mosaic law, the Torah, which became the code of   social life and religious observance. The Jews were bound to a universal  God.

539     BC. THE BIBLE Isaiah 13:17, Isaiah 21:2, Jeremiah 51:11, and Jeremiah 51:27-28 predicted  that Babylon would be destroyed by the Medes, Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz and  Elamites. The Persians under Cyrus the Great captured Babylon in 539 BC. Daniel 5:31 incorrectly stated that it was Darius the Mede who captured  Babylon.  Christian apologists state that the prophecy in Isaiah 13:21 could possibly have been directed originally against Assyria whose capital Ninive was defeated 612 BC by a combined onslaught of the Medes and Babylonians. According to this explanation the prophecy was later updated and referred to Babylon   not recognizing the rising power of Persia.

    538    Fall of Babylon to the Persians. Edict of Cyrus allows some Jewish exiles to return to Judah.

        PALESTINE Persian rule (538 BCE)After the Persian Empire was established, Jews were allowed to return to what their holy books had termed the Land of Israel, and having been granted some autonomy by the Persian administration, it was during this period that the Second Temple in Jerusalem was built.[7][52] Sebastia, near Nablus, was the northernmost province of the Persian administration in Palestine, and its southern borders were drawn at Hebron.[7][53] Some of the local population served as soldiers and lay people in the Persian administration, while others continued to agriculture. In 400 BCE, the Nabataeans made inroads into southern Palestine and built a separate civilization in the Negev that lasted until 160 BCE.Jews  allowed  back  in Jerusalem after exile in Babylon.  Mene mene tekkel upharsin.    -  the handwriting on the wall. BC.  TALMUD. The Sadducees were a Jewish sect which flourished during the Second Temple period. One of their main arguments with the Pharisees (later known as Rabbinic Judaism) was over their rejection of an Oral Law as well as denying a resurrection after death. The disagreement was not strictly speaking about the Talmud, as this had not been written at the time.

535    Tarquinius superbus (the Proud) last king of Rome –to 510. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (535 – 496 BC) was the legendary seventh and final King of Rome, reigning from 535 BC until the popular uprising in 509 BC that led to the establishment of the Roman Republic. He is commonly known as Tarquin the Proud, from his cognomen Superbus, a Latin word meaning "proud, arrogant, lofty." The Tarquins were of Etruscan origin. According to Roman tradition, Tarquinius Superbus gained the kingship by ordering the assassination of his much-admired predecessor, Servius Tullius.Tarquin's father, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, was the fifth King of Rome, reigning 616-579 BC. His grandfather was said to be Demaratus the Corinthian, an immigrant from the Greek city of Corinth. Priscus himself originated in the Etruscan city of Tarquinia. Disgruntled with his opportunities there, Priscus migrated to Rome with his wife Tanaquil, at her suggestion. On their arrival, Tanaquil interpreted an omen as predicting Priscus' future as King of Rome.Superbus was not the immediate successor of his father Priscus, since Servius Tullius took the throne on Priscus' death.Ancient accounts of the Regal period mingle history and legend. The reign of Tarquin is typically described as a tyranny that justified the abolition of the monarchy. His kingship ended in 509 BC, after his son Sextus Tarquinius raped Lucretia, a married noblewoman known as an exemplar of virtue. This outrage inspired an uprising led by the aristocrat Lucius Junius Brutus, which resulted in the expulsion of Tarquin and his family from Rome. Early life and familyTarquin's parents were the fifth king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, and his wife Tanaquil. Both Tarquin and his brother Aruns married daughters of Servius Tullius, the sixth king; both daughters were named Tullia, by Roman custom. Tarquin's mother, Queen Tanaquil, had aided in the selection of Servius Tullius as heir to the Roman throne when Lucius Tarquinius Priscus was assassinated by the sons of the previous king, Ancus Marcius, in 579 BC. Tarquin also had a sister, Tarquinia, the mother of Lucius Junius Brutus. According to Livy, the younger of the two daughters of Servius Tullius was of fiercer temperament than her sister, yet she originally married Aruns, who had a milder disposition than his elder brother. The younger Tullia came to despise Aruns and developed a plot with Tarquin. Together, they arranged the murder of their respective siblings, in quick succession, and were thereafter married to each other.Tarquin had three sons: Titus, Aruns, and Sextus. Overthrow of Servius TulliusTullia continued to encourage Tarquin to increase his own position. In time, she convinced him to attempt to usurp the throne. Tarquin began to solicit the support of the patrician senators, especially those families who had been given senatorial rank by his father.He bestowed presents upon them, and to them he criticised the king Servius Tullius.In time, Tarquin felt ready to seize the throne. He went to the Senate-house with a group of armed men, sat himself on the throne, and summoned the senators to attend upon King Tarquin. He then spoke to the senators, criticising Servius: for being a slave born of a slave; for failing to be elected by the Senate and the people during an interregnum, as had been the tradition for the election of kings of Rome; for being gifted the throne by a woman; for favouring the lower classes of Rome over the wealthy and for taking the land of the upper classes for distribution to the poor; and for instituting the census so that the wealth of the upper classes might be exposed in order to excite popular envy. Immediately afterward, Servius Tullius was murdered in the streets of Rome by a group of men sent by Tarquin, possibly on the advice of Tullia. Tullia then drove in her chariot to the senate house, where she hailed her husband as king. He ordered her to return home, away from the tumult. She drove along the Cyprian street, where the king had been murdered, and turned towards the Orbian Hill, in the direction of the Esquiline Hill. There she encountered her father's body and, on a street later to become known as wicked street because of her actions, she drove her chariot over her father's body. Livy also says that she took a part of her father's body, and his blood, and returned with it to her own and her husband's household gods, and that by the end of her journey she was, herself, covered in the blood. Reign Tarquinius Superbus makes himself King; from The Comic History of Rome by Gilbert Abbott A Beckett (c.1850s)Tarquin commenced his reign by refusing burial to his predecessor Servius, thereby earning for himself the name "Superbus"('proud'), and then putting to death a number of the leading senators, whom he suspected of remaining loyal to Servius. By not replacing the slain senators, and not consulting the Senate on all matters of government, he diminished both the size and also the authority of the Senate. In another break with tradition, he also judged capital criminal cases without the advice of counsellors, thereby creating fear amongst those who might think to oppose him. Early in his reign Tarquin called a meeting of the Latin leaders to discuss the bonds between Rome and the Latin towns. The meeting was held at a grove sacred to the goddess Ferentina. At the meeting Turnus inveighed against the arrogance of Tarquinius, and warned his countrymen against putting trust in him. Tarquinius then secretly bribed Turnus' servant to store a large number of swords in Turnus' lodging. Tarquin called together the Latin leaders, and accused Turnus of plotting a coup. The Latin leaders accompanied Tarquin to Turnus' lodging and, the swords then being discovered, Turnus' guilt was then speedily inferred, and he was condemned and was thrown into a pool of water in the grove, and a wooden frame ("cratis") placed over his head, into which stones were thrown, thereby drowning him. The meeting of the Latin chiefs then continued, and Tarquin persuaded them to renew their treaty with Rome and become her allies rather than her enemies, and it was agreed that the troops of the Latins would attend at the grove on an appointed day to form a united military force with the troops of Rome. This was done, and Tarquin formed combined units of Roman and Latin troops.Tarquin next began a war against the Volsci. He took the wealthy town of Suessa Pometia, with the spoils of which he commenced the erection of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus which his father had vowed. He also celebrated a triumph for his victory. He was next engaged in a war with Gabii, one of the Latin cities, which had rejected the Latin treaty with Rome. Unable to take the city by force of arms, Tarquin had recourse to a clever stratagem. His son, Sextus, pretending to be ill-treated by his father, and covered with the bloody marks of stripes, fled to Gabii. The infatuated inhabitants entrusted him with the command of their troops, and when he had obtained the unlimited confidence of the citizens, he sent a messenger to his father to inquire how he should deliver the city into his hands. The king, who was walking in his garden when the messenger arrived, made no reply, but kept striking off the heads of the tallest poppies with his stick. Sextus took the hint. He put to death or banished, on false charges, all the leading men of the place, and then had no difficulty in compelling it to submit to his father.Tarquin married his daughter to Octavius Mamilius, one of the leading men of Tusculum, and argued by some to be the most eminent of the Latin chiefs. This alliance secured Tarquin powerful assistance in the field.Tarquin also agreed a peace with the Aequi, and renewed the treaty of peace between Rome and the Etruscans. According to the Fasti Triumphales, Tarquin also won a victory over the Sabines.Tarquin completed the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill which had been vowed and possibly begun by his father. This involved the leveling of the top of the Tarpeian Rock that overlooked the Forum and the removal of a number of its ancient Sabine shrines. He also ordered underground works carried out on the cloaca maxima, and the erection of benches at the circus maximus.He established Roman colonies at the towns of Signia and Circeii.Tarquinius Superbus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, depicting the king receiving a laurel; the poppies in the foreground refer to the "tall poppy" allegory (see below)According to one story, when Tarquin was approached by the Cumaean Sibyl, she offered him nine books of prophecy at an exorbitant price. Tarquin refused abruptly, and the Sibyl proceeded to burn three of the nine. She then offered him the remaining books, but at the same price. Tarquin hesitated, but refused again. The Sibyl then burned three more books and again offered Tarquin the three remaining Sibylline Books at the original price. At last Tarquin accepted. As the Sibylline Books were housed in the fortress temple of Jupiter, their legend has been associated with him.Overthrow and exileTarquinius next went to war with the Rutuli. According to Livy, the Rutuli were, at that time, a very wealthy nation and Tarquinius was keen to obtain the booty which would come with victory over the Rutuli in order, in part, to assuage the anger of his subjects.Tarquin unsuccessfully sought to take the Rutulian capital Ardea by storm, and subsequently began an extensive siege of the city.Meanwhile, the king's son, Sextus Tarquinius snuck away from the camp to Collatia, and raped Lucretia, a beautiful noblewoman, who consequently committed suicide. Lucretia's kinsman Lucius Junius Brutus (himself a member of the Tarquin dynasty) and Lucretia's widowed husband, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus (grand-nephew of Tarquinus Priscus and thus also a member of the dynasty) led the revolt, along with Publius Valerius Poplicola, and Lucretia's aging father, Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus. That uprising resulted in the exile or Regifugium, after a reign of twenty-five years, of Tarquin and his family, and the establishment of the Roman Republic, with Brutus and Collatinus as the first consuls.It is unclear what was the outcome of the siege of Ardea, or indeed the war against the Rutuli.Tarquin and his two eldest sons Titus and Aruns went into exile in Caere. After his exile, Tarquin made a number of attempts to regain the throne. At first he sent ambassadors to the Senate to request the return of his family's personal effects which had been seized in the coup. In secret, while the Senate debated his request, the ambassadors met with and subverted a number of the leading men of Rome to the royal cause, in the Tarquinian conspiracy. The conspirators included two of Brutus' brothers-in-law, and his two sons Titus and Tiberius. The conspiracy was discovered, and the conspirators executed. Although the Senate had initially agreed to Tarquin's request for a return of his family's effects, the decision was reconsidered and revoked after the discovery of the conspiracy, and the royal property was given over to be plundered by the Roman populace. Tarquin next attempted to regain Rome by force of arms. He first gained the support of the cities of Veii and Tarquinii, recalling to the former their regular losses of war and land to the Roman state, and to the latter his family ties. The armies of the two cities were led by Tarquin against Rome in the Battle of Silva Arsia. The king commanded the Etruscan infantry. Although the result initially appeared uncertain, the Romans were victorious. Both Brutus (the consul) and Aruns (the king's son) were killed in battle.Tarquin's final attempt relied on military support from Lars Porsenna, king of Clusium. The war led to the siege of Rome, and finally a peace treaty. However, Tarquin failed to achieve his aim of regaining the throne. Tarquinius and his family left Clusium, and instead sought refuge in Tusculum with his son-in-law Octavius Mamilius.Tarquin died in exile at Cumae, Campania in 496 BC.Cultural referencesAccording to Livy, Tarquin cut off the heads of the tallest poppies in his garden as an allegory to instruct his son Sextus to pacify a recently-conquered enemy city by executing its leading citizens. This is the one of many stories which leads to the modern expression of "Tall Poppy Syndrome" to describe the phenomenon of tearing down individuals who rise too far above the majority. A quotation concerning Tarquin and the poppy allegory appears in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.Patrick Henry refers to Tarquin in his famous speech ending, "Tarquin and Caesar each had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell and George the Third ... may profit by their example." To yells of "treason", Henry added, "If this be treason then make the most of it!"

        CORIOLANUS."Virgilia bewailing the absence of Coriolanus" by Thomas WoolnerThe play opens in Rome shortly after the expulsion of the Tarquin kings. There are riots in progress, after stores of grain were withheld from ordinary citizens. The rioters are particularly angry at Caius Martius, a brilliant Roman general whom they blame for the grain being taken away. The rioters encounter a patrician named Menenius Agrippa, as well as Caius Martius himself. Menenius tries to calm the rioters, while Martius is openly contemptuous, and says that the plebeians were not worthy of the grain because of their lack of military service. Two of the tribunes of Rome, Brutus and Sicinius, privately denounce Martius. He leaves Rome after news arrives that a Volscian army is in the field.The commander of the Volscian army, Tullus Aufidius, has fought Martius on several occasions and considers him a blood enemy. The Roman army is commanded by Cominius, with Martius as his deputy. While Cominius takes his soldiers to meet Aufidius' army, Martius leads a rally against the Volscian city of Corioles. The siege of Corioles is initially unsuccessful, but Martius is able to force open the gates of the city, and the Romans conquer it. Even though he is exhausted from the fighting, Martius marches quickly to join Cominius and fight the other Volscian force. Martius and Aufidius meet in single combat, which only ends when Aufidius' own soldiers drag him away from the battle.In recognition of his great courage, Cominius gives Caius Martius the cognomen of "Coriolanus". When they return to Rome, Coriolanus' mother Volumnia encourages her son to run for consul. Coriolanus is hesitant to do this, but he bows to his mother's wishes. He effortlessly wins the support of the Roman Senate, and seems at first to have won over the commoners as well. However, Brutus and Sicinius scheme to undo Coriolanus and whip up another riot in opposition to his becoming consul. Faced with this opposition, Coriolanus flies into a rage and rails against the concept of popular rule. He compares allowing plebeians to have power over the patricians to allowing "crows to peck the eagles". The two tribunes condemn Coriolanus as a traitor for his words, and order him to be banished. Coriolanus retorts that it is he who banishes Rome from his presence.After being exiled from Rome, Coriolanus seeks out Aufidius in the Volscian capital of Antium, and offers to let Aufidius kill him in order to spite the country that banished him. Moved by his plight and honoured to fight alongside the great general, Aufidius and his superiors embrace Coriolanus, and allow him to lead a new assault on the city.Rome, in its panic, tries desperately to persuade Coriolanus to halt his crusade for vengeance, but both Cominius and Menenius fail. Finally, Volumnia is sent to meet with her son, along with Coriolanus' wife Virgilia and child, and a chaste gentlewoman Valeria. Volumnia succeeds in dissuading her son from destroying Rome, and Coriolanus instead concludes a peace treaty between the Volscians and the Romans. When Coriolanus returns to the Volscian capital, conspirators, organised by Aufidius, kill him for his betrayal.

530    BC    PALESTINE.Cambyses, ruler of Persia.  The Persians ruled the land from about 530 to 331 B.C. Alexander the Great then conquered the Persian Empire. After Alexander's death in 323 B.C., his generals divided the empire. One of these generals, Seleucus, founded a dynasty that gained control of much of Palestine about 200 B.C. At first, the new rulers, called Seleucids, allowed the practice of Judaism. But later, one of the kings, Antiochus IV, tried to prohibit it.

    525    Persian conquest of AFRICA.Cambyses conquers Egypt, which is under Persian kings until 404.

    Persian Empire founded

522    IRAN. Darius was declared king (ruled 522–486 BC). He was to be arguably the greatest of the ancient Persian rulers.
 
        Avestan is an Eastern Old Iranian language that was used to compose the sacred hymns and canon of the Zoroastrian Avesta.

521    Darius I rules Persia .Persian empire divided into 20 satrapies (provinces) of which Egypt is one.

520    Work is resumed on the temple of Jerusalem –to 515.

510    Cleisthenes reforms the Athenian constitution.Tarquinius overthrown by rebellion.

510 GRECO PERSIAN WARS. Persia Persian warriors, possibly Immortals, a frieze in Darius's palace at Susa. Silicious glazed bricks, c. 510 BCThe Persian military consisted of a heterogeneous group of troops drawn from across the empire. However, according to Herodotus, there was at least a general conformity in the type of armour and style of fighting. The troops were, generally speaking, armed with a bow, 'short spear' and sword or axe, carried a wicker shield, and wore at most a leather jerkin, although metal armor of high quality is attested to have been worn by individuals of high stature. The style of fighting used by the Persians was probably to stand off from an enemy, using their bows (or equivalent) to wear down the enemy, before closing in to deliver the coup de grace with spear and sword. The first rank of Persian infantry formations, the so-called 'sparabara', had no bows, carried larger wicker shields and were sometimes armed with longer spears. Their role was to protect the back ranks of the formation.The cavalry probably fought as lightly armed missile cavalry.

509    Foundation of Roman Republic
ROME. -The last king, Tarquin the Proud was banished for his tyranny and the monarchy was abolished.  Political power was in the hands of the herary aristocracy known as patricians. The had the best lands, were of noble blood and the richest citizens. The masses were known as plebeians, the middle and poor peasants, the artesans and traders living in the city. Many fell into debt slavery while some became rich through trading or usury. The rich plebeians soon began to seek political rights on par with the patricians. The highest office was that of consul, elected annually, in command of the levy and were who convened the Senate and the comitia. The Senate consisted of 300 members, all from the patrician class. The Senate decided questions of internal and foreign policy and controlled the budget and state  property. The assemblies were the centuriate assembly and the plebeian tribal assembly, to which legislative functions were assigned early on. In spite of popular measures, the great weight the Senate carried gave the Republic an aristocratic character.

509    PROMETHEUS BOUND. by Aeschylus(525 - 456 B.C.)Type of work:Classical tragic drama Setting: A desolate Scythian cliff; remote antiquityPrincipal characters: Prometheus, the fire-bearing Titan demigodHephaestus, an Olympian fire godMight (Kratos) and Force (Bia), beings repre- senting Power and ViolenceOceanos, god of the sea, and brother to PrometheusIo, a river princessHermes, Zeus the chief Olympian god's winged messengerA Chorus composed of the daughters of Oceanos, who converse, comment, and sing throughout the playPlay Overview:Prologue: Like other works of the Classical Age, Prometheus Bound doesn't begin at the beginning, but leaps in medias res ("into the middle of things"), just as Prometheus, a defiant demigod, is brought in chains to be fettered to a desolate mountain crag. For the modern reader - as opposed to an Aeschylian audience, who would have already been conversant with the plot - a bit of background is in order.Prometheus was a god from the old order, the Titans, who had now all been overthrown by a group of young upstarts, the Olympians - all, that is, except for Prometheus. Rather than go down in honor, this half-god Prometheus, in order to avoid further violence, had chosen to desert over to the Olympian forces. In fact, he was instrumental in Zeus' ursurpation of the throne from the old Titan king Chronus. In the new order, Zeus stood as chief god.Now one of Zeus' first objectives was to destroy the race of men, who, until then, had been a primitive, unenlightened and miserable lot. Zeus' intent was to replace mankind with a new, more noble race, servile to the gods' every whim.When the destructive proclamation went out, however, Prometheus alone objected to Zeus' heartless proposal. He saw in man a spark of divine promise that even the gods might envy, and in order to save the human race, he willingly and courageously committed a crime: he brought fire down from heaven and taught the mortals how to use it. Furthermore, he tutored them in practical arts, applied sciences and philosophy, that he might edify, ennoble and empower them.But these saving acts were deemed highly treasonous; such knowledge in the hands of humans threatened to put them on an equal footing with the gods themselves. Furious, Zeus commanded the Olympian blacksmith god of fire, Hephaestus, and the gods of Might and Force, Kratos and Bia, to seize Prometheus and shackle him to a barren mountainside. But Hephaestus approached his task halfheartedly. He had been taught to respect deity and he sympathized with Prometheus - after all, it didn't seem right that a divine being should suffer such scornful abuse. Pangs of sorrow overwhelmed him; to think that this god was doomed to remain in chains as the solitary guardian of a lonely Scythian cliff for all time to come! The exchange between Hephaestus and Might (Kratos) showed clearly their separate sentiments. Even as the smithy was reasoning and pleading:Compassion will not move the mind of Zeus:All monarchs new to power show brutality.... How bitterly I hate my craftsman's cunning now!...  Prometheus! I lament your pain...  Might stood by complaining of Hephaestus' delay, and demanding full punishment:Now do your work - enough of useless pitying.How can you fail to loathe this god whom all gods hate,Who has betrayed to man the prize that was your right?...  The hammer! Strike, and rivet him against the rock!...  Teach this clever one he is less wise than Zeus.Now take your wedge of steel and with its cruel pointTransfix him! Drive it through his breast with all your strength!The smithy had no choice but to comply with his orders; and tied with bonds "as strong as adamant," Prometheus was left alone on the jagged face of the cliff. Before departing, the mighty Kratos hurled one last taunt at the Titan god, asking how his human friends could help him now, and chuckling at the foolish Titans who had named him Prometheus, "the Forethinker." It seemed now, Kratos pointed out, that Prometheus required a higher intelligence to do his thinking for him.The captive god called upon the wind, the waters, mother earth, and the sun to look on him and see how gods tortured a god. He bemoaned his invincible fate, puzzled that he should be punished simply for loving mankind.Presently, a chorus of the daughters of Oceanos, Prometheus' brother, came on the scene. Seeing the tragic yet defiant figure on the crag, they felt both pity and admiration, and listened as their uncle described the events that had brought him to his exile. The chorus stayed to provide comforting music and cheer.Next, Prometheus received separate visits from three characters - Oceanos himself, Io, and Hermes. Oceanos came with a plan. He would go before Zeus and convey his brother's sorrow and plead for forgiveness. He reasoned that if an apology were offered, and if the captive Titan subjected himself to Zeus' sovereignty, Prometheus might be granted a pardon. But Prometheus was outraged at this proposal; he was a god, and would not stoop to such an apology. Had not Zeus been the true traitor? Had he not betrayed and bound a fellow god?Oceanos begged his brother to allow him at least a word with Zeus on his behalf, but Prometheus dismissed his offer, calling it a "useless effort" and claiming that if Oceanos tried to intervene, he too would be in danger of punishment for siding with a rebel.Before his reluctant withdrawal, Oceanos chastised his brother for his arrogance and warned that he would someday be sorry for it. Prometheus responded that he would rather  suffer forever than beg forgiveness of Zeus. After he departed, Oceanos' daughters began to recite a lyrical passage, mourning Prometheus' predicament. As they sang, the Titan answered their lamentations, revealing a secret, an ancient prophecy, made known only to him, which stated that one day he would be freed from bondage and Zeus would be put under seige and defeated. Though he had no knowledge of how or when it would happen, this foreknowledge of Zeus' eventual downfall and Prometheus' satisfaction for having brought to man the arts of letters and numbers, and all manner of crafts, was what permitted him to endure his present punishment.Io, the daughter of Inachus, a river god, was the next to pass. Zeus had once tried to seduce the lovely Io, but Hera, his jealous wife, had discovered her husband's intentions and turned poor Io into a cow, left to wander about the earth, constantly pursued and tormented by a pestilent gadfly. Io bewailed her unhappy fate. Prometheus only responded with fresh lamentations on his own misery. Finally, though, he offered Io some consolation: he revealed, again through prophetic knowledge, the time and day when she would be restored to her true form. Io pled for Prometheus to tell her more, but he would divulge only this: Zeus would one day give her back her beauty, and she would bear Zeus a son. After three generations had passed, one of this offspring's descendants (Hercules) would rise up and overpower Zeus, and finally free Prometheus from his mountain isolation.No sooner did the Titan finish imparting this information, than the gadfly renewed his torment of poor Io, driving her off in a frenzy.Now Prometheus had openly denounced Zeus and had predicted his downfall. This blasphemous invective did not go unheard by the chief god, who dispatched the messenger Hermes both to rebuke Prometheus and to inquire after the meaning of his prophecies.This third visitor questioned Prometheus concerning the report that one of Zeus' own descendants would someday usurp him. Exactly who would bear the child? What would be the child's name? Prometheus, more bitter than ever, scornfully refused to answer any of these questions. Rather, in a brilliant and biting exchange, he belittled Hermes as nothing more than a puppet-slave to Zeus: "I'd rather suffer here in freedom than be a slave to Zeus as you are."Hermes: Your words declare you mad.Prometheus: Yes, if it's madness to detest my foes.Hermes: No one could bear you in success.Prometheus: Alas!Hermes: Alas! Zeus does not know that word.Prometheus: Time in its aging course teaches all things.Hermes: But you have not yet learned a wise discretion.Prometheus: True, or I would not speak so to a servant.With this, Hermes made off in a huff, quicky retreating from the revenge he knew would arrive forthwith on the proud captive; and indeed Prometheus' fate was soon sealed. The enraged Zeus sent a thunderbolt hurtling down to shatter the cliff, and with blasts of wind, opened an abyss-dungeon deep within the trembling earth. Thus damned, the Titan fire-bearer was thrust down to this hellish punishment - until the time should come for his deliverance.Commentary:This simple yet compelling drama is almost devoid of action, but full of reflection and ideas. For this reason, it has enjoyed more success as a dramatic poem than as a play - a work to be read rather than staged.It is quite natural for the reader to sympathize with Prometheus here, and to see Zeus as a pitiless, imperious young tyrant, more concerned with suppressing insubordination than with the general welfare of his subjects. We ought to remember, however, that Prometheus Bound is only the first in a trilogy. The Zeus depicted in the second play, Prometheus Unbound, is far less stern; he reconciles with Prometheus and frees him. (Incidentally, the third play, Prometheus the Fire-bearer, has been lost.)The plots of these plays have frequently been used as figurative evidence by those who denounce governments and other institutions as oppressors of the individual. For instance, a scientist who uncovers a principle which appears to contradict established religious or scientific tenets can identify with Prometheus when his findings are ridiculed or suppressed. Prometheus, a god made subject to suffering by the pettiness of gods, is symbolic of man's petty inhumanity to man. Even as the figure of Prometheus, with the daughters of Oceanos around him, sinks out of sight, the great Titan-god cries out:Ocean and sky are one great chaos!So mighty a gale comes only from ZeusHe sends it to rouse wild fear in my heart.... O glorious mother, O sky that sendsThe racing sun to give all things light,You see what injustice I suffer!

        Labours of HerculesHercules is known for his many adventures,whichtook him to the far reaches of the Greco-Roman world. One cycle of these adventures became canonical as the "Twelve Labours," but the list has variations. One traditional order of the labours is found in the Bibliotheca as follows:Slay the Nemean Lion. Slay the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra. Capture the Golden Hind of Artemis. Capture the Erymanthian Boar. Clean the Augean stables in a single day. In Greek mythology, Augeas (or Augeias, , Ancient Greek: whose name means "bright", was king of Elis and father of Epicaste. Some say that Augeas was one of the Argonauts.He is best known for his stables, which housed the single greatest number of cattle in the country and had never been cleaned—until the time of the great hero Heracles.Augeas' lineage varies in the sources—he was said to be either the son of Helius and Nausidame, or of Eleios, king of Elis, and Nausidame, or of Poseidon, or of Phorbas and Hyrmine. His children were Epicaste, Phyleus, Agamede (who was the mother of Dictys by Poseidon), Agasthenes, and Eurytus.Fifth labour of Heracles[edit source | editbeta] Heracles rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus. Roman mosaic, 3rd century AD.The fifth Labour of Heracles (Hercules in Latin) was to clean the Augean stables /. This assignment was intended to be both humiliating (rather than impressive, as had the previous labours) and impossible, since the livestock were divinely healthy (immortal) and therefore produced an enormous quantity of dung. These stables had not been cleaned in over 30 years, and over 1,000 cattle lived there. However, Heracles succeeded by rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to wash out the filth.Augeas was irate because he had promised Heracles one tenth of his cattle if the job was finished in one day. He refused to honour the agreement, and Heracles killed him after completing the tasks. Heracles gave his kingdom to Phyleus, Augeas' son, who had been exiled for supporting Heracles against his father.According to the Odes of the poet Pindar, Heracles then founded the Olympic Games:"the games which by the ancient tomb of Pelops the mighty Heracles founded, after that he slew Kleatos, Poseidon's godly son, and slewalso  Eurytos, that he might wrest from tyrannous Augeas against his will reward for service done. The success of this labour was ultimately discounted because the rushing waters had done the work of cleaning the stables and because Heracles was paid. Eurystheus, stating that Heracles still had seven labours to do, then sent Heracles to defeat the Stymphalian Birds.Slay the Stymphalian Birds. Capture the Cretan Bull. Steal the Mares of Diomedes. Obtain the girdle of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Obtain the cattle of the monster Geryon. Steal the apples of the Hesperides. Capture and bring back Cerberus. Side adventuresHercules had a greater number of "deeds on the side" (parerga) that have been popular subjects for art, including:Killing a fire-breathing Cacus (Sebald Beham, 1545)Holding up the world for Atlas (based on Heinrich Aldegrever, 1550)Wrestling with Achelous (16th-century plaque)Fighting the giant Antaeus (Auguste Couder, 1819)Retrieving Alcestis from the underworld (Paul Cézanne, 1867)Freeing Prometheus (Christian Griepenkerl, 1878)Roman eraMain article: Hercules in ancient RomeThis Roman statuette is a copy after a Greek original that depicts the hero at an advanced age. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.The Latin name Hercules was borrowed through Etruscan, where it is represented variously as Heracle, Hercle, and other forms. Hercules was a favorite subject for Etruscan art, and appears often on bronze mirrors. The Etruscan form Herceler derives from the Greek Heracles via syncope. A mild oath invoking Hercules (Hercule! or Mehercle!) was a common interjection in Classical Latin.Baby Hercules strangling a snake sent to kill him in his cradle (Roman marble, 2nd century CE)Hercules had a number of myths that were distinctly Roman. One of these is Hercules' defeat of Cacus, who was terrorizing the countryside of Rome. The hero was associated with the Aventine Hill through his son Aventinus. Mark Antony considered him a personal patron god, as did the emperor Commodus. Hercules received various forms of religious veneration, including as a deity concerned with children and childbirth, in part because of myths about his precocious infancy, and in part because he fathered countless children. Roman brides wore a special belt tied with the "knot of Hercules", which was supposed to be hard to untie. The comic playwright Plautus presents the myth of Hercules' conception as a sex comedy in his play Amphitryon; Seneca wrote the tragedy Hercules Furens about his bout with madness. During the Roman Imperial era, Hercules was worshipped locally from Hispania through Gaul.Germanic associationTacitus records a special affinity of the Germanic peoples for Hercules. In chapter 3 of his Germania, Tacitus states:... they say that Hercules, too, once visited them; and when going into battle, they sang of him first of all heroes. They have also those songs of theirs, by the recital of this barditus[5] as they call it, they rouse their courage, while from the note they augur the result of the approaching conflict. For, as their line shouts, they inspire or feel alarm.In the Roman era Hercules' Club amulets appear from the 2nd to 3rd century distributed over the empire (including Roman Britain, c.f. Cool 1986), mostly made of gold, shaped like wooden clubs. A specimen found in Köln-Nippes bears the inscription "DEO HER[culi]", confirming the association with Hercules.In the 5th to 7th centuries, during the Migration Period, the amulet is theorized to have rapidly spread from the Elbe Germanic area across Europe. These Germanic "Donar's Clubs" were made from deer antler, bone or wood, more rarely also from bronze or precious metals.They are found exclusively in female graves, apparently worn either as a belt pendant, or as an ear pendant. The amulet type is replaced by the Viking Age Thor's hammer pendants in the course of the Christianization of Scandinavia from the 8th to 9th century.Medieval mythography Hercules and the Nemean lion in the 15th-century Histoires de TroyesAfter the Roman Empire became Christianized, mythological narratives were often reinterpreted as allegory, influenced by the philosophy of late antiquity. In the 4th century, Servius had described Hercules' return from the underworld as representing his ability to overcome earthly desires and vices, or the earth itself as a consumer of bodies. In medieval mythography, Hercules was one of the heroes seen as a strong role model who demonstrated both valor and wisdom, with the monsters he battles as moral obstacles. One glossator noted that when Hercules became a constellation, he showed that strength was necessary to gain entrance to Heaven.Medieval mythography was written almost entirely in Latin, and original Greek texts were little used as sources for Hercules' myths.Renaissance mythographyThe Renaissance and the invention of the printing press brought a renewed interest in and publication of Greek literature. Renaissance mythography drew more extensively on the Greek tradition of Heracles, typically under the Romanized name Hercules, or the alternate name Alcides. In a chapter of his book Mythologiae (1567), the influential mythographer Natale Conti collected and summarized an extensive range of myths concerning the birth, adventures, and death of the hero under his Roman name Hercules. Conti begins his lengthy chapter on Hercules with an overview description that continues the moralizing impulse of the Middle Ages: Hercules, who subdued and destroyed monsters, bandits, and criminals, was justly famous and renowned for his great courage and great genitals. His great and glorious reputation was worldwide, and so firmly entrenched that he'll always be remembered. In fact the ancients honored him with his own temples, altars, ceremonies, and priests. But it was his wisdom and great soul that earned those honors; noble blood, physical strength, and political power just aren't good enough.In artIn Roman works of art and in Renaissance and post-Renaissance art, Hercules can be identified by his attributes, the lion skin and the gnarled club (his favorite weapon); in mosaic he is shown tanned bronze, a virile aspect.[10]Roman eraHercules of the Forum Boarium (Hellenistic, 2nd century BCE)Hercules and Iolaus (1st century CE mosaic from the Anzio Nymphaeum,Rome)Hercules (Hatra, Iraq, Parthian period, 1st-2nd century CE)Hercules bronze statuette, 2nd century CE (museum of Alanya, Turkey)Hercules and the Nemean Lion (detail), silver plate, 6th century (Cabinet des Médailles, Paris)Modern eraThe Giant Hercules (1589) by Hendrik GoltziusThe Drunken Hercules (1612-1614) by RubensHercules in the Augean stable (1842, Honoré Daumier)Comic book cover (c.1958)Hercules, Deianira and the Centaur Nessus, by Bartholomäus Spranger, 1580 - 1582Henry IV of France, as Hercules vanquishing the Lernaean Hydra (i.e. the Catholic League), by Toussaint Dubreuil, circa 1600. Louvre MuseumIn numismaticsHercules was among the earliest figures on ancient Roman coinage, and has been the main motif of many collector coins and medals since.One example is the 20 euro Baroque Silver coin issued on September 11, 2002. The obverse side of the coin shows the Grand Staircase in the town palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy in Vienna, currently the Austrian Ministry of Finance. Gods and demi-gods hold its flights, while Hercules stands at the turn of the stairs.Juno, with Hercules fighting a Centaur on reverse (Roman, 215–15 BCE)Club over his shoulder on a Roman denarius (ca. 100 BCE)Maximinus II and Hercules with  club and lionskin (Roman, 313 CE)Commemorative 5-franc piece (1996), Hercules in centerOther cultural referencesPillars of Hercules, representing the Strait of Gibraltar (19th-century conjecture of the Tabula Peutingeriana)The Cudgel of Hercules, a tall limestone rock formation, with Pieskowa Skala Castle in the backgroundHercules as heraldic supporters in the royal arms of Greece, in use 1863–1973. The phrase "??a??e?? t?? st?µµat??" ("Defenders of the Crown")  has pejorative connotations ("chief henchmen") in Greek.In filmsFor a list of films featuring Hercules,

508    Cleisthenes reforms the constitution of Athens. And introduces democratic government. The etruscan ruler Lars Porsena attacks Rome heroic defense of the bridge over the Tiber by Horacius Cocles. Rome makes treaty with Carthage.

507    Spartans under Cleomenes try to restore the aristocracy in Athens. Athenians rise and put Cleisthenes back into power.



    

The four tables give the most commonly accepted  dates or ranges of dates for the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, Deuterocanonical books, and New Testament, including, where possible, hypotheses about their formation-history.Table I is a chronological overview of all the books of the Old and New Testaments plus the deuterocanonical books. Table II divides the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible books by groups, following the divisions of the Hebrew Bible, and makes occasional reference to scholarly divisions as well. Table III gives the Deuterocanonical books, included in Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy bibles but not in the Hebrew and Protestant bibles. Table IV gives the books of the New Testament, including the earliest preserved fragments for each. Table I: Chronological overview This table summarises the chronology of the main tables and serves as a guide to the historical periods mentioned. Much of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) may have been assembled in the 5th century BCE. The New Testament books were composed largely in the second half of the 1st century CE. The Deuterocanon falls largely in between. 8th-7th centuriesc.745-586 BCE * Individual psalms. * 8th century: Amos (first half, immediately prior to Assyria's expansion c.645 BCE); "First Isaiah" (Isaiah 1-39), Hosea, Micah (second half).* 7th century: Nahum (based on its assumption of the fall of Thebes and call for the destruction of Nineveh), Zephaniah (in the reign of Josiah, c.649-609 BCE),  Habakkuk (possibly shortly before the battle of Carchemish, 605 BCE); first edition of the Deuteronomistic history (books of Joshua/Judges/Samuel/Kings) in the reign of Josiah; Deuteronomy 5-26 in the reign of Josiah. Exilic 6th century
586-539 BCE * Core of Obadiah around the fall of Jerusalem, 586 BCE. * Completion of Deuteronomistic history (Joshua/Judges/Samuel/Kings).  * Deuteronomy expanded with addition of chapters 1-4 and 29-30 to serve as an introduction to the Deuteronomistic history. * Jeremiah active in the last decade of the 7th century and first decades of the 6th;  * Ezekiel active in Babylon 592-571 BCE; * "Second Isaiah" (author of Isaiah 40-55) active in Babylon around mid-century.  * Expansion and reshaping of Hosea, Amos, Micah and Zephaniah. * Possible early Psalms collection (psalms "of David") ending with psalm 89. Post-exilic Persian 5th-4th centuries 538-330 BCE * Torah (books of Genesis/Exodus/Leviticus/Numbers *Deuteronomy revised with expansions to chapters 19-25 and addition of chapter 27 and 31-34 to serve as conclusion to the Torah.
 * "Third Isaiah" (Isaiah 56-66) * Later version (the Masoretic Hebrew version) of Jeremiah * Haggai (self-dated to the second year of the Persian king Darius 520 BCE),
 * Zechariah (chapters 1-8 contemporary with Haggai, chapters 9-14 from the 5th century) * Malachi (5th century BCE, contemporaneous or immediately prior to the missions of Nehemiah and Ezra)  * Chronicles (between 400–250 BC, probably in the period 350–300 BCE) * Origins of Ezra-Nehemiah (may have reached its  final form as late as the Ptolemaic period, c.300 -200 BCE).[25]  Post-exilic  Hellenistic 3rd-2nd centuries 330-164 BCE * Job, Ecclesiastes and the Song of  Songs (Could have been written in the 4th or even 5th centuries, but seem to reflect contact with Greek culture).  * Book of Jonah (Persian or Hellenistic, no later than 2nd century BCE). Maccabean/Hasmonean 2nd-1st centuries 164-4 BCE * Daniel, 164 BCE.  *1 Maccabees/2 Maccabees/3 Maccabees/4 Maccabees,  Tobit,Judith,Additions to Daniel and Additions to Esther  *Wisdom of Solomon late 1st century BCE or early to mid 1st century CE. Roman century CE onward after 4 BCE *4 Maccabees (mid-1st century CE) *New Testament between c.50-110 CE (see Table IV)  Table II: Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Torah Date or range of dates most widely held by  scholars Book of Genesis Book of Exodus Leviticus Book of Numbers Deuteronomy The majority of modern biblical  scholars believe that the Torah was given its  present form in the post-Exilic period  Genesis contains two major elements, the Priestly  source and the "non-priestly" material; there is  general agreement that the Priestly source is post-exilic, but there is no agreement over the non-Priestly source(s).  Exodus is an anthology drawn from nearly all periods of Israel's history.  Leviticus is entirely Priestly and dates from the exilic/post-exilic period. Numbers is a Priestly redaction (i.e., editing) of a Yahwistic (non-Priestly) original in the early  Persian period (5th century BCE).  Deuteronomy, now the last book of the Torah, began as the set of religious laws which make up the bulk of the book, was extended in the early part of the 6th century in order to be used as the introduction to the Deuteronomistic history, and later still was detached from that history, extended yet again, and used to conclude the Torah. Prophets  Former Prophets:  Book of Joshua Book of Judges Books of Samuel Books of Kings. This group of books, plus Deuteronomy, is called  the "Deuteronomistic history" by scholars. The proposal that they made up a unified work was first advanced by Martin Noth in 1943, and has been widely accepted. Noth proposed that the entire history was the creation of a single individual working in the exilic period (6th century BCE); since then there has been wide recognition that the history appeared in two "editions", the first in the reign of Judah's King Josiah (late 7th century), the second during the exile (6th century). Noth's dating was based on the assumption that the history was completed very soon after its last recorded event, the release of King Jehoiachin in Babylon c.560 BCE; has not been widely questioned, some scholars have termed his reasoning inadequate and the history may have been further extended in the post-exilic period. Three Major Prophets:  Book of Isaiah Book of Jeremiah Book of Ezekiel Scholars recognise three "sections" in the Book  of Isaiah: Proto-Isaiah (the original 8th century  Isaiah); Deutero-Isaiah (an anonymous prophet  living in Babylon during the exile); and Trito-Isaiah (an anonymous author or authors in Jerusalem immediately after the exile). The Book of Jeremiah exists in two version, Greek and Hebrew, with the Greek representing the earlier version. The Greek version was probably finalised in the early Persian period, and the Hebrew version some point between then and  the 2nd century BCE. The Book of Ezekiel describes itself as the words of the Ezekiel ben-Buzi, a priest living in exile in the city of Babylon, and internal evidence dates the visions to between 593 and 571 BCE. While the book probably reflects much of the historic Ezekiel, it is the product of a long and complex history, with significant additions by a "school" of later followers. Twelve Minor Prophets In the Hebrew Bible the Twelve Minor Prophets are a single collection edited in the Second Temple period, but the collection is broken up in Christian Bibles. With the exception of Jonah, which is a fictional work, there exists an original core of prophetic tradition behind each book: Book of Hosea: second half of the 8th century BCE . Book of Joel: late Persian or Hellenistic. Book of Amos: first half of the 8th century. Book of Obadiah:around the time of the fall of  Jerusalem, 586 BCE. Book of Jonah: Persian or Hellenistic, no later than 2nd century BCE Book of Micah: c.750-700 BCE  Book of Nahum: an "oracle concerning Nineveh", the  Assyrian city destroyed in 612 BCE. Book of Habakkuk: possibly shortly before the  battle of Carchemish, 605 BCE . Book of Zephaniah: reign of Josiah. Book of Haggai: self-dated to the second year of the Persian king Darius (Darius the Great), 520 BCE . Book of Zechariah: first eight chapters contemporary with Haggai; chapters 9-14 from the  5th century. Book of Malachi: 5th century BCE, contemporaneous or immediately prior to the missions of Nehemiah and Ezra (which, however, are themselves difficult to date) Ketuvim. Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs The books of Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs share a similar outlook which they themselves call "wisdom". It is generally agreed that Job comes from between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE, with the 6th century as the most likely. Ecclesiastes can be no earlier than about 450 BCE, due to the presence of Persian loan-words and Aramaic idioms, and no later than 180 BCE, when the Jewish writer Ben Sira quotes from it.  Proverbs is a "collection of collections" relating to a pattern of life which lasted for more than a millennium, and impossible to date. Poetic works: Psalms and Lamentations The book of Psalms was possibly given its modern shape and
division into five parts in the post-exilic period, although it continued to be revised and expanded well into Hellenistic and even Roman times. It is generally accepted that the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 BCE forms the background to the Book of Lamentations. Histories: Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah Chronicles was composed between 400–250 BC, probably in the period 350–300 BCE; Ezra-Nehemiah (two books in modern Bibles, but originally one) may have reached its final form as late as the Ptolemaic
period, c.300-200 BCE. Miscellaneous works: Book of Ruth, Book of Esther, Book of Daniel, Song of Songs The Book of Ruth is commonly dated to the Persian period;  Esther to the 3rd or 4th centuries BCE; the Book of Daniel can be dated more precisely to 164 BCE thanks to its veiled prophecy of the death of a Greek king of Syria;  and the Song of Songs
could have been composed at any time after the 6th century BCE. Table III: Deuterocanonical. Tobit 225-175 BCE, on the basis of apparent use of  language and references common to the post-exilic period, but lack of knowledge of the 2nd century BCE persecution of Jews. Judith 150-100 BCE, although estimates range from the 5th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. 1 Maccabees 100 BCE 2 Maccabees ca. 100 BCE 3 Maccabees 100-75 BCE "very probable" 4 Maccabees mid-1st century CE Wisdom of Solomon late 1st century BCE/early 1st century CE, on the basis of shared outlook with other works dating from this time. Sirach 196-175 BCE, as the author implies that Simon the high priest had died (196 BCE), but shows no knowledge of the persecution of the Jews that began after 175 BCE. Additions to Daniel Prayer of Azariah (Song of the Three Holy Children); Bel and the Dragon: late 6th century; Susanna and the Elders: possibly 95-80 BCE . Baruch and Letter of Jeremiah 2nd century BCE, as Baruch uses Sirach (written c.180 BCE) and is in turn used by the Psalms of Solomon (mid-1st century BCE). The Letter of Jeremiah, ch. 6:1-73 of the Book of Baruch, is sometimes considered a separate book. Table IV: NEW TESTAMENT. 104 (150–200 CE)  Gospel of Mark 68–70 CE. References to persecution and to war in Judea suggest that its context was either Nero's persecution of the Christians in Rome or the Jewish revolt. 45 (250 CE)  Earliest known fragment  Gospel of Matthew 80–90 CE. This is based on three strands of evidence: (a) the setting of Matthew reflects the final separation of Church and Synagogue, about 85 CE; (b) it reflects the capture of Rome and destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE; (c) it uses Mark, usually dated around 70 CE, as a source. Gospel of Luke 80-90 CE, with some scholars suggesting 90-100.[71] There is evidence, both textual (the conflicts between Western and Alexandrian manuscript families) and from the Marcionite controversy (Marcion was a 2nd-century heretic who produced his own version of Christian scripture based on Luke's gospel and Paul's epistles) that Luke-Acts was still being substantially revised well into the 2nd century. 4, 75 (175–250 CE)  Gospel of John 90-110 CE, the upper date based on textual evidence that the gospel was known in the early 2nd century, and the lower on an internal reference to the expulsion of Christians from the synagogues. 52 (125–160 CE)  Acts 95-100 CE. If Acts uses Josephus as a source, as has been proposed, then it must have been composed after 93 CE; it does not show any knowledge of Paul's letters, which also supports a late date; and the social situation is one in which the faithful need "shepherds" to protect them from heretical "wolves", which again reflects a late date. (250 CE)  Romans c.57 CE  (late 2nd century or 3rd century CE)  Corinthians c.56 CE   (late 2nd century or 3rd century CE)  Galatians c.55 CE   (late 2nd century or 3rd century CE)  Ephesians c.80-90 CE  (late 2nd century or 3rd century CE)  Philippians c.54-55 CE   (late 2nd century or 3rd century CE)  Colossians c.62-70 CE   (late 2nd century or 3rd century CE)  1 Thessalonians c.51 CE   (late 2nd century or 3rd century CE) 2 Thessalonians c.51 CE or post-70 CE 92 (300 CE) 1 Timothy2 Timothy c.100 CE Codex Sinaiticus (350 CE) Titus c.100 CE 32 (200 CE) Philemon c.54-55 CE 87 (3rd
century CE) Hebrews c.80–90 CE 46 (late 2nd century or 3rd century CE) James c.65-85 CE 20, 23 (early 3rd century CE)
First Peter c.75-90 CE 72 (3rd/4th century CE) Second Peter c.110 CE 72 (3rd/4th century CE) Epistles of John 90–110 CE.  The letters give no clear indication, but scholars tend to place them about a decade after the Gospel of John. 9, Uncial 0232, Codex Sinaiticus (3rd/4th century CE) Jude uncertain 72 (3rd/4th century CE)  Revelation c. 95 CE 98 (150–200
CE)

    500 BCE- End of Kingdom of Israel Judaism's ancient voice of reason The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture by Ora Harmony Reviewed by Friedrich Hansen Ora Harmony is one of the founders of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, an academic research  institute dedicated to the sustenance of the  Jewish People and Israel. This scholarly book is about the extended narrative of the ancient Hebrew  Scriptures. It covers not only the Pentateuch, the  five books of Moses, but all the additional  biblical texts that make up the comprehensive.  History of Israel.    The author is attempting to convince readers that  by including the context of the Mosaic Law, the biblical covenant between God and the Children of  Israel and their proselytes, we can get an understanding of the philosophy behind the Hebrew Bible. But  above all this book allows us to read the Hebrew  Bible as a work of reason just like the great  Greek philosophers.  Hazony sets off with the genuinely Christian and therefore post-biblical dichotomy of reason and   revelation - reason being the product of man   exercising intellectual capabilities in order to   grasp the good, the beautiful and the true. In   contrast, God's revelation aims at accomplishing  the same by giving us a somewhat common sense or   narrative version, ie the literal stories of the  Hebrew Scripture.   In the history of ideas, namely through the   German-American political philosopher Leo Strauss,   this dichotomy has been addressed as esoteric or  elitist versus esoteric or everyman's knowledge.  Politically speaking, this split comes at the  price of creating a dualism that separates a spiritual from the physical realm.   Just as Philo of Alexandria in the first-century CE attempted to synthesize Greek Philosophy and  Judaism, so Christianity can be depicted as quite   a different attempt to accomplish this, resulting  in a consequential Hellenization. The original motive of the Christian fathers might  have been to fend off all sorts of Gnostic rivals.  By contrast, as Hazony makes clear, the Hebrew  Bible, written 500 years before the dualism  appeared, did not really need to. Judaism always  lacked any missionary drive and was firmly moored  at the harbor of Jewish particularism or even  naturalism with an additional universalist touch  to it. It is against this historical background  that Hazony's book can be best understood.   Other Christian tenets that flow from the   reason-revelation split, such as the healing power  of faith and the concept of eternal life, were   also conspicuously absent from the core tenets   Judaism. So much so that the philosopher Immanuel   Kant did not even acknowledge ancient Judaism as a   religion. This backfired during the 18th century, when the philosophers of the Enlightenment used  the reason-revelation dichotomy to specifically attack the philosophical underpinnings of the  Christian doctrine, rendering it as superstitious. "Fideists and heretics alike", Hazony tells us,  "have thus had ample reason to insist on this  distinction, and many continue to do so even  today".  However, the Hebrew Bible was ill-served  historically by being interpreted within the  Christian framework of revelation versus reason.  Read as revelation, the Hebrew Scripture is being  completely distorted and its message destroyed. In   addition, this forceful misreading had huge  consequences, diminishing the scripture's general  standing and ultimately leading to it being banned from universities and public education.  Hazony therefore wishes the original Hebrew   narrative to be read entirely as a work of reason.   His book aims at persuading readers of the  usefulness of the Hebrew Bible as a philosophical  source for answering questions about the nature of  the universe and the right or just life of man. To  do this, he needs to dismantle prejudices and   obstacles of methodology.   Maintaining an emphasis on philosophical argument,  he furnishes examples of the pre-Socratic philosophers such as Parmenides, Empedocles and  Heraclitus, who, in the fifth century not long   before the prophet Jeremiah (647-572), all framed  their ideas as being revealed.   Even Socrates, as related by his disciple Plato,   had prophetic power and heard voices delivering   divine commands that prevented him from doing certain untoward things. What rightly puzzles  Hazony is that modern historians such as Bertrand Russell unambiguously read these works by founders  of the Western philosophic tradition as words of   reason.  Hazony blames the different reading of Jeremiah  and the pre-Socratic philosophers on simple  prejudice rooted in the Christian dichotomy. Since  the Enlightenment, this same dichotomy has also   been upheld by the modern research of  universities. Originally developed in Germany by  Wilhelm von Humboldt, the interpretation was  adopted and implemented in the United States in the last third of the 19th Century. From there  originates the exclusion of the Hebrew Bible from  works of reason.  Not for nothing was Greek philosophy the main  currency in continental post-Enlightenment France   and Germany. Thus, the history of Western thought  was rewritten with Kant and Georg Wilhelm  Friedrich Hegel gazing though a Greek lens, with a  rich Jewish tradition marginalized as  superstitious and rendered as utterly worthless.  Hazony is quick to assert that the Hebrew Bible  does not offer one single point of view, given   that dozens of authors have contributed at times   contradictory accounts to it. It is for this   reason, he writes, that the "heart" of the Bible  is not easily accessible, but has to be sought.  "Having been assembled to embrace and heal a  broken people after the loss of their land and  freedom, the Hebrew Bible could not afford the   parochialism of a narrow religious sect, because it was consciously assembled to serve as the basis for the thought of an entire nation." Hazony goes  even further, saying the ambiguity and uncertainty  of the biblical narrative reflects the limits of  human intelligence or, as the author puts it,"ultimate knowledge of God's thoughts is beyond the powers of man, which are by nature weak and   fallible".  For this reason, to get the full picture, it is  necessary to extend the reading of the Hebrew   Scripture beyond the five books of Moses, the  traditional halachic core depicting Jewish Law  sensu stricto. Only the complete narrative all the  way to the end of the Book of Kings gives us the  reading intended by the authors of the scripture. The complete narrative of the History of Israel is   altogether about 150,000 words and consists of  nine works: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,  Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. The  second half of the history is then included in the anthology of the Prophets. Hazony also notes that   many editions of the Hebrew Bible divide Samuel  and Kings into smaller works, but this is  certainly a post-Talmudic (ancient Rabbinic)  innovation.  This brings us back to the starting point: the   reason-revelation dichotomy which is the book's  central argument.  The author concludes: "In the New Testament,  revelation is unapproachable to reason because  that which is revealed appears in the world in the  form of bare contingent facts - facts that stand  alone, without relation to anything that has come  before in human experience. Such a revelation is,  by definition, opposed to human reason, and can be  accepted only as a secret and a mystery." The purpose of the Hebrew Bible couldn't be more   different. For its authors are anonymous - precisely the opposite of bearing witness. It also  does not deal with secrets or predominantly with   miracles. The History of Israel lies open before our  eyes. The destruction of the Jewish Kingdom, of  the Temple for instance, those are horrible facts,  not doubted by anyone.  The importance of the Hebrew Scripture lies in it  framing for the first time of the History of the  Jews. This provided a broken people with a lasting self-understanding intended to facilitate their survival.
EARLY BIBLE STORIES- PENTATEUCH, EZRAS
    Torah  (/ t  r /; Hebrew:               , "Instruction", "Teaching") is a central concept in the Jewish tradition. It has a range of meanings: it can most specifically mean the first five books of the Tanakh, it can mean this, plus the rabbinic commentaries on it, it can mean the continued narrative from Genesis to the end of the Tanakh, it can even mean the totality of Jewish teaching and practice. Common to all these meanings, Torah consists of the foundational narrative of the Jewish people: their call into being by their God, their trials and tribulations, and their covenant with their God which involves following a way of life (halakha) embodied in a set of religious obligations and civil laws.In its most specific meaning, it consists of the first five books of the Tanakh written in Biblical Hebrew. The names of each of these books in Hebrew are taken from the first phrase in each book: Bereshit ("In [the] beginning", Genesis), Shemot ("Names", Exodus), Vayikra ("He called", Leviticus[1]), Bamidbar ("In the desert", Numbers) and Devarim ("Words", Deuteronomy).In rabbinic literature the word Torah denotes both these five books, Torah Shebichtav (          , "Torah that is written"), and an Oral Torah, Torah Shebe'al Peh (                   , "Torah that is spoken"). The Oral Torah consists of the traditional interpretations and amplifications handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation and now embodied in the Talmud (                  ) and Midrash (    ). Traditionally, the words of the Torah are written on a scroll by a sofer on parchment in Hebrew. A Torah portion is read publicly at least once every three days, in the halachically prescribed tune, in the presence of a congregation. Reading the Torah publicly is one of the bases for Jewish communal life. According to religious tradition, all of the teachings found in the Torah, both written and oral, were given by God to Moses, some of them at Mount Sinai and others at the Tabernacle, and all the teachings were written down by Moses, which resulted in the Torah we have today. According to a Midrash, the Torah was created prior to the creation of the world, and was used as the blueprint for Creation. Some modern Biblical scholars believe that the written books were a product of the Babylonian exilic period (c. 600 BCE) and that it was completed by the Persian period (c. 400 BCE).  Meaning and names  Reading of the TorahThe word "Torah" in Hebrew is derived from the root    , which in the hifil conjugation means "to guide/teach" (cf. Lev. 10:11). The meaning of the word is therefore "teaching", "doctrine", or "instruction"; the commonly accepted "law" gives a wrong impression. Other translational contexts in the English language include custom, theory, guidance, or system.The term "Torah" is used in the general sense to include both rabbinic Judaism's written law and oral law, serving to encompass the entire spectrum of authoritative Jewish religious teachings throughout history, including the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Midrash and more, and the inaccurate rendering of "Torah" as "Law" may be an obstacle to understanding the ideal that is summed up in the term talmud torah (          , "study of Torah"). The earliest name for the first part of the Bible seems to have been "The Torah of Moses". This title, however, is found neither in the Torah itself, nor in the works of the pre-Exilic literary prophets. It appears in Joshua (8:31–32; 23:6) and Kings (I Kings 2:3; II Kings 14:6; 23:25), but it cannot be said to refer there to the entire corpus. In contrast, there is every likelihood that its use in the post-Exilic works (Mal. 3:22; Dan. 9:11, 13; Ezra 3:2; 7:6; Neh. 8:1; II Chron. 23:18; 30:16) was intended to be comprehensive. Other early titles were "The Book of Moses" (Ezra 6:18; Neh. 13:1; II Chron. 35:12; 25:4; cf. II Kings 14:6) and "The Book of the Torah" (Neh. 8:3), which seems to be a contraction of a fuller name, "The Book of the Torah of God" (Neh. 8:8, 18; 10:29–30; cf. 9:3). Scholars usually refer to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible as the Pentateuch, a term first used in the Hellenistic Judaism of Alexandria, meaning five books, or as the Law, or Law of Moses. Muslims refer to the Torah as Tawrat (     , "Law"), an Arabic word for the revelations given to the Islamic prophet Musa (    , Moses in Arabic).Composition.  Mosaic authorship and Documentary hypothesis A Sefer Torah opened for liturgical use in a synagogue service The first sentence in the Genesis (          ) book of a 1932 Polish illustrated Torah According to Jewish tradition (later adopted by Christianity) the Torah was dictated to Moses by God, with the exception of the last eight verses of Deuteronomy, which describe the death and burial of Moses. This belief is based on what was transmitted as a historical narrative that is first recorded in the Mishnah (100 BCE – 100 CE), the Mishnah being the first time that traditions that were transmitted orally from the time of Moses were put in writing. It is also based on the Hebrew Torah  that states in Deuteronomy 31:24–26; after Moses finished writing the words of this Torah in a book from beginning to end. He gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord: "Take this Book of the Torah and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. There it will remain as a witness upon you". The Torah refers to this book of the Torah that was entrusted to the Levites in regard to rules pertaining to a king. Deuteronomy 17:18 states; When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this Torah, taken from that of the Levitical priests. Today the majority of academic scholars accept the theory that the Torah does not have a single author, and that its composition took place over centuries. From the late 19th century there was a general consensus around the documentary hypothesis, which suggests that the five books were created c. 450 BCE by combining four originally independent sources, known as the Jahwist, or J (c. 900 BCE), the Elohist, or E (c. 800 BCE), the Deuteronomist, or D, (c. 600 BCE), and the Priestly source, or P (c. 500 BCE).[19] This general agreement began to break down in the late 1970s, and today there are many theories but no consensus, or even majority viewpoint. Variations of the documentary hypothesis remain popular especially in America and Israel, and the identification of distinctive Deuteronomistic and Priestly theologies and vocabularies remains widespread, but they are used to form new approaches suggesting that the books were combined gradually over time by the slow accumulation of "fragments" of text, or that a basic text was "supplemented" by later authors/editors.  At the same time there has been a tendency to bring the origins of the Pentateuch further forward in time, and the most recent proposals place it in 5th century Judah under the Persian empire.Deuteronomy is often treated separately from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. The process of its formation probably took several hundred years, from the 8th century to the 6th,[24] and its authors have been variously identified as prophetic circles (because the concerns of Deuteronomy mirror those of the prophets, especially Hosea), Levitical priestly circles (because it stresses the role of the Levites), and wisdom and scribal circles (because it esteems wisdom, and because the treaty-form in which it is written would be best known to scribes).[25] According to the theory of the Deuteronomistic history proposed by Martin Noth and widely accepted, Deuteronomy was a product of the court of Josiah (late 7th century) before being used as the introduction to a comprehensive history of Israel written in the early part of the 6th century; later still it was detached from the history and used to round off the Pentateuch.Many Jews, including an estimated 55% of Israeli Jews, believe that the Torah was revealed to Moses by God, implicitly rejecting a theory that holds that the Torah was complied by unknown editors from multiple sources. Reasons for this belief can be that it is supported by what they view as the historical narrative, that the Hebrew [16] Torah in Deuteronomy 31:24–26, as well as the Talmud (Gittin 60a, Bava Basra 14b), state that Moses wrote the Torah, and that the Mishnah[28] asserts the divine origin of the Torah as one of the essential tenets of Judaism.[29] Many Jews also accept the 13 Principles of Faith that were established by Maimonides, one of which that states; The Torah that we have today is the one dictated to Moses by God. StructureThe five books of the Torah are known in Judaism by their incipits, the initial words of the first verse of each book. For example, the Hebrew name of the first book, Bereshit, is the first word of Genesis 1:1:Bereshit (           , literally "In the beginning") Shemot (       , literally "Names") Vayikra (     , literally "And He called") B midbar (     , literally "In the desert [of]") Devarim (     , literally "Things" or "Words") The Christian names for the books are derived from the Greek Septuagint and reflect the essential theme of each book:Genesis: "creation" Exodus: "departure" Leviticus: refers to the Levites and the regulations that apply to their presence and service in the Temple, which form the bulk of the third book.  Numbers (Arithmoi): contains a record of the numbering of the Israelites in the wilderness of Sinai and later on the plain of Moab. Deuteronomy: "second law", refers to the fifth book's recapitulation of the commandments reviewed by Moses before his death.The form of Torah is that of a narrative, from the beginning of God's creating the world, through the beginnings of the people of Israel, their descent into Egypt, the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, and ends with the death of Moses, just before the people of Israel cross to the promised land of Canaan. Interspersed in the narrative are the specific teachings (religious obligations and civil laws) given explicitely (i.e. Ten Commandments) or implicitely embedded in the narrative (as in Exodus 12 and 13 laws of the celebration of Pesach (passover)).This combination is noteworthy, making Torah not just a narrative document like Homer's Odyssey, nor solely a legal document like the U.S. constitution. This complexity of Torah is related to the complexity of the Jewish tradition, it cannot be understood solely within the Western concept of a religion. At the same time, the fact that the teachings are embeded in story, influences the flexible attitude that Jews take towards their code of life.The narrative is in Biblical Hebrew prose. Interspersed are poetic fragments from a single sentence (Genesis 1:27 creation of mankind) to expansive (Deuteronomy 32:1-43 Moses' song to the people). The poetic forms are flexible. In general a series of two or more parallel phrases. They usually parallel each other at least in meaning ("Listen, skies, so I may speak/and let the earth hear what my mouth says" Deuteronomy 32:1 Richard Elliot Friedman tr.[31]) but may also share the same number of stresses or even syllables. They may also parallel each other with alliteration. There are no strict meters and phrases almost never rhyme in the sense of western poetry.[32]The stories in the narrative are linked together by a system of resonating word roots that can often only be appreciated in the original Hebrew. For example, within a story, (Genesis 2:25) after Eve's creation: "And the two of them were naked, the human and his woman and they were not embarrassed" (Hebrew word for naked is 'arum, ). The very next line in Genesis 3:1 is: "And the snake was slier than any animal of the field" (Hebrew word for sly: 'arum).An example linking different stories: The story of Joseph; his being favored by his father Jacob, tattling on his brothers, being sold into slavery, finally achieving success in Egypt.. (Genesis 37-50) seems to be interrupted by an unrelated story about Judah and Tamar (38:1-30). Yet, both stories are linked together by the key word "to recognize". These linkages play a role in the traditional interpretation of Torah.According to the Oral tradition, the prose in the Torah is not always in chronological order. Sometimes it is ordered by concept according to the rule: "There is not 'earlier' and 'later' in the Torah" (                      , Ein mukdam u'meuchar baTorah).[34] Some scholars understand confusions in chronology as a sign that the current text of the Torah was redacted from earlier sources.ContentsBereshit (Genesis) begins with the so-called "primeval history" (Genesis 1–11), the story of the world's beginnings and the descent of Abraham. This is followed by the story of the three patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), Joseph (Genesis 12–50) and the four matriarchs (Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel). God gives to the patriarchs a promise of the land of Canaan, but at the end of Genesis the sons of Jacob end up leaving Canaan for Egypt due to a regional famine. They had heard that there was a grain storage and distribution facility in Egypt.Shemot (Exodus) begins the story of God's revelation to his people Israel through Moses, who leads them out of Egypt (Exodus 1–18) to Mount Sinai. There the people accept a covenant with God, agreeing to be his people in return for agreeing to abide by his Law. Moses receives the Torah from God, and mediates His laws and Covenant (Exodus 19–24) to the people of Israel. Exodus also deals with the first violation of the covenant when the Golden Calf was constructed (Exodus 32–34). Exodus concludes with the instructions on building the Tabernacle (Exodus 25–31; 35–40).Vayikra (Leviticus) begins with instructions to the Israelites on how to use the Tabernacle, which they had just built (Leviticus 1–10). This is followed by rules of clean and unclean (Leviticus 11–15), which includes the laws of slaughter and animals permissible to eat (see also: Kashrut), the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16), and various moral and ritual laws sometimes called the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26).Bamidbar (Numbers) tells how Israel consolidated itself as a community at Sinai (Numbers 1–9), set out from Sinai to move towards Canaan and spied out the land (Numbers 10–13). Because of unbelief at various points, but especially at Kadesh Barnea (Numbers 14), the Israelites were condemned to wander for forty years in the desert in the vicinity of Kadesh instead of immediately entering the Promised Land. Even Moses sins and is told he would not live to enter the land (Numbers 20). At the end of Numbers (Numbers 26–35) Israel moves from Kadesh to the plains of Moab opposite Jericho, ready to enter the Promised Land.Devarim (Deuteronomy) is a series of speeches by Moses on the plains of Moab opposite Jericho. Moses proclaims the Law (Deuteronomy 12–26), gives instruction concerning covenant renewal at Shechem (Deuteronomy 27–28) and gives Israel new laws (the "Deuteronomic Code)".[35] At the end of the book (Deuteronomy 34) Moses is allowed to see the promised land from a mountain, but it is not known what happened to Moses on the mountain. He was never seen again. Knowing that he is nearing the end of his life, Moses appoints Joshua his successor, bequeathing to him the mantle of leadership. Soon afterwards Israel begins the conquest of Canaan.

____________________________________________________________

500-494    Ionian cities revolt against Persia

500    Bantu-speaking people spread in East Africa

    500     BERBERS. BCThe well-known connections between the ancient Berbers and the ancient Greeks were in Cyrenaica where the Greeks had established colonies. The Greeks influenced the eastern Berber pantheon, but they were also influenced by the Berber culture and beliefs. Generally, the Libyan-Greek relationships knew two different periods. In the first period, the Greeks had peaceful relationships with the Libyans. Later, there existed wars between them. These social relationships were mirrored in their beliefs. Before the battle of Irassa (570 BC)Athena, was considered by some ancient historians, like Herodotus, to have been of Libyan origin. Medusa is believed to have originated from Libya The Medracen Tomb, probably dating to the second century BC, is located near Lambaesis in Algeria The first notable appearance of the Libyan influence on the Cyrenaican-Greek beliefs is the name Cyrenaica itself. This name was originally the name of a legendary (mythic) Berber woman warrior who was known
    as Cyre. Cyre was ,according to the legend, a courageous lion-hunting woman. She gave her name to the city Cyrene. The emigrating Greeks made her as their protector besides their Greek god Apollo.The Greeks of Cyrenaica seemed also to have adopted some Berber customs and intermarried with the Berber women. Herodotus (Book IV 120) reported that the Libyans taught the Greeks how to yoke four horses to a chariot. The Cyrenaican Greeks built temples for the Libyan god Amon instead of their original god Zeus. They later identified their supreme god Zeus with the Libyan Amon. Some of
    them continued worshipping Amon himself. Amon's cult was so widespread among the Greeks that even Alexander the Great decided to be declared as the son of Zeus in the Siwan temple by the Libyan priests of Amon.The ancient historians mentioned that some Greek deities were of Libyan origin. The daughter of Zeus Athena was considered by some ancient historians, like Herodotus, to have been of Libyan origin. Those ancient historians stated that she was originally honored by the Berbers around Lake Tritonis where she has
    been born from the god Poseidon and Lake Tritonis, according to the Libyan legend. Herodotus wrote that the Aegis and the clothes of Athena are typical for Libyan woman.Herodotus stated also that Poseidon (an important Greek sea god) was adopted from the Libyans by the Greeks. He emphasized that no other people worshipped Poseidon from early times than the Libyans who spread his cult[..]these I think received their naming from the Pelasgians, except Poseidon;  but about this god the Hellenes learnt from the Libyans, for no people except  the Libyans have had the name of Poseidon from the first and have paid honour   to this god always.Some other Greek deities were related to Libya. The goddess Lamia was believed
    to have originated in Libya, like Medusa and the Gorgons. The Greeks seem also to have met the god Triton in Libya. The Greeks may have believed that the Hesperides was situated in modern Morocco. Some scholars situate it in Tangier where Antaios lived, according to some myths. The Hesperides were believed to be the daughters of Atlas a god that is associated with the Atlas mountains by Herodotus. The Atlas mountain was worshipped by the Berbers. After the Battle of IrassaAntaeus is depicted with long hair and beard, contrary to Heracles.The Greeks and the Libyans began to break their harmony in the period of the Battus II.Battus II began secretly to invite other Greek groups to Libya. The Libyans considered that as a danger that has to be stopped. The Berbers began to fight against the Greeks, sometimes in alliance with the Egyptians and other times with the Carthaginians. Nevertheless, the Greeks were the victors. Some historians believe that the myth of Antaios was a reflection of those wars between the Libyans and Greeks. The legend tells that he was the undefeatable protector of the Libyans. He was the son of the god Poseidon and Gaia. He was the husband of the Berber goddess Tinjis. He used to protect the lands of the Berbers until he was slain by the Greek hero Heracles who married Tingis and fathered the son Sufax (Berber-Greek son). Some Libyan kings, like Juba I, claimed to be the descendants of Sufax. While some sources described him
    as the king of Irassa, Plutarch reported that the Libyans buried Antaios in Tangier: In this city (Tangier) the Libyans say that Antaeus is buried; and Sertorius  had his tomb dug open, the great size of which made him disbelieve the  Barbarians...(Plutarch, The Parallel Lives)In the Greek iconography, Antaeus was clearly distinguished from the Greek appearance. He was depicted with long hair and beard that was typical for the Eastern Libyans.

    500    MESOAMERICA. Cuando declino la cultura olmeca en se edificaron nuevos centrso seremoniales en los valles de Oaxaca y MÉXICO.  Los Teotihuacanos. Construyeron el conjunto urbano mas importante de Mesoamerica y de la America antigua, Teotihuacan

    Tomatoes cultivated in Ecuador and Peru

    500- CHINA. The Tao Te Ching is the main body of work in Taoist tradition.  Known as the Tao, the text was transcribed during the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy, possibly around the fourth century BCE.  Generally attributed to Lao Tzu (551-479 BCE), an older contemporary of Confucius, the Tao ("the Way" or "the Path") constitutes the path to Ching, or "virtue."  The Tao, then, is a poetic treatise on the art of politics, government, and virtue.Taoism grew out of a turbulent period of Chinese history known as the "warring states period," in which the country was divided into combative feudalists struggling for control and power.  The Tao Te Ching emerged from this conflict as a way to establish needed change, and subsequently to achieve oneness, order and balance between the warring parties.Balance, a central principle, is embodied in the Taoist symbol of the yin and yang, which represent the condition of absolute balance in the universe.  Balance then, is the Way, or the Path, referred to as the tao (pronounced "dow").  The tao "is to the world as the river and the sea are to rivulets and streams."  (XXXII) However, to describe the tao using specific terms would limit its function—and the tao has no limits.As a thing the tao isShadowy, indistinct.  [XXI]One must study carefully to grasp the nature of the way:Yet within the tao is a substance.Dim and dark,Yet within the tao is an essence.This essence is quite genuineAnd within it is something that can be tested.  [XXI]Still, the tao is largely intangible, since "the great image has no shape.  The way conceals itself in being nameless."  [XLI] The point is, then, that the Way (tao) can be approached by adhering to a set of rules and prescriptions, but that fully to grasp it, one must internalize the concepts.The Way has existed since before the creation of the universe, since before time began.  The tao is something created from nothing.There is a thing confusedly formed,Born before heaven and earth.Silent and voidIt stands alone and does not change,Goes round and does not [become] weary.It is capable of being the mother of the world.  [XXV]Obviously, the Tao Te Ching states, that which came before the creation of the universe cannot be easily defined.  It is too universal, too eternal to be represented by a mere name.I know not its nameSo I style it "the Way."I give it the makeshift name of "the great."  [XXV]The Way, then, is essential to the very structure of creation.Man models himself on earth,Earth on heaven,Heaven on the way,And the way on that which is naturally so.  [XXV]Integral to the universe's structure and balance are the two opposing forces—the named and the unnamed—which, together, constitute a harmonious whole, just like the yin and the yang.  The Tao explains that since "the way that can be spoken of is not the constant way" [I], and "The name that can be named is not the constant name" [I], the named is the "creator," the mother of all life on earth, while the "nameless" is the way which is beyond the temporal world.The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;The named was the mother of the myriad creatures ...These two are the sameBut diverge in name as they issue forth.  [I]The "nameless" and the "named"—also referred to as "nothing" and "something"—are held in perfect equilibrium, as are all the opposites required to make a whole.  These balanced opposites provide the central dynamic of the tao, as the following passage explainsThus Something and Nothing produce each other; the difficult and the easy compliment each other; the long and the short off-set each other;The high and the low incline towards each other;Note and sound harmonize with each other;Before and after follow each other.  [II]"Balanced opposites" becomes a metaphor in the Tao Te Ching; every natural force has its opposites and contradictions, which, brought together, endow the world with balance and oneness.  Use of the tao will not drain it of its power; after all, it has no limit.  The tao is both empty and full.It is empty without being exhausted:The more it works the more comes out.  [V]Simply put, the tao simply is.  It is strong, yet, because it has no substance, it is also weak.Weakness is the means the way employs.  [XL]The tao is forceful, yet submissive.  It provides structure to the universe, yet it is supple and easily manipulated, seeming paradoxes illustrated by the following passage:
        A man is supple and weak when living, but hard and stiff when dead.  Grass and trees are pliant and fragile when living, but dried and shrivelled when dead.  Thus the hard and the strong are the comrades of death; the supple and the weak are the comrades of life.  [LXXVI]The vitality of the tao lies in its pliancy and receptiveness.  It is not stiff or unyielding like iron; its strength is rather like water:  though it is powerful enough to carve stone, yet it provides little resistance to the gentle caress.At first it may be difficult to see the connection between Taoist philosophy and the turbulent era of Chinese history from which it sprang.  However, the tao is closely linked to feudalism and sheds much-needed light on the world of politics, ethics, and government.  For example, the notion of the weak thing manifesting itself as strong pertains to the way in which control and power flows amongst a people.  The weak, afflicted serf, Lao Tzu writes, shall overcome, while the strong shall fall, just as "a tree that is strong shall suffer the axe."  [LXXVI]The strong and big takes the lower position,The supple and weak takes the higher position.  [LXXVI]...  The weak overcomes the strong,And the submissive overcomes the hard,Everyone in the world knows yet no one can put this knowledge into practice.  [LXXVIII]Of course, as is the way of yin and yang, once the weak conquer the strong, weakness becomes strength, and will in turn be conquered as new weak forces arise in the future.  This perpetual behavior of individuals as well as governments echoes another Taoist dynamic:  the cyclical nature of all natural and human phenomena.One who understands the meaning of the tao is known as a sage or ruler.  A sage exhibits specific characteristics:  The sage "embraces the One and is a model for the empire"; he is "well versed in the way"; and like the tao itself, a sage is "minutely subtle, mysteriously comprehending, and too profound to be known."  Furthermore, the true sage is constantly evolving, changing, shifting
        Falling apart like thawing ice;Thick like the uncarved block;Vacant like a valley;Murky like muddy water ...  [XV]Further, the sage "desires not to be full.  Because he is not full that he can be worn and yet newly made."  [XV] The sage is also subtle yet powerful.He does not show himself, and so is conspicuous;He does not consider himself right, and so is illustrious;He does not brag, and so has merit;He does not boast, and so endures.It is because he does not contend that no one in the empire is in a position to contend with him.  [XXII]
        "Because he does nothing, he never ruins anything; and, because he does not lay hold of anything, he loses nothing."  [LXIV] In short, the sage is made great because he never attempts to be so.  He is the servant of all, and therefore, the ruler of all.As a ruler, the sage is benevolent.  He "has no mind of his own.  He takes as his own the minds of the people."  [XLIX] And, in "desiring to lead the people," the sage must "follow behind them."  [LXVI]
        In maintaining the government, the ruler neither trifles with his power nor interferes with the affairs of the state.  "Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish," the Tao declares.  Surely the state, like the fish, can be spoiled by too much handling.The empire is a sacred vessel and nothing should be done to it.Whoever does anything to it will ruin it; whoever lays hold of it will lose it.  [XXIX]Tampering with the empire frustrates its purposes.  "It is always through not meddling that the empire is won.  Should you meddle, then you are not equal to the task of winning the empire."  [XLVIII] Rather, a sage will follow a course of "no action."The sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action and practices the teaching that uses no words.  [IIThe Tao Te Ching truly practices what it preaches, imparting instruction using the minimum of words and leaving the student to discover the tao on his own.  Its verses mystify because attempting to explain them would muddle their meaning:  the Way of the universe has no limit, and defining its nature implies that it has boundaries or form when in fact is has none.  The Way is constantly changing, yet never changes.  The Tao Te Ching simply reveals that change is an integral part of life.  Change is the Way.

        The Art of War (Chinese: ; pinyin: Sun Zi Bing Fa) is a Chinese military treatise that was written by Sun Tzu in the 6th century BC, during the Spring and Autumn period. Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it is said to be the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time, and still one of the basic texts.The Art of War is one of the oldest and most successful books on military strategy. It has had an influence on Eastern military thinking, business tactics, and beyond. Sun Tzu suggested the importance of positioning in strategy and that position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitive actors in that environment. He thought that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through an established list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. (tactics).  Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a changing environment, competing plans collide, creating unexpected situations.  The book was translated into the French language in 1772 by French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, and into English by British officer Everard Ferguson Calthrop in 1905. It likely influenced Napoleon,   and leaders as diverse as Mao Zedong, General Vo Nguyen Giap, Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini, and General Douglas MacArthur have claimed to have drawn inspiration from the work. The Art of War has also been applied to business and managerial strategies. The 13 chapters   The Art of War is divided into 13 chapters (or P'ien), and the collection is referred to as being one Ch'üan ("whole" or alternatively "chronicle"). As different translations have used differing titles for each chapter, a selection appears below. Lionel Giles' 1910 translation is considered the standard reference, but the other titles are, given the nature of translation, equally valid.
        Chapter summary Laying Plans explores the five fundamental factors that define a successful outcome (the Way, seasons, terrain, leadership, and management). By thinking,  assessing and comparing these points you can calculate a victory, deviation   from them will ensure failure. Remember that war is a very grave matter of  state.  Waging War explains how to understand the economy of war and how success  requires making the winning play, which in turn, requires limiting the cost of  competition and conflict.  Attack by Stratagem defines the source of strength as unity, not size, and the  five ingredients that you need to succeed in any war.   Tactical Dispositions explains the importance of defending existing positions  until you can advance them and how you must recognize opportunities, not try  to create them. Energy explains the use of creativity and timing in building your momentum. Weak Points & Strong explains how your opportunities come from the openings in  the environment caused by the relative weakness of your enemy in a given area.  Maneuvering explains the dangers of direct conflict and how to win those confrontations when they are forced upon you.  Variation in Tactics focuses on the need for flexibility in your responses. It  explains how to respond to shifting circumstances successfully.  The Army on the March describes the different situations in which you find  yourselves as you move into new enemy territories and how to respond to them.  Much of it focuses on evaluating the intentions of others.  Terrain looks at the three general areas of resistance (distance, dangers, and barriers) and the six types of ground positions that arise from them. Each of  these six field positions offer certain advantages and disadvantages.  The Nine Situations describe nine common situations (or stages) in a campaign,  from scattering to deadly, and the specific focus you need to successfully  navigate each of them.  The Attack by Fire explains the use of weapons generally and the use of the  environment as a weapon specifically. It examines the five targets for attack,  the five types of environmental attack, and the appropriate responses to such  attack.  The Use of Spies focuses on the importance of developing good information   sources, specifically the five types of sources and how to manage them. Mao's quote: "We must not belittle the saying in the book of Sun Wu Tzu, the great military expert of ancient China, 'Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a thousand battles without disaster.'" During the Vietnam War, some Vietcong officers studied The Art of War, and reportedly could recite entire passages from memory. General Vo Nguyen Giap successfully implemented tactics described in The Art of War during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu to end major French involvement in Indochina and led to the accords which partitioned Vietnam into North and South. The Department of the Army in the United States, through its Command and General Staff College, has directed all units to maintain libraries within their respective headquarters for the continuing education of personnel in the art of war. The Art of War is mentioned as an example of works to be maintained at each individual unit, and staff duty officers are obliged to prepare short papers for presentation to other officers on their readings. The Art of War is listed on the Marine Corps Professional Reading Program (formerly known as the Commandant's Reading List) Application outside the militaryThe Art of War has been applied to fields well outside the military. Much of the text is about how to fight wars without actually having to do battle: it gives tips on how to outsmart one's opponent so that physical battle is not necessary. As such, it has found application as a training guide for many competitive endeavors that do not involve actual combat.The book has gained popularity in corporate culture; there have been a variety of business books written applying its lessons to "office politics" and corporate strategy. Many Japanese companies make the book required reading for their key executives.  The book is also popular among Western business management, who have turned to it for inspiration and advice on how to succeed in competitive business situations.

500    B.C.The location is within a few hundred miles of the Altai "Scythian" burials which date from approximately 500-300 BC. There is definitly some  connection here. There is also a connection between the Taklamakan people and the Crimean Scyths, the Celts and the Picts. They likely influenced the "indigenous" tattooing of the tribal peoples of India, and possibly  are antecedent to the Jomon culture of Japan (ancestors of the tattooed  Ainu). There is credible evidence that some of the tattooing tribes of  northern Asia migrated eastward to become certain tribes in the Americas as well.As early as 1986 it was reported in world news sources that some of these  mummies bore tattoos in "geometric" patterns. Thus far images of thesetattoos have not been published in any accessible form. Victor Mair did an  all too brief special for Nova on the mummies, but none of the tattoos were shown. The Chinese central government does not support publication or dissemination of information about the Caucasian attributes of these  people. Also tattooing has been illegal in China since the time of Emperor Qin ['Chin'], about 200 BC.  The Tribal Bible Volume One presents images of all the "Chinese" Caucasian  mummy tattoo patterns currently known and lots more information about them  then you are reading here. We have been assisting the archaeologists in  the research on these people and have the very latest data on their  tattoos   The most stunning example of ancient pictorial tattooing is the heavily  tattooed Scythian chieftain, the "godfather of the Tribal Tattoo," discovered by Russian archeologists in Siberia near the Mongolian and Chinese borders in 1947. The mummy was unearthed from a kurgan burial  mound at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains and was dated to ca. 500 BC,  though archaeologist James Mallory (author of In Search of the  Indo-Europeans) believes he is more properly dated to about 300 BC.  The chieftain was preserved as an "ice-cube" because water leaked into the  kurgan and froze immediately and permanently. His arms, shoulders and parts of his torso and one leg were covered with unique bold blackline  tribal animal motifs. They have stylistic echoes of Persian, Assyrian,  Indian art and particularly strong parallels in the Zhou (Chou) Dynasty and Warring States periods of Chinese art. This clearly defined and strongly developed style, which has been dubbed "Animal Style", was used for centuries on fabric, wood and metal artifacts   produced across the vast expanse of the steppes which the Scyths (and   their various tribal relations) roamed and ruled. It influenced the art of the Celts and the Goths as well as the Chinese.The tattooed chieftain was of Mongolian stock in a predominantly Caucasian  tribe. He was a great warrior with many kills. Each tattoo doubtlessly indicated another enemy slain (as the Spanish noted was the case amongst the Aztec warriors). This is reflected in modern American culture, where gun-fighters cut notches in their pistol grips, fighter pilots paint kill emblems on their cockpits, and army personnel wear ribbons on their chest.A horse-worshiping nomadic people, the Scythians are thought to have ranged from the Altai in the East to the Crimea/Pontus region in the West. They were well known to the ancient Greeks. The Persians and Chinescalled them the "Sakas." Herodotus gives extensive descriptions of them  including their burial customs. Most of these accounts, long thought to  have been solely the fruit of Herodotus' fevered imagination, have been shown to be quite accurate by the science of Archaeology.

    500 BC - by Lao Tzu (441-479 BCE) The Tao Te Ching is the main body of work in Taoist tradition.  Known as the Tao, the text was transcribed during the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy, possibly around the fourth century BCE.  Generally attributed to Lao Tzu (551-479 BCE), an older contemporary of Confucius, the Tao ("the Way" or "the Path") constitutes the path to Ching, or "virtue."  The Tao, then, is a poetic treatise on the art of politics, government, and virtue.
Taoism grew out of a turbulent period of Chinese history known as the "warring states period," in which the country was divided into combative feudalists struggling for control and power.  The Tao Te Ching emerged from this conflict as a way to establish needed change, and subsequently to achieve oneness, order and balance between the warring parties.
Balance, a central principle, is embodied in the Taoist symbol of the yin and yang, which represent the condition of absolute balance in the universe.  Balance then, is the Way, or the Path, referred to as the tao (pronounced "dow").  The tao "is to the world as the river and the sea are to rivulets and streams."  (XXXII) However, to describe the tao using specific terms would limit its function—and the tao has no limits.
As a thing the tao is
Shadowy, indistinct.  [XXI]
One must study carefully to grasp the nature of the way:
Yet within the tao is a substance.
Dim and dark,
Yet within the tao is an essence.
This essence is quite genuine
And within it is something that can be tested.  [XXI]
Still, the tao is largely intangible, since "the great image has no shape.  The way conceals itself in being nameless."  [XLI] The point is, then, that the Way (tao) can be approached by adhering to a set of rules and prescriptions, but that fully to grasp it, one must internalize the concepts.
The Way has existed since before the creation of the universe, since before time began.  The tao is something created from nothing.
There is a thing confusedly formed,
Born before heaven and earth.
Silent and void
It stands alone and does not change,
Goes round and does not [become] weary.
It is capable of being the mother of the world.  [XXV]
Obviously, the Tao Te Ching states, that which came before the creation of the universe cannot be easily defined.  It is too universal, too eternal to be represented by a mere name.
I know not its name
So I style it "the Way."
I give it the makeshift name of "the great."  [XXV]
The Way, then, is essential to the very structure of creation.

Man models himself on earth,
Earth on heaven,
Heaven on the way,
And the way on that which is naturally so.  [XXV]
Integral to the universe's structure and balance are the two opposing forces—the named and the unnamed—which, together, constitute a harmonious whole, just like the yin and the yang.  The Tao explains that since "the way that can be spoken of is not the constant way" [I], and "The name that can be named is not the constant name" [I], the named is the "creator," the mother of all life on earth, while the "nameless" is the way which is beyond the temporal world.

The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;
The named was the mother of the myriad creatures ...
These two are the same
But diverge in name as they issue forth.  [I]
The "nameless" and the "named"—also referred to as "nothing" and "something"—are held in perfect equilibrium, as are all the opposites required to make a whole.  These balanced opposites provide the central dynamic of the tao, as the following passage explains:

Thus Something and Nothing produce each other; the difficult and the easy compliment each other; the long and the short off-set each other;
The high and the low incline towards each other;
Note and sound harmonize with each other;
Before and after follow each other.  [II]
"Balanced opposites" becomes a metaphor in the Tao Te Ching; every natural force has its opposites and contradictions, which, brought together, endow the world with balance and oneness.  Use of the tao will not drain it of its power; after all, it has no limit.  The tao is both empty and full.
It is empty without being exhausted:
The more it works the more comes out.  [V]
Simply put, the tao simply is.  It is strong, yet, because it has no substance, it is also weak.
Weakness is the means the way employs.  [XL]
The tao is forceful, yet submissive.  It provides structure to the universe, yet it is supple and easily manipulated, seeming paradoxes illustrated by the following passage:

A man is supple and weak when living, but hard and stiff when dead.  Grass and trees are pliant and fragile when living, but dried and shrivelled when dead.  Thus the hard and the strong are the comrades of death; the supple and the weak are the comrades of life.  [LXXVI]
The vitality of the tao lies in its pliancy and receptiveness.  It is not stiff or unyielding like iron; its strength is rather like water:  though it is powerful enough to carve stone, yet it provides little resistance to the gentle caress.
At first it may be difficult to see the connection between Taoist philosophy and the turbulent era of Chinese history from which it sprang.  However, the tao is closely linked to feudalism and sheds much-needed light on the world of politics, ethics, and government.  For example, the notion of the weak thing manifesting itself as strong pertains to the way in which control and power flows amongst a people.  The weak, afflicted serf, Lao Tzu writes, shall overcome, while the strong shall fall, just as "a tree that is strong shall suffer the axe."  [LXXVI]

The strong and big takes the lower position,
The supple and weak takes the higher position.  [LXXVI]
...  The weak overcomes the strong,
And the submissive overcomes the hard,
Everyone in the world knows yet no one can put this knowledge into practice.  [LXXVIII]
Of course, as is the way of yin and yang, once the weak conquer the strong, weakness becomes strength, and will in turn be conquered as new weak forces arise in the future.  This perpetual behavior of individuals as well as governments echoes another Taoist dynamic:  the cyclical nature of all natural and human phenomena.
One who understands the meaning of the tao is known as a sage or ruler.  A sage exhibits specific characteristics:  The sage "embraces the One and is a model for the empire"; he is "well versed in the way"; and like the tao itself, a sage is "minutely subtle, mysteriously comprehending, and too profound to be known."  Furthermore, the true sage is constantly evolving, changing, shifting.

Falling apart like thawing ice;
Thick like the uncarved block;
Vacant like a valley;
Murky like muddy water ...  [XV]
Further, the sage "desires not to be full.  Because he is not full that he can be worn and yet newly made."  [XV] The sage is also subtle yet powerful.

He does not show himself, and so is conspicuous;
He does not consider himself right, and so is illustrious;
He does not brag, and so has merit;
He does not boast, and so endures.
It is because he does not contend that no one in the empire is in a position to contend with him.  [XXII]
"Because he does nothing, he never ruins anything; and, because he does not lay hold of anything, he loses nothing."  [LXIV] In short, the sage is made great because he never attempts to be so.  He is the servant of all, and therefore, the ruler of all.
As a ruler, the sage is benevolent.  He "has no mind of his own.  He takes as his own the minds of the people."  [XLIX] And, in "desiring to lead the people," the sage must "follow behind them."  [LXVI]
In maintaining the government, the ruler neither trifles with his power nor interferes with the affairs of the state.  "Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish," the Tao declares.  Surely the state, like the fish, can be spoiled by too much handling.

The empire is a sacred vessel and nothing should be done to it.
Whoever does anything to it will ruin it; whoever lays hold of it will lose it.  [XXIX]
Tampering with the empire frustrates its purposes.  "It is always through not meddling that the empire is won.  Should you meddle, then you are not equal to the task of winning the empire."  [XLVIII] Rather, a sage will follow a course of "no action."

The sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action and practices the teaching that uses no words.  [II]
The Tao Te Ching truly practices what it preaches, imparting instruction using the minimum of words and leaving the student to discover the tao on his own.  Its verses mystify because attempting to explain them would muddle their meaning:  the Way of the universe has no limit, and defining its nature implies that it has boundaries or form when in fact is has none.  The Way is constantly changing, yet never changes.  The Tao Te Ching simply reveals that change is an integral part of life.  Change is the Way.

500- BCE-

 

 

500  Rebellion against Hinduism and its animal sacrifices gives rise to Jainism. In the gatherings that are entertainment in towns across the Ganges Valley, cult leaders have been debating and picking up followers. Siddartha Gautama is a successful debater and movement leader. He also rejects animal sacrifices and metaphysics. He produces a guide for living and (according to claims passed down by followers) he says people must be their own light rather than follow the dogma of a priesthood.

499  In Asia Minor, Greeks begin a rebellion against Persian rule.

490  To punish mainland Greeks for their support of the rebellion in Asia Minor, Darius the Great of Persia sends a fleet across the Aegean Sea and lands soldiers near Marathon, twenty-six miles north of Athens. A runner covers the distance to announce the arrival of the Persians. A coalition of city-states defeats the Persians at Marathon, and the Persians withdraw. In Athens, the god Pan is said to have given the Greeks their victory, to win back from the Athenians their devotion, which he had seen as diminishing.

486  Darius the Great dies at around the age of seventy-two.

485  The Athenian poet Aeshylus is turning forty. Before he dies he will have written around ninety plays. Athens is developing a literature that goes beyond simple divisions of good versus evil people, a human-centered approach that would be called humanistic. These are writers about which the Yahwist Isaiah would have complained that "...they do not pay attention to the deeds of the Lord." (Isaiah 5:12)

480  Xerxes, son of Darius, marches an army through Thrace and into mainland Greece. The Persians are trying to extend their empire too far.

     431  The Great Peloponnesian War begins, with Sparta and its allies on one side and Athens and its allies on the other. Athenians have built an empire among the island states and believe that it is rule or be ruled. Sparta and its allies fear domination by Athens and invade Attica, announcing that they are fighting against Athenian imperialism for their independence and for the liberty of Greeks.

    430  A Chinese scholar, Mo-zi, nears forty. Unlike Confucius and his followers, Mo-zi believes that all men are equal before the lord of the heavens. He believes that the powers of heaven exercise love for all humankind. Mo-zi speaks of the value of the labor of common folks, and he advocates promoting people to positions of power solely on the strength of their abilities and virtues. Mo-zi witnesses local rulers sending their armies against neighboring states, devastating crops, slaughtering cattle, burning towns and temples, killing civilians and dragging people away to be made slaves. He tries to mediate between rulers at war with each other. He creates an army of well-trained and highly disciplined warriors which he offers to rulers defending themselves against aggression.

    404  Athens has counted too much on military force and too little on hearts and minds. The Great Peloponnesian War ends with defeat for Athens and victory for Sparta and its allies. Sparta is now the undisputed leader and policing power among the Greek city-states.

    401?  Radiocarbon dating indicates that the Haraldskær Woman lived in this century – in what is today Denmark. Her body was discovered in Denmark in 1835. Scientists estimate that she would have stood at 150 centimeters (4 feet 11 inches), that she died at about 50 years old, in good health and without signs of degenerative disease. Her stomach contents were of unhusked millet and blackberries. Writes Wikipedia, "Her neck had a faint groove as if a rope may have been applied for torture or strangulation." Cremation was the prevailing mode of interment during this period in this place, and the Haraldskær Woman is believed by those who have examined her remains to have been a victim of ritual sacrifice.

timeline 1000-501 | 4th Century BCE (400 to 301)

    479 - Near Athens, the Athenian navy and its allies destroy the Persian fleet. With much of the Persian army dependent on ships for supplies, it is forced to march back to Asia Minor.

    460  The navy of Athens is still taking war to the Persians, and, asserting leadership, Athens is turning its alliance with other Greek cities into an empire.

    458  The Persians are allowing Yahwist priests to return from Babylon to Judah and urging the priests to maintain order in accordance with their teachings – a common practice by the Persians regarding subject peoples. The Persians do not allow the Jews a king, which is okay with the high-priests. In Jerusalem, the high-priest Ezra arrives with 1,800 others and finds assimilations. He begins to organize Judaic law along lines of identity with Yahweh worship. Men are soon to be asked to expel from their homes their foreign wives. Judaic law is to be based on an assembled five books purportedly written by Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Intolerance toward other faiths is encouraged.

    450  The philosopher Anaxagoras is teaching in Athens. He gives laboratory demonstrations, conducts simple experiments and tests hypotheses. He speculates that matter too small to see is infinitely numerous and distributed in all things. He speculates that mind is a substance disconnected from all other substances, that mind was the first cause of all motion. He equates mind (collective rather than individual) with soul, which he calls nous, and for Anaxagoras, nous is God, giving rise to a monotheism alongside what has arisen in the Upanishads.

    445  Protagoras is around forty and moves from Thrace to Athens. He is a democrat and, contrary to popular opinion, speaks of people from different areas around the world as sharing a common humanity. He claims that by criticizing tradition and eliminating customs derived from "barbarian times" people can create better societies. He is opposed to the tradition of laws made by kings, favoring the privileged and described as having been made by the gods. He claims that laws should be made by and for common people. He claims that humanity must learn for itself what is just and right - a view that "man is the measure of all things."

    445  The Hebrew priest Ezra reads the Book of the Law to the people of Jerusalem.

    442  In Rome, legislation is introduced against a law prohibiting marriage between aristocrats and commoners. Aristocrats (patricians) are concerned about the purity of their blood and describe the legislation as a rebellion against the laws of heaven. Commoner (plebeian) families headed by vigorous entrepreneurs have accumulated much wealth, and patricians from poorer families have an interest in marrying into these more wealthy families. The law against prohibiting marriage between aristocrats and commoners is repealed.

    440 - Herodotus is in his early forties. He has or will soon write about the Persian war and about his travels to Babylon, Egypt, the Crimea, Italy and elsewhere. His open-mindedness about the people he visits results in fellow Greeks calling him a "barbarian-lover."  Unlike priestly writers, he does not write to praise his gods and he admits that his work is subjective


    500 BCE-- A detail of the 13th century Fontana Maggiore in Perugia with the fables of The Wolf and the Crane and The Wolf and the Lamb Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE Apollonius of Tyana, a 1st century CE philosopher, is recorded as having said about Aesop:... like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths, and after serving up a story he adds to it  the advice to do a thing or not to do it. Then, too, he was really more  attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events. —Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Book V:14
      


____________________________________________________________

499    IRAN.Cyrus the Great was the founder of the Persian Empire, and the author of "the world's oldest human rights declaration".Under Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great, the Persian Empire eventually became the largest and most powerful empire in human history up until that point, ruling over most of the known world. Their greatest achievement was the empire itself. The Persian Empire represented the world's first global superpower], and was "a paragon of religious and cultural tolerance". The borders of the Persian empire stretched from the Indus and Oxus Rivers in the East to the Merranean Sea in the West, extending through Anatolia (modern day Turkey) and Egypt.In 499BC, Athens lent support to a revolt by one of the cities along the cost of Anatolia, Miletus, ruled by a Greek tyrant named Aristagoras, which culminated in the sacking and burning of the city of Sardis. This event escalated into what is known as the Greco-Persian Wars, during which Persia conquered Thrace, Macedonia, then most of the Greek mainland (Battle of Thermopylae), and razed Athens in 480BC. However Greek victories on land at Marathon and Platea and at sea at Salamis and Mycale forced Persia to withdraw. Fighting continued across the Eastern Merranean area from Cyprus to Egypt

    499 -GRECO PERSIAN WARS. The Greco-Persian Wars (also often called the Persian Wars) were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and city-states of the Hellenic world that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered Ionia in 547 BC. Struggling to rule the independent-minded cities of Ionia, the Persians appointed tyrants to rule each of them. This would prove the source of much trouble for both Greeks and Persians alike.In 499 BC, the then tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, embarked on an expedition to conquer the island of Naxos, with Persian support. However, the expedition was a debacle, and pre-empting his dismissal, Aristagoras incited the whole of Hellenic Asia Minor into rebellion against the Persians. This was the beginning of the Ionian Revolt, which would last until 493 BC, progressively drawing more regions of Asia Minor into the conflict. Aristagoras secured military support from Athens and Eretria, and in 498 BC, these forces helped to capture and burn the Persian regional capital of Sardis. The Persian king Darius the Great vowed to have revenge on Athens and Eretria for this act. The revolt continued, with the two sides effectively stalemated throughout 497–495 BC. In 494 BC, the Persians regrouped, and attacked the epicentre of the revolt in Miletus. At the Battle of Lade, the Ionians suffered a decisive defeat, and the rebellion collapsed, with the final members being stamped out the following year.Seeking to secure his empire from further revolts, and from the interference of the mainland Greeks, Darius embarked on a scheme to conquer Greece, and to punish Athens and Eretria for the burning of Sardis. The first Persian invasion of Greece began in 492 BC, with the Persian general Mardonius subjugating Thrace and Macedon before several mishaps forced an early end to the campaign. In 490 BC a second force was sent to Greece, this time across the Aegean Sea, under the command of Datis and Artaphernes. This expedition subjugated the Cyclades, before besieging, capturing and razing Eretria. However, while on route to attack Athens, the Persian force was decisively defeated by the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon, ending Persian efforts for the time being. Darius then began to plan the complete the conquest of Greece, but died in 486 BC and responsibility for the conquest passed to his son Xerxes I. In 480 BC, Xerxes personally led the second Persian invasion of Greece, accompanied by one of the largest ancient armies ever assembled. Victory over the 'Allied' Greek states (led by Sparta and Athens) at the Battle of Thermopylae allowed the Persians to overrun most of Greece. However, while seeking to destroy the Allied fleet, the Persians suffered a severe defeat at the Battle of Salamis. The following year, the Allies went on the offensive, defeating the Persian army at the Battle of Plataea, and thereby ending the invasion of Greece.The Allies followed up their success by destroying the rest of the Persian fleet at the Battle of Mycale, before expelling Persian garrisons from Sestos (479 BC)
    and Byzantium (478 BC). The actions of the general Pausanias at the siege of Byzantium alienated many of the Greek states from the Spartans, and the anti-Persian alliance was therefore reconstituted around Athenian leadership, as the so-called Delian League. The Delian League continued to campaign against Persia for the next three decades, beginning with the expulsion of the remaining Persian garrisons from Europe. At the Battle of the Eurymedon in 466 BC the League won a double victory that finally secured freedom for the cities of Ionia. However, the involvement of the League in an Egyptian revolt (from 460–454 BC) resulted in a catastrophic defeat and a further campaigning was suspended. A fleet was dispatched to Cyprus in 451 BC, but achieved little, and when it withdrew, the Greco-Persian Wars drew to a quiet end. Some historical sources suggest that the end of hostilities was marked by a peace treaty between Athens and Persia, the so-called Peace of Callias.

    499 - Ionians rebel against their Persian rulers with Athenian support. Revolt ends after Darius sacks Miletus in 494. 499 GRECO PERSIAN WARS. The Ionian Revolt, and associated revolts in Aeolis, Doris, Cyprus and Caria, were military rebellions by several regions of Asia Minor against Persian rule, lasting from 499 to 493 BC. At the heart of the rebellion was the dissatisfaction of the Greek cities of Asia Minor with the tyrants appointed by Persia to rule them, along with the individual actions of two Milesian tyrants, Histiaeus and Aristagoras. In 499 BC the then tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, launched a joint expedition with the Persian satrap Artaphernes to conquer Naxos, in an attempt to bolster his position in Miletus (both financially and in terms of prestige). The mission was a debacle,[55] and sensing his imminent removal as tyrant, Aristagoras choseto incite the whole of Ionia into rebellion against the Persian king Darius the Great.
 
    498- GRECO PERSIAN WARS. Map showing main events of the Ionian Revolt.In 498 BC, supported by troops from Athens and Eretria, the Ionians marched on, captured, and burnt Sardis.However, on their return journey to Ionia, they were followed by Persian troops, and decisively beaten at the Battle of Ephesus. This campaign was the only offensive action taken by the Ionians, who subsequently went on the defensive. The Persians responded in 497 BC with a three pronged attack aimed at recapturing the outlying areas of the rebellious territory, but the spread of the revolt to Caria meant that the largest army, under Darius, relocated there instead. While initially campaigning successfully in Caria, this army was annihilated in an ambush at the Battle of Pedasus.This resulted in a stalemate for the rest of 496 and 495 BC.

496     Romans defeat the Latins at Lake Regilius.

494    Plebeians in Rome revolt, and win political rights from patricians.

    494- GRECO PERSIAN WARS. By 494 BC the Persian army and navy had regrouped, and they made straight for the epicentre of the rebellion at Miletus.[62] The Ionian fleet sought to defend Miletus by sea, but were decisively beaten at the Battle of Lade, after the defection of the Samians.[63] Miletus was then besieged, captured, and its population was enslaved.[64] This double defeat effectively ended the revolt, and the Carians surrendered to the Persians as a result.[65] The Persians spent 493 BC reducing the cities along the west coast that still held out against them,[66] before finally imposing a peace settlement on Ionia that was generally considered to be both just and fair.The Ionian Revolt constituted the first major conflict between Greece and the Achaemenid Empire, and as such represents the first phase of the Greco-Persian Wars. Asia Minor had been brought back into the Persian fold, but Darius had vowed to punish Athens and Eretria for their support for the revolt.Moreover, seeing that the political situation in Greece posed a continued threat to the stability of his Empire, he decided to embark on the conquest of all Greece.First invasion of Greece (492–490 BC)Main article: First Persian invasion of Greece
            
    494-     ROME. Between the fifth and third centuries the struggle in Rome was between the patricians and the plebeians. A struggle for land and political rights. The plebeian masses campaigned for land while the richer stratum wanted political power. A dramatic episode was the Plebeian Secession, when they set up camp on the Mons Sacer. Their departure weakened Rome's military strength and the patricians were obliged to make concessions. The post of People's Tribune was created to champion the interests of the plebeians. These tribunes were elected and had the right of veto.

493-    Treaty between Rome and the other countries of the Latin League, providing for mutual help throughout Latium against Etruscans.

    493 BC-Foedus Cassianum Ends the war between the Roman Republic and the Latin League.



492    Mrdonius leads first Persian expedition against Athens. His fleet is shattered by a storm.

    492 -GRECO PERSIAN WARS. Upon completing the pacification of Ionia, the Persians began planning their next moves; to extinguish the threat to their empire from Greece, and to punish Athens and Eretria.[68] The resultant first Persian invasion of Greece consisted of two main campaigns. 492 BC: Mardonius's campaign Map showing events of the first phases of the Greco-Persian WarsThe first campaign, in 492 BC, was led by Darius's son-in-law Mardonius, who re-subjugated Thrace, which had nominally been part of the Persian empire since 513 BC.[70] Mardonius was also able to force Macedon to become a client kingdom of Persia; it had previously been allied but independent.[71] However, further progress in this campaign was prevented when Mardonius's fleet was wrecked in a storm off the coast of Mount Athos. Mardonius himself was then injured in a raid on his camp by a Thracian tribe, and after this he returned with the remainder of the expedition to Asia.The following year, having given clear warning of his intentions, Darius sent ambassadors to all the cities of Greece, demanding their submission.[73] He received it from almost all of them, except Athens and Sparta, both of whom instead executed the ambassadors.[73] With Athens still defiant, and Sparta now also effectively at war with him, Darius ordered a further military campaign for the following year.

490     BCDiscovery of a Rich Seam of Silver in the Laurion Mines Themistocles subsequently persuades the Athenians to use some of the  proceeds to build a fleet of warships.

    490    The Persian invasion of Attica. Second Persian expedition. Athenians defeat the Persians.Greek victory at Marathon .
 
    490    GRECO PERSIAN WARS. The Persian Empire in 490 BC.While fighting the Lydians, Cyrus had sent messages to the Ionians asking them to revolt against Lydian rule, which the Ionians had refused to do. After Cyrus finished the conquest of Lydia, the Ionian cities
        now offered to be his subjects under the same terms as they had been subjects of Croesus.Cyrus refused, citing the Ionians' unwillingness to help him previously. The Ionians thus prepared to defend themselves, and Cyrus sent the Median general Harpagus to conquer them.He first attacked Phocaea; the Phocaeans decided to entirely abandon their city and sail into exile in Sicily, rather than become Persian subjects (although many subsequently returned). Some Teians also chose to emigrate when Harpagus attacked Teos, but the rest of the Ionians remained, and were each in turn conquered.
        In the years following their conquest, the Persians found the Ionians difficult to rule. Elsewhere in the empire, Cyrus was able to identify elite native groups to help him rule his new subjects – such as the priesthood of Judea. No such group existed in Greek cities at this time; while there was usually an aristocracy, this was inevitably divided into feuding factions. The Persians thus settled for sponsoring a tyrant in each Ionian city, even though this drew them into the Ionians' internal conflicts. Furthermore, certain tyrants might develop an independent streak and have to be replaced. The tyrants themselves faced a difficult task; they had to deflect the worst of their fellow citizens' hatred, while staying in the favour of the Persians. While Greek states had in the past often been ruled by tyrants, this was a form of government generally on the decline. Moreover, past tyrants had at least tended (and needed) to be strong and able leaders, whereas the rulers appointed by the Persians were simply place-men. Backed by the Persian military might, these tyrants did not need the support of the population, and could thus rule absolutely. On the eve of the Greco-Persian wars, it is probable that the population of Ionia (and Hellenic Asia Minor in general) had become discontent, and were ready for rebellion. It should be noted that Ionia does not seem to have revolted in the civil war period between the reigns of Cyrus and Darius I of Persia, unlike the many other areas of the empire (as testified by the Behistun Inscription), and it is therefore possible to argue that the Greeks were not so dissatisfied with Persian rule as some historians propose.Warfare in the ancient MediterraneanIn the Greco-Persian wars both sides made use of spear-armed infantry and light missile troops, Greek armies placed the emphasis on heavier infantry, while Persian armies tended to favour lighter troop types

    490    BC: GRECO PERSIAN WARS. Datis and Artaphernes' campaignIn Datis and Artaphernes (son of the satrap Artaphernes) were given command of an amphibious invasion force, and set sail from Cilicia.[74] The Persian force sailed from Cilicia firstly to the island of Rhodes, where a Lindian Temple Chronicle records that Datis besieged the city of Lindos, but was unsuccessful.[75] The fleet sailed next to Naxos, in order to punish the Naxians for their resistance to the failed expedition that the Persians had mounted there a decade earlier Many of the inhabitants fled to the mountains; those that the Persians caught were enslaved.The Persians then burnt the city and temples of the Naxians.The fleet then proceeded to island-hop across the rest of the Aegean on its way to Eretria, taking hostages and troops from each island.The task force sailed on to Euboea, and to the first major target, Eretria.The Eretrians made no attempt to stop the Persians landing or advancing, and thus allowed themselves to be besieged.[79] For six days the Persians attacked the walls, with losses on both sides;[79] however, on the seventh day two
        reputable Eretrians opened the gates and betrayed the city to the Persians.The city was razed, and temples and shrines were looted and burned. Furthermore, according to Darius's commands, the Persians enslaved all the remaining townspeople.

         Battle of Marathon
 
        The Greek wings envelop the PersiansThe Persian fleet next headed south down the coast of Attica, landing at the bay of Marathon, roughly 25 miles (40 km) from Athens [80] Under the guidance of Miltiades, the general with the greatest experience of fighting the Persians, the Athenian army marched to block the two exits from the plain of Marathon. Stalemate ensued for five days, before the Athenians (for reasons that are not completely clear) decided to attack the Persians.[81] Despite the numerical advantage of the Persians, the hoplites proved devastatingly effective against the more lightly armed Persian infantry, routing the wings before turning in on the centre of the Persian line. The remnants of the Persian army fled to their ships and left the battle.Herodotus records that 6,400 Persian bodies were counted on the battlefield; the Athenians lost only 192 men.As soon as the Persian survivors had put to sea the Athenians marched as quickly as possible to Athens. They arrived in time to prevent Artaphernes from securing a landing in Athens. Seeing his opportunity lost, Artaphernes brought the year's campaign to an end and returned to Asia.The Battle of Marathon was a watershed in the Greco-Persian wars, showing the Greeks that the Persians could be beaten. It also highlighted the superiority of the more heavily armoured Greek hoplites, and showed their potential when used wisely. The Battle of Marathon is perhaps now more famous as the inspiration for the Marathon race.

    490    -GRECO PERSIAN WARS. Interbellum (–480 BC) Achaemenid EmpireAfter the failure of the first invasion, Darius began raising a huge new army with which he meant to completely subjugate Greece; however, in 486 BC, his Egyptian subjects revolted, indefinitely postponing any Greek expedition.[86] Darius died while preparing to
        march on Egypt, and the throne of Persia passed to his son Xerxes I.Xerxes crushed the Egyptian revolt, and very quickly restarted the preparations for the invasion of Greece.[88] Since this was to be a full scale invasion it required longterm planning, stockpiling and conscription. Xerxes decided that the Hellespont would be bridged to allow his army to cross to Europe, and that a canal should be dug across the isthmus of Mount Athos (a Persian fleet had been destroyed in 492 BC while rounding this coastline). These were both feats of exceptional ambition, that would have been beyond any contemporary state.However, the campaign was delayed by one year because of another revolt in Egypt and Babylonia.The Persians had the sympathy of a number of Greek city-states, including Argos, which had pledged to defect when the Persians reached their borders. The Aleuadae family, who ruled Larissa in Thessaly, saw the invasion as an opportunity to extend their power.[92] Thebes, though not explicitly 'Medising', was suspected of being willing to aid the Persians once the invasion force arrived.In 481 BC, after roughly four years of preparation, Xerxes began to muster the troops for the invasion of Europe. Herodotus gives the names of 46 nations from which troops were drafted.[95] The Persian army was  gathered in Asia Minor in the summer and autumn of 481 BC. The armies from the Eastern satrapies was gathered in Kritala, Cappadocia and were led by Xerxes to Sardis where they passed the winter.[96] Early in spring it moved to Abydos where it was joined with the armies of the western satrapies.[97] Then the army that Xerxes had mustered marched towards Europe, crossing the Hellespont on two pontoon
        bridges. Size of the Persian forcesFor further information see Size of the Persian Forces The numbers of troops that Xerxes mustered for the second invasion of Greece have been the subject of endless dispute. Modern scholars tend to reject as unrealistic the figures of 2.5 million given by Herodotus and other ancient sources, as a result of miscalculations or exaggerations on the part of the victors. The topic has been hotly debated, but the consensus revolves around the
        figure of 200,000.The size of the Persian fleet is also disputed, although perhaps less so. Herodotus gives a number of 1,207 to which other ancient authors concur. These numbers are by ancient standards consistent, and this could be interpreted that a number around 1,200 is correct. Among modern scholars some have accepted this number, although suggesting that the number must have been lower by the Battle of Salamis. Other recent works on the Persian Wars reject this
        number, viewing 1,207 as more of a reference to the combined Greek fleet in the Iliad. These works generally claim that the Persians could have launched no more than around 600 warships into the Aegean.AthensA year after Marathon, Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, was injured in a minor battle. Taking advantage of his incapacitation, the powerful Alcmaeonid family arranged for him to be prosecuted. Miltiades was given a massive fine for the crime of 'deceiving the Athenian people', but died weeks later as a result of his wound.Bust of ThemistoclesThe politician Themistocles, with a power-base firmly established amongst the poor, filled the vacuum left by Miltiades's death, and in the following decade became the most influential politician in Athens.During this period, Themistocles continued to advocate the expansion of Athenian naval power.[105] The Athenians were certainly aware throughout this period that the Persian interest in Greece had not ended,[88] and Themistocles's naval policies may be seen in the light of the potential threat from Persia.Aristides, Themistocles's great rival, and champion of the zeugites (the upper, 'hoplite-class') vigorously opposed such a policy.In 483 BC, a massive new seam of silver was found in the Athenian mines at Laurium.[107] Themistocles proposed that the silver should be used to build a new fleet of triremes, ostensibly to assist in a long running war with Aegina[108] Plutarch suggests that Themistocles deliberately avoided mentioning Persia, deeming that it was too distant a threat for the Athenians to act on, but that countering Persia was the ultimate aim of the fleet.[107] Fine suggests that many Athenians must also have acknowledged that such a fleet would be needed to resist the Persians, whose preparations for the coming campaign were known about.[109] Themistocles's motion was passed easily, despite strong opposition from Aristides. Another factor in the motion's passing may have been the desire of many of the poorer Athenians for paid employment as rowers in the fleet.[109] It is unclear from the ancient sources whether 100 or 200 ships initially authorised; both Fine and Holland suggest that initially 100 ships were authorised, and that a second vote boosted this to the actual levels seen during the second invasion.

490    Warring states period in China

486    Xerxes I the great ruler of Persia to 465. Demands tribute from the Greek states, most of which refuse.

    
    484    GRECO PERSIAN WARS. Herodotus, the main source for this conflict. Thucydides continued Herodotus's narrative.Almost all the primary sources for the Greco-Persian Wars are Greek; There are no surviving historical accounts from the Persian side. By some distance, the main source for the Greco-PersianWars is the Greek historian Herodotus. Herodotus, who has been called the "Father of History",[2] was born in 484 BC in Halicarnassus, Asia Minor (then part of the Persian empire).

482 GRECO PERSIAN WARS.  Aristides continued to oppose
        Themistocles's policy, and tension between the two camps built over the winter, so that the ostracism of 482 BC became a direct contest between Themistocles and Aristides.[108] In what Holland characterises as, in essence, the world's first referendum, Aristides was ostracised, and Themistocles's policies were endorsed.[108] Indeed, becoming aware of the Persian preparations for the coming invasion, the Athenians voted for the construction of more ships than Themistocles had initially asked for.[108] In the run up to the Persian invasion, Themistocles had thus become the foremost politician in Athens.SpartaThe Spartan king Demaratus had been stripped of his kingship in 491 BC, and replaced with his cousin Leotychides. Sometime after 490 BC the humiliated Demaratus had chosen to go into exile, and had made his way to Darius's court in Susa.[86] Demaratus would henceforth act as an advisor to Darius, and subsequently Xerxes, on Greek affairs, and accompanied Xerxes during the second Persian invasion.[111] At the very end of Herodotus's book 7, there is an anecdote relating that in the run-up to the second invasion, Demaratus sent an apparently blank wax tablet to Sparta. When the wax was removed, a message was found scratched on the wooden backing, warning the Spartans of Xerxes's plans.[112] However, many historians believe that this chapter was inserted into the text by a later author, possibly to cover up a lacuna between the end of book 7 and the start of book 8; the historicity of this anecdote is therefore unclear.

    481    GRECO PERSIAN WARS. Hellenic allianceIn 481 BC Xerxes sent ambassadors around Greece asking for earth and water, but making the very deliberate omission of Athens and Sparta.[114] Support thus began to coalesce around these two states. A congress of states met at Corinth in late autumn of 481 BC, and a confederate alliance of Greek city-states was formed.[115] This confederation had the power to send envoys asking for assistance and to dispatch troops from the member states to defensive points after joint consultation. Herodotus does not formulate an abstract name for the union but simply calls them " (the Greeks) and "the Greeks who had sworn alliance" (Godley translation) or "the Greeks who had banded themselves together" (Rawlinson translation).[116] Hereafter, they will be referred to as the 'Allies'. Sparta and Athens had a leading role in the congress but the interests of all the states played a part in determining defensive strategy.[117] Little is known about the internal workings of the congress or the discussions during its meetings. Only 70 of the approximately 700 Greek city-states sent representatives. Nevertheless, this was remarkable for the disjointed Greek world, especially since many of the city-states in attendance were still technically at war with each other.Second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC)

    480    GRECO PERSIAN WARS.  Early 480 BC: Thrace, Macedonia and ThessalyHaving crossed into Europe in April 480 BC, the Persian army began its march to Greece, taking 3 months to travel unopposed from the Hellespont to Therme. It paused at Doriskos where it was joined by the fleet. Xerxes reorganized the troops into tactical units replacing the national formations used earlier for the march.Major events in the second invasion of GreeceThe Allied 'congress' met again in the spring of 480 BC and agreed to defend the narrow Vale of Tempe, on the borders of Thessaly, and thereby block Xerxes's advance.[120] However, once there, they were warned by Alexander I of Macedon that the vale could be bypassed and that the army of Xerxes was overwhelmingly large, thus the Greeks retreated.[121] Shortly afterwards, they received the news that Xerxes had crossed the Hellespont.[121] At this point a second strategy was suggested by Themistocles to the allies. The route to southern Greece (Boeotia, Attica and the Peloponnesus) would require the army of Xerxes to travel through the very narrow pass of Thermopylae. This could easily be blocked by the Greek hoplites, despite the overwhelming numbers of Persians. Furthermore, to prevent the Persians bypassing Thermopylae by sea, the Athenian and allied navies could block the straits of Artemisium. This dual strategy was adopted by the congress.[122] However, the Peloponnesian cities made fall-back plans to defend the Isthmus of Corinth should it come to it, while the women and children of Athens were evacuated en masse to the Peloponnesian city of Troezen.August 480 BC: Battles of Thermopylae and ArtemisiumMain articles: Battle of Thermopylae and Battle of ArtemisiumXerxes's estimated time of arrival at Thermopylae coincided with both the Olympic games and the festival of Carneia. For the Spartans, warfare during these periods was considered sacrilegious.[124] Despite the uncomfortable timing, the Spartans considered the threat so grave that they dispatched their king Leonidas I with his personal bodyguard (the Hippeis) of 300 men; although in this case, the customary elite young men in the Hippeis were replaced by veterans who already had children.[124] Leonidas was supported by contingents from the Allied Peloponnesian cities, and other forces that the Allies picked up en route to Thermopylae.[124] The Allies proceeded to occupy the pass, rebuilt the wall the Phocians had built at the narrowest point of the pass, and waited for Xerxes's arrival.The pass of ThermopylaeWhen the Persians arrived at Thermopylae in mid-August, they initially waited for three days for the Allies to disperse. When Xerxes was
        eventually persuaded that the Allies intended to contest the pass, he sent his troops to attack.[126] However, the Allied position was ideally suited to hoplite warfare, the Persian contingents being forced to attack the Greek phalanx head on.[127] The Allies withstood two full days of Persian attacks, including those by the elite Persian Immortals. However, towards the end of the second day, they were betrayed by a local resident named Ephialtes who revealed to Xerxes a mountain path that led behind the Allied lines. Made aware by scouts that they were being outflanked, Leonidas dismissed the bulk of the Allied army, remaining to guard the rear with perhaps 2,000 men. On the final day of the battle, the remaining Allies sallied forth from the wall to meet the Persians in the wider part of the pass in an attempt to slaughter as many Persians as they could, but eventually they were all killed or captured.Simultaneous with the battle at Thermopylae, an Allied naval force of 271 triremes defended the Straits of Artemisium against the Persians, thus protecting the flank of the forces at Thermopylae.[129] Here the Allied fleet held off the Persians for three days; however, on the third evening the Allies received news of the fate of Leonidas and the Allied troops at Thermopylae.
        Since the Allied fleet was badly damaged, and since it no longer needed to defend the flank of Thermopylae, the Allies retreated from Artemisium to the island of Salamis. September 480 BC: Battle of SalamisMain article: Battle of SalamisVictory at Thermopylae meant that all Boeotia fell to Xerxes; and left Attica open to invasion. The remaining population of Athens was evacuated, with the aid of the Allied fleet, to Salamis.[131] The Peloponnesian Allies began to prepare a defensive line across the Isthmus of Corinth, building a wall, and demolishing the road from Megara, abandoning Athens to the Persians.[132] Athens thus fell to the Persians; the small number of Athenians who had barricaded themselves on the Acropolis were eventually defeated, and Xerxes then ordered Athens to be razed.Schematic diagram illustrating events during the Battle of SalamisThe Persians had now captured most of Greece, but Xerxes had perhaps not expected such defiance; his priority was now to complete the war as quickly as possible If Xerxes could destroy the Allied navy, he would be in a strong position to force an Allied surrender;[135] conversely by avoiding destruction, or as Themistocles hoped, by destroying the Persian fleet, the Allies could prevent the completion of the conquest.[136] The Allied fleet thus remained off the coast of Salamis into September, despite the imminent arrival of the Persians. Even after Athens fell, the Allied fleet still remained off the coast of Salamis, trying to lure the Persian fleet to battle.[137] Partly as a result of subterfuge on the part of Themistocles, the navies met in the cramped Straits of Salamis.[138] There, the Persian numbers became a hindrance, as ships struggled to maneuver and became disorganised.[139] Seizing the opportunity, the Allied fleet attacked, and scored a decisive victory, sinking or capturing at least 200 Persian ships, therefore ensuring the safety of the Peloponnessus.According to Herodotus, after the loss of the battle Xerxes attempted to build a causeway across the channel to attack the Athenian evacuees on Salamis, but this project was soon abandoned. With the Persians' naval superiority removed, Xerxes feared that the Allies might sail to the Hellespont and destroy the pontoon bridges.[141] His general Mardonius volunteered to remain in Greece and complete the conquest with a hand-picked group of troops, while Xerxes retreated to Asia with the bulk of the army.[142] Mardonius over-wintered in Boeotia and Thessaly; the Athenians were thus able to return to their burnt-out city for the winter.

    480    Greek victories over Persians, on land at Thermopylae, and at sea off Salamis. BCBattle of Salamis      Greek civilization is saved by the victory of the Athenian fleet over the  Persians. Third Persian expedition. Xerxes invades Greece with 180,000 men. Greek rearguard is wiped out defending Pass of Thermopylae.

     479 Battle of Platea. Greek army defeats Persian army. Persian fleet is destroyed at. Mycale. Athens and. Piraeus firtified.

    479 GRECO PERSIAN WARS.  June 479 BC: Battles of Plataea and MycaleMain articles: Battle of Plataea and Battle of MycaleOver the winter, there seems to have been some tension between the Allies. In
    particular, the Athenians, who were not protected by the Isthmus, but whose fleet were the key to the security of the Peloponnesus, felt hard done by, and refused to join the Allied navy in Spring. Mardonius remained in Thessaly, knowing an attack on the Isthmus was pointless, while the Allies refused to send an army outside the Peloponessus. Mardonius moved to break the stalemate, by offering peace to the Athenians, using Alexander I of Macedon as an
    intermediate. The Athenians made sure that a Spartan delegation was on hand to hear the offer, but rejected it. Athens was thus evacuated again, and the Persians marched south and re-took possession of it. Mardonius now repeated his offer of peace to the Athenian refugees on Salamis. Athens, along with Megara and Plataea sent emissaries to Sparta demanding assistance, and threatening to accept the Persian terms if they were not aided. In response, the Spartans summonded a large army from the Peloponnese cities and marched to meet the Persians.When Mardonius heard the Allied army was on the march, he retreated into
    Boeotia, near Plataea, trying to draw the Allies into open terrain where he could use his cavalry. The Allied army, under the command of the regent Pausanias, stayed on high ground above Plataea to protect themselves against such tactics.After several days of maneuver and stalemate, Pausanias ordered a night-time retreat towards the Allies' original positions. This maneuver went awry, leaving the Athenians, and Spartans and Tegeans isolated on separate hills, with the other contingents scattered further away near Plataea. Seeing that the Persians might never have a better opportunity to attack, Mardonius ordered his whole army forward. However, the Persian infantry proved no match for the heavily armoured Greek hoplites, and the Spartans broke through to Mardonius's bodyguard and killed him. After this
    the Persian force dissolved in rout; 40,000 troops managed to escape via the road to Thessaly, but the rest fled to the Persian camp where they were trapped and slaughtered by the Greeks, finalising the Greek victoryHerodotus recounts that, on the afternoon of the Battle of Plataea, a rumour of their victory at that battle reached the Allies' navy, at that time off the coast of Mount Mycale in Ionia. Their morale boosted, the Allied marines fought and won a decisive victory at the Battle of Mycale that same day, destroying the remnants of the Persian fleet, crippling Xerxes' sea power, and
    marking the ascendancy of the Greek fleet. Whilst many modern historians doubt that Mycale took place on the same day as Plataea, the battle may well only have occurred once the Allies received news of the events unfolding in Greece.

479                    GRECO PERSIAN WARS.  Greek counterattack –478 BC) Mycale and IoniaMycale was, in many ways, the beginning of a new phase in the conflict, in which the Greeks would go on the offensive against the Persians.[158] The most immediate result of the victory at Mycale was to trigger a second revolt amongst the Greek cities of Asia Minor. The Samians and Milesians had actively fought against the Persians at Mycale, thus openly declaring their rebellion, and the other cities followed in their example. SestosShortly after Mycale, the Allied fleet sailed to the Hellespont to break down the pontoon bridges, but found that this had already been done.The Peloponnesians sailed home, but the Athenians remained to attack the Chersonesos, still held by the Persians. The Persians and their allies, made for Sestos, the strongest town in the region. Amongst them was one Oeobazus of Cardia, who had with him the cables and other equipment from the pontoon bridges. The Persian governor, Artayctes had made no preparations for a siege, not believing that the Allies would attack. The Athenians therefore were able to lay a siege around Sestos. The siege dragged on for several months, causing some discontment amongst the Athenian troops, but eventually, when the food ran out in the City, the Persians fled at night from the least guarded area of the city.The Athenians were thus able to take possession of the city the next day.Most of the Athenian troops were sent straight away to pursue the Persians.The party of Oeobazus was captured by a Thracian tribe, and Oeobazus was sacrificied to the god Plistorus. The Athenians eventually caught Artayctes, killing some of the Persians with him, but taking most captive, including Artayctes. Artayctes was crucified at the request of the people of Elaeus, a town which Artayctes had plundered while governor of the Chersonesos. The Athenians, having pacified the region, then sailed back to Athens, taking the cables from the pontoon bridges with them as trophies. CyprusIn 478 BC, still operating under the terms of the Hellenic alliance, the Allies sent out a fleet composed of 20 Peloponnesian and 30 Athenian ships supported by an unspecified number of allies, under the overall command of Pausanias. According to Thucydides, this fleet sailed to Cyprus and "subdued most of the island". Exactly what Thucydides means by this is unclear. Sealey suggests that this was essentially a raid to gather as much booty as possible from the Persian garrisons on Cyprus. There is no indication that the Allies made any attempt to actually take possession of the island, and shortly after they sailed to Byzantium.[169] Certainly, the fact that the Delian League repeatedly campaigned in Cyprus suggests that either the island was not garrisoned by the Allies in 478 BC, or that the garrisons were quickly expelled. ByzantiumThe Greek fleet then sailed to Byzantium, which they besieged, and eventually captured. Control of both Sestos and Byzantium gave the allies command of the straits between Europe and Asia (over which the Persians had crossed), and allowed them access to the merchant trade of the Black Sea.The aftermath of the siege was to prove troublesome for Pausanias. Exactly what happened is unclear; Thucydides gives few details, although later writers added plenty of lurid insinuations.[171] Through his arrogance and arbitrary actions (Thucydides says "violence"), Pausanias managed to alienate many of the Allied contingents, particularly those that had just been freed from Persian overlordship. The Ionians and others asked the Athenians to take leadership of the campaign, to which they agreed.[172] The Spartans, hearing of his behaviour, recalled Pausanias, and tried him on charges of collaborating with the enemy. Although he was acquitted, his reputation was tarnished and he was not restored to his command.

479    Battles at Plataea and Mycale, Greek victories on land and at sea respectively.Persian invasion repulsed. Athens and Piraeus fortified.

       
478        Delian league  founded. First Athenian naval alliance
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477 GRECO PERSIAN WARS. Pausanias returned to Byzantium as private citizen in 477 BC, and took command of the city until he was expelled by the Athenians. He then crossed the Bosporus and settled in Colonae in the Troad, until he was again accused of collaborating with the Persians and was recalled by the Spartans for trial; after which he starved himself to death.[173] The timescale is unclear, but Pausanias may have remained in possession of Byzantium until 470 BC.In the meantime, the Spartans had sent Dorkis to Byzantium with a small force, to take command of the Allied force. However, he found that the rest of the Allies were no longer prepared to accept Spartan leadership, and therefore returned home.

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470 BC THE CLASSICAL WORLD.

470    The Carthaginian leader Hannosails down the African coast as far as Cameroon.
 
465    Araxerxes rules Persia to 424

460    Egyptians rebel against Persian rule. Age of Pericles in Athens to429. First Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta to 451.

460 PERICLES. Pericles (Ancient Greek:         , Perikl s, "surrounded by glory"; c. 495 – 429 BC) was a prominent and influential Greek statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. He was descended, through his mother, from the powerful and historically influential Alcmaeonid family.Pericles had such a profound influence on Athenian society that Thucydides, his contemporary historian, acclaimed him as "the first citizen of Athens". Pericles turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire and led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. The period during which he led Athens, roughly from 461 to 429 BC, is sometimes known as the "Age of Pericles", though the period thus denoted can include times as early as the Persian Wars, or as late as the next century.Pericles promoted the arts and literature; it is principally through his efforts that Athens holds the reputation of being the educational and cultural centre of the ancient Greek world. He started an ambitious project that generated most of the surviving structures on the Acropolis (including the Parthenon). This project beautified the city, exhibited its glory, and gave work to the people. Pericles also fostered Athenian democracy to such an extent that critics call him a populist. Early years Pericles was born c. 495 BC, in the deme of Cholargos just north of Athens. He was the son of the politician Xanthippus, who, although ostracized in 485–484 BC, returned to Athens to command the Athenian contingent in the Greek victory at Mycale just five years later. Pericles' mother, Agariste, a scion of the powerful and controversial noble family of the Alcmaeonidae, and her familial connections played a crucial role in starting Xanthippus' political career. Agariste was the great-granddaughter of the tyrant of Sicyon, Cleisthenes, and the niece of the supreme Athenian reformer Cleisthenes, another Alcmaeonid. According to Herodotus and Plutarch, Agariste dreamed, a few nights before Pericles' birth, that she had borne a lion. One interpretation of the anecdote treats the lion as a traditional symbol of greatness, but the story may also allude to the unusual size of Pericles' skull, which became a popular target of contemporary comedians (who called him "Squill-head", after the Squill or Sea-Onion). (Although Plutarch claims that this deformity was the reason that Pericles was always depicted wearing a helmet, this is not the case; the helmet was actually the symbol of his official rank as strategos (general))."Our polity does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. It is called a democracy, because not the few but the many govern. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if to social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition."Pericles' Funeral Oration as recorded by  Thucydides, who disclaims verbal accuracy.Pericles belonged to the local tribe of Acamantis (   µ          ). His early years were quiet; the introverted young Pericles took to avoiding public appearances, instead preferring to devote his time to his studies.His family's nobility and wealth allowed him to fully pursue his inclination toward education. He learned music from the masters of the time (Damon or Pythocleides could have been his teacher) and he is considered to have been the first politician to attribute great importance to philosophy. He enjoyed the company of the philosophers Protagoras, Zeno of Elea and Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras in particular became a close friend and influenced him greatly. Pericles' manner of thought and rhetorical charisma may have been in part products of Anaxagoras' emphasis on emotional calm in the face of trouble and skepticism about divine phenomena. His proverbial calmness and self-control are also regarded as products of Anaxagoras' influence. Political career until 431 BC Entering politicsIn the spring of 472 BC, Pericles presented the Persae of Aeschylus at the Greater Dionysia as a liturgy, demonstrating that he was one of the wealthier men of Athens. Simon Hornblower has argued that Pericles' selection of this play, which presents a nostalgic picture of Themistocles' famous victory at Salamis, shows that the young politician was supporting Themistocles against his political opponent Cimon, whose faction succeeded in having Themistocles ostracized shortly afterwards.Plutarch says that Pericles stood first among the Athenians for forty years.If this was so, Pericles must have taken up a position of leadership by the early 460s BC- in his early or mid-thirties. Throughout these years he endeavored to protect his privacy and tried to present himself as a model for his fellow citizens. For example, he would often avoid banquets, trying to be frugal.In 463 BC Pericles was the leading prosecutor of Cimon, the leader of the conservative faction, who was accused of neglecting Athens' vital interests in Macedon. Although Cimon was acquitted, this confrontation proved that Pericles' major political opponent was vulnerable. Ostracizing CimonAround 461 BC, the leadership of the democratic party decided it was time to take aim at the Areopagus, a traditional council controlled by the Athenian aristocracy, which had once been the most powerful body in the state. The leader of the party and mentor of Pericles, Ephialtes, proposed a sharp reduction of the Areopagus' powers. The Ecclesia (the Athenian Assembly) adopted Ephialtes' proposal without strong opposition. This reform signalled the commencement of a new era of "radical democracy". The democratic party gradually became dominant in Athenian politics and Pericles seemed willing to follow a populist policy in order to cajole the public. According to Aristotle, Pericles' stance can be explained by the fact that his principal political opponent, Cimon, was rich and generous, and was able to secure public favor by lavishly bestowing his sizable personal fortune. The historian Loren J. Samons II argues, however, that Pericles had enough resources to make a political mark by private means, had he so chosen.In 461 BC, Pericles achieved the political elimination of this formidable opponent using the weapon of ostracism. The ostensible accusation was that Cimon betrayed his city by acting as a friend of Sparta.Even after Cimon's ostracism, Pericles continued to espouse and promote a populist social policy. He first proposed a decree that permitted the poor to watch theatrical plays without paying, with the state covering the cost of their admission. With other decrees he lowered the property requirement for the archonship in 458–457 BC and bestowed generous wages on all citizens who served as jurymen in the Heliaia (the supreme court of Athens) some time just after 454 BC. His most controversial measure, however, was a law of 451 BC limiting Athenian citizenship to those of Athenian parentage on both sides."Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses might charm for the moment only for the impression which they gave to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us."Pericles' Funeral Oration as recorded by Thucydides Such measures impelled Pericles' critics to regard him as responsible for the gradual degeneration of the Athenian democracy. Constantine Paparrigopoulos, a major modern Greek historian, argues that Pericles sought for the expansion and stabilization of all democratic institutions. Hence, he enacted legislation granting the lower classes access to the political system and the public offices, from which they had previously been barred on account of limited means or humble birth. According to Samons, Pericles believed that it was necessary to raise the demos, in which he saw an untapped source of Athenian power and the crucial element of Athenian military dominance. (The fleet, backbone of Athenian power since the days of Themistocles, was manned almost entirely by members of the lower classes.Cimon, on the other hand, apparently believed that no further free space for democratic evolution existed. He was certain that democracy had reached its peak and Pericles' reforms were leading to the stalemate of populism. According to Paparrigopoulos, history vindicated Cimon, because Athens, after Pericles' death, sank into the abyss of political turmoil and demagogy. According to another historian, Justin Daniel King, radical democracy benefited people individually, but harmed the state. On the other hand, Donald Kagan asserts that the democratic measures Pericles put into effect provided the basis for an unassailable political strength. After all, Cimon finally accepted the new democracy and did not oppose the citizenship law, after he returned from exile in 451 BC. Leading AthensEphialtes' murder in 461 BC paved the way for Pericles to consolidate his authority. Lacking any robust opposition after the expulsion of Cimon, the unchallengeable leader of the democratic party became the unchallengeable ruler of Athens. He remained in power almost uninterruptedly until his death in 429 BC. First Peloponnesian WarMain article: First Peloponnesian War"Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to Pericles, Aspasia, Alcibiades and friends", by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1868, Birmingham Museum & Art GalleryPericles made his first military excursions during the First Peloponnesian War, which was caused in part by Athens' alliance with Megara and Argos and the subsequent reaction of Sparta. In 454 BC he attacked Sicyon and Acarnania. He then unsuccessfully tried to take Oeniadea on the Corinthian gulf, before returning to Athens. In 451 BC, Cimon is said to have returned from exile and negotiated a five years' truce with Sparta after a proposal of Pericles, an event which indicates a shift in Pericles' political strategy.Pericles may have realized the importance of Cimon's contribution during the ongoing conflicts against the Peloponnesians and the Persians. Anthony J. Podlecki argues, however, that Pericles' alleged change of position was invented by ancient writers to support "a tendentious view of Pericles' shiftiness".Plutarch states that Cimon struck a power-sharing deal with his opponents, according to which Pericles would carry through the interior affairs and Cimon would be the leader of the Athenian army, campaigning abroad. If it was actually made, this bargain would constitute a concession on Pericles' part that he was not a great strategist. Kagan believes that Cimon adapted himself to the new conditions and promoted a political marriage between Periclean liberals and Cimonian conservatives.In the mid-450s the Athenians launched an unsuccessful attempt to aid an Egyptian revolt against Persia, which led to a prolonged siege of a Persian fortress in the Nile Delta. The campaign culminated in a disaster on a very large scale; the besieging force was defeated and destroyed. In 451–450 BC the Athenians sent troops to Cyprus. Cimon defeated the Persians in the Battle of Salamis-in-Cyprus, but died of disease in 449 BC. Pericles is said to have initiated both expeditions in Egypt and Cyprus, although some researchers, such as Karl Julius Beloch, argue that the dispatch of such a great fleet conforms with the spirit of Cimon's policy.Complicating the account of this complex period is the issue of the Peace of Callias, which allegedly ended hostilities between the Greeks and the Persians. The very existence of the treaty is hotly disputed, and its particulars and negotiation are equally ambiguous. Ernst Badian believes that a peace between Athens and Persia was first ratified in 463 BC (making the Athenian interventions in Egypt and Cyprus violations of the peace), and renegotiated at the conclusion of the campaign in Cyprus, taking force again by 449–448 BC.John Fine, on the other hand, suggests that the first peace between Athens and Persia was concluded in 450–449 BC, as a result of Pericles' strategic calculation that ongoing conflict with Persia was undermining Athens' ability to spread its influence in Greece and the Aegean. Kagan believes that Pericles used Callias, a brother-in-law of Cimon, as a symbol of unity and employed him several times to negotiate important agreements.In the spring of 449 BC, Pericles proposed the Congress Decree, which led to a meeting ("Congress") of all Greek states in order to consider the question of rebuilding the temples destroyed by the Persians. The Congress failed because of Sparta's stance, but Pericles' real intentions remain unclear. Some historians think that he wanted to prompt some kind of confederation with the participation of all the Greek cities; others think he wanted to assert Athenian pre-eminence. According to the historian Terry Buckley the objective of the Congress Decree was a new mandate for the Delian League and for the collection of "phoros" (taxes)."Remember, too, that if your country has the greatest name in all the world, it is because she never bent before disaster; because she has expended more life and effort in war than any other city, and has won for herself a power greater than any hitherto known, the memory of which will descend to the latest posterity."Pericles' Third Oration according to Thucydides During the Second Sacred War Pericles led the Athenian army against Delphi and reinstated Phocis in its sovereign rights on the oracle. In 447 BC Pericles engaged in his most admired excursion, the expulsion of barbarians from the Thracian peninsula of Gallipoli, in order to establish Athenian colonists in the region. At this time, however, Athens was seriously challenged by a number of revolts among its allies (or, to be more accurate, its subjects). In 447 BC the oligarchs of Thebes conspired against the democratic faction. The Athenians demanded their immediate surrender, but, after the Battle of Coronea, Pericles was forced to concede the loss of Boeotia in order to recover the prisoners taken in that battle. With Boeotia in hostile hands, Phocis and Locris became untenable and quickly fell under the control of hostile oligarchs. In 446 BC, a more dangerous uprising erupted. Euboea and Megara revolted. Pericles crossed over to Euboea with his troops, but was forced to return when the Spartan army invaded Attica. Through bribery and negotiations, Pericles defused the imminent threat, and the Spartans returned home. When Pericles was later audited for the handling of public money, an expenditure of 10 talents was not sufficiently justified, since the official documents just referred that the money was spent for a "very serious purpose". Nonetheless, the "serious purpose" (namely the bribery) was so obvious to the auditors that they approved the expenditure without official meddling and without even investigating the mystery. After the Spartan threat had been removed, Pericles crossed back to Euboea to crush the revolt there. He then inflicted a stringent punishment on the landowners of Chalcis, who lost their properties. The residents of Istiaia, meanwhile, who had butchered the crew of an Athenian trireme, were uprooted and replaced by 2,000 Athenian settlers. The crisis was brought to an official end by the Thirty Years' Peace (winter of 446–445 BC), in which Athens relinquished most of the possessions and interests on the Greek mainland which it had acquired since 460 BC, and both Athens and Sparta agreed not to attempt to win over the other state's allies.Final battle with the conservativesIn 444 BC, the conservative and the democratic factions confronted each other in a fierce struggle. The ambitious new leader of the conservatives, Thucydides (not to be confused with the historian of the same name), accused Pericles of profligacy, criticizing the way he spent the money for the ongoing building plan. Thucydides managed, initially, to incite the passions of the ecclesia in his favor, but, when Pericles, the leader of the democrats, took the floor, he put the conservatives in the shade. Pericles responded resolutely, proposing to reimburse the city for all the expenses from his private property, under the term that he would make the inscriptions of dedication in his own name. His stance was greeted with applause, and Thucydides suffered an unexpected defeat. In 442 BC, the Athenian public ostracized Thucydides for 10 years and Pericles was once again the unchallenged suzerain of the Athenian political arena. Athens' rule over its alliancePericles wanted to stabilize Athens' dominance over its alliance and to enforce its pre-eminence in Greece. The process by which the Delian League transformed into an Athenian empire is generally considered to have begun well before Pericles' time, as various allies in the league chose to pay tribute to Athens instead of manning ships for the league's fleet, but the transformation was speeded and brought to its conclusion by measures implemented by Pericles. The final steps in the shift to empire may have been triggered by Athens' defeat in Egypt, which challenged the city's dominance in the Aegean and led to the revolt of several allies, such as Miletus and Erythrae.Either because of a genuine fear for its safety after the defeat in Egypt and the revolts of the allies, or as a pretext to gain control of the League's finances, Athens transferred the treasury of the alliance from Delos to Athens in 454–453 BC. By 450–449 BC the revolts in Miletus and Erythrae were quelled and Athens restored its rule over its allies.Around 447 BC Clearchus proposed the Coinage Decree, which imposed Athenian silver coinage, weights and measures on all of the allies. According to one of the decree's most stringent provisions, surplus from a minting operation was to go into a special fund, and anyone proposing to use it otherwise was subject to the death penalty.It was from the alliance's treasury that Pericles drew the funds necessary to enable his ambitious building plan, centered on the "Periclean Acropolis", which included the Propylaea, the Parthenon and the golden statue of Athena, sculpted by Pericles' friend, Phidias. In 449 BC Pericles proposed a decree allowing the use of 9,000 talents to finance the major rebuilding program of Athenian temples. this misappropriation financed, however, some of the most marvellous artistic creations of the ancient world.The Samian War was one of the last significant military events before the Peloponnesian War. After Thucydides' ostracism, Pericles was re-elected yearly to the generalship, the only office he ever officially occupied, although his influence was so great as to make him the de facto ruler of the state. In 440 BC Samos was at war with Miletus over control of Priene, an ancient city of Ionia on the foot-hills of Mycale. Worsted in the war, the Milesians came to Athens to plead their case against the Samians. When the Athenians ordered the two sides to stop fighting and submit the case to arbitration at Athens, the Samians refused.In response, Pericles passed a decree dispatching an expedition to Samos, "alleging against its people that, although they were ordered to break off their war against the Milesians, they were not complying". In a naval battle the Athenians led by Pericles and the other nine generals defeated the forces of Samos and imposed on the island an administration pleasing to them. When the Samians revolted against Athenian rule, Pericles compelled the rebels to capitulate after a tough siege of eight months, which resulted in substantial discontent among the Athenian sailors. Pericles then quelled a revolt in Byzantium and, when he returned to Athens, gave a funeral oration to honor the soldiers who died in the expedition.Between 438-436 BC Pericles led Athens' fleet in Pontus and established friendly relations with the Greek cities of the region. Pericles focused also on internal projects, such as the fortification of Athens (the building of the "middle wall" about 440 BC), and on the creation of new cleruchies, such as Andros, Naxos and Thurii (444 BC) as well as Amphipolis (437–436 BC). Personal attacks Aspasia of Miletus (c. 469 BC – c. 406 BC), Pericles' companionPericles and his friends were never immune from attack, as preeminence in democratic Athens was not equivalent to absolute rule. Just before the eruption of the Peloponnesian war, Pericles and two of his closest associates, Phidias and his companion, Aspasia, faced a series of personal and judicial attacks.Phidias, who had been in charge of all building projects, was first accused of embezzling gold intended for the statue of Athena and then of impiety, because, when he wrought the battle of the Amazons on the shield of Athena, he carved out a figure that suggested himself as a bald old man, and also inserted a very fine likeness of Pericles fighting with an Amazon. Pericles' enemies also found a false witness against Phidias, named Menon.Aspasia, who was noted for her ability as a conversationalist and adviser, was accused of corrupting the women of Athens in order to satisfy Pericles' perversions. The accusations against her were probably nothing more than unproven slanders, but the whole experience was very bitter for Pericles. Although Aspasia was acquitted thanks to a rare emotional outburst of Pericles, his friend, Phidias, died in prison and another friend of his, Anaxagoras, was attacked by the ecclesia for his religious beliefs.Beyond these initial prosecutions, the ecclesia attacked Pericles himself by asking him to justify his ostensible profligacy with, and maladministration of, public money. According to Plutarch, Pericles did not let the Athenians yield to the Lacedaemonians.  Beloch also believes that Pericles deliberately brought on the war to protect his political position at home. Thus, at the start of the Peloponnesian War, Athens found itself in the awkward position of entrusting its future to a leader whose pre-eminence had just been seriously shaken for the first time in over a decade.The causes of the Peloponnesian War have been much debated, but many ancient historians lay the blame on Pericles and Athens. Plutarch seems to believe that Pericles and the Athenians incited the war, scrambling to implement their belligerent tactics "with a sort of arrogance and a love of strife".Thucydides hints at the same thing, believing the reason for the war was Sparta's fear of Athenian power and growth. However, as he is generally regarded as an admirer of Pericles, Thucydides has been criticized for bias towards Sparta.Pericles was convinced that the war against Sparta, which could not conceal its envy of Athens' pre-eminence, was inevitable if not to be welcomed. Therefore he did not hesitate to send troops to Corcyra to reinforce the Corcyraean fleet, which was fighting against Corinth. In 433 BC the enemy fleets confronted each other at the Battle of Sybota and a year later the Athenians fought Corinthian colonists at the Battle of Potidaea; these two events contributed greatly to Corinth's lasting hatred of Athens. During the same period, Pericles proposed the Megarian Decree, which resembled a modern trade embargo. According to the provisions of the decree, Megarian merchants were excluded from the market of Athens and the ports in its empire. This ban strangled the Megarian economy and strained the fragile peace between Athens and Sparta, which was allied with Megara. According to George Cawkwell, a praelector in ancient history, with this decree Pericles breached the Thirty Years' Peace "but, perhaps, not without the semblance of an excuse". The Athenians' justification was that the Megarians had cultivated the sacred land consecrated to Demeter and had given refuge to runaway slaves, a behavior which the Athenians considered to be impious.After consultations with its allies, Sparta sent a deputation to Athens demanding certain concessions, such as the immediate expulsion of the Alcmaeonidae family including Pericles and the retraction of the Megarian Decree, threatening war if the demands were not met. The obvious purpose of these proposals was the instigation of a confrontation between Pericles and the people; this event, indeed, would come about a few years later. At that time, the Athenians unhesitatingly followed Pericles' instructions. In the first legendary oration  Pericles advised the Athenians not to yield to their opponents' demands, since they were militarily stronger. Pericles was not prepared to make unilateral concessions, believing that "if Athens conceded on that issue, then Sparta was sure to come up with further demands". Consequently, Pericles asked the Spartans to offer a quid pro quo. In exchange for retracting the Megarian Decree, the Athenians demanded from Sparta to abandon their practice of periodic expulsion of foreigners from their territory (xenelasia) and to recognize the autonomy of its allied cities, a request implying that Sparta's hegemony was also ruthless.The terms were rejected by the Spartans, and, with neither side willing to back down, the two sides prepared for war. According to Athanasios G. Platias and Constantinos Koliopoulos, professors of strategic studies and international politics, "rather than to submit to coercive demands, Pericles chose war".Another consideration that may well have influenced Pericles' stance was the concern that revolts in the empire might spread if Athens showed herself weak. First year of the war (431 BC) The Parthenon, a masterpiece prompted by Pericles, from the southIn 431 BC, while peace already was precarious, Archidamus II, Sparta's king, sent a new delegation to Athens, demanding that the Athenians submit to Sparta's demands. This deputation was not allowed to enter Athens, as Pericles had already passed a resolution according to which no Spartan deputation would be welcomed if the Spartans had previously initiated any hostile military actions. The Spartan army was at this time gathered at Corinth, and, citing this as a hostile action, the Athenians refused to admit their emissaries. With his last attempt at negotiation thus declined, Archidamus invaded Attica, but found no Athenians there; Pericles, aware that Sparta's strategy would be to invade and ravage Athenian territory, had previously arranged to evacuate the entire population of the region to within the walls of Athens.No definite record exists of how exactly Pericles managed to convince the residents of Attica to agree to move into the crowded urban areas. For most, the move meant abandoning their land and ancestral shrines and completely changing their lifestyle. Pericles also gave his compatriots some advice on their present affairs and reassured them that, if the enemy did not plunder his farms, he would offer his property to the city.
    This promise was prompted by his concern that Archidamus, who was a friend of his, might pass by his estate without ravaging it, either as a gesture of friendship or as a calculated political move aimed to alienate Pericles from his constituents."For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart."Pericles' Funeral Oration as recorded by Thucydides In any case, seeing the pillage of their farms, the Athenians were outraged, and they soon began to indirectly express their discontent towards their leader, who many of them considered to have drawn them into the war. Even when in the face of mounting pressure, Pericles did not give in to the demands for immediate action against the enemy or revise his initial strategy. He also avoided convening the ecclesia, fearing that the populace, outraged by the unopposed ravaging of their farms, might rashly decide to challenge the vaunted Spartan army in the field. As meetings of the assembly were called at the discretion of its rotating presidents, the "prytanies", Pericles had no formal control over their scheduling; rather, the respect in which Pericles was held by the prytanies was apparently sufficient to persuade them to do as he wished.While the Spartan army remained in Attica, Pericles sent a fleet of 100 ships to loot the coasts of the Peloponnese and charged the cavalry to guard the ravaged farms close to the walls of the city. When the enemy retired and the pillaging came to an end, Pericles proposed a decree according to which the authorities of the city should put aside 1,000 talents and 100 ships, in case Athens was attacked by naval forces. According to the most stringent provision of the decree, even proposing a different use of the money or ships would entail the penalty of death. During the autumn of 431 BC, Pericles led the Athenian forces that invaded Megara and a few months later (winter of 431–430 BC) he delivered his monumental and emotional Funeral Oration, honoring the Athenians who died for their city. Last military operations and deathIn 430 BC, the army of Sparta looted Attica for a second time, but Pericles was not daunted and refused to revise his initial strategy. Unwilling to engage the Spartan army in battle, he again led a naval expedition to plunder the coasts of the Peloponnese, this time taking 100 Athenian ships with him. According to Plutarch, just before the
    sailing of the ships an eclipse of the sun frightened the crews, but Pericles used the astronomical knowledge he had acquired from Anaxagoras to calm them. In the summer of the same year an epidemic broke out and devastated the Athenians. The exact identity of the disease is uncertain, and has been the source of much debate. In any case, the city's plight, caused by the epidemic, triggered a new wave of public uproar, and Pericles was forced to defend himself in an emotional final speech, a rendition of which is presented by Thucydides. This is considered to be a monumental oration, revealing Pericles' virtues but also his bitterness towards his compatriots' ingratitude. He managed to tame the people's resentment and to ride out the storm, but his internal enemies' final bid to undermine him came off; they managed to deprive him of the generalship and to fine him at an amount estimated between 15 and 50 talents. Ancient sources mention Cleon, a rising and dynamic protagonist of the Athenian political scene during the war, as the public prosecutor in Pericles' trial. Within just a year, in 429 BC, the Athenians re-elected him as strategos. He was reinstated in command of the Athenian army and led all its military operations during 429 BC, having once again under his control the levers of power. In that year, however, Pericles witnessed the death of both his legitimate sons from his first wife, Paralus and Xanthippus, in the epidemic. His morale undermined, he burst into tears and not even Aspasia's companionship could console him. He himself died of the plague in the autumn of 429 BC.Just before his death, Pericles' friends were concentrated around his bed, enumerating his virtues during peace and underscoring his nine war trophies. Pericles, though moribund, heard them and interrupted them, pointing out that they forgot to mention his fairest and greatest title to their admiration; "for", said he, "no living Athenian ever put on mourning because of me".Pericles lived during the first two and a half years of the Peloponnesian War and, according to Thucydides, his death was a disaster for Athens, since his successors were inferior to him; they preferred to incite all the bad habits of the rabble and followed an unstable policy, endeavoring to be popular rather than useful. With these bitter comments, Thucydides not only laments the loss of a man he admired, but he also heralds the flickering of Athens' unique glory and grandeur.Pericles, following Athenian custom, was first married to one of his closest relatives, with whom he had two sons, Paralus and Xanthippus, but around 445 BC, Pericles divorced his wife. He offered her to another husband, with the agreement of her male relatives. The name of his first wife is not known; the only information about her is that she was the wife of Hipponicus, before being married to Pericles, and the mother of Callias from this first marriage."For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity."Pericles' Funeral Oration as recorded by Thucydides The woman he really adored was Aspasia of Miletus. She became Pericles' mistress and they began to live together as if they were married. This relationship aroused many reactions and even Pericles' own son, Xanthippus, who had political ambitions, did not hesitate to slander his father. Nonetheless, these persecutions did not undermine Pericles' morale, although he had to burst into tears in order to protect his beloved Aspasia when she was accused of corrupting Athenian society. His greatest personal tragedy was the death of his sister and of both his legitimate sons, Xanthippus and Paralus, all affected by the epidemic, a calamity he never managed to overcome. Just before his death, the Athenians allowed a change in the law of 451 BC that made his half-Athenian son with Aspasia, Pericles the Younger, a citizen and legitimate heir, a decision all the more striking in consideration that Pericles himself had proposed the law confining citizenship to those of Athenian parentage on both sides.AssessmentsPericles marked a whole era and inspired conflicting judgments about his significant decisions. The fact that he was at the same time a vigorous statesman, general and orator makes more complex the objective assessment of his actions.Some contemporary scholars, for example Sarah Ruden, call Pericles a populist,  and a hawk, while other scholars admire his charismatic leadership. According to Plutarch, after assuming the leadership of Athens, "he was no longer the same man as before, nor alike submissive to the people and ready to yield and give in to the desires of the multitude as a steersman to the breezes". It is told that when his political opponent, Thucydides, was asked by Sparta's king, Archidamus, whether he or Pericles was the better fighter, Thucydides answered without any hesitation that Pericles was better, because even when he was defeated, he managed to convince the audience that he had won. In matters of character, Pericles was above reproach in the eyes of the ancient historians, since "he kept himself untainted by corruption, although he was not altogether indifferent to money-making".Thucydides, an admirer of Pericles, maintains that Athens was "in name a democracy but, in fact, governed by its first citizen". Through this comment, the historian illustrates what he perceives as Pericles' charisma to lead, convince and, sometimes, to manipulate. Although Thucydides mentions the fining of Pericles, he does not mention the accusations against Pericles but instead focuses on Pericles' integrity. On the other hand, in one of his dialogues, Plato reactionarily rejects the glorification of Pericles and quote as saying: "as I know, Pericles made the Athenians slothful, garrulous and avaricious, by starting the system of public fees". Plutarch mentions other criticism of Pericles' leadership: "many others say that the people were first led on by him into allotments of public lands, festival-grants, and distributions of fees for public services, thereby falling into bad habits, and becoming luxurious and wanton under the influence of his public measures, instead of frugal and self-sufficing".Thucydides argues that Pericles "was not carried away by the people, but he was the one guiding the people". According to King, by increasing the power of the people, the Athenians left themselves with no authoritative leader. During the Peloponnesian War, Pericles' dependence on popular support to govern was obvious. Military achievementsFor more than 20 years Pericles led many expeditions, mainly naval ones. Being always cautious, he never undertook of his own accord a battle involving much uncertainty and peril and he did not accede to the "vain impulses of the citizens". He based his military policy on Themistocles' principle that Athens' predominance depends on its superior naval power and believed that the Peloponnesians were near-invincible on land.Pericles also tried to minimize the advantages of Sparta by rebuilding the walls of Athens, which, it has been suggested, radically altered the use of force in Greek international relations."These glories may incur the censure of the slow and unambitious; but in the breast of energy they will awake emulation, and in those who must remain without them an envious regret. Hatred and unpopularity at the moment have fallen to the lot of all who have aspired to rule others."Pericles' Third Oration as recorded by Thucydides During the Peloponnesian War, Pericles initiated a defensive "grand strategy" whose aim was the exhaustion of the enemy and the preservation of the status quo. According to Platias and Koliopoulos, Athens as the strongest party did not have to beat Sparta in military terms and "chose to foil the Spartan plan for victory". The two basic principles of the "Periclean Grand Strategy" were the rejection of appeasement (in accordance with which he urged the Athenians not to revoke the Megarian Decree) and the avoidance of overextension. According to Kagan, Pericles' vehement insistence that there should be no diversionary expeditions may well have resulted from the bitter memory of the Egyptian campaign, which he had allegedly supported. His strategy is said to have been "inherently unpopular", but Pericles managed to persuade the Athenian public to follow it. It is for that reason that Hans Delbrück called him one of the greatest statesmen and military leaders in history. Although his countrymen engaged in several aggressive actions soon after his death, Platias and Koliopoulos argue that the Athenians remained true to the larger Periclean strategy of seeking to preserve, not expand, the empire, and did not depart from it until the Sicilian Expedition. For his part, Ben X. de Wet concludes his strategy would have succeeded had he lived longer.. A common criticism is that Pericles was always a better politician and orator than strategist. Kagan criticizes the Periclean strategy on four counts: first that by rejecting minor concessions it brought about war; second, that it was unforeseen by the enemy and hence lacked credibility; third, that it was too feeble to exploit any opportunities; and fourth, that it depended on Pericles for its execution and thus was bound to be abandoned after his death. Kagan estimates Pericles' expenditure on his military strategy in the Peloponnesian War to be about 2,000 talents annually, and based on this figure concludes that he would only have enough money to keep the war going for three years. He asserts that since Pericles must have known about these limitations he probably planned for a much shorter war.Others, such as Donald W. Knight, conclude that the strategy was too defensive and would not succeed.On the other hand, Platias and Koliopoulos reject these criticisms and state that "the Athenians lost the war only when they dramatically reversed the Periclean grand strategy that explicitly disdained further conquests".Hanson stresses that the Periclean strategy was not innovative, but could lead to a stagnancy in favor of Athens. It is a popular conclusion that those succeeding him lacked his abilities and character.Thucydides, with other modern historians and writers, take varying stances on the issue of how much of the speeches of Pericles, as given by this historian, do actually represent Pericles' own words and how much of them is free literary creation or paraphrase by Thucydides. Since Pericles never wrote down or distributed his orations, no historians are able to answer this with certainty; Thucydides recreated three of them from memory and, thereby, it cannot be ascertained that he did not add his own notions and thoughts.Although Pericles was a main source of his inspiration, some historians have noted that the passionate and idealistic literary style of the speeches Thucydides attributes to Pericles is completely at odds with Thucydides' own cold and analytical writing style. This might, however, be the result of the incorporation of the genre of rhetoric into the genre of historiography. That is to say, Thucydides could simply have used two different writing styles for two different purposes.Kagan states that Pericles adopted "an elevated mode of speech, free from the vulgar and knavish tricks of mob-orators" and, according to Diodorus Siculus, he "excelled all his fellow citizens in skill of oratory". According to Plutarch, he avoided using gimmicks in his speeches, unlike the passionate Demosthenes, and always spoke in a calm and tranquil manner. Gorgias, in Plato's homonymous dialogue, uses Pericles as an example of powerful oratory. In Menexenus, however, Socrates casts aspersions on Pericles' rhetorical fame, claiming ironically that, since Pericles was educated by Aspasia, a trainer of many orators, he would be superior in rhetoric to someone educated by Antiphon. He also attributes authorship of the Funeral Oration to Aspasia and attacks his contemporaries' veneration of Pericles. Sir Richard C. Jebb concludes that "unique as an Athenian statesman, Pericles must have been in two respects unique also as an Athenian orator; first, because he occupied such a position of personal ascendancy as no man before or after him attained; secondly, because his thoughts and his moral force won him such renown for eloquence as no one else ever got from Athenians".Ancient Greek writers call Pericles "Olympian" and extol his talents; referring to him "thundering and lightening and exciting Greece" and carrying the weapons of Zeus when orating. According to Quintilian, Pericles would always prepare assiduously for his orations and, before going on the rostrum, he would always pray to the Gods, so as not to utter any improper word. LegacyPericles' most visible legacy can be found in the literary and artistic works of the Golden Age, most of which survive to this day. The Acropolis, though in ruins, still stands and is a symbol of modern Athens. Paparrigopoulos wrote that these masterpieces are "sufficient to render the name of Greece immortal in our world".Pericles and his "expansionary" policies have been at the center of arguments promoting democracy in oppressed countries.Other analysts maintain an Athenian humanism illustrated in the Golden Age.The freedom of expression is regarded as the lasting legacy deriving from this period. Pericles is lauded as "the ideal type of the perfect statesman in ancient Greece" and his Funeral Oration is nowadays synonymous with the struggle for participatory democracy and civic pride.

460 GRECO PERSIAN WARS. Towards the end of the 460s BC, the Athenians took the ambitious decision to support a revolt in the Egyptian satrapy of the Persian empire. Although the Greek task force achieved initial successes, they were unable to capture the
    Persian garrison in Memphis, despite a 3 year long siege. The Persians then counterattacked, and the Athenian force was itself besieged for 18 months, before being wiped out.[180] This disaster, coupled with ongoing warfare in Greece, dissuaded the Athenians from resuming conflict with Persia.

GREECE. Athens starts rise to power

    THE HOUSE OF ATHENS. Erichtonius begat Pandion I who had three children; Erechtheus. Philomela, and Procne (Tereus). Erechteus had four children, Cecrops, Orythia, (Boreas), Creusa (Apollo) (Xuthus), and Procris (Cephalus) Cecrops begat Pandion II, who begat Aegeus (Aethra) who had Theseus (Hppolita)(Antiope)(Phaedra) He had a son, Hippolytus. Boreas begat Zetes and Calais, Apollo behat Ion and Procris begat Odysseus

    458 BC - by Aeschylus(525-456 B.C.)Type of work:Lyric Greek tragedySetting:Argos, Greek city in the north-east  Peloponese; the Autumn of 1250 B.C.


    451 GRECO PERSIAN WARS. BC however, a truce was agreed in Greece, and Cimon was then able to lead an expedition to Cyprus. However, while besieging Kition, Cimon died, and the Athenian force decided to withdraw, winning another double victory at the Battle of Salamis-in-Cyprus in order to extricate themselves. This campaign marked the end of hostilities between the Delian League and Persia, and therefore the end of the Greco-Persian Wars. Peace with PersiaAfter the Battle of Salamis-in-Cyprus, Thucydides makes no further mention of conflict with the Persians, simply saying that the Greeks returned home. Diodorus, on the other hand, claims that in the aftermath of Salamis, a full-blown peace treaty (the "Peace of Callias") was agreed with the Persians.

    451-     ROME. The Laws of the Twelve Tables were decreed and the Roman courts are made subject to these laws. Marriages between patricians and plebeians are made legal.

450    Herodotus, first historian visits Egypt. The Twelve Tables, wooden tablets on which the laws of Rome are written. Carthage begins to develop new trading centers along northa nd west African coasts.


450        Democracy flourishing in Athens

    450 - BC - by Plato(c.  427 - 347 B.C.) Plato wrote in the dialogue literary form, expressing his ideas in the form of conversations.  This dialogue format is very effective for presenting philosophical arguments and criticisms.  His 35 separate "dramas of ideas," or Socratic Dialogues, often depict several different characters, Socrates himself (Plato's esteemed teacher and mentor) dominating the action as the central figure.In one of Plato's earliest dialogues, Charmides, he sets forth that Socrates' aim—and thus his own—is not to convert his hearers to his own beliefs, but to arouse each to think for himself.  And Plato's Dialogues offer much for readers to think about:  his topics include friendship, piety, history, virtuosity, art, kindness, misery, and just about any other topic that touches on the human condition.  Many times in the dialogues, Socrates, professing ignorance, questions those who claim to know something, and proves in the end that they do not know it after all.  Due to the quality of his dialogues, many scholars consider Plato to be the finest prose writer the world has produced.
Plato's early Dialogues include The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, conversations which, together, make up an account of the last days and the death of Socrates.
Apology (Socrates' Defense)
In his "Defense" (Apology), Socrates has been brought before an Athenian court and charged with heresy:  "Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and teaches others to follow his example."  Also accused of believing in deities of his "own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state," Socrates attempted to explain how this false notoriety originated.
Chaerephon, a boyhood friend of Socrates, once inquired of a priestess if there was anyone wiser than Socrates.  The priestess replied that there was no one.  "After puzzling about it for some time," Socrates said, "I set myself at last with considerable reluctance to check the truth of it in the following way.  I went to interview a man with a high reputation for wisdom, because I felt that here if anywhere I should succeed in disproving the oracle ...  " Socrates found that this man ...  "appeared to be wise [but] in fact he was not."  He concluded:
It seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.
Socrates went about interviewing one person after another, and came up with the same result:
...  The people with the greatest reputations were almost entirely deficient, while others who were supposed to be their inferiors were much better qualified in practical intelligence.
After consulting all the politicians, Socrates tested the poets:
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled them to write their poetry, but a kind of instance or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
Socrates next turned to the skilled craftsmen, who "understood things which I did not, and to that extent they were wiser than I was.  But ...  these professional experts seemed to share the same failing which I had noticed in the poets.... They claimed a perfect understanding of every other subject, however important, and I felt that this error more than outweighed their positive wisdom."
The truth of the matter is, Socrates finally declared,
...  Real wisdom is the property of God, and this oracle is his way of telling us that human wisdom has little or no value ...  as if he would say to us, "the wisest of your men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless."
Socrates thus became quite unpopular as he went about disproving anyone claiming to be wise.  Further, he was accused by a man named Meletus of teaching the reality of new deities instead of that of the Gods recognized by the state.  "Tell me honestly, Meletus," Socrates replied, "is that your opinion of me?  Do I believe in no god?"  Meletus replied, "No, none at all, not in the slightest degree."  Socrates, after some discussion, finally answered:
...  It is my belief that no greater good has ever befallen you in this city (Athens) than my service to my God.  For I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make your first and chief concern not for your bodies nor for your possessions, but for the highest welfare of your souls, proclaiming as I go, "Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state."
Finally, having explained why he had been charged with these crimes, Socrates argued against his death:
You will not easily find another liked me, gentlemen, and if you take my advice you will spare my life ...  Having said so much, I feel moved to prophesy to you who have given your vote against me, for I am now at that point where the gift of prophesy comes most readily to men—at the point of death.  I tell you, my executioners, that as soon as I am dead, vengeance shall fall upon you with a punishment far more painful than your killing of me ...  If you expect to stop denunciation of your wrong way of life by putting people to death, there is something amiss with your reasoning.  This way of escape is neither possible nor creditable.  The best and easiest way is not to stop the mouths of others, but to make yourselves as good men as you can.  This is my last message to you who voted for my condemnation.
Of his imminent execution, Socrates observed:
Death is one of two things.  Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything, or, as we are told, it is really a change—a migration of the soul from this place to another.  Now if there is no consciousness but only a dreamless sleep, death must be a marvelous gain ...  If on the other hand death is a removal from here to some other place, and if what we are told is true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing could there be than this, gentlemen?
Finally, Socrates closed his defense:
Now it is time that we were going, I to die and you to live, but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God.
Crito
The next dialogue, Crito, contains the account of Socrates' friends as they beseech the condemned philosopher to escape from his prison.  Socrates answered by asking if it can ever be right to defend oneself against evil by doing evil, referring to the fact that if Socrates were to escape, his jailers would have to be bribed.  "Look here, Socrates," Crito piped up.  " ...  Your death means a double calamity for me.  I shall not only lose a friend whom I can never possibly replace, but besides a great many people ...  will be sure to think that I let you down, because I could have saved you if I had been willing to spend the money.  Most people will never believe that it was you who refused to leave this place although we tried our hardest to persuade you ...  Take my advice, and be reasonable."  To this, Socrates answered:
I cannot abandon the principles which I used to hold in the past simply because this accident has happened to me; [I] regard the same principles now as before.  So unless we can find better principles on this occasion, you can be quite sure that I shall not agree with you—not even if the power of the people conjures up fresh hordes of bogies to terrify our childish minds, by subjecting us to chains and executions and confiscations of our property.... One must not even do wrong when one is wronged, which most people regard as the natural course.
Socrates' unmistakable concern was not for himself, but for Athens; if he escaped, he would wrong that state which he held in esteem:
Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal judgments which are pronounced in it have no force but are nullified and destroyed by private persons?  ... Shall we say, "Yes, I do intend to destroy the laws, because the state wronged me by passing a faulty judgment at my trial"?  Is this to be our answer, or what?
In the end, Socrates' commitment to his country made him willingly face death.  "Then give it up, Crito," urged Socrates, "and let us follow this course, since God points out the way."
Phaedo
Phaedo was named for one of Socrates' faithful pupils who was at his side on his execution day.  Socrates claimed to suffer no regrets, and looked forward to his death as an opportunity to greet the great ones who came before him and to receive his reward for living a good life:
...  Sometimes and for some people death is better than life ...  I have a firm hope that there is something in store for those who have died, and, as we have been told for many years, something much better for the good than for the wicked.
Socrates went on to explain his position on the afterlife, depicting death as simply the release of the soul from the body, which is a hindrance to the acquisition of knowledge:
So long as we keep to the body and our soul is contaminated with this imperfection, there is no chance of our ever attaining satisfactorily to our object, which we assert to be truth.  In the first place, the body provides us with innumerable distractions in the pursuit of our necessary sustenance ...  Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires.  All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth, and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.
It followed, therefore, that true "knowledge ...  is only possible after death, because it is only then that the soul will be separate and independent of the body ...  "
...  It is natural for me to leave you and my earthly rulers without any feeling of grief or bitterness, since I believe that I shall find there, no less than here, good rulers and good friends.
This final exchange then turned to the subject of immortality.  Knowledge, Socrates taught, must come from a time before earthly existence; knowledge is a rememberance of a former time:
...  We acquired our knowledge before our birth, and lost it at the moment of birth; but afterward, by the exercise of our senses upon sensible objects, recover the knowledge which we had once before ...  and surely we should be right in calling this recollection.
This being true, Socrates then asked:
When do our souls acquire this knowledge?  It cannot be after the beginning of our mortal life ...  then it must be before.  Then our souls had a previous existence, before they took on this human shape.  They were independent of our bodies, and they were possessed of intelligence.
Because humans can perceive of beauty and love, which are eternal characteristics, Socrates taught, within each individual there must be a spark of immortality.
Socrates' final day in mortality drew to a close, and his friends passed him the cup containing the poisonous hemlock.  Without hesitation, Socrates drank it.  Soon thereafter, he died.  "Such was the end of our comrade," laments Phaedo, "who was we may fairly say, of all those whom we knew in our time, the bravest and also the wisest and most upright man."

    450 - by Sophocles (c.496 - 406 B.C.) translation by Paul RocheType of work: Poetic Greek tragedy Setting: Thebes, a city of ancient Greece Principal characters: Antigone, daughter of Oedipus and sister of the dead Polyneices and Eteocles Ismene, Antigone's sister Creon, inexperienced, proud, and tyrannical king of Thebes Haemon, son of Creon—and the betrothed of Antigone Tiresias, a blind prophet The Chorus, citizens of Thebes Play Overview:"What more, do you think, could Zeus require of us to load the curse that's on the House of Oedipus?"  Antigone asks of her sister Ismene as the play opens.  Those acquainted with the mythological history of The House of Oedipus would be hard-pressed to answer the daughter's question, for few family sagas have been as steeped in tragic events as theirs.  For Oedipus and his offspring, misfortune seemed to be hereditary.  As Ismene reminds Antigone: Remember how our father died:  hated, in disgrace, wrapped in horror of himself, his own hand stabbing out his sight.  And how his mother-wife in one twisted off her earthly days with a cord.  And thirdly how our two brothers in a single day each achieved for each a suicidal nemesis. Among the family's tragedies, it was this last event which was now to lead to further tribulation for the surviving sisters.Prior to the opening of this play, Oedipus' death had led his two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, to battle for their father's Theban throne.  Polyneices had joined forces with a neighboring city-state, Argos, to attack his native city of Thebes, leaving Eteocles and their uncle Creon—the regent since Oedipus' self-banishment—to defend the city.  The brothers finally met in combat and slew one another.  The Argive army then retreated in defeat, and victorious Thebes was left with Creon as its undisputed king. Creon, exercising his newly acquired power, had proclaimed that his nephew Eteocles, who had died defending Thebes, would receive a heroic burial.  Polyneices, however, who had died in an offensive against his own native city, would receive no burial at all; his body would be left to rot on the battlefield—the most ignominious end for any Greek.  To ensure that this mandate be honored, Creon made it a crime against the state—punishable by death—to violate the edict by burying or in any other way honoring the corpse. Yet, in prohibiting Polyneices' burial, Creon himself had transgressed a higher, more sacred law:  in ancient Greece a corpse had to receive certain funeral rites in order to pass into Hades. After hearing the news, Antigone led her sister Ismene beyond the city gates and informed her of Creon's decree—as well as of her grief-stricken and angry intentions to defy it.  Ismene pled with her sister to reconsider, or at least to maintain secrecy, but Antigone would not be swayed.  She would not allow such a mandate to stand; she was determined to mourn her fallen brother as commanded by the gods.  Polyneices' body must be buried in honor, and she would do the deed, fearing neither discovery nor punishment. As the sisters turned for home, the Theban Chorus began its victory celebration:  Now let us chase the memory far away of the wars that are past.  Come call on the gods with song and dance all through the night.Soon, however, a vexed Creon arrived on the scene to justify his harsh decree, saying, "you'll not catch me putting traitors up on a pedestal beside the loyal man.  I'll honor him alone, alive or dead, who honors Thebes."  No sooner had Creon spoken, however, than a sentry appeared to inform the king that someone—unknown and undetected by the guards posted near the body of Polyneices—had performed funeral rites upon the body—leaving it "not buried, [but] lightly veiled with ritual dust."  Commanded, upon pain of death, to expose the perpetrator, the sentry soon returned—leading Antigone, who had defiantly gone back to the corpse to complete her lamentations."Guilty.  I deny nothing," Antigone answered unflinchingly when questioned by Creon.  " ...  So you chose flagrantly to disobey my law?"  Creon asked.  "Naturally!"  replied Antigone, " ...  since Zeus never promulgated such a law.  Nor will you find that Justice publishes such laws to man below.  I never thought your edicts had such force they nullified the laws of heaven ...  " Antigone's refusal to repent of any wrong-doing angered Creon even more than her open disregard for his decree:  "This girl, already versed in disrespect when she first disobeyed my law, now adds a second insult—vaunts it to my face."  Even though Antigone was betrothed to his own son, Haemon, the King imperiously command that she must die.  Disobedience—bad enough when practiced by a man—was, in this case, most intolerable to Creon, who certainly would not be "worsted by a woman."Haemon then approached the King.  Driven both by love for Antigone and the realization of his father's error, Haemon pled for leniency.  He reminded Creon that the sympathy of the city was swelling towards Antigone.  "Because no woman ever faced so unreasonable, so cruel a death for such a generous act ...  `should not her name be writ in gold?' they say."  But Creon remained firm; he would not give in to the clamor of the populace, nor to his son's brash siding with the woman.  The administration of punishment was a sovereign's right.  To this Haemon replied, "What rights—when you trample on the rights of God?"  Creon was outraged.  "You shall not marry her alive!"  he declared.  The impassioned son rushed from the scene, leaving the father "raving" to his "chosen friends"—those who would never dare to contradict the King.Meanwhile, Antigone was led to face her sentence—entombment, alive, in a "rock-hewn vault, with ritual food enough to clear the taint of murder from the City's name."  As she was led to the tomb, Antigone retained her courage—even when Creon entered and demanded that her interment proceed without further delay:Seal up the tomb.Let her choose a death at leisure, orPerhaps an underground life forlorn.We wash our hands of this girlExcept to take her from the light. After Antigone was led away, the blind prophet Tiresias arrived with dire news that Creon's imperious edicts were wreaking havoc on the city:  dogs and crows were now profaning the Thebes' alters with "carrion from the poor unburied son of Oedipus," voiding the prayers of the inhabitants.  The prophet urged Creon to alter his edict, to remedy his blunders before it proved too late:To err is human, true,And only he is cursed who having sinnedWill not repent, will not repair ...Then Tiresias chided his king that "where neither you nor gods above must meddle you have thrust your thumbs," and prophesied that "furies lie in wait for you, ready with the punishments you have engineered for others."Even though Tiresias' past prophecies had always proven true and "never stirred the city to false alarm," Creon haughtily dismissed the trusted old counselor:Not even if Zeus's eagles come to fly awayWith carrion morsels to their master's throneEven such a threat of taint will not win his body burial.But after the seer had departed, Creon reconsidered.  It would be difficult for him to loosen his stance, he admitted, but "harder still to risk catastrophe through stubborn pride":How it goes against the grainTo smother all one's heart's desire!I cannot fight with destiny.Finally concluding that he had already lost his fight with destiny, Creon set off to undo his deeds—but too late.  He had held onto his pride till the last; slow to smother his heart's desire, now Creon's heart was about to be smothered in grief.After at last performing the burial rites for the remains of Polyneices, Creon hurried to the vault where Antigone had been entombed.  There, inside the walled-up sepulcher, he found his son holding Antigone's lifeless body as it hung from a linen noose around her neck.  Crying and cursing his father, Haemon, sword in hand, lunged as if to impale Creon.  But instead of striking his father, Haemon spat on him.  Then he fell on his own sword, driving its blade clear through his body.  The King's son, with Antigone's limp figure wrapped in his arms, then sank into death, " ...  corpse upon corpse ...  "In the palace, meanwhile, Creon's wife, Eurydice, upon hearing the news of Haemon's death, had also taken her own life, cursing Creon in her last breath:  "There at the altar, self-stabbed with a keen knife [she] invoked evil fortunes ...  upon the slayer of her son."Alas, the tragic cycle of events which Creon's relentless pride had put into motion had come full circle.  The King could now feel the reverence and bitter sadness Antigone had felt for her brother.  Before being led out of the city to a self-imposed exile, Creon slumped in agony.  The dead to be mourned were now his own ...  the rites of burial now his to perform.Commentary:Tragic drama originated in ancient Greece, and Sophocles was one of its most significant contributors.  Chronologically, Antigone is the third work in "The Theban Trilogy," or "Oedipus Plays."  While Oedipus may be considered the epitome of Greek tragic drama, Antigone, though smaller in scale, remains one of Sophocles' most revered and accessible works.Ironically, it is Creon, not Antigone, who is the true protagonist in this play.  It is he who propels the action along; it is he who holds power within his grasp; and it is he who possesses the "tragic flaw"—the three essential elements of the classic Greek "hero."  Additionally, because Antigone's death is incongruous with the typical tragic ending—a tragic heroine rarely would be spared a lonely and ignominious destiny through suicide—she can better be seen as the principal external force leading to Creon's downfall.Creon's tragic flaw—not unlike that of many contemporary leaders—is, of course, pride.  While his reasons for not burying the fallen Polyneices at first may seem justifiable, in the end it is only arrogance that prevents him from carrying out the burial rites—and saving Antigone.The extent to which pride governs Creon can finally be seen in his disregard of divine and natural law.  The immortals of ancient Greece were notorious for their exacting revenge when offended.  Only a foolishly smug and inexperienced mortal—like Creon—would dare risk provoking their wrath.Such pride, the Chorus in "Antigone" concludes, does not go unpunished:Where wisdom is, there happiness will crownA piety that nothing will corrode.But high and mighty words and waysAre flogged to humbleness, till age,

Beaten to its knees, at last is wise.

    
    450    AFRICA. CARTHAGE. the Greek historian Herodotus traveled to a region nowcalled Aswan and to the  capital city of Meroe in northern  Africa.Detailing  his journey,Herodotus recalls watching the curious way in which the Carthaginians conducted trade with the people of western Libya:first the Carthaginians laid their wares on the seashore and returned to their boats; next the natives came to lay a quantity of gold on the beach, then retreated; finally the Carthaginians returned to look atgold, andif they were not satisfied with the amount, retreated to the boat until more gold was added.  "There is perfect honesty on both sides,"writes Herodotus.  "The Carthaginians never touch the gold until it equals in value what they have offered for sale, and the natives never touch the goods until the gold has been taken away."

    450     BC PALESTINE. In the 5th century BCE, the Greek historian and geographer Herodotus wrote in Greek of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinêi,"from which Latin: Palaestina and Palestine are derived, as "a district of Syria". Syria, at that time, referred rather imprecisely to the region north to south from Asia Minor to Sinai, and west to east from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. The boundaries of the "distinct" described by Herodotus are even more imprecise, as is the ethnic nature of its people; sometimes it denotes the coast north of Mount Carmel, and elsewhere it seems to extend down all the coast from Phoenicia to Egypt, and as far east as the Jordan River. Josephus used the name  generally for the smaller coastal area anciently inhabited by the Philistines, which most of his contemporaries prefer to call Philistia. Ptolemy also used the term. In Latin, Pliny mentions a region of Syria that was "formerly called Palaestina" among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean. Philo uses the terms Palaestina and Canaan interchangeably, noting that the region's Jewish population is larger than that of any other single country.During the Roman period, the Iudaea Province (including Samaria) comprised much of modern Palestine, although the Galilee and other northern areas remained administratively distinct.

450 BCPeace of CalliasEnds the Persian Wars.



449    IRAN peace of Callias in 449BC.The rules and ethics emanating from Zorasters teachings were strictly followed by the Achaemenids who introduced and adopted policies based on human rights, equality and banning of slavery. Zoroastrianism spread unimposed during the time of the Achaemenids and through contacts with the exiled Jewish people in Babylon
    freed by Cyrus, Zoroastrian concepts further propagated and influenced into other Abrahamic religions. The Golden Age of Athens marked by Aristotle, Plato and Socrates also came about during the Achaemenid period while their contacts with Persia and the Near East abounded. The peace, tranquility, security and prosperity that were afforded to the people of the Near East and Southeastern Europe proved to be a rare historical occurrence, an unparalleled period where commerce prospered, and the standard of living for all people of the region improved.

        PLATO. The philosophy was most famously expounded by Plato, who believed human reproduction should be monitored and controlled by the state. However, Plato understood this form of government control would not be readily accepted, and proposed the truth be concealed from the public via a fixed lottery. Mates, in Plato's Republic, would be chosen by a "marriage number" in which the quality of the individual would be quantitatively analyzed, and persons of high numbers would be allowed to procreate with other persons of high numbers. In theory, this would lead to predictable results and the improvement of the human race. However, Plato acknowledged the failure of the "marriage number" since "gold soul" persons could still produce "bronze soul" children.[44] Plato's ideas may have been one of the earliest attempts to mathematically analyze genetic inheritance, which was not perfected until the development of Mendelian genetics and the mapping of the human genome.Other ancient civilizations, such as Rome, Athens and Sparta, practiced infanticide through exposure as a form of phenotypic selection. In Sparta, newborns were inspected by the city's elders, who decided the fate of the infant. If the child was deemed incapable of living, it was usually exposed in the Apothetae near the Taygetus mountain. It was more common for boys than girls to be killed this way in Sparta.[47] Trials for babies included bathing them in wine and exposing them to the elements. To Sparta, this would ensure only the strongest survived and procreated.[48] Adolf Hitler considered Sparta to be the first "Völkisch State," and much like Ernst Haeckel before him, praised Sparta for its selective infanticide policy, though the Nazis believed the children were killed outright and not exposed.The Twelve Tables of Roman Law, established early in the formation of the Roman Republic, stated in the fourth table that deformed children must be put to death. In addition, patriarchs in Roman society were given the right to "discard" infants at their discretion. This was often done by drowning undesired newborns in the Tiber River. The practice of open infanticide in the Roman Empire did not subside until its Christianization.

 
    The School of Athens, by Raphael.Dialectic (also dialectics and the dialectical method) is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues. The dialectical method is dialogue between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject, who wish to establish the truth of the matter by dialogue, with reasoned arguments. Dialectics is different from debate, wherein the debaters are committed to their points of view, and mean to win the debate, either by persuading the opponent, proving their argument correct, or proving the opponent's argument incorrect — thus, either a judge or a jury must decide who wins the debate. Dialectics is also different from rhetoric, wherein the speaker uses logos, pathos, or ethos to persuade listeners to take the side of their argument.The Sophists taught arête (Greek: ??et?, quality, excellence) as the highest value, and the determinant of one's actions in life. The Sophists taught artistic quality in oratory (motivation via speech) as a manner of demonstrating one's arête. Oratory was taught as an art form, used to please and to influence other people via excellent speech; nonetheless, the Sophists taught the pupil to seek arête in all endeavours, not solely in oratory.Socrates favoured truth as the highest value, proposing that it could be discovered through reason and logic in discussion: ergo, dialectic. Socrates valued rationality (appealing to logic, not emotion) as the proper means for persuasion, the discovery of truth, and the determinant for one's actions. To Socrates, truth, not arête, was the greater good, and each person should, above all else, seek truth to guide one's life. Therefore, Socrates opposed the Sophists and their teaching of rhetoric as art and as emotional oratory requiring neither logic nor proof. Different forms of dialectical reasoning emerged from the Indosphere (Greater India) and in the West (Europe), and throughout history; Socratic method, Hindu, Buddhist, Medieval, Hegelian dialectics, Marxist, Talmudic, and Neo-orthodoxy.The Classical Greek philosopher Plato.Classical philosophyIn classical philosophy, dialectic  is a form of reasoning based upon dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses). The outcome of such a dialectic might be the refutation of a relevant proposition, or of a synthesis, or a combination of the opposing assertions, or a qualitative improvement of the dialogue.Moreover, the term dialectic owes much of its prestige to its role in the philosophies of Socrates and Plato, in the Greek Classical period (4–5 c. BC). Aristotle said that it was the pre-Socratic philosopher Zeno of Elea who invented dialectic, of which the dialogues of Plato are the examples of the Socratic dialectical method.

Anaxagoras, filosofo naturalista de la grecia antigua, materialista inconsecuente

449    Sacred war between Sparta and Athens over control of the oracle at Delphi to 448.

447     Athenians begin building the Parthenon.

446    Athens and Sparta conclude the 30 years peace.

445    Nehemiah the profet rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem.

    445 BCThirty Years' PeaceEnds the First Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta.
    

440    Plebeians in Rome win the right to marry patricians.

440    GRECO PERSIAN WARS. He wrote his 'Enquiries' (Greek—Historia; English—(The) Histories) around –430 BC, trying to trace the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars, which would still have been relatively recent history.Herodotus's approach was entirely novel, and at least in Western society, he does seem to have invented 'history' as a discipline. As Holland has it: "For the first time, a chronicler set himself to trace the origins of a conflict not to a past so remote so as to be utterly fabulous, nor to the whims and wishes of some god, nor to a people's claim to manifest destiny, but rather explanations he could verify personally."Some subsequent ancient historians, despite following in his footsteps, criticised Herodotus, starting with Thucydides. Nevertheless, Thucydides chose to begin his history where Herodotus left off (at the Siege of Sestos), and therefore evidently felt that Herodotus's history was accurate enough not to need re-writing or correcting.[5] Plutarch criticised Herodotus in his essay "On The Malignity of Herodotus", describing Herodotus as "Philobarbaros" (barbarian-lover) for not being pro-Greek enough, which suggests that Herodotus might actually have done a reasonable job of being even-handed. A negative view of Herodotus was passed on to Renaissance Europe, though he remained well read. However, since the 19th century his reputation has been dramatically rehabilitated by archaeological finds that have repeatedly confirmed his version of events. The prevailing modern view is that Herodotus generally did a remarkable job in his Historia, but that some of his specific details (particularly troop numbers and dates) should be viewed with skepticism. Nevertheless, there are still some historians who believeHerodotus made up much of his story.Unfortunately, the military history of Greece between the end of the second Persian invasion of Greece and the Peloponnesian War (479–431 BC) is poorly attested by surviving ancient sources. This period, sometimes referred to as the pentekontaetia by ancient scholars, was a period of relative peace and prosperity within Greece. The richest source for the period, and also the most contemporaneous, is Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, which is generally considered by modern historians to be a reliable primary account. Thucydides only mentions this period in a digression on the growth of Athenian power in the run up to the Peloponnesian War, and the account is brief, probably selective and lacks any dates Nevertheless, Thucydides's account can be, and is, used by historians to draw up a skeleton chronology for the period, on to which details from archaeological records and other writers can be superimposed.Much extra detail for the whole period is provided by Plutarch, in his biographies of Themistocles, Aristides and especially Cimon. Plutarch was writing some 600 years after the events in question, and is therefore very much a secondary source, but he often explicitly names his sources, which allows some degree of verification of his statements. In his biographies, he explicitly draws on many ancient histories that have not survived, and thus often preserves details of the period that are omitted in Herodotus and Thucydides's accounts. The final major extant source for the period is the universal history (Bibliotheca historica) of the 1st century BC Sicilian, Diodorus Siculus. Much of Diodorus's writing concerning this period seems to be derived from the much earlier Greek historian Ephorus, who also wrote a universal history.Diodorus is also very much a secondary source, often derided by modern historians for his style and inaccuracies, but he preserves many details of the ancient period found nowhere else.Further scattered details can be found in Pausanias's Description of Greece, while the Byzantine Suda dictionary of the 10th century AD preserves some anecdotes found nowhere else. Minor sources for the period include the works of Pompeius Trogus (epitomized by Justinus), Cornelius Nepos and Ctesias of Cnidus (epitomized by Photius), which are not in their original textual form. These works are not considered particularly reliable (especially Ctesias), and are not particularly useful for reconstructing the history of this period. Origins of the conflictThe Greeks of the classic period believed that, in the dark age that followed the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, significant numbers of Greeks fled and had emigrated to Asia Minor and settled there. Modern historians generally accept this migration as historic (but definitely separate from the later colonization of the Mediterranean by the Greeks), but there are those who believe that the Ionian migration cannot be explained as simply as the classical Greeks claimed. These settlers were from three tribal groups: the Aeolians, Dorians and Ionians.The Ionians had settled about the coasts of Lydia and Caria, founding the twelve cities that made up Ionia.These cities were Miletus, Myus and Priene in Caria; Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenae, Phocaea and Erythrae in Lydia; and the islands of Samos and Chios. Although the Ionian cities were independent from each other, they acknowledged their shared heritage, and supposedly had a common temple and meeting place, the Panionion.ii[›] They thus formed a 'cultural league', to which they would admit no other cities, or even other tribal Ionians.The cities of Ionia had remained independent until they were conquered by the Lydians of western Asia Minor. The Lydian king Alyattes II attacked Miletus, a conflict that ended with a treaty of alliance between Miletus and Lydia, that meant that Miletus would have internal autonomy but follow Lydia in foreign affairs. At this time, the Lydians were also in conflict with the Median Empire, and the Milesians sent an army to aid the Lydians in this conflict. Eventually a peaceable settlement was established between the Medes and the Lydians, with the Halys River set up as the frontier between the kingdoms.

441    -479 BCE)The Tao Te Ching is the main body of work in Taoist tradition.  Known as the Tao, the text was transcribed during the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy, possibly around the fourth century BCE.  Generally attributed to Lao Tzu (551-479 BCE), an older contemporary of Confucius, the Tao ("the Way" or "the Path") constitutes the path to Ching, or "virtue."  The Tao, then, is a poetic treatise on the art of politics, government, and virtue.Taoism grew out of a turbulent period of Chinese history known as the "warring states period," in which the country was divided into combative feudalists struggling for control and power.  The Tao Te Ching emerged from this conflict as a way to establish needed change, and subsequently to achieve oneness, order and balance between the warring parties.Balance, a central principle, is embodied in the Taoist symbol of the yin and yang, which represent the condition of absolute balance in the universe.  Balance then, is the Way, or the Path, referred to as the tao (pronounced "dow").  The tao "is to the world as the river and the sea are to rivulets and streams."  (XXXII) However, to describe the tao using specific terms would limit its function—and the tao has no limits.As a thing the tao isShadowy, indistinct.  [XXI]One must study carefully to grasp the nature of the way:Yet within the tao is a substance.Dim and dark,Yet within the tao is an essence.This essence is quite genuineAnd within it is something that can be tested.  [XXI]Still, the tao is largely intangible, since "the great image has no shape.  The way conceals itself in being nameless."  [XLI] The point is, then, that the Way (tao) can be approached by adhering to a set of rules and prescriptions, but that fully to grasp it, one must internalize the concepts.The Way has existed since before the creation of the universe, since before time began.  The tao is something created from nothing.There is a thing confusedly formed,Born before heaven and earth.Silent and voidIt stands alone and does not change,Goes round and does not [become] weary.It is capable of being the mother of the world.  [XXV]Obviously, the Tao Te Ching states, that which came before the creation of the universe cannot be easily defined.  It is too universal, too eternal to be represented by a mere name.I know not its nameSo I style it "the Way."I give it the makeshift name of "the great."  [XXV]The Way, then, is essential to the very structure of creation.Man models himself on earth,Earth on heaven,Heaven on the way,And the way on that which is naturally so.  [XXV]Integral to the universe's structure and balance are the two opposing forces—the named and the unnamed—which, together, constitute a harmonious whole, just like the yin and the yang.  The Tao explains that since "the way that can be spoken of is not the constant way" [I], and "The name that can be named is not the constant name" [I], the named is the "creator," the mother of all life on earth, while the "nameless" is the way which is beyond the temporal world.The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;The named was the mother of the myriad creatures ...These two are the sameBut diverge in name as they issue forth.  [I]The "nameless" and the "named"—also referred to as "nothing" and "something"—are held in perfect equilibrium, as are all the opposites required to make a whole.  These balanced opposites provide the central dynamic of the tao, as the following passage explains:Thus Something and Nothing produce each other; the difficult and the easy compliment each other; the long and the short off-set each other;The high and the low incline towards each other;Note and sound harmonize with each other;Before and after follow each other.  [II]"Balanced opposites" becomes a metaphor in the Tao Te Ching; every natural force has its opposites and contradictions, which, brought together, endow the world with balance and oneness.  Use of the tao will not drain it of its power; after all, it has no limit.  The tao is both empty and full.It is empty without being exhausted:The more it works the more comes out.  [V]Simply put, the tao simply is.  It is strong, yet, because it has no substance, it is also weak.Weakness is the means the way employs.  [XL]The tao is forceful, yet submissive.  It provides structure to the universe, yet it is supple and easily manipulated, seeming paradoxes illustrated by the following passage:A man is supple and weak when living, but hard and stiff when dead.  Grass and trees are pliant and fragile when living, but dried and shrivelled when dead.  Thus the hard and the strong are the comrades of death; the supple and the weak are the comrades of life.  [LXXVI]The vitality of the tao lies in its pliancy and receptiveness.  It is not stiff or unyielding like iron; its strength is rather like water:  though it is powerful enough to carve stone, yet it provides little resistance to the gentle caress.At first it may be difficult to see the connection between Taoist philosophy and the turbulent era of Chinese history from which it sprang.  However, the tao is closely linked to feudalism and sheds much-needed light on the world of politics, ethics, and government.  For example, the notion of the weak thing manifesting itself as strong pertains to the way in which control and power flows amongst a people.  The weak, afflicted serf, Lao Tzu writes, shall overcome, while the strong shall fall, just as "a tree that is strong shall suffer the axe."  [LXXVI]The strong and big takes the lower position,The supple and weak takes the higher position.  [LXXVI]...  The weak overcomes the strong,And the submissive overcomes the hard,Everyone in the world knows yet no one can put this knowledge into practice.  [LXXVIII]Of course, as is the way of yin and yang, once the weak conquer the strong, weakness becomes strength, and will in turn be conquered as new weak forces arise in the future.  This perpetual behavior of individuals as well as governments echoes another Taoist dynamic:  the cyclical nature of all natural and human phenomena.One who understands the meaning of the tao is known as a sage or ruler.  A sage exhibits specific characteristics:  The sage "embraces the One and is a model for the empire"; he is "well versed in the way"; and like the tao itself, a sage is "minutely subtle, mysteriously comprehending, and too profound to be known."  Furthermore, the true sage is constantly evolving, changing, shifting.Falling apart like thawing ice;Thick like the uncarved block;Vacant like a valley;Murky like muddy water ...  [XV]Further, the sage "desires not to be full.  Because he is not full that he can be worn and yet newly made."  [XV] The sage is also subtle yet powerful.He does not show himself, and so is conspicuous;He does not consider himself right, and so is illustrious;He does not brag, and so has merit;He does not boast, and so endures.It is because he does not contend that no one in the empire is in a position to contend with him.  [XXII]"Because he does nothing, he never ruins anything; and, because he does not lay hold of anything, he loses nothing."  [LXIV] In short, the sage is made great because he never attempts to be so.  He is the servant of all, and therefore, the ruler of all.As a ruler, the sage is benevolent.  He "has no mind of his own.  He takes as his own the minds of the people."  [XLIX] And, in "desiring to lead the people," the sage must "follow behind them."  [LXVI]In maintaining the government, the ruler neither trifles with his power nor interferes with the affairs of the state.  "Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish," the Tao declares.  Surely the state, like the fish, can be spoiled by too much handling.The empire is a sacred vessel and nothing should be done to it.Whoever does anything to it will ruin it; whoever lays hold of it will lose it.  [XXIX]Tampering with the empire frustrates its purposes.  "It is always through not meddling that the empire is won.  Should you meddle, then you are not equal to the task of winning the empire."  [XLVIII] Rather, a sage will follow a course of "no action."The sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action and practices the teaching that uses no words.  [II]The Tao Te Ching truly practices what it preaches, imparting instruction using the minimum of words and leaving the student to discover the tao on his own.  Its verses mystify because attempting to explain them would muddle their meaning:  the Way of the universe has no limit, and defining its nature implies that it has boundaries or form when in fact is has none.  The Way is constantly changing, yet never changes.  The Tao Te Ching simply reveals that change is an integral part of life.  Change is the Way.

    431    GREECE.     Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta   For a collective first- and second-hand narrative of the first twenty years of the conflict weDialectics is based around three (or four) basic metaphysical concepts:Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time (this idea is not accepted by some dialecticians). Everything is made out of opposing forces/opposing sides (contradictions). Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one force overcomes the other  (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).  Change moves in spirals (or helixes), not circles. (Sometimes referred to as "negation of the negation") Within this broad qualification, dialectics has a rich and varied history. It has been stated that the history of dialectic is identical to the extensive history of philosophy.[1]. The basic idea is perhaps already present in Heraclitus of Ephesus, who held that all is in constant change, as a result of inner strife and opposition. Only fragments of his works and commentary remain, however.The aim of the dialectical method is resolution of the disagreement through rational discussion,[5][6] and ultimately the search for truth. One way to proceed — the Socratic method — is to show that a given hypothesis (with other admissions) leads to a contradiction; thus, forcing the withdrawal of the hypothesis as a candidate for truth (see also reductio ad absurdum). Another way of trying to resolve a disagreement is by denying some presupposition of both the contending thesis and antithesis; thereby moving to a third (syn)thesis or "sublation". However, the rejection of the participant's presuppositions can be resisted, which might generate a second-order controversy.Classical philosophyThe term "dialectic" owes much of its prestige to its role in the philosophy of Socrates and Plato. According to Aristotle,[8] it was Zeno of Elea who 'invented' dialectic.In classical philosophy, dialectic (Greek: d?a?e?t???) is a form of reasoning based on the exchange of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses). The outcome of such an exchange might be the refutation of one of the relevant points of view, or a synthesis or combination of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue. Socratic dialectic Socratic methodIn Plato's dialogues and other Socratic dialogues, Socrates attempts to examine someone's beliefs, at times even first principles or premises by which we all reason and argue. Socrates typically argues by cross-examining his interlocutor's claims and premises in order to draw out a contradiction or inconsistency among them. According to Plato, the rational detection of error amounts to finding the proof of the antithesis.[11] However, important as this objective is, the principal aim of Socratic activity seems to be to improve the soul of his interlocutors, by freeing them from unrecognized errors.For example, in the Euthyphro, Socrates asks Euthyphro to provide a definition of piety. Euthyphro replies that the pious is that which is loved by the gods. But, Socrates also has Euthyphro agreeing that the gods are quarrelsome and their quarrels, like human quarrels, concern objects of love or hatred. Therefore, Socrates reasons, at least one thing exists which certain gods love but other gods hate. Again, Euthyphro agrees. Socrates concludes that if Euthyphro's definition of piety is acceptable, then there must exist at least one thing which is both pious and impious (as it is both loved and hated by the gods) — which Euthyphro admits is absurd. Thus, Euthyphro is brought to a realization by this dialectical method that his definition of piety is not sufficiently elaborate, thus wrong. Medieval philosophyIn Medieval Europe, dialectics (also called logic) was one of the three original liberal arts collectively known as the trivium (the others were rhetoric and grammar). In ancient and medieval times both rhetoric and dialectic were understood to aim at being persuasive (through dialogue. have the remarkable History of the Peloponnesian War by the Athenian general Thucydides, who spent two decades in exile after a defeat in the battle for the city of Amphipolis.
     "Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves.  Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy.  If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences ...  The freedom we enjoy in our government extends to our ordinary life.... We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing ......  We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy.... In short ...  I doubt if the world can produce a man [who is] graced by so happy a versatility as the Athenian ...  "The Early Years. For years the great city of Sparta—located on the southern Greek peninsula of Peloponnesus —had objected to Athens' expansionist gestures.  As friction mounted between the governing Athens and the power-seeking peninsular city-state, relations between the two formerly neighboring—though discordant—cultures turned sour. The first phase of the war—often known as the Archidamian War in honor of King Archidamus, who commanded Sparta's ground forces—lasted just over a decade, and ended in a virtual stalemate.  Though the Athenians and their allies enjoyed an overwhelming naval superiority, the Spartans possessed enough of an advantage on the land to keep their rivals (literally) at bay. During this period, nearly every spring the Spartans and their allies occupied the promontory of Attica, including the countryside surrounding Athens.  Adhering to the policy of their great leader Pericles, the Athenians refused to fight and instead retreated behind the walls of their city.  Unfortunately, this tactic brought tragedy:  after their first retreat, Athens was beset by a plague, which killed a quarter to a third of the population, including Pericles.  Overall, however, the occupation of Attica by Sparta and its allies had little political effect, since the Athenians were able to farm most of their own crops within the radius of the city defenses, and import their grain by sea. With ample food supplies, the Athenians were thus able to conduct brief sorties into enemy  territories to block ships from transporting goods.
431
    GREECE. Played out against the backdrop of the classical Greek "Golden Age," the intermittent conflict between the city states of Athens and Sparta and their allies lasted from Hellenic times.

    431 GRECO PERSAN WARS. Delian LeagueAthens and her "empire" in BC. The empire was the direct descendant of the Delian LeagueAfter Byzantium, the Spartans were allegedly eager to end their involvement in the war. The Spartans were supposedly of the view that, with the liberation of mainland Greece and the Greek cities of Asia Minor, the war's purpose had already been reached. There was also perhaps a feeling that securing long-term security for the Asian Greeks would prove impossible.[174] In the aftermath of Mycale, the Spartan king Leotychides had proposed transplanting all the Greeks from Asia Minor to Europe as the only method of permanently freeing them from Persian dominion. Xanthippus, the Athenian commander at Mycale, had furiously rejected this; the Ionian cities were originally Athenian colonies, and the Athenians, if no-one else, would protect the Ionians.[174] This marks the point at which the leadership of the Greek Alliance effectively passed to the Athenians.[174] With the Spartan withdrawal after Byzantium, the leadership of the Athenians became explicit.The loose alliance of city states that had fought against Xerxes's invasion had been dominated by Sparta and the Peloponnesian league. With the withdrawal of these states, a congress was called on the holy island of Delos to institute a new alliance to continue the fight against the Persians. This alliance, now including many of the Aegean islands, was formally constituted as the 'First Athenian Alliance', commonly known as the Delian League. According to Thucydides, the official aim of the League was to "avenge the wrongs they suffered by ravaging the territory of the king".[175] In reality, this goal was divided into three main efforts—to prepare for future invasion, to seek revenge against Persia, and to organize a means of dividing spoils of war. The members were given a choice of either supplying armed forces or paying a tax to the joint treasury; most states chose the tax. Campaigns against PersiaMain article: Wars of the Delian LeagueMap showing the locations of battles fought by the Delian League, 477–449 BCThroughout the 470s BC, the Delian League campaigned in Thrace and the Aegean to remove the remaining Persian garrisons from the region, primarily under the command of the Athenian politician Cimon.[176] In the early part of the next decade, Cimon began campaigning in Asia Minor, seeking to strengthen the Greek position there.[177] At the Battle of the Eurymedon in Pamphylia, the Athenians and allied fleet achieved a stunning double victory, destroying a Persian fleet and then landing the ships' marines to attack and rout the Persian army. After this battle, the Persians took an essentially passive role in the conflict, anxious not to risk battle if possible.

431    Secon Peloponnesian war to 421

430    Epidemic of plague breaks out in Athens.
429    Pericles dies of the plague. The Acropolis is completed. Birth of Plato.
.

    425     GREECE. Turning-point of the Archidamian War.  On his way to Corcyra, the Athenian commander Demosthenes landed at Pylos on the west coast of the Peloponnesian peninsula.  Finding a suitable and easily fortified harbor, Demosthenes took the radical step of securing it for permanent occupation, forcing the Spartan troops in Attica to sail back to Laconia in order to protect their homeland from Western invaders.  The enormous Spartan fleet, however, was intercepted and destroyed by the vastly superior Athenian navy, led by Eurymedon and Sophocles.  After a 72-day battle, a Spartan detachment of 300 infantrymen—trapped by the Athenians in Pylos—finally surrendered. The defeat at Pylos was a severe blow to Sparta.  Overly eager to recoup those who had been taken captive—many of them the sons of Sparta's most prominent families—the Spartans again left themselves vulnerable to attack by Athenian forces in Pylos, who found they could launch raids into Spartan territory virtually unimpeded. Even after four long years of bitter attack, however, Sparta had some hopes for victory.  The advantages of the city's enemies were partially offset by the campaign of the Spartan commander Brasidas, "liberator of Hellas," in Chalcidice, a peninsula where the Athenians held several major colonies.
 
    424     GREECE.  and within two years, through conquest and coercion, Brasidas had conquered several economically crucial Athenian allies.  His campaign was almost as damaging to the Athenians as the capture of Pylos was to the Spartans. 

424    Xerxes of Persia assassinated. Darius II rules Persia to 404

    422    GREECE.  however, both Brasidas and his Athenian counterpart Cleon were killed in battle near Amphipolis. After the demise of these two outspoken supporters of prolonged warfare, a peace settlement was arranged by the Athenian general Nicias and the Spartan king Pleistonax.

424 BC LYSISTRATA-
 

Written by
Aristophanes

Chorus

Old men
Old women
 

Characters

Lysistrata
Calonice
Myrrhine
Lampito
Magistrate
Cinesias
Baby
Spartan Herald
Spartan Ambassador
Athenian Negotiator
Two Layabouts
Doorkeeper
Two Diners
Stratyllis
Five Young Women
 

Mute

Ismenia
Corinthian Woman
Reconciliation
Four Scythian Policemen
Scythian Policewoman
Athenian citizens, Spartan envoys, slaves et al.
 

Setting
Before the Propylaea, or gateway to the Acropolis of Athens, 405 BCE

Lysistrata  "Army-disbander" is a comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace — a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society. The dramatic structure represents a shift away from the conventions of Old Comedy, a trend typical of the author's career.[2] It was produced in the same year as Thesmophoriazusae, another play with a focus on gender-based issues, just two years after Athens' catastrophic defeat in the Sicilian Expedition.

LYSISTRATA:
    There are a lot of things about us women
    That sadden me, considering how men
    See us as rascals.
               CALONICE:
                        As indeed we are!


These lines, spoken by Lysistrata and her friend Calonice at the beginning of the play,[3] set the scene for the action that follows. Women, as represented by Calonice, are sly hedonists in need of firm guidance and direction. Lysistrata however is an extraordinary woman with a large sense of individual responsibility. She has convened a meeting of women from various city states in Greece (there is no mention of how she managed this feat) and, very soon after confiding in her friend about her concerns for the female sex, the women begin arriving.

With support from Lampito, the Spartan, Lysistrata persuades the other women to withhold sexual privileges from their menfolk as a means of forcing them to end the interminable Peloponnesian War. The women are very reluctant but the deal is sealed with a solemn oath around a wine bowl, Lysistrata choosing the words and Calonice repeating them on behalf of the other women. It is a long and detailed oath, in which the women abjure all their sexual pleasures, including The Lioness on The Cheese Grater (a sexual position).

Soon after the oath is finished, a cry of triumph is heard from the nearby Acropolis – the old women of Athens have seized control of it at Lysistrata's instigation, since it holds the state treasury, without which the men cannot long continue to fund their war. Lampito goes off to spread the word of revolt and the other women retreat behind the barred gates of the Acropolis to await the men's response.

A Chorus of Old Men arrives, intent on burning down the gate of the Acropolis if the women don't open up. Encumbered with heavy timbers, inconvenienced with smoke and burdened with old age, they are still making preparations to assault the gate when a Chorus of Old Women arrives, bearing pitchers of water. The Old Women complain about the difficulty they had getting the water but they are ready for a fight in defense of their younger comrades. Threats are exchanged, water beats fire and the Old Men are discomfited with a soaking.

The magistrate then arrives with some Scythian archers (the Athenian version of police constables). He reflects on the hysterical nature of women, their devotion to wine, promiscuous sex and exotic cults (such as to Sabazius and Adonis) but above all he blames men for poor supervision of their womenfolk. He has come for silver from the state treasury to buy oars for the fleet and he instructs his Scythians to begin levering open the gate. However,they are quickly overwhelmed by groups of unruly women with such unruly names as speµaaeaapde (seed-market-porridge-vegetable-sellers) and sdpadetatpde(garlic-innkeeping-bread-sellers).

Lysistrata restores order and she allows the magistrate to question her. She explains to him the frustrations women feel at a time of war when the men make stupid decisions that affect everyone, and their wives' opinions are not listened to. She drapes her headdress over him, gives him a basket of wool and tells him that war will be a woman's business from now on. She then explains the pity she feels for young, childless women, ageing at home while the men are away on endless campaigns. When the magistrate points out that men also age, she reminds him that men can marry at any age whereas a woman has only a short time before she is considered too old. She then dresses the magistrate like a corpse for laying out, with a wreath and a fillet, and advises him that he's dead. Outraged at these indignities, he storms off to report the incident to his colleagues, while Lysistrata returns to the Acropolis.

The debate or agon is continued between the Chorus of Old Men and the Chorus of Old Women until Lysistrata returns to the stage with some news — her comrades are desperate for sex and they are beginning to desert on the silliest pretexts (for example, one woman says she has to go home to air her fabrics by spreading them on the bed). After rallying her comrades and restoring their discipline, Lysistrata again returns to the Acropolis to continue waiting for the men's surrender.

A man soon appears, desperate for sex. It is Kinesias, the husband of Myrrhine. Lysistrata instructs her to torture him and Myrrhine then informs Kinesias that she can't have sex with him until he stops the war. He promptly agrees to these terms and the young couple prepares for sex on the spot. Myrrhine fetches a bed, then a mattress, then a pillow, then a blanket, then a flask of oil, exasperating her husband with delays until finally disappointing him completely by locking herself in the Acropolis again. The Chorus of Old Men commiserates with the young man in a plaintive song.

A Spartan herald then appears with a large burden (an erection) scarcely hidden inside his tunic and he requests to see the ruling council to arrange peace talks. The magistrate, now also sporting a prodigious burden, laughs at the herald's embarrassing situation but agrees that peace talks should begin.

They go off to fetch the delegates; and, while they are gone, the Old Women make overtures to the Old Men. The Old Men are content to be comforted and fussed over by the Old Women; and thereupon the two Choruses merge, singing and dancing in unison. Peace talks commence and Lysistrata introduces the Spartan and Athenian delegates to a gorgeous young woman called Reconciliation. The delegates cannot take their eyes off the young woman; and meanwhile, Lysistrata scolds both sides for past errors of judgment. The delegates briefly squabble over the peace terms; but, with Reconciliation before them and the burden of sexual deprivation still heavy upon them, they quickly overcome their differences and retire to the Acropolis for celebrations.

Another choral song follows; and, after a bit of humorous dialogue between drunken dinner guests, the celebrants all return to the stage for a final round of songs, the men and women dancing together.

Historical background

Some events that are significant for our understanding of the play:
424 BC: The Knights won first prize at the Lenaia. Its protagonist, a sausage-seller named Agoracritus, emerges at the end of the play as the improbable saviour of Athens (Lysistrata is its saviour thirteen years later).
421 BC: Peace was produced. Its protagonist, Trygaeus, emerges as the improbable champion of universal peace (Lysistrata's role ten years later). The Peace of Nicias was formalised this same year, ending the first half of the Peloponnesian War (referred to in Lysistrata as "The Former War").[5]
413 BC: The Athenians and their allies suffered a catastrophic defeat in the Sicilian Expedition, a turning-point in the long-running Peloponnesian War.
411 BC: Both Thesmophoriazusae and Lysistrata were produced; an oligarchic revolution (one of the consequences of the Sicilian disaster) proved briefly successful.

Old Comedy was a highly topical genre and the playwright expected his audience to be familiar with local identities and issues. The following list of identities mentioned in the play gives some indication of the difficulty faced by any producer trying to stage Lysistrata for modern audiences.
Korybantes: Devotees of the Asiatic goddess Cybele – Lysistrata says that Athenian men resemble them when they do their shopping in full armour, a habit she and the other women deplore.[6]
Hermokopidae: Vandals who mutilated the herms in Athens at the onset of the Sicilian Expedition, they are mentioned in the play as a reason why the peace delegates should not remove their cloaks, in case they too are vandalized.[7]
Hippias: An Athenian tyrant, he receives two mentions in the play, as a sample of the kind of tyranny that the Old Men can "smell" in the revolt by the women[8] and secondly in connection with a good service that the Spartans once rendered Athens (they removed him from power by force)[9]
Aristogeiton: A famous tyrannicide, he is mentioned briefly here with approval by the Old Men.[10]
Cimon: An Athenian commander, mentioned here by Lysistrata in connection with the Spartan king Pericleides who had once requested and obtained Athenian help in putting down a revolt by helots.[11]
Myronides: An Athenian general in the 450s, he is mentioned by the Old Men as a good example of a hairy guy, together with Phormio, the Athenian admiral who swept the Spartans from the sea between 430 BC and 428 BC.[12]
Peisander: An Athenian aristocrat and oligarch, he is mentioned here by Lysistrata as typical of a corrupt politician exploiting the war for personal gain.[13] He was previously mentioned in Peace[14] and The Birds[15]
Demostratus: An Athenian who proposed and carried the motion in support of the Sicilian Expedition, he is mentioned briefly by the magistrate.[16]
Cleisthenes: A notoriously effete homosexual and the butt of many jokes in Old Comedy, he receives two mentions here, firstly as a suspected mediator between the Spartans and the Athenian women[17] and secondly as someone that sex-starved Athenian men are beginning to consider a viable proposition.[18]
Theogenes: A nouveau riche politician, he is mentioned here[19] as the husband of a woman who is expected to attend the meeting called by Lysistrata. He is lampooned earlier in The Wasps,[20] Peace[21] and The Birds.[22]
Lycon: A minor politician who afterwards figured significantly in the trial of Socrates,[23] he is mentioned here merely as the husband of a woman that the Old Men have a particular dislike for[24] (he is mentioned also in The Wasps).[25]
Cleomenes I: A Spartan king, who is mentioned by the Old Men in connection with the heroism of ordinary Athenians in resisting Spartan interference in their politics.[26]
Leonidas: The famous Spartan king who led a Greek force against the Persians at Thermopylae, he is mentioned by the Spartan envoys in association with the Athenian victory against the Persian fleet at the Battle of Artemisium.[27]
Artemisia: A female ruler of Ionia, famous for her participation in the naval Battle of Salamis, she is mentioned by the Old Men with awe[28] as a kind of Amazon.
Homer: The epic poet is quoted in a circuitous manner when Lysistrata quotes her husband[29] who quotes from a speech by Hector in the Iliad as he farewells his wife before going to battle: "War will be men's business."[30]
Aeschylus: The tragic poet is mentioned briefly[31] as the source of a ferocious oath that Lysistrata proposes to her comrades, in which a shield is to be filled with blood; the oath is found in Seven Against Thebes.[32]
Euripides: The dramatic poet receives two brief mentions here, in each case by the Old Men with approval as a misogynist.[33]
Pherecrates: A contemporary comic poet, he is quoted by Lysistrata as the author of the saying: "to skin a flayed dog."[34]
Bupalus: A sculptor who is known to have made a caricature of the satirist Hipponax[35] he is mentioned here briefly by the Old Men in reference to their own desire to assault rebellious women.[36]
Micon: An artist, he is mentioned briefly by the Old Men in reference to Amazons[37] (because he depicted a battle between Theseus and Amazons on the Painted Stoa).
Timon: The legendary misanthrope, he is mentioned here with approval by the Old Women in response to the Old Men's favourable mention of Melanion: A legendary misogynist[38]
Orsilochus and Pellene: An Athenian pimp and a prostitute,[39] mentioned briefly to illustrate sexual desire.[40]

Pellene was also the name of a Peloponnesian town resisting Spartan pressure to contribute to naval operations against Athens at this time. It was mentioned earlier in The Birds.[41]

Discussion

As indicated below (Influence and legacy) modern adaptations of Lysistrata are often feminist and/or pacifist in their aim. The original play was neither feminist nor unreservedly pacifist. Even when they seemed to demonstrate empathy with the female condition, dramatic poets in classical Athens still reinforced sexual stereotyping of women as irrational creatures in need of protection from themselves and from others.[42] Thus Lysistrata accepted the men's conduct of the war out of female respect for male authority[43] until it became obvious that there were no real men in Athens who could bring an end to the destruction and waste of young lives.[44] She must protect women from their own worst instincts before she can accomplish her primary mission to end the war – she has to persuade them to forgo sexual activity, even binding them with an oath, and later she must rally them with an oracle when they show signs of wavering. She is an exceptional woman and by the end of the play she has demonstrated power over men also – even the leaders of Greece are submissive once caught in her magic (?????, íyngi).[45] Her role as an improbable savior of Athens is anticipated in The Knights, where the protagonist is an obscure sausage vendor, Agoracritus. Some points of resemblance:
1.Lysistrata uses an oracle to manipulate women, Agoracritus uses oracles to manipulate Demos (the people);[46]
2.Lysistrata presents the Athenian and Spartan envoys with the beautiful Reconciliation (Diallage), Agoracritus presents Demos with the beautiful Treaties (Spondai);[47]
3.Lysistrata appears to have extraordinary powers (possibly magical powers), Agoracritus emerges as an agent of divine intervention, not only inspired by the gods[48] but also able to be thought of as a god himself.[49]

There are also some parallels between Lysistrata and two other plays written by Aristophanes on a peace theme: The Acharnians and Peace.[50] The allegorical figure Reconciliation, virtually a prostitute in Lysistrata, appears also in The Acharnians and her beauty is celebrated by the Chorus of old Acharnians in a song full of sexual innuendo.[51] In Peace, the goddess Peace is invoked as Lysimache ('She Who Undoes Battle)[52] and her beautiful companion, Sacred Delegation (Theoria), is offered up to the Athenian Boule as a prostitute.[53]

The play is not an attempt to promote universal peace – Lysistrata chides the Athenian and Spartan envoys for allying themselves with barbarians.[54] In fact the play might not even be a plea for an end to the war so much as an imaginative vision of an honourable end to the war at a time when no such ending was possible.[55] According to Sarah Ruden, Hackett Classics, 2003, ‘Lysistrata nowhere suggests that warfare in itself is intolerable, let alone immoral.' (87)

Lysistrata and Old Comedy

Lysistrata belongs to the middle period of Aristophanes' career when he was beginning to diverge significantly from the conventions of Old Comedy. Such variations from convention include:
The divided Chorus: The Chorus begins this play being divided (Old Men versus Old Women), and its unification later exemplifies the major theme of the play – reconciliation. There is nothing quite like this use of a Chorus in the other plays. A doubling of the role of the Chorus occurs in two other middle-period plays, The Frogs and Thesmophoriazusae, but in each of those plays the two Choruses appear consecutively and not simultaneously. The nearest equivalent to Lysistrata's divided Chorus is found in the earliest of the surviving plays, The Acharnians, where the Chorus very briefly divides into factions for and against the protagonist.[56]
Parabasis: The parabasis is an important, conventional element in Old Comedy. There is no parabasis proper in Lysistrata. Most plays have a second parabasis near the end and there is something like a parabasis in that position in this play but it only comprises two songs (strophe and antistrophe) and these are separated by an episodic scene of dialogue.[57] In these two songs, the now united Chorus declares that it is not prepared to speak ill of anyone on this occasion because the current situation (ta parakeimena) is already bad enough – a topical reference to the catastrophic end to the Sicilian Expedition. In keeping however with the victim-centred approach of Old Comedy, the Chorus then teases the entire audience with false generosity, offering gifts that are not in its power to give.
Agon: The Roman orator Quintilian considered Old Comedy a good genre for study by students of rhetoric[58] and the plays of Aristophanes in fact contain formal disputes or agons that are constructed for rhetorical effect. Lysistrata's debate with the proboulos (magistrate) is an unusual agon[59] in that one character (Lysistrata) does almost all the talking while the antagonist (the magistrate) merely asks questions or expresses indignation. The informality of the agon draws attention to the absurdity of a classical woman engaging in public debate.[60] Like most agons, however, it is structured symmetrically in two sections, each half comprising long verses of anapests that are introduced by a choral song and that end in a pnigos. In the first half of the agon, Lysistrata quotes from Homer's Iliad ("war will be men's business"), then quotes 'the man in the street' ("Isn't there a man in the country?" – "No, by God, there isn't!") and finally arrives at the only logical conclusion to these premises: "War will be women's business!" The logic of this conclusion is supported rhythmically by the pnigos, during which Lysistrata and her friends dress the magistrate like a woman, with a veil and a basket of wool, reinforcing her argument and lending it ironic point – if the men are women, obviously the war can only be women's business. During the pnigos of the second section, the magistrate is dressed like a corpse, highlighting the argument that war is a living death for women. The agon in Lysistrata is thus a fine example of rhetoric even though it is unusually one-sided.

 421    BCPeace of NiciasAthens and Sparta end the first phase of the Peloponnesian War.

421    The Peace of Nicias ends war between Athens and Sparta.



                            415     GREECE.  Sicilian leaders enticed the Athenians to undertake a campaign in their island,  which was at war with neighboring Selinus.  Although few Athenians were sufficiently knowledgeable of Sicily to warrant such an undertaking, they anticipated an easy and profitable victory.  Encouraged by the popular and ambitious general Alcibiades, the Athenians dispatched a massive armada of 4000 troops and 300 horsemen, led by Alcibiades, Nicias and Lamachus. After these three generals had arrived in southern Italy, a messenger arrived from Athens to demand that Alcibiades return:  he was to be tried in Athens in connection with what was known as "The Affair of the Hermae," an incident involving a band of drunken young men who had blasphemously defaced many Athenian statues of Hermes.  The trusted Alcibiades was allowed to return aboard his own ship.  Instead of heading homeward for Athens, however, he turned sail to Sparta, where he sold his military expertise to his appreciative erstwhile enemies.  On Alcibiades' advice, the Spartans soon sent a sizeable force to Syracuse, drawing Nicias and Lamachus to focus their attention on the capture of that city.  This proved to be an absurd and highly futile project, inasmuch as Syracuse was almost as large and prosperous as Athens.  Lamachus was killed early in the campaign, and Nicias confirmed his reputation as a fumbling and indecisive leader.  In short order, the Syracusans, guided by the savvy Gylippus, blocked the Athenian troops by sea and by land.
        The stubbornly determined Athenians sent Nicias reinforcements of another 73 ships and 5000 infantrymen, under the able command of General Demosthenes.  Upon seeing what his forces would go up against, Demosthenes confided to his intimates that he favored abandoning the invasion; however, he never dared confront Nicias with this appraisal, and before long the entire Athenian fleet was blockaded in the harbor.  In one of the greatest debacles of the war, after waging two unsuccessful sea battles against the Syracusans, the Athenians burned most of their own ships and attempted to escape overland.  The retreat was suicidal:  ... The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered in grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far ...  more to be pitied than those who perished ...  They had come to enslave others, and were departing in fear of being enslaved themselves ... Following this disastrous rout, most of the surviving Athenian forces surrendered.  Nicias and Demosthenes were put to death and the captive Athenian soldiers were either sold as slaves or "deposited in the quarries."  Thucydides writes:  This was the greatest Hellenic achievement of any in this war ...  [The Athenians] were beaten at all points and altogether ...  their fleet, their army—everything was destroyed, and few of the many returned home.
    The Final Decline of Athens
    Towards the end of the Peloponnesian War, Athens gradually declined in influence.  Sparta's allies, which now included the mighty city of Syracuse, built a fleet to rival that of Athens, and, one by one, the city lost almost all the client states which had comprised its empire.  Some of the city's wealthiest citizens suspended operations of the Ekklesia, the governing body in Athens, and tried to make peace with Sparta on any terms.  Due to military opposition, their attempt failed.

    414 BC - (from The Comedies) by Aristophanes (ca.  448-380 B.C.) Type of work: Comedic lyrical social satire Setting: A dramatic competition in Athens during the Second Pelo ponnesian War; 414 B.C. Principal characters: Pisthetaerus, an elderly Athenian Euelpides, another old gentleman Epops, King of the Birds, formerly a man A Chorus of Birds Play Overview: Life in Athens during the last years of the fifth century B.C.  had badly deteriorated.  For one thing, there was the heavy burden of the fifteen-year-old Peloponnesian War that was still being waged against Sparta.  Then, too, there were the costs of expanding the empire west into Sicily—and, there again, battling Sparta.  Finally, and even more disheartening—as the players on the skylit stage of The Birds irreverently attested to their Athenian audience—there was the prospect of enduring yet another tragedy by Euripides at this year's theater festival.
In such troubled times, it seemed that the only freedom to which an ordinary Athenian could look forward with any degree of certainty was the freedom to pay taxes.  And if, in the middle of this sad state of affairs, you had found yourself on stage in this latest comedy from the pen of Aristophanes, taking the role of a disgruntled old man hounded by creditors and tax collectors, then the act of gathering your belongings and heading out of town would surely have seemed less a contrivance of comic desperation than an eminently reasonable response.  Nor probably did it seem any less sensible to the audience living under these circumstances when you disclosed in the opening scenes that, before setting out for parts unknown, you had bought a crow and a magpie in the Athenian bird market, hoping that one bird or the other would guide you—by instinct you assumed—to Epops the Hoopoe, otherwise known as King of the Birds.
Epops had first been born not as a bird, but as a man; he had ruled in Greece as a king named Tereus.  Long ago he had inexplicably mutated into a bird.  Having traveled widely through the kingdoms of both men and birds, Epops, you might assume, should know of a place somewhere in the world where a poor refugee might settle down and live a life of comfort and ease.
Such, at any rate, was the plan that the two old gentlemen on stage, Euelpides and Pisthetaerus, had hatched.  Now, with their meager belongings in tow, they found themselves facing the audience from the midst of a desolate mountain scene.  They paused beneath a rocky crag, arguing between themselves and interpreting as best they could the squawks and caws of the two guide-birds which sat perched on their shoulders.
They had begun to lament their plan to escape Athens as an idea that was quite literally "for the birds," when the disturbance they were making brought Epops out from a rocky crag, having just awakened from a nap.  It was molting season, and because he had lost so much of his plumage, to the startled Euelpides and Pisthetaerus his aspect was sightly less than royal.  Still, the travelers had come this far, they decided to explain their plight and ask if he could recommend a peaceful land beyond the reach of creditors where the worst they might suffer would be an invitation to dinner.
Epops made several suggestions, but all were rejected; none, it seemed, were ideally suited to the Athenians' paradisiacal fantasy.  Finally, almost as an afterthought, the two humans asked Epops what life was like among the birds.  Epops rehearsed the various advantages of birdhood—noting in particular that birds lived without need of money.  Hearing this, Pisthetaerus suddenly had an idea.  "You should build your own city-state in the clouds," he urged Epops.  The birds, he enthused, could surround their city with huge walls and starve the gods themselves into submission "by preventing men's sacrifices from reaching heaven."  Epops was intrigued by the notion.  "By traps and nets and decoys," he added approvingly.  "I've never heard a better idea!"
But such an ambitious proposition—one that would overthrow the whole established oligarchy of the gods—required approval of birds throughout the world.  So Epops summoned the birds together in a chorus on stage in order that they might hear Pisthetaerus' plan.
The birds were naturally suspicious.  Unlike Epops, none of them had ever been men.  In fact, men had always been the enemies of birds:  throughout history humans had captured them, killed them, eaten them.  Thus, it was not, perhaps, unnatural, that the first act of the chorus was to form ranks and launch an assault on their human visitors.
After Euelpides and Pisthetaerus had endured much wing-beating and pecking from the birds, Epops finally rebuked his followers, reminding them that they had much to "learn from their enemies."  Chastised, at least for the moment, the birds settled down to listen.
Pisthetaerus first rose to speak, presenting an eloquent argument.  Hadn't the chorus read their Aesop?  If so, they would know that birds were originally the masters of men.  A remnant of the birds' primordial glory was even yet evident in man's lexicon:  the owl, the eagle, the hawk, the dove, all were reverenced as symbols of courage, peace—the noblest ideals of humanity.  Couldn't they see that if they built a walled city between heaven and earth, the birds could force both men and gods to once more worship them?  They would be sovereign; the feathered tribes would reign!  Point by persuasive point, Pisthetaerus laid out all the advantages of his plan.  "I advise you," he forcefully concluded, "to create a city of birds."
"O reverend elder," the chorus of birds now intoned, "instead of our worst enemy you have become our dearest friend."  Following much rejoicing, Euelpides and Pisthetaerus were led away to be honored with their own pairs of wings.
During this interlude, the chorus of birds—who were, after all, only actors in a comedy—took occasion to address the audience directly, entreating them to become citizens of their newly founded city.  If the humans would agree to this treaty, the birds promised to control insect plagues and such, so that mankind would benefit; what's more, given wings, the humans, would not have to sit through another of Euripides' boring tragedies—they could simply fly home for a snack and be back in time for a comedy.  If the human audience refused to pay homage, however, the siege of the birds would begin, and feathered battalions would be sent to pluck our the eyes of their cattle.  In any case, the chorus concluded, the judges at the theater festival should definitely award first prize to their own most inspired drama.
The interlude ended, once more the birds assumed their stage roles, and the drama continued to unfold.  Soon news came to Pisthetaerus that the building of the celestial city and all its fortifications had been completed.  The question naturally arose as to what to call the new city.  Pisthetaerus at first suggested "Sparta," but Euelpides objected that the name "Sparta" would even be an insult to his mattress.    No, he insisted, such a lofty city required "something big, smacking of the clouds.  A pinch of fluff and rare air.  A swollen sound."  Pisthetaerus thought a moment.  "I've got it," he exclaimed.  "Listen—CLOUDCUCKOOLAND!"  Everyone agreed.  "The perfect name," someone said.  "And it's a big word too."
The problem was, however, that rumors of Cloudcuckooland-to-come had already spread to Athens.  Pisthetaerus was at once besieged by a procession of the seediest characters from the noble city—each one seeking money by offering his corrupt services in the building of the project.  There came an indigent poet offering to write celebratory verses; an itinerant prophet peddling a book of bogus oracles; a geometer putting in his bid to survey the new city; and an imperious Athenian legislator wishing to sell the city a huge volume of statutes and laws.  In short, all of Athens seemed to be dreaming of feathers, a winged way of life, a life of ease.  Among this clamoring crowd, the corrupt and self-serving soon found themselves unceremoniously either pummeled or expelled by Pisthetaerus himself.  But Athenians who sued with a pure heart for the privileges of Cloudcuckooland, were given wings to soar aloft in their chosen professions:  poets were empowered to gather inspiration for their works, and workmen to climb to the nethermost heights of their craft.
The gods, too, had by now received news of Cloudcuckooland and of the birds' fiat declaring themselves supreme rulers of the world.  In fact, since communications between gods and man had been cut off and men were no longer making sacrificial offerings, the gods were growing very hungry.  At first, Zeus dispatched Iris, goddess of the rainbow, who arrived on stage with her veils blowing in the wind by means of a stage crane.  Pisthetaerus dismissed the gentle goddess so rudely, though, that Zeus next sent an Olympian delegation consisting of Poseidon, Triballus, and Heracles.
Now the idea behind this delegation—that more illustrious members of the pantheon were needed to obtain an audience with the now-winged Pisthetaerus—was sound enough.  The constitution of the delegation, however, was another matter.  Here, Zeus seemed to have seriously erred in that each member brought his own particular weakness to the table.  Poseidon, for instance, was far too glum a god to possess any diplomatic talents.  Triballus—being a Dorian god and speaking a barbarian tongue—could not make himself understood.  And Heracles not only "burned less brightly" than other gods—he was, in fact, dim-witted—but he was also a renowned glutton—by this time a renowned hungry glutton.
When the Olympian delegation arrived, Pisthetaerus was slicing pickles and his chef was preparing a barbecue—a fact which did not escape the notice of the famished Heracles.  "Hey," saluted the muscular demigod, "what kind of meat is dat?"  The chef was roasting three birds, Pisthetaerus explained—three "jail birds" who had been "sentenced to death for High Treason against the Sovereign Birds."  "And dat luscious gravy gets poured on foist?"  Heracles asked, licking his lips.
Needless to say, negotiations did not go well for the gods.  First, they ceded their dominion over men to Pisthetaerus' birds and agreed to turn over Zeus's scepter.  Then Pisthetaerus, still unsatisfied, laid down new terms:  he would instruct the birds to end the gods' famine, he declared—and even invite them to dinner—but only if they also agreed to give him Basileia, Zeus' most beautiful wife.  This was most unreasonable, Poseidon complained.  "You won't have peace," he threatened as the Olympians rose to leave.  "It's all the same to me," Pisthetaerus said nonchalantly.  "O Chef," he called ignoring the gods, "make the gravy thick."
This last reference to the gravy was "more than Heracles could stand," and the envoys fell into a slavering quarrel.  Finally—as the three of them sat down to dinner—Poseidon reluctantly agreed to all of Pisthetaerus' audacious demands.  Then, in the distance, they heard the roll of Zeus' thunder.  A bolt of lightning stuck the stage, Basileia was delivered before their eyes, and she and Pisthetaerus were promptly married.
Finally, Pisthetaerus, King of the Birds, extended one hand to Basileia—Zeus' scepter was clasped firmly in the other—and together they stepped into the stage crane's breeze, beating their wings.  As the crane slowly lifted them up and offstage, the gods knelt in homage.  And as the chorus of the birds exited the stage, they chanted "O greatest of gods!"
Commentary:
"The Birds" was first performed in competition at Athens' festival of Dionysus in 414 B.C.  Despite the pleas of the chorus, the judges awarded it second, rather than first prize.  Nonetheless, it may be Aristophanes' finest comedy, and certainly one of the masterpieces of Western literature.  Indeed, it would be difficult to think of another work that can match "The Birds" for its rich mix of rollicking, absurd humor, self-conscious parody, and soaring lyricism.
"The Birds" is one of the first works of literature to treat the now familiar theme of Utopia.  The ideal of Aristophanes' Utopia, however, is no real "ideal" at all.  The ancient gods are starved out by the Cloudcuckoolanders, not from any pious intentions to establish a new haven for pure living or thinking, but in brazen pursuit of the Ultimate Escape.  Rather than a noble sanctuary, the city of the birds—and of frenzied, weak-willed, tax-evading humans—brazenly declares itself as the magical, flawed, tyrannical paradise of infamy.
In 405 B.C., Athens fell to Sparta.  It marked not only the literary epitaph of Aristophanes, but also the end of Greece's golden age of drama.


413    Athenian attack on Sicily fails.

411                    GREECE. Revolution in Athens. Government of the 5,000 seizes power, but democracy is soon restored.  In his work Hellenica, Xenophon tells how Sparta and its allies entered into an alliance with the Persian Empire.  Alcibiades was allowed to return to Athens and was elected supreme commander of the Athenian fleet, but the Athenians subsequently blamed him for their defeat near Ephesus, whereupon they elected ten new generals, including Pericles, the son and namesake of the celebrated early statesman. Soon afterward, the Athenians enjoyed their last significant victory of the war with the Battle of Arginusae.  A fleet of 150 Athenian ships met and defeated Lysander's 120-vessel force, sinking 70 of the Spartan ships, along with the 14,000 men they carried—including Lysander himself.  A sudden storm, however, prevented the Athenians from rescuing the sailors from 25 of their own sinking vessels.  And when Athens' citizens heard this, they angrily sought to depose the eight generals who had been present at Arginusae, eventually bringing six of them to trial.  This was an unconstitutional act, but the members of the presiding committee, the prytany, eventually gave in to the public outcry and sentenced the generals to death in a near unanimous vote.  The single dissenter was the philosopher Socrates, who "would do nothing at all that was contrary to the law." As the war dragged disastrously on, the Athenian fleet was virtually destroyed after its commanding general Conon ordered it ashore on the European side of the Merranean in search of provisions.  Under Spartan attack, Conon managed to escape to Cyprus along with eight ships.  The Paralus, the official state warship of Athens, was subsequently sent to Piraeus, a Greek seaport, with an account of the defeat:  As the news of the disaster was told, one man passed it to another, and a sound of wailing arose ...  That night no one slept.  They mourned for the lost, but still more for their own fate.  They thought that they themselves would now be dealt with as they had dealt with    others ...Besieged by both land and sea, the starving Athenians were compelled to concede defeat

__________________________________________________________________________________

409    Carthage begins invasion of Sicily.

407    Acibiades Athenian general quells revolt in subject states.

    407  - ISRAEL. Ezra,  Haggai,  Zecharai,  Malachi. End of Old Testament.
        Ezra finally led a group of Jews from Babylon to Jerusalem, where he reinforced the observance of the Torah (the "Pentateuch," or first five books of the Old Testament) and purified the temple rituals.  Many Jews, though, never returned:  some continued to reside in Persia, where they were saved from destruction by the courageous Jewish Queen Esther; others were scattered around the world.  Still, Judaism continued to prosper, and most Hebrews continued to await the Holy Messiah's appearance.  For, as the prophet Isaiah had foretold, the Messiah would come to deliver them from bondage, sin and death:  "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows ...  He was wounded for our transgressions ...  and with his stripes we are healed."
    Hellenistic Judaism.

407     BCSparta captures the Laurion Mines Sparta releases 20,000 slaves from the mines and cuts off supplies of silver to Athens.

406     - 405 BCAthens issues bronze coins with a silver coating The Athenian public hoards silver coins which, as a result, quickly disappear from circulation, leaving only the inferior bronze ones. Athenian fleet defeats a Spartan fleet at the battle of Arguinusae.

 405     BCAristophanes' comedy The Frogs is producedIn the play Aristophanes refers to how the new, inferior coins have displaced the old superior ones from circulation - probably the world's first statement of Gresham's law, that bad money drives out good.

405    Lysander of Sparta defeats the Athenian fleet off Aegospotami.

404    GREECE. There followed the Reign of the Thirty Tyrants—under Spartan dominion—during which Athens' most brutal oligarchs exercised their power to despoil their political enemies.  After many executions and confiscations of estates, the Thirty were defeated by Athenian exiles returning from Thebes at the Battle of Munychia

        Artaxerxes II ruler of Persia to 359. Amyrtaeus of Sais king of Egypt to 399the XXVIIIth dynasty. Spartans capture Athens. Athenian hero Alcibiades is assassinated in exile. Short lived government of the 30 tyrants in Athens.

403    GREECE. Soon thereafter, the Spartan King Pausanias proclaimed a general amnesty and dismantled the Spartan garrison which had controlled Athens.  The Athenian democracy thus was restored, but never again would Athens attain the status of an imperial power.
400- BCE- 400-Zoroastrianism is the faith of many Persians. The Zoroastrians believe in a struggle between their god, Mazda, and the devil. They believe that the birth of their founder, the prophet Zarathustra, was the beginning of a final epoch that is to end in an Armageddon and triumph of good over evil. Perhaps Persian officials or merchants in Judah are passing Zoroastrian notions to the Jews, who at this time have respect for Persians and the late Cyrus II, who freed the Jewish captives in Babylon.

399  Democrats, back in power in Athens and afraid of enemies, condemn the aristocratic philosopher Socrates to death. Socrates wants people to question, and he pretends to be without conclusions. He believes in a god like that of his teacher, Anaxagoras. Like Xenophanes he thinks that the gods of Homer are examples of bad behavior. Greeks are looking upon Homer's writing as divinely inspired and as a reference for religious thought. Those who sentence Socrates at least pretended to be believers in the gods of the common people, and they consider Socrates subversive and against democracy.

396  Antisthenes is around forty. He has founded a school of thought called Cynicism. He is disgusted by the world around him and what he sees as the worthless quibbling of refined philosophy. He has left the company of other philosophers and preaches to common people in market places using simple language. He tells people that virtue demands withdrawal from involvement with a world that is immoral and corrupt. But dropping out is meaningless to people trying to survive.

394  Rome, now grown to about thirty by twenty miles, responds to a request from the Etruscan city of Clusium for help against an attack by a Celtic people called Gauls.

390  The Gauls attack and almost destroy Rome. Rome is determined to be stronger. They are to adopt new military weaponry, dropping the spear in favor of a two-foot long sword. The Romans also begin to use helmets, breastplates and a shield with iron edges. And they are to reorganize their army.

387  The philosopher Plato turns forty. He returns to Athens from exile and starts his own academy. Plato dislikes democrats and the likes of Protagoras (the sophists). He is an aristocrat who dislikes the world around him, including aristocratic rule, and he favors a society divided into classes and run by philosophers. He believes that abstractions are real unto themselves rather than representations, that words are absolutes rather than convention and representative of meaning. He understands nothing about the body allowing the brain to function. The heavens, he believes, are nothing but perfection, including perfect circles. He belongs to the Pythagorian tradition in philosophy. And like his mentor, Socrates, he is a monotheist.

 

 

380  Carthage has begun trading with Africans to their south, sending iron through the Sahara. Iron smelting has appeared in what we now call Nigeria. The use of iron is improving hunting and forest farming, which is helping to build population pressures that send Bantu speaking people migrating eastward.

371  Sparta has made a mess of policing other Greek city-states. Sparta is no longer the society it was a century before. It is defeated by Thebes. Greeks recognize that Sparta's domination has ended, and new coalitions form across Greece.

360  Jerusalem has been rebuilt and the power of Judaism's hereditary priesthood is firmly established. If a father finds his son rebellious and disobedient he can take him to the city elders and have him stoned to death. In a dispute that goes to court, a man judged wicked is whipped, but no more than forty times. Priest scribes have described the Hebrews as descendants of Noah and Noah's forebears as the first family of humankind. And the priest scribes describe the god of the Jews as supreme above all other gods. Moses is described as living during the time of the kingdoms of Moab and Edom, and Abraham is described as living when the Chaldeans were in possession of Sumer. Jewish law permits slavery, but the enslavement of a fellow Jew is restricted to seven years.

350  Hindu stories, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, are being put into writing. They are from oral tradition, and, like Homer's Iliad, they focus on the power of the gods and praise the heroism and virtues of warrior-princes. The heroes of these sacred stories are devoted to truth, have a strong sense of duty and affection for their parents.

344  The Athenian orator Demosthenes turns forty. Of marriage he has said or will say: "We have prostitutes for our pleasure, concubines for our health and wives to bear us lawful offspring."

344  Also, Aristotle turns forty. He had been a student of Plato. He dislikes Plato's utopia and believes more in empiricism than does Plato. His empiricism: If you do not believe that rivers begin as little streams in mountains, follow them upstream. He likes to categorize everything, including things biological. He believes in syllogistic logic – consistency from the general to the specific. He believes in harmony and balance, that the best is between extremes, including a balance between state power and individual freedom. He believes in the god of Anaxagoras. He dislikes communism and supports slavery.  He is for a balance between individualism and a totalitarian enforcement of collective interests.

338 (Aug 2)  An army from the nation-state of Macedonia, led by its king, Philip II, defeats the combined forces of the Greek city-states Athens and Thebes, at the Battle of Chaeronea.

337  Philip II has created a strong and unified nation in Macedonia. He is devoted to Greek culture and has hired Aristotle to tutor his son, Alexander. He imposes unity on the divided Greek city-states and creates the Hellenic League, which meets for the first time in the city of Corinth.

336  Philip II is assassinated. Alexander becomes king.

334  Alexander begins warring against Persia, he and his army moving through the Persian empire, from Asia Minor, to Egypt, across Persia, into the Hindu Kush and the Indus Valley.

331 (Oct 1)  Alexander defeats an army of Persia's King Darius III and his Greek mercenaries, at the Battle of Gaugamela.

323  Alexander returns to his new capital, Babylon. He wants cooperation and brotherhood across his empire and has plans for expanded commerce and extending his rule to Italy. Then he dies, at thirty-two. Myth is still the dominant way of considering the past, and many myths about Alexander are to develop.

322  Alexander's Persian wife, Roxana, gives birth to Alexander's child, Alexander IV. Alexander's generals have sworn to keep Alexander's empire together, but for some Macedonians it is unthinkable that their king should be the son of a barbarian Asian woman.

321  In India, competition between kingdoms produces one dominant power under Chandragupta Maura, founder of a new dynasty.

316  Alexander the Great's mother, Olympias, has claimed rule in Macedonia, has raised an army and is supporting the legitimacy of Roxana's son, Alexander IV. Macedonia is overrun by her opponents and she is killed.

311  Alexander IV is executed, and his mother, Roxana, also dies. Former subordinates of Alexander the Great have been fighting each other and are dividing his empire. Alexander's former bodyguard, Ptolemy, is making himself king of Egypt.

305  A former officer in Alexander's army, Seleucus, considers himself emperor across Persia and into lands east of Persia. He attempts to recover lands taken by Chandragupta that had been a part of Alexander's Empire. Chandragupta turns back Seleucus' drive and Seleucus is forced to agree to peace terms. Chandragupta then conquers into the Himalayas and the rest of northern India.

301  Chandragupta abdicates in favor of one of his sons and withdraws with a Jainist sage to a religious retreat. There, while appealing to God for relief from a drought, he fasts to death.

5th Century BCE (500 to 401) | 3rd Century BCE (300 to 201)

    400    The Persian Wars. Greek army under Xenophon is defeated at Cunaxa in revolt against Artaxerxes II of Persia. Retreat of the 10,000.

    400--    BCE -- OriginsThe Greek historian Herodotus mentions in passing that "Aesop the fable writer" was a slave who lived in Ancient Greece during the 5th century BCE.[1] Among references in other writers, Aristophanes, in his comedy The Wasps, represented the protagonist Philocleon as having learnt the "absurdities" of Aesop from conversation at banquets; Plato wrote in Phaedo that Socrates whiled away his jail time turning some of Aesop's fables "which he knew" into verses. Nonetheless, for two main reasons[2] – because numerous morals within Aesop's attributed fables contradict each other, and because ancient accounts of Aesop's life contradict each other – the modern view is that Aesop probably did not solely compose all those fables attributed to him, if he even existed at all.[2]

440 BC FAMINE. Ancient Rome

400    Eggplants cultivated in India.

    400    BC AFRICA. TUNISIA. HannibalAfter a series of wars with Greek city-states of Sicily in the 5th century BC, Carthage rose to power and eventually became the dominant civilization in the Western Mediterranean. The people of Carthage worshipped a pantheon of Middle Eastern gods including Baal and Tanit. Tanit's symbol, a simple female figure with extended arms and long dress, is a popular icon found in ancient sites. The founders of Carthage also established a Tophet which was altered in Roman times. Carthaginian invasion of Italy led by Hannibal during the Second Punic War, one of a series of wars with Rome, nearly crippled the rise of Roman power. From the conclusion of the Second Punic War in 202 BC, Carthage functioned as a client state of the Roman Republic for another 50 years. The Roman PeriodFollowing the Battle of Carthage in 149 BC, Carthage was conquered by Rome. After the Roman conquest, the region became one of the granaries of Rome and was Latinized and Christianized. The Romans controlled nearly all of modern Tunisia from 149 BC until the area was conquered by the Vandals in the 5th century AD, only to be reconquered by Roman general Belisarius in the 6th century, during the rule of emperor Justinian.The Islamic Period The Great Mosque of Al-Zaytuna

    400    BC FEZZAN. AFRICA. LIBYA. From the 5th century BCE to the 5th century of the modern era, the Fezzan was home to the Garamantian Empire, a city state which operated the Trans-Saharan trade routes between the Carthaginians -- and later the Roman Empire -- and Sahelian states of west and central Africa.Roman Septimius Flaccus in AD 50 led a military expedition that reached the actual Fezzan [1] and went further south. For two/three centuries since this invasion, Fezzan -as part of the Garamantes State- was a client state of the Roman Empire and benefited from Roman civilization.With the end of the Roman empire and the following commercial crisis, Fezzan started to lose importance: the population was greatly reduced because of the desertification process of the Sahara during the Middle Ages.

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400 BC - ZOROASTER - The Avestas:  The Holy Books of Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism is an ancient religion which first developed in the northeastern region of what is now Iran.  It was founded by Zoroaster (a Greek extraction of "Zarathustra") a prophet who lived around the sixth century BC.
Although Zoroastrianism was largely replaced by the Muslim religion, it is still practiced in certain areas.  In fact, the Parsis of India and small groups in Iran still may be found vigorously plying their religious liturgy.
Very little is known about Zoroaster, aside from a smattering of cryptic stories, such as the one the ancient Romans repeated:  "Zoroaster was the only human being to laugh at birth."  At age twenty he left home on a search for religious truth.  After wandering from village to village and living alone for ten years, he had a vision.  During the next ten years, he had six more revelations, in which he spoke with the chief angels and God himself.  He was commanded to call the people together to worship God (Ahura Mazda) and to fight against Ahura Mazda's enemy, the Evil Spirit (Angra Mainyu).  For the remainder of his life, Zoroaster went about gathering believers.  At the time of his death in his mid-fifties, his teachings were beginning to have a strong influence in Persia.
Only a portion of Zoroaster's writings still exist, serving as the basis of Zoroastrian scripture.  These writings constitute part of the "Avesta," a book written in a language (Gathic) spoken only in the Avesta region of the ancient Persian Empire.  This language has posed formidable problems for interpretive scholars, and obscurities in translation continue to this day.
Text Overview:
The most essential components of the Avesta are the prayer-hymns, composed by Zoroaster and known as his "Gathas."  The Gathas reveal Zoroaster's world-view in poetic form and give an account of his spiritual journey.  Only five of these Gathas survive, yet this is sufficient for reconstructing Zoroaster's general religious perspectives and teachings.
Central to Zoroastrian doctrine is the belief that there are two classifications of deities:  Ahuras and Daevas.
Ahuras—These are the positive, or "good" deities.  But only one supremely good ahura, worthy of worship, is indicated.  This ahura is known as Ahura Mazda, Ahura meaning "Lord" and Mazda meaning "wisdom."  Ahura Mazda represents all positive attributes, but, curiously, is never portrayed as the only Ahura.
Daevas—These are the negative, or "evil" deities.  They have only one will—to do evil.  They are not true gods; they are the Evil Spirit, Angra Mainyu and the host of evil who sprang from his Evil Mind (Aka Manah).  The classification of these deities forms the basis for the rest of Zoroaster's religion.
The world and everyone in it represent a battleground between good and evil.  Followers of Zoroastrianism are called to fight on the side of the good, which, in the end, will win out; they are called to seek, obey, and worship Ahura Mazda, creator of all things, judge at the end of time, and neither honor or placate the daevas.  Instead, they must relentlessly seek to defeat their diabolical aims.
Ahura Mazda's Bounteous Spirit, Spenta Mainyu, is His "son," who creates of life and the good in life.  Because Ahura Mazda's spirit creates good, He has the primary attribute of goodness or righteousness, and all other secondary characteristics.
The divine qualities of Ahura Mazda are known collectively as Amesa Spenta ("Immortal Ones").  They participate as part of Ahura Mazda and are personified, almost as independent entities.  They are:
1)    Good Mind (Vohu Manah)
2)    Truth (Asha)
3)    Good Power of the Kingdom of God (Khsanthra)
4)    Right-Mindedness or Devotion (Armaiti)
5)    Wholeness or Perfection (Haurvatat)
6)    Immortality (Ameretat)
By right aspiration and obedience, man may participate in the first four of these divine aspects.  But the last two, Perfection and Immortality, cannot be won by man's efforts alone; they are gifts of God granted to those who seek to achieve the other qualities.
Embracing the quality of truth (Asha) is particularly important in Zoroaster's view:
Through the best Asha, through the highest Asha, may we obtain a vision of Thee, may we draw near unto Thee, and may we be in perfect union with Thee ...  I will esteem Asha above all as long as I am able.  So do Thou guide me to Asha for whom I have ever yearned.
Again and again in the Gathas he invokes or speaks of Asha.  In fact, Asha is mentioned in 176 of the 238 verses of the five Gathas.  Solely through Asha one can achieve the supreme goal of human life:
Unto him, who moved by the call of the Holy Spirit and the Divine Mind, expresses Asha in deed and word, will Ahura Mazda, bestow haurvatat (perfection) and ameretat (immortality)."
Of all the creatures God (Ahura Mazda) placed in the world, He created man alone to be His ally.  Man possesses free will, and if he chooses rightly and accepts his divinely intended role, he will conform his mind to that of the characteristics of Good Mind, and will conform his will to that of Truth.
Zoroaster asked Ahura Mazda:  "When the wise man ...  strives earnestly for the increase of Asha, would he then, by such action, become one with (or, be merged into) Thee, O Mazda Ahura?"
Ahura Mazda replies:  "Whoso listens to and realizes Asha becomes the soul-healing Lord of Wisdom, O Ahura."
So there is a reward for conforming to divine characteristics.  Specifically, humans can receive Perfection and Immortality:
Now, I shall speak of what the most virtuous one told me, that word which is to be heard as the best for men:  "Those of you who shall give obedience and regard to this Lord of mine, they shall reach Perfection and Immortality.  The Wise One is Lord through such actions stemming from good spirit."
Failure to follow the way of the divine characteristics leads man to suffering:
Now, I shall speak of the foremost doctrine of this existence that which the Wise Lord, the Knowing One, told me, "Those of you who shall not bring to realization each precept now exactly as I shall conceive and speak of it, for them shall there be woe at the end of existence."
God is the eternal enemy of Angra Mainyu, the Evil Spirit, at every level of the spiritual and earthly creation.  If humans choose to respond in favor of Angra Mainyu, they will receive the opposite of the divine characteristics.
There are specific duties for all those who choose the good.  If these duties are accepted and the war against evil is fought bravely, the world will be made perfect in a final judgement, bringing an end to time and eternally settling the battle between good and evil.  Then, Zoroaster and his loyal followers will be entrusted with the perfecting of the world.
Prominent in Zoroaster's doctrines is the idea of the "Bridge of the Separator."  He promises to help the pious over this bridge into the "House of Song," where God dwells forever with his own.  This bridge is said, in later Zoroastrian teachings, to be broad for the righteous, but narrow as a razor for the wicked, who fall off it into hell.
Each individual will have to pass through a test of fire and molten metal.  The good will pass unscathed, and may even be purified by the ordeal.  Those who are evil, however, will be unmasked and seared unmercifully.  Ahura Mazda, wielding the characteristics of Truth, Good Mind, and Devotion, will preside over this final judgement.
So understand these Laws ordained by Mazda, O ye mortals, regarding happiness and pain:  Falsehood brings age-long suffering whilst Truth leads to a fuller, higher life; then, after these there shall be bliss.
For his followers, Zoroaster prescribes complete self-responsibility and adherence to the precepts of truth and the other divine characteristics.  He looks forward to the "Great Crisis," the "day of reckoning when men's lives shall be finally weighed, and the followers of Asha shall have their reward."  At that time, the followers of the "Druj" (the "lie") shall be banished to the "House of Druj":
Whoso cometh to the Righteous One, far from him shall be the future long aeon of misery, of darkness, ill food and crying woe.  To such an existence, ye followers of Druj, shall your own Self bring you by your actions.
Good men will live forever in the grace of Ahura Mazda in his Kingdom of Righteousness, while evil men will face great doom, as a consequence of the choice they have made to follow evil.
Still, Ahura Mazda is a forgiving God:
When retribution descends upon the sinners, then unto them O Mazda, will thy Law be clearly revealed by ...  and unto them, O Ahura, shall teaching be given so that into the hands of Asha they will deliver up the false one.
When retribution destroys the past triumphs of the False ones, then they shall attain their innermost desire (namely, the innermost hidden longing for Ahura Mazda ...  ); they shall attain the Blessed Abode of Vohu Manah, of Mazda and of Asha.
Thus, O Ahura Mazda, Zarathustra chooses for himself Thy Spirit which indeed is holiest.  May Asha incarnate in us, filling our living being with Thy Life and Strength ...
I shall try to turn Him hither to us by praises of reverence, for I have just now, knowingly through truth, seen the Wise One in a vision to be Lord of the word and deed stemming from good spirit ...
I shall try to gratify Him for us with good thinking, Him who left our will to choose between the virtuous and the unvirtuous.  May the Lord, Wise in His rule, place us in effectiveness, in order to prosper our cattle and our men in consequence of the good relationship of good thinking with truth.
Yes, praising, I shall always worship ...  Wise Lord, with truth and the very best thinking and with their rule through which one shall stand on the path of good power.  I shall always obey you ...
...  Let wisdom come in the company of truth across the earth.


        The rise of Confucianism and Taoism in China

        400 BC - - "China's Wise Teacher" (c. 551 - 479 B.C.) Early            YearsThere was nothing auspicious about the year 551 B.C.            when   a male child was born to the K'ung family in the small            dukedom of Lu. However, this child was to become the greatest         sage of China, and would transform the whole of Chinese             culture. We know him as Confucius. K'ung Ch'iu ("Confucius"     is the
Latinized form of K'ung-fu-tzu, meaning "Great Master") grew up during the decline of the Chou dynasty. The idealistic glories of the past appealed to the lad, who loved its feudal system of order and peace. But as the Chou monarchs' authority weakened, tribal chieftains and lords took dominion. Chinese society soon consisted of scattered fiefs, with most of their subjects living in poverty. The "shih" class, into which Ch'iu was born, was the educated link between the few aristocrats ("mind-laborers") at the top of Chinese society and the mass of working peasants ("body-laborers") at the bottom.  The much-favored son of an elderly soldier- father who died when the boy was only three years old, Ch'iu was raised by his mother, and educated in the histories, ceremonies, poetry, music and etiquette of the ancient courts. This code of rituals, known as "Li," had long governed the moral and social activities of the aristocracy. But as the peasant class grew, it merged into a vast agrarian population, and the separate fiefdoms were drawn into a life-and-death struggle for supremacy. Ancient arts were put aside; feudal etiquette and morality were lost. Strife and bloodshed, corruption and filth, became the norm, and the royal dukes became mere puppets in the hands of three powerful clans.Following his family tradition, Ch'iu became keeper of the granary and, later, supervisor of the flocks and herds, positions he fulfilled with exactness.When his mother died, Ch'iu, in keeping with ancient ritual, observed a three-year period of seclusion and bereavement. This time of contemplation and serious thought launched the young man into the role of philosopher and instilled in him a longing for his society to return to the old ways.Simple Life; Wise TeachingsThroughout Chinese history the title of scholar had been a hereditary rank attached to an office of the prince's court. Never before had a private individual engaged in public teaching. Now K'ung Ch'iu sought to enter this unexplored profession. For four years Ch'iu instructed young men of all classes in the knowledge of Li - a combination of manners, ritual, custom and respect - and its accompanying arts.The only tuition he required was a bundle of dried meat. On one occasion, a dying nobleman, enthralled with the sage's teachings, made his final request for his sons to be taught in Li tradition: "A knowledge of Li is the stem of man, without which he cannot stand firm. I have heard that there is a rising man of great intelligence...  " Soon, Ch'iu was the reputed master of Li ceremonials.When the duke of Lu was ousted from the city by his ministers, Master K'ung also followed him into exile. He could not serve under tyrannical, unprincipled officials. For over fourteen years K'ung traveled, attempting to perfect himself in the six ancient arts (charioteering, archery, history, numbers, music and ritual), inscribing poetry, studying history, and carefully instructing his small band of intimate students. The countless specific rites and maxims commended by Master K'ung were all considered elaborations of two ideals:  (1)  The heart of all K'ung's teachings included the knitting of the words "chung" and "shu." Chung means "middle of the heart," faithfulness to oneself. Shu, meaning "as one's heart," follows chung "to do to others as your heart prompts or urges you." Basically, it encompasses Christianity's Golden Rule.(2)  Supreme virtue is "jen," a composite of "two" and "man." Jen - "human-heartedness," love, charity, genuine manhood, true benevolence - is the ideal of the superior man; an ideal which Master K'ung often admitted he fell short of achieving. Nevertheless, it is a goal within the grasp of all who will reach for it.K'ung's beliefs harkened back to practical, of-this-world wisdom. He felt that the individual is the hub of the universe, and the "flowering of the individual" is the ultimate aim in life; for as a man cultivates harmony within himself, he brings peace everywhere. His sage teachings reflected his great regard for human growth: •    No ceremonies should be performed without regard for morality. "A man without virtue; what has he to do with rites? What has he to do with music?"•    The art of peace includes a knowledge of archery and war. These provide private contests and recreation to test nobility.•    Intellectual enlightenment consists of instruction in numbers (probably connected with divination), history, speech and government.•    "...  What is knowledge? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it, - this is knowledge."•    Rituals, poetry, and meditation exalt and strengthen a man.•    Music consummates a man's life, giving his rituals meaning. Music has a transforming effect on its listeners and should be the first principle of government.•    Nobility of character is preeminent over nobility of birth.     •    A man should demand much from himself, but little from others. "When you meet a man of worth, think how you may attain to his excellence. When you meet an unworthy one, then look within and examine yourself."•    Man must be both proprietous and practical: one should be undeviating in the observance of feudal customs and respectfully refrain from singing or dancing on the day he attends a funeral; still, the humor and joy of everyday living must often be manifest. •    Li governs a well-ordered society; but Li must be transformed from a set of rites performed by the elite, to include a sense of piety and respect honored by all.•    "Behave in such a way that your father and mother will have no anxiety about you except for your health." A youth "should be earnest and sincere; he should be overflowing in love for all, while cultivating the friendship of the virtuous. If, when all that is done, he still has energy to spare, then let him study the polite arts."K'ung's students loved and admired him:    "...  He is a man who forgets his food in his eager pursuit of knowledge, forgets his sorrows in its happy attainment, and does not perceive that old age is creeping up on him...  "  Unlike many of the dogmatic sages, K'ung maintained a sense of fellowship with his students. He was optimistic: "Who knows, but that the future generation will surpass the present?"  He regarded all men the same, though they were not necessarily equal in knowledge and morality. The Master jested with his students, questioned them on ideas, complimented and scolded them, and studied their characters with a view to shaping them into a perfect pattern. He wisely treated each student differently, trying to help the overconfident one to learn humility and the diffident one to be bold.K'ung was finally goaded into public office. As chief administrator in Lu, he hoped to influence his employer, the Pi governor, to restore Li philosophy to prominence. His popularity rose dramatically as moral education replaced cruelty among the populace. Soon, the state government offered K'ung the office of Minister of Crime, the highest non-hereditary office attainable in China.With the purpose of preparing China for a feudal restoration, K'ung demolished fortresses. The state prospered; but jealous enemies within the court eventually blocked K'ung's rise, and he departed Lu in sorrow. Master K'ung wandered from city to city, his fame preceding him everywhere he went. He chided powerful, overly demanding ministers as well as common crowds.  On one occasion, the scholar's pragmatic attitude was clearly displayed. As they traveled to Wey, he and his disciples were set upon by the rebellious people of P'u, who made him swear that, if left in peace, he would not go on to Wey. But despite this oath, the party proceeded to Wey. "Can one break one's oath like that?" grumbled the P'u leader. The Master replied: "That was an extorted oath; such a one the deities do not hear!"After fourteen years, the teacher grew weary and returned home. Seeing the series of failures and frustrations that his life-work had come to, he now took consolation only in the hope that his faithful students would hold aloft the torch of Chou culture. In his last years, he became the foremost author in China, putting his materials together in a collection of fundamental doctrines. Of the Book of History, the Six Classics, the Book of Changes, and others, only Spring and Autumn, a chronological record of the reigning dukes of Lu, survives.  Two years before Master K'ung's death, it was reported that a one-horned antelope had been wounded outside the city. When he saw the animal, K'ung burst into tears and explained that "the unicorn comes only when there is a sage-ruler. To see it appear untimely, and then get injured...  " In halting manner, he then prophesied his own death and wrote his final entry on the bamboo tablets: "In the spring of the Duke's fourteenth year, during a hunt in the west, a unicorn was captured." And with these words, he threw away his stylus.K'ung's disciples mourned his death for a period of three years, and his devoted student Tzu-kung stayed in the mud hut beside the burial mound for another three years. Millions of followers - from about 200 B.C., when his philosophies took hold, to the mid-nineteenth century - are a witness to his magnetic personality and elevated wisdom.  Above all else, K'ung was an educator; a transmitter and lover of knowledge. "I was not born with knowledge," he would say. "I simply love the past and am earnest in its study." He worked no miracles, claimed no divine revelation. As a self-appointed "reformer," he owned a realistic interest in this present life, man's earthly ties and ethical relations, though he believed in the hope of another existence: "If we fail in our duty to the living, how can we serve the dead? Not knowing life, how can we know death?"Confucius is still revered as the master of wise proverbs - insights that today, centuries later, still spark with brilliance. Most significant, Confucius' fight to return to traditional values gave root to a pattern that the Chinese community observed for the succeeding 2100 years - and may be continuing to observe, in some even deeper spirit, today.

400    CHINA. Chuang Tzu, along with the even more legendary Lao Tzu, is considered one of the chief philosophers of classical Taoism.  His extant work, consisting of seven "inner chapters," is accepted by scholars as authentic.  An additional 26 chapters attributed to Chuang may actually be the contributions of later, anonymous authors.As a historical figure, Chuang Tzu is a mysterious, almost legendary element in the history ofChinese religion and philosophy.  He is said to have lived in the Honan province of China around 400 B.C.  He appears as an eccentric recluse with an obvious disdain for common social and political values.  In one story Chuang is offered—and refuses—the position of prime minister of China.  His writings explicitly reject the powerful Confucian dogma which was so influential during his time.  Instead of a specific code or doctrine, Chuang recommends the Tao (the mystical, incomprehensible, universal source and nature of all existence) as the only true guide to living, moment by moment.The 33 chapters of his writings—simply titled Chuang Tzu—are comprised of poems, philosophies, and stories which illustrate aspects of Taoist thought.Great knowledge sees all in one.Small knowledge breaks down into the many.The Tao is all-pervading and prior to everything in the universe, Chuang Tzu asserts.  The universe comes into existence in accordance with the Tao and manifests itself as "the many."  Everything in the universe is begotten by the same source and is, therefore, equal.  Any differences are relative, and are simply manifestations of the same original unified source.Pleasure and rageSadness and joyHopes and regretsChange and stabilityWeakness and decisionImpatience and sloth:All are sounds from the same flute,All mushrooms from the same wet mould ...  Since all qualities, ideas, sensations and emotions derive from the same source, they are, therefore, ultimately the same.  Even the ideals of right and wrong do not exist in ultimate reality.  "Right" is considered "right" only because of the existence of "wrong."  "Up" and "down" arise together; "hot" and "cold" are simply thought of as such, relative to each other:  a hot summer is cold, compared to a hot fire.  And yet, the source of both fire and summer remains a mystery:Day and night follow one another and come upon usWithout our seeing how they sprout!But, Chuang Tzu continues, it is possible to come to the conclusion that there must be a source—which, he deduces, is the Tao:If there were no "that"There would be no "this."If there were no "this"There would be nothing for all these winds to play on.So far can we go.But how shall we understandWhat brings it about?One may well suppose the True GovernorTo be behind it all.  That such a power worksI can believe.  I cannot see his form.He acts, but has no form.The Tao, then, is most mysterious, and yet we can and must recognize it as the source of all individual occurrences, objects, and thoughts.The Tao encompasses all truth, apparent and unknowable alike.  Rigid religious and philosophical systems—Confucianism in particular—miss the point entirely—as demonstrated by the tale of "Three Friends":There were three friends discussing life.  One said:  "Can men live together and know nothing of it?  Can they fly around in space and forget to exist, world without end?"The three friends looked at each other and burst out laughing.  They had no explanation.  Thus they were better friends than before.Then one friend [Sung Hu] died.  Confucius sent a disciple to help the other two chant his obsequies.  The disciple found that one friend had composed a song.  While the other played a lute, they sang together:"Hey, Sung Hu!Where'd you go?Hey, Sung Hu!Where'd you go?You have goneWhere you really were.And we are here—Damn it!  We are here!"Then the disciple of Confucius burst in on them and exclaimed:  "May I inquire where you found this in the rubrics for obsequies, this frivolous carolling in the presence of the departed?"The two friends looked at each other and laughed:  "Poor fellow," they said, "he doesn't know the new liturgy!"The way of the Tao is Nature's way, constant and absolute.  Because of Nature's way—the Tao—however, everything is also in constant change.  And this constant change takes place completely within cycles.  For example, every phenomenon in the universe first appears and then disappears.  Nothing is forever, only everything is forever.  This is also true of the cycle of human beings:  We are born and we die.By recognizing our essence, the eternally changing Tao, we can enjoy the freedom of non-attachment to the cycles of Nature—cycles such as life and death, pleasure and pain, affection and anger—which tend to tie us down to earthly "realities":When Chuang Tzu's wife died, Hui Shih came to condole.  As for Chuang Tzu, he was squatting with his knees out, drumming on a pot and singing.  "When you have lived with someone," said Hui Shih, "and brought up children, and grown old together, to refuse to bewail her death would be bad enough, but to drum on a pot and sing —could there be anything more shameful?""Not so," Chuang Tzu replied.  "When she first died do you suppose I was not able to feel the loss?  ... She has gone over to death.  This is to be companion with spring and autumn, summer and winter, in the procession of the four seasons.  When someone was about to lie down and sleep in the greatest of mansions, I with my sobbing knew no better than to bewail her ...  [Then] the thought came to me that I was being uncomprehending toward destiny, so I stopped."From Chuang Tzu's perspective, the commonly accepted notions of knowledge are merely artificial constructions of the mind, with only relative meaning.  The only true knowledge is the soul-deep knowledge and acceptance of the incomprehensible Tao.The artificial constructions which men take to be knowledge, are actually the cause of much suffering, Chuang Tzu avers.  Acting in accordance with this false knowledge, men blindly fight against what their minds tell them is bad and for what their minds claim is good.  But these ideals of "good" and "bad" can never be achieved or acquired in a complete way.  Only the Tao is complete; the perfect music comes from "a lute that has no strings."When we wear out our minds, stubbornly clinging to one partial view of things, refusing to see a deeper agreement between this and its complementary opposite, we have what is called "three in the morning."What is this "three in the morning?"A monkey trainer went to his monkeys and told them:  "As regards your chestnuts:  you are going to have three measures in the morning and four in the afternoon."At this they all became angry.  So he said:  "All right, in that case I will give you four in the morning and three in the afternoon."  This time they were satisfied.The two arrangements were the same in that the number of chestnuts did not change.  But in one case the animals were displeased, and in the other they were satisfied.  The keeper had been willing to change his personal arrangement in order to meet objective conditions.  He lost nothing by it!The truly wise man, considering both sides of the question without partiality, sees them both in the light of Tao.This is called following two courses at once.In letting go of intellectual judgments and prejudices, we are blessed to see the unity of all things.  Ultimately, conflict will be seen as merely a mental projection; thus we will be liberated.  This liberation is permanent and supreme; there is nothing to negate it.  It is the way of Nature, the way of the Tao.But this is not the normal experience of man:Men are blocked, perplexed, lost in doubt.Little fears eat away at their peace of heart.Great fears swallow them whole.Arrows shot at a target:  hit and miss, right and wrong.That is what men call judgement, deci sion.Their pronouncements are as finalAs treaties between emperors.O, they make their point!Yet their arguments fall faster and feeblerThan dead leaves in autumn and winter.Their talk flows out like piss,Never to be recovered.They stand at last, blocked, bound, and gagged,Choked up like old drain pipes.The mind fails.  It shall not see light again.Only through transcending the dualistic thinking of the common man can one experience the peace of a sage.  Hui Shih, though, did not understand this point and questioned Chuang Tzu and Chuang Tzu offered his rejoinders:"Can a man really be without the essen tial to man?""He can.""If a man is without the essential to man, how can we call him a man?"The Way gives him features, Heaven gives him the shape; how can he be with out the essential to man?"Judging `It's this, It's not' is what I mean by the essential to man.  What I mean by being without the essential is that the man does not inwardly wound his person by likes and dislikes, that he constantly goes by the spontaneous and does not add anything to the process of life."And so, Chuang Tzu affirms his understanding that everything is relative and the same; all distinctions—right and wrong, life and death, and up and down—are transitory and dependent upon each other for their relevant meaning.  They have no real, independent existence.  Only the mysterious, inexpressible, cyclical Tao is real.  That is our true Nature, Chuang Tzu concludes, and we must each, individually, recognize this truth.  For life without this recognition is miserable.

        ASIA. Kun Fu Tsi, filosofo de la antigua China, personalidad politica y pedagogo, formulo una teoria etico- politica que tuvo gran influencia en el desarrollo de la filosofia y pensamiento social chinos  Logic in ChinaIn China, a contemporary of Confucius, Mozi, "Master Mo", is credited with founding the Mohist school, whose canons dealt with issues relating to valid inference and the conditions of correct conclusions. In particular, one of the schools that grew out of Mohism, the Logicians, are credited by some scholars for their early investigation of formal logic. Unfortunately, due to the harsh rule of Legalism in the subsequent Qin Dynasty, this line of investigation disappeared in China until the introduction of Indian philosophy by Buddhists.
               

400 BC-MAHABHARATA-


    

The Mahabharata  is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Ramayana.[3]

Besides its epic narrative of the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pandava princes, the Mahabharata contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or purusharthas (12.161). Among the principal works and stories in the Mahabharata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the Ramayana, and the Rishyasringa, often considered as works in their own right.

Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa. There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers. The oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, though the origins of the epic probably fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE.[4] The text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period (c. 4th century CE).[5] The title may be translated as "the great tale of the Bharata dynasty". According to the Mahabharata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses called simply Bharata.[6]

The Mahabharata is the longest known epic poem and has been described as "the longest poem ever written".[7][8] Its longest version consists of over 100,000 shloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages. About 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabharata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Ramayana. W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the Mahabharata to world civilization to that of the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the Qur'an.
 


 Modern depiction of Vyasa narrating the Mahabharata to Ganesha at the Murudeshwara temple, Karnataka.
The epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyasa, who is also a major character in the epic. Vyasa described it as being itihasa (history). He also describes the Guru-shishya parampara, which traces all great teachers and their students of the Vedic times.

The first section of the Mahabharata states that it was Ganesha who wrote down the text to Vyasa's dictation. Ganesha is said to have agreed to write it only if Vyasa never paused in his recitation. Vyasa agrees on condition that Ganesha takes the time to understand what was said before writing it down.

The epic employs the story within a story structure, otherwise known as frametales, popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works. It is recited by the sage Vaisampayana, a disciple of Vyasa, to the King Janamejaya who is the great-grandson of the Pandava prince Arjuna. The story is then recited again by a professional storyteller named Ugrasrava Sauti, many years later, to an assemblage of sages performing the 12-year sacrifice for the king Saunaka Kulapati in the Naimisha Forest.

The text has been described by some early 20th-century western Indologists as unstructured and chaotic. Hermann Oldenberg supposed that the original poem must once have carried an immense "tragic force" but dismissed the full text as a "horrible chaos."[12] Moritz Winternitz (Geschichte der indischen Literatur 1909) considered that "only unpoetical theologists and clumsy scribes" could have lumped the parts of disparate origin into an unordered whole.[13]


Research on the Mahabharata has put an enormous effort into recognizing and dating layers within the text. Some elements of the present Mahabharata can be traced back to Vedic times.[14] The background to the Mahabharata suggests the origin of the epic occurs "after the very early Vedic period" and before "the first Indian 'empire' was to rise in the third century B.C." That this is "a date not too far removed from the 8th or 9th century B.C."[4][15] is likely. It is generally agreed that "Unlike the Vedas, which have to be preserved letter-perfect, the epic was a popular work whose reciters would inevitably conform to changes in language and style,"[15] so the earliest 'surviving' components of this dynamic text are believed to be no older than the earliest 'external' references we have to the epic, which may include an allusion in Panini's 4th century BCE grammar Ashtadhyayi 4:2:56.[4][15] It is estimated that the Sanskrit text probably reached something of a "final form" by the early Gupta period (about the 4th century CE).[15] Vishnu Sukthankar, editor of the first great critical edition of the Mahabharata, commented: "It is useless to think of reconstructing a fluid text in a literally original shape, on the basis of an archetype and a stemma codicum. What then is possible? Our objective can only be to reconstruct the oldest form of the text which it is possible to reach on the basis of the manuscript material available."[16] That manuscript evidence is somewhat late, given its material composition and the climate of India, but it is very extensive.

The Mahabharata itself (1.1.61) distinguishes a core portion of 24,000 verses: the Bharata proper, as opposed to additional secondary material, while the Ashvalayana Grhyasutra (3.4.4) makes a similar distinction. At least three redactions of the text are commonly recognized: Jaya (Victory) with 8,800 verses attributed to Vyasa, Bharata with 24,000 verses as recited by Vaisampayana, and finally the Mahabharata as recited by Ugrasrava Sauti with over 100,000 verses.[17][18] However, some scholars such as John Brockington, argue that Jaya and Bharata refer to the same text, and ascribe the theory of Jaya with 8,800 verses to a misreading of a verse in Adiparvan (1.1.81).[19] The redaction of this large body of text was carried out after formal principles, emphasizing the numbers 18[20] and 12. The addition of the latest parts may be dated by the absence of the Anushasana-parva and the Virata parva from the "Spitzer manuscript".[21] The oldest surviving Sanskrit text dates to the Kushan Period (200 CE).[22]

According to what one character says at Mbh. 1.1.50, there were three versions of the epic, beginning with Manu (1.1.27), Astika (1.3, sub-parva 5) or Vasu (1.57), respectively. These versions would correspond to the addition of one and then another 'frame' settings of dialogues. The Vasu version would omit the frame settings and begin with the account of the birth of Vyasa. The astika version would add the sarpasattra and ashvamedha material from Brahmanical literature, introduce the name Mahabharata, and identify Vyasa as the work's author. The redactors of these additions were probably Pancharatrin scholars who according to Oberlies (1998) likely retained control over the text until its final redaction. Mention of the Huna in the Bhishma-parva however appears to imply that this parva may have been edited around the 4th century[citation needed].


 


 The snake sacrifice of Janamejaya
The Adi-parva includes the snake sacrifice (sarpasattra) of Janamejaya, explaining its motivation, detailing why all snakes in existence were intended to be destroyed, and why in spite of this, there are still snakes in existence. This sarpasattra material was often considered an independent tale added to a version of the Mahabharata by "thematic attraction" (Minkowski 1991), and considered to have a particularly close connection to Vedic (Brahmana) literature. The Panchavimsha Brahmana (at 25.15.3) enumerates the officiant priests of a sarpasattra among whom the names Dhrtarashtra and Janamejaya, two main characters of the Mahabharata's sarpasattra, as well as Takshaka, the name of a snake in the Mahabharata, occur.
The earliest known references to the Mahabharata and its core Bharata date to the Ashtadhyayi (sutra 6.2.38) of Pa?ini (fl. 4th century BCE) and in the Ashvalayana Grhyasutra (3.4.4). This may mean the core 24,000 verses, known as the Bharata, as well as an early version of the extended Mahabharata, were composed by the 4th century BCE.

A report by the Greek writer Dio Chrysostom (c. 40 - c. 120 CE) about Homer's poetry being sung even in India[24] seems to imply that the Iliad had been translated into Sanskrit. However, scholars have, in general, taken this as evidence for the existence of a Mahabharata at this date, whose episodes Dio or his sources identify with the story of the Iliad.[25]

Several stories within the Mahabharata took on separate identities of their own in Classical Sanskrit literature. For instance, Abhijñanashakuntala by the renowned Sanskrit poet Kalidasa (c. 400 CE), believed to have lived in the era of the Gupta dynasty, is based on a story that is the precursor to the Mahabharata. Urubhanga, a Sanskrit play written by Bhasa who is believed to have lived before Kalidasa, is based on the slaying of Duryodhana by the splitting of his thighs by Bhima.

The copper-plate inscription of the Maharaja Sharvanatha (533–534 CE) from Khoh (Satna District, Madhya Pradesh) describes the Mahabharata as a "collection of 100,000 verses" (shatasahasri samhita).





1 Adi Parva (The Book of the Beginning) 1–19 How the Mahabharata came to be narrated by Sauti to the assembled rishis at Naimisharanya, after having been recited at the sarpasattra of Janamejaya by Vaishampayana at Tak?asila. The history and genealogy of the Bharata and Bhrigu races is recalled, as is the birth and early life of the Kuru princes (adi means first).
2 Sabha Parva (The Book of the Assembly Hall) 20–28 Maya Danava erects the palace and court (sabha), at Indraprastha. Life at the court, Yudhishthira's Rajasuya Yajna, the game of dice, the disrobing of Pandava wife Draupadi and eventual exile of the Pandavas.
3 Vana Parva also Aranyaka-parva, Aranya-parva (The Book of the Forest) 29–44 The twelve years of exile in the forest (aranya).
4 Virata Parva (The Book of Virata) 45–48 The year spent incognito at the court of Virata.
5 Udyoga Parva (The Book of the Effort) 49–59 Preparations for war and efforts to bring about peace between the Kaurava and the Pandava sides which eventually fail (udyoga means effort or work).
6 Bhishma Parva (The Book of Bhishma) 60–64 The first part of the great battle, with Bhishma as commander for the Kaurava and his fall on the bed of arrows. (Includes the Bhagavad Gita in chapters 25[26]-42.[27])
7 Drona Parva (The Book of Drona) 65–72 The battle continues, with Drona as commander. This is the major book of the war. Most of the great warriors on both sides are dead by the end of this book.
8 Karna Parva (The Book of Karna) 73 The continuation of the battle with Karna as commander of the Kaurava forces.
9 Shalya Parva (The Book of Shalya) 74–77 The last day of the battle, with Shalya as commander. Also told in detail, is the pilgrimage of Balarama to the fords of the river Saraswati and the mace fight between Bhima and Duryodhana which ends the war, since Bhima kills Duryodhana by smashing him on the thighs with a mace.
10 Sauptika Parva (The Book of the Sleeping Warriors) 78–80 Ashvattama, Kripa and Kritavarma kill the remaining Pandava army in their sleep. Only 7 warriors remain on the Pandava side and 3 on the Kaurava side.
11 Stri Parva (The Book of the Women) 81–85 Gandhari and the women (stri) of the Kauravas and Pandavas lament the dead and Gandhari cursing Krishna for the massive destruction and the extermination of the Kaurava.
12 Shanti Parva (The Book of Peace) 86–88 The crowning of Yudhisthira as king of Hastinapura, and instructions from Bhishma for the newly anointed king on society, economics and politics. This is the longest book of the Mahabharata. Kisari Mohan Ganguli considers this Parva as a later interpolation.'
13 Anushasana Parva (The Book of the Instructions) 89–90 The final instructions (anushasana) from Bhishma.
14 Ashvamedhika Parva (The Book of the Horse Sacrifice)[28] 91–92 The royal ceremony of the Ashvamedha (Horse sacrifice) conducted by Yudhisthira. The world conquest by Arjuna. The Anugita is told by Krishna to Arjuna.
15 Ashramavasika Parva (The Book of the Hermitage) 93–95 The eventual deaths of Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti in a forest fire when they are living in a hermitage in the Himalayas. Vidura predeceases them and Sanjaya on Dhritarashtra's bidding goes to live in the higher Himalayas.
16 Mausala Parva (The Book of the Clubs) 96 The materialisation of Gandhari's curse, i.e., the infighting between the Yadavas with maces (mausala) and the eventual destruction of the Yadavas.
17 Mahaprasthanika Parva (The Book of the Great Journey) 97 The great journey of Yudhisthira, his brothers and his wife Draupadi across the whole country and finally their ascent of the great Himalayas where each Pandava falls except for Yudhisthira.
18 Svargarohana Parva (The Book of the Ascent to Heaven) 98 Yudhisthira's final test and the return of the Pandavas to the spiritual world (svarga).
khila Harivamsa Parva (The Book of the Genealogy of Hari) 99–100 This is an addendum to the 18 books, and covers those parts of the life of Krishna which is not covered in the 18 parvas of the Mahabharata.
The historicity of the Kurukshetra War is unclear. Many historians estimate the date of the Kurukshetra war to Iron Age India of the 10th century BCE.[29] The setting of the epic has a historical precedent in Iron Age (Vedic) India, where the Kuru kingdom was the center of political power during roughly 1200 to 800 BCE.[30] A dynastic conflict of the period could have been the inspiration for the Jaya, the foundation on which the Mahabharata corpus was built, with a climactic battle eventually coming to be viewed as an epochal event.

Puranic literature presents genealogical lists associated with the Mahabharata narrative. The evidence of the Puranas is of two kinds. Of the first kind, there is the direct statement that there were 1015 (or 1050) years between the birth of Parikshit (Arjuna's grandson) and the accession of Mahapadma Nanda (400-329 BCE), which would yield an estimate of about 1400 BCE for the Bharata battle.[31] However, this would imply improbably long reigns on average for the kings listed in the genealogies.[32] Of the second kind are analyses of parallel genealogies in the Puranas between the times of Adhisimakrishna (Parikshit's great-grandson) and Mahapadma Nanda. Pargiter accordingly estimated 26 generations by averaging 10 different dynastic lists and, assuming 18 years for the average duration of a reign, arrived at an estimate of 850 BCE for Adhisimakrishna, and thus approximately 950 BCE for the Bharata battle.[33]

B. B. Lal used the same approach with a more conservative assumption of the average reign to estimate a date of 836 BCE, and correlated this with archaeological evidence from Painted Grey Ware sites, the association being strong between PGW artifacts and places mentioned in the epic.[34]

Attempts to date the events using methods of archaeoastronomy have produced, depending on which passages are chosen and how they are interpreted, estimates ranging from the late 4th to the mid-2nd millennium BCE.[35] The late 4th millennium date has a precedent in the calculation of the Kaliyuga epoch, based on planetary conjunctions, by Aryabhata (6th century). Aryabhatta's date of February 18 3102 BCE for Mahabharata war has become widespread in Indian tradition. Coincidentally, this marks the disppearance of Krishna from earth from many source.[36] The Aihole inscription of Pulikeshi II, dated to Saka 556 = 634 CE, claims that 3735 years have elapsed since the Bharata battle, putting the date of Mahabharata war at 3137 BCE.[37][38] Another traditional school of astronomers and historians, represented by Vriddha-Garga, Varahamihira (author of the Brhatsamhita) and Kalhana (author of the Rajatarangini), place the Bharata war 653 years after the Kaliyuga epoch, corresponding to 2449 BCE.


 Ganesha writing the Mahabharata
The core story of the work is that of a dynastic struggle for the throne of Hastinapura, the kingdom ruled by the Kuru clan. The two collateral branches of the family that participate in the struggle are the Kaurava and the Pandava. Although the Kaurava is the senior branch of the family, Duryodhana, the eldest Kaurava, is younger than Yudhisthira, the eldest Pandava. Both Duryodhana and Yudhisthira claim to be first in line to inherit the throne.

The struggle culminates in the great battle of Kurukshetra, in which the Pandavas are ultimately victorious. The battle produces complex conflicts of kinship and friendship, instances of family loyalty and duty taking precedence over what is right, as well as the converse.

The Mahabharata itself ends with the death of Krishna, and the subsequent end of his dynasty and ascent of the Pandava brothers to heaven. It also marks the beginning of the Hindu age of Kali Yuga, the fourth and final age of mankind, in which great values and noble ideas have crumbled, and man is heading towards the complete dissolution of right action, morality and virtue.

The older generations


 


 Shantanu woos Satyavati, the fisherwoman. Painting by Raja Ravi Varma.
King Janamejaya's ancestor Shantanu, the king of Hastinapura, has a short-lived marriage with the goddess Ganga and has a son, Devavrata (later to be called Bhishma, a great warrior), who becomes the heir apparent. Many years later, when King Shantanu goes hunting, he sees Satyavati, the daughter of the chief of fisherman, and asks her father for her hand. Her father refuses to consent to the marriage unless Shantanu promises to make any future son of Satyavati the king upon his death. To resolve his father's dilemma, Devavrata agrees to relinquish his right to the throne. As the fisherman is not sure about the prince's children honouring the promise, Devavrata also takes a vow of lifelong celibacy to guarantee his father's promise.

Shantanu has two sons by Satyavati, Chitrangada and Vichitravirya. Upon Shantanu's death, Chitrangada becomes king. He lives a very short uneventful life and dies. Vichitravirya, the younger son, rules Hastinapura. Meanwhile, the King of Kasi arranges a swayamvara for his three daughters, neglecting to invite the royal family of Hastinapur. In order to arrange the marriage of young Vichitravirya, Bhishma attends the swayamvara of the three princesses Amba, Ambika and Ambalika, uninvited, and proceeds to abduct them. Ambika and Ambalika consent to be married to Vichitravirya.

The oldest princess Amba, however, informs Bhishma that she wishes to marry king of Shalva whom Bhishma defeated at their swayamvara. Bhishma lets her leave to marry king of Shalva, but Shalva refuses to marry her, still smarting at his humiliation at the hands of Bhishma. Amba then returns to marry Bhishma but he refuses due to his vow of celibacy. Amba becomes enraged and becomes Bhishma's bitter enemy, holding him responsible for her plight. Later she is reborn to King Drupada as Shikhandi (or Shikhandini) and causes Bhishma's fall, with the help of Arjuna, in the battle of Kurukshetra.

The Pandava and Kaurava princes


 


Draupadi with her five husbands - the Pandavas. The central figure is Yudhishthira; the two on the bottom are Bhima and Arjuna. Nakula and Sahadeva, the twins, are standing. Painting by Raja Ravi Varma, c. 1900.
When Vichitravirya dies young without any heirs, Satyavati asks her first son Vyasa to father children with the widows. The eldest, Ambika, shuts her eyes when she sees him, and so her son Dhritarashtra is born blind. Ambalika turns pale and bloodless upon seeing him, and thus her son Pandu is born pale and unhealthy (the term Pandu may also mean 'jaundiced'[40]). Due to the physical challenges of the first two children, Satyavati asks Vyasa to try once again. However, Ambika and Ambalika send their maid instead, to Vyasa's room. Vyasa fathers a third son, Vidura, by the maid. He is born healthy and grows up to be one of the wisest characters in the Mahabharata. He serves as Prime Minister (Mahamantri or Mahatma) to King Pandu and King Dhritarashtra.

When the princes grow up, Dhritarashtra is about to be crowned king by Bhishma when Vidura intervenes and uses his knowledge of politics to assert that a blind person cannot be king. This is because a blind man cannot control and protect his subjects. The throne is then given to Pandu because of Dhritarashtra's blindness. Pandu marries twice, to Kunti and Madri. Dhritarashtra marries Gandhari, a princess from Gandhara, who blindfolds herself so that she may feel the pain that her husband feels. Her brother Shakuni is enraged by this and vows to take revenge on the Kuru family. One day, when Pandu is relaxing in the forest, he hears the sound of a wild animal. He shoots an arrow in the direction of the sound. However the arrow hits the sage Kindama, who curses him that if he engages in a sexual act, he will die. Pandu then retires to the forest along with his two wives, and his brother Dhritarashtra rules thereafter, despite his blindness.

Pandu's older queen Kunti, however, had been given a boon by Sage Durvasa that she could invoke any god using a special mantra. Kunti uses this boon to ask Dharma the god of justice, Vayu the god of the wind, and Indra the lord of the heavens for sons. She gives birth to three sons, Yudhisthira, Bhima, and Arjuna, through these gods. Kunti shares her mantra with the younger queen Madri, who bears the twins Nakula and Sahadeva through the Ashwini twins. However, Pandu and Madri indulge in sex, and Pandu dies. Madri dies on his funeral pyre out of remorse. Kunti raises the five brothers, who are from then on usually referred to as the Pandava brothers.

Dhritarashtra has a hundred sons through Gandhari, all born after the birth of Yudhishtira. These are the Kaurava brothers, the eldest being Duryodhana, and the second Dushasana. Other Kaurava brothers were Vikarna and Sukarna. The rivalry and enmity between them and the Pandava brothers, from their youth and into manhood, leads to the Kurukshetra war.

Lakshagraha (the house of lac)

After the deaths of their mother (Madri) and father (Pandu), the Pandavas and their mother Kunti return to the palace of Hastinapur. Yudhisthira is made Crown Prince by Dhritarashtra, under considerable pressure from his kingdom. Dhritarashtra wanted his own son Duryodhana to become king and lets his ambition get in the way of preserving justice.

Shakuni, Duryodhana and Dusasana plot to get rid of the Pandavas. Shakuni calls the architect Purochana to build a palace out of flammable materials like lac and ghee. He then arranges for the Pandavas and the Queen Mother Kunti to stay there, with the intention of setting it alight. However, the Pandavas are warned by their wise uncle, Vidura, who sends them a miner to dig a tunnel. They are able to escape to safety and go into hiding. Back at Hastinapur, the Pandavas and Kunti are presumed dead.[41]

Marriage to Draupadi


 


Arjuna piercing the eye of the fish as depicted in Chennakesava Temple built by Hoysala Empire.
Whilst they were in hiding the Pandavas learn of a swayamvara which is taking place for the hand of the Pañcala princess Draupadi. The Pandavas enter the competition in disguise as Brahmins. The task is to string a mighty steel bow and shoot a target on the ceiling, which is the eye of a moving artificial fish, while looking at its reflection in oil below. Most of the princes fail, many being unable to lift the bow. Arjuna succeeds however. The Pandavas return home and inform their mother that Arjuna has won a competition and to look at what they have brought back. Without looking, Kunti asks them to share whatever it is Arjuna has won among themselves. On explaining the previous life of Draupadi, she ends up being the wife of all five brothers.

Indraprastha

After the wedding, the Pandava brothers are invited back to Hastinapura. The Kuru family elders and relatives negotiate and broker a split of the kingdom, with the Pandavas obtaining a new territory. Yudhishtira has a new capital built for this territory at Indraprastha. Neither the Pandava nor Kaurava sides are happy with the arrangement however.

Shortly after this, Arjuna elopes with and then marries Krishna's sister, Subhadra. Yudhishtira wishes to establish his position as king; he seeks Krishna's advice. Krishna advises him, and after due preparation and the elimination of some opposition, Yudhishthira carries out the rajasuya yagna ceremony; he is thus recognised as pre-eminent among kings.

The Pandavas have a new palace built for them, by Maya the Danava.[42] They invite their Kaurava cousins to Indraprastha. Duryodhana walks round the palace, and mistakes a glossy floor for water, and will not step in. After being told of his error, he then sees a pond, and assumes it is not water and falls in. Draupadi laughs at him and ridicules him by saying that this is because of his blind father Dhritrashtra. He then decides to avenge his humiliation.

The dice game


 


 Draupadi humiliated.
Shakuni, Duryodhana's uncle, now arranges a dice game, playing against Yudhishtira with loaded dice. Yudhishtira loses all his wealth, then his kingdom. He then even gambles his brothers, himself, and finally his wife into servitude. The jubilant Kauravas insult the Pandavas in their helpless state and even try to disrobe Draupadi in front of the entire court, but her honour is saved by Krishna who miraculously creates lengths of cloth to replace the ones being removed.

Dhritarashtra, Bhishma, and the other elders are aghast at the situation, but Duryodhana is adamant that there is no place for two crown princes in Hastinapura. Against his wishes Dhritarashtra orders for another dice game. The Pandavas are required to go into exile for 12 years, and in the 13th year must remain hidden. If discovered by the Kauravas, they will be forced into exile for another 12 years.

Exile and return

The Pandavas spend thirteen years in exile; many adventures occur during this time. They also prepare alliances for a possible future conflict. They spend their final year in disguise in the court of Virata, and are discovered just after the end of the year.

At the end of their exile, they try to negotiate a return to Indraprastha. However, this fails, as Duryodhana objects that they were discovered while in hiding, and that no return of their kingdom was agreed. War becomes inevitable.

The battle at Kurukshetra

Main article: Kurukshetra War


A black stone relief depicting a number of men wearing a crown and a dhoti, fighting with spears, swords and bows. A chariot with half the horse out of the frame is seen in the middle.


 A scene from the Mahabharata war, Angkor Wat: A black stone relief depicting a number of men wearing a crown and a dhoti, fighting with spears, swords and bows. A chariot with half the horse out of the frame is seen in the middle.
The two sides summon vast armies to their help and line up at Kurukshetra for a war. The kingdoms of Panchala, Dwaraka, Kasi, Kekaya, Magadha, Matsya, Chedi, Pandyas, Telinga, and the Yadus of Mathura and some other clans like the Parama Kambojas were allied with the Pandavas. The allies of the Kauravas included the kings of Pragjyotisha, Anga, Kekaya, Sindhudesa (including Sindhus, Sauviras and Sivis), Mahishmati, Avanti in Madhyadesa, Madra, Gandhara, Bahlika people, Kambojas and many others. Before war being declared, Balarama had expressed his unhappiness at the developing conflict and left to go on pilgrimage; thus he does not take part in the battle itself. Krishna takes part in a non-combatant role, as charioteer for Arjuna.

Before the battle, Arjuna, seeing the opposing army includes many relatives and loved ones, including his great grandfather Bhishma and his teacher Drona, has doubts about the battle and he fails to lift his Gandeeva bow. Krishna wakes him up to his call of duty in the famous Bhagavad Gita section of the epic.

Though initially sticking to chivalrous notions of warfare, both sides soon adopt dishonourable tactics. At the end of the 18-day battle, only the Pandavas, Satyaki, Kripa, Ashwatthama, Kritavarma, Yuyutsu and Krishna survive.

The end of the Pandavas


 


 Gandhari, blindfolded, supporting Dhrtarashtra and following Kunti when Dhrtarashtra became old and infirm and retired to the forest. A miniature painting from a 16th-century manuscript of part of the Razmnama, a Persian translation of the Mahabharata
After "seeing" the carnage, Gandhari, who had lost all her sons, curses Krishna to be a witness to a similar annihilation of his family, for though divine and capable of stopping the war, he had not done so. Krishna accepts the curse, which bears fruit 36 years later.

The Pandavas, who had ruled their kingdom meanwhile, decide to renounce everything. Clad in skins and rags they retire to the Himalaya and climb towards heaven in their bodily form. A stray dog travels with them. One by one the brothers and Draupadi fall on their way. As each one stumbles, Yudhisthira gives the rest the reason for their fall (Draupadi was partial to Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva were vain and proud of their looks, and Bhima and Arjuna were proud of their strength and archery skills, respectively). Only the virtuous Yudhisthira, who had tried everything to prevent the carnage, and the dog remain. The dog reveals himself to be the god Yama (also known as Yama Dharmaraja), and then takes him to the underworld where he sees his siblings and wife. After explaining the nature of the test, Yama takes Yudhishthira back to heaven and explains that it was necessary to expose him to the underworld because (Rajyante narakam dhruvam) any ruler has to visit the underworld at least once. Yama then assures him that his siblings and wife would join him in heaven after they had been exposed to the underworld for measures of time according to their vices.

Arjuna's grandson Parikshit rules after them and dies bitten by a snake. His furious son, Janamejaya, decides to perform a snake sacrifice (sarpasattra) in order to destroy the snakes. It is at this sacrifice that the tale of his ancestors is narrated to him.

The reunion

The Mahabharata mentions that Karna, the Pandavas, and Dhritarashtra's sons eventually ascended to svarga and "attained the state of the gods" and banded together — "serene and free from anger."[43]

Themes

Just war

The Mahabharata offers one of the first instances of theorizing about "just war", illustrating many of the standards that would be debated later across the world. In the story, one of five brothers asks if the suffering caused by war can ever be justified. A long discussion ensues between the siblings, establishing criteria like proportionality (chariots cannot attack cavalry, only other chariots; no attacking people in distress), just means (no poisoned or barbed arrows), just cause (no attacking out of rage), and fair treatment of captives and the wounded.[44]

Versions, translations, and derivative works

Critical Edition

Between 1919 and 1966, scholars at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, compared the various manuscripts of the epic from India and abroad and produced the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata, on 13,000 pages in 19 volumes, followed by the Harivamsha in another two volumes and six index volumes. This is the text that is usually used in current Mahabharata studies for reference.[45] This work is sometimes called the "Pune" or "Poona" edition of the Mahabharata.

Regional versions

Many regional versions of the work developed over time, mostly differing only in minor details, or with verses or subsidiary stories being added. These include the Tamil street theatre, terukkuttu and kattaikkuttu, the plays of which use themes from the Tamil language versions of Mahabharata, focusing on Draupadi.[46]


 


 The Pandavas and Krishna in an act of the Javanese wayang wong performance.
Outside the Indian subcontinent, in Indonesia, a version was developed in ancient Java as Kakawin Bharatayuddha in the 11th century under the patronage of King Dharmawangsa (990–1016),[47] and later it spread to neighboring island of Bali where today remains a Hindu majority island, despite today Indonesia is the most populous Muslim majority nation. It has become the fertile source for Javanese literature, dance drama (wayang wong), and wayang shadow puppet performances. This Javanese version differ slightly from the original Indian version. For example, Draupadi is only be wed to Yudhisthira, not to the entire Pandavas brothers, this might demonstrate ancient Javanese opposition of polyandry practice. The author later added some female characters to be wed to the Pandavas. Arjuna for example is described as having many wives and consorts next to Subhadra. Another difference is Shikhandi did not undergone sex change and remains as a woman, to be wed to Arjuna, and took the role as a warrior princess during the war. Another twist is Gandhari was described as antagonist character that hates Pandava so much. Her hate was out of jealousy, because during svayambara for the hand of Gandhari, she was actually in love with Pandu, but later being wed to his blind elder brother instead, whom she does not love, as a protest she then blindfold herself. Another notable difference is the inclusion of Punakawans, the clown servants of the main characters in the storyline, which is not found in Indian version. This characters includes Semar, Petruk, Gareng and Bagong, they are much-loved by Indonesian audiences. There are some spin-off episode developed in ancient Java, such as Arjunawiwaha composed in 11th century.

A Kawi version of the Mahabharata, of which eight of the eighteen parvas survive, is found on the Indonesian island of Bali. It has been translated into English by Dr. I. Gusti Putu Phalgunadi.[citation needed]

Translations


 


 Bhishma on his death-bed of arrows with the Pandavas and Krishna. Folio from the Razmnama (1761–1763), Persian translation of the Mahabharata, commissioned by Mughal emperor Akbar. The Pandavas are dressed in Persian armour and robes.[48]
A Persian translation of Mahabharta, titled Razmnameh, was produced at Akbar's orders, by Faizi and `Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni in the 18th century.[49]

The first complete English translation was the Victorian prose version by Kisari Mohan Ganguli,[50] published between 1883 and 1896 (Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers) and by M. N. Dutt (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers). Most critics consider the translation by Ganguli to be faithful to the original text. The complete text of Ganguli's translation is in the public domain and is available online.[51][52]

Another English prose translation of the full epic, based on the Critical Edition, is in progress, published by University Of Chicago Press. It was initiated by Indologist J. A. B. van Buitenen (books 1–5) and, following a 20-year hiatus caused by the death of van Buitenen, is being continued by D. Gitomer of DePaul University (book 6), J. L. Fitzgerald of Brown University (books 11–13) and Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago (books 14–18).

An early poetry translation by Romesh Chunder Dutt and published in 1898 condenses the main themes of the Mahabharata into English verse.[53] A later poetic "transcreation" (author's own description) of the full epic into English, done by the poet P. Lal is complete, and in 2005 began being published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta. The P. Lal translation is a non-rhyming verse-by-verse rendering, and is the only edition in any language to include all slokas in all recensions of the work (not just those in the Critical Edition). The completion of the publishing project is scheduled for 2010. Sixteen of the eighteen volumes are now available.

A project to translate the full epic into English prose, translated by various hands, began to appear in 2005 from the Clay Sanskrit Library, published by New York University Press. The translation is based not on the Critical Edition but on the version known to the commentator Nilaka??ha. Currently available are 15 volumes of the projected 32-volume edition.

Indian economist Bibek Debroy has also begun an unabridged English translation in ten volumes. Volume 1: Adi Parva was published in March 2010.

Many condensed versions, abridgements and novelistic prose retellings of the complete epic have been published in English, including works by Ramesh Menon, William Buck, R. K. Narayan, C. Rajagopalachari, K. M. Munshi, Krishna Dharma, Romesh C. Dutt, Bharadvaja Sarma, John D. Smith and Sharon Maas.

Derivative literature

Bhasa, the 2nd- or 3rd-century CE Sanskrit playwright, wrote two plays on episodes in the Marabharata, Urubhanga (Broken Thigh), about the fight between Duryodhana and Bhima, while Madhyamavyayoga (The Middle One) set around Bhima and his son, Ghatotkacha. The first important play of 20th century was Andha Yug (The Blind Epoch), by Dharamvir Bharati, which came in 1955, found in Mahabharat, both an ideal source and expression of modern predicaments and discontent. Starting with Ebrahim Alkazi it was staged by numerous directors. V. S. Khandekar's Marathi novel, Yayati (1960) and Girish Karnad's debut play Yayati (1961) are based on the story of King Yayati found in the Mahabharat.[54] Bengali writer and playwright, Buddhadeva Bose wrote three plays set in Mahabharat, Anamni Angana, Pratham Partha and Kalsandhya.[55] Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni wrote a version from the perspective of Draupadi entitled The Palace of Illusions: A Novel, which was published in 2008.

Amar Chitra Katha published a 1,260 page comic book version of the Mahabharata.[56]

In film and television


 


 Krishna as portrayed in Yakshagana from Karnataka which is based largely on stories of Mahabharata
In Indian cinema, several film versions of the epic have been made, dating back to 1920.[57] In Telugu film Daana Veera Soora Karna (1977) directed by and starring N. T. Rama Rao depicts Karna as the lead character.[58] The Mahabharata was also reinterpreted by Shyam Benegal in Kalyug.[59] Prakash Jha directed 2010 film Raajneeti was partially inspired by the Mahabharata.[60] A 2013 animated adaptation holds the record for India's most expensive animated film.[61]

In the late 1980s, the Mahabharat TV series, directed by Ravi Chopra,[62] was televised on India's national television (Doordarshan). In the Western world, a well-known presentation of the epic is Peter Brook's nine-hour play, which premiered in Avignon in 1985, and its five-hour movie version The Mahabharata (1989).[63]

Uncompleted projects on the Mahabharata include a ones by Rajkumar Santoshi,[64] and a theaterical adaptation planned by Satyajit Ray.[65]




 


 Depiction of wedding procession of Lord Neminatha. The enclosure shows the animals that are to be slaughtered for food for weddings. Overcome with Compassion for animals, Neminatha refused to marry and renounced his kingdom to become a Shramana
Jain version of Mahabharata can be found in the various Jain texts like Harivamsapurana (the story of Harivamsa) Trisastisalakapurusa Caritra (Hagiography of 63 Illustrious persons), Pandavacaritra (lives of Pandavas) and Pandavapurana (stories of Pandavas).[66] From the earlier canonical literature, Antakrddaasah (8th cannon) and Vrisnidasa (upangagama or secondary canon) contain the stories of Neminatha (22nd Tirthankara), Krishna and Balarama.[67] Prof. Padmanabh Jaini notes that, unlike in the Hindu Puranas, the names Baladeva and Vasudeva are not restricted to Balarama and Krishna in Jain puranas. Instead they serve as names of two distinct class of mighty brothers, who appear nine times in each half of time cycles of the Jain cosmology and rule the half the earth as half-chakravartins. Jaini traces the origin of this list of brothers to the Jinacharitra by Bhadrabahu swami (4th–3rd century BCE).[68] According to Jain cosmology Balarama, Krishna and Jarasandha are the ninth and the last set of Baladeva, Vasudeva, and Partivasudeva. The main battle is not the Mahabharata, but the fight between Krishna and Jarasandha (who is killed by Krishna). Ultimately, the Pandavas and Balarama take renunciation as Jain monks and are reborn in heavens, while on the other hand Krishna and Jarasandha are reborn in hell.[70] In keeping with the law of karma, Krishna is reborn in hell for his exploits (sexual and violent) while Jarasandha for his evil ways. Prof. Jaini admits a possibility that perhaps because of his popularity, the Jain authors were keen to rehabilitate Krishna. The Jain texts predict that after his karmic term in hell is over sometime during the next half time-cycle, Krishna will be reborn as a Jain Tirthankara and attain liberation. Krishna and Balrama are shown as contemporaries and cousins of 22nd Tirthankara, Neminatha.[71] According to this story, Krishna arranged young Neminath's marriage with Rajamati, the daughter of Ugrasena, but Neminatha, empathizing with the animals which were to be slaughtered for the marriage feast, left the procession suddenly and renounced the world.[72]


    400    BC.BANKING.    Pythius, who operated as a merchant banker throughout Asia Minor at the beginning of the 5th century B.C., is the first individual banker of whom we have records. Many of the early bankers in Greek city-states were "metics" or foreign residents. Around 371 B.C., Pasion, a slave, became the wealthiest and most famous Greek banker, gaining his freedom and Athenian citizenship in the process.The fourth century B.C. saw increased use of credit-based banking in the Mediterranean world. In Egypt, from early times, grain had been used as a form of money in addition to precious metals, and state granaries functioned as banks. When Egypt fell under the rule of a Greek dynasty, the Ptolemies (332-30 B.C.), the numerous scattered government granaries were transformed into a network of grain banks, centralized in Alexandria where the main accounts from all the state granary banks were recorded. This banking network functioned as a trade credit system in which payments were effected by transfer from one account to another without money passing.

    (from The Comedies)by Aristophanes(ca.  448-380 B.C.)Type of work:Comedic lyrical social satireSetting:A dramatic competition in Athens during the Second Peloponnesian War; 414 B.C.Principal characters:Pisthetaerus, an elderly AthenianEuelpides, another old gentlemanEpops, King of the Birds, formerly a manA Chorus of BirdsPlay Overview:Life in Athens during the last years of the fifth century B.C.  had badly deteriorated.  For one thing, there was the heavy burden of the fifteen-year-old Peloponnesian War that was still being waged against Sparta.  Then, too, there were the costs of expanding the empire west into Sicily—and, there again, battling Sparta.  Finally, and even more disheartening—as the players on the skylit stage of The Birds irreverently attested to their Athenian audience—there was the prospect of enduring yet another tragedy by Euripides at this year's theater festival.
    In such troubled times, it seemed that the only freedom to which an ordinary Athenian could look forward with any degree of certainty was the freedom to pay taxes.  And if, in the middle of this sad state of affairs, you had found yourself on stage in this latest comedy from the pen of Aristophanes, taking the role of a disgruntled old man hounded by creditors and tax collectors, then the act of gathering your belongings and heading out of town would surely have seemed less a contrivance of comic desperation than an eminently reasonable response.  Nor probably did it seem any less sensible to the audience living under these circumstances when you disclosed in the opening scenes that, before setting out for parts unknown, you had bought a crow and a magpie in the Athenian bird market, hoping that one bird or the other would guide you—by instinct you assumed—to Epops the Hoopoe, otherwise known as King of the Birds.Epops had first been born not as a bird, but as a man; he had ruled in Greece as a king named Tereus.  Long ago he had inexplicably mutated into a bird.  Having traveled widely through the kingdoms of both men and birds, Epops, you might assume, should know of a place somewhere in the world where a poor refugee might settle down and live a life of comfort and ease.Such, at any rate, was the plan that the two old gentlemen on stage, Euelpides and Pisthetaerus, had hatched.  Now, with their meager belongings in tow, they found themselves facing the audience from the midst of a desolate mountain scene.  They paused beneath a rocky crag, arguing between themselves and interpreting as best they could the squawks and caws of the two guide-birds which sat perched on their shoulders.They had begun to lament their plan to escape Athens as an idea that was quite literally "for the birds," when the disturbance they were making brought Epops out from a rocky crag, having just awakened from a nap.  It was molting season, and because he had lost so much of his plumage, to the startled Euelpides and Pisthetaerus his aspect was sightly less than royal.  Still, the travelers had come this far, they decided to explain their plight and ask if he could recommend a peaceful land beyond the reach of creditors where the worst they might suffer would be an invitation to dinner.Epops made several suggestions, but all were rejected; none, it seemed, were ideally suited to the Athenians' paradisiacal fantasy.  Finally, almost as an afterthought, the two humans asked Epops what life was like among the birds.  Epops rehearsed the various advantages of birdhood—noting in particular that birds lived without need of money.  Hearing this, Pisthetaerus suddenly had an idea.  "You should build your own city-state in the clouds," he urged Epops.  The birds, he enthused, could surround their city with huge walls and starve the gods themselves into submission "by preventing men's sacrifices from reaching heaven."  Epops was intrigued by the notion.  "By traps and nets and decoys," he added approvingly.  "I've never heard a better idea!"But such an ambitious proposition—one that would overthrow the whole established oligarchy of the gods—required approval of birds throughout the world.  So Epops summoned the birds together in a chorus on stage in order that they might hear Pisthetaerus' plan.The birds were naturally suspicious.  Unlike Epops, none of them had ever been men.  In fact, men had always been the enemies of birds:  throughout history humans had captured them, killed them, eaten them.  Thus, it was not, perhaps, unnatural, that the first act of the chorus was to form ranks and launch an assault on their human visitors.After Euelpides and Pisthetaerus had endured much wing-beating and pecking from the birds, Epops finally rebuked his followers, reminding them that they had much to "learn from their enemies."  Chastised, at least for the moment, the birds settled down to listen.Pisthetaerus first rose to speak, presenting an eloquent argument.  Hadn't the chorus read their Aesop?  If so, they would know that birds were originally the masters of men.  A remnant of the birds' primordial glory was even yet evident in man's lexicon:  the owl, the eagle, the hawk, the dove, all were reverenced as symbols of courage, peace—the noblest ideals of humanity.  Couldn't they see that if they built a walled city between heaven and earth, the birds could force both men and gods to once more worship them?  They would be sovereign; the feathered tribes would reign!  Point by persuasive point, Pisthetaerus laid out all the advantages of his plan.  "I advise you," he forcefully concluded, "to create a city of birds.""O reverend elder," the chorus of birds now intoned, "instead of our worst enemy you have become our dearest friend."  Following much rejoicing, Euelpides and Pisthetaerus were led away to be honored with their own pairs of wings.During this interlude, the chorus of birds—who were, after all, only actors in a comedy—took occasion to address the audience directly, entreating them to become citizens of their newly founded city.  If the humans would agree to this treaty, the birds promised to control insect plagues and such, so that mankind would benefit; what's more, given wings, the humans, would not have to sit through another of Euripides' boring tragedies—they could simply fly home for a snack and be back in time for a comedy.  If the human audience refused to pay homage, however, the siege of the birds would begin, and feathered battalions would be sent to pluck our the eyes of their cattle.  In any case, the chorus concluded, the judges at the theater festival should definitely award first prize to their own most inspired drama.The interlude ended, once more the birds assumed their stage roles, and the drama continued to unfold.  Soon news came to Pisthetaerus that the building of the celestial city and all its fortifications had been completed.  The question naturally arose as to what to call the new city.  Pisthetaerus at first suggested "Sparta," but Euelpides objected that the name "Sparta" would even be an insult to his mattress.    No, he insisted, such a lofty city required "something big, smacking of the clouds.  A pinch of fluff and rare air.  A swollen sound."  Pisthetaerus thought a moment.  "I've got it," he exclaimed.  "Listen—CLOUDCUCKOOLAND!"  Everyone agreed.  "The perfect name," someone said.  "And it's a big word too."The problem was, however, that rumors of Cloudcuckooland-to-come had already spread to Athens.  Pisthetaerus was at once besieged by a procession of the seediest characters from the noble city—each one seeking money by offering his corrupt services in the building of the project.  There came an indigent poet offering to write celebratory verses; an itinerant prophet peddling a book of bogus oracles; a geometer putting in his bid to survey the new city; and an imperious Athenian legislator wishing to sell the city a huge volume of statutes and laws.  In short, all of Athens seemed to be dreaming of feathers, a winged way of life, a life of ease.  Among this clamoring crowd, the corrupt and self-serving soon found themselves unceremoniously either pummeled or expelled by Pisthetaerus himself.  But Athenians who sued with a pure heart for the privileges of Cloudcuckooland, were given wings to soar aloft in their chosen professions:  poets were empowered to gather inspiration for their works, and workmen to climb to the nethermost heights of their craft.The gods, too, had by now received news of Cloudcuckooland and of the birds' fiat declaring themselves supreme rulers of the world.  In fact, since communications between gods and man had been cut off and men were no longer making sacrificial offerings, the gods were growing very hungry.  At first, Zeus dispatched Iris, goddess of the rainbow, who arrived on stage with her veils blowing in the wind by means of a stage crane.  Pisthetaerus dismissed the gentle goddess so rudely, though, that Zeus next sent an Olympian delegation consisting of Poseidon, Triballus, and Heracles.Now the idea behind this delegation—that more illustrious members of the pantheon were needed to obtain an audience with the now-winged Pisthetaerus—was sound enough.  The constitution of the delegation, however, was another matter.  Here, Zeus seemed to have seriously erred in that each member brought his own particular weakness to the table.  Poseidon, for instance, was far too glum a god to possess any diplomatic talents.  Triballus—being a Dorian god and speaking a barbarian tongue—could not make himself understood.  And Heracles not only "burned less brightly" than other gods—he was, in fact, dim-witted—but he was also a renowned glutton—by this time a renowned hungry glutton.When the Olympian delegation arrived, Pisthetaerus was slicing pickles and his chef was preparing a barbecue—a fact which did not escape the notice of the famished Heracles.  "Hey," saluted the muscular demigod, "what kind of meat is dat?"  The chef was roasting three birds, Pisthetaerus explained—three "jail birds" who had been "sentenced to death for High Treason against the Sovereign Birds."  "And dat luscious gravy gets poured on foist?"  Heracles asked, licking his lips.Needless to say, negotiations did not go well for the gods.  First, they ceded their dominion over men to Pisthetaerus' birds and agreed to turn over Zeus's scepter.  Then Pisthetaerus, still unsatisfied, laid down new terms:  he would instruct the birds to end the gods' famine, he declared—and even invite them to dinner—but only if they also agreed to give him Basileia, Zeus' most beautiful wife.  This was most unreasonable, Poseidon complained.  "You won't have peace," he threatened as the Olympians rose to leave.  "It's all the same to me," Pisthetaerus said nonchalantly.  "O Chef," he called ignoring the gods, "make the gravy thick."This last reference to the gravy was "more than Heracles could stand," and the envoys fell into a slavering quarrel.  Finally—as the three of them sat down to dinner—Poseidon reluctantly agreed to all of Pisthetaerus' audacious demands.  Then, in the distance, they heard the roll of Zeus' thunder.  A bolt of lightning stuck the stage, Basileia was delivered before their eyes, and she and Pisthetaerus were promptly married.Finally, Pisthetaerus, King of the Birds, extended one hand to Basileia—Zeus' scepter was clasped firmly in the other—and together they stepped into the stage crane's breeze, beating their wings.  As the crane slowly lifted them up and offstage, the gods knelt in homage.  And as the chorus of the birds exited the stage, they chanted "O greatest of gods!"Commentary:"The Birds" was first performed in competition at Athens' festival of Dionysus in 414 B.C.  Despite the pleas of the chorus, the judges awarded it second, rather than first prize.  Nonetheless, it may be Aristophanes' finest comedy, and certainly one of the masterpieces of Western literature.  Indeed, it would be difficult to think of another work that can match "The Birds" for its rich mix of rollicking, absurd humor, self-conscious parody, and soaring lyricism."The Birds" is one of the first works of literature to treat the now familiar theme of Utopia.  The ideal of Aristophanes' Utopia, however, is no real "ideal" at all.  The ancient gods are starved out by the Cloudcuckoolanders, not from any pious intentions to establish a new haven for pure living or thinking, but in brazen pursuit of the Ultimate Escape.  Rather than a noble sanctuary, the city of the birds—and of frenzied, weak-willed, tax-evading humans—brazenly declares itself as the magical, flawed, tyrannical paradise of infamy.In 405 B.C., Athens fell to Sparta.  It marked not only the literary epitaph of Aristophanes, but also the end of Greece's golden age of drama.

 
    404 GRECO PERSIAN WARS. In 404 BC when Cyrus the Younger attempted to seize the Persian throne, he recruited 13,000 Greek mercenaries from all over the Greek world of which Sparta sent 700–800, believing they were following the terms of the treaty and unaware of the army's true purpose. After the failure of Cyrus, Persia tried to regain control of the Ionian city-states, which had rebelled during the conflict. The Ionians refused to capitulate and called upon Sparta for assistance, which she provided, in 396–395 BC.Athens, however, sided with the Persians, which led in turn to another large scale conflict in Greece, the Corinthian War. 

 

SOCRATES. The Classical Greek philosopher Socrates.In Plato's dialogues and other Socratic dialogues, Socrates attempts to examine someone's beliefs, at times even first principles or premises by which we all reason and argue. Socrates typically argues by cross-examining his interlocutor's claims and premises in order to draw out a contradiction or inconsistency among them. According to Plato, the rational detection of error amounts to finding the proof of the antithesis. However, important as this objective is, the principal aim of Socratic activity seems to be to improve the soul of his interlocutors, by freeing them from unrecognized errors.For example, in the Euthyphro, Socrates asks Euthyphro to provide a definition of piety. Euthyphro replies that the pious is that which is loved by the gods. But, Socrates also has Euthyphro agreeing that the gods are quarrelsome and their quarrels, like human quarrels, concern objects of love or hatred. Therefore, Socrates reasons, at least one thing exists which certain gods love but other gods hate. Again, Euthyphro agrees. Socrates concludes that if Euthyphro's definition of piety is acceptable, then there must exist at least one thing which is both pious and impious (as it is both loved and hated by the gods) — which Euthyphro admits is absurd. Thus, Euthyphro is brought to a realization by this dialectical method that his definition of piety is not sufficiently meaningful.There is another interpretation of the dialectic as a method of intuition which is suggested in The Republic. Simon Blackburn writes that the dialectic in this sense is used to understand "the total process of enlightenment, whereby the philosopher is educated so as to achieve knowledge of the supreme good, the Form of the Good".

    400 BC - (And The History of the Persian Wars)by Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c.  484 - 425 B.C.)This is the setting-forth of the research of Herodotus of Halicarnassus so that neither will the things done by men be forgotten with the passage of time nor will the great deeds and wonders which have transpired, some among the Greeks, and others among the barbarians, be without fame ...Thus begins Herodotus' massive nine-volume work, titled, appropriately, The Histories, considered to be the first true historical treatise.  Though Sumerian and Egyptian scribes had earlier set down in print various events, they usually wrote their accounts to flatter their contemporary political authorities.Herodotus was the first to organize divers events around a common narrative theme.  In fact, his Histories stands as the first great work of prose extant in Western literature; all previous works had been written in verse for oral performance.  Moreover, it is on the strength of Herodotus' work that the word has come to possess "history" its present meaning.The Histories largely focuses on the conflict between East and West, Asia and Europe—or the Greeks and the "barbarians"—which culminated in the Persian Wars of 490 and 480 B.C.  The first half of the Histories, Books I through V, deals mostly with the rise of the Persian Empire.  The remainder details the conflict between the Persians and the Greek city-states.Herodotus' purposes, however, were not strictly historical.  His writing primarily was intended to be entertaining, for Herodotus was a great storyteller.  He admits:  "Digressions are part of the plan," and thus his history contains a large number of fascinating stories, including many of dubious authenticity.The Story of CroesusTypical of Herodotus' quasi-historical narratives is the story of Croesus of Lydia.  Non-Greeks, the Lydians were most noted for their invention of coinage.  Lydia's ruler, Croesus, belonged to a family called the Mermnadae.  According to Herodotus, their dominion began when Gyges, Croesus' great-great grandfather, usurped the throne of King Candaules.Now Candaules, or so the story goes, was exceedingly fond of his wife; to him, she was the most beautiful of women and he continually praised her comeliness to his bodyguard Gyges.  To prove her beauty to Gyges, Candaules persuaded the reluctant servant to hide in the royal bedroom and observe her as she disrobed.  Gyges did spy on the queen, but she spotted him doing so and suspected that her husband was responsible.  The next day she summoned Gyges and presented him with an ultimatum:  "Gyges, there are two courses open to you, and you may take your choice between them.  Kill Candaules and seize the throne, with me as your wife; or die yourself on the spot, so that never again may your blind obedience to the king tempt you to see what you have no right to see."  Not surprisingly, Gyges opted for the first alternative.Although many Lydians objected to the prospect of Gyges as king, they eventually were persuaded to accept him, so long as his authority was confirmed by a pronouncement of the oracle at Delphi.  The priestess of Apollo indeed confirmed that Gyges would rule, but announced that Candaules' descendants would be avenged in the fifth generation.Many years later, Gyges' descendant Croesus extended the Lydian Empire throughout the territory of the Greek city-states.  As fifth in the line of Gyges, however, Croesus was destined to be deposed.As it happened, among the many famous visitors to Croesus' city of Sardis was the Athenian constitutional reformer Solon.  Croesus, quite smug about his own prosperity, asked the well-traveled Solon to name the man, among the many he had met, whom he regarded as the most happy.  "An Athenian called Tellus," was Solon's reply.Taken aback, Croesus asked the Athenian to defend his choice.  Solon explained that Tellus had lived to see sons and grandsons born, and had died a glorious death in battle.  The Athenians subsequently had provided a public funeral for this honorable, happy man.Now Croesus demanded to know Solon's second choice, and this time he named Cleobis and Biton, two brothers who had pulled their mother in an oxcart to the festival of the goddess Hera, as the happiest.  They died in answer to a maternal prayer that they be granted "the greatest blessing that can fall to mortal man."  No man, regardless of his prosperity, added Solon, can be called "happy" until he has died happily.  Croesus considered this explanation foolish, and sent Solon away.Some years later, King Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire, marched on toward Sardis, took the city, and captured Croesus.  As predicted by the Oracle, Croesus and his great empire had fallen.On the orders of Cyrus, Croesus and fourteen young Lydian boys were chained to a great pyre to be burned alive.  Realizing that he was about to die, Croesus reflected upon his conversation with Solon long ago and thrice uttered the name of the Athenian:  "Solon ...  Solon ...  Solon ...  " Cyrus, overhearing the invocation, sent an interpreter to find out what was meant by it.  Upon hearing Croesus' explanation, Cyrus wanted to spare his life, but it was too late:  the fire had been lit.  As a last resort, Croesus called on Apollo to save him, whereupon that god sent a storm which doused the flames.Such a tale, at least from a modern perspective, may seem out of place in a historical account.  As stated earlier, however, Herodotus' purposes were different than those of a modern historian:  "My business is to record what people say, but I am by no means bound to believe it—and that may be taken to apply to this book as a whole."Preserving the Ancient Tales While entertaining, Herodotus' quasi-fictional accounts have also proven to be enlightening.  There are at least two instances, for example, when he reports views which he did not find credible but which seem perfectly reasonable to the modern reader.  The first deals with why the waters of the Nile rise at the summer solstice.  Presenting three commonly held views, Herodotus denounces the third, although it is the one we know to be correct today:  " ...  The water of the Nile comes from melting snow ...  " Since hotter climates were found to be farther south, and the source of the Nile is to the south, this explanation seemed highly implausible.  He had no way of knowing, however, that many snow-capped mountains lie in the vicinity of the equator.The second example of Herodotus' commitment to accurate recording is even more interesting.  Herodotus relates that a Phoenician crew, commissioned by Pharaoh Neco, circumnavigated the African continent.  While Herodotus does not question the fact that the voyage occurred, he doubts the report that "as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya (by which he means Africa), they had the sun on their right—to the northward of them."  We know that this is just what one would expect, traveling west in the Southern Hemisphere.  But, of course, Herodotus was ignorant to the fact that the earth is roughly spherical.  A more "scientific" historian would, no doubt, have neglected to mention such an unlikely detail.The Culture of Ancient EgyptOne of the most important of Herodotus' digressions is the whole of Book II, which encompasses a detailed description of the cultural idiosyncrasies of ancient Egypt.  Egyptian customs included both circumcision—which seemed frightening and distasteful to the Greeks—and mummification.  He notes that, from a Greek point of view, the Egyptians often reversed the usual roles of men and women:  Egyptian women went to the marketplace to shop, for instance, while the men remained at home, weaving.Especially engrossing is Herodotus' comparison of Egyptian religious practices with those of the Greeks.  He observed substantial underlying similarities between Greek and Egyptian religious practices and beliefs, and did not fail to draw an obvious conclusion:  Greek gods were, in many cases, borrowed from the Egyptians.  He then goes on to equate Egyptian deities with their Greek counterparts.  Thus, the god Amun "is the Egyptian name for Zeus"; Osiris is simply an Egyptian Dionysus.In some cases, Herodotus' assumptions are probably incorrect.  He nevertheless was the first author to suggest that cultures borrow ritual practices and religious beliefs from each other.The Persian WarsFrom the latter part of Book V through Book IX, the historian focuses much more closely on his major theme:  the famed Persian Wars.When Aristogoras of Miletus persuaded the Ionian city-states to revolt against the Persian Empire in 499 B.C., he enlisted the help of the Athenians, who sent twenty warships.  The combined Greek forces launched an attack on Sardis—by then a provincial capital of the Persian Empire—plundering the temples and burning much of the city.  Soon afterward, around 494 B.C., the Greeks and Ionians first were defeated at sea by the Persian fleet, and then the Persians struck back, invading Greek and Ionian lands.  By 493 B.C.  the revolt had been completely suppressed.Meanwhile, a formidable advocate of Athenian naval supremacy named Themistocles initiated two major confrontations between Greeks and Persians.  He began by calling upon Persian Emperor Darius to send military aid.  Still stung by the role the Athenians had played in Sardis' earlier defeat—Darius dispatched a fleet of ships carrying both infantry and cavalry to challenge Athens.  The fleet landed on the east coast of Attica at the Bay of Marathon, leaving the Athenians, aided only by their allies the Plataeans, to confront a Persian force four times as large as their own.  But against all expectations, the Athenians achieved a stunning victory:  by what could only be attributed to "the graces of the gods," the Athenians and their allies suffered 192 casualties while the "barbarians" and their allies lost 6400.The final Persian response was delayed by the death of Darius in 486 B.C.  Six years later, however, his successor Xerxes—accompanied by a fleet of unprecedented size—personally led a mighty army to battle the Greeks.  Although the Persian army initially met with little resistance, they were eventually confronted by a heroic force of three hundred Spartans at the narrow mountain pass of Thermopylae.  A Greek named Ephialtes then covertly informed Xerxes of a second mountain pass by which, if followed, would allow the Persians also to attack from the rear.  Xerxes and his legion subsequently were able to surround and annihilate the Spartan forces, then press southward to occupy Attica and burn to the ground the evacuated city of Athens.By use of a clever ploy, the Greeks convinced the Persians to believe that they had "trapped" the entire Athenian fleet in the Bay of Eleusis.  In the ensuing naval battle, however, the mighty Athenians showed their true strength and utterly defeated the Persian fleet.His ships either sunken or badly crippled, Xerxes had no way to supply his massive land forces.  Returning to Persia with some remaining ships, Xerxes left the core of his army on the Greek mainland under the command of Mardonius.  During the next summer of 479 B.C., though, Mardonius was defeated at the Battle of Plataea and the remnant of the Persian fleet was overwhelmed and sunk at Mycale off the coast of Asia Minor.Thus ends Herodotus' stirring narrative of the Persian Wars.  While not always factual in every detail, his account largely is reliable, and every bit as exciting as the imaginative tales that illumine today's movie screens.

    400 BC -Sacred to Buddhists is the collection of verses called The Dhammapada—meaning the "path of truth, light and love"—written in the third century B.C.E.  ("before common-era"—a term used by recent scholars to avoid continual reference to a "Christian" calendar).  The Dhammapada exists as the word of Gotama Buddha (563-483 BCE).  A prince who would be king, Gotama cast aside his life of privilege for one of nomadic contemplation.  He changed his name to Buddha, meaning "to be awake, to know," when he experienced a revelation while meditating beneath a tree.  What the Buddha experienced on that day was a "union of the finite with the infinite," where his spirit transcended the earthly realm into a new realm of being.  This state, called "Nirvana," is the supreme objective of all Buddhists.  In the words of the Buddha, "Few cross the river of time and are able to reach Nirvana.  Most of them run up and down only on this side of the river."Read individually, The Dhammapada's verses can inspire faith, purity, wisdom and virtue for all who seek truth, wish to enrich their lives, and find greater peace through proper living.The Dhammapada outlines the footpath that leads to Nirvana.  The journey is incredibly long, for one must leave behind the seemingly endless circle of lifetimes (the result of reincarnation).  This cycle, or wheel, is known as "Samsara," identified in the text as the "ever-returning life in death."  In order to transcend Samsara, the Buddha prescribes an "eight-fold path" of enlightenment which must be trodden.  The steps must be taken one at a time, for one level precedes the next on the path to Nirvana.Stage 1The first stage involves the attainment of the four great virtues of Buddhism:  Maitri, Karuna, Mudita, and Upeksha.  Maitri is the virtue of benevolence and goodwill.  Karuna involves compassion, pity, and sorrow.  Mudita is to have joy in the good of all.  And Upeksha means forgiveness.  The attainment of these four virtues prepares one for the second step, that of Right Determination.Stage 2We must learn to give up the world:Leave the past behind; leave the future behind; leave the present behind.  Thou art ready to go to the other shore.  Never more shalt thou return to a life that ends in death.Further, it is said:Go beyond the stream, Brahmin [the enlightened one, one who has reached the highest stage], go with all your soul:  leave desires behind.  When you have crossed the stream of Samsara, you will reach the land of Nirvana.Clearly, one must give up the cycle of earthly life in favor of a more enlightened state of being.  However, simply leaving Samsara behind is not enough:For whom "name and form" are not real, who never feels "this is mine," and who sorrows not for things that are not, he in truth can be called a monk.Here it is understood that those names and forms found in Samsara are not real but are transient and everchanging, like a flowing river.  Therefore, one who seeks enlightenment is willing to leave them—as well as personal possessions and human emotions—behind.Stage 3This stage involves Right Words, for "Better than a thousand useless words is one single word that gives peace."  According to the Buddha:Never speak harsh words, for once spoken they may return to you.  Angry words are painful and there may be blows for blows.... let your words be self-controlled.  Hurt not with words, but use your words well.Further:--if a man speaks but a few holy words, free from passion and hate and illusion ...  the life of this man is a life of holiness.Stage 4Stage four is Right Action, which involves holding to truth, avoiding anger, and helping others:Speak the truth, yield not to anger, give what you can to him who asks:  these three steps will lead you to the gods.Right action means doing good:If a man does something good, let him do it again and again.  Let him find joy in his good work.  Joyful is the accumulation of good work ...  Make haste and do what is good; keep your mind away from evil.  If a man is slow in doing good, his mind finds pleasure in evil.Right Action also includes self-control:Good is control of the body, and good is the control of words; good is the control of the mind, and good is the control of our whole inner life.  When a monk has achieved perfect self-control, he leaves all sorrows behind.Stage 5Stage five is Right Livelihood, known as the avoidance of ignorance, evil, violence, and earthly desires such as lust: He who lives not for pleasures, and whose soul is in self-harmony, who eats or fasts with moderation, and has faith and the power of virtue—this man is not moved by temptations, as a great rock is not shaken by the wind ...  Be therefore not bound to pleasure for the loss of pleasure is pain.  There are no fetters for the man who is beyond pleasure and pain.The same concept applies to lust:From lust arises sorrow and from lust arises fear.  If a man is free from lust, he is free from fear and sorrow ...  [Hence], the man whose mind, filled with determination, is longing for the infinite Nirvana, and who is free from sensuous pleasures, is called uddham-soto, "he who goes upstream," for against the current of passions and worldly life he is bound for the joy of the Infinite ...  Good men, at all times, surrender in truth all attachments.  The holy spend not idle words on things of desire.  When pleasure or pain comes to them, the wise feel above pleasure and pain.Stage 6Stage six, Right Effort, takes in not only performing actions which are good, truthful and virtuous, but also actively seeking out opportunities to do such good works.  Of course, it is much easier not to act and fall into a state of apathy and idleness, swept along in the river's current.  But according to Buddha, we must be proactive:Better than a hundred years lived in idleness and in weakness is a single day lived with courage and powerful striving ...  If a man when young and strong does not arise and strive when he should arise and strive, and thus sinks into laziness and lack of determination, he will never find the path of wisdom.In addition, Right Effort includes vanquishing evil and overcoming violence for the sake of good:A man is not on the path of righteousness if he settles matters in a violent haste.  A wise man calmly considers what is right and what is wrong, and faces different opinions with truth, non-violence and peace.  This man is guarded by truth and is a guardian of truth.  He is righteous and he is wise.In general, one who has mastered Right Effort "in truth is a Samana [a monk, or Brahmin]."Stage 7Stage seven is Right Remembrance, or watchfulness.  In the words of Buddha:Watchfulness is the path of immortality:  unwatchfulness is the path of death.  Those who are watchful never die:  Those who do not watch are already as dead.... Watchfulness is god-like, protectful and virtuous, since ...  by arising in faith and watchfulness, by self-possession and self-harmony, the wise man makes an island for his soul which many waters cannot overflow ...  Even the gods long to be like the Buddhas who are awake and watch, who find peace in contemplation and who, calm and steady, find joy in renunciation.Thus, the Brahmin journeys forward on the path:Watchful amongst the unwatchful, awake amongst those who sleep ...  like a swift horse runs his race, outrunning those who are slow ...  like a fire, burning all obstacles both great and small.Stage 8The final stage is called Samandhi, or union, and consists of four all-encompassing virtues:  Recollection, Meditation, Contemplation, and Union.  In preparation for higher realms of thought, Recollection requires focus and attention.  Meditation includes higher intellectual thought, such as that found in philosophy and science.  Beyond this realm is Contemplation, or silence of the mind.  Contemplation cannot be reached through thought, poetry, art, or music.  Indeed, all thoughts are left behind.  Finally, the Brahmin, seeing Union, reaches the highest order of enlightenment, Samandhi:  When beyond meditation and contemplation a Brahmin has reached the other shore, then he attains the supreme vision, and all his fetters are broken ...  Finally, after a great deal of effort and sacrifice, the wheel of myriad lifetimes is transcended; all suffering, ignorance and evil are cast aside, forsaken.Upon arriving at the level of Samandhi, or Nirvana, one ceases to exist as an earthly, temporal individual entity.  The bonds of time are finally obliterated; there is no self, no striving, no becoming.  There is only pure Union and Being.  One "whose vision is deep, who is wise, who has attained the highest end" is prepared to see the supreme Union in his surroundings, in everything, and is worthy to be called Brahmin:  "This highest end is Samandhi, the oneness which is Nirvana."A Brahmin who has reached the end "knows the going and the returning of beings—the birth and rebirth of life—and in joy has arrived at the end of his journey, and now he is awake and can see."And so, The Dhammapada's "path of truth, light and love" is a spiritual guide for all who would be "virtuous, and righteous, and wise"; for he who "craves not for sons or power or wealth, who puts not his own success before the success of righteousness."  The path requires many sacrifices; it is almost infinitely long.  Like a great edifice which must grow one floor at a time, one must graduate step by step to each successive stage, or face living out entire lifetimes until one gains the mastery to approach the next stage.  The Dhammapada's message is clear:This is the path.  There is no other that leads to vision.  Go on this path, and you will confuse Mara, the devil of confusion ...  Live a life of inner heroism, the all-seer, the all-conqueror, the ever-pure, who has reached the end of the journey, who like Buddha is awake.  ___________________________________________________________


399    Greek philosopher Socrates is condemned to death for heretical teaching.

        395    -386    Corinthian war. Athens, Thebes, Corinth and Argos form a coalition against Sparta. Lysander is killed in battle.

394     - 371 BCCareer of Pasion the Athenian bankerPasion, a slave, becomes the wealthiest and most famous Greek banker and  gains his freedom and Athenian citizenship in the process. Greek banking transactions are carried out primarily in cash. Battle of Coronae. Soarta defeats the coalition.

393    Treaty between Salamis, in Cyprus and Egypt.

391    Romans under the dictator Marcus furius Camillus subjugate the Etruscans.

.

    387 BCPeace of AntalcidasSets the boundaries of Greek and Persian  territory

387    Artaxerxes II of Persia captures Greek cities in Asia Minor.

    387 GRECO PERSIAN WARS. Towards the end of that conflict, in 387 BC, Sparta sought the aid of Persia to shore up her position. Under the so-called "King's Peace" that brought the war to an end, Artaxerxes II demanded and received the return of the cities of Asia Minor from the Spartans, in return for which the Persians threatened to make war on any Greek state that did not make peace.[199] This humiliating treaty, which undid all the Greek gains of the previous century, sacrificied the Greeks of Asia Minor so that the Spartans could maintain their hegemony over Greece.[200] It is in the aftermath of this treaty that Greek orators began to refer to the Peace of Callias (whether fictional or not), as a counterpoint to the shame of the King's Peace, and a glorious example of the "good old days" when the Greeks of the Aegean had been freed from Persian rule by the Delian League.[17] The final confrontation between the Greek world and Achaemenid Persia began just 53 years after that, with the army of Alexander the Great crossing into Asia, marking the beginning of what would result in the razing of Persepolis and the end of the Achaemenid Empire.

386     Spartan ruler Antalcidas negotiates peace with Persia, and forces other Greek states to agree to it.

380    Last native Egytian dynasty XXXth to 343

    380 - BC - THE REPUBLIC by Plato(427 - 347 B.C.)Book Overview:(The Republic is an examination of the "Good Life"; the harmony reached by applying pure reason and justice. The ideas and arguments presented center on the social conditions of an ideal republic - those that lead each individual to the most perfect possible life for him. Socrates - Plato's early mentor in real life - moderates the discussion throughout, presumably as Plato's mouthpiece. Through Socrates' powerful and brilliant questions and summations on a series of topics, the reader comes to understand what Plato's model society would look like.)Socrates was returning to Athens after attending a festival, when he met Polemarchos on the road. Upon Polemarchos' insistence, Socrates accompanied him to his home to meet his friends and family. As they entered the courtyard, Polemarchos' elderly father, Cephalus, greeted them and launched into a discussion of old age. Socrates seemed pleased to converse with the older man: "It seems right to enquire of them, as if they traversed a long journey which perhaps we will have to traverse." The discussion then turned to the question of "justice," or "doing the right thing." Polemarchos suggested that "to give back what is owed to each is just." However, Socrates countered that to return a weapon to a friend who had gone mad was not just, but the opposite of justice. Still another man, Thrasymachos, offered his definition of justice: "I declare justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger." But Socrates, again by logical argument, dismissed this definition: Since rulers are fallible, they often make decisions that are not in their best interest, thus requiring their subjects to do the wrong, unjust thing. But, according to Socrates, "right living," dutiful service to others, and doing that which is "appropriate" to the person and situation are the prerequisites to individual happiness - and prerequisites for avoiding chaos within a republic.Still another in the group voiced his objections to Socrates' statement that justice is a virtue and injustice a vice; Glaucon was not entirely convinced that justice possessed any intrinsic value. Socrates began his examination of this concept by turning his focus from the individual to the city: people gathered together in cities in order that each individual might perform the task best suited to his or her nature. From this point, Socrates delineated the various classes of people in a city-state, from the peasant and beggar to the highest kings and rulers. He then posed a question: "Do you not think, that one who is to be guardian-like (a leader) needs something more besides a spirited temper, and that is to be in his nature a lover of wisdom?" Socrates also wondered aloud how these traits could be instilled into potential leaders: "How shall our guardians be trained and educated?"Socrates proceeded to weigh the numerous types of education and experience demanded of a good ruler, and divided education into two main areas: music (in this case, all the arts) and gymnastics (athletics). Fables, he observed, were the first "music" that children hear, and children are "easily molded" by these stories. Socrates recommended that "we must set up a censorship over the fable-makers, and approve any good fable they make, and disapprove the bad." Many classical fables and myths were to be censored as "false" because they portrayed the gods in an unfavorable light. Children "must never hear at all that the gods war against other gods and plot and fight," he said, for when they grow older, they will accept this behavior as virtuous. Instead, children should hear the "noblest things told in the best fables for encouraging virtue." He concluded: "God is simple and true in word and deed," and this must be held up as an example to children, especially to those who may grow up to become rulers.Socrates extended his censorship argument to include craftsmen: artists and sculptors must be restrained from deformed, ignoble, morbid or "imaginary" creations, "to stop their implanting this spirit so evil and dissolute." Craftsmen "who by good natural powers can track out the nature of the beautiful and the graceful," should share their gifts so that young people would dwell in "wholesome country."A delicate balance had to be maintained between gymnastic and "musical" education; an over-emphasis on gymnastics produced "savagery and hardness" in a person, while too much music spawned excessive "softness and gentleness." The two arts "may be fitted together in concord, by being strained and slackened to the proper point."Now that the thrust of the future citizens' education was established, Socrates asked: "Which among these are to rule, and which to be ruled?" He then answered his own question, asserting that there were several ways of discovering those best suited to rule. He vaguely suggested that a true guardian would be diligent in keeping watch "on enemies without and friends within," and in seeing that no injury befell the city or its inhabitants. Of the three classes of citizens - the merchant class (the lowest of the low in that their primary purpose is greedy consumption), the high-spirited soldier class (quite like "animals"), and the high-minded, more human-minded philosopher - the philosopher would act most just and civil, and show the most ideal "harmony" in ruling over the passions and appetites of the other two classes.To maintain harmony, true guardian-kings "must live in common" with their subjects, and must "dare not have any dealings with gold or silver." Rather, the city should supply all their needs.Expanding these arguments to include the entire population of the city, Socrates preached that there should neither be great wealth nor great poverty; both extremes breed evil in men. Also, "as long as the growing city is willing to remain a unity, so big let it grow but no further." Each citizen must work in a profession fitted to his talents, and work with his neighbor in unity for the growth of his state.Socrates next turned to the elements which make a city-state virtuous. In both the ruler and in the state, these principles are as follows: "Temperance and courage and intelligence, and here is a thing which makes it possible for [these] three to be there at all": justice. Socrates went on to compare a just city to a just person. Three elements combined make up the individual soul: reason, emotion, and desire. A person "must have all three parts in tune within him, highest [reason], and lowest [desire], and middle [emotion]."Before the master philosopher could delve deeper into the two types of state - the just and the unjust - Glaucon interrupted to ask if Socrates truly believed that such a virtuous city was possible. "There is one change which I think would make the transformation," Socrates replied. As philosophers become "kings in our cities...  political power and intellectual wisdom will be joined in one." But until this happened, Socrates saw no end to the troubles suffered worldwide. Furthermore, for a man to be a genuine philosopher, he must pursue truth for an entire lifetime. This pursuit, Socrates affirmed, impels him from a state of darkness to a state of light. Just as objects in the shadows are more difficult to see while in sunlight they are easily discerned, so "truth" cannot be seen with eyes that are dark, but only through eyes of "understanding" (comprehending logical and mathematical concepts) and through "exercising reason" (dialectical thought).   By experiencing "pure ideas," a man discovers the higher ideals such as "perfect beauty, justice and goodness." To escape the dark "shadows of the images" of reality, he must free himself from his fetters, turn to the "real light," and climb out of his cave of ignorance. Initially, the light of truth might hurt his eyes, but soon he will become accustomed to its brightness and multiple colors. Eventually, he will see everything - relationships, the soul, the human mind - through "new" eyes and use reason to understand all that he sees. This difficult ascent and "view of the upper world is the rising of the soul into the world of mind." It is an arduous trek, but not an impossible one. By exploring abstractions, a person may reach the brilliant light. This trek, according to Socrates, requires the study of numbers, arithmetic, plane geometry, and astronomy. Though all these fields have their practical applications, their true value lies in the fact that they "compel the soul to use pure reason in order to find out the truth." Pure reason is expressed in the dialectical process - the very process they were all using in their exchange of views. Socrates urged everyone "to get a start towards the real thing"; for it is only "through reason and without any help from the senses [that the individual can arrive] at the very end of the world of thought."A final question was raised: What of pleasure? Socrates boldly insisted that the highest pleasure was that enjoyed by the philosopher, "the lover of wisdom." A philosopher may or may not choose to experience the pleasures of gain and honor, but only he can "know how great is the pleasure of contemplating things as they are." The "greed-for-wealth" philosophy espoused by democracies, he argued, inevitably causes democratic societies to turn to tyranny. For this reason, he cautioned his listeners to guard their ideal city against the arts of "the imitators" - those who wrote poetry: "[Poets] do not lay hold of truth."  The poetic artist projects images of "love-making and anger and all the desires and griefs and pleasures in the soul which we say go along with our every action." But this is not good in that "it nourishes [the passions] by watering what it ought to dry up, and makes them rulers in us...  "  Socrates ended his involved analysis by exhorting his fellow philosophers to follow his advice. By employing all our faculties of reason and "believing the soul immortal and able to undergo all evil things and all good things, we will hold ever to the upper road, and we will practice in every way justice along with wisdom."Commentary:  The Republic is one of the foundational writings of Western philosophy and civilization. We see Platonic thought and Socratic methodology still vitally evolving in today's world. Dialectic questioning is the basis of Marxism and many other schools of philosophy. Indeed, the question-and-answer method plays an expansive role in our legal, scientific and educational systems.   Moreover, Plato's views concerning the nature of humankind - his notion of "mind over matter" in the individual soul - is a cornerstone of Christianity. The arguments and ideas of The Republic have had a profound influence on all the dialectic swings within our social, political, and religious quests and thinking since they were first written down in Athens twenty-five hundred years ago.

380 -ANTIGONA - by Sophocles (c.496 - 406 B.C.) translation by Paul RocheType of work:Poetic Greek tragedySetting:Thebes, a city of ancient GreecePrincipal characters: Antigone, daughter of Oedipus and sister of the dead Polyneices and Eteocles Ismene, Antigone's sister Creon, inexperienced, proud, and tyrannical king of Thebes
Haemon, son of Creon—and the betrothed of Antigone Tiresias, a blind prophet The Chorus, citizens of Thebes Play Overview: "What more, do you think, could Zeus require of us to load the curse that's on the House of Oedipus?"  Antigone asks of her sister Ismene as the play opens.  Those acquainted with the mythological history of The House of Oedipus would be hard-pressed to answer the daughter's question, for few family sagas have been as steeped in tragic events as theirs.  For Oedipus and his offspring, misfortune seemed to be hereditary.  As Ismene reminds Antigone:
Remember how our father died:  hated, in disgrace, wrapped in horror of himself, his own hand stabbing out his sight.  And how his mother-wife in one twisted off her earthly days with a cord.  And thirdly how our two brothers in a single day each achieved for each a suicidal nemesis.  Among the family's tragedies, it was this last event which was now to lead to further tribulation for the surviving sisters. Prior to the opening of this play, Oedipus' death had led his two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, to battle for their father's Theban throne.  Polyneices had joined forces with a neighboring city-state, Argos, to attack his native city of Thebes, leaving Eteocles and their uncle Creon—the regent since Oedipus' self-banishment—to defend the city.  The brothers finally met in combat and slew one another.  The Argive army then retreated in defeat, and victorious Thebes was left with Creon as its undisputed king. Creon, exercising his newly acquired power, had proclaimed that his nephew Eteocles, who had died defending Thebes, would receive a heroic burial.  Polyneices, however, who had died in an offensive against his own native city, would receive no burial at all; his body would be left to rot on the battlefield—the most ignominious end for any Greek.  To ensure that this mandate be honored, Creon made it a crime against the state—punishable by death—to violate the edict by burying or in any other way honoring the corpse. Yet, in prohibiting Polyneices' burial, Creon himself had transgressed a higher, more sacred law:  in ancient Greece a corpse had to receive certain funeral rites in order to pass into Hades. After hearing the news, Antigone led her sister Ismene beyond the city gates and informed her of Creon's decree—as well as of her grief-stricken and angry intentions to defy it.  Ismene pled with her sister to reconsider, or at least to maintain secrecy, but Antigone would not be swayed.  She would not allow such a mandate to stand; she was determined to mourn her fallen brother as commanded by the gods.  Polyneices' body must be buried in honor, and she would do the deed, fearing neither discovery nor punishment. As the sisters turned for home, the Theban Chorus began its victory celebration:  Now let us chase the memory far away of the wars that are past.  Come call on the gods with song and dance all through the night. Soon, however, a vexed Creon arrived on the scene to justify his harsh decree, saying, "you'll not catch me putting traitors up on a pedestal beside the loyal man.  I'll honor him alone, alive or dead, who honors Thebes."  No sooner had Creon spoken, however, than a sentry appeared to inform the king that someone—unknown and undetected by the guards posted near the body of Polyneices—had performed funeral rites upon the body—leaving it "not buried, [but] lightly veiled with ritual dust."  Commanded, upon pain of death, to expose the perpetrator, the sentry soon returned—leading Antigone, who had defiantly gone back to the corpse to complete her lamentations. "Guilty.  I deny nothing," Antigone answered unflinchingly when questioned by Creon.  " ...  So you chose flagrantly to disobey my law?"  Creon asked.  "Naturally!"  replied Antigone, " ...  since Zeus never promulgated such a law.  Nor will you find that Justice publishes such laws to man below.  I never thought your edicts had such force they nullified the laws of heaven ...  " Antigone's refusal to repent of any wrong-doing angered Creon even more than her open disregard for his decree:  "This girl, already versed in disrespect when she first disobeyed my law, now adds a second insult—vaunts it to my face."  Even though Antigone was betrothed to his own son, Haemon, the King imperiously command that she must die.  Disobedience—bad enough when practiced by a man—was, in this case, most intolerable to Creon, who certainly would not be "worsted by a woman." Haemon then approached the King.  Driven both by love for Antigone and the realization of his father's error, Haemon pled for leniency.  He reminded Creon that the sympathy of the city was swelling towards Antigone.  "Because no woman ever faced so unreasonable, so cruel a death for such a generous act ...  `should not her name be writ in gold?' they say."  But Creon remained firm; he would not give in to the clamor of the populace, nor to his son's brash siding with the woman.  The administration of punishment was a sovereign's right.  To this Haemon replied, "What rights—when you trample on the rights of God?"  Creon was outraged.  "You shall not marry her alive!"  he declared.  The impassioned son rushed from the scene, leaving the father "raving" to his "chosen friends"—those who would never dare to contradict the King. Meanwhile, Antigone was led to face her sentence—entombment, alive, in a "rock-hewn vault, with ritual food enough to clear the taint of murder from the City's name."  As she was led to the tomb, Antigone retained her courage—even when Creon entered and demanded that her interment proceed without further delay: Seal up the tomb. Let her choose a death at leisure, or Perhaps an underground life forlorn. We wash our hands of this girl Except to take her from the light. After Antigone was led away, the blind prophet Tiresias arrived with dire news that Creon's imperious edicts were wreaking havoc on the city:  dogs and crows were now profaning the Thebes' alters with "carrion from the poor unburied son of Oedipus," voiding the prayers of the inhabitants.  The prophet urged Creon to alter his edict, to remedy his blunders before it proved too late: To err is human, true, And only he is cursed who having sinned Will not repent, will not repair ... Then Tiresias chided his king that "where neither you nor gods above must meddle you have thrust your thumbs," and prophesied that "furies lie in wait for you, ready with the punishments you have engineered for others." Even though Tiresias' past prophecies had always proven true and "never stirred the city to false alarm," Creon haughtily dismissed the trusted old counselor:
Not even if Zeus's eagles come to fly away With carrion morsels to their master's throne Even such a threat of taint will not win his body burial. But after the seer had departed, Creon reconsidered.  It would be difficult for him to loosen his stance, he admitted, but "harder still to risk catastrophe through stubborn pride": How it goes against the grain To smother all one's heart's desire! I cannot fight with destiny.
Finally concluding that he had already lost his fight with destiny, Creon set off to undo his deeds—but too late.  He had held onto his pride till the last; slow to smother his heart's desire, now Creon's heart was about to be smothered in grief. After at last performing the burial rites for the remains of Polyneices, Creon hurried to the vault where Antigone had been entombed.  There, inside the walled-up sepulcher, he found his son holding Antigone's lifeless body as it hung from a linen noose around her neck.  Crying and cursing his father, Haemon, sword in hand, lunged as if to impale Creon.  But instead of striking his father, Haemon spat on him.  Then he fell on his own sword, driving its blade clear through his body.  The King's son, with Antigone's limp figure wrapped in his arms, then sank into death, " ...  corpse upon corpse ...  " In the palace, meanwhile, Creon's wife, Eurydice, upon hearing the news of Haemon's death, had also taken her own life, cursing Creon in her last breath:  "There at the altar, self-stabbed with a keen knife [she] invoked evil fortunes ...  upon the slayer of her son." Alas, the tragic cycle of events which Creon's relentless pride had put into motion had come full circle.  The King could now feel the reverence and bitter sadness Antigone had felt for her brother.  Before being led out of the city to a self-imposed exile, Creon slumped in agony.  The dead to be mourned were now his own ...  the rites of burial now his to perform. Commentary: Tragic drama originated in ancient Greece, and Sophocles was one of its most significant contributors.  Chronologically, Antigone is the third work in "The Theban Trilogy," or "Oedipus Plays."  While Oedipus may be considered the epitome of Greek tragic drama, Antigone, though smaller in scale, remains one of Sophocles' most revered and accessible works. Ironically, it is Creon, not Antigone, who is the true protagonist in this play.  It is he who propels the action along; it is he who holds power within his grasp; and it is he who possesses the "tragic flaw"—the three essential elements of the classic Greek "hero."  Additionally, because Antigone's death is incongruous with the typical tragic ending—a tragic heroine rarely would be spared a lonely and ignominious destiny through suicide—she can better be seen as the principal external force leading to Creon's downfall. Creon's tragic flaw—not unlike that of many contemporary leaders—is, of course, pride.  While his reasons for not burying the fallen Polyneices at first may seem justifiable, in the end it is only arrogance that prevents him from carrying out the burial rites—and saving Antigone. The extent to which pride governs Creon can finally be seen in his disregard of divine and natural law.  The immortals of ancient Greece were notorious for their exacting revenge when offended.  Only a foolishly smug and inexperienced mortal—like Creon—would dare risk provoking their wrath. Such pride, the Chorus in "Antigone" concludes, does not go unpunished: Where wisdom is, there happiness will crown A piety that nothing will corrode. But high and mighty words and ways Are flogged to humbleness, till age, Beaten to its knees, at last is wise.

    380 GRECO PERSIAN  WARS. Diodorus was probably following the history of Ephorus at this point, who in turn was presumably influenced by his teacher Isocrates—from whom there is the earliest reference to the supposed peace, in 380 BC. Even during the 4th century BC the idea of the treaty was controversial, and two authors from that period, Callisthenes and Theopompus, appear to reject its existence.It is possible that the Athenians had attempted to negotiate with the Persians previously. Plutarch suggests that in the aftermath of the victory at the Eurymedon, Artaxerxes had agreed a peace treaty with the Greeks, even naming Callias as the Athenian ambassador involved. However, as Plutarch admits, Callisthenes denied that such a peace was made at this point (ca. 466 BC).Herodotus also mentions, in passing, an Athenian embassy headed by Callias, which was sent to Susa to negotiate with Artaxerxes. This embassy included some Argive representatives and can probably be therefore dated to ca. 461 BC (after an alliance was agreed between Athens and Argos). This embassy may have been an attempt to reach some kind of peace agreement, and it has even been suggested that the failure of these hypothetical negotiations led to the Athenian decision to support the Egyptian revolt. The ancient sources therefore disagree as to whether there was an official peace or not, and if there was, when it was agreed.Opinion amongst modern historians is also split; for instance, Fine accepts the concept of the Peace of Callias, whereas Sealey effectively rejects it.Holland accepts that some kind of accommodation was made between Athens and Persia, but no actual treaty. Fine argues that Callisthenes's denial that a treaty was made after the Eurymedon does not preclude a peace being made at another point. Further, he suggests that Theopompus was actually referring to a treaty that had allegedly been negotiated with Persia in 423 BC. If these views are correct, it would remove one major obstacle to the acceptance of the treaty's existence. A further argument for the existence of the treaty is the sudden withdrawal of the Athenians from Cyprus in 449 BC, which Fine suggests makes most sense in the light of some kind of peace agreement. On the other hand, if there was indeed some kind of accommodation, Thucydides's failure to mention it is odd. In his digression on the pentekontaetia his aim is to explain the growth of Athenian power, and such a treaty, and the fact that the Delian allies were not released from their obligations after it, would have marked a major step in the Athenian ascendancy. Conversely, it has been suggested that certain passages elsewhere in Thucydides's history are best interpreted as referring to a peace agreement. There is thus no clear consensus amongst modern historians as to the treaty's existence.If the treaty did indeed exist, its terms were humiliating for Persia. The ancient sources that give details of the treaty are reasonably consistent in their description of the terms:All Greek cities of Asia were to 'live by their own laws' or 'be autonomous' (depending on translation). Persian satraps (and presumably their armies) were not to travel west of the Halys River (Isocrates) or closer than a day's journey on horseback to the Aegean Sea (Callisthenes) or closer than three days' journey on foot to the Aegean Sea (Ephorus and Diodorus). No Persian warship was to sail west of Phaselis (on the southern coast of Asia Minor), nor west of the Cyanaean rocks (probably at the eastern end of the Bosporus, on the north coast). If the terms were observed by the king and his generals, then the Athenians were not to send troops to lands ruled by Persia.  Aftermath and later conflictsTowards the end of the conflict with Persia, the process by which the Delian League became the Athenian Empire reached its conclusion. The allies of Athens were not released from their obligations to provide either money or ships, despite the cessation of hostilities. In Greece, the First Peloponnesian War between the power-blocs of Athens and Sparta, which had continued on/off since 460 BC, finally ended in 445 BC, with the agreement of a thirty year truce. However, the growing enmity between Sparta and Athens would lead, just 14 years later, into the outbreak of the Second Peloponnesian War. This disastrous conflict, which dragged on for 27 years, would eventually result in the utter destruction of Athenian power, the dismemberment of the Athenian empire, and the establishment of a Spartan hegemony over Greece. However, not just Athens suffered—the conflict would significantly weaken the whole of Greece.Repeatedly defeated in battle by the Greeks, and plagued by internal rebellions that hindered their ability to fight the Greeks, after 449 BC Artaxerxes I and his successors instead adopted a policy of divide-and-rule. Avoiding fighting the Greeks themselves, the Persians instead attempted to set Athens against Sparta, regularly bribing politicians to achieve their aims. In this way, they ensured that the Greeks remained distracted by internal conflicts, and were unable to turn their attentions to Persia. There was no open conflict between the Greeks and Persia until 396 BC, when the Spartan king Agesilaus briefly invaded Asia Minor; as Plutarch points out, the Greeks were far too busy overseeing the destruction of their own power to fight against the "barbarians".If the wars of the Delian League shifted the balance of power between Greece and Persia in favour of the Greeks, then the subsequent half-century of internecine conflict in Greece did much to restore the balance of power to Persia. The Persians entered the Peloponnesian War in 411 BC forming a mutual-defence pact with Sparta and combining their naval resources against Athens in exchange for sole Persian control of Ionia.

378    Second Athenian naval alliance

371    The Athenian league and sparta make peace.

370    Thebes forms the Arcadian league against Sparta to 362

    367 LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA. The Ancient Library of Alexandria.According to the earliest source of information, the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas, the library was initially organized by Demetrius of Phaleron,[5] a student of Aristotle, under the reign of Ptolemy Soter (ca.367 BC—ca.283 BC).Built in the Brucheion (Royal Quarter) in the style of Aristotle's Lyceum, adjacent to and in service of the Musaeum[6] (a Greek Temple or "House of Muses", hence the term "museum"), the library comprised a Peripatos walk, gardens, a room for shared dining, a reading room, lecture halls and meeting rooms. However, the exact layout is not known. This model's influence may still be seen today in the layout of university campuses. The library itself is known to have had an acquisitions department (possibly built near the stacks, or for utility closer to the harbour), and a cataloguing department. A hall contained shelves for the collections of scrolls (as the books were at this time on papyrus scrolls), known as bibliothekai . It was rumored that carved into the wall above the shelves, a famous inscription read: The place of the cure of the soul.The first known library of its kind to gather a serious collection of books from beyond its country's borders, the Library at Alexandria was charged with collecting all the world's knowledge. It did so through an aggressive and well-funded royal mandate involving trips to the book fairs of Rhodes and Athens[8] and a policy of pulling the books off every ship that came into port. They kept the original texts and made copies to send back to their owners. This detail is informed by the fact that Alexandria, because of its man-made bidirectional port between the mainland and the Pharos island, welcomed trade from the East and West, and soon found itself the international hub for trade, as well as the leading producer of papyrus and, soon enough, books.Other than collecting works from the past, the library was also home to a host of international scholars, well-patronized by the Ptolemaic dynasty with travel, lodging and stipends for their whole families. As a research institution, the library filled its stacks with new works in mathematics, astronomy, physics, natural sciences and other subjects. Its empirical standards applied in one of the first and certainly strongest homes for serious textual criticism.As the same text often existed in several different versions, comparative textual criticism was crucial for ensuring their veracity. Once ascertained, canonical copies would then be made for scholars, royalty and wealthy bibliophiles the world over, this commerce bringing income to the library.The editors at the Library of Alexandria are especially well known for their work on Homeric texts. The more famous editors generally also held the title of head librarian. These included, among others, Zenodotus (early 3rd century BC) Callimachus, (early 3rd century BC), the first bibliographer and developer of  the Pinakes — the first library catalog.  Apollonius of Rhodes (mid-3rd century BC)  Eratosthenes (late 3rd century BC)  Aristophanes of Byzantium (early 2nd century BC)  Aristarchus of Samothrace (late 2nd century BC).

366    First plebeian council elected in Rome
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360 Reign of Philip II of MacedoniaPhilip unitesGreece and Macedonia. During his reign he deliberately mints    far more coins than required for the immediate needs of  his kingdom, probably to support the campaign against. Persia that he was planning before his assassination.Amongthese coins is the golden stater celebrating his triumph in the chariot race in the Olympics in 356 BC - an  early example of the use of coins as propaganda. These staters are widely  circulated among the Celts of central and norther Europe whose earliest  coins are copies of Philip's
 
359    Phillip II king of Macedonia to 336. Artaxerxes III ruler of Persia to 336.

355    Third Scared war to 346 begins when Phocians seize Delphi and use the oracle funds to raise an army. Macedonia fights againt Athens. Alexander the Great is born.
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351    Persian invasion of Egypt fails


350     BCNormal rate of interest in Greece is 10% except for risky business According to Demosthenes 10% is the normal rate of interest for  run-of-the-mill business. For risky business such as lending for shipping  rates of between 20% and 30% are normal.
 

350    GREECE. ARISTOTELES.  (384-322 BCE)Aristotle's influence on philosophy cannot be compared to any other figure.  The rigorous, investigative, systematic, logical approach he brought to philosophical questions (in contrast to Plato's more lyrical, imaginative, mythical style) has shaped philosophy up to the present day At age seventeen, Aristotle was sent by his physician father from Macedonia to Athens to study under Plato at the Academy.  Later, he returned to the Macedonian court as a tutor for the thirteen-year-old Alexander the Great.  A philosopher, natural historian, and theorist, Aristotle soon founded his own school, the Lyceum in Athens.  The death of Alexander in 323, however, brought a significant change in the political climate, and Aristotle was forced into exile, dying a year later at the age of sixty-two.Aristotle's Ethics attempts to unearth what actions and characteristics contribute to the "good" of men, and are therefore virtuous.  Aristotle differentiates between the good of virtue and happiness and that of other sensations such as pleasure; the happiness of virtue is an end in itself, as opposed to pleasure, which depends on some conditional, outward cause or stimulus.However, virtue must be manifested in the way one lives.  In other words, it is not enough for one to know; one must act in the light of knowledge.It was Aristotle's belief that "highest virtue" is available to very few.  Men born into noble families are able to pursue more  virtuous qualities, such as wisdom and honor (hence the word "Aristocratic" has been used down through the centuries to denote nobility).  Men of lower birth (and all women),  all people, according to Aristotle, seek the highest good available to them.  Therefore, a slave can be a good slave by being faithful,  thereby obtaining the highest level of virtue available to him. , In Book I of Ethics, Aristotle establishes "good" as that which is good for its own sake:If ...  there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else, clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Aristotle then asks what sort of goods are good in themselves, and concludes:The account of the good will have to appear identical in them all, as that of whiteness is identical in snow and in white lead, salt, sugar.  But of honor, wisdom, and pleasure, just in respect of their goodness, the accounts are distinct and diverse.Therefore, the "good" of seemingly similar things is not identical.  Good "is not some common element answering to one idea ...  Even if there is some one good which is universally predicable of goods ...  clearly it could not be achieved by man."  The chief good, then, "is clearly something final.  Therefore, if there is only one final end, this will be what we are seeking, and if there are more than one, the most final of these will be what we are seeking."  It follows that "we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more final than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else."According to Aristotle, since the good of something is its purpose, or end, everything has a different good.  For man, happiness is the purpose of existence, the good in itself.  Yet, even in happiness, there are many degrees of good; .  The general run of men  say that [good] is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is, [men] differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise ...  To judge from the lives that men lead, most men, seem to identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure; which is the reason why they love the life of enjoyment. Aristotle vehemently argues against the popular view that happiness is locked up in "pleasure, honor and wealth."  Unlike pleasure, true happiness is chosen "always for itself and never for the sake of something else."  Happiness, then, is "something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action."Still, how one defines or identifies happiness varies from individual to individual, for "some identify happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with philosophical wisdom, accompanied or not with pleasure, or external property."  Aristotle himself defines happiness as "a sort of good life and good action" which involves these activities, which he calls "best activities."  In a few words, happiness is recognized as each individual's "best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world."Aristotle maintains that happiness, being a "good," is "God-given":  "[Happiness] comes as a result of virtue and some processes of virtue and training."  By giving himself over to instruction (the "grace of the Gods"), the virtuous man "will be happy throughout his life ...  for always he will be engaged in virtuous action and contemplation":No happy man can become miserable; for he will never do the acts that are hateful and mean to others.... The man who is truly good and wise ...  bears all the changes of life becomingly and always makes the best of circumstances.In Book II Aristotle argues that "most people ...  incline towards [pleasure] and are slaves of their pleasures."  For Aristotle, pleasure was more of a "false good," because it must always be accompanied by activity: Some things delight us when they are new, but later do so less, for the same reason; for at first the mind is in a state of stimulation and intensely active about them ...  but afterwards our activity is not of this kind, but has grown relaxed; for which reason the pleasure is also dulled.Aristotle urges the man seeking after virtue to cease pursuing pleasures as ends of themselves.  Instead, he praises virtuous action and a life of contemplation.  Unlike pleasures, these activities are not dulled by time and do not depend on outside stimulation.  They are permanent; and "the most valuable [behaviors] are the more durable."Book III focuses upon "moral virtue acquired by practice."  According to Aristotle, there are two types of virtue:  moral virtue and intellectual virtue.  Intellectual virtue "owes both its birth and its growth to teaching ...  " Moral virtue, on the other hand, "comes about as a result of innate habit."  Both good and bad habits can be fashioned, just as "men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly."  Similarly, "by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust."  Thus, "we are made perfect by practice."Aristotle recommends that an individual follow the middle path (the "Golden Mean") in regards to choosing action.  In the application of virtue to a situation, he argues, there can always be too much or too little.  For example, in battle, too much courage is heedless, while too little is cowardice. Regarding the Golden Mean, in book IV Aristotle addresses the nature of wealth, which he defines as "all the things whose value is measured by money."  To this definition Aristotle applies the concept of liberality, a middle ground "with regard to the giving and taking of wealth":Those who practice liberality handle wealth in moderation.  [Riches] will be used best by the man who has the virtue concerned with wealth; and this is the liberal man ...  The liberal are almost the most loved of all virtuous characters, since they are useful; and this depends on their giving."Moreover, the liberal man will "give rightly ...  to the right people, the right amounts, and at the right time."Not all people, however, strive toward liberality.  Many succumb either to wastefulness or miserliness.  Those who are wasteful "exceed in giving and not taking."  Those who suffer from miserliness, on the other hand, "fall short in giving, and exceed in taking," exercising a common "sordid love of gain."  However, unlike wastefulness, miserliness is incurable; wasteful men tend to change their ways after they squander all of their wealth, but miserly men carry a fatal disease.  Thus, men should seek liberality, the common-ground mean between the two extremes.Similarly, pride is a middle ground between vanity and excessive humility.  " ...  He who thinks himself worthy of great things, being unworthy of them, is vain"; such people "are fools and ignorant of themselves."  Conversely, "the man who thinks himself worthy of less that he is really worthy of is unduly humble ...  he robs himself of what he deserves."  Hence, Aristotle recommends the middle ground of pride where a man "thinks himself worthy of great things."  The proud man is one who lives up to his claims and is "a man of few deeds, but of great and ones":Now the proud man, since he deserves most, must be good in the highest degree; for the better man always deserves more, and the best man most.  Therefore the truly proud man must be good.  And greatness in every virtue would seem to be characteristic of a proud man. Aristotle concludes that "pride ...  seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues; for it makes [virtues] greater, and is not found without them.  Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it is impossible without  goodness of character."A necessary part of living a happy and virtuous life is to enjoy lasting friendships;  men experience relationships that are far less ideal.  Aristotle asserts that friendship is the glue which "holds states together ...  Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all."Aristotle identifies various kinds of friendship.  Friendship of utility is one of the lesser types, since "those who love for the sake of utility love for the sake of what is good for themselves, and those who love for the sake of pleasure do so for the sake of what is pleasant to themselves."  This sort of unequal relationship is undesirable; "such friendships are easily dissolved ...  for if the one party is no longer pleasant or useful the other ceases to love him."  It follows that "bad men will be friends for the sake of pleasure or utility, being in this respect like each other; but good men will be friends for their own sake, in virtue of their goodness.  These, then, are friends without qualification ...  Loving seems to be the characteristic virtue of friends, so that it is only those in whom this is found in due measure that are lasting friends, and only their friendship that endures."These characteristics between individuals should also be binding among nations and states, and between a ruler and his subjects.  The good ruler "confers benefits on his subjects ...  he cares for them with a view to their well-being, as a shepherd does for his sheep."  In a nation governed by tyrannical rule, however, "there is nothing common to ruler and ruled ...  since there is no justice ...  [Therefore], in democracies [friendship and justice] exist more fully; for where the citizens are equal they have much in common."Abiding in such Golden Mean courses of action, the virtuous man achieves and enjoys the good life, flourishing in virtue, contemplation, happiness and love.Perhaps the greatest problem with Aristotle's theories of human virtue and happiness is that not all people can achieve "great happiness," but only lower degrees of contentment. 


    
300- "Scientist and Prince of Philosophers"(384 - 322 B.C.)
        Early YearsIf there existed a "Renaissance Man" before the advent of the Renaissance, it was Aristotle - the great universal thinker who lived and wrote over 2,000 years ago, and whose ideas are still discussed, applied and debated today. Born in the town of Stagira, Macedonia, 384 B.C., he gained his interest in biology and the "practical sciences" from his father, Nicomachus, a prominent physician. At age seventeen, Aristotle was sent to Athens to study in the Academy of Plato, where he cultivated his formal philosophical thinking. He went on to enrich almost every branch of philosophy and science.  The young man remained in the school until shortly after Plato died - a total of twenty years. He loved Plato, but often disagreed with him.  Little is known of Aristotle's personality. He loved fine clothes, jewelry, wore his hair fashionably short, and had a stinging wit. He was quite thin, suffering from poor digestion. He spoke in a lucid, persuasive, conversant, though, at times, arrogant and impersonal style.Aristotle was driven throughout his life by one overpowering desire: to know the truth. Discovery of truth was his sole concern throughout his career.  In 342 B.C., the young scholar returned to Macedonia to become the private tutor of King Philip's thirteen-year-old son, later known as Alexander the Great. After seven years, when Alexander ascended to the throne, Aristotle returned again to Athens. There he opened his own gymnasium-school, called the Lyceum, funded by his Macedonian pupil-king. This was the first known state funding of research - and the last for many centuries to come. While Alexander furthered his military conquests, Aristotle spent twelve years teaching. He married a woman named Pythias, who became the mother of their two children, Pythias and Nicomachus.     Aristotle was no intellectual recluse; he loved his reputation as  a public figure, enjoying the thrill of discourse. To him, knowledge and teaching were inseparable.   The philosopher's ethical beliefs and background often contrasted sharply with the dictatorial ruling style of his former pupil Alexander. When the conqueror executed Aristotle's nephew on suspicion of treason, the more democratic Aristotle naturally felt threatened as well. But, ironically, when Alexander died in 323 B.C., Aristotle found himself, due to his association with Alexander, scorned by the Athenian "anti-Macedonians" who came into power. Indicted for "impiety," and recalling the grisly fate of Socrates seventy-six years earlier, Aristotle fled the city. He would not allow the Athenians to commit their "second crime against philosophy."  Aristotle died in exile just a few months after his departure from Athens.The Ideas of AristotleAristotle is credited with writing some 170 books, 47 of which still survive. But it is his enormous range of subjects that has amazed his students for over 2300 years. Mention a field of research, and Aristotle labored in it; pick an area of human endeavor, and he spoke about it. Aristotle created a veritable encyclopedia of the scientific knowledge of his day, including anatomy, physiology, zoology, geology, geography, physics, astronomy and almost every other Greek discipline. Most of these writings were never intended to be read by the public, but were kept for Aristotle's own use. Hence, his many separate treatises are rough reading compared to Plato's polished literature. His accumulated writings also encompass the discoveries of others, including his hired assistants - together with conclusions reached by his own observations.As the acknowledged leading expert in all fields of Hellenistic science, Aristotle was the premier philosopher. He researched and wrote on ethics, metaphysics, psychology, theology, politics, history, sports, economics, rhetoric, and aesthetics. His studies delved into education, diverse cultures, poetry, and comparative government.It was Aristotle's remarkable gift for defining terms and categorizing thoughts which enabled him to master so many fields. This capacity to organize within his mind led to perhaps his most important contribution -  the theory of logic. The philosopher always used common sense, never relying on the mystical or undefinable. Aristotle made mistakes, of course, but, in the vastness of his encyclopedia of thought he made remarkably few foolish assertions.  It is impossible to list all the ancient and medieval scholars who were influenced by Aristotle. His translated works reached most civilizations of Europe, becoming a major thrust both in the Western scientific surge and in Islamic philosophy. Averroes, the Arab scholar, labored to synthesize Aristotelian rationalism with Islamic theology. The Jewish thinker Maimonides achieved a similar synthesis for Judaism. Aristotle's thought also deeply affected Christian theology. The Summa Theologica, written by St. Thomas Aquinas, is perhaps the clearest and broadest reflection of this influence.  Unfortunately, as the centuries unfolded, Aristotle's categories and concepts became so entrenched as unquestionable "fact" that further intellectual inquiry was suppressed. The ever-learning philosopher would certainly have disapproved of such blind and unyielding adherence.Some of Aristotle's ideas seem reactionary by today's standards, though they merely reflected the popular beliefs of the time. He maintained that women were naturally inferior to men and that slavery, at least in its ideal state, was in accordance with natural law. But many other beliefs were strikingly modern in nature. He considered poverty, for instance, to be "the parent of revolution and crime." Speaking on education (though there was no public education in his time), Aristotle pronounced, "All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind are convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth."Some of his ideas can be vexing, cloaked in obscure and often "unscientific" language. Despite his great respect for observation and comparison, he was forced by the strict tenets of Greek rationalism to follow a more formal method: select a theme, expand and illustrate the argument, make clear transitions, then add some examples here and subtract a hypothesis there. Although slanted towards formal logic and idealism rather than the rigorous experimental proofs we expect today, his lectures must have been challenging and, at the same time, exciting and penetrating.A smattering of Aristotle's studies follows: Zoological Research - Primarily in two volumes (History of Animals and Dissections), Aristotle provides detailed descriptions and diagrams of the structures (internal and external) of many different mammals, fish, insects, birds and reptiles, including the anatomy of man. He describes mating rituals and means of locomotion and survival. He obtained much of his information from beekeepers, fishermen, and hunters. These gathered facts together with his own  observations laid the foundations of today's biological sciences.Logic - Aristotle's work became the basis of classical deductive logic. He perfected the syllogism, an argument "pattern" consisting of two premises, followed by a conclusion. The major premise states: "All X's are Y's," "No X's are Y's," or "Some X's are Y's." The minor premise identifies a more specific relationship, and the conclusion is predetermined by the form of these premises. One classic syllogism, for example, begins: "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal." In any valid syllogism, it is only by consistently offering true premises that the truth of the conclusion is guaranteed.Causes - Material objects change, and their changes are caused. Scientific knowledge requires explanations to state the causes of change. Aristotle sought a "Why...  ? /Because...  " unity (similar to logical reasoning) to all questions. He would ask: Because of what does one thing belong to another? "Because of what does noise (thunder) occur in the clouds?" and so on. A "World View" - Aristotle was certain that he could unite science and philosophy into one form of empirical, systematic research, to arrive at reality. Earth, air, fire and water made up his basic earth constituents, each having "primary" qualities. Earth is governed by circular motion "of necessity," and is the center of the universe... Practical Philosophy - Practical sciences are those whose purpose is not merely to spread truth, but also to affect action.  "Ethika" (ethics; "matters of character"), "arete" (virtue; the qualities of a good human being), and "eudaimonia" (doing; flourishing and succeeding in life) are each discussed in terms of individual motives, society's responsibilities and the idealist point of view. The Arts - One can judge or produce a work of art by "imitating" human existence. For example, dramatic tragedy has six elements - plot, character, language, thought, spectacle and song. Plot, as in real life, is the most important. And art is emotional and intellectual, as well as aesthetic.If you wished to learn about biology or physics you would no longer consult Aristotle's writings, but this is not true of Aristotle's more philosophical works. Though some details of his thinking have been superseded, his rational approach to learning is still alive and useful in current debate. He was an extraordinary man, probing for relationships among even the most common thingsFrom a portion of Parts of Animals, he reveals his personal relationship with the world around him: ...  About perishable substances - plants and animals - we are much better off with regard to knowledge, because we are brought up among them; for anyone willing to take enough trouble may learn much of the truth about each kind...  In everything natural there is something marvelous.thought to need friends most of all."Aristotle identifies various kinds of friendship.  Friendship of utility is one of the lesser types, since "those who love for the sake of utility love for the sake of what is good for themselves, and those who love for the sake of pleasure do so for the sake of what is pleasant to themselves."  This sort of unequal relationship is undesirable; "such friendships are easily dissolved ...  for if the one party is no longer pleasant or useful the other ceases to love him."  It follows that "bad men will be friends for the sake of pleasure or utility, being in this respect like each other; but good men will be friends for their own sake, in virtue of their goodness.  These, then, are friends without qualification ...  Loving seems to be the characteristic virtue of friends, so that it is only those in whom this is found in due measure that are lasting friends, and only their friendship that endures."

343    BC  Epicurus was born in Samos in 341 B.C.  He went to Athens to do his military service in 323—a time when Aristotle was at his peak as the most powerful philosophical and political force in the world.  With the free-thinking philosophies of Aristotle bringing an end to Stoic prominence, society's strict, moralistic structure was slowly crumbling. After ten years of study, Epicurus presented himself as a teacher.  His first school was in Mytiline, reputed to be a secluded and spacious home and garden set far away from the city, where the students met as friends with their mentor, who taught: Of everything that wisdom lays in store for a lifetime of happiness, the possession of friendship is by far the most important. Epicurus died at the age of 70 in 271 after a long and painful illness—a disease which certainly seemed to have influenced his philosophical outlook and passion for the value of all life.  Lucretius paid him homage: He was a god, yes, a god, this man who first discovered the way of life now called wisdom; the man who through his art enabled us to escape from such holocausts and such a dark night, and who set our lives on such a calm and luminous course.Text Overview: Canons of Epicurean thought"
        Epicurus uses many colorful words," said Cicero, "but he rarely takes the trouble to be consistent."  While Cicero's words may be true, and it has been noted by his own followers that Epicurus spoke much more than he wrote, Lucretius' works contain most of his fundamental convictions, or canons.  The first of these is Passion, or, experiencing pleasure and pain.  Epicurus held that human beings experience both pleasure and pain—as do dogs, turtles, trees, plants, and every other living thing; these all exist as passionate entities.  Perhaps an example taken from the works of Lucretius can clarify this philosophy: But plain matter of fact clearly proves that all things grow up in the air and are fed out of the earth; unless the season at the propitious period send such abundant showers that the trees reel beneath the soaking storms of rain, and unless the sun on its part foster them and supply heat; corn and living trees could not grow.In other words, all things in nature respond to one another.The second idea, or "canon," is Sensation.  Similar to the first canon, sensation denotes being aware of the immediate evidence of the senses—seeing, hearing and feeling the world—and avoiding the temptation to reduce incoming sensory input to a system of reason, as the religious Stoics, philosophical Platoists, and other thinkers had.  Rather, life's pleasures should be truly experienced—sensed . The third canon is Memory, or as the Epicureans preferred, Prenotion.  Prenotion is the idea that any question, if it is to be asked and understood, implies that we have, in advance, some notion of the thing involved.  That is, contained within language itself is a basic understanding of the meaning of words.  Therefore, if we can ask a question about a thing, then we are well on the way toward understanding the meaning of the thing.  A person might ask, for instance, "Do horses exist?"  Well, the average person has probably seen or heard of horses, so, yes, they exist.  But to a person who has never seen a horse, or heard one mentioned, horses don't exist; therefore, he or she possibly cannot even inquire about their existence.  This concept extends even to the unseen forces around us:All nature then, as it exists by itself is founded on two things; there are bodies and there is void in which these bodies are placed and through which they move about.  In this way, then, must the blasts of wind move on, and when they, like a mighty stream have borne down in any direction, they pull things before them, with repeated assaults, sometimes catch them up in a curling eddy and carry them away ...Resisting the Stoics' many rules of conduct and their belief that the Will of the Gods reigns supreme, Lucretius' Epicurean philosophy is based on free thinking.  Far from advancing a hedonistic idealogy, the Epicureans maintained that there is no social "Golden Rule"; rather, each individual possesses his own sense of morality and ethics.  The Epicureans simply wanted to sit with friends and discuss the world, living out their lives while enjoying all its native beauty.  The world was too tied to traditional schools of thought, they insisted; too many of the popular thinkers of the day were consumed with ordering the world.  Lucretius taught instead that beauty was inherent in the disarray of the world.  Nature is not an ordered, rational science, but instead the exact opposite.  Seeds are spread at random, not by some predetermined order.  Plants grow without so-called "logic" or "reason."  He taught his students to love the earth and observe the wonders of nature.  "Survey the running water," is how he might address his student-friends, "how it erodes the river bank.  The wind, to a lesser degree, also weathers the rocks and tree trunks.  Observe the plants how they wither and die if deprived of water or sunlight—surely they have feelings.  And watch how animals respond to danger.  Humans must learn from these, nature's objects." Atomic physics of epicurean thought. The Epicurean love of nature brings to mind two of its key philosophical concepts:  the concept of atoms and the concept of void.  The "atom"—while somewhat related to the notion of atoms in modern-day physics—to the Epicureans was never intended to take on a scientific meaning.  Rather, the atoms of Epicurus are determined by their individual and separate function.  For example, atoms that make up a human being are not the same type as those that comprise a plant or a dog.  According to Epicurus, a person is composed of "me" atoms, while a plant is composed of "plant" atoms.  Void, on the other hand, is basically all space that is not occupied by atoms:If things came from nothing, any kind might be born of any thing. Men, for instance, might rise out of the sea ...Again wherever there is empty space we call void, there body is not; wherever again body maintains itself, there empty void no longer exists....  Clothes hung up on a shore which waves break upon become moist, and then get dry if spread out.Yet it has not been seen in which way the moisture of water has sunk into them nor again in what way this has been dispelled by heat.The moisture therefore is dispersed into small particles which the eyes are quite unable to see....  Nature therefore works by unseen bodies. It should be noted that Lucretius and Epicurus did not develop the idea of atoms—Democritus is given credit for that.  Instead, they expounded upon Democritus' theory by figuring chance into the movement of atoms. Religion in Epicurean thought.  The followers of Epicureanism engendered many foes in the ancient world; this was primarily due to its preference to pre-Socratic philosophy and its disinterest in the more recent gods Zeus and Apollo of Hellenistic Greece and Rome.  Epicurus espoused a return to an earlier Greek way of life, one espousing an unadorned belief and dependence on man and nature.The Stoics, with their rigid, disciplined and hierarchial society, were disgusted by the Epicureans and wrongly accused them self-indulgence and laziness.  Stinging insults soon catapulted from both sides. In the final analysis, though, the Epicureans just wanted to be left alone.  Though repeatedly invited to defend their positions at the famed Porch in Athens, Epicurus and his disciple Lucretius chose to remain, for the most part, in the solitude and silence of their gardens.  Simplicity and personal responsibility were the watchwords: This terror then and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and the law of nature; the warp of whose design we shall begin with this first principle: nothing is ever gotten out of nothing by divine power. Fear ...  holds so in check all mortals, because they see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in no way understand, believing them therefore to be done by power divine ... both the elements out of which everything can be produced and the manner in which all things are done can be done without the hand of the gods. Only the devoted poet Lucretius' works are left to herald Epicurean philosophy.  To observe the world, to remain a passionate lover of good things, and to be at peace with what cannot be changed were its ancient tenets.  To feel, to understand purely, to gain an empathy for all things—these entailed Lucretius' simple ambitions: Nor does my mind fail to perceive how hard it is to make clear in Latin verses the dark discoveries of the Greeks. But your worth and the looked-for pleasure of sweet friendship prompt me to undergo any labour and lead me on to watch the clear nights ... seeking by what words and in what verseI may be able in the end to shed on your mind so clear a lightthat you can thoroughly scan hidden things

    300     - Hippocrates of Kos (/h?'p?kr??ti?z/; Greek: ?pp????t??; Hippokrátes; c. 460 – c. 370 BC) also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician of the Age of Pericles (Classical Greece), and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is referred to as the "Father of Western Medicine"[1][2][3] in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic School of Medicine. This intellectual school revolutionized medicine in ancient Greece, establishing it as a discipline distinct from other fields with which it had traditionally been associated (theurgy and philosophy), thus establishing medicine as a profession.[4][5]

However, the achievements of the writers of the Corpus, the practitioners of Hippocratic medicine, and the actions of Hippocrates himself were often commingled; thus very little is known about what Hippocrates actually thought, wrote, and did. Hippocrates is commonly portrayed as the paragon of the ancient physician, and credited with coining the Hippocratic Oath, still relevant and in use today. He is also credited with greatly advancing the systematic study of clinical medicine, summing up the medical knowledge of previous schools, and prescribing practices for physicians through the Hippocratic Corpus and other works. Asklepieion on Kos
Historians agree that Hippocrates was born around the year 460 BC on the Greek island of Kos; other biographical information, however, is likely to be untrue.

Soranus of Ephesus, a 2nd-century Greek gynecologist,[8] was Hippocrates' first biographer and is the source of most personal information about him. Later biographies are in the Suda of the 10th century AD, and in the works of John Tzetzes, which date from the 12th century AD.[4][9] Hippocrates is mentioned in passing in the writings of two contemporaries: Plato, in "Protagoras" and "Phaedrus",[10] and, Aristotle's "Politics", which date from the 4th century BC.[11]

Soranus wrote that Hippocrates' father was Heraclides, a physician, and his mother was Praxitela, daughter of Tizane. The two sons of Hippocrates, Thessalus and Draco, and his son-in-law, Polybus, were his students. According to Galen, a later physician, Polybus was Hippocrates' true successor, while Thessalus and Draco each had a son named Hippocrates (Hippocrates III and IV).

Soranus said that Hippocrates learned medicine from his father and grandfather (Hippocrates I), and studied other subjects with Democritus and Gorgias. Hippocrates was probably trained at the asklepieion of Kos, and took lessons from the Thracian physician Herodicus of Selymbria. Plato mentions Hippocrates in two of his dialogues: in Protagoras, Plato describes Hippocrates as "Hippocrates of Kos, the Asclepiad"; while in Phaedrus, Plato suggests that "Hippocrates the Asclepiad" thought that a complete knowledge of the nature of the body was necessary for medicine.[16] Hippocrates taught and practiced medicine throughout his life, traveling at least as far as Thessaly, Thrace, and the Sea of Marmara.[13] Several different accounts of his death exist. He died, probably in Larissa, at the age of 83, 85 or 90, though some say he lived to be well over 100.[

Hippocratic theory  " It is thus with regard divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause from the originates like other affections. Men regard its nature and cause as divine from ignorance and wonder... " — Hippocrates, On the Sacred Disease. Hippocrates is credited with being the first person to believe that diseases were caused naturally, not because of superstition and gods. Hippocrates was credited by the disciples of Pythagoras of allying philosophy and medicine.[17] He separated the discipline of medicine from religion, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits. Indeed there is not a single mention of a mystical illness in the entirety of the Hippocratic Corpus. However, Hippocrates did work with many convictions that were based on what is now known to be incorrect anatomy and physiology, such as Humorism.

Ancient Greek schools of medicine were split (into the Knidian and Koan) on how to deal with disease. The Knidian school of medicine focused on diagnosis. Medicine at the time of Hippocrates knew almost nothing of human anatomy and physiology because of the Greek taboo forbidding the dissection of humans. The Knidian school consequently failed to distinguish when one disease caused many possible series of symptoms.[21] The Hippocratic school or Koan school achieved greater success by applying general diagnoses and passive treatments. Its focus was on patient care and prognosis, not diagnosis. It could effectively treat diseases and allowed for a great development in clinical practice.

Hippocratic medicine and its philosophy are far removed from that of modern medicine. Now, the physician focuses on specific diagnosis and specialized treatment, both of which were espoused by the Knidian school. This shift in medical thought since Hippocrates' day has caused serious criticism over the past two millennia, with the passivity of Hippocratic treatment being the subject of particularly strong denunciations; for example, the French doctor M. S. Houdart called the Hippocratic treatment a "meditation upon death".[24]

Crisis

Another important concept in Hippocratic medicine was that of a crisis, a point in the progression of disease at which either the illness would begin to triumph and the patient would succumb to death, or the opposite would occur and natural processes would make the patient recover. After a crisis, a relapse might follow, and then another deciding crisis. According to this doctrine, crises tend to occur on critical days, which were supposed to be a fixed time after the contraction of a disease. If a crisis occurred on a day far from a critical day, a relapse might be expected. Galen believed that this idea originated with Hippocrates, though it is possible that it predated him.


 


 Illustration of a Hippocratic bench, date unknown
Hippocratic medicine was humble and passive. The therapeutic approach was based on "the healing power of nature" ("vis medicatrix naturae" in Latin). According to this doctrine, the body contains within itself the power to re-balance the four humours and heal itself (physis).[26] Hippocratic therapy focused on simply easing this natural process. To this end, Hippocrates believed "rest and immobilization [were] of capital importance."[27] In general, the Hippocratic medicine was very kind to the patient; treatment was gentle, and emphasized keeping the patient clean and sterile. For example, only clean water or wine were ever used on wounds, though "dry" treatment was preferable. Soothing balms were sometimes employed.[28]

Hippocrates was reluctant to administer drugs and engage in specialized treatment that might prove to be wrongly chosen; generalized therapy followed a generalized diagnosis. Generalized treatments he prescribed include fasting and the consumption of apple cider vinegar. Hippocrates once said that "to eat when you are sick, is to feed your sickness." However, potent drugs were used on certain occasions.[30] This passive approach was very successful in treating relatively simple ailments such as broken bones which required traction to stretch the skeletal system and relieve pressure on the injured area. The Hippocratic bench and other devices were used to this end.

One of the strengths of Hippocratic medicine was its emphasis on prognosis. At Hippocrates' time, medicinal therapy was quite immature, and often the best thing that physicians could do was to evaluate an illness and predict its likely progression based upon data collected in detailed case histories.

Professionalism


 


 A number of ancient Greek surgical tools. On the left is a trephine; on the right, a set of scalpels. Hippocratic medicine made good use of these tools.[32]
Hippocratic medicine was notable for its strict professionalism, discipline, and rigorous practice.[33] The Hippocratic work On the Physician recommends that physicians always be well-kempt, honest, calm, understanding, and serious. The Hippocratic physician paid careful attention to all aspects of his practice: he followed detailed specifications for, "lighting, personnel, instruments, positioning of the patient, and techniques of bandaging and splinting" in the ancient operating room.[34] He even kept his fingernails to a precise length.[35]

The Hippocratic School gave importance to the clinical doctrines of observation and documentation. These doctrines dictate that physicians record their findings and their medicinal methods in a very clear and objective manner, so that these records may be passed down and employed by other physicians.[13] Hippocrates made careful, regular note of many symptoms including complexion, pulse, fever, pains, movement, and excretions.[31] He is said to have measured a patient's pulse when taking a case history to discover whether the patient was lying.[36] Hippocrates extended clinical observations into family history and environment.[37] "To him medicine owes the art of clinical inspection and observation."[20] For this reason, he may more properly be termed as the "Father of Medicine".[38]

Direct contributions to medicine[edit]


 


 Clubbing of fingers in a patient with Eisenmenger's syndrome;  Hippocrates and his followers were first to describe many diseases and medical conditions. He is given credit for the first description of clubbing of the fingers, an important diagnostic sign in chronic lung disease, lung cancer and cyanotic heart disease. For this reason, clubbed fingers are sometimes referred to as "Hippocratic fingers".[39] Hippocrates was also the first physician to describe Hippocratic face in Prognosis. Shakespeare famously alludes to this description when writing of Falstaff's death in Act II, Scene iii. of Henry V.[40][41]

Hippocrates began to categorize illnesses as acute, chronic, endemic and epidemic, and use terms such as, "exacerbation, relapse, resolution, crisis, paroxysm, peak, and convalescence."[31][42] Another of Hippocrates' major contributions may be found in his descriptions of the symptomatology, physical findings, surgical treatment and prognosis of thoracic empyema, i.e. suppuration of the lining of the chest cavity. His teachings remain relevant to present-day students of pulmonary medicine and surgery.[43] Hippocrates was the first documented chest surgeon and his findings and techniques, while crude, such as the use of lead pipes to drain chest wall abscess, are still valid.[43]

The Hippocratic school of medicine described well the ailments of the human rectum and the treatment thereof, despite the school's poor theory of medicine. Hemorrhoids, for instance, though believed to be caused by an excess of bile and phlegm, were treated by Hippocratic physicians in relatively advanced ways. Cautery and excision are described in the Hippocratic Corpus, in addition to the preferred methods: ligating the hemorrhoids and drying them with a hot iron. Other treatments such as applying various salves are suggested as well. Today, "treatment [for hemorrhoids] still includes burning, strangling, and excising."[44] Also, some of the fundamental concepts of proctoscopy outlined in the Corpus are still in use.[44][45] For example, the uses of the rectal speculum, a common medical device, are discussed in the Hippocratic Corpus.[45] This constitutes the earliest recorded reference to endoscopy.[48][49] Hippocrates often used lifestyle modifications such as diet and exercise to treat diseases such as diabetes, what is today called lifestyle medicine. He is often quoted with "Let food be your medicine, and medicine be your food" and "Walking is man's best medicine",[50] however the quote "Let food be your medicine" is an apparent misquotation and its exact origin remains unknown.

Hippocratic Corpus


 A 12th-century Byzantine manuscript of the Oath in the form of a cross
The Hippocratic Corpus (Latin: Corpus Hippocraticum) is a collection of around seventy early medical works from Alexandrian Greece.[52] It is written in Ionic Greek. The question of whether Hippocrates himself was the author of the corpus has not been conclusively answered,[53] but the volumes were probably produced by his students and followers.[54] Because of the variety of subjects, writing styles and apparent date of construction, scholars believe Hippocratic Corpus could not have been written by one person (Ermerins numbers the authors at nineteen).[30] The corpus was attributed to Hippocrates in antiquity, and its teaching generally followed his principles; thus it came to be known by his name. It might be the remains of a library of Kos, or a collection compiled in the 3rd century BC in Alexandria.

The Hippocratic Corpus contains textbooks, lectures, research, notes and philosophical essays on various subjects in medicine, in no particular order.[ These works were written for different audiences, both specialists and laymen, and were sometimes written from opposing view points; significant contradictions can be found between works in the Corpus.[56] Notable among the treatises of the Corpus are The Hippocratic Oath; The Book of Prognostics; On Regimen in Acute Diseases; Aphorisms; On Airs, Waters and Places; Instruments of Reduction; On The Sacred Disease; etc.[30]

Hippocratic Oath

The Hippocratic Oath, a seminal document on the ethics of medical practice, was attributed to Hippocrates in antiquity although new information shows it may have been written after his death. This is probably the most famous document of the Hippocratic Corpus. Recently the authenticity of the document's author has come under scrutiny. While the Oath is rarely used in its original form today, it serves as a foundation for other, similar oaths and laws that define good medical practice and morals. Such derivatives are regularly taken today by medical graduates about to enter medical practice.
 Mural painting showing Galen and Hippocrates. 12th century; Anagni, Italy
Hippocrates is widely considered to be the "Father of Medicine".[54] His contributions revolutionized the practice of medicine; but after his death the advancement stalled.[60] So revered was Hippocrates that his teachings were largely taken as too great to be improved upon and no significant advancements of his methods were made for a long time. The centuries after Hippocrates' death were marked as much by retrograde movement as by further advancement. For instance, "after the Hippocratic period, the practice of taking clinical case-histories died out," according to Fielding Garrison. Medical care reached a decadent stage.

After Hippocrates, the next significant physician was Galen, a Greek who lived from AD 129 to AD 200. Galen perpetuated Hippocratic medicine, moving both forward and backward.[62] In the Middle Ages, the Islamic world adopted Hippocratic methods and developed new medical technologies.[63] After the European Renaissance, Hippocratic methods were revived in western Europe and even further expanded in the 19th century. Notable among those who employed Hippocrates' rigorous clinical techniques were Thomas Sydenham, William Heberden, Jean-Martin Charcot and William Osler. Henri Huchard, a French physician, said that these revivals make up "the whole history of internal medicine."[64]

The most severe form of hair loss and baldness is called the Hippocratic form.[65]

Image[edit]


 


 A conventionalized image in a Roman "portrait" bust (19th-century engraving)
According to Aristotle's testimony, Hippocrates was known as "The Great Hippocrates".[66] Concerning his disposition, Hippocrates was first portrayed as a "kind, dignified, old country doctor" and later as "stern and forbidding".[14] He is certainly considered wise, of very great intellect and especially as very practical. Francis Adams describes him as "strictly the physician of experience and common sense."[21]

His image as the wise, old doctor is reinforced by busts of him, which wear large beards on a wrinkled face. Many physicians of the time wore their hair in the style of Jove and Asklepius. Accordingly, the busts of Hippocrates that have been found could be only altered versions of portraits of these deities.[60] Hippocrates and the beliefs that he embodied are considered medical ideals. Fielding Garrison, an authority on medical history, stated, "He is, above all, the exemplar of that flexible, critical, well-poised attitude of mind, ever on the lookout for sources of error, which is the very essence of the scientific spirit."[64] "His figure... stands for all time as that of the ideal physician," according to A Short History of Medicine, inspiring the medical profession since his death.[67]

Genealogy[edit]

Hippocrates' legendary genealogy traces his paternal heritage directly to Asklepius and his maternal ancestry to Heracles.[30] According to Tzetzes's Chiliades, the ahnentafel of Hippocrates II is:[68]


 


 An image of Hippocrates on the floor of the Asclepieion of Kos, with Asklepius in the middle
1. Hippocrates II. "The Father of Medicine" 2. Heraclides 4. Hippocrates I. 8. Gnosidicus 16. Nebrus 32. Sostratus III.
 64. Theodorus II. 128. Sostratus, II. 256. Thedorus 512. Cleomyttades 1024. Crisamis 2048. Dardanus 4096. Sostratu  8192. Hippolochu  16384. Podaliriu  32768. Asklepius

 Statue of Hippocrates in front of the Mayne Medical School in Brisbane
Some clinical symptoms and signs have been named after Hippocrates as he is believed to be the first person to describe those. Hippocratic face is the change produced in the countenance by death, or long sickness, excessive evacuations, excessive hunger, and the like. Clubbing, a deformity of the fingers and fingernails, is also known as Hippocratic fingers. Hippocratic succussion is the internal splashing noise of hydropneumothorax or pyopneumothorax. Hippocratic bench (a device which uses tension to aid in setting bones) and Hippocratic cap-shaped bandage are two devices named after Hippocrates.[69] Hippocratic Corpus and Hippocratic Oath are also his namesakes. The drink hypocras is also believed to be invented by Hippocrates. Risus sardonicus, a sustained spasming of the face muscles may also be termed the Hippocratic Smile.

In the modern age, a lunar crater has been named Hippocrates. The Hippocratic Museum, a museum on the Greek island of Kos is dedicated to him. The Hippocrates Project is a program of the New York University Medical Center to enhance education through use of technology. Project Hippocrates (an acronym of "HIgh PerfOrmance Computing for Robot-AssisTEd Surgery") is an effort of the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science and Shadyside Medical Center, "to develop advanced planning, simulation, and execution technologies for the next generation of computer-assisted surgical robots."[70] Both the Canadian Hippocratic Registry and American Hippocratic Registry are organizations of physicians who uphold the principles of the original Hippocratic Oath as inviolable through changing social times.


    300    - ASIA- This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.  Mozi (Chinese: ??; pinyin: Mòzi; Wade–Giles: Mo Tzu, Lat. as Micius, ca. 470 BC – ca. 391 BC), original name Mo Di (??), was a Chinese philosopher during the Hundred Schools of Thought period (early Warring States period). Born in Tengzhou, Shandong Province, China, he founded the school of Mohism that argued strongly against Confucianism and Daoism. His philosophy emphasized self-restraint, self-reflection and authenticity rather than obedience to ritual. During the Warring States period, Mohism was actively developed and practiced in many states but fell out of favour when the legalist Qin Dynasty came to power. During that period, many Mohist classics were ruined when emperor Qin Shi Huang carried out the burning of books and burying of scholars. The importance of Mohism further declined when Confucianism became the dominant school of thought during the Han Dynasty, until mostly disappearing by the middle of the Western Han Dynasty.[1]

Mozi is known by children throughout Chinese culture by way of the Thousand Character Classic, which records that he was saddened when he saw dyeing of pure white silk, which embodied his conception of austerity (simplicity, chastity). For the modern juvenile audience of Chinese speakers the image of his school and its founder was popularized by the animated TV series The Legend of Qin.



Contents  [show]


Name[edit]



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There has been considerable debate about the actual name of Mozi, not less than three concepts of its origin exist as of the date.

1. Traditionally, Mozi was said to have inherited the surname "Mo" from his supposed ancestor, the Lord of Guzhu (Chinese: ???; pinyin: Guzhú Jun), himself descended from Shennong, the legendary emperor. The descendants of the Lord of Guzhu had the clan name "Motai" (Chinese: ??; pinyin: Mòtai), which later was shortened to "Mo". However, modern scholarship suggests that "Mo" was not, in fact, the clan name of Mozi, as this clan name/family name is not encountered during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods.

2. As "Mo" came to be the name of the Mohist school itself, it might have derived from the name of a criminal punishment (tattooing of the forehead of criminals; "mo" literally means "ink"), usually inflicted on slaves. It signals the Mohists' identification with the lowest of common people. The actual ancestral name and clan name of Mozi is not known. It may be that, because he was likely born into the lower classes, he did not have an ancestral or clan name. During Chinese antiquity, the vast majority of the Chinese people who were not related to aristocratic families did not possess ancestral and clan names.

3. A plausible source of Mozi's name may have been the philosopher's skin complexion itself, which is referred to as "dark" (lit. "black") in the text. "Mozi was going north to Qi and met a fortune teller on the way. The fortune teller told him: "God kills the black dragon in the north today. Now, your complexion is dark. You must not go north."[2]

Life[edit]


 


 Mozi was born in Lu (seen toward the north, with a small coastline along the Yellow Sea) and spent some time as a government minister in Song (a landlocked state to the south of Lu)
Most historians believe that Mozi was a member of the lower artisan class who managed to climb his way to an official post. It is known, however, that his parents were not affectionate towards him and showed him very little love. Mozi was a native of the State of Lu (Today's Tengzhou, Shandong Province), although for a time, he served as a minister in the State of Song.[3] Like Confucius, Mozi was known to have maintained a school for those who desired to become officials serving in the different ruling courts of the Warring States.[4]

Mozi was a carpenter and was extremely skilled in creating devices, designing everything from mechanical birds to wheeled, mobile "cloud ladders" used to besiege city walls (see Lu Ban). Though he did not hold a high official position, Mozi was sought out by various rulers as an expert on fortification. He was schooled in Confucianism in his early years, but he viewed Confucianism as being too fatalistic and emphasizing too much on elaborate celebrations and funerals which he felt were detrimental to the livelihood and productivity of common people. He managed to attract a large following during his lifetime which rivaled that of Confucius. His followers—mostly technicians and craftspeople—were organized in a disciplined order that studied both Mozi's philosophical and technical writings.

According to some accounts of the popular understanding of Mozi at the time, he had been hailed by many as the greatest hero to come from Henan. His passion was said to be for the good of the people, without concern for personal gain or even his own life or death. His tireless contribution to society was praised by many, including Confucius' disciple Mencius. Mencius wrote in Jinxin (Chinese: ????; pinyin: Mengzi Jinxin) that Mozi believed in love for all mankind. As long as something benefits mankind, Mozi will pursue it even if it means hurting his head or his feet. Zhang Tai Yan said that in terms of moral virtue, even Confucius and Laozi cannot compare to Mozi.

Mozi travelled from one crisis zone to another throughout the ravaged landscape of the Warring States, trying to dissuade rulers from their plans of conquest. According to the chapter "Gongshu" in Mozi, he once walked for ten days to the state of Chu in order to forestall an attack on the state of Song. At the Chu court, Mozi engaged in nine simulated war games with Gongshu Ban, the chief military strategist of Chu, and overturned each one of his stratagems. When Gongshu Ban threatened him with death, Mozi informed the king that his disciples had already trained the soldiers of Song in his fortification methods, so it would be useless to kill him. The Chu king was forced to call off the war. On the way back, however, the soldiers of Song, not recognizing him, would not allow Mozi to enter their city, and he had to spend a night freezing in the rain. After this episode, he also stopped the state of Qi from attacking the state of Lu. He taught that defense of a city does not depend only on fortification, weaponry and food supply; it is also important to keep talented people close by and to put trust in them.

Though Mozi's school of thought faded into obscurity after the Warring States period, he was studied again two millennia after his death. As almost nobody had copied the texts during the last two thousand years, there was much difficulty in deciphering them. As a result, Mohism became the most difficult philosophy within the Hundred Schools of Thoughts to study. Both the Republican revolutionaries of 1911 and the Communists saw in him a surprisingly modern thinker who was stifled early in Chinese history.

Philosophy[edit]


 


 Between Mozi's background as an engineer and his pacifist leanings, the Mohists became experts at building fortifications and sieges
Mozi's moral teachings emphasized self-reflection and authenticity rather than obedience to ritual. He observed that we often learn about the world through adversity ("Embracing Scholars" in Mozi). By reflecting on one's own successes and failures, one attains true self-knowledge rather than mere conformity to ritual ("Refining Self" in Mozi). Mozi exhorted people to lead a life of asceticism and self-restraint, renouncing both material and spiritual extravagance.

Like Confucius, Mozi idealized the Xia Dynasty and the ancients of Chinese mythology, but he criticized the Confucian belief that modern life should be patterned on the ways of the ancients. After all, he pointed out, what we think of as "ancient" was actually innovative in its time, and thus should not be used to hinder present-day innovation ("Against Confucianism, Part 3" in the Mozi). Though Mozi did not believe that history necessarily progresses, as did Han Fei Zi, he shared the latter's critique of fate (?, mìng). Mozi believed that people were capable of changing their circumstances and directing their own lives. They could do this by applying their senses to observing the world, judging objects and events by their causes, their functions, and their historical bases. ("Against Fate, Part 3") This was the "three-prong method" Mozi recommended for testing the truth or falsehood of statements. His students later expanded on this to form the School of Names.

Mozi tried to replace what he considered to be the long-entrenched Chinese over-attachment to family and clan structures with the concept of "impartial caring" or "universal love" (??, jian ài). In this, he argued directly against Confucians who had argued that it was natural and correct for people to care about different people in different degrees. Mozi, in contrast, argued that people in principle should care for all people equally, a notion that philosophers in other schools found absurd, as they interpreted this notion as implying no special amount of care or duty towards one's parents and family.

Overlooked by those critics, however, is a passage in the chapter on "Self-Cultivation" which states, "When people near-by are not befriended, there is no use endeavoring to attract those at a distance." This point is also precisely articulated by a Mohist in a debate with Mencius (in the Mencius), where the Mohist argues in relation to carrying out universal love, that "We begin with what is near." Also, in the first chapter of the writings of Mozi on universal love, Mozi argues that the best way of being filial to one's parents is to be filial to the parents of others. The foundational principle is that benevolence, as well as malevolence, is requited, and that one will be treated by others as one treats others. Mozi quotes a popular passage from the Book of Odes to bring home this point: "When one throws to me a peach, I return to him a plum." One's parents will be treated by others as one treats the parents of others. In pursuing this line of argument, Mozi was directly appealing to the idea of enlightened self-interest in social relations. Also of note is the fact that Mozi differentiated between "intention" and "actuality," thereby placing a central importance on the will to love, even though in practice it may very well be impossible to bring benefit to everyone.

In addition, Mozi argued that benevolence comes to human beings "as naturally as fire turns upward or water turns downward", provided that persons in positions of authority illustrate benevolence in their own lives. In differentiating between the ideas of "universal" (jian) and "differential" (bie), Mozi said that "universal" comes from righteousness while "differential" entails human effort. Furthermore, Mozi's basic argument concerning universal love asserts that universal love is supremely practical, and this argument was directed against those who objected that such love could not be put into practice.

Mozi also held a belief in the power of ghosts and spirits, although he is often thought to have only worshipped them pragmatically. In fact, in his discussion on ghosts and spirits, he remarks that even if they did not exist, communal gatherings for the sake of making sacrificial offering would play a role in strengthening social bonds. Furthermore, for Mozi the will of Heaven (?, tian) was that people should love one another, and that mutual love by all would bring benefit to all. Therefore, it was in everyone's interest that they love others "as they love themselves." Heaven should be respected because failing to do so would subject one to punishment. For Mozi, Heaven was not the "amoral", mystical nature of the Taoists. Rather, it was a benevolent, moral force that rewarded good and punished evil. Similar in some ways to the Abrahamic religions, Mozi believed that all living things live in a realm ruled by Heaven, and Heaven has a will which is independent from and higher than the will of man. Thus he writes that "Universal love is the Way of Heaven," since "Heaven nourishes and sustains all life without regard to status." ("Laws and Customs" in Mozi) Mozi's ideal of government, which advocated a meritocracy based on talent rather than background, also followed his idea of Heaven.

Ethics[edit]

Main article: Mohist consequentialism


What is the purpose of houses? It is to protect us from the wind and cold of winter, the heat and rain of summer, and to keep out robbers and thieves. Once these ends have been secured, that is all. Whatever does not contribute to these ends should be eliminated.[5]

—?Mozi, Mozi (5th century BC) Ch 20


 


 Confucian philosopher Mencius was one of several critics of Mozi, in part because his philosophy lacked filial piety
Mohist ethics are considered a form of consequentialism, sometimes called state consequentialism.[6] Mohist ethics evaluates the moral worth of an action based on how it contributes to the stability of a state,[6] through social order, material wealth, and population growth. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Mohist consequentialism, dating back to the 5th century BC, is the "world's earliest form of consequentialism, a remarkably sophisticated version based on a plurality of intrinsic goods taken as constitutive of human welfare."[7]

Unlike utilitarianism, which views pleasure as a moral good, "the basic goods in Mohist consequentialist thinking are... order, material wealth, and increase in population".[8] During Mozi's era, war and famines were common, and population growth was seen as a moral necessity for a harmonious society. The "material wealth" of Mohist consequentialism refers to basic needs like shelter and clothing, and the "order" of Mohist consequentialism refers to Mozi's stance against warfare and violence, which he viewed as pointless and a threat to social stability.[5] Stanford sinologist David Shepherd Nivison, in the The Cambridge History of Ancient China, writes that the moral goods of Mohism "are interrelated: more basic wealth, then more reproduction; more people, then more production and wealth... if people have plenty, they would be good, filial, kind, and so on unproblematically."[8] In contrast to Jeremy Bentham, Mozi did not believe that individual happiness was important; the consequences of the state outweigh the consequences of individual actions.[8]

Mozi tended to evaluate actions based on whether they provide benefit to the people, which he measured in terms of an enlarged population (states were sparsely populated in his day), a prosperous economy, and social order. Like other consequentialist theories, Mozi thought that actions should be measured by the way they contribute to the "greatest societal good for what we have agreed to in a social contract." With this criterion Mozi denounced things as diverse as offensive warfare, expensive funerals, and even music and dance, which he saw as serving no useful purpose. Mozi did not object to music in principle—"It's not that I don't like the sound of the drum" ("Against Music")—but only because of the heavy tax burden such activities placed on commoners and also due to the fact that officials tended to indulge in them at the expense of their duties.

Works and influence[edit]



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A page covered in Chinese writing


 A page from the Mozi
"Mozi" is also the name of the philosophical text compiled by Mohists from Mozi's thought. This text originally consisted of 71 chapters. During the Han dynasty Confucianism dominated China. As Mohism is against Confucianism, the text "Mozi" was neglected. During the Song dynasty, only 61 chapters were left. Today, we have only 53 chapters through which we attempt to understand this school of thought, as compiled by Sun Yirang. Because Mohism disappeared as a living tradition from China, its texts were not well maintained, and many chapters are missing or in a corrupted state. For example, of the three chapters "Against Confucianism", only one remains.

The collection of texts from "Mozi" is a rich source of insight into early Chinese dynastic history and culture. Much of Mozi's arguments are supported by the historical claims of even earlier records. His conversations with other renowned philosophers of that era are also recorded. From them, we can distinguish Mohism from other schools of thought more clearly.

Mohism was suppressed under the Qin and died out completely under the Han, which made Confucianism the official doctrine. However, many of its ideas were dissolved into the mainstream of Chinese thought, since both Confucians such as Xunzi and Taoists such as Zhuangzi expressed sympathy with Mozi's concerns. The influence of Mozi is still visible in many Han works written hundreds of years later. In modern times, Mohism was given a fresh analysis. Sun Yat-Sen used "universal love" as one of the foundations for his idea of Chinese democracy. More recently, Chinese scholars under Communism have tried to rehabilitate Mozi as a "philosopher of the people", highlighting his rational-empirical approach to the world as well as his "proletarian" background.

Some views claim that Mozi's philosophy was at once more advanced and less so than that of Confucius. His concept of "universal love" embraced a broader idea of human community than that of the Confucians, but he was less tolerant than Confucius in his condemnation of all that is not directly "useful," neglecting the humanizing functions of art and music. Zhuangzi, who criticized both the Confucians and the Mohists, had this in mind in his parables on the "usefulness of the useless". Of course, this insistence on usefulness comes from a time when war and famine were widespread and could well have made all the royal pageantry look frivolous.

However, others would say the above view is not entirely accurate, and that in fact "universal love" (??), as well as "the world as a commonwealth shared by all" (????) advocated by Sun Yat-Sen are Confucian ideas.[9] "Universal love" (??, Boai) in Confucianism is a little different from Mozi's "universal love" (??, Jian'ai): in Confucianism it tends to emphasize it as naturally befitting human relations, while in Mozi's ideas it tends to be community oriented and non-differentiated according to individual. Some modern-day supporters for Mozi (as well as Communism) make the claim that Mohism and modern Communism share a lot in terms of ideals for community life. Others would claim that Mohism shares more with the central ideas of Christianity, especially in terms of the idea of "universal love" (in Greek, "agape"), the "Golden Rule", and the relation of humanity to the supernatural realm.

    350    GREECE. Aristoteles, pensador de la grecia antigua vuyas obras abarcan casi todas las     esferas del saber de su tiempo, en filosofia vacilaba entre el materialismo y el idealismo

350     HYPATIA.  born between AD 350 and 370; died March 415) was a Greek scholar from Alexandria, Egypt, considered the first notable woman in mathematics, who also taught philosophy and astronomy. She lived in Roman Egypt, and was killed by a Christian mob who accused her of causing religious turmoil. Some suggest that her murder marked the end of what is traditionally known as Classical antiquity, although others such as Maria Dzielska and Christian Wildberg observe that Hellenistic philosophy continued to flourish in the 5th and 6th centuries, Wildberg suggests until the age of Justinian. A Neoplatonist philosopher, she belonged to the mathematical tradition of the Academy of Athens represented by Eudoxus of Cnidus; she followed the school of the 3rd century thinker Plotinus, discouraging empirical enquiry and encouraging logical and mathematical studies. The name Hypatia derives from
        the adjective  the feminine form of  (upatos), meaning "highest, uppermost, supremest".  Although Hypatia's death has been interpreted by some as an example of conflict between religion and scientific inquiry, contemporary historians of science have a different view: she essentially got caught up in a political struggle. She was the daughter of Theon, who was her teacher and the last known mathematician associated with the Museum of Alexandria. While some suggest that she traveled to both Athens and Italy to study, others think there is no evidence that she ever left the city. She became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria in approximately 400. According to the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia the Suda, she worked as a teacher of philosophy, teaching the works of Plato and Aristotle. It is believed that there were both Christians and foreigners among her students.Although Hypatia might have been a pagan (no document refers to her religion), she was respected by a number of Christians, and later held up by Christian authors as a symbol of virtue. The Suda controversially declared her "the wife of Isidore the Philosopher" but agreed she had remained a virgin. Hypatia rebuffed a suitor by showing him her menstrual rags, claiming they demonstrated that there was "nothing beautiful" about carnal desires. Hypatia maintained correspondence with her former pupil Synesius of Cyrene, who in AD 410 became bishop of Ptolemais. Together with the references by Damascius, these are the only surviving writings with descriptions or information from her pupils. The contemporary Christian historiographer Socrates Scholasticus described her in his Ecclesiastical History:"There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as  to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive  her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she  not unfrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.—Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History Death  Believed to have been the reason for the strained relationship between the Imperial Prefect Orestes and the Patriarch Cyril, Hypatia attracted the ire of a Christian population eager to see the two reconciled. One day in March AD 415, during the season of Lent, her chariot was waylaid on her route home by a Christian mob, possibly Nitrian monks led by a man identified only as Peter, who is thought to be Peter the Reader. The Christian monks stripped her naked and dragged her through the streets to the newly Christianised Caesareum church, where she was brutally killed. Some reports suggest she was flayed with ostraca (pot shards) and set ablaze while still alive, though other accounts suggest those actions happened after her death: Socrates Scholasticus (5th-century)  John of Nikiû (7th-century)"Yet even she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed. For as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace, that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. Some of them  therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was  a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her from  her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her by scraping her skin off with tiles and bits of shell. After tearing her body in pieces, they took  her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them." "And in those days there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through Satanic wiles...A multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance  of Peter the magistrate...and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman  who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her  enchantments. And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded  to her and found her...they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesareum. Now this was in the days of the fast. And they tore off her clothing and dragged her...through the streets of the  city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and  they burned her body with fire."  Many of the works commonly attributed to Hypatia are believed to have been collaborative works with her father, Theon Alexandricus, this kind of authorial uncertainty being typical for feminine philosophy in Antiquity.  A partial list of specific accomplishments: A commentary on the 13-volume Arithmetica by Diophantus.A commentary on the Conics of Apollonius.  Edited the existing version of Ptolemy's Almagest.  Edited her father's commentary on Euclid's Elements She wrote a text "The Astronomical Canon." (Possibly a new edition of Ptolemy's Handy Tables.  Her contributions to science are reputed to include the charting of celestial bodies and the invention of the hydrometer, used to determine the relative density and gravity of liquids.  Her pupil Synesius, bishop of Cyrene, wrote a letter defending her as the inventor of the astrolabe, although earlier astrolabes predate Hypatia's model by at least a century - and her father had gained fame for his treatise on the subject. Late Antiquity to the Age of Reason  Shortly after her death, a forged letter attacking Christianity was published under her name.  According to Bryan J. Whitfield of Mercer University, the pagan historian Damascius was "anxious to exploit the scandal of Hypatia's death", and laid the blame squarely on the Christians and Bishop Cyril. His account was incorporated in the Suda and so became widely known. However, Damascius is the only ancient source to say that Cyril was responsible. Maria Dzielska suggests the possibility that Cyril's own guard might have been implicated in the murder. The fact that most historians of the 4th century and later were Christians, is, according to Dzielska, the main reason for the scarcity of the sources on Hypatia, and Dzielska suggests that they most likely were ashamed to write about her fate.

350    Jewish revolt against Persians fails.

346    Peace of Philocrates. Athenian statesman leads a delegation to sue for peace from Macedonia.

343    -290    The Samnite Wars. Rome extends hegemony over central Italy. Aeraxerxes III leads an army into Egypt and conquers it. Persian rule in Egypt. The XXXIst dynasty to 332.

339    The Fourth Sacred war to 338. Phillip of Macedonia conquers Greece.

338    Darius III ruler of Persia to 330.

    336 - 323 BC. Assassination of Phillip of Macedonia.  Reign of Alexander the Great, son of Phillip and Olympias. Alexander crushes revolts by Athens, Thebes and other Greek cities. During the conquest of Asia Minor the cost of maintaining Alexander's army reaches about 20 talents or half a ton of silver a day but later enormous quantities of Persian bullion are captured. The coining of the previously stagnant Persian gold stocks and payments to Alexander's soldiers, many of whom settle in new towns founded by him, give an enormous stimulus to trade throughout his empire. Alexander also simplifies the exchange rate between silver and gold by fixing it at 10 units of silver equals one of gold.

    336 BCE saw the rise of Alexander the Great, who forged an empire from various vassal states stretching from modern Greece to the Indian subcontinent, bringing Mediterranean nations into contact with those of central and southern Asia, much as the Persian Empire had before him. The boundaries of this empire extended hundreds of kilometers
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334    -324    Eastern campaigns of Alexander the Great. Campaign against Persia, defeats Darius III at the river Granicusin Asia minor.

    
    334    TURKEY Alexander the Great in 334 BCE.10 Anatolia was subsequently divided among the Lysimachian, Antigonid and Seleucid Empires, and later among a number of small Hellenistic kingdoms (including Bithynia, Cappadocia, Galatia, Pergamon, Pontus and Armenia), all of which had succumbed to Rome by the mid-1st century BCE.  In 286 CE, Diocletian made Nicomedia (present-day Izmit) the eastern and most senior capital city of the Roman Empire with the Tetrarchy system, which remained in force until Licinius was defeated by Constantine the Great at the Battle of Chrysopolis (Üsküdar) in 324 CE. Constantine mainly resided in Nicomedia as his interim capital city for the next six years, until in 330 CE he declared the nearby Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire, renaming it as Nova Roma. After Constantine's death in 337 CE, Nova Roma was eventually renamed as Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). Following the permanent division of the Roman Empire between the two sons of Theodosius I in 395 CE, the city became the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. Turks and the Ottoman (Muslim) Empire

334    --IRAN.Arda Viraz - invaded Achaemenid territory in 334 BCE, conclusively defeating the last Achaemenid Emperor Darius III at the Battle of Issus in 333 BCE. In 330 BCE, Alexander occupied Persepolis (and according to legend, had it destroyed) and Pasargadae, leaving them and the rest of the Pars province in control of one of his officers before moving on northwards. In the same year, Alexander occupied in quick succession Aspardana (present day Isfahan), Ecbatana in Media (present day Hamadan), Hecatompylos in Hyrancia (present day Mazandaran), Susia in Parthia (in present day North Khorasan). He then turned southwards and occupied Prophtasia in Drangiana (present day Sistan).

    Hellenistic rule (333 BCE)

333    Alexander defeats Darius again at the battle of Issus, capturing the Persian queen and her children. Alexander refuses Darius offer of ransom and part of his empire. Alexander captures Tyre. End of the Phoenician empire.
 
        THE GORDIAN KNOT- At one time the Phrygians were without a king. An oracle at Telmissus (the ancient capital of Phrygia) decreed that the next man to enter the city driving an ox-cart should become their king. A peasant farmer named Gordias drove into town on an ox-cart. His position had also been predicted earlier by an eagle landing on his cart, a sign to him from the gods, and, on entering the city, Gordias was declared king by the priests. Out of gratitude, his son Midas dedicated the ox-cart to the Phrygian god Sabazios (whom the Greeks identified with Zeus) and either tied it to a post or tied its shaft with an intricate knot of cornel (Cornus mas) bark. The ox-cart still stood in the palace of the former kings of Phrygia at Gordium in the fourth century BC when Alexander arrived, at which point Phrygia had been reduced to a satrapy, or province, of the Persian Empire.Several themes of myth converged on the chariot, as Robin Lane Fox remarks:Midas was connected in legend with Alexander's native Macedonia, where the lowland "Gardens of Midas" still bore his name, and the Phrygian tribes were rightly remembered as having once dwelt in Macedonia. So, in 333 BC, while wintering at Gordium, Alexander the Great attempted to untie the knot. When he could not find the end to the knot to unbind it, he sliced it in half with a stroke of his sword, producing the required ends (the so-called "Alexandrian solution"). That night there was a violent thunderstorm. Alexander's prophet Aristander took this as a sign that Zeus was pleased and would grant Alexander many victories. Once Alexander had sliced the knot with a sword-stroke, his biographers claimed in retrospect that an oracle further prophesied that the one to untie the knot would become the king of Asia. Status of the legend[edit source | editbeta]Alexander is a figure of outstanding celebrity and the dramatic episode with the Gordian Knot remains widely known. Literary sources are Alexander's propagandist Arrian (Anabasis Alexandri 2.3) Quintus Curtius (3.1.14), Justin's epitome of Pompeius Trogus (11.7.3), and Aelian's De Natura Animalium 13.1. While sources from antiquity agree that Alexander was confronted with the challenge of the knot, the means by which he solved the problem are disputed. Both Plutarch and Arrian relate that according to Aristobulus,  Alexander pulled the knot out of its pole pin, exposing the two ends of the cord and allowing him to untie the knot without having to cut through it. Some classical scholars regard this as more plausible than the popular account.Alexander later went on to conquer Asia as far as the Indus and the Oxus thus, for Callisthenes, fulfilling the prophecy.Interpretations The knot may have been a religious knot-cipher guarded by Gordian/Midas's priests and priestesses. Robert Graves suggested that it may have symbolized the ineffable name of Dionysus that, knotted like a cipher, would have been passed on through generations of priests and revealed only to the kings of Phrygia.Unlike fable, true myth has few completely arbitrary elements. This myth taken as a whole seems designed to confer legitimacy to dynastic change in this central Anatolian kingdom: thus Alexander's "brutal cutting of the knot... ended an ancient dispensation." The ox-cart suggests a longer voyage, rather than a local journey, perhaps linking Gordias/Midas with an attested origin-myth in Macedon, of which Alexander is most likely to have been aware. Based on the myth, the new dynasty was not immemorially ancient, but had widely remembered origins in a local, but non-priestly "outsider" class, represented by Greek reports equally as an eponymous peasant "Gordias" or the locally-attested, authentically Phrygian "Midas" in his ox-cart. Other Greek myths legitimize dynasties by right of conquest (compare Cadmus), but the legitimizing oracle stressed in this myth suggests that the previous dynasty was a race of priest-kings allied to the unidentified oracle deity.Use of the phrase  The Gordian knot is alluded in the motto of Ferdinand II of Aragon, Tanto  monta ("It amounts to the same, (cutting as untying)") and in the yoke representing Ferdinand in the emblem of the yoke and arrows.  Brian Coless has suggested that Donald Wiseman "cut the Gordian knot" of "the intractable problem of identifying King Darius the Mede" in the Book of Daniel, by identifying Darius with Cyrus the Great.W. G. Sebald in The Rings of Saturn recounts the episode of Joseph Conrad who  was shot or shot himself in the chest allowing him to "Cut the Gordian Knot"  of a stormy love affair.In Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County, Bill Fordham  uses the phrase to describe his marital problems with his wife Barbara when he says to her: "Just because you and I are struggling with this Gordian knot  doesn't make me any less of a --" Lord Upjohn, speaking of the allocation of beneficial interests between the parties under a constructive trust in National Provincial Bank Ltd v Ainsworth, said that the parties' affairs are sometimes so inextricably intermixed that "an equitable knife must be used to sever the Gordian Knot". Gottfried Leibniz argues in his essay On Nature Itself that refusing to acknowledge an active force in things and instead "simply to absorb this force  into a command of God's - a command given just once in the past, having no effect on things and leaving no traces of itself in them - is so far from making the matter easier to grasp that it is more like abandoning the role of the philosopher altogether and cutting the Gordian knot with a sword."Charles Spurgeon, preaching at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, England, made mention of the "many gordian knots which wicked men may cut, and which righteous men may try to unravel, but which God alone can untie."
 
333    PALESTINE. Roman Iudaea Province in the 1st century CE as based on Robert W. Funk's The Acts of Jesus, Michael Grant's's Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels and John P. Meier's A Marginal Jew.The Persian Empire fell to Greek forces of the Macedonian general Alexander the Great.After his death, with the absence of heirs, his conquests were divided amongst his generals, while the region of the Jews ("Judah" or Judea as it became known) was first part of the Ptolemaic dynasty and then part of the Seleucid Empire.The landscape during this period was markedly changed by extensive growth and development that included urban planning and the establishment of well-built fortified cities.Hellenistic pottery was produced that absorbed Philistine traditions. Trade and commerce flourished, particularly in the most Hellenized areas, such as Ascalon, Jaffa,  Jerusalem,Gaza, and ancient Nablus (Tell Balatah)The Jewish population in Judea was allowed limited autonomy in religion and administration. In the second century BCE fascination in Jerusalem for Greek culture resulted in a movement to break down the separation of Jew and Gentile and some people even tried to disguise the marks of their circumcision.Disputes between the leaders of the reform movement, Jason and Menelaus, eventually led to civil war and the intervention of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Subsequent persecution of the Jews led to the Maccabean Revolt under the leadership of the Hasmoneans, and the construction of a native Jewish kingship under the Hasmonean Dynasty .[63] After approximately a century of independence disputes between the Hasmonean rivals Aristobulus and Hyrcanus led to control of the kingdom by the Roman army of Pompey. The territory then became first a Roman client kingdom under Hyrcanus and then a Roman Province administered by the governor of Syria PALESTINE.    : Persiadomination of Palestine was replaced by Greek rule when Alexander the Great of Macedonia took the region. Alexander's successors, the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria , continued to rule the country . The Seleucids tried to impose Hellenistic (Greek) culture and  religion on the population.
        TALMUD. KaraismAnother movement which rejected the oral law was Karaism. It arose within two centuries of the completion of the Talmud. Karaism developed as a reaction against the Talmudic Judaism of Babylonia. The central concept of Karaism is the rejection of the Oral Torah, as embodied in the Talmud, in favor of a strict adherence to the Written Law only. This opposes the fundamental Rabbinic concept that the Oral Law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai together with the Written Law. Some later Karaites took a more moderate stance, allowing that some element of tradition (called sevel ha-yerushah, the burden of inheritance) is admissible in interpreting the Torah and that some authentic traditions are contained in the Mishnah and the Talmud, though these can never supersede the plain meaning of the Written Law.Karaism has virtually disappeared, declining from a high of nearly 10% of the Jewish population to a current estimated 0.2%.

    332    AFRICA enjoys a cultural revival of sorts, since foundation of Alexandria became the greatest cultural center in the Eastern Merranean during the Hellenistic period.  The great scientific and literary achievements of Alexandria were triumphs of Greek and AFRICan culture.

 332     BC Following the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C., Egypt also enjoyed a cultural revival of sorts, since Alexandria became the greatest cultural center in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic period.  But the great scientific and literary achievements of Alexandria were triumphs of Greek rather than Egyptian culture.  The great pharaohs ruled no more.

332    BC GAZA. After the Siege of Tyre in 332 BC, Alexander the Great besieged Gaza, the last city to resist his conquest. Gaza, led by a eunuch named Batis and defended by Arab mercenaries, withstood the siege for two months, until it was overcome by storm. The defenders, most local elements, fought to death, and the women andchildren were taken captive. The city was resettled by neighboring Bedouins.Ptolemy started the rule in the year 301 BC. The Seleucides dominated by the year 198 BC.

331    Renewal of the Persian campaign. Alexander defeats Darius at Arbela. End of the Persian empire.

330    Darius is murdered. Alexander is in complete control of Persia.

    329    IRAN. Alexander took the satrapy capitals at Kandahar in Arachosia, Kabura (Kabul), Bactra (Balkh) in Bactria, and finally Maracanda (Samarkand) in Sogdiana before leaving imperial territory
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328    IRAN. In each of the former Achaemenid territories he installed his own officers as caretakers, which led to friction and ultimately to the partitioning of the former empire after Alexander's death. A reunification would not occur until 700 years later, under the Sassanids (see below). Unlike the diadochic Seleucids and the succeeding Arsacids, who used a vassalary system, the Sassanids - like the Achaemenids - had a system of governors (MP: shahrab) personally appointed by the Emperor and directed by the central government.

327    Alexander begins invasion of India.

326    Alexander wins the battle of the Hydaspes, but his soldiers refuse to go any further east, and he has to retreat.

324    Foundation of the Maurya dynasty in India

323     - 30 BCEmpire of the Ptolemies in EgyptFor long before Egypt came under Greek control grain had been used as a form of money in addition to precious metals, and state granaries functioned as banks. The Ptolemies transform the local warehouse deposit system into a fully integrated giro system with a central bank in Alexandria. Payments are made by transfer from one account to another without money passing.  Alexander dies at Babylon; his generals divide his empire among themselves.  Ptolemy satrap of Egypt. Birth of Euclid.

323    BC ANTIOCH.  The settlement of Meroe pre-dated Antioch. A shrine of Anat, called by the Greeks the "Persian Artemis," was located here. This site was included in the eastern suburbs of Antioch. There was a village on the spur of Mount Silpius named or Iopolis. This name was always adduced as evidence by Antiochenes (e.g. Libanius) anxious to affiliate themselves to the Attic Ionians--an eagerness which is illustrated by the Athenian types used on the city's coins. Io may have been a small early colony of trading Greeks (Javan). John Malalas mentions also an archaic village, Bottia, in the plain by the river.Foundation by Seleucus I  Alexander the Great is said to have camped on the site of Antioch, and dedicated an altar to Zeus Bottiaeus, it lay in the northwest of the future city. This account is found only in the writings of Libanius, a 4th century AD orator from Antioch, and may be legend intended to enhance Antioch's status. But the story is not unlikely in itself.After Alexander's death in 323 BC, his generals divided up the territory he had conquered. Seleucus I Nicator won the territory of Syria, and he proceeded to found four "sister cities" in northwestern Syria, one of which was Antioch. Like the other three, Antioch was named by Seleucus for a member of his family. He is reputed to have built sixteen Antiochs.Seleucus founded Antioch on a site chosen through ritual means. An eagle, the bird of Zeus, had been given a piece of sacrificial meat and the city was founded on the site to which the eagle carried the offering. He did this in the twelfth year of his reign.Antioch soon rose above Seleucia Pieria to become the Syrian capital
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321-276    The dissolution of Alexander's empire. The struggle between his successors.

    Rise of Hellenistic states.

320    Chandragupta founds the Maurya dynasty in northern India to 184.320     CHANDRA GUPTA, History Early
    LifeChandra Gupta was son of Ghatotkacha to the throne of the ancestral Gupta kingdom. While his two ancestors were given the title of Maharaja (king), Chandragupta I is described in his inscriptions as Maharajadhiraj (king of kings) signifying a rise in the family fortunes.He gained control over many territories by conquests and favourable marriage alliances. He married a Lichchhavi princess to enhance his prestige.After 500 years of invasion and turmoil after Ashoka's death, a strong leader named Chandragupta took over. Chandragupta married a daughter of a royal influential family. After marrying, he earned the title of Great King of Kings. A series of gold coins issued by the king also testifies to his rising influence. The well known Gupta era which commenced on February 26, 320 AD is generally attributed to Chandragupta I. Hence it is surmised that the Gupta era began on the occasion of the coronation of Chandragupta I. According to the Puranas the Guptas ruled over territories (referred to as Janapadas) such as Prayag (Allahabad), Saket (Oudh) and Magadh (south Bihar). This description of the Gupta dominion precedes the reign of Samudragupta and hence must refer to the territories ruled over by Chandragupta I.
    CHANDRA GUPTA MAURYA. OriginsFurther infomation: Ancestry of Chandragupta Maurya-Many Indian literary traditions connect him with the Nanda Dynasty of Magadha in modern day Bihar in eastern India. More than half a millennium later, the Sanskrit drama Mudrarakshasa calls him a "Nandanvaya" i.e. the descendant of Nanda (Act IV). Again more than a millennium later, Dhundiraja, a commentator of 18th century on Mudrarakshasa states that Chandragupta alias Maurya who, was son of the Nanda king Sarvarthasiddhi by a wife named Mura, daughter of a Vrishala (shudra). Mudrarakshasa uses terms like kula-hina and Vrishala for Chandragupta's lineage. This reinforces Justin's contention that Chandragupta had a humble origin. On the other hand, the same play describes the Nandas as of Prathita-kula, i.e., illustrious lineage. The medieval commentator on the Vishnu Purana informs us that Chandragupta was son of a Nanda prince and a dasi (English: maid), mura. The poets Kshmendra and Somadeva call him Purvananda-suta, son of genuine Nanda as opposed to Yoga-Nanda, i.e., pseudo Nanda. Nanda dynasty was started by Mahapadma Nanda, who is considered, the first Shudra king of Magadha.The Buddhist text of the Mahavamsa calls Chandragupta a section of the Khattya (Kshatriya) clan named Moriya (Maurya). Divyavadana calls Bindusara, son of Chandragupta, an anointed Kshatriya, Kshatriya Murdhabhishikata, and in the same work, king Ashoka, son of Bindusara, is also styled a Kshatriya. The Mahaparinnibhana Sutta of the Buddhist canon states that the Moriyas (Mauryas) belonged to the Kshatriya community of Pippalivana. These traditions, at least,
    indicate that Chandragupta has come from a Kshatriya lineage. The Mahavamshatika connects him with the Sakya clan of the Buddha, a clan which also belongs to the race of Aditya, i.e., solar race by all the vedas and Hindu puranas. See the page shakya for more details. All the puranas and vedas together proved shakya clan as a branch of ikshwaku vamsha or surya vamsha. All the Buddhist texts shows the genealogy of shakya kings of suryavamsha.A medieval inscription represents the Maurya clan as belonging to the solar race of Kshatriyas. It is stated that the Maurya line sprang from Suryavamsi Mandhatri, son of prince Yuvanashva of the solar race. Early lifeVery little is known about Chandragupta's youth. What is known about his youth is gathered from later classical Sanskrit literature, as well as classical Greek and Latin sources which refer to Chandragupta by the names "Sandracottos" or "Andracottus". He was a paragon for later rulers.Plutarch reports that he met with Alexander the Great, probably around Takshasila in the northwest, and that he viewed the ruling Nanda Empire in a negative light:123456""Androcottus, when he was a stripling, saw Alexander himself, and we are told that he often said in later times that Alexander narrowly missed making himself master of the country, since its king was hated and despised on account of his baseness and low birth.""—Plutarch, Parallel Lives: Life of Alexander 62.9 According to this text, the encounter would have happened around 326 BCE, suggesting a birth date for Chandragupta around 340 BCE. Plutarch and other Greco-Roman historians appreciated the gravity of Chandragupta Maurya's conquests. Junianus Justinus (Justin) describes the humble origins of Chandragupta, and explains how he later led a popular uprising against the Nanda king. Foundation of the Maurya EmpireFurther information: Magadha and Maurya Empire  Silver punch mark coin of the Maurya empire, with symbols of wheel and elephant. 3rd century BCE.Chandragupta Maurya, with the help of Chanakya, defeated the Magadha kings and the bulk army of Chandravanshi clan. Following his victory, defeated generals of Alexander settled in Gandhara (Kamboja kingdom of Aryan race Mahajanpada), today's Afghanistan. At the time of Alexander's invasion, Chanakya was a teacher in Takshasila. The king of Takshasila and Gandhara, Ambhi (also known as Taxiles), made signed a peace treaty with Alexander. Chanakya, however, planned to defeat the foreign invasion and sought help from other kings to unite and fight Alexander. Parvateshwara (Porus), a king of Punjab, was the only local king who was able to challenge Alexander at the Battle of the Hydaspes River, but was defeated.Chanakya then went to Magadha further east, to seek the help of Dhana Nanda, who ruled a vast Nanda Empire which extended from Bihar and Bengal in the east to Punjab and Sindh in the west,[12] but he was denied any such help. After this incident, Chanakya started to convince his disciple Chandragupta of the need to build an empire that could protect Indian territories from foreign invasion.ChanakyaMain article: ChanakyaChandragupta's teacher and later his prime minister[13] Chanakya, who is also known as Kautilya and was the author of the Arthashastra, is regarded as the architect of Chandragupta's early rise to power. Chandragupta Maurya, with the help of Chanakya, began laying the foundation of the Mauryan Empire. In all forms of the Chanakya legend,[14] he is thrown out of the Nanda court by the king, whereupon he swears revenge. While in Magadha, Chanakya by chance met Chandragupta in whom he spotted great military and executive abilities. Chanakya was impressed by the prince's personality and intelligence, and immediately took the young boy under his wing to fulfill his silent vow.Nanda army The Nanda Empire at its greatest extent under Dhana Nanda circa 323 BCE.Main article: Nanda DynastyAccording to Plutarch, at the time of Alexander's Battle of the Hydaspes River, the size of the Nanda Empire's army further east numbered 200,000 infantry, 80,000 cavalry, 8,000 chariots, and 6,000 war elephants, which was discouraging for Alexander's men and stayed their further progress into India:""As for the Macedonians, however, their struggle with Porus blunted their  courage and stayed their further advance into India. For having had all they could do to repulse an enemy who mustered only twenty thousand  infantry and two thousand horse, they violently opposed Alexander when he  insisted on crossing the river Ganges also, the width of which, as they learned, was thirty-two furlongs, its depth a hundred fathoms, while its  banks on the further side were covered with multitudes of men-at arms and  horsemen and elephants. For they were told that the kings of the  Ganderites and Praesii were awaiting them with eighty thousand horsemen,  two hundred thousand footmen, eight thousand chariots, and six thousand fighting elephants. And there was no boasting in these reports. For  Androcottus, who reigned there not long afterwards, made a present to Seleucus of five hundred elephants, and with an army of six hundred
       thousand men overran and subdued all India.""—Plutarch, Parallel Lives, "Life of Alexander" 62.1- In order to defeat the powerful Nanda army, Chandragupta needed to raise a formidable army of his own. Conquest of the Nanda EmpireFurther information: Nanda Dynasty Nanda War Chandragupta's empire when he founded it c. 320 BCE, by the time he was about 20 years old.Chanakya had trained Chandragupta under his guidance and together they planned the destruction of Dhana Nanda. The Mudrarakshasa of Visakhadutta as well as the Jaina work Parisishtaparvan talk of Chandragupta's alliance with the Himalayan king Parvatka, sometimes identified with Porus. It is noted in the Chandraguptakatha that the protagonist and Chanakya were initially rebuffed by the Nanda forces. Regardless, in the ensuing war, Chandragupta faced off against Bhadrasala – commander of Dhana Nanda's armies. He was eventually able to defeat Bhadrasala and Dhana Nanda in a series of battles, ending with the siege of the capital city Pataliputra and the conquest of the Nanda Empire around 321 BCE, thus founding the powerful Maurya Empire in Northern India by the time he was about 20 years old. Conquest of Macedonian territories in IndiaMain article: Seleucid–Mauryan war Chandragupta had defeated the remaining Macedonian satrapies in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent by 317 BCE.After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, Chandragupta, turned his attention to Northwestern India (modern Pakistan), where he defeated the satrapies (described as "prefects" in classical Western sources) left in place by Alexander (according to Justin), and may have assassinated two of his governors, Nicanor and Philip. The satrapies he fought may have included Eudemus, ruler in western Punjab until his departure in 317 BCE; and Peithon, son of Agenor, ruler of the Greek colonies along the Indus until his departure for Babylon in 316 BCE. The Roman historian Justin described how Sandrocottus (Greek version of Chandragupta's name) conquered the northwest: ""Some time after, as he was going to war with the generals of Alexander, a wild elephant of great bulk presented itself before him of its own  accord, and, as if tamed down to gentleness, took him on its back, and  became his guide in the war, and conspicuous in fields of battle.  Sandrocottus, having thus acquired a throne, was in possession of India,  when Seleucus was laying the foundations of his future greatness; who,  after making a league with him, and settling his affairs in the east,  proceeded to join in the war against Antigonus. As soon as the forces, therefore, of all the confederates were united, a battle was fought, in which Antigonus was slain, and his son Demetrius put to flight. "" —Junianus Justinus, Historiarum Philippicarum libri XLIV, XV.4.1 ExpansionBy the time he was only about 20 years old, Chandragupta, who had succeeded in defeating the Macedonian satrapies in India and conquering the Nanda Empire, had founded a vast empire that extended from the Bay of Bengal in the east, to the Indus River in the west, which he would further expand in later years.Conquest of Seleucus' eastern territories Silver coin of Seleucus I Nicator, who fought Chandragupta Maurya, and later made an alliance with him. Chandragupta extended the borders of his empire towards Seleucid Persia after his conflict with Seleucus c. 305 BCE.Seleucus I Nicator, a Macedonian satrap of Alexander, reconquered most of Alexander's former empire and put under his own authority eastern territories as far as Bactria and the Indus (Appian, History of Rome, The Syrian Wars 55), until in 305 BCE he entered in a confrontation with Chandragupta:
    ""Always lying in wait for the neighboring nations,strong in arms and persuasive in council, he acquired Mesopotamia, Armenia, 'Seleucid'  Cappadocia, Persis, Parthia, Bactria, Arabia, Tapouria, Sogdia, Arachosia,  Hyrcania, and other adjacent peoples that had been subdued by Alexander, as far as the river Indus, so that the boundaries of his empire were the  most extensive in Asia after that of Alexander. The whole region from  Phrygia to the Indus was subject to Seleucus. He crossed the Indus and waged war with Sandrocottus [Maurya], king of the Indians, who dwelt on the banks of that stream, until they came to an understanding with each  other and contracted a marriage relationship. Some of these exploits were  performed before the death of Antigonus and some afterward.""—Appian, History of Rome, The Syrian Wars 55 The exact details of engagement are not known. As noted by scholars such as R.  C. Majumdar[16] and D. D. Kosambi, Seleucus appears to have fared poorly, having ceded large territories west of the Indus to Chandragupta. Due to his defeat,  Seleucus surrendered Arachosia, Gedrosia, Paropamisadae, and Aria. Mainstream scholarship asserts that Chandragupta received vast territory west of the Indus, including the Hindu Kush, modern day Afghanistan, and the Balochistanprovince of Pakistan. Archaeologically, concrete indications of Mauryan rule, such as the inscriptions of the Edicts of Ashoka, are known as far as Kandhahar in southern Afghanistan.""After having made a treaty with him (Sandrakotos) and put in order the Orient situation, Seleucos went to war against Antigonus.""—Junianus Justinus, Historiarum Philippicarum libri XLIV, XV.4.15 It is generally thought that Chandragupta married Seleucus's daughter to formalize an alliance. In a return gesture, Chandragupta sent 500 war-elephants, a military asset which would play a decisive role at the Battle of Ipsus in 302 BCE. In addition to this treaty, Seleucus dispatched an ambassador, Megasthenes, to Chandragupta, and later Deimakos to his son Bindusara, at the Mauryan court at Pataliputra (modern Patna in Bihar state). Later Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt and contemporary of Ashoka the Great, is also recorded by Pliny the Elder as having sent an ambassador named Dionysius to the Mauryan court.[24]Classical sources have also recorded that following their treaty, Chandragupta and Seleucus exchanged presents, such as when Chandragupta sent various aphrodisiacs to Seleucus:""And Theophrastus says that some contrivances are of wondrous efficacy in
    such matters [as to make people more amorous]. And Phylarchus confirms him, by reference to some of the presents which Sandrakottus, the king of the Indians, sent to Seleucus; which were to act like charms in producing  a wonderful degree of affection, while some, on the contrary, were to banish love.""—Athenaeus of Naucratis Southern conquestAfter annexing Seleucus' eastern Persian provinces, Chandragupta had a vast empire extending across the northern parts of Indian Sub-continent, from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea. Chandragupta then began expanding his empire further south beyond the barrier of the Vindhya Range and into the Deccan Plateau except the Tamil regions (Pandya, Chera, Chola and Satyaputra) and Kalinga (modern day Orissa).[12] By the time his conquests were complete, Chandragupta succeeded in unifying most of Southern Asia. Megasthenes later recorded the size of Chandragupta's acquired army as 400,000 soldiers, according to Strabo:""Megasthenes was in the camp of Sandrocottus, which consisted of 400,000 men"" —Strabo, Geographica, 15.1.53

    On the other hand, Pliny, who also drew from Megasthenes' work, gives even larger numbers of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 war elephants:""But the Prasii surpass in power and glory every other people, not only in this quarter, but one may say in all India, their capital Palibothra, a very large and wealthy city, after which some call the people itself the Palibothri,--nay even the whole tract along the Ganges. Their king has in his pay a standing army of 600,000-foot-soldiers, 30,000 cavalry, and  9,000 elephants: whence may be formed some conjecture as to the vastness  of his resources."" —Pliny, Natural History VI, 22. Jainism and sallekhanaChandragupta gave up his throne in 298 BCE, when hewas 42 years-old, and became an ascetic under the Jain saint Acharya Bhadrabahu, migrating south with them and ending his days in "sallekhana" at  rava a Be go a, in present day Karnataka; though fifth-century inscriptions in the area support the concept of a larger southern migration around that time.[25] A small temple marks the cave (Bhadrabahu Cave) where he is said to have died by fasting.There are two hills in  rava a Be go a, Chandragiri (Chikkabetta) and Vindyagiri. The last shruta-kevali, Bhadrabahu and his pupil Chandragupta
    Maurya, are believed to have meditated here. Chandragupta Basadi, which was dedicated to Chandragupta Maurya, was originally built there by Emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE.SuccessorsMain article: Maurya EmpireChandragupta Maurya renounced his throne to his son, Bindusara, who became the new Mauryan Emperor. Bindusara's son Ashoka the Great, became one of the most influential kings in India's history due to his important role in the history of Buddhism. Ashoka the Great after witnessing the results of his wars, became a devoted Buddhist and a man of peace. In popular cultureKautilya's role in the formation of the Mauryan Empire is the essence of a historical/spiritual novel The Courtesan and the Sadhu by Dr. Mysore N. Prakash.In Santosh Sivan's 2001 epic Hindi language film Asoka, the last moments of Chandra Gupta Maurya as an emperor is portrayed. Also the sword of Chandra Gupta Maurya plays an important role in the film. The film opens with an old and tired Chandragupta Maurya giving away all his material possessions and taking the life of a Jain saint. His favorite grandson, prince Asoka, claims his grandfather's sword. Chandra Gupta Maurya explains that the sword is in fact a demon that, whenever unsheathed, craves blood without regard to friend or foe. He throws away the sword but the young prince Asoka reclaims and unsheathes it whereupon it accidentally slashes his dear birds on a tree. At one point, Emperor Asoka mentions that he "want to be a greater emperor than Chandra Gupta Maurya". The film ends with Emperor Asoka throwing the sword at the same spot his grandfather, Chandragupta Maurya, had thrown it and embracing Buddhism. Emperor Asoka understands that his grandfather's advice about the sword was right.Television series Chanakya is archetypal account of the life and times of Chanakya, based on the play "Mudra Rakshasa" (The Signet Ring of "Rakshasa") A Television series on Imagine TV available as Chandragupta Maurya (The serial  is based on the life of Indian ruler "Chandragupta Maurya" and "Chanakya")[27]


320    Ptolemy captures Jerusalem. Lybia becomes an Egyptian province. Birth of Theocrites.

316    Olympias. Mother of Alexander, is murdered in revenge for the killings she had ordered.

312    Seleucus, one of Alexander's generals, begins to take control of Syria. The Roman cenor Appius Claudius begins the Appian way from Rome to Capua.

312 BC NABATAEAN The first definite appearance was in 312/311 BC, when they were attacked at Sela or perhaps Petra without success by Antigonus I's officer Athenaeus as part of the Third War of the Diadochi; at that time Hieronymus of Cardia, a Seleucid officer, mentioned the Nabataeans in a battle report. About 50 BC, the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus cited Hieronymus in his report, and added the following: "Just as the Seleucids had tried to subdue them, so the Romans made several attempts to get their hands on that lucrative trade." Sela was the ancient capital of Edom; the Nabataeans must have occupied the old Edomite country, and succeeded to its commerce, after the Edomites took advantage of the Babylonian captivity to press forward into southern Judaea. This migration, the date of which cannot be determined, also made them masters of the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba and the important harbor of Elath. Here, according to Agatharchides, they became, as wreckers and pirates, very troublesome to the reopened commerce between Egypt and the East, until they were chastised by the Ptolemaic rulers of Alexandria.The Nabataeans had already some tincture of foreign culture when they first appear in history. That culture was Aramaic; they wrote a letter to Antigonus in Syriac letters, and Aramaic continued to be the language of their coins and inscriptions when the tribe grew into a kingdom, and profited by the decay of the Seleucids to extend its bordersnorthward over the more fertile country east of the Jordan. They occupied Hauran, and in about 85 BC their king Aretas III became lord of Damascus and Coele-Syria. Nabataeans became the Arabic name for Aramaeans, whether in Syria or Iraq, a fact which has been incorrectly held to prove that the Nabataeans were originally Aramaean immigrants from Babylonia. Proper names on their inscriptions suggest that they were true Arabs who had come under Aramaic influence. Starcky identifies the Nabatu of southern Arabia (Pre-Khalan migration) as their ancestors. However different groups amongst the Nabataeans wrote their names in slightly different ways, consequently archeologists are reluctant to say that they were all the same tribe, or that any one group is the original Nabataeans.The language of the Nabataean inscriptions, attested from the 2nd century BCE, shows a local development of the Aramaic language, which had ceased to have super-regional importance after the collapse of the Achaemenid Empire (330 BC). The Nabataean alphabet itself also developed out of the Aramaic alphabet.This Aramaic dialect was increasingly affected by the Arabic dialect of the local population. From the 4th century, the Arabic influence becomes overwhelming, in a way that it may be said the Nabataean language shifted seamlessly from Aramaic to Arabic. The Arabic alphabet itself developed out of cursive variants of the Nabataean script in the 5th century.Ibn Wahshiyya claimed to have translated from this language in his Nabataean corpus. Agriculture Remains of a Nabataean cistern north of Makhtesh Ramon, southern Israel.Although not as dry as at present, the area occupied by the Nabataeans was still a desert and required special techniques for agriculture. One was to contour an area of land into a shallow funnel and to plant a single fruit tree in the middle. Before the 'rainy season' which could easily consist of only one or two rain events, the area around the tree was broken up. When the rain came, all the water which collected in the funnel would flow down toward the fruit tree and sink into the ground. The ground, which was largely loess, would seal up when it got wet and retain the water.In the mid-1950s, a research team headed by M. Evenari set up a research station near Avdat (Evenari, Shenan and Tadmor 1971). He focused on the relevance of runoff rainwater management in explaining the mechanism of the ancient agricultural features, such as terraced wadis, channels for collecting runoff rainwater, and the enigmatic phenomenon of "Tuleilat el-Anab". Evenari showed that the runoff rainwater collection systems concentrate water from an area that is five times larger than the area in which the water actually drains.Another study was conducted by Y. Kedar in 1957, which also focused on the mechanism of the agriculture systems, but he studied soil management, and claimed that the ancient agriculture systems were intended to increase the accumulation of loess in wadis and create an infrastructure for agricultural activity. This theory has also been explored by Prof. E. Mazor, of the The Hellenistic and Roman periods The Roman province of Arabia Petraea, created from the Nabataean kingdom. Nabataean trade routes.For more details on this topic, see Petra. Petra was rapidly built in the 1st century BC in Hellenistic splendor, and developed a population estimated at 20,000.

310    The Etruscans join the Samnites in an attack on Rome, but are defeated at Lake Vadimo.

307    Two of Alexander's generals rule Greece, Antigonus I and Demetrius I take the title of king, other governors follow suit.

306    Trade treaty between Rome and Carthage.

305    Ptolemy I takes the title of king of Egypt, and is soon proclaimed pharao. Seleucus I becomes king of Babylon, founding the Seleucid dynasty. Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, makes peace with Carthage after a heavy defeat and is allowed to take the title of king.
    
304     Seleucus cedes his claim on India to Chandragupta in exvhange for 500 elephants. Rome makes peace with the Samnites and its other enemies, gaining area around Napoles.

301    Antigonus is killed in battle of Issus against Seleucus I and his allies. Seleucus rules Syria and Ptolemy I rules Palestine.

300- BC00  Taoists scoff at Confucianism's veneration of early Zhou kings and reject Confucianism's striving for virtue, belief in ritual and governmental regulation. They expect society to continue to be driven by greed and lust for power, and they advocate withdrawal from social strife. For ending strife and greed they advocate an end to profits. The Taoists seek serenity in the beauties of nature and in surrender to the will of heaven. They have a saying not fashioned to encourage technological and economic growth: He who does nothing accomplishes everything.

296  Zeno of Citium turns forty. He has founded a new school of thought: stoicism. Zeno believes that God is the father to all and that all men are therefore brothers. He looks forward to one great nation under divine laws to which everyone consents – a nation bound together by love. He believes in God's will, that God works in mysterious ways, that humanity sees only a tiny portion of God's plan. Believing that God plans all, he believes in facing all circumstances with resignation. He and his followers believe that self-discipline is the starting point of virtue and that freedom is a state of mind. For the Stoics, poverty and slavery affect only the body. The poorest slave, they hold, could be a king in his own soul.

291  Epicurus is turning fifty. He is founder of a school of thought opposed to cynicism and stoicism. His is a philosophy for people who have enough wealth to live a life of ease and have enough time to smell the roses. He too is against exposing oneself to strife. He is atheistic. He believes in an empirical approach to knowledge and explains why he thinks life is worth living.

290  The great library at Alexandria is founded. A new Hellenistic, cosmopolitan culture is rising in the wake of Alexander's empire. Commercial enterprises are growing. Merchant ships are bigger. From Marseille to India, Greek is becoming the language of business. Education and training are on the rise. Migrations are increasing and with it religious diffusions. Monotheism is on the rise with the belief that all of the gods worshiped across the world are really Zeus, that Zeus is the universal god. Slavery continues.

283  Ptolemy abdicates in favor of his twenty-five year-old son, Ptolemy II. To win support from the Egyptians the Ptolomies have created a cult that includes worship of the goddess Isis. Priests clad in white initiate people by submerging them in the Nile or in sacred water from the Nile, believed to remove one's sins. The daily routine of the priests faith includes ceremonies with the singing of hymns and sprinkling of sacred water. Members of the cult believe that they will be judged after death, and they hope that with death they will pass into an everlasting life.

279  Pyrrhon, founder of a school of thought called skepticism, turns forty. While a soldier with Alexander he had come into contact with a variety of cultures and conflicting beliefs. He is the ultimate cultural relativist, holding that equally valid arguments can be made on both sides of any question and that there is no way to know which point of view is correct. He takes an absolutist approach to knowledge, believing that because we can know nothing with certainty we know nothing at all.  Pyrrhon is left with intuition and faith. What matters, believes Pyrrhon, is living well and living unperturbed.

275  Rome wins its last war over who will dominate Italy, defeating the city of Tarentum and its ally, a former kinsman of Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus, of "Pyrrhic victory" fame.

264  Rome goes to war against Carthage, the result of a politician arousing the chauvinism of Roman citizens, overriding the Roman Senate's misgivings and breaking an old treaty with Carthage.

 

 

261  Asoka (Ashoka), grandson of Chandragupta Maurya, has been ruling the great Maurya Empire since around the year 273. He is disgusted by his wars of expansion and converts to Buddhism. He gives up the kingly pastime of hunting game and instead goes on religious pilgrimages. He supports philanthropies, advocates non-violence, vegetarianism, charity and tenderness to all living things. He proselytizes for Buddhism and promises no more wars of expansion. He keeps an army for defense. He maintains monarchical authoritarianism and the network of spies that he has inherited.

250  In Alexandria, most literate Jews cannot read Hebrew, and the Five Books of Moses are translated into Greek – a translation called the Septuagint. The translations are proclaimed to be miraculous creations, and a curse is announced against anyone who changes what has been produced. Jews in different areas need clarifications, and they ignore the curse and insert new words to fit local meaning.

250  In Greece an alarm clock is created – a water clock.

247  Parthians, from the steppe lands east of the Caspian Sea, have been establishing themselves in Persia, and their chief, Arcases, becomes king.

246  The governor for the Seleucus dynasty in Bactria declares Bactria's independence. The Seleucus dynasty continues to rule in Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine and parts of Persia. Colonies that Alexander created are islands in a sea of eastern people, and Greek culture is diffusing with eastern cultures.

241  Twenty-three years of war between Carthage and Rome comes to an end. Many Romans believe that victory confirms that their city has been called on by the gods for a special destiny. Rome's concern for security has been raised. Rome wins control over Corsica and Sardinia. The Sardinians resist. Roman soldiers with trained dogs invade Sardinia, hunt down people and glut the slave market in Italy. A new saying emerges: "as cheap as a Sardinian."

240  To Japan's major southern island, Kyushu, migrants have brought, or are about to bring, a culture with iron, bronze, tool making and wet-rice agriculture. The migrants are perhaps from Korea – the shortest distance from the Asian mainland and where such ways of living exists.

233  Sometime around now, the scholar Han Feizi complains about people thinking that five sons are not too many. People are more, he writes, and wealth is less. "The life of a nation depends on having enough food, not upon the number of people."

233  The scholar Han Feizi kills himself or dies as a result of political intrigue, at the age of around 47. He had abandoned Confucianism, believing that moral example is not enough. He has followers known as Legalists. The Legalists see goodness as people cooperating with authority. Society, they believe, must be organized by the state. Seeing rivalries between states as a fact of life, the Legalists believe in strengthening the state, and some of them advocate expansion as a means of strengthening the state. Seeing Taoism and Confucianism as unessential and divisive, the Legalists favor restricting these.

230  Qin, the most eastern of the states in Zhou civilization, defeats the first of its rival states, Han, in a drive to unify all the states of Zhou civilization. Qin has been considered the most barbaric of states, mixed as it was with tribal peoples to the west. But it has been the most innovative and vigorous of the states, and it has been open to immigration, adding to its manpower.

221  Qin has defeated its other rivals: Chao, Wei, Ch'u and Yan. Qin's ruler takes the title of First Emperor – Shihuang-di. It is said that Heaven has given him the mandate to rule. The new and widespread unity gives birth to what will be called China.

218  The second war between Carthage and Rome begins, sparked by a clash of  interests between the two imperial powers in Spain. The Carthaginians, led by Hannibal, cross from Spain through Gaul and over the Swiss Alps into Italy.

217  At Lake Trasimenus, the Carthaginians kill all but a few Roman soldiers, and in the wake of this disaster, on December 17th, Rome introduces a festival to lift the morale of its citizens, a festival called Saturnalia for the god of agriculture, Saturn. The courts and schools close and military operations are suspended so that soldiers can celebrate. It is a time of goodwill and jollity that includes visiting people, banqueting and exchanging gifts.

213  Shihuang-di is trying to secure his rule. He is collecting weapons from all those not in his armies, and his agents are confiscating books thought to be dangerous. Books on agriculture, forestry, herbal medicine and divination are spared. Writings of Confucius and his followers are burned. Shihuang-di makes himself an enemy to Confucianists.

210  Shihuang-di dies and civil war erupts.

202  In China's civil war, Liu Bang, a former policemen, has been better at attracting support, and he defeats his brutal and ruthless rival, Xiang Yu. Having won the title Prince of Han, Liu Bang begins what is to be known as the Han dynasty.

202  After sixteen years of fighting, the second war between Carthage and Rome is about over. A Roman soldier runs a sword through the Greek scientist and philosopher, Archemides, at his home in Syracuse.

201  Rome defeats Carthage. Hannibal finds refuge with the Seleucid king in Syria, Antiochus III. Rome considers itself ruler on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain).

300 BC - EUCLID - "Geometry's Genius"Early YearsAlmost none of the details of Euclid's life are known.  His birth and death dates are uncertain, as are the city and even the continent of his birth.  How ironic that a man of such enduring fame received such little attention while he was alive.  It is certain that Euclid was active as a teacher at the great library in Alexandria, Egypt, around the third century B.C.  He was also a writer, devoted to explaining and expanding mathematical theories.  His deductive mind led him to create a fascinating work that has been far more influential than any other treatise ever written on logical geometry.  Though he wrote several books, this textbook of geometry titled The Elements, secured his place in history.    His Book: The ElementsThe Elements has been used as a basis for teaching geometry for well over two thousand years.  The first edition appeared in print about thirty years after Gutenburg invented his printing press in 1455.  More than a thousand editions, many translated into other languages from the original Greek, have since been produced, making Euclid the most successful textbook writer of all time.  So laudable was his work that all previous geometry texts were superseded and forgotten when Euclid's book appeared.    The majority of the principles contained in The Elements were already understood - and many were already proven - through the research of Hippocrates, Eudoxus and the Pythagoreans.  Euclid's primary contribution consisted of a unique formulation of these theories and the arrangement of information into an overall plan based on a few select axioms.  These axioms were then verified using mathematical precepts to develop a pattern of conclusions in succession.  Along the way, the mathematician supplied the steps and proofs that had previously been missing.  The idea that everything within a discipline could be deduced from a few basic principles was new - and important to world history.  Euclid's deductive examples, many centuries later, fueled the Western quest for scientific knowledge that was pioneered by thinkers like Newton, Galileo and Copernicus.  It was substantially due to two factors, Greek rationalism and early Greek mathematical learning, that science arose and flourished in Europe.  Other parts of the world (China, for instance), though technologically more advanced than Europe, never possessed the practical, theoretical pattern of spatial analysis that European intellectuals enjoyed.  These thinkers had been conditioned to embrace Euclid's geometry as descriptive of the real world, not as merely an abstract system of postulates. Sir Isaac Newton's elegant work, the Principia, written more than a millennium after Euclid's death, is a particularly obvious example of the Alexandrian's influence.  It is organized in a classical geometric form similar to that of The Elements. Since Euclid's time, other mathematicians, as well as many scientists and philosophers, have attempted to show how all their conclusions could be logically derived from a small number of initial assumptions.  Today, all branches of mathematics are organized into deductive systems.  Euclidean geometry does not always hold true in Einstein's "real" universe, but it does provide a very close map of reality in our everyday world.  While it primarily develops plane and solid geometry, The Elements also contains sections on algebra and number theory.  The text was not intended as an encyclopedia of geometry.  It had a more specialized purpose - to prepare students for philosophical studies, much in the abstract, "pure-ideas" spirit of Plato.  King Ptolemy once asked if there was any shorter way through geometry than studying The Elements, to which Euclid replied, "There is no royal road to geometry."  However true this may be, some points, as an overview of the work, are crudely summarized hereafter.The work begins with a list of assumptions (axioms that are assumed to be true).  It then draws conclusions from these assumptions by employing a deductive reasoning process (If...  , then...  ).Axioms are made up of "undefined" or "self-evident" terms - those having no need (or so Euclid thought) of being defined using other words.  Euclid compares the axioms he uses in his reasoning system to the trunk of a tree; resultant propositions, deduced from the axioms, are like the branches supported by the trunk; additional propositions derived from these propositions are like the twigs that grow out of the branches, and so on.  The line of propositions (if they don't circle back into themselves) must end somewhere; but at the same time a new, yet unfounded series of axioms is initiated, to prompt future thinking. Five "postulates" and five "common notions" make up the ten axioms (or assumptions) of The Elements.  As translated by Sir Thomas Heath in his famous annotated edition, these axioms are listed below: Postulates-1.    It is possible to draw a straight line from any point to any point.-2.    It is possible to produce a finite straight line continuously in a straight line.-3.It is possible to describe a circle with any center and distance (diameter).--4.All right angles are equal to one another.--5.If a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which the angles are less than right angles.Common notions--1.Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another.--2.    If equals be added to equals, the wholes are equal.--3.If equals be subtracted from equals, the remainders are equal.--4.Things which coincide with one another are equal to one another--.5.The whole is greater than the part.Believe it or not, from these ten quite rudimentary concepts - in conjunction with a section on definitions - Euclid derived all of his geometric theorems.  Again taking from Heath's edition, some of the most important of these theorums include:-•    If in a triangle two angles be equal to one another, the sides which subtend (are opposite) the equal angles will also be equal to one another.•    If two straight lines cut one another, they make the vertical (opposite) angles equal to one another.•In any triangle, two angles taken together in any manner are less than two right angles. •    Straight lines parallel to the same straight line are also parallel to one another.  •In any triangle...  the three interior angles (added together) are equal to two right angles (180 degrees).•If a parallelogram (a four-sided figure) [has] the same base with a triangle and [is located] in the same parallels, the parallelogram is double the triangle (in area).After stating each theorum, Euclid offers detailed, step-by-step drawings. Then he explains the significance of each of the lines, points, and numerals or letters he uses to arrive at his conclusions.The Elements deals with abstract mathematical space rather than with physical space.  The work was at times criticized for its lack of practical application for this very reason One anecdote illustrates Euclid's preferred emphasis on theory to the exclusion of practice.  A student, after studying the first theorem contained in the book, asked the Teacher, "What shall I get by learning these things?"  Euclid replied by calling one of his slaves and saying, "Give him a coin, since he must make gain out of what he learns."As we have seen, Euclid's Elements was a crucial factor in the rise of science.  Science is more than just an assembly of accurate ideas and observable facts; it is a mixture of thoughtful experimentation on the one hand and careful analysis and reasoning on the other.  And Euclid's mastery of all three - logic, experimentation and analysis, along with rigorous, bold exercising of each - led to his elegant system; a system that has had a profound, "geometrically"increased influence on the world through the ages.

300 LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA.It is now impossible to determine the collection's size in any era with any certainty. Papyrus scrolls comprised the collection, and although parchment codices were used after 300 BC, the Alexandrian Library is never documented as having switched to parchment, perhaps because of its strong links to the papyrus trade. (The Library of Alexandria in fact had an indirect cause in the creation of writing parchment — due to the library's critical need for papyrus, little was exported and thus an alternate source of copy material became essential.)A single piece of writing might occupy several scrolls, and this division into self-contained "books" was a major aspect of editorial work. King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) is said to have set 500,000 scrolls as an objective for the library. Mark Antony supposedly gave Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls (taken from the great Library of Pergamum) for the library as a wedding gift, but this is regarded by some historians as a propagandist claim meant to show Antony's allegiance to Egypt rather than Rome. No index of the library survives, and it is not possible to know with certainty how large and how diverse the collection may have been. For example, it is likely that even if the Library of Alexandria had hundreds of thousands of scrolls (and thus perhaps tens of thousands of individual works), some of these would have been duplicate copies or alternate versions of the same texts.A possibly apocryphal or exaggerated story concerns how the library's collection grew so large. By decree of Ptolemy III of Egypt, all visitors to the city were required to surrender all books and scrolls, as well as any form of written media in any language in their possession which, according to Galen, were listed under the heading "books of the ships". Official scribes then swiftly copied these writings, some copies proving so precise that the originals were put into the library, and the copies delivered to the unsuspecting owners. This process also helped to create a reservoir of books in the relatively new city.According to Galen, Ptolemy III requested permission from the Athenians to borrow the original scripts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, for which the Athenians demanded the enormous amount of fifteen talents (450 kg of a precious metal) as guarantee. Ptolemy happily paid the fee but kept the original scripts for the library. This story may also be constructed erroneously to show the power of Alexandria over Athens during the Ptolemaic dynasty.MusaeumThe library of Alexandria was but one part of the Musaeum of Alexandria, which functioned as a sort of research institute. In addition to the library, the Musaeum included rooms for the study of astronomy, anatomy, and even a zoo of exotic animals. The classical thinkers who studied, wrote, and experimented at the museum include the fathers of math, engineering, physiology, geography, and medicine. Notable thinkers such as Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Hipparchus, Pappus, Hypatia, and Aristarchus of Samos.


300    ANTIOCH. Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the Near East and was a cradle of gentile Christianity.[1] It was one of the four cities of the Syrian tetrapolis. Its residents were known as Antiochenes. Once a great metropolis of a half million people, it declined during the Middle Ages and was eventually deserted because of repeated earthquakes, military conflicts and the silting-up of its river port.Two routes from the Mediterranean, lying through the Orontes gorge and the Beilan Pass, converge in the plain of the Antioch Lake (Balük Geut or El Bahr) and are met there bythe road from the Amanic Gates (Baghche Pass) and western Commagene, which descends the valley of the Kara Su,  the roads from eastern Commagene and the Euphratean crossings at Samosata (Samsat) and Apamea Zeugma (Birejik), which descend the valleys of the Afrin and the Kuwaik, and the road from the Euphratean ford at Thapsacus, which skirts the fringe of the Syrian steppe. A single route proceeds

.300    --KOSOVO. Kosovo, First Bulgarian Empire, and History of Medieval SerbiaDuring the Neolithic period, the region of Kosovo lay within the extent of the Vinca-Turdas culture. In the 4th to 3rd centuries BC, it was the territory of the Thraco-Illyrian tribe of the Dardani, forming part of the kingdom of Illyria. Illyria was conquered by Rome in the 160s BC, and made the Roman province of Illyricum in 59 BC. The Kosovo region became part of Moesia Superior in AD 87.

300 BC  BRITAIN swords were making their appearance once more in place of daggers. Finally,
    beginning in the 3rd century, a British form of  La Tène Celtic art was developed to decorate warlike equipment such as scabbards, shields, and helmets, and eventually also bronze mirrors and even domestic pottery. During the 2nd century the export of Cornish tin, noted before Pytheas of Massalia, a Greek explorer, continued; evidence of its destination is provided by the Paul (Cornwall) hoard of north Italian silver coins.

300    State of Choson is formed in northern Korea.
    Treaty between Rome and Carthage.

298    Third Samnite war ends 290 in Roman victory in central Italy.

285    Ptolemy II Philadelphius rules Egypt to 247.

280    -275    Campaigns of Phyrrus, King of Epirus, in Italy and Sicily
    ROME. Tarentum decides to resist Roman aggression. The people turn for help to Phyrrus, king of northwest Greece. His troops land in Italy and gain a resounding victory in the first battle. Phyrrus is also victorious at Ausculum. The battle is so fierce and there are so many losses that Phyrrus exclaims,"If we gain another such victory we are finished!". Eventually Phrrus is forced to leave Italy. Tarentum surrenders to the Romans. Rome becomes one of the major Merranean powers.
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276    Ptolemy II marries his sister Arsinoe. Antigonus II Gonatus rules Greece to 239.
    
275     BC  The aes signatum or bronze bars are still commonly used as currency  in RomeThese cumbersome bronze bars are later superseded by coins which are much  more convenient.

272    Antigonus defeats invasion by Phyrrus of Epirus.

269     BCRegular issues of silver coins are minted by the Romans and widely circulatedDespite the example of the Greek colonies on the southern Italian mainland and Sicily, and of Carthage, the Romans are relatively late in adopting  coinage.
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        264    -241    First Punic War (Cartagena)
        ROME. In Sicily, the Romans came up against a serious rival in Carthage, based in Tunisia. It had been a power long before Rome, as a leading trade center or raw materials and finished products. The lands around the plantations of the rich were worked by thousands of slaves. Trade and agricultural led to power being in the hands of landowners and merchants. Carthage was nominally a Republic, but without a firm base. Executive power was held by two consuls who were in command of the army and navy. The army was weak in the sense that it was comprised mainly of mercenaries. However, its professional standards was high and its technology advanced (elephants, siege weapons, etc). Carthage colonized Africa, Spain, the Baleares, Corsica and Sardinia In conflict with Rome, the first Punic war (Carthagenians were Punics) lasted 23 years. The Romans had to build a fleet before the could transfer the theater of war to Africa. Hostilities were at first centered in Sicily.

        254    Carthage is defeated and is obliged to sue for peace and pay a tribute to Rome. The Romans, in an act of unprovoked aggression, later seized Corsica and Sardinia. Carthage was unable to defend itself since it was also under attack in Lybia. Amilcar Barca quelled this revolt, gaining authority in Carthage, and was  acknowledged as chief of the new leaders who dreamed of revenge against Rome. He hoped to gain a bridgehead in Spain to better attack. During the fighting in Spain Almilcar died. The command was at first taken over by his son in law, then by his son, Hannibal. Amilcar had asked his son to vow eternal enmity against Rome, and Hannibal remained true to his vow all his life.. Rome takes Panormus in Sicily from Carthage to 241.

250    Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek.

        ROMA. Ashkali.HistoryOrigin of the Romani peopleLinguistic and genetic evidence indicates the Romanies originated from the Indian subcontinent, emigrating from India towards the northwest no earlier than the 11th century. The Romani are generally believed to have originated in central India, possibly in the modern Indian state of Rajasthan, migrating to northwest India (the Punjab region) around 250 BC. In the centuries spent here, there may have been close interaction with such established groups as the Rajputs and the Jats. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is believed to have occurred between AD 500 and AD 1000. Contemporary populations sometimes suggested as sharing a close relationship to the Romani are the Dom people of Central Asia and the Banjara of India.The emigration from India likely took place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni[40] As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire. The 11th century terminus post quem is due to the Romani language showing unambiguous features of the Modern Indo-Aryan languages,[41] precluding an emigration during the Middle Indic period.Genetic evidence supports the mediaeval migration from India. The Romanies have been described as "a conglomerate of genetically isolated founder populations",[42] while a number of common Mendelian disorders among Romanies from all over Europe indicates "a common origin and founder effect". A study from 2001 by Gresham et al. suggests "a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group".[44] The same study found that "a single lineage ... found across Romani populations, accounts for almost one-third of Romani males." A 2004 study by Morar et al. concluded that the Romani population was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, with secondary and tertiary founder events occurring approximately 16–25 generations ago".Possible connection with the Jat peopleWhile the South Asian origin of the Romani people has been long considered a certitude, the exact South Asian group from whom the Romanies have descended has been a matter of debate. The recent discovery of the "Jat mutation" that causes a type of glaucoma in Romani populations suggests that the Romani people are the descendants of the Jat people found in Northern India and Pakistan.[46] This connection was upheld by Michael Jan de Goeje in 1883.This contradicted an earlier study that compared the most common haplotypes found in Romani groups with those found in Jatt Sikhs and Jats from Haryana and found no matches.[48] The haplogroup H, which is the most common haplogroup in Romanis is far more prevalent in central India and south India than it is in northern India, where haplogroup R1a lineages make up at least half of male ancestries, and haplogroup H is rare.
    
 

247    Ptolemy III rules Egypt to 221.
        Asoka rules the Maurya empire in India to 236 and becomes a Buddhist. Devanampiya Tissa rules Sri lanka to 207.
 
248    IRAN.  - Sassanid dynastic empireCoin of Phraates IV. The inscription reads: Benefactor Arsaces, civilized, friend of Greeks.Main articles: Parthian Empire and Seleucid EmpireRoman-Persian Wars, Roman relations with the Parthians and Sassanians, and Silk RoadParthia was led by the Arsacid dynasty, who reunited and ruled over the Iranian plateau, after defeating the Greek Seleucid Empire, beginning in the late third century BCE, and intermittently controlled Mesopotamia

241    Peace between Rome and Carthage. Carthage surrenders Sicily, which becomes the first Roman province.
      
241 BCTreaty of LutatiusEnds the First Punic War.
     
     226 BCEbro TreatyEstablishes the Ebro River in Iberia as the boundary line between the Roman Republic and Carthage.
      
    216 BCMacedonian-Carthaginian TreatyEstablishes an anti-Roman alliance between Philip V of Macedon and Hannibal of Carthage.
     
 205 BCTreaty of Phoenice Ends the First Macedonia WAR
200 BC- 200  The city of Teotihuacan, in central Mexico, is established – the city's earliest buildings dating from around this time. The founders of the city are unknown, but evidense points to Olmec influence in the city's culture and architecture.

200  Sometime around now, people from an island in the east, in the Tonga or Samoans islands, become the first to inhabit Tahiti. Their journey was across several hundred kilometres of ocean in an outrigger canoe twenty or thirty meters long and able to transport families and domestic animals. Their language is of the family of Austronesian Languages common in the Pacific, including Fiji.

200 to 197  Rome intervenes in a conflict between a reformer, Philip V of  Macedonia, and conservatives ruling Greek city states. The Romans win, and Philip agrees to stop interventions and to pay war damages.

193 to 190  Rome sees expansion by Antiochus III of Syria as a threat to its power and remembers that Antiochus has given refuge to Hannibal. Rome allies with Rhodes, Pergamum and other Greek cities hostile to Antiochus, and together they defeat Antiochus and his allies. Antiochus agrees to surrender to Hannibal and to pay a great sum to Rome as tribute.

185  The Maurya Dynasty ends when the army commander-in-chief, Pushyamitra, murders the last Mauryan king and takes power. Animal sacrifices, prohibited under concise paragraphs and his heirs, return. Musical festivals and dances also return.

183  Word is out about division and weakness in India, and a series of invasions into the Indus Valley begins.

183  Hannibal commits suicide rather than let himself be found by Romans.

171  Greek cities that fear Macedonia's power have told  Rome's senate that Macedonia is plotting against Rome. Rome's Senate decides on war against Macedonia's new ruler, Perseus, son of Philip V.

168   Rome destroys the army of Perseus and takes him away as prisoner. Because Epirus was allied with Perseus, Rome attacks its towns and villages and carries away 150,000 people whom they sell into slavery. Rome divides Macedonia into four republics and forbids contact between the four. Rome takes possession of Macedonia's mines and forests. It is the beginning of Roman annexations east of the Adriatic Sea.

167  Antiochus IV, of the Seleucid dynasty and empire, dedicates the temple in Jerusalem as a shrine to Zeus. He believes that this will be accepted because people readily shift the names of gods and are willing to recognize the one god of the universe by the name of Zeus.

166   In Judah, the Maccabaean rebellion against Seleucid rule begins. It is part civil war and part war of national liberation. Rome, which has no love for the Seleucid dynasty, is friendly toward the rebellion.

155 to 151  In the Iberian Peninsula, the Lusitani nation rebels against Rome. The Romans offer them peace and land, trap them, slaughter 9,000 and enslave 20,000. To give one of its generals a longer season for campaigning, the Senate has moved the date of the New Year from March 15 to January 1.

149  Rome begins a third war against Carthage, a war that Carthaginians do not want.

148  Rome crushes a rebellion in Macedonia.

 

 

146  Across Greece, an alliance led by a reformer, Critolaus, rebels against Roman domination.  At Carthage, amid suicides and carnage, the Romans demolish and burn the city and carry off survivors to sell as slaves. The Romans defeat an army of Greeks at Corinth, slaughter all of that city's males, enslave the city's women and children, ship the city's treasures to Italy and burn the city to the ground. Rome now dominates the Hellenized east. Rome's army finds Thebes entirely empty of people, its inhabitants having fled to wander through mountains and wilderness. According to the Greek historian Polybius, people everywhere are throwing themselves down wells and over precipices.

141  After more than twenty-five years of rebellion, Jewish rebels drive the last of the Syrians out of Judea. With the strength of Rome behind the rebellion, Judea wins formal independence: an independent Jewish state for the first time in more than four centuries. Simon Maccabeus is chosen by a popular assembly as High Priest despite his lack of qualifications by birth. He also takes the position of Ruler of the Nation (ethnarch). He creates a festival called Hanukkah to celebrate both Judea's independence and the day that his rule begins.

141  Scythians, from Central Asia, are beginning to push into the lush agricultural land of Bactria.

140  In China, a young man succeeds his father Han Jing-di and becomes Emperor Wu.

138  Emperor Wu sends an explorer to Persia, which helps open the Silk Road.

135  Encouraged by a slave-priest, about four hundred slaves in Sicily revolt. They massacre most of their masters, and the uprising encourages other slaves in Sicily. As many as sixty thousand join the revolt. They seize a number of Sicilian towns, and they defeat the first of the armies that Rome sends against them.

133  A Roman war hero, aristocrat and reformer, Tiberius Gracchus, challenges the power of the senate and is murdered.

132 to 130  The slave revolt in Sicily is crushed, but the slave revolt spreads to western Asia Minor, led by a king denied his throne by the Romans: Aristonicus. Aristonicus is fighting a guerrilla war with support from common people. The Romans poison the water wells that local people and the guerrillas depend on. Aristonicus is captured, taken to Rome and executed by strangulation. Rome extends its rule across much of western Asia Minor.

128  With the rise in China's prosperity, Emperor Wu believes he can support a war against tribes in the northwest, whom previous emperors have been paying not to attack. Emperor Wu stops the bribery and launches a successful series offensives.

124  China's Imperial University is founded.

121  Gauis Gracchus, brother of Tiberius, has renewed efforts at reform. He has an army of bodyguards, but he and his associates are hunted down and killed.

120  A revival of Confucianism has occurred, and Emperor Wu makes Confucianism China's official philosophy.

111  Emperor Wu's armies conquer northern Vietnam and take control of Guangzhou, in southern China – which had been lost during upheavals a century before.

108  To the extreme northeast, Emperor Wu's armies conquer northern Korea.

104  Emperor Wu's expansion and his maintaining large armies of occupation have burdened China's economy. China's population has been growing. Big landowners have been expanding their holdings. Ordinary farmers are most burdened by taxes, forced to borrow at usurious rates and are paying 50 percent of their crops as rent. Homelessness and banditry has increased, and agricultural productivity has declined. The Confucianist, Dong Zhongshu, who has been leading the call for reform, dies.
    200 - THE OLD TESTAMENT  - Christians and Jews consider the Old Testament to be the foundational historical canon of religious worship; some of the earlier sections hold religious significance to Moslems as well.  Said to include the entire history of the world, from its creation down to the last days, its prophetic—and often cryptic—utterances and chronicled events all point to one major occurrence:  the coming of the Messiah. The vast work is divided into four major sections:  The creation, the story of Abraham, and the patriarchs in Canaan (Genesis and Job) make up the first section.  The second (Exodus through Ruth) covers the period from Israel's bondage in Egypt, the exodus, all through the conquest of the Promised Land.  The third section (I Samuel through Zephaniah) includes Israel's history as a united—then a divided—kingdom in the land of Canaan.  And the final section (Ezekiel through Malachi) records the fall of the two major kingdoms, Israel and Judah, the Babylonian Captivity, and the release of the exiles to rebuild their country.Text Overview:I.  In the Beginning"In the beginning, God created heaven and earth."  After forming Adam and Eve, he caused them to become living souls and placed them in the Garden of Eden, a paradise.  He forbade them to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, on pain of death.  They disobeyed, and were cast out of the garden.  Thus, through this first transgression, sin and rebellion entered the world; Adam and Eve's fall from innocence was the beginning of humanity's estrangement from God.After some 900 years, sin and iniquity became so widespread that God resolved to cleanse the earth of its inhabitants by sending a cataclysmic flood.  God commanded the prophet Noah, who "found grace in the eyes of the Lord," to build an ark, in which he, his family, and male and female members of every species of animal were saved from drowning.Following the flood, Noah's descendants flourished for a time, but eventually became so sinful and arrogant that they attempted to build a tower that would reach to heaven.  Angry, God punished their folly by confusing their languages and scattering the people to different parts of the earth.Out of the materially advanced but spiritually dead culture of the Near East, God chose Abraham as his prophet.  God made a covenant with Abraham that his posterity would be a chosen people.  Through Abraham, God promised that a Messiah would come to bless the whole world and redeem humanity from sin.  Following God's injunction, Abraham traveled from Ur, in Mesopotamia, to Canaan, the Promised Land.However, Abraham needed to learn certain lessons of faith and obedience.  As a test of faith, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his firstborn son Isaac on the altar.  Just as Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, an angel from God intervened—Abraham's obedience and faith had been manifest.Isaac's chief significance was that he fathered Jacob.  Jacob tricked his father into giving him, not his older brother Esau, the birthright blessing reserved for the eldest son.  In a vision, God promised Jacob that his posterity would "multiply as the stars of the heaven."  Finally, Jacob reconciled with Esau, and his name, Jacob—which means "usurper" in Hebrew—was changed to Israel, meaning "prince of God," the title that God's "chosen people" would bear ever after.II.  On the MarchIsrael fathered twelve sons, each of which would someday lead one of Israel's twelve "tribes."  The second youngest, Joseph, was sold into slavery by his jealous older brothers.  Eventually, Jacob's sons journeyed to Egypt to escape a severe famine in Canaan.  Joseph, who had since risen to become a ruler of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh, forgave his brothers and provided for his family's needs.Israel's family eventually settled in Goshen.  After four hundred years in Egypt, the people had grown and prospered, becoming a mighty nation.  Eventually, though, a Pharaoh took power who, fearing the Hebrews' vast numbers, enslaved them.  By their suffering, the Israelites were taught to rely on God's mercy.God selected Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.  Moses went to Pharaoh and demanded that the people be freed from bondage, but Pharaoh refused.  Thus, God brought down ten successive plagues upon the Egyptians, the last of which killed all firstborn males throughout the land.  This plague led to the institution of the Passover:  the firstborn son of every believing Israelite family was spared death ("passed over" by the destroying angel) if the blood of a sacrificed lamb (symbolic of the coming Christ's sacrifice) was painted over the doorway.  Death visited all who were not "under the blood."Pharaoh, whose eldest son died in the plague, finally allowed the Israelites to leave.  But his anger was again kindled, and he sent his army to slaughter the departing Israelites, who found themselves caught between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army.  Miraculously, God parted the waters of the Red Sea, delivered them "dry-shod" through the channel, and destroyed Pharaoh's pursuing army.  Despite this deliverance and many other blessing given them by God, the children of Israel often complained about their hardships.They journeyed eastward to Mount Sinai, where God gave Moses Ten Commandments:--1.  Thou shalt have no other gods before me.--2.    Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image ...--3.      Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain ...--4.  Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy ...--5.  Honour thy father and thy mother ...--6.  Thou shalt not kill.--7.      Thou shalt not commit adultery.--8.  Thou shalt not steal.--9.  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.--10.Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's [possessions] ...These basic religious/societal laws became the core of doctrine for both the Jewish and Christian faiths, a foundation that endures up to the present day.Because of unbelief, Israel became an itinerant, nomadic nation, and wandered in the wilderness thirty-eight more years, until all the faithless adult generation had perished.  Moses, "whom the Lord knew face to face," also died before entering the Promised Land.  Joshua, Moses' appointed successor, led the people across the Jordan River—again parting the waters—where they began to conquer, settle, and prosper in a land "flowing with milk and honey.""In those days," however, "there was no king in Israel; everyone did what he thought best."  (Judges 21:25) Lacking national unity, Israel was weak and in a state of perpetual anarchy.III.  In the LandResponding to Israelite demands for a king, the prophet Samuel anointed Saul the first King of Israel.  Although an effective military leader, Saul was unequipped to be Israel's spiritual leader.  After disregarding God's command to "utterly to destroy" the Amalekites and their possessions, Samuel anointed David to replace Saul.  David, as a young man, had first shown his favor with God by defeating the giant Philistine, Goliath, using only a sling.David, eager to merge the northern and southern tribes, proclaimed centrally-located Jerusalem the political and religious capitol of a united Israel.  Both a skilled statesman and an effective general, he defeated the Philistines and expanded the kingdom into a vast empire.  While David's great sin—sending Uriah, one of his generals, to the front lines to die so that he could marry Bathsheba, Uriah's wife—did not cost him the throne, God promised David that the sword would bedevil his family forever.  However, God also promised David that through his descendants, a Messiah would come to redeem Israel and the rest of the world from sin.After a period of internal strife, David's son Solomon took the throne.  Israel soon flourished in power, influence, wealth, and glory.  Solomon, while not a military leader, was a wise political leader.  He brought order to the nation and pursued an aggressive building program, including an elaborate temple and various fortifications.  Funded by heavy taxes and built through forced labor, however, Solomon's great buildings alienated his own people, and eventually he fell into idolatry (the worship of idols or "heathen" gods).  But despite the failings of their leaders, God continued to guide his people toward the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham.Through David and Solomon emerged some of the Old Testament's most powerful verse.  David's twenty-third Psalm reads:  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:  he leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul ...  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:  for thou art with me ...Solomon's Proverbs are renowned for their insight and spiritual direction:  Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.  (Prov.  3:5-6) A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.  (Prov.  15:1)Over the ensuing centuries, Israel fell into various states of anarchy, and the kingdom was again divided, Israel to the north, Judah to the south.  Babylonian attacks periodically brought both nations into captivity and destruction.  These years also saw the prophetic/kingly ministries of Elijah, Elisha, Jehoshaphat, Micah, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Josiah, and the prophetess Huldah, each assisting the chosen king in his duties and trying to convince the people to keep the commandments and reject their idolatrous practices.  Finally, the Babylonians conquered both of the principal kingdoms, leaving the nations mere shadows of their former glory.IV.  A Remnant RestoredThe prophets Daniel and Ezekiel—who went into exile with Judah's last king, Jehoiakim—recorded the period of Israelite captivity.  Those who were faithful to God during their captivity were blessed.  God preserved three men who were cast into a fiery furnace for refusing to bow down and worship idols.  A young man named Daniel likewise was cast into a den of lions for worshipping the Lord, and he was also saved.  This Daniel, who grew to become both a statesman and a prophet, eventually rose from royal hostage to third in command in Babylon.After seventy years in captivity, God raised up Cyrus, ruler of Persia, to conquer Babylon and to decree that Judah was to return to the land of Israel; the Jews began to rebuild their country.  The first returning exiles reconstructed the temple, but it was a poor substitute for Solomon's glorious edifice.  Seventy-five years later, Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem's walls, a feat accomplished despite the opposition of Samaria and Ammon.The prophet Ezra finally led a group of Jews from Babylon to Jerusalem, where he reinforced the observance of the Torah (the "Pentateuch," or first five books of the Old Testament) and purified the temple rituals.  Many Jews, though, never returned:  some continued to reside in Persia, where they were saved from destruction by the courageous Jewish Queen Esther; others were scattered around the world.  Still, Judaism continued to prosper, and most Hebrews continued to await the Holy Messiah's appearance.  For, as the prophet Isaiah had foretold, the Messiah would come to deliver them from bondage, sin and death:  "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows ...  He was wounded for our transgressions ...  and with his stripes we are healed."

    200BC - Paradise Lostby  John Milton (1608 - 1674) Typeof work: Narrative, epic poem Setting: Hell, then Heaven, then newly-created     Earth; all "in the beginning" Principal characters: Satan, earlier called Lucifer, a fallen angel Adam, the first man Eve, the first woman God the Father God the Son Various angels and demons Story Overview: (Recounted here is the story of Man's fall, Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, Till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat... )
Satan, the once radiant Lucifer, and his angels, lay in a formless, sulphurous lake of fire having just been driven out of Heaven. Their fall had sent them plummeting through space from their heavenly home down to Hell, leaving them beaten senseless. Only now, after lying unconscious for nine days, did Satan and his demons begin to rouse themselves. Accustomed to living in heavenly glory, they found their new home horrifying, and convened a council to determine how they might escape Hell and recover at least some of their former glory.
Too proud to consider seeking re-admittance to Heaven through repentance, they agreed with Satan that it was "better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." One demon favored remaining in Hell, but transforming it into a kingdom as powerful and glorious as Heaven. But another, Beelzebub, second in command, proposed a different plan: He had heard that God had designs to create a new world, to be the home "of some new race called man...  / To be created like to us, though less/ In power and excellence."
Beelzebub argued that, if they acted quickly, they could possess this new world and subdue as slaves the new race of men. His vengeful plot was eagerly approved by the hosts of Hell, and Satan himself volunteered to make the perilous journey past the Gates of Hell and through space to the new earth.
Satan, after a long trek, happened upon a heavenly angel, Uriel, custodian of the orb of the sun. Disguised as an angel, Satan managed to get the unsuspecting Uriel to point out where the new earth lay. The devil then flew off.
His earthly arrival, however, did not go unnoticed by God, who calmly explained to His Son that Satan's presence would, in time, lead to the fall of man, bringing upon him punishment and death. Moved by compassion, the Son offered to give his life in order to save men, which sacrifice the Father accepted. But for the time they left Satan to his wiles.
Satan was overwhelmed by the earth's beauty. But that very beauty, far from filling him with joy, stirred up memories of the Paradise he had lost. In a stormy speech full of self-doubt, fear, and envy, Satan lamented his fall and foretold a future filled with ever-worsening torments. He would never be able to escape Hell, he concluded, since "which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell." But if he could not live in peace, at least he would divide Heaven's kingdom, and possibly rule over the greater part of God's creation.
Searching, Satan finally came upon Adam and Eve. Disguised in the forms of various beasts, he marvelled at the first man and woman, whose beauty and nobility inspired in him both admiration and jealousy. He watched them discharge their duties as caretakers of the Garden of Eden and eavesdropped on their long, affectionate conversations. He was astonished to find them endowed with full faculties of speech and reasoning, and yet they were so innocent as to enjoy sexual union without the slightest taint  of lust. After performing their evening devotions, Adam and Eve retired to their bed. Satan, crouching as a toad beside the sleeping woman, whispered falsehoods and rumors into her ear. After a time, guardian angels arrived to interrupt his mischief, but allowed him to escape.
On the next morning Eve awoke complaining of a nightmare in which an angel had tempted her to eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. God, seeing the peril his creation was in, sent the angel Raphael to explain to the couple that Satan had been the cause of the dream and to warn them against further temptation. Adam's curiosity was sparked; he asked Raphael about this "Satan" and how he had managed to come to the earth. The angel answered Adam with an account of Satan's fall. The problem, he related, began when God the Father announced to the assembled angels that He had anointed His Son, who stood at His right hand, as a Lord over them all. Lucifer, full of envy, managed to assemble a rival faction of angels to contest God's power. The ensuing battle lasted three days. On the first, the loyal angels routed the rebels. Satan retreated, but during the night manufactured a slew of weapons with which, on the second day's fighting, he surprised Heaven's angels. On the third day, God sent His Son to personally lead His forces. The Son drove Satan and his legions over the edge of Heaven into the waiting flames.
Raphael went on to describe the creation of the earth, the forming of man and woman, and advised Adam not to seek knowledge beyond his comprehension. Capping off his visit with a warning to beware of Satan, Raphael returned to Heaven.
But Satan was eager to succeed. Back in Eden, he assumed the form of a serpent and waited for his opportunity. Adam had reluctantly allowed his wife to work alone that day in another part of the garden. Satan accosted her, showering her with flattery, comparing her to a goddess. Astonished and a little pleased by the compliments, Eve demanded to know how the serpent managed to acquire speech. From eating a certain fruit, Satan explained; no sooner had he tasted it than he had found himself able to speak and reason. Though Eve was suspicious, she followed the snake to the tree bearing the fruit. Above the woman's protest that it was forbidden to her, Satan delivered a masterful, subtle argument that if the fruit of the tree could give a mere serpent human faculties, surely it would transform humans into gods! Furthermore, he asserted, the warning of certain death associated with eating the fruit could not be true, since he himself had eaten it and had not died. Swayed by these words, Eve took of the fruit and ate her fill. She returned to Adam, overcome with the sensation of knowledge and power. While horrified that she had partaken of the forbidden fruit, Adam chose to partake as well rather than be separated from her.
Their newfound knowledge, however, was already working changes in their nature. Once wholly innocent in their nakedness, the man and woman now looked on each other with licentiousness; lust overtook them. Afterwards, in guilt and remorse, the transgressors resorted to pleading with God for forgiveness of their sins. The Son, acting as intercessor on their behalf, carried their cries to the Father, who chose to forgive them on condition that they be expelled from Eden, in order to experience mortality. To the woman it would mean pain in childbearing. To Adam, their fall would bring a world of toil and sweat, and a curse of weeds, thorns and briars. God dispatched Michael, one of His chief angels, to carry out the expulsion.
In the meantime, Satan gleefully dashed back towards Hell with news of his victory. On the way he met Sin and Death, busily building a road to earth, and bargained with them to be his ambassadors on Earth.
In Hell, Satan haughtily told of his masterful seduction of Adam and Eve. But just at the very moment when he expected to receive their thunderous applause, he heard nothing but hisses - the host of them had been turned into serpents. Trees, exact in appearance to the Tree of Knowledge, appeared, laden with fruit. But when the mass of serpents struggled to bite into the fruit, it turned to bitter ashes. The Son had prevented Hell's hosts from becoming mortal; they would forever be the hated enemy of mankind.
On an earth filled with storms, floods, earthquakes, violent predators and the discomforts of changing seasons, Adam and Eve contemplated suicide. But Michael arrived, bringing hope - God would forgive their sin. Though in consequence of their sin they must be expelled from the Garden, Michael comforted them, manifesting to them a vision of mankind's future: their progeny; the rise and fall of kingdoms; Noah; Abraham; Moses; the coming of the Messiah, and His death, resurrection and expiration to redeem fallen man; the progress of God's church; and, in the end, the Lord's second coming. Cheered by the prospect of the ultimate redemption of their race, the man and woman followed the path leading from their paradisiacal garden to the barren and lonely world below.
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitary way.
Commentary:
Few literary poems attempt to take on such a huge theme as Paradise Lost. Milton himself, in the Argumentum that begins the poem, claims to have produced the greatest poem ever written, "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." The poem's theme is nothing less than the origin of evil itself, which Milton sees as being embedded in man's nature as a result of the original transgression and subsequent sins of humanity's common ancestors. It recounts, in twelve expansive books, a story line that occupies only a few verses of the book of Genesis.
Aside from its sheer size, other elements might make the work somewhat difficult for a modern reader. It is told in the high formal style, filled with rhetorical speeches, invocations, elaborate similes, and long "catalogues" of names, places, and armies. Milton showers his poem with thousands of allusions to Hebraic, medieval, and renaissance culture, and his syntax may strike a modern reader as twisted. This striking and unusual word order is imitative of Vergil's Aneid and the structure of many other great classical epics.
But one need not be a classical scholar to enjoy Paradise Lost. The music of the language is often mesmerizing, and its imaginative retelling of the Genesis account is without equal.
The reader is immediately intrigued by Milton's portrait of Satan. In fact, it's not hard to sympathize with the fallen devil, or even side with him - his character is more fleshy and alluring than that of the somewhat bland God of the poem. But that is the very irony Milton wanted to achieve: Just as Satan makes evil appear good, so Satan's ways may appear, but only at first glance, attractive.

     200 BC - As translated from the Sanskrit by Sir Edwin Arnold. The Bhagavad-gita, meaning literally "The Song of the Blessed One," was incorporated into an Indian epic called the Mahabarata in about 200 B.C.E.  The 700 "shlokas" (verses) of the Bhagavad-gita make up only a fraction of the Mahabarata, which encompasses some 100,000 verses.  In the 8th century, the great philosopher-saint Shri Shankaracharya decided that the Bhagavad-gita was, in itself, an important work, and that it should stand alone.  Since that time, it has been published on its own and is now much more widely read than the Mahabarata.The text, in many respects, contains an inspiring story, and, inasmuch as there are many translations and interpretations, Sir Edwin Arnold is to be praised for his beautiful and poetic translation from the original Sanskrit, a formidable task.  More than any other piece of Indian literature, its eighteen chapters give us a relatively succinct, clearly defined explanation of the Hindu, or Vedic faith, a set of religious ideals which have had profound influence on India's traditional social structure.  And, in spite of the fact that some critics view the Hindu faith as a kind of religious justification for India's stratified caste system, it should be emphasized that its true religious sentiments are both genuine and penetrating. Perhaps one of the most difficult Hindu concepts for a westerner to come to terms with is the notion of detachment, i.e., denying and ultimately liberating oneself from one's passions and desires.  After all, many in Western society are taught to affirm their emotions and eagerly pursue their various desires, not to deny them.  However, one must be patient with this characteristic Hindu perspective and try to fully understand it before prematurely dismissing it as extreme.The main text of the Bhagavad-gita is an eighteen-chapter dialogue between Arjuna, a warrior-prince, and Krishna, who is an earthly incarnation of the solar deity Vishnu.  The setting of the story is a battlefield where two clans, the Pandavas (the clan portrayed as being virtuous and just) and the Kauravas, are poised to fight.  The leaders of each clan are cousins, and many of the other warriors are relatives opposing one another.  Arjuna, a troubled human hero and leader of the Pandavas, has been reluctantly forced to engage in righteous battle against his own kinsmen.  Krisna, disguised as a charioteer, attends Arjuna in order to bolster his faltering will with wise discourse.In the opening chapter we find Arjuna and Krisna mounted on a chariot, prepared to give the fighting orders.  Before he begins, Arjuna requests that they visit the front lines to survey the scene.  Upon doing so, Arjuna is suddenly distraught at the sight of so many kin about to slaughter each other, and questions the purpose of such a battle:Krisna!  As I behold, come here to shedTheir common blood, yon concourse of our kinMy members fail, my tongue dries in my mouthA shudder thrills my body, and my hair bristles with horrorThe life within me seems to swim and faint;Nothing do I foresee save woe and wail.Arjuna continues in this vein for some time, and his passionate exhortation for peace concludes the first chapter.  Krisna vehemently chastises Arjuna for his sentiment, and submits that the proper thing for Arjuna to do is to go into battle dutifully.  The remainder of the story consists of Krisna teaching and Arjuna questioning.  Indeed, it takes a considerable amount of convincing for Krisna to finally persuade Arjuna that he must fight.To Krisna, however, the battle is merely an archetype; his overall philosophy touches upon the virtuous life.  Periodically, God comes to earth to put virtue back in her rightful place, says Krisna.  God incarnates himself in an earthly shape, or emanation, called an avatara.  Krisna himself is an avatara of God. Interestingly, Hindus ultimately believe in one God, although they worship a number of deities, considering them aspects of an all-encompassing God.  Humans, too, can be considered manifestations of God in that the spark of divinity breathes in every human.In the Bhagavad-gita we see Krisna, God incarnate, coming to the aid of noble Arjuna, who, as an advanced soul, represents the side of virtue in a battle which ends up annihilating nearly all of its participants.  The text as a whole—and specifically the teachings of Krisna—is an excellent profile of Hindu thought.  Fundamental ideas of the faith are put forth in the context of Arjuna's inner crisis.  Central to the story are the ideas of reincarnation, karma, the caste system, the unity of opposites, and right action.The notion of reincarnation is somewhat familiar to most Western readers.  Hindus believe that when people die, they are reborn on Earth again and again—until they learn the correct life path and attain Nirvana, a state of eternal bliss.  The earthly world is an illusion—or what Hindus call "Maya"—and its complexities and impediments essentially a test to be overcome.  A soul can never die, but takes on many different forms in its ascent towards—or descent from—the unity of God.Karma is the law governing action and the consequences thereof.  A life of virtue will lead one toward a more favorable earthly existence in the next life.  Conversely, every sin committed in this life will return as an added hurdle in the next.Closely tied to the ideas of reincarnation and karma is the caste system, in which Indian society is partitioned into four strata:  the Brahman, or priestly class; the ksatriya, or warrior class; the vaishya, or merchant class; and the shudras, the working class and untouchables.  Hindus believe that, warranted by his actions in previous lives, a person merits membership in the caste to which he belongs.  For society to function properly, each class must fulfill a specific duty.  Traditionally the Brahman constitute the religious and political power of India, the ksatriyas make up the military, the vaishya are concerned with trade, and the shudras are laborers.  To follow through with one's duty is of the utmost importance.  As Krisna says, "To die performing duty is no ill, but one who seeks other roads shall wander still."  One must accept the role he or she is born to play, and willingly act out the assigned tasks.  No earthly role is necessarily more important than any other because all duties carry equal weight and every soul on earth is compelled to perform them all in a succession of lifetimes:Thy task prescribed with spirit unattached gladly performSince in performance of plain duty manMounts to his highest bliss.By works alone Janak and ancient saints reached blessedness.Krisna beseeches Arjuna to follow through with his war; not only does he represent the cause of virtue and his opponents that of moral decay, but, as a ksatriya, it is his blessed duty to go to war.  "Fight!  Vanquish foes and doubts, dear hero!"  Krisna urges him.  "Slay what haunts thee in fond shapes, and would betray."  He says further that one should maintain a detached attitude toward one's duty, while still performing it uprightly.That which is called right action is "wrought without attachment, passionlessly, for duty, not for love, nor hate, nor gain."  The dictates of "Tyaga" pronounce that one should not be concerned with the fruit of one's acts, because if a person is focused on the end, or motivated by some sort of emotion or passion, then the act itself will be sullied and impure.  It is pointless for Arjuna to be distraught about going into battle, Krisna declares; it is out of right action, his unshakable duty, to do so.  And since souls are immortal, it is foolish for Arjuna to think he will truly "destroy" any of his foes:Thou grievest where no grief should be!Thou speak'st words lacking in wisdom!For the wise in heartMourn not for those that live, nor those that die.Nor I, nor thou, nor any one of theseEver was not, nor ever will not beFor ever and ever afterwards.All that doth live, lives always!  ...As there come infancy and youth and age,So come there raisings-up and layings-downOf other and other life abodes,Which the wise know, and fear not.Because of the immortality of souls, joy and sorrow, as well as other dichotomous passions, are, ultimately, irrelevant concepts:The soul which is not moved,The soul that with a strong and constant calmTakes sorrow and joy indifferently,Lives in the life undying!  That which isCan never cease to be; that which is notWill not exist.  To see this truth of bothIs theirs who part essence from accident,Substance from shadow.In this illustration, the earthly world is the shadow and the substance is the divine.  Hence, we should realize that the events of this world, both positive and negative, are illusory, transitory, and insignificant.  Furthermore, argues Krisna, sensory experience should be disregarded as much as possible.  Sensory experience (all feelings and ideas acquired by way of the senses) leads to attraction, which in turn leads to desire.  Desire gives birth to passion, recklessness, and ultimately, the undoing of purpose, mind, and man.  In short, desire is the root cause of man's suffering.The perfect man is one who has transcended the temporal world and sees beyond the bounds of opposites, perceiving instead a unity of opposites.  "If a man sees everywhere—taught by his own similitude, one life, one essence in the evil and the good, hold him a yogi—yea, [he is] well-perfected."  He is one who has "true knowledge," that is, one who sees a single "changeless life in all the lives, and in the separate, one inseparable."  The enlightened soul is one who has renounced the world:  "That is the true renouncer, firm and fixed, who—seeking naught, rejecting naught—dwells proof against the opposites."Krisna tells Arjuna that on his path toward perfection he must beware of three things in particular, obsessions which he calls the doors of hell:  lust, wrath, and avarice.  Man will never advance unless he places himself beyond these doors and holds no importance in his own ego.After much deliberation, Arjuna finally comes to acknowledge that Krisna does in fact represent God's true word, grants that what he has taught is true, and pledges that he will willingly obey:Trouble and ignorance are gone!  The lightHath come unto me, by thy favour, Lord!Now I am fixed!  My doubt is fled away!According to thy word, so will I do!The Bhagavad-gita ends at this juncture.  According to Hindu legend, in the ensuing battle all but a handful of warriors are slaughtered.  Arjuna's Pandavas, with a few more survivors than the Kauravas, are declared the victors—and virtue is returned to her throne in India.



----------------------------------------------------------------    
196 BCTreaty of TempeaEnds the Second Macedonian War.
      
    188 BCTreaty of ApameaBetween the Roman Republic and Antiochus III (the Great), ruler of the Seleucid Empire.
      
    161 BCRoman-Jewish TreatyEstablishes friendship between Judas Maccabeus and the Roman Republic.
     
 85 BCTreaty of DardanosEnds the First Mithridatic War.
240    Revolt of Cartahginian mercenaries, crushed by Hamilcar Barca in 238.

240    BC ANTIOCH. Antioch became the capital and court-city of the western Seleucid empire under Antiochus I, its counterpart in the east being Seleucia on the Tigris; but its paramount importance dates from the battle of Ancyra (240 BC), which shifted the Seleucid centre of gravity from Asia Minor, and led indirectly to the rise of Pergamum.The Seleucids reigned from Antioch.[4] We know little of it in the Hellenistic period, apart from Syria, all our information coming from authors of the late Roman time. Among its great Greek buildings we hear only of the theatre, of which substructures still remain on the flank of Silpius, and of the royal palace, probably situated on the island. It enjoyed a reputation for letters and the arts (Cicero pro Archia, 3); but the only names of distinction in these pursuits during the Seleucid period, that have come down to us, are Apollophanes, the Stoic, and one Phoebus, a writer on dreams. The mass of the population seems to have been only superficially Hellenic, and to have spoken Aramaic in non-official life. The nicknames which they gave to their later kings were Aramaic; and, except Apollo and Daphne, the great divinities of north Syria seem to have remained essentially native, such as the "Persian Artemis" of Meroe and Atargatis of Hierapolis Bambyce.The epithet, "Golden," suggests that the external appearance of Antioch was impressive, but the city needed constant restoration owing to the seismic disturbances to which the district has always been subjected.



238    Carthaginians begin conquest of Spain.

225    Romans defeat Celts at Telamon in Italy.

224    - Safavid dynasty  (second reunification)

223    Antiochus III the Great, ruler of Babylonian empire to 187.

    220    BC BERBERS. Numidia around 220 BC Jugurtha, king of NumidiaNumidia (202 BC – 46 BC) was an ancient Berber kingdom in present-day Algeria and part of Tunisia (North Africa) that later alternated between being a Roman province and being a Roman client state, and is no longer in existence today. It was located on the eastern border of modern Algeria, bordered by the Roman province of Mauretania (in modern day Algeria and Morocco) to the west, the Roman province of Africa (modern day Tunisia) to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Sahara Desert to the south. Its people were the Numidians.The name Numidia was first applied by Polybius and other historians during the third century BC to indicate the territory west of Carthage, including the entire north of Algeria as far as the river Mulucha (Muluya), about 100 miles west of Oran. The Numidians were conceived of as two great tribal groups: the Massylii in eastern Numidia, and the Masaesyli in the west. During the first part of the Second Punic War, the eastern Massylii under their king Gala were allied with Carthage, while the western Masaesyli under king Syphax were allied with Rome. However in 206 BC, the new king of the eastern Massylii, Masinissa, allied himself with Rome, and Syphax of the Masaesyli switched his allegiance to the Carthaginian side. At the end of the war the victorious Romans gave all of Numidia to Masinissa of the Massylii. At the time of his death in 148 BC, Masinissa's territory extended from Mauretania to the boundary of the Carthaginian territory, and also southeast as far as Cyrenaica, so that Numidia entirely surrounded Carthage (Appian, Punica, 106) except towards the sea.Jugurthine WarMasinissa was succeeded by his son Micipsa. When Micipsa died in 118, he was succeeded jointly by his two sons Hiempsal I and Adherbal and Masinissa's illegitimate grandson, Jugurtha, of Berber origin, who was very popular among the Numidians. Hiempsal and Jugurtha quarreled immediately after the death of Micipsa. Jugurtha had Hiempsal killed, which led to open war with Adherbal. After Jugurtha defeated him in open battle, Adherbal fled to Rome for help. The Roman officials, allegedly due to bribes but perhaps more likely because of a desire to quickly end conflict in a profitable client kingdom, settled the fight by dividing Numidia into two parts. Jugurtha was assigned the western half. However, soon after conflict broke out again, leading to the Jugurthine War between Rome and Numidia.

220 CHINA GREAT WALL. Great Wall of the Qin Dynasty
        Great Wall of the Han Dynasty Great Wall of the Ming DynastyThe Chinese were already familiar with the techniques of wall-building by the time of the Spring and Autumn Period.During this time and the subsequent Warring States Period, the states of Qin, Wei, Zhao, Qi, Yan and Zhongshan all constructed extensive fortifications to defend their own borders. Built to withstand the attack of small arms such as swords and spears, these walls were made mostly by stamping earth and gravel between board frames.Qin Shi Huang conquered all opposing states and unified China in 221 BC, establishing the Qin Dynasty. Intending to impose centralized rule and prevent the resurgence of feudal lords, he ordered the destruction of the wall sections that divided his empire along the former state borders. To protect the empire against intrusions by the Xiongnu people from the north, he ordered the building of a new wall to connect the remaining fortifications along the empire's new northern frontier. Transporting the large quantity of materials required for construction was difficult, so builders always tried to use local resources. Stones from the mountains were used over mountain ranges, while rammed earth was used for construction in the plains. There are no surviving historical records indicating the exact length and course of the Qin Dynasty walls. Most of the ancient walls have eroded away over the centuries, and very few sections remain today. The human cost of the construction is unknown, but it has been estimated by some authors that hundreds of thousands,[13] if not up to a million, workers died building the Qin wall. Later, the Han, Sui, and Northern dynasties all repaired, rebuilt, or expanded sections of the Great Wall at great cost to defend themselves against northern invaders.[16] The Tang and Song Dynasties did not build any walls in the region.[16] The Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties, who ruled Northern China throughout most of the 10-13th centuries, had their original power bases north of the Great Wall proper; accordingly, they would have no need throughout most of their history to build a wall along this line. The Liao carried out limited repair of the Great Wall in a few areas, however the Jin did construct defensive walls in the 12th century, but those were located much to the north of the Great Wall as we know it, within today's Inner and Outer Mongolia.Ming eraThe Great Wall concept was revived again during the Ming Dynasty in the 14th century,[19] and following the Ming army's defeat by the Oirats in the Battle of Tumu. The Ming had failed to gain a clear upper hand over the Manchurian and Mongolian tribes after successive battles, and the long-drawn conflict was taking a toll on the empire. The Ming adopted a new strategy to keep the nomadic tribes out by constructing walls along the northern border of China. Acknowledging the Mongol control established in the Ordos Desert, the wall followed the desert's southern edge instead of incorporating the bend of the Huang He.


221    CHINA. 221 bc    China is most commonly called Zhongguó  in Mandarin Chinese. The term can be literally translated into English as "Central Kingdom" or "Central Country", the less accurate translations can be "Middle Country" and "Middle Kingdom". In ancient times the name referred to the "Central States" along the Yellow River valley and was not associated with any single political entity. The nomenclature gradually evolved to mean the lands under direct imperial rule.English and many other languages use various forms of the name "China" and the prefix "Sino-" or "Sin-". These forms are thought to derive from the name of the Qin Dynasty that first unified the country (221–206 BCE). "Qin" is pronounced as "Chin" which is considered the possible root of the word "China".
        Ptolemy IV Philopater rules Egypt to 203. Philip V rules Macedonia to 179.

218     - 201 BC   2nd Punic War between Rome and Carthage Because of the enormous demand for coins to pay troops the Roman rulers debase their coinage in purity and weight, causing inflation. Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage. To 201. Carthaginian generals Hannibal leads army from Spain over the alps over the Alps to invade Italy, defeating Publius Cornelius Scipio at river Ticinus, and Sempronius Longus at river Trebia.  -201        Second Punic War lasts 17 years.ROME. Hannibal devised a plan to fight Rome in Italy. For this he had to cross the Alps. A military genius, he inflicts a series of crushing defeats on the Romans (Battle of Cannae). However, Carthage did not provide its leader with necessary support. Although undefeated, Hannibal was cut off in Italy, and the towns that had gone over to his side were soon taken over again by the Romans. Scipio scores a number of victories against the Carthaginians in Spain, expelling them. Scipio took the war to Africa, where Hannibal suffered his first and last defeat. Carthage loses all her colonies, hands over the fleet and all the elephants to the Romans, and pays a huge tribute, leaving Rome the strongest power in the Mediterranean.

217    Hannibal annihilates a Roman army at Lake Trasimene.

        216    Roman defeat at Cannae. Hannibal wins another victory.

    215    First Macedonian war. Philip of Macedonia attacks Rome in support of Carthage. Rome at war with Macedonia, claims Greece free and independent while taking it over Macedonia becomes a province of Rome. War ends in peace of Phoenice in 205. A liberation movement starts up in Greece and is brutally suppressed by the Romans, who destroy Corinth as further intimidation.Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus defeats Hannibal at Nola.

214    Construction of Great Wall of China begins.
        Marcellus begins conquest of Sicily from the Carthaginians to 210.
    
215    BC TURKIC. The Han Dynasty and the XiongnuIn material that is more certainly historical the Xiong-nu appear as a confederacy of marauding nomads against whom the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty sent an army in 215 BC.[5] On the fall of Qin in 206 the problem resumed. They attacked Shanxi Province of the Han Dynasty in 201 BC. The Han emperor Gao Zu bought them off with jade, silk and a Chinese wife for the Shanyu, or leader.[6] Relations with the Xiong Nu continued to be troubled and in 133 BC the Han emperor Wu Di proceeded against them with 300,000 men.Eighty-one years and fourteen expeditions later in 52 BC the southern Xiong Nu surrendered and the northern desisted from raiding.Apparently the Xiong Nu were only biding their time. The emperor Wang Mang planned expeditions against them in AD 11 and AD 21 but they were not undertaken because China was regarded then as militarily weak.[8] Plundering went on. One especially severe round of episodes in the early 4th century has led to the certain identification of the Xiong Nu with the Huns. Luoyang was sacked in 311; Ye in 307 and 313; Chang'an in 311.A letter (Letter II) written in the ancient Sogdian language excavated from a Han Dynasty watchtower in 1911 identified the perpetrators of these events as the xwn, "Huns", supporting de Guignes' 1758 identification. The equivalence was not without its critics, notably Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, who argued that xwn was a general name and could refer to anyone. More recently other evidence was noticed: Zhu Fahu, a monk, translated Sanskrit Hu?a in the Tathagataguhya Sutra and the Lalitavistara as Xiongnu. Vaissière reconstructs the pronunciation as *Xiwong nuo. Moreover the Book of Wei states that the king of the Xiongnu killed the king of Sogdiana and took the country, which event is dateable to the time of the Huns, who did exactly that; in short, "... the name of the Huns is a precise referent and not generic."

210    CHINA.     Some of the thousands of life-size Terracotta Warriors of the Qin Dynasty, The second dynasty, the loosely feudal Shang, definitely settled along the Yellow River in eastern China from the 18th to the 12th century BCE. They were invaded from the west by the Zhou, who ruled from the 12th to the 5th century BCE. The centralized authority of the Zhou was slowly eroded by warlords. Many strong, independent states continually warring with each other in the Spring and Autumn period, only occasionally deferring to the Zhou king.The first unified Chinese state was established by the Qin Dynasty in 221 BCE, when the office of the Emperor was set up and the Chinese language was forcibly standardized. This state did not last long, as its legalist policies soon led to widespread rebellion.The subsequent Han Dynasty ruled China between 206 BCE and 220 CE, and created a lasting Han cultural identity among its populace that would last to the present day. The Han Dynasty expanded China's territory considerably with military campaigns reaching Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and Central Asia, and also helped establish the Silk Road in Central Asia.After Han's collapse, another period of disunion followed, including the highly chivalric period of the Three Kingdoms. Independent Chinese states of this period also opened diplomatic relations with Japan, introducing the Chinese writing system there

206    Publius Cornelius Scipio the Younger defeats the Carthaginians in Spain.

203    Ptolemy V Epiphanes rules Egypt to 181. Rosetta Stone recording his ascension is carved.

202    Han Dynasty in China to 9AD founded by Liu Pang.

202    BC TURKIC. The earliest Turkic peoples appear as nomadic tribes on the plains of the Far East north of the Great wall of China, which was constructed as a fortified border essentially between the Han Dynasty (though started earlier) and the Xiong-nu. Chronicles of Shi JiThe population ancestral to the Turkic language speakers is thought to have been included in the Xiong Nu of Mongolia or along the upper Yenisei in Siberia (the area of the contemporary Tuvan language), known from historical sources. The Han Dynasty chronicle of the Xiong-nu, included in the Shi Ji, traces a legendary history of them back a thousand years before the Han to a legendary ancestor, Chunwei, a supposed "descendant of the rulers of the Xia Dynasty."  He lived among the "Mountain Barbarians", Xianyun or Hunzhu, who were known since the time of the shadowy emperors Yao and Shun. Their name may connect them to the Turkics, who later were said to have been iron-workers and kept a national shrine in a mountain cave in Mongolia. Apparently the Xiong-nu were a number of tribes and geographic groups, not all of which were probably Turkic (considering the later mixed ethnicity). The Shi Ji mentions the Mianshu, Hunrong and Diyuan west of Long; the Yiqu, Dali, Wiezhi and Quyan north of the Qi and Liang mountains and Jing and Qi Rivers; the Forest Barbarians and Loufan north of Jin and the Eastern Barbarians and Mountain Barbarians north of Yan. Later the treatise mentions others.The Xianyun, says the Shi Ji, move aboutin search of water and pasture and have no walled cities or fixed dwellings,  nor do they engage in any kind of agriculture ... in periods of crisis they  take up arms and go off on plundering and marauding expeditions.

200 BC DEAD SEA SCROLLS. -The Dead Sea Scrolls, in the narrow sense of Qumran Caves Scrolls,[notes 1] are a collection of some 981 different texts discovered between 1946 and 1956 in eleven caves from the immediate vicinity of the ancient settlement at Khirbet Qumran in the West Bank. The caves are located about 2 kilometres inland from the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name.[3]

The consensus is that the Qumran Caves Scrolls date from the last three centuries BCE and the first century CE (see "Age" paragraph in this article and the dedicated site of the Israel Museum[2]). Bronze coins found at the same sites form a series beginning with John Hyrcanus (135–104 BCE) and continuing until the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), supporting the radiocarbon and paleographic dating of the scrolls.[4] Manuscripts from additional Judean desert sites go back as far as the eighth century BCE to as late as the 11th century CE.[1]

The texts are of great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the third oldest known surviving manuscripts of works later included in the Hebrew Bible canon, along with deuterocanonical and extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. Only in two silver scroll-shaped amulets containing portions of the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers has biblical text so far been discovered that is older than the Dead Sea Scrolls; the silver scrolls were excavated in Jerusalem at Ketef Hinnom and date from around 600 BCE. A burnt piece of Leviticus dating from the 6th century CE has recently been analyzed and is the fourth oldest piece of the Torah known to still exist. [5]

Most of the texts are written in Hebrew, with some in Aramaic (in different regional dialects, including Nabataean), and a few in Greek.[6] If discoveries from the Judean desert are included, Latin (from Masada) and Arabic (from Khirbet al-Mird) can be added.[7] Most texts are written on parchment, some on papyrus and one on copper.[8]

The scrolls have traditionally been identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, although some recent interpretations have challenged this association and argue that the scrolls were penned by priests in Jerusalem, Zadokites or other unknown Jewish groups.

Due to the poor condition of some of the Scrolls, not all of them have been identified. Those that have been identified can be divided into three general groups:
1.some 40% of them are copies of texts from the Hebrew Bible,
2.approximately another 30% of them are texts from the Second Temple Period which ultimately were not canonized in the Hebrew Bible, like the Book of Enoch, Jubilees, the Book of Tobit, the Wisdom of Sirach, Psalms 152–155, etc., and
3.the remaining roughly 30% of them are sectarian manuscripts of previously unknown documents that shed light on the rules and beliefs of a particular group or groups within greater Judaism, like the Community Rule, the War Scroll, the Pesher on Habakkuk and The Rule of the Blessing.[11


 


 Qumran cave 4, where ninety percent of the scrolls were found
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a series of eleven caves around the site known as Wadi Qumran near the Dead Sea in the West Bank (of the Jordan River) between 1946 and 1956 by Bedouin shepherds and a team of archeologists.[12]

Initial discovery (1946–1947)[edit]

The initial discovery, by Bedouin shepherd Muhammed edh-Dhib, his cousin Jum'a Muhammed, and Khalil Musa, took place between November 1946 and February 1947. The shepherds discovered seven scrolls (See Fragment and scroll lists) housed in jars in a cave near what is now known as the Qumran site. John C. Trever reconstructed the story of the scrolls from several interviews with the Bedouin. Edh-Dhib's cousin noticed the caves, but edh-Dhib himself was the first to actually fall into one. He retrieved a handful of scrolls, which Trever identifies as the Isaiah Scroll, Habakkuk Commentary, and the Community Rule, and took them back to the camp to show to his family. None of the scrolls were destroyed in this process, despite popular rumor. The Bedouin kept the scrolls hanging on a tent pole while they figured out what to do with them, periodically taking them out to show people. At some point during this time, the Community Rule was split in two. The Bedouin first took the scrolls to a dealer named Ibrahim 'Ijha in Bethlehem. 'Ijha returned them, saying they were worthless, after being warned that they might have been stolen from a synagogue. Undaunted, the Bedouin went to a nearby market, where a Syrian Christian offered to buy them. A sheikh joined their conversation and suggested they take the scrolls to Khalil Eskander Shahin, "Kando", a cobbler and part-time antiques dealer. The Bedouin and the dealers returned to the site, leaving one scroll with Kando and selling three others to a dealer for 7 GBP (equivalent to US$29 in 2003, US$37 2014). The original scrolls continued to change hands after the Bedouin left them in the possession of a third party until a sale could be arranged. (See Ownership.)

In 1947 the original seven scrolls caught the attention of Dr. John C. Trever, of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), who compared the script in the scrolls to that of The Nash Papyrus, the oldest biblical manuscript then known, and found similarities between them. In March the 1948 Arab-Israeli War prompted the move of some of the scrolls to Beirut, Lebanon for safekeeping. On 11 April 1948, Millar Burrows, head of the ASOR, announced the discovery of the scrolls in a general press release.

Search for the Qumran caves (1948–1949)

Early in September 1948, Metropolitan bishop Mar Samuel brought some additional scroll fragments that he had acquired to Professor Ovid R. Sellers, the new Director of ASOR. By the end of 1948, nearly two years after their discovery, scholars had yet to locate the original cave where the fragments had been found. With unrest in the country at that time, no large-scale search could be undertaken safely. Sellers attempted to get the Syrians to assist in the search for the cave, but he was unable to pay their price. In early 1948, the government of Jordan gave permission to the Arab Legion to search the area where the original Qumran cave was thought to be. Consequently, Cave 1 was rediscovered on 28 January 1949, by Belgian United Nations observer Captain Phillipe Lippens and Arab Legion Captain Akkash el-Zebn.

Qumran caves rediscovery and new scroll discoveries (1949–1951)[edit]


 


 A view of the Dead Sea from a cave at Qumran in which some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
The rediscovery of what became known as "Cave 1" at Qumran prompted the initial excavation of the site from 15 February to 5 March 1949 by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities led by Gerald Lankester Harding and Roland de Vaux.[17] The Cave 1 site yielded discoveries of additional Dead Sea Scroll fragments, linen cloth, jars, and other artifacts.

Excavations of Qumran (1951–1956)

In November 1951, Roland de Vaux and his team from the ASOR began a full excavation of Qumran.[19] By February 1952, the Bedouin people had discovered 30 fragments in what was to be designated Cave 2. The discovery of a second cave eventually yielded 300 fragments from 33 manuscripts, including fragments of Jubilees, the Wisdom of Sirach, and Ben Sira written in Hebrew. The following month, on 14 March 1952, the ASOR team discovered a third cave with fragments of Jubilees and the Copper Scroll.[21] Between September and December 1952 the fragments and scrolls of Caves 4, 5, and 6 were subsequently discovered by the ASOR teams.[19]

With the monetary value of the scrolls rising as their historical significance was made more public, the Bedouins and the ASOR archaeologists accelerated their search for the scrolls separately in the same general area of Qumran, which was over 1 kilometer in length. Between 1953 and 1956, Roland de Vaux led four more archaeological expeditions in the area to uncover scrolls and artifacts.[18] The last cave, Cave 11, was discovered in 1956 and yielded the last fragments to be found in the vicinity of Qumran.[22]




 


 The Isaiah scroll (1QIsaa) contains almost the whole Book of Isaiah.

 


The War Scroll, found in Qumran Cave 1.

 


 A portion of the second discovered copy of the Isaiah scroll, 1QIsab.
The 972 manuscripts found at Qumran were found primarily in two separate formats: as scrolls and as fragments of previous scrolls and texts. In the fourth cave the fragments were in up to 15,000 pieces. These small fragments created some what of a problem for scholars, G.L. Harding director of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities began working on piecing the fragments together and after forty long years of work he was not finished.[23]

The original seven scrolls from Cave 1 at Qumran are: the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa), a second copy of Isaiah (1QIsab), the Community Rule Scroll (4QSa-j), the Pesher on Habakkuk (1QpHab), the War Scroll (1QM), the Thanksgiving Hymns (1QH), and the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen).[24]

Caves 4a and 4b
Cave 4 was discovered in August 1952, and was excavated from 22–29 September 1952 by Gerald Lankester Harding, Roland de Vaux, and Józef Milik.[25] Cave 4 is actually two hand-cut caves (4a and 4b), but since the fragments were mixed, they are labeled as 4Q. Cave 4 is the most famous of Qumran caves both because of its visibility from the Qumran plateau and its productivity. It is visible from the plateau to the south of the Qumran settlement. It is by far the most productive of all Qumran caves, producing ninety percent of the Dead Sea Scrolls and scroll fragments (approx. 15,000 fragments from 500 different texts), including 9–10 copies of Jubilees, along with 21 tefillin and 7 mezuzot.Cave 5 was discovered alongside Cave 6 in 1952, shortly after the discovery of Cave 4. Cave 5 produced approximately 25 manuscripts.[25]


Cave 6 was discovered alongside Cave 5 in 1952, shortly after the discovery of Cave 4. Cave 6 contained fragments of about 31 manuscripts.[25]

List of groups of fragments collected from Wadi Qumran Cave 6:[29][30]


Cave 7 yielded fewer than 20 fragments of Greek documents, including 7Q2 (the "Letter of Jeremiah" = Baruch 6), 7Q5 (which became the subject of much speculation in later decades), and a Greek copy of a scroll of Enoch. Cave 7 also produced several inscribed potsherds and jars.
 


 A view of part of the Temple Scroll that was found in Qumran Cave 11.
Lists of groups of fragments collected from Wadi Qumran Cave 7:




Cave 8, along with caves 7 and 9, was one of the only caves that are accessible by passing through the settlement at Qumran. Carved into the southern end of the Qumran plateau, cave 8 was excavated by archaeologists in 1957.

Cave 8 produced five fragments: Genesis (8QGen), Psalms (8QPs), a tefillin fragment (8QPhyl), a mezuzah (8QMez), and a hymn (8QHymn).[35] Cave 8 also produced several tefillin cases, a box of leather objects, tons of lamps, jars, and the sole of a leather shoe.[34]

List of groups of fragments collected from Wadi Qumran Cave 8:



Cave 9, along with caves 7 and 8, was one of the only caves that are accessible by passing through the settlement at Qumran. Carved into the southern end of the Qumran plateau, Cave 9 was excavated by archaeologists in 1957.

There was only one fragment found in Cave 9:




In Cave 10 archaeologists found two ostraca with some writing on them, along with an unknown symbol on a grey stone slab:




Cave 11 was discovered in 1956 and yielded 21 texts, some of which were quite lengthy. The Temple Scroll, so called because more than half of it pertains to the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem, was found in Cave 11, and is by far the longest scroll. It is now 26.7 feet (8.15 m) long. Its original length may have been over 28 feet (8.75 m). The Temple Scroll was regarded by Yigael Yadin as "The Torah According to the Essenes". On the other hand, Hartmut Stegemann, a contemporary and friend of Yadin, believed the scroll was not to be regarded as such, but was a document without exceptional significance. Stegemann notes that it is not mentioned or cited in any known Essene writing.[36]

Also in Cave 11, an eschatological fragment about the biblical figure Melchizedek (11Q13) was found. Cave 11 also produced a copy of Jubilees.

According to former chief editor of the DSS editorial team John Strugnell, there are at least four privately owned scrolls from Cave 11, that have not yet been made available for scholars. Among them is a complete Aramaic manuscript of the Book of Enoch.[37]




Fragments with unknown provenance[edit]

Some fragments of scrolls have neither significant archaeological provenance nor records that reveal in which designated Qumran cave area they were found. They are believed to have come from Wadi Qumran caves, but are just as likely to have come from other archaeological sites in the Judaean Desert area.[38] These fragments have therefore been designated to the temporary "X" series.




There has been much debate about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The dominant theory remains that the scrolls were the product of a sect of Jews living at nearby Qumran called the Essenes, but this theory has come to be challenged by several modern scholars.

Qumran–Essene theory
The view among scholars, almost universally held until the 1990s, is the "Qumran–Essene" hypothesis originally posited by Roland Guérin de Vaux[39] and Józef Tadeusz Milik,[40] though independently both Eliezer Sukenik and Butrus Sowmy of St Mark's Monastery connected scrolls with the Essenes well before any excavations at Qumran.[41] The Qumran–Essene theory holds that the scrolls were written by the Essenes, or by another Jewish sectarian group, residing at Khirbet Qumran. They composed the scrolls and ultimately hid them in the nearby caves during the Jewish Revolt sometime between 66 and 68 CE. The site of Qumran was destroyed and the scrolls never recovered. A number of arguments are used to support this theory.
There are striking similarities between the description of an initiation ceremony of new members in the Community Rule and descriptions of the Essene initiation ceremony mentioned in the works of Flavius Josephus – a Jewish–Roman historian of the Second Temple Period.
Josephus mentions the Essenes as sharing property among the members of the community, as does the Community Rule.
During the excavation of Khirbet Qumran, two inkwells and plastered elements thought to be tables were found, offering evidence that some form of writing was done there. More inkwells were discovered nearby. De Vaux called this area the "scriptorium" based upon this discovery.
Several Jewish ritual baths (Hebrew: miqvah = ????) were discovered at Qumran, offering evidence of an observant Jewish presence at the site.
Pliny the Elder (a geographer writing after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE) describes a group of Essenes living in a desert community on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea near the ruined town of 'Ein Gedi.

The Qumran–Essene theory has been the dominant theory since its initial proposal by Roland de Vaux and J.T. Milik. Recently, however, several other scholars have proposed alternative origins of the scrolls.

Qumran–Sectarian theory

Qumran–Sectarian theories are variations on the Qumran–Essene theory. The main point of departure from the Qumran–Essene theory is hesitation to link the Dead Sea Scrolls specifically with the Essenes. Most proponents of the Qumran–Sectarian theory understand a group of Jews living in or near Qumran to be responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, but do not necessarily conclude that the sectarians are Essenes.

Christian origin theory



In recent years, Robert Eisenman has advanced the theory that some scrolls describe the early Christian community. Eisenman also argued that the careers of James the Just and Paul the Apostle correspond to events recorded in some of these documents.
Jerusalem origin theory

Some scholars have argued that the scrolls were the product of Jews living in Jerusalem, who hid the scrolls in the caves near Qumran while fleeing from the Romans during the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Karl Heinrich Rengstorf first proposed that the Dead Sea Scrolls originated at the library of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.[45] Later, Norman Golb suggested that the scrolls were the product of multiple libraries in Jerusalem, and not necessarily the Jerusalem Temple library.[10][46] Proponents of the Jerusalem Origin theory point to the diversity of thought and handwriting among the scrolls as evidence against a Qumran origin of the scrolls. Several archaeologists have also accepted an origin of the scrolls other than Qumran, including Yizhar Hirschfeld[47] and most recently Yizhak Magen and Yuval Peleg,[48] who all understand the remains of Qumran to be those of a Hasmonean fort that was reused during later periods.

Qumran–Sadducean theory
A specific variation on the Qumran–Sectarian theory that has gained much recent popularity is the work of Lawrence H. Schiffman, who proposes that the community was led by a group of Zadokite priests (Sadducees).[49] The most important document in support of this view is the "Miqsat Ma'ase Ha-Torah" (4QMMT), which cites purity laws (such as the transfer of impurities) identical to those attributed in rabbinic writings to the Sadducees. 4QMMT also reproduces a festival calendar that follows Sadducee principles for the dating of certain festival days.



Parchment from a number of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been carbon dated. The initial test performed in 1950 was on a piece of linen from one of the caves. This test gave an indicative dating of 33 CE plus or minus 200 years, eliminating early hypotheses relating the scrolls to the medieval period.[50] Since then two large series of tests have been performed on the scrolls themselves. The results were summarized by VanderKam and Flint, who said the tests give "strong reason for thinking that most of the Qumran manuscripts belong to the last two centuries BCE and the first century CE."[51]

Paleographic dating

Analysis of letter forms, or palaeography, was applied to the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls by a variety of scholars in the field. Major linguistic analysis by Cross and Avigad dates fragments from 225 BCE to 50 CE.[52] These dates were determined by examining the size, variability, and style of the text.[53] The same fragments were later analyzed using radiocarbon dating and were dated to an estimated range of 385 BCE to 82 CE with a 68% accuracy rate.[52]

Ink and parchment
The scrolls were analyzed using a cyclotron at the University of California, Davis, where it was found that two types of black ink were used: iron-gall ink and carbon soot ink.[54] In addition, a third ink on the scrolls that was red in color was found to be made with cinnabar (HgS, mercury sulfide).[54] There are only four uses of this red ink in the entire collection of Dead Sea Scroll fragments.[55] The black inks found on the scrolls that are made up of carbon soot were found to be from olive oil lamps.[56] Gall nuts from oak trees, present in some, but not all of the black inks on the scrolls, was added to make the ink more resilient to smudging common with pure carbon inks.[54] Honey, oil, vinegar and water were often added to the mixture to thin the ink to a proper consistency for writing.[56] In order to apply the ink to the scrolls, its writers used reed pens.


 


 Shown here is a closeup of the ink and text of two of the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The two fragments, fragments 1 and 2 of 7Q6, are written on papyrus.
The Dead Sea scrolls were written on parchment made of processed animal hide known as vellum (approximately 85.5 – 90.5% of the scrolls), papyrus (estimated at 8.0 – 13.0% of the scrolls), and sheets of bronze composed of about 99.0% copper and 1.0% tin (approximately 1.5% of the scrolls).[57][58] For those scrolls written on animal hides, scholars with the Israeli Antiquities Authority, by use of DNA testing for assembly purposes, believe that there may be a hierarchy in the religious importance of the texts based on which type of animal was used to create the hide. Scrolls written on goat and calf hides are considered by scholars to be more significant in nature, while those written on gazelle or ibex are considered to be less religiously significant in nature.
In addition, tests by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Sicily, Italy, have suggested that the origin of parchment of select Dead Sea Scroll fragments is from the Qumran area itself, by using X-ray and Particle Induced X-ray emission testing of the water used to make the parchment that were compared with the water from the area around the Qumran site.

Deterioration, storage, and preservation


 


 Two examples of the pottery that held some of the Dead Sea Scrolls documents found at Qumran.
The Dead Sea Scrolls that were found were originally preserved by the dry, arid, and low humidity conditions present within the Qumran area adjoining the Dead Sea.[61] In addition, the lack of the use of tanning materials on the parchment of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the very low airflow in the Qumran caves also contributed significantly to their preservation.[62] Some of the scrolls were found stored in clay jars within the Qumran caves, further helping to preserve them from deterioration. The original handling of the scrolls by archaeologists and scholars was done inappropriately, and, along with their storage in an uncontrolled environment, they began a process of more rapid deterioration than they had experienced at Qumran.[63] During the first few years in the late 1940s and early 1950s, adhesive tape used to join fragments and seal cracks caused significant damage to the documents.[63] The Government of Jordan had recognized the urgency of protecting the scrolls from deterioration and the presence of the deterioration among the scrolls.[64] However, the government did not have adequate funds to purchase all the scrolls for their protection and agreed to have foreign institutions purchase the scrolls and have them held at their museum in Jerusalem until they could be "adequately studied".[64]

In early 1953, they were moved to the Palestine Archaeological Museum (commonly called the Rockefeller Museum) in East Jerusalem and through their transportation suffered more deterioration and damage. The museum was underfunded and had limited resources with which to examine the scrolls, and, as a result, conditions of the "scrollery" and storage area were left relatively uncontrolled by modern standards. The museum had left most of the fragments and scrolls lying between window glass, trapping the moisture in with them, causing an acceleration in the deterioration process. During a portion of the conflict during the 1956 war waged by Israel, Britain and France against Egypt, the scrolls collection of the Palestine Archaeological Museum was stored in the vault of the Ottoman Bank in Amman, Jordan.[67] Damp conditions from temporary storage of the scrolls in the Ottoman Bank vault from 1956 to the Spring of 1957 led to a more rapid rate of deterioration of the scrolls. The conditions caused mildew to develop on the scrolls and fragments, and some of the fragments were partially destroyed or made illegible by the glue and paper of the manila envelopes in which they were stored while in the vault. By 1958 it was noted that up to 5% of some of the scrolls had completely deteriorated. Many of the texts had become illegible and many of the parchments had darkened considerably.

Until the 1970s, the scrolls continued to deteriorate because of poor storage arrangements, exposure to different adhesives, and being trapped in moist environments. Fragments written on parchment (rather than papyrus or bronze) in the hands of private collectors and scholars suffered an even worse fate than those in the hands of the museum, with large portions of fragments being reported to have disappeared by 1966. In the late 1960s, the deterioration was becoming a major concern with scholars and museum officials alike. Scholars John Allegro and Sir Francis Frank were some of the first to strongly advocate for better preservation techniques. Early attempts made by both the British and Israel Museums to remove the adhesive tape ended up exposing the parchment to an array of chemicals, including "British Leather Dressing," and darkening some of them significantly.[66] In the 1970s and 1980s, other preservation attempts were made that included removing the glass plates and replacing them with cardboard and removing pressure against the plates that held the scrolls in storage; however, the fragments and scrolls continued to rapidly deteriorate during this time.

In 1991, the Israeli Antiquities Authority established a temperature-controlled laboratory for the storage and preservation of the scrolls. The actions and preservation methods of Rockefeller Museum staff were concentrated on the removal of tape, oils, metals, salt, and other contaminants.[63] The fragments and scrolls are preserved using acid-free cardboard and stored in solander boxes in the climate-controlled storage area.[63]

Nine tiny phylactery slips were rediscovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) in 2014, after they had been stored unopened for six decades following their excavation in 1952. The IAA is preparing to unroll the phylacteries or tefillin once a safe procedure has been decided upon.
Photography and assembly

Since the Dead Sea Scrolls were initially held by different parties during and after the excavation process, they were not all photographed by the same organization nor in their entirety.

First photographs by the American Schools of Oriental Research (1948)

The first individual to photograph a portion of the collection was John C. Trever (1916–2006), a biblical scholar and archaeologist, who was a resident for the American Schools of Oriental Research.[71] He photographed three of the scrolls discovered in Cave 1 on 21 February 1948, both on black-and-white and standard color film.[73] Although an amateur photographer, the quality of his photographs often exceeded the visibility of the scrolls themselves as, over the years, the ink of the texts quickly deteriorated after they were removed from their linen wrappings.

Infrared photography and plate assembly by the Palestine Archaeological Museum (1952–1967)

A majority of the collection from the Qumran caves was acquired by the Palestine Archeological Museum. The Museum had the scrolls photographed by Najib Albina, a local Arab photographer trained by Lewis Larsson of the American Colony in Jerusalem,[74] Between 1952 and 1967, Albina documented the five-stage process of the sorting and assembly of the scrolls, done by the curator and staff of the Palestine Archeological Museum, using infrared photography. Using a process known today as broadband fluorescence infrared photography, or NIR photography, Najib and the team at the Museum produced over 1,750 photographic plates of the scrolls and fragments. The photographs were taken with the scrolls laid out on animal skin, using large format film, which caused the text to stand out, making the plates especially useful for assembling fragments.[79] These are the earliest photographs of the museum's collection, which was the most complete in the world at the time, and they recorded the fragments and scrolls before their further decay in storage, so they are often considered the best recorded copies of the scrolls.[80]

Israel Antiquities Authority and NASA digital infrared imaging (1993–2012)


 


 A previously unreadable fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls photographed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA in the early 1990s using digital infrared technology. The fragment, translated into English, reads "he wrote the words of Noah."
Beginning in 1993, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration used digital infrared imaging technology to produce photographs of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments.[81] In partnership with the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center and West Semitic Research, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory successfully worked to expand on the use of infrared photography previously used to evaluate ancient manuscripts by expanding the range of spectra at which images are photographed.[82] NASA used this multi-spectral imaging technique, adapted from its remote sensing and planetary probes, in order to reveal previously illegible text on fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.[82] The process uses a liquid crystal tunable filter in order to photograph the scrolls at specific wavelengths of light and, as a result, image distortion is significantly diminished.[81] This method was used with select fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls to reveal text and details that cameras that take photographs using a larger light spectrum could not reveal.[81] The camera and digital imaging assembly was developed by Greg Berman, a scientist with NASA, specifically for the purpose of photographing illegible ancient texts.[83]

On December–18-2012[84] the first output of this project was launched together with Google on a dedicated site http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/. The site contains both digitizations of old images taken in the 1950s and about 1000 new images taken with the new NASA technology.

Israel Antiquities Authority and DNA scroll assembly (2006–2012)
Scientists with the Israeli Antiquities Authority have used DNA from the parchment on which the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments were written, in concert with infrared digital photography, to assist in the reassembly of the scrolls. For scrolls written on parchment made from animal hide and papyrus, scientists with the museum are using DNA code to associate fragments with different scrolls and to help scholars determine which scrolls may hold greater significance based on the type of material that was used.[59]

Israel Museum of Jerusalem and Google digitization project (2011–2016, estimated)
In partnership with Google, the Museum of Jerusalem is working to photograph the Dead Sea Scrolls and make them available to the public digitally, although not placing the images in the public domain.[86] The lead photographer of the project, Ardon Bar-Hama, and his team are utilizing the Alpa 12 MAX camera accompanied with a Leaf Aptus-II back in order to produce ultra-high resolution digital images of the scrolls and fragments.[87] With photos taken at 1,200 megapixels, the results are digital images that can be used to distinguish details that are invisible to the naked eye. In order to minimize damage to the scrolls and fragments, photographers are using a 1/4000th of a second exposure time and UV-protected flash tubes.[86] The digital photography project, estimated in 2011 to cost approximately 3.5 million U.S. dollars, is expected to be completed by 2016.[87]

Scholarly examination


 


 Scholar Eleazar Sukenik examining one of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1951.
Early study by scholars

After most of the scrolls and fragments were moved to the Palestine Archaeological Museum in 1953, scholars began to assemble them and log them for translation and study in a room that became known as the "Scrollery".[88]

Language and script

The text of the Dead Sea Scrolls is written in four different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean.




Hebrew Assyrian block script[89] Estimated 76.0–79.0% 3rd century BC to present
Hebrew Cryptic scripts "A" "B" and "C" Estimated 0.9%–1.0%[93] Unknown
Biblical Hebrew Paleo-Hebrew script[94] Estimated 1.0–1.5%[92] 10th century BC to the 2nd century AD
Biblical Hebrew Paleo-Hebrew scribal script[94]
Aramaic Aramaic square script Estimated 16.0–17.0%[95] 8th century BC to present
Greek Greek uncial script[94] Estimated 3.0%[92] 3rd century AD to 8th centuries AD
Nabataean Nabataean script[96] Estimated 0.2%[96] 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD

Publication


 


 Scholars assembling and examining the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments in what became known as the "Scrollery" room of the Palestine Archaeological Museum.
Physical publication and controversy

Some of the fragments and scrolls were published early. Most of the longer, more complete scrolls were published soon after their discovery. All the writings in Cave 1 appeared in print between 1950 and 1956; those from eight other caves were released in 1963; and 1965 saw the publication of the Psalms Scroll from Cave 11. Their translations into English soon followed.

Controversy

Publication of the scrolls has taken many decades, and delays have been a source of academic controversy. The scrolls were controlled by a small group of scholars headed by John Strugnell, while a majority of scholars had access neither to the scrolls nor even to photographs of the text. Scholars such as Hershel Shanks, Norman Golb and many others argued for decades for publishing the texts, so that they become available to researchers. This controversy only ended in 1991, when the Biblical Archaeology Society was able to publish the "Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls", after an intervention of the Israeli government and the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA).[97] In 1991 Emanuel Tov was appointed as the chairman of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, and publication of the scrolls followed in the same year.

Physical description

The majority of the scrolls consist of tiny, brittle fragments, which were published at a pace considered by many to be excessively slow. During early assembly and translation work by scholars through the Rockefeller Museum from the 1950s through the 1960s, access to the unpublished documents was limited to the editorial committee.

Discoveries in the Judean Desert (1955–2009)


 


 Emanuel Tov (1941–) who was Editor-in-Chief of the Dead Seas Scrolls Publication Project and, as a result, responsible for the publication of 32 volumes of the Discoveries in the Judean Desert series. He also worked to publish a six-volume printed edition with a majority of the non-Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls and make the same volumes available electronically on CD in a collection titled "The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader".
The content of the scrolls was published in a 40 volume series by Oxford University Press published between 1955 and 2009 known as Discoveries in the Judean Desert.[98] In 1952 the Jordanian Department of Antiquities assembled a team of scholars to begin examining, assembling, and translating the scrolls with the intent of publishing them.[99] The initial publication, assembled by Dominique Barthélemy and Józef Milik, was published as Qumran Cave 1 in 1955.[98] After a series of other publications in the late 1980s and early 1990s and with the appointment of the respected Dutch-Israeli textual scholar Emanuel Tov as Editor-in-Chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project in 1990 publication of the scrolls accelerated. Tov's team had published five volumes covering the Cave 4 documents by 1995. Between 1990 and 2009, Tov helped the team produce 32 volumes. The final volume, Volume XL, was published in 2009.

A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls (1991)

In 1991, researchers at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg, announced the creation of a computer program that used previously published scrolls to reconstruct the unpublished texts.[100] Officials at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, led by Head Librarian William Andrew Moffett, announced that they would allow researchers unrestricted access to the library's complete set of photographs of the scrolls. In the fall of that year, Wacholder published 17 documents that had been reconstructed in 1988 from a concordance and had come into the hands of scholars outside of the International Team; in the same month, there occurred the discovery and publication of a complete set of facsimiles of the Cave 4 materials at the Huntington Library. Thereafter, the officials of the Israel Antiquities Authority agreed to lift their long-standing restrictions on the use of the scrolls.[101]

A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1991)

After further delays, attorney William John Cox undertook representation of an "undisclosed client", who had provided a complete set of the unpublished photographs, and contracted for their publication. Professors Robert Eisenman and James Robinson indexed the photographs and wrote an introduction to A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which was published by the Biblical Archaeology Society in 1991.[102] Following the publication of the Facsimile Edition, Professor Elisha Qimron sued Hershel Shanks, Eisenman, Robinson and the Biblical Archaeology Society for copyright infringement of one of the scrolls, MMT, which he deciphered. The District Court of Jerusalem found in favor of Qimron in September 1993.[103] The Court issued a restraining order, which prohibited the publication of the deciphered text, and ordered defendants to pay Qimron NIS 100,000 for infringing his copyright and the right of attribution. Defendants appealed the Supreme Court of Israel, which approved the District Court's decision, in August 2000. The Supreme Court further ordered that the defendants hand over to Qimron all the infringing copies.[104] The decision met Israeli and international criticism from copyright law scholars.[105]


Israel Antiquities Authority and Google digitization project (2010–2016)[edit]

High-resolution images, including infrared photographs, of some of the Dead Sea scrolls are now available online on two dedicated websites.

On 19 October 2010, it was announced[114] that Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) would scan the documents using multi-spectral imaging technology developed by NASA to produce high-resolution images of the texts, and then, through a partnership with Google, make them available online free of charge,[115] on a searchable database and complemented by translation and other scholarly tools. The project is scheduled for completion within five years.

On 25 September 2011 the Israel Museum Digital Dead Sea Scrolls site went online.[116][117] It gives users access to searchable, high-resolution images of the scrolls, as well as short explanatory videos and background information on the texts and their history. As of May 2012, five complete scrolls from the Israel Museum have been digitized for the project and are now accessible online: the Great Isaiah Scroll, the Community Rule Scroll, the Commentary on Habakkuk Scroll, the Temple Scroll, and the War Scroll.



Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew language manuscripts of the Bible were Masoretic texts dating to the 10th century CE, such as the Aleppo Codex.[118] Today, the oldest known extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century. The biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls push that date back a full thousand years, to the 2nd century BCE.[119] These Hebrew-language manuscripts containing fragments of the Jewish Bible should not be confused with Greek-language Christian Bible codices, which include the New Testament books and of which the earliest extant manuscripts are the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 and Codex Sinaiticus, both dating from the 4th century CE.

According to The Oxford Companion to Archaeology:


The biblical manuscripts from Qumran, which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament, except perhaps for the Book of Esther, provide a far older cross section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100.

There are 225 Biblical texts included in the Dead Sea Scroll documents, or around 22% of the total, and with deuterocanonical books the number increases to 235.[121][122] The Dead Sea Scrolls contain parts of all but one of the books of the Tanakh of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament protocanon. They also include four of the deuterocanonical books included in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles: Tobit, Ben Sirach, Baruch 6 (also known as the Letter or Epistle of Jeremiah), and Psalm 151.[121] The Book of Esther has not yet been found and scholars believe Esther is missing because, as a Jew, her marriage to a Persian king may have been looked down upon by the inhabitants of Qumran,[123] or because the book has the Purim festival which is not included in the Qumran calendar.[124] Listed below are the most represented books of the Bible and Apocrypha found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the number of translatable Dead Sea texts that represent a copy of scripture from each Biblical book:
Psalms 39
Deuteronomy 33
1 Enoch 25
Genesis 24
Isaiah 22
Jubilees 21
Exodus 18
Leviticus 17
Numbers 11
Minor Prophets 10 Scrolls containing fragments of all 12 of the "Minor Prophets" were found in Cave 4, although no fragment contains portions of more than three prophets.[127]
Daniel 8
Jeremiah 6
Ezekiel 6
Job 6
Tobit 5[128]
1 & 2 Kings 4
1 & 2 Samuel 4
Judges 4[129]
Song of Songs (Canticles) 4
Ruth 4
Lamentations 4
Sirach 3
Ecclesiastes 2
Joshua 2


The majority of the texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls are non-biblical in nature and were thought to be insignificant for understanding the composition or canonization of the Biblical books, but a different consensus has emerged which sees many of these works as being collected by the Essene community instead of being composed by them.[130] Scholars now recognize that some of these works were composed earlier than the Essene period, when some of the Biblical books were still being written or redacted into their final form.[130]


Small portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls collections have been put on temporary display in exhibitions at museums and public venues around the world. The majority of these exhibitions took place in 1965 in the United States and the United Kingdom and from 1993 to 2011 in locations around the world. Many of the exhibitions were co-sponsored by either the Jordanian government (pre-1967) or the Israeli government (post-1967). Exhibitions were discontinued after 1965 due to the Six-days War conflicts and have slowed down in post-2011 as the Israeli Antiquities Authority works to digitize the scrolls and place them in permanent cold storage

200    BC ASTRONOMY. Greek equatorial sun dial, Alexandria on the Oxus, present-day Afghanistan 3rd-2nd century BCE.Following the Babylonians, significant advances in astronomy were made in ancient Greece and the Hellenistic world. Greek astronomy is characterized from the start by seeking a rational, physical explanation for celestial phenomena. In the 3rd century BC, Aristarchus of Samos calculated the size of the Earth, and measured the size and distance of the Moon and Sun, and was the first to propose a heliocentric model of the solar system. In the 2nd century BC, Hipparchus discovered precession, calculated the size and distance of the Moon and invented the earliest known astronomical devices such as the astrolabe. Hipparchus also created a comprehensive catalog of 1020 stars, and most of the constellations of the northern hemisphere derive are taken from Greek astronomy. The Antikythera mechanism (c. 150–80 BC) was an early analog computer designed to calculating the location of the Sun, Moon, and planets for a given date. Technological artifacts of similar complexity did not reappear until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks appeared in Europe.

200    BRITAIN Britain had fully developed its insular Celtic character. The emergence, however, of the British tribes known to Roman historians was due to a further phase of settlement by tribesmen from Belgic Gaul.  Coin finds suggest that the earliest movements of this migration began

200    BC.BANKING.    In the late third century B.C., the barren Aegean island of Delos, known for its magnificent harbor and famous temple of Apollo, became a prominent banking center. As in Egypt, cash transactions were replaced by real credit receipts and payments were made based on simple instructions with accounts kept for each client. With the defeat of its main rivals, Carthage and Corinth, by the Romans, the importance of Delos increased. Consequently it was natural that the bank of Delos should become the model most closely imitated by the banks of Rome. Transactions are carried out by giro or credit transfer.

200    BC. Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century BCE elaborated some theories of Heraclides Ponticus (the daily rotation of the Earth on its axis, the revolutionof Venus and Mercury around the Sun) to propose what was the first scientific  model of a heliocentric solar system: the Earth and all other planets revolvingaround the Sun, the Earth rotating around its axis daily, the Moon in turn revolving around the Earth once a month. His heliocentric work has not survived, so we can only speculate about what led him to his conclusions. It is notable that, according to Plutarch, a contemporary of Aristarchus accused him of impiety for "putting the Earth in motion."Copernicus cited Aristarchus and Philolaus in a surviving early manuscript of his book, stating: "Philolaus believed in the mobility of the earth, and some even say that Aristarchus of Samos was of that opinion." For reasons unknown (possibly from reluctance to quote pre-Christian sources), he did not include this passage in the published book. It has been argued that in developing the mathematics of heliocentrism Copernicus drew on not just the Greek, but also the work of Muslim astronomers, especially the works of Nasir al-Din Tusi (Tusi-couple), Mo'ayyeduddin Urdi (Urdi lemma) and Ibn al-Shatir. In his major work, Copernicus also discussed the theories of Ibn Battuta and Averroes.Ptolemy: medieval artist's rendition

    200     BC ASHOKA THE GREAT. Ashoka (Devan gar :         , IAST: A oka, IPA: [a  o k ], ca. 304–232 BC), also known as Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from ca. 269 BC to 232 BC.[1] One of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka reigned over most of present-day India after a number of military conquests. His empire stretched from the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan to the present-day Bangladesh and the Indian state of Assam in the east, and as far south as northern Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. He conquered the kingdom named Kalinga, which none of his ancestors had conquered starting from Chandragupta Maurya. His reign was headquartered in Magadha (present-day Bihar). He embraced Buddhism after witnessing the mass deaths of the Kalinga War, which he himself had waged out of a desire for conquest. He was later dedicated to the propagation of Buddhism across Asia and established monuments marking several significant sites in the life of Gautama Buddha. Ashoka was a devotee of ahimsa (nonviolence), love, truth, tolerance and vegetarianism. Ashoka is remembered in history as a philanthropic administrator.In the history of India, Ashoka is referred to as Samraat Chakravartin Ashoka – the "Emperor of Emperors Ashoka". His name "a oka" means "painless, without sorrow" in Sanskrit (the a privativum and  oka "pain, distress"). In his edicts, he is referred to as Dev n mpriya (Pali Dev na piya or "The Beloved Of The Gods"), and Priyadar in (Pali Piyadas  or "He who regards everyone with affection").Along with the Edicts of Ashoka, his legend is related in the later 2nd-century A ok vad na ("Narrative of Asoka") and Divy vad na ("Divine narrative"), and in the Sri Lankan text Mahavamsa ("Great Chronicle").Ashoka played a critical role in helping make Buddhism a world religion.[2] As the peace-loving ruler of one of the world's largest, richest and most powerful multi-ethnic states, he is considered an exemplary ruler, who tried to put into practice a secular state ethic of non-violence. The emblem of the modern Republic of India is an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Ashoka.BiographyEarly lifeAshoka was born to the Mauryan emperor Bindusara and his queen, Dharm  [or Dhamm ]. He was the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya, founder of Mauryan dynasty. Ashok vad na states that his mother was a queen named Subhadrang , the daughter of Champa of Telangana. Queen Subhadrang  was a Brahmin of the Ajivika sect. Sage Pilindavatsa (aias Janasana) was a kalupaga Brahmin[3] of the Ajivika sect had found Subhadrang  as a suitable match for Emperor Bindusara. A palace intrigue kept her away from the king. This eventually ended, and she bore a son. It is from her exclamation "I am now without sorrow", that Ashoka got his name. The Divy vad na tells a similar story, but gives the name of the queen as Janapadakaly n .Ashoka had several elder siblings, all of whom were his half-brothers from other wives of Bindus ra.He had been given the royal military training knowledge. He was a fearsome hunter, and according to a legend, killed a lion with just a wooden rod. He was very adventurous and a trained fighter, who was known for his skills with the sword. Because of his reputation as a frightening warrior and a heartless general, he was sent to curb the riots in the Avanti province of the Mauryan empire.[6]Rise to power Maurya Empire at the age of Ashoka. The empire stretched from Afghanistan to Bangladesh/Assam and from Central Asia (Afghanistan) to Tamil Nadu/South India.The Divyavandana talks of Ashoka putting down a revolt due to activities of wicked ministers. This may have been an incident in Bindusara's times. Taranatha's account states that Chanakya, one of Bindusara's great lords, destroyed the nobles and kings of 16 towns and made himself the master of all territory between the eastern and the western seas. Some historians consider this as an indication of Bindusara's conquest of the Deccan while others consider it as suppression of a revolt. Following this, Ashoka was stationed at Ujjayini as governor.Bindusara's death in 273 BC led to a war over succession. According to Divyavandana, Bindusara wanted his son Sushim to succeed him but Ashoka was supported by his father's ministers. A minister named Radhagupta seems to have played an important role. Ashoka managed to become the king by getting rid of the legitimate heir to the throne, by tricking him into entering a pit filled with live coals. The Dipavansa and Mahavansa refer to Ashoka killing 99 of his brothers, sparing only one, named Tissa,[5] although there is no clear proof about this incident. The coronation happened in 269 BC, four years after his succession to the throne.Early life as Emperor Asoka's QueenAshoka is said to have been of a wicked nature and bad temper. He submitted his ministers to a test of loyalty and had 500 of them killed. He also kept a harem of around 500 women. When a few of these women insulted him, he had the whole lot of them burnt to death. He also built hell on earth, an elaborate and horrific torture chamber. This torture chamber earned him the name of Chand Ashoka (Sanskrit), meaning Ashoka the Fierce. Ascending the throne, Ashoka expanded his empire over the next eight years, from the present-day boundaries and regions of Burma–Bangladesh and the state of Assam in India in the east to the territory of present-day Iran / Persia and Afghanistan in the west; from the Pamir Knots in the north almost to the peninsular of southern India (i.e. Tamil Nadu / Andhra Pradesh).Conquest of KalingaMain article: Kalinga War While the early part of Ashoka's reign was apparently quite bloodthirsty, he became a follower of the Buddha's teaching after his conquest of Kalinga on the east coast of India in the present-day states of Orissa and North Coastal Andhra Pradesh. Kalinga was a state that prided itself on its sovereignty and democracy. With its monarchical parliamentary democracy it was quite an exception in ancient Bharata where there existed the concept of Rajdharma. Rajdharma means the duty of the rulers, which was intrinsically entwined with the concept of bravery and Kshatriya dharma. The Kalinga War happened eight years after his coronation. From his 13th inscription, we come to know that the battle was a massive one and caused the deaths of more than 100,000 soldiers and many civilians who rose up in defense; over 150,000 were deported.[7] When he was walking through the grounds of Kalinga after his conquest, rejoicing in his victory, he was moved by the number of bodies strewn there and the wails of the kith and kin of the dead.Buddhist.  A similar four "Indian lion" Lion Capital of Ashoka atop an intact Ashoka Pillar at Wat U Mong near Chiang Mai, Thailand showing another larger Dharma Chakra / Ashoka Chakra atop the four lions thought to be missing in the Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath Museum which has been adopted as the National Emblem of India.As the legend goes, one day after the war was over, Ashoka ventured out to roam the city and all he could see were burnt houses and scattered corpses. This sight made him sick and he cried the famous monologue:What have I done? If this is a victory, what's a defeat then? Is this a victory or a defeat? Is this justice or injustice? Is it gallantry or a rout? Is it valor to kill innocent children and women? Do I do it to widen the empire and for prosperity or to destroy the other's kingdom and splendor? One has lost her husband, someone else a father, someone a child, someone an unborn infant.... What's this debris of the corpses? Are these marks of victory or defeat? Are these vultures, crows, eagles the messengers of death  or evil? The brutality of the conquest led him to adopt Buddhism, and he used his position to propagate the relatively new religion to new heights, as far as ancient Rome and Egypt. He made Buddhism his state religion around 260 BC, and propagated it and preached it within his domain and worldwide from about 250 BC."Who professed and favoured Buddhism, much as the Roman Emperor Constantine did Christianity six centuries later"[8]Emperor Ashoka undoubtedly has to be credited with the first serious attempt to develop a Buddhist policy.Ashokan Pillar at VaishaliProminent in this cause were his son Venerable Mahindra and daughter Sanghamitra (whose name means "friend of the Sangha"), who established Buddhism in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He built thousands of Stupas and Viharas for Buddhist followers. The Stupas of Sanchi are world famous and the stupa named Sanchi Stupa was built by Emperor Ashoka. During the remaining portion of Ashoka's reign, he pursued an official policy of nonviolence (ahimsa). Even the unnecessary slaughter or mutilation of animals was immediately abolished. Everyone became protected by the king's law against sport hunting and branding. Limited hunting was permitted for consumption reasons but Ashoka also promoted the concept of vegetarianism. Ashoka also showed mercy to those imprisoned, allowing them leave for the outside a day of the year. He attempted to raise the professional ambition of the common man by building universities for study, and water transit and irrigation systems for trade and agriculture. He treated his subjects as equals regardless of their religion, politics and caste. The kingdoms surrounding his, so easily overthrown, were instead made to be well-respected allies.He is acclaimed for constructing hospitals for animals and renovating major roads throughout India. After this transformation, Ashoka came to be known as Dhammashoka (Sanskrit), meaning Ashoka, the follower of Dharma. Ashoka defined the main principles of dharma (dhamma) as nonviolence, tolerance of all sects and opinions, obedience to parents, respect for the Brahmans and other religious teachers and priests, liberality towards friends, humane treatment of servants, and generosity towards all. These principles suggest a general ethic of behaviour to which no religious or social group could object.Some critics say that Ashoka was afraid of more wars, but among his neighbors, including the Seleucid Empire and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom established by Diodotus I, none could match his strength. He was a contemporary of both Antiochus I Soter and his successor Antiochus II Theos of the Seleucid dynasty as well as Diodotus I and his son Diodotus II of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom. If his inscriptions and edicts are well studied one finds that he was familiar with the Hellenic world but never in awe of it. His edicts, which talk of friendly relations, give the names of both Antiochus of the Seleucid empire and Ptolemy III of Egypt. The fame of the Mauryan empire was widespread from the time that Ashoka's grandfather Chandragupta Maurya defeated Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Seleucid Dynasty.Stupa of Sanchi.The source of much of our knowledge of Ashoka is the many inscriptions he had carved on pillars and rocks throughout the empire. All his inscriptions have the imperial touch and show compassionate loving. He addressed his people as his "children". These inscriptions promoted Buddhist morality and encouraged nonviolence and adherence to Dharma (duty or proper behavior), and they talk of his fame and conquered lands as well as the neighboring kingdoms holding up his might. One also gets some primary information about the Kalinga War and Ashoka's allies plus some useful knowledge on the civil administration. The Ashoka Pillar at Sarnath is the most popular of the relics left by Ashoka. Made of sandstone, this pillar records the visit of the emperor to Sarnath, in the 3rd century BC. It has a four-lion capital (four lions standing back to back) which was adopted as the emblem of the modern Indian republic. The lion symbolizes both Ashoka's imperial rule and the kingship of the Buddha. In translating these monuments, historians learn the bulk of what is assumed to have been true fact of the Mauryan Empire. It is difficult to determine whether or not some actual events ever happened, but the stone etchings clearly depict how Ashoka wanted to be thought of and remembered.Ashoka's own words as known from his Edicts are: "All men are my children. I am like a father to them. As every father desires the good and the happiness of his children, I wish that all men should be happy always." Edward D'Cruz interprets the Ashokan dharma as a "religion to be used as a symbol of a new imperial unity and a cementing force to weld the diverse and heterogeneous elements of the empire".Also, in the Edicts, Ashoka mentions that some of the people living in Hellenic countries as converts to Buddhism, although no Hellenic historical record of this event remain:Now it is conquest by Dhamma [(which conquest means peaceful conversion, not military conquest)] that Beloved-of-the-Gods considers to be the best conquest. And it (conquest by Dhamma) has been won here, on the borders, even six hundred yojanas away, where the Greek king Antiochos rules, beyond there where the four kings named Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas and Alexander rule, likewise in the south among the Cholas, the Pandyas, and as far as Tamraparni. Here in the king's domain among the Greeks, the Kambojas, the Nabhakas, the Nabhapamkits, the Bhojas, the Pitinikas, the Andhras and the Palidas, everywhere people are following Beloved-of-the-Gods' instructions in Dhamma. Even where Beloved-of-the-Gods' envoys have not been, these people too, having heard of the practice of Dhamma and the ordinances and instructions in Dhamma  given by Beloved-of-the-Gods, are following it and will continue to do so. —Edicts of Ashoka, Rock Edict (S. Dhammika)Ashoka also claims that he encouraged the development of herbal medicine, for human and nonhuman animals, in their territories:Everywhere within Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi's [Ashoka's] domain, and among the people beyond the borders, the Cholas, the Pandyas, the Satiyaputras, the Keralaputras, as far as Tamraparni and where the Greek king Antiochos rules, and among the kings who are neighbours of Antiochos, everywhere has Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, made provision for two types of medical treatment: medical treatment for humans and medical treatment for animals. Wherever medical herbs suitable for humans or animals are not available, I have had them imported and grown. Wherever medical roots or fruits are not available I have had them imported and grown. Along roads I have had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals. —Edicts of Ashoka, Rock Edict 2The Greeks in India even seem to have played an active role in the propagation of Buddhism, as some of the emissaries of Ashoka, such as Dharmaraksita, are described in Pali sources as leading Greek (Yona) Buddhist monks, active in spreading Buddhism (the Mahavamsa, XII . Death and legacy The Junagadh rock contains inscriptions by Ashoka (fourteen of the Edicts of Ashoka), Rudradaman I and Skandagupta.Ashoka ruled for an estimated forty years. After his death, the Mauryan dynasty lasted just fifty more years. Ashoka had many wives and children, but many of their names are lost to time. Mahindra and Sanghamitra were twins born by his first wife, Devi, in the city of Ujjain. He had entrusted to them the job of making his state religion, Buddhism, more popular across the known and the unknown world. Mahindra and Sanghamitra went into Sri Lanka and converted the King, the Queen and their people to Buddhism. They were naturally not handling state affairs after him.In his old age, he seems to have come under the spell of his youngest wife Tishyaraksha. It is said that she had got his son Kunala, the regent in Takshashila, blinded by a wily stratagem. The official executioners spared Kunala and he became a wandering singer accompanied by his favourite wife Kanchanmala. In Pataliputra, Ashoka hears Kunala's song, and realizes that Kunala's misfortune may have been a punishment for some past sin of the emperor himself and condemns Tishyaraksha to death, restoring Kunala to the court. Kunala was succeeded by his son, Samprati, but his rule did not last long after Ashoka's death. The reign of Ashoka Maurya could easily have disappeared into history as the ages passed by, and would have had he not left behind a record of his trials. The testimony of this wise king was discovered in the form of magnificently sculpted pillars and boulders with a variety of actions and teachings he wished to be published etched into the stone. What Ashoka left behind was the first written language in India since the ancient city of Harappa. The language used for inscription was the then current spoken form called Prakrit.In the year 185 BC, about fifty years after Ashoka's death, the last Maurya ruler, Brhadrata, was assassinated by the commander-in-chief of the Mauryan armed forces, Pusyamitra Sunga, while he was taking the Guard of Honor of his forces. Pusyamitra Sunga founded the Sunga dynasty (185 BC-78 BC) and ruled just a fragmented part of the Mauryan Empire. Many of the northwestern territories of the Mauryan Empire (modern-day Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan) became the Indo-Greek Kingdom.In 1992, Ashoka was ranked #53 on Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history. In 2001, a semi-fictionalized portrayal of Ashoka's life was produced as a motion picture under the title Asoka. King Ashoka, the third monarch of the Indian Mauryan dynasty, has come to be regarded as one of the most exemplary rulers in world history. The British historian H.G. Wells has written: "Amidst the tens of thousands of names of monarchs that crowd the columns of history, their majesties and graciousnesses and serenities and royal highnesses and the like, the name of Asoka shines, and shines, almost alone, a star."Buddhist kingship. Main articles: History of Buddhism and History of Buddhism in India Further information: Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Buddhism in Burma One of the more enduring legacies of Ashoka Maurya was the model that he provided for the relationship between Buddhism and the state. Throughout Theravada Southeastern Asia, the model of rulership embodied by Ashoka replaced the notion of divine kingship that had previously dominated (in the Angkor kingdom, for instance). Under this model of 'Buddhist kingship', the king sought to legitimize his rule not through descent from a divine source, but by supporting and earning the approval of the Buddhist sangha. Following Ashoka's example, kings established monasteries, funded the construction of stupas, and supported the ordination of monks in their kingdom. Many rulers also took an active role in resolving disputes over the status and regulation of the sangha, as Ashoka had in calling a conclave to settle a number of contentious issues during his reign. This development ultimately lead to a close association in many Southeast Asian countries between the monarchy and the religious hierarchy, an association that can still be seen today in the state-supported Buddhism of Thailand and the traditional role of the Thai king as both a religious and secular leader. Ashoka also said that all his courtiers were true to their self and always governed the people in a moral manner.Historical sourcesWestern sourcesAshoka was almost forgotten by the historians of the early British India, but James Prinsep contributed in the revelation of historical sources. Another important historian was British archaeologist John Hubert Marshall who was director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India. His main interests were Sanchi and Sarnath besides Harappa and Mohenjodaro. Sir Alexander Cunningham, a British archaeologist and army engineer and often known as the father of the Archaeological Survey of India, unveiled heritage sites like the Bharhut Stupa, Sarnath, Sanchi, and the Mahabodhi Temple; thus, his contribution is recognizable in realms of historical sources. Mortimer Wheeler, a British archaeologist, also exposed Ashokan historical sources, especially the Taxila.Eastern sourcesMain articles: Edicts of Ashoka, Ashokavadana, Mahavamsa, and Dipavamsa  Bilingual inscription (in Greek and Aramaic) by King Ashoka, discovered at Kandahar (National Museum of Afghanistan).Information about the life and reign of Ashoka primarily comes from a relatively small number of Buddhist sources. In particular, the Sanskrit Ashokavadana ('Story of Ashoka'), written in the 2nd century, and the two P li chronicles of Sri Lanka (the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa) provide most of the currently known information about Ashoka. Additional information is contributed by the Edicts of Asoka, whose authorship was finally attributed to the Ashoka of Buddhist legend after the discovery of dynastic lists that gave the name used in the edicts (Priyadarsi – 'favored by the Gods') as a title or additional name of Ashoka Mauriya. Architectural remains of his period have been found at Kumhrar, Patna, which include an 80-pillar hypostyle hall.Edicts of Ashoka -The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of 33 inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, made by the Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty during his reign from 272 to 231 BC. These inscriptions are dispersed throughout the areas of modern-day Pakistan and India, and represent the first tangible evidence of Buddhism. The edicts describe in detail the first wide expansion of Buddhism through the sponsorship of one of the most powerful kings of Indian history.It give more information about Ashoka's proselytism, Moral precepts, Religious precepts, Social and animal welfare .Ashokavadana - The Ashokavadana is a 2nd century CE text related to the legend of the Maurya Emperor Ashoka. The legend was translated into Chinese by Fa Hien in 300 CE.Mahavamsa -The Mahavamsa ("Great Chronicle") is a historical poem written in the Pali language, of the kings of Sri Lanka. It covers the period from the coming of King Vijaya of Kalinga (ancient Orissa) in 543 BC to the reign of King Mahasena (334–361). As it often refers to the royal dynasties of India, the Mahavamsa is also valuable for historians who wish to date and relate contemporary royal dynasties in the Indian subcontinent. It is very important in dating the consecration of the Maurya emperor Ashoka.Dipavamsa -The Dipavamsa, or "Deepavamsa", (i.e., Chronicle of the Island, in Pali) is the oldest historical record of Sri Lanka. The chronicle is believe to be compiled from Atthakatha and other sources around the 3–4th century, King Dhatusena (4th century CE) had ordered that the Dipavamsa be recited at the Mahinda (son to Ashoka) festival held annually in Anuradhapura.The use of Buddhist sources in reconstructing the life of Ashoka has had a strong influence on perceptions of Ashoka, as well as the interpretations of his edicts. Building on traditional accounts, early scholars regarded Ashoka as a primarily Buddhist monarch who underwent a conversion to Buddhism and was actively engaged in sponsoring and supporting the Buddhist monastic institution. Some scholars have tended to question this assessment. The only source of information not attributable to Buddhist sources are the Ashokan edicts, and these do not explicitly state that Ashoka was a Buddhist. In his edicts, Ashoka expresses support for all the major religions of his time: Buddhism, Brahmanism, Jainism, and Ajivikaism, and his edicts addressed to the population at large (there are some addressed specifically to Buddhists; this is not the case for the other religions) generally focus on moral themes members of all the religions would accept.However, there is strong evidence in the edicts alone that he was a Buddhist. In one edict he belittles rituals, and he banned Vedic animal sacrifices; these strongly suggest that he at least did not look to the Vedic tradition for guidance. Furthermore, there are many edicts expressed to Buddhists alone; in one, Ashoka declares himself to be an "upasaka", and in another he demonstrates a close familiarity with Buddhist texts. He erected rock pillars at Buddhist holy sites, but did not do so for the sites of other religions. He also used the word "dhamma" to refer to qualities of the heart that underlie moral action; this was an exclusively Buddhist use of the word. Finally, the ideals he promotes correspond to the first three steps of the Buddha's graduated discourse. ContributionsGlobal spread of BuddhismAshoka, now a Buddhist emperor, believed that Buddhism is beneficial for all human beings as well as animals and plants, so he built 84,000 stupas, Sangharama, viharas, Chaitya, and residences for Buddhist monks all over South Asia and Central Asia. He gave donations to viharas and mathas. He sent his only daughter Sanghamitta and son Mahindra to spread Buddhism in Sri Lanka (ancient name Tamraparni). Ashoka also sent many prominent Buddhist monks (bhikshus) Sthaviras like Madhyamik Sthavira to modern Kashmir and Afghanistan; Maharaskshit Sthavira to Syria, Persia / Iran, Egypt, Greece, Italy and Turkey; Massim Sthavira to Nepal, Bhutan, China and Mongolia; Sohn Uttar Sthavira to modern Cambodia, Laos, Burma (old name Suvarnabhumi for Burma and Thailand), Thailand and Vietnam; Mahadhhamarakhhita stahvira to Maharashtra (old name Maharatthha); Maharakhhit Sthavira and Yavandhammarakhhita Sthavira to South India. Ashoka also invited Buddhists and non-Buddhists for religious conferences. Ashoka inspired the Buddhist monks to compose the sacred religious texts, and also gave all types of help to that end. Ashoka also helped to develop viharas (intellectual hubs) such as Nalanda and Taxila. Ashoka helped to construct Sanchi and Mahabodhi Temple. Ashoka never tried to harm or to destroy non-Buddhist religions, and indeed gave donations to non-Buddhists. As his reign continued his even-handedness was replaced with special inclination towards Buddhism.[12] Ashoka helped and respected both Sramans (Buddhists monks) and Brahmins (Vedic monks). Ashoka also helped to organize the Third Buddhist council (c. 250 BC) at Pataliputra (today's Patna). It was conducted by the monk Moggaliputta-Tissa who was the spiritual teacher of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka.As administrator Mauryan ringstone, with standing goddess. Northwest Pakistan. third century BC. British Museum.Ashoka's military power was so strong that he was able to crush those empires that went to war against him. Still, he was on friendly terms with kingdoms in the South like Cholas, Pandya, Keralputra, the post Alexandrian empire, Tamraparni, and Suvarnabhumi who were strong enough to remain outside his empire and continued to profess Hinduism. According to his edicts we know that he provided humanitarian help including doctors, hospitals, inns, wells, medical herbs and engineers to his neighboring countries. In neighboring countries, Ashoka helped humans as well as animals. Ashoka also planted trees in his empire and his neighboring countries. Ashoka was perhaps the first emperor in human history to ban slavery, hunting, fishing and deforestation. Ashoka also banned the death sentence and asked the same for the neighboring countries. Ashoka commanded his people to serve the orders of their elders parents and religious monks (shramana and Brahmin). Ashoka also recommended his people study and respect all religions. According to Ashoka, to harm another's religion is a harm to one's own religion. Ashoka asserted his people to live with Dharmmacharana. Ashoka asked people to live with harmony, peace, love and tolerance. Ashoka called his people as his children, and they could call him when they need him. He also asked people to save money and not to spend for immoral causes. Ashoka also believed in dharmacharana (dhammacharana) and dharmavijaya (dhammavijaya). According to many European and Asian historians the age of Ashoka was the age of light and delightment. He was the first emperor in human history who has taught the lesson of unity, peace, equality and love. Ashoka's aim was not to expand the territories but the welfare of all of his subjects (sarvajansukhay). In his vast empire there was no evidence of recognizable mutiny or civil war. Ashoka was the true devotee of nonviolence, peace and love. This made him different from other emperors. Ashoka also helped Buddhism as well as religions like Jainism, Hinduism, Hellenic polytheism and Ajivikas. Ashoka was against any discrimination among humans. He helped students, the poor, orphans and the elderly with sound social, political and economic help. According to Ashoka, hatred gives birth to hatred and a feeling of love gives birth to love and mercy. According to him the happiness of people is the happiness of the ruler. His opinion was that the sword is not as powerful as love. Ashoka was also kind to prisoners, and respected animal life and tree life. Ashoka allowed females to be educated. He also permitted females to enter religious institutions. He allowed female Buddhist monastics such as Bhikkhuni. He combined in himself the complexity of a king and a simplicity of a buddhist monk. Because of these reasons he is known as the emperor of all ages and thus became a milestone in the History of the world.Ashoka ChakraMain article: Ashoka Chakra  The Ashoka Chakra, "the wheel of Righteousness" (Dharma in Sanskrit or Dhamma in Pali)"The Ashoka Chakra (the wheel of Ashoka) is a depiction of the Dharmachakra or Dhammachakka in Pali, the Wheel of Dharma (Sanskrit: Chakra means wheel). The wheel has 24 spokes. The Ashoka Chakra has been widely inscribed on many relics of the Mauryan Emperor, most prominent among which is the Lion Capital of Sarnath and The Ashoka Pillar. The most visible use of the Ashoka Chakra today is at the centre of the National flag of the Republic of India (adopted on 22 July 1947), where it is rendered in a Navy-blue color on a White background, by replacing the symbol of Charkha (Spinning wheel) of the pre-independence versions of the flag. Ashoka Chakra can also been seen on the base of Lion Capital of Ashoka which has been adopted as the National Emblem of India.The Ashoka chakra was built by Ashoka during his reign. Chakra is a Sanskrit word which also means cycle or self repeating process. The process it signifies is the cycle of time as how the world changes with time.A few days before India became independent on August 1947, the specially constituted Constituent Assembly decided that the flag of India must be acceptable to all parties and communities.[14] A flag with three colours, Saffron, White and Green with the Ashoka Chakra was selected.Pillars of Ashoka (Ashokstambha)Main article: Pillars of AshokaThe pillars of Ashoka are a series of columns dispersed throughout the northern Indian subcontinent, and erected by Ashoka during his reign in the 3rd century BC. Originally, there must have been many pillars of Ashoka although only ten with inscriptions still survive. Averaging between forty and fifty feet in height, and weighing up to fifty tons each, all the pillars were quarried at Chunar, just south of Varanasi and dragged, sometimes hundreds of miles, to where they were erected. The first Pillar of Ashoka was found in the 16th century by Thomas Coryat in the ruins of ancient Delhi. The wheel represents the sun time and Buddhist law, while the swastika stands for the cosmic dance arouna fixed center and guards against evil. There is no evidence of a swastika, or manji, on the pillars.The Asokan pillar at Lumbini, NepalLion Capital of Asoka (Ashokmudra) Main article: Lion Capital of AsokaThe Lion capital of Ashoka is a sculpture of four "Indian lions" standing back to back. It was originally placed atop the A oka pillar at Sarnath, now in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. The pillar, sometimes called the A oka Column is still in its original location, but the Lion Capital is now in the Sarnath Museum. This Lion Capital of Ashoka from Sarnath has been adopted as the National Emblem of India and the wheel "Ashoka Chakra" from its base was placed onto the center of the National Flag of India.The capital contains four lions (Indian / Asiatic Lions), standing back to back, mounted on an abacus, with a frieze carrying sculptures in high relief of an elephant, a galloping horse, a bull, and a lion, separated by intervening spoked chariot-wheels over a bell-shaped lotus. Carved out of a single block of polished sandstone, the capital was believed to be crowned by a 'Wheel of Dharma' (Dharmachakra popularly known in India as the "Ashoka Chakra").The Ashoka Lion capital or the Sarnath lion capital is also known as the national symbol of India. The Sarnath pillar bears one of the Edicts of Ashoka, an inscription against division within the Buddhist community, which reads, "No one shall cause division in the order of monks". The Sarnath pillar is a column surmounted by a capital, which consists of a canopy representing an inverted bell-shaped lotus flower, a short cylindrical abacus with four 24-spoked Dharma wheels with four animals (an elephant, a bull, a horse, a lion).The four animals in the Sarnath capital are believed to symbolize different steps of Lord Buddha's life.The Elephant represents the Buddha's idea in reference to the dream of Queen Maya of a white elephant entering her womb. The Bull represents desire during the life of the Buddha as a prince. The Horse represents Buddha's departure from palatial life. The Lion represents the accomplishment of Buddha. Besides the religious interpretations, there are some non-religious interpretations also about the symbolism of the Ashoka capital pillar at Sarnath. According to them, the four lions symbolize Ashoka's rule over the four directions, the wheels as symbols of his enlightened rule (Chakravartin) and the four animals as symbols of four adjoining territories of India.

    200     BCE  -- Modern scholarship reveals fables and proverbs of "Aesopic" form existing in both ancient Sumer and Akkad, as early as the third millennium BCE.Aesop and Indian traditionsAesop's fables and the Indian tradition as represented by the Buddhist Jataka Tales and the Hindu Panchatantra share about a dozen tales in common although often widely differing in detail. There is therefore some debate over whether the Greeks learned these fables from Indian storytellers or the other way, or if the influences were mutual. Loeb editor Ben E. Perry took the extreme position in his book Babrius and Phaedrus thatIn the entire Greek tradition there is not, so far as I can see, a single  fable that can be said to come either directly or indirectly from an Indian source; but many fables or fable-motifs that first appear in Greek or Near Eastern literature are found later in the Panchatantra and other Indian story-books, including the Buddhist Jatakas. Although Aesop and the Buddha were near contemporaries, the stories of neither were recorded in writing until some centuries after their death and few disinterested scholars would now be prepared to make so absolute a stand about their origin in view of the conflicting and still emerging evidenceTranslation and transmission Greek versionsWhen and how the fables arrived in and travelled from ancient Greece remains a mystery. Some cannot be dated any earlier than Babrius and Phaedrus, several centuries after Aesop, and yet others even later. The earliest mentioned collection was by Demetrius of Phalerum, an Athenian orator and statesman of the 4th century BCE, who compiled the fables into a set of ten books for the use of orators. A follower of Aristotle, he simply catalogued all the fables that earlier Greek writers had used in isolation as exempla, putting them into prose. At least it was evidence of what was attributed to Aesop by others; but this may have included any ascription to him from the oral tradition in the way of animal fables, fictitious anecdotes, etiological or satirical myths, possibly even any proverb or joke, that these writers transmitted. It is more a proof of the power of Aesop's name to attract such stories to it than evidence of his actual authorship. In any case, although the work of Demetrius was mentioned frequently for the next twelve centuries, and was considered the official Aesop, no copy now survives.

200    Second Macedonian war to 196. Greeks with Roman support rebel against Macedonian rule. Philip is forced to give up Greece.
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2nd    CENT BC. THE BIBLE. The Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh, which includes the Five Books of Moses called the Torah) and Christian Bible (the Old Testament - which is in Protestant use the same as the Tanakh, arranged in a different order, but Catholics and Orthodox include either 7 or 12 additional books, called the deuterocanon [literally "second canon"] - and the New Testament) are works considered sacred and authoritative writings by the respective faith groups that revere their specific collections of biblical writings. The Old Testament collection, or Hebrew Bible, was originally composed in Hebrew, except for parts of Daniel and Ezra that are written in Aramaic. These writings depict Israelite religion from its beginnings to about the 2nd Century BC.The New Testament writings were in Koine (common) Greek.At the end of the 17th century few Bible scholars would have questioned that the Pentateuch was the work of Moses, Joshua was by Joshua, and so on. Butin the late 18th century some liberal scholars began to question these traditional authorships, and by the end of the 19th century some went as far as to claim that the Pentateuch as a whole was the work of many more authors over many centuries from 1000 BC (the time of David) to 500 BC (the time of Ezra), and that the history it contained was often more polemical rather than strictly factual. By the first half of the 20th century Hermann Gunkel had drawn attention to the mythic aspects of the Pentateuch, and Albrecht Alt, Martin Noth and the tradition history school argued that although its core traditions had genuinely ancient roots, the narratives were fictional framing devices and were not intended as history in the modern sense.While the limits of the canon were effectively set in these early centuries,  the status of Scripture has been a topic of scholarly discussion in the later  church. Increasingly, the Biblical works have been subjected to literary and  historical criticism in efforts to interpret the texts independent of Church and dogmatic influences. Different views of the authority and inspiration of  the Bible also continue to be expressed in liberal and fundamentalist churches  today. What cannot be denied, however, is the enormous influence which the  stories, poetry, and reflections found in the Biblical writings have had, not  only on the doctrines and practices of two major faiths, but also on Western  culture, its literature, art, and music.In the 2nd century, the gnostics often asserted that their form of Christianity was the first, in which Jesus was sometimes regarded as merely a teaching device, or as a docetic teacher, or allegory. Elaine Pagels has proposed that there are several examples of gnostic attitudes in the Pauline Epistles, Elaine Pagels. Bart D. Ehrman and Raymond E. Brown note that some of the Pauline epistles are widely regarded by scholars as pseudonymous, and it is the view of Timothy Freke, and others, that this involved a forgery in an attempt by the Church to bring in Paul's Gnostic supporters and turn the arguments in the other Epistles on their head.Some critics have maintained that Christianity is not founded on an historical figure, but rather on a mythical creation. This view proposes that the idea of Jesus was the Jewish manifestation of a pan-Hellenic cult, known as Osiris-Dionysus, which acknowledged the non-historic nature of thefigure, using it instead as a teaching device. Translation issuesMain articles: Biblical manuscripts, Textual criticism, and Biblical inerrancySome critics express concern that none of the original manuscripts of the books of the Bible still exist. All translations of the Bible have been made from well respected but centuries-old copies of the original manuscripts. Religious communities value highly those who interpret their scriptures at both the scholarly and popular levels. Translation of scripture into the vernacular (such as English and hundreds of other languages), though a common phenomenon, is also a subject of debate and criticism.Translation has led to a number of issues, as the original languages are often quite different in grammar and word meaning. While the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy states that "inerrancy" applies only to the original languages, some believers trust their own translation as the truly accurate one—for example, the King-James-Only Movement. For readability, clarity, or other reasons, translators may choose different wording or sentence structure, and some translations may choose to paraphrase passages.Because many of the words in the original language have ambiguous or difficult to translate meanings, debates over correct interpretation occur. For instance, at creation(Gen 1:2), is (ruwach 'elohiym) the "wind of god", "spirit of god"(i.e., the Holy Spirit in Christianity), or a "mighty wind" over the primordial deep? In Hebrew, (ruwach) can mean "wind","breath" or "spirit". Both ancient and modern translators are divided over this and many other such ambiguities. Another example is the word used in the masoretic text [Isa 7:14] to indicate the woman who would bearEmmanuel is alleged to mean a young, unmarried woman in Hebrew, while Matthew 1:23 follows the Septuagint version of the passage that uses the Greek word parthenos, translated virgin, and is used to support the Christian idea of virgin birth. Those who view the masoretic text, which forms the basis of most English translations of the Old Testament, as being more accurate than the Septuagint, and trust its usual translation, may see this as an inconsistency, whereas those who take the Septuagint to be accurate may not.In the History of the English Bible, there have been many changes to the wording, leading to several competing versions. Many of these have contained Biblical errata—typographic errors, such as the phrases Is thereno treacle in Gilead?, Printers have persecuted me without cause, and Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?, and even Thou shalt commit adultery.More recently, several discoveries of ancient manuscripts such as the Dead Sea scrolls, and Codex Sinaiticus, have led to modern translations like the New International Version differing somewhat from the older ones such as the 17th century King James Version, removing verses not present in the earliest manuscripts (see List of omitted Bible verses), some of which are acknowledged as interpolations, such as the Comma Johanneum, others having several highly variant versions in very important places, such as the resurrection scene in Mark 16. The King-James-Only Movement advocates reject these changes and uphold the King James Version as the most accurate.Ethics in the BibleMain article: Ethics in the BibleCertain interpretations of the moral decisions in the Bible are considered ethically questionable by many modern groups. Some of the passages (generally ones related to Mosaic Law) most commonly criticized include the subjugation of women, religious intolerance, use of capital punishment as penalty for violation of Mosaic Law, sexual acts like incest, toleration of the institution of slavery in both Old and New Testaments, obligatory religious wars and the order to commit the genocide of the Canaanites and the Amalekites. Some religious groups support the Bible's decisions by reminding critics that they should be judged by the standards of the time and that Mosaic Law applied to the Israelite people (who lived before the birth of Jesus). Other religious groups see nothing wrong with the Bible's judgments. Other critics of the Bible, such as Friedrich Nietzsche who popularized the phrase "God is dead," have criticized the morality of the New Testament, regarding it as weak and conformist-oriented. See Rebellious son: "If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, 19 then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gatewayof his home town.  "And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This sonof ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.'  "Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear of it and fear," (Deut. 21:18-21). Internal consistencyMain article: Internal consistency of the BibleThere are many places in the Bible in which inconsistencies—such as different numbers and names for the same feature, and different sequences for the same events—have been alleged and presented by critics as difficulties. Responses to these criticisms include the modern documentary hypothesis, the two-source hypothesis and theories that the Pastoral Epistles are pseudonymous. Con trasting with these critical stances are positions supported by other authorities that consider the texts to be consistent. Such advocates maintain that the Torah was written by a single source, the Gospels by four independent witnesses, and all of the Pauline Epistles to have been written by the Apostle Paul. However authors such as Raymond Brown have presented arguments that the Gospels actually contradict each other in various important respects and on various important details. W. D. Davies and E. P. Sanders state that: "on many points, especially about Jesus' early life, the evangelists were ignorant … they simply did not know, and, guided by rumour, hope or supposition, did the best they could". More critical scholars see the nativity stories either as completely fictional accounts, or at least constructed from traditionsthat predate the Gospels.For example, many versions of the Bible specifically point out that the most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses did not include Mark 16:9-20, i.e., the Gospel of Mark originally ended at Mark 16:8, and additional verses were added a few hundred years later. This is known as the "Markan Appendix". Alleged fulfillment of biblical propheciesThe fulfillment of biblical prophecies is a popular argument used by Christian apologists to prove the divine inspiration of the Bible. In prophecy fulfillment, they see evidence of God's direct involvement in the writing of the Bible. However, critics argue that biblical prophecies turn out to be prophecies only because Bible writers arbitrarily declared them to be prophecies or the fulfillments became fulfillments only because biased New Testament writers arbitrarily declared them to be fulfillments. Messianic propheciesMain article: Claimed Messianic prophecies of JesusSee also: Judaism's view of Jesus, Jewish messianism, and Jewish Messiah claimantsAccording to Christian apologists, the alleged fulfillment of the messianic prophecies in the mission, death, and resurrection of Jesus proves the accuracy of the Bible and that Jesus is the Son of God. However, according to Jewish scholars, Christian claims that Jesus is the textual messiah of the Hebrew Bible are based on mistranslations and Jesus did not fulfill the qualifications for Jewish Messiah. An example of this is Isaiah 7:14. Christians read Isaiah 7:14 as a prophetic prediction of Jesus' birth from a virgin, while Jews read it as referring to the birth of Ahaz's son, Hezekiah. They also point out that the word Almah, used in Isaiah 7:14, is part of the Hebrew phrase ha-almah hara, meaning "the almah is pregnant." Since the present tense is used, they maintain that the young woman was already pregnant and hence not a virgin. This being the case, they claim the verse cannot be cited as a prediction of the future.Prophecies after the eventCritics  also claim that many biblical prophecies were written after the events supposedly predicted or that their text was modified after the event to fit the facts as they occurred. An example of an alleged after-the-fact prophecy is the Little Apocalypse recorded in the Olivet Discourse of the Gospel of Mark.

192    Syrian war to 189. Antiochus III defeated in war with Rome.

186    The bacchanalia were originally held in secret and only attended by women. The festivals occurred in the grove of Simila near the Aventine Hill on March 16 and March 17. Later, admission to the rites was extended to men, and celebrations took place five times a month. According to Livy, the extension happened in an era when the leader of the Bacchus cult was Paculla Annia — though it is now believed that some men had participated before that. Livy informs us that the rapid spread of the cult, which he claims indulged in all kinds of crime and political conspiracies at its nocturnal meetings, led in 186 BC to a decree of the Senate — the so-called Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, inscribed on a bronze tablet discovered in Apulia in Southern Italy (1640), now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna — by which the Bacchanalia were prohibited throughout all Italy except in certain special cases which must be approved specifically by the Senate. In spite of the severe punishment inflicted on those found in violation of this decree (Livy claims there were more executions than imprisonment), the Bacchanalia survived in Southern Italy long past the repression.the Senate acted against the Bacchants for one of the following reasons:* Women occupied leadership positions in the cult (contrary to the patriarchical Roman values of the time)* Slaves and the poor were the cult's members and were planning to overthrow the Roman government  * According to a theory proposed by Erich Gruen, as a display of the Senate's supreme power to the Italian allies as well as competitors within the Roman political system, such as individual victorious generals whose popularity made them a threat to the Senate's collective authority. There was no crime, no deed of shame, wanting. More acts were committed by men with men than with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim. To regard nothing as impious or criminal was the sum total of their religion. The men, as though seized with madness and with frenzied distortions of their bodies, shrieked out prophecies; the matrons, dressed as Bacchae, their hair disheveled, rushed down to the Tiber River with burning torches, plunged them into the water, and drew them out again, the flame undiminished because they were made of sulfur mixed with lime. Men were fastened to a machine and hurried off to hidden caves, and they were said to have been taken away by the gods. These were the men who refused to join their conspiracy or take part in their crimes or submit to their orgies.




    184    Sunga dynasty in India founded by Pushayanitra.

183    Hannibal commits suicide to aboid being handed over to the Romans.

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181    Ptolemy VI Philometor rules Egypt to 145.

179    Perseus son of Philip V King of Macedonia continues the war with Rome to 167.

175    Antiochus IV Epiphanes King of Seleucid empire to 163.BC ANTIOCH.  The original city of Seleucus was laid out in imitation of the grid plan of Alexandria by the architect Xenarius. Libanius describes the first building and arrangement of this city (i. p. 300. 17). The citadel was on Mt. Silpius and the city lay mainly on the low ground to the north, fringing the river. Two great colonnaded streets intersected in the centre. Shortly afterwards a second quarter was laid out, probably on the east and by Antiochus I, which, from an expression of Strabo, appears to have been the native, as contrasted with the Greek, town. It was enclosed by a wall of its own. In the Orontes, north of the city, lay a large island, and on this Seleucus II Callinicus began a third walled "city," which was finished by Antiochus III. A fourth and last quarter was added by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 BC); and thenceforth Antioch was known as Tetrapolis. From west to east the whole was about 6 km in diameter and little less from north to south, this area including many large gardens.The new city was populated by a mix of local settlers that Athenians brought from the nearby city of Antigonia, Macedonians, and Jews (who were given full status from the beginning). The total free population of Antioch at its foundation has been estimated at between 17,000 and 25,000, not including slaves and native settlers.[2] During the late Hellenistic period and Early Roman period, Antioch population reached its peak of over 500,000 inhabitants (estimates vary from 400,000 to 600,000) and was the third largest city in the world after Rome and Alexandria. By the 4th century, Antioch's declining population was about 200,000 according to Chrysostom, a figure which again does not include slaves.About 6 km west and beyond the suburb Heraclea lay the paradise of Daphne, a park of woods and waters, in the midst of which rose a great temple to the Pythian Apollo, also founded by Seleucus I and enriched with a cult-statue of the god, as Musagetes, by Bryaxis. A companion sanctuary of Hecate was constructed underground by Diocletian. The beauty and the lax morals of Daphne were celebrated all over the western world; and indeed Antioch as a whole shared in both these titles to fame. Its amenities awoke both the enthusiasm and the scorn of many writers of antiquity.

175- Persecution of Jews begins.

171    Third Macedonian war to 167. Macedonians under Perseus again attack Rome.

170    Antiochus IV invades Egypt and captures Ptolemy VI Egyptians proclaim his younger brother Ptolemy VIII Euergetes king. Antiochus withdraws and the brothers reign jointly.

168    Battle of Pydna. Romans dfeat and capture Perseus.

167    BC    PALESTINE. MACCABEES. Antiochus begins persecution of Jews. Worship of Zeus in the Temple at Jerusalem. Jews under Judas Maccabeus revolt against Antiochus until 164. Jewish worship restored. In 167 B.C., the Jews revolted under the leadership of the Maccabeans and either drove the Seleucids out of Palestine or at least established a large degree of autonomy, forming a kingdom with its capital in Jerusalem. The kingdom received Roman "protection" when Judah Maccabee was made a "friend of the Roman senate and people" in 164 B.C. according to the records of Roman historians. Palestine  Jewish sacrifice was forbidden, sabbaths and feasts were banned and circumcision was outlawed. Altars to Greek gods were set up and animals prohibited to Jews were sacrificed on them. The Olympian Zeus was placed on the altar of the Temple. Possession of Jewish scriptures was made a capital offence. The motives of Antiochus are unclear. He may have been incensed at the overthrow of his appointee, Menelaus,[3] he may have been responding to an orthodox Jewish revolt that had drawn on the Temple and the Torah for its strength, or he may have been encouraged by a group of radical Hellenizers among the Jews.Israel under Judah Maccabee Jonathan's conquests Simon's conquestsIn the narrative of I Maccabees, after Antiochus issued his
        decrees forbidding Jewish religious practice, a rural Jewish priest from Modiin, Mattathias the Hasmonean, sparked the revolt against the Seleucid Empire by refusing to worship the Greek gods. Mattathias killed a Hellenistic Jew who stepped forward to offer a sacrifice to an idol in Mattathias' place. He and his five sons fled to the wilderness of Judah.

166    BC MACCABEES. After Mattathias' death about one year later in 166 BCE, his son Judah Maccabee led an army of Jewish dissidents to victory over the Seleucid dynasty in guerrilla warfare, which at first was directed against Hellenizing Jews, of whom there were many. The Maccabees destroyed pagan altars in the villages, circumcised children and forced Jews into outlawry. The term Maccabees as used to describe the Jewish army is taken from the Hebrew word for "hammer".The revolt itself involved many battles, in which the Maccabean forces gained notoriety among the Syrian army for their use of guerrilla tactics. After the victory, the Maccabees entered Jerusalem in triumph and ritually cleansed the
        Temple, reestablishing traditional Jewish worship there and installing Jonathan Maccabee as high priest. A large Syrian army was sent to quash the revolt, but returned to Syria on the death of Antiochus IV. Its commander Lysias, preoccupied with internal Syrian affairs, agreed to a political compromise that restored religious freedom.The Jewish festival of Hanukkah celebrates the re-dedication of the Temple following Judah Maccabee's victory over the Seleucids. According to Rabbinic tradition, the victorious Maccabees could only find a small jug of oil that had remained uncontaminated by virtue of a seal, and although it only contained
        enough oil to sustain the Menorah for one day, it miraculously lasted for eight days, by which time further oil could be procured.Maccabean ruleHasmoneanFollowing the re-dedication of the temple, the supporters of the Maccabees were divided over the question of whether to continue fighting or not. When the revolt began under the leadership of Mattathias, it was seen, in the view of the author of the First Book of Maccabees, as a war for religious freedom to end the oppression of the Seleucids. However, as the Maccabees realized how successful they had been, many wanted to continue the revolt and conquer other lands with Jewish populations or to convert their peoples. This policy exacerbated the divide between the Pharisees and Sadducees under later Hasmonean monarchs such as Alexander Jannaeus.[8] Those who sought the continuation of the war were led by Judah Maccabee.On his death in battle in 160 BCE, Judah was succeeded as army commander by his younger brother, Jonathan, who was already High Priest. Jonathan made treaties with various foreign states, causing further dissent between those who merely desired religious freedom and those who sought greater power.

165    -  Jewish  guerrillas beat Syrian overlords, resist attempts to  turn Jerusalem into Greek colony. Hasmonean (Maccabean)Dynasty.

164    BC MACCABEES. In the 2nd century BCE, Judea lay between the Ptolemaic Kingdom based in Egypt and the Seleucid empire based in Syria, kingdoms formed after the death of Alexander the Great (336–323 BCE) Previously under the Ptolemies, Judea had
        fallen to the Seleucids in ca.200 BCE. Since the rule of Alexander in the near east, there had been a process of Hellenization, which affected Judea. Some Jews, mainly those of the urban upper class,[ wished to dispense with Jewish law and to adopt a Greek lifestyle. Hellenizing Jews had built a gymnasium, competed internationally in Greek games, "removed their marks of circumcision and repudiated the holy covenant".When Antiochus IV Epiphanes (ca. 215–164 BCE), became ruler of the Seleucid Empire in 175 BCE, the High Priest in Jerusalem was Onias III. Antiochus was insensitive to the views of religious Jews and treated the High Priest as a political appointee and one from whom money could be made. To Antiochus the High Priest was merely a local governor within his realm, who could be appointed or dismissed at will, while to orthodox Jews he was divinely appointed. Jason, the brother of Onias, bribed Antiochus to make him High Priest instead. Jason abolished the traditional theocracy and constituted Jerusalem as a Greek polis. Menelaus (who was not even a member of the Levite priestly family) then bribed Antiochus and was appointed High Priest in place of Jason. Menelaus had Onias assassinated. His brother Lysimachus took holy vessels from the Temple, causing riots and the thief's death at the hands of the rioters. Menelaus was arrested and arraigned before Antiochus, but he bribed his way out
        of trouble. Jason subsequently drove out Menelaus and became High Priest again. Antiochus pillaged the Temple, attacked Jerusalem and "led captive the women and children". From this point onwards, Antiochus pursued a Hellenizing policy with zeal. This effectively meant banning traditional Jewish religious practice.

160    Judas Maccabeus killed in battle against the Syrians. Jonathan Maccabeus, the younger brother, is leader of Jews to 143.

157    Judaea becomes and independent principality

150    ROME. Polybius published a history of Rome about 150 BC in which he describes the Gauls of Italy and their conflict with Rome. Pausanias in the second century BC says that the Gauls "originally called Celts live on the remotest region of Europe on the coast of an enormous tidal sea". Posidonius described the southern Gauls about 100 BC. Though his original work is lost it was used by later writers such as Strabo. The latter, writing in the early first century AD, deals with Britain and Gaul as well as Spain, Italy and Galatia. Caesar wrote extensively about his Gallic Wars in 58-51 BC. Diodorus Siculus wrote about the Celts of Gaul and Britain in his first century History.

        The Romans arrived in the Rhone valley in the second century BC and found that a large part of Gaul was Celtic speaking. Rome needed land communications with its Spanish provinces and fought a major battle with the Saluvii at Entremont in 124-123 BC. Gradually Roman control extended, the Roman Province of Gallia Transalpina being along the Merranean coast. The remainder was known as Gallia Comata "Hairy Gaul".In 58 BC, the Helvetii planned to migrate westward but were forced back by Julius Caesar. He then became involved in fighting the various tribes in Gaul, and by 55 BC, most of Gaul had been overrun. In 52 BC, Vercingetorix led a revolt against the Roman occupation but was defeated at the siege of Alesia and surrendered. Following the Gallic Wars of 58-51 BC, Celticia formed the main part of Roman Gaul. Place name analysis shows that Celtic was used east of the Garonne river and south of the Seine-Marne. However, the Celtic language did not survive, having been replaced by a Romance language, French.Iberia.

        CELTS. Main language areas in Iberia, showing Celtic and Proto-Celtic languages in green, and Iberian languages in purple, circa 250 BC. Main language areas in Iberia circa 200 BC. showing Celtic and Proto-Celtic languages in green.See also: Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, Prehistoric Iberia, Hispania, Lusitania, and Gallaecia
        Traditional 18th/19th centuries scholarship surrounding the Celts virtually ignored the Iberian Peninsula, since material culture relatable to the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures that have defined Iron Age Celts was rare in Iberia, and did not provide a cultural scenario that could easily be linked to that of Central Europe. Celtic presence and influences were very substantial in Iberia. The Celts in Iberia were divided in two main archaeological and cultural groups, even if the divide is not very clear:One group, from Galicia and along the Iberian Atlantic shores. They were made up of the Lusitanians (in Portugal and the Celtic region that Strabo called Celtica in the southwest including the Algarve, inhabited by the Celtici), the Vettones and Vacceani peoples (of central west Spain and Portugal), and the Gallaecian, Astures and Cantabrian peoples of the Castro culture of north and northwest Spain and Portugal). The Celtiberian group of central Spain and the upper Ebro valley, which both present special, local features. The group originated when Celts migrated from what is now France and integrated with the local Iberian people. The origins of the Celtiberians might provide a key to unlocking the Celticization process in the rest of the Peninsula. The process of celticization of the southwest by the Keltoi and of the northwest is however not a simple celtiberian question. Recent investigation about the Callaici Bracari in northwest Portugal is bringing new approaches to understand Celtic culture evidences (language, art and religion) in western Iberia.
         Italy. There was an early Celtic presence in northern Italy since inscriptions dated to the sixth century BC have been found there. In 391BC Celts "who had their homes beyond the Alps streamed through the passes in great strength and seized the territory that lay between the Appeninne mountains and the Alps" according to Diodorus Siculus. The Po Valley and the rest of northern Italy (known to the Romans as Cisalpine Gaul) was inhabited by Celtic-speakers who founded cities such as Milan. Later the Roman army was routed at the battle of Allia and Rome was sacked in 390BC.At the battle of Telemon in 225 BC a large Celtic army was trapped between two Roman forces and crushed.The defeat of the combined Samnite, Celtic and Etruscan alliance by the Romans in the Third Samnite War sounded the beginning of the end of the Celtic domination in mainland Europe, but it was not until 192 BC that the Roman armies conquered the last remaining independent Celtic kingdoms in Italy.
        The Celts settled much further south of the Po River than many maps show. Remnants in the town of Doccia, in the province of Emilia-Romagna, showcase Celtic houses in very good condition dating from about the 4th century BC.
        Other regionsThe Celts also expanded down the Danube river and its tributaries. On of the most influential tribes, the Scordisci, had established their capital at Singidunum in 3rd century BC, which is present-day Belgrade. The concentration of hill-forts and cemeteries shows a density of population in the Tisza valley of modern-day Vojvodina, Hungary and into Ukraine. Expansion into Romania was however blocked by the Dacians.Further south, Celts settled in Thrace (Bulgaria), which they ruled for over a century, and Anatolia, where they settled as the Galatians. Despite their geographical isolation from the rest of the Celtic world, the Galatians maintained their Celtic language for at least seven hundred years. St Jerome, who visited Ancyra (modern-day Ankara in 373AD, likened their language to that of the Treveri of northern Gaul.The Boii tribe gave their name to Bohemia (Czech Republic) and Celtic artifacts and cemeteries have been discovered further east in both Poland and Slovakia. A celtic coin (Biatec) from Bratislava's mint is displayed on today's Slovak 5 crown coin.As there is no archaeological evidence for large scale invasions in some of the other areas, one current school of thought holds that Celtic language and culture spread to those areas by contact rather than invasion. However, the Celtic invasions of Italy, Greece, and western Anatolia are well documented in Greek and Latin history. Examine the Map of Celtic Lands for more information. There are records of Celtic mercenaries in Egypt serving the Ptolemies. Thousands were employed in 283-246 BC and they were also in service around 186 BC. They attempted to overthrow Ptolomy II.
        RomanisationUnder Caesar the Romans conquered Celtic Gaul, and from Claudius onward the Roman empire absorbed parts of Britain. Roman local government of these regions closely mirrored pre-Roman 'tribal' boundaries, and archaeological finds suggest native involvement in local government. Latin was the official language of these regions after the conquests.The native peoples under Roman rule became Romanized and keen to adopt Roman ways. Celtic art had already incorporated classical influences, and surviving Gallo-Roman pieces interpret classical subjects or keep faith with old traditions despite a Roman overlay.The Roman occupation of Gaul, and to a lesser extent of Britain, led to Roman-Celtic syncretism (see Roman Gaul, Roman Britain). In the case of Gaul, this eventually resulted in a language shift from Gaulish to Vulgar Latin (see also Gallo-Roman culture). However, the Celts were master horsemen, which so impressed the Romans that they adopted Epona, the Celtic horse goddess, into their pantheon. During and after the fall of the Roman Empire many parts of France threw out their Roman administrators.There were four major festivals in the Celtic Calendar: "Imbolc" on the 1st of February, possibly linked to the lactation of the ewes and sacred to the Irish Goddess Brigid. "Beltain" on the 1st of May, connected to fertility and warmth, possibly linked to the Sun God Belenos. "Lughnasa" on the 1st of August, connected with the harvest and associated with the God Lugh. And finally "Samhain" on the 1st of November, possibly the start of the year.[28] Two of these festivals, Beltain and Lugnasa are shown on the Coligny Calendar by sigils, and it is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to match the first month on the Calendar (Samonios) to Samhain. Lughnasa does not seem to be shown at all however.[29]The Celtic Calendar seems to be based on astronomy[30] but how any astrology system would have worked is harder to tell. We have to base our knowledge on Old Irish manuscripts, none of which have been published or fully translated. It seems to have been based on an indigenous Irish symbol system, and not that of any of the more commonly-known astrological systems such as Western, Chinese or Vedic astrology.SocietyTo the extent that sources are available, they depict a pre-Christian Celtic social structure based formally on class and kinship. Patron-client relationships similar to those of Roman society are also described by Caesar and others in the Gaul of the first century BC.In the main, the evidence is of tribes being led by kings, although some argue that there is evidence of oligarchical republican forms of government eventually emerging in areas in close contact with Rome. Most descriptions of Celtic societies describe them as being divided into three groups: a warrior aristocracy; an intellectual class including professions such as druid, poet, and jurist; and everyone else. There are instances recorded where women participated both in warfare and in kingship, although they were in the minority in these areas. In historical times, the offices of high and low kings in Ireland and Scotland were filled by election under the system of tanistry, which eventually came into conflict with the feudal principle of primogeniture where the succession goes to the first born son.Archaeological discoveries at the Vix Burial indicate that women could achieve high status and power within at least one Celtic society. As Celtic history was only carried forward by oral tradition, it has been advanced that the traditions finally recorded in the seventh century can be projected back through Celtic history.[32] If this is so then, according to the Cáin Lánamna, a woman had the right to demand divorce, take back whatever property she brought into the marriage and be free to remarry. If later Celtic tradition can be projected back, and from Ireland to Britain and the continent, then Celtic law demanded that children, the elderly, and the mentally handicapped be looked after.Little is known of family structure among the Celts. Athenaeus in his Deipnosophists, 13.603, claims that "the Celts, in spite of the fact that their women are the most beautiful of all the barbarian tribes, prefer boys as sexual partners. There are some of them who will regularly go to bed – on those animal skins of theirs – with a pair of lovers", implying a woman and a boy. Such reports reflect an outsiders observation of Celtic culture.[33] It is unknown whether Athenaeus, born in Egypt of Greek origin ever visited any Celts since little is known about him beyond his surviving writings.Patterns of settlement varied from decentralised to the urban. The popular stereotype of non-urbanised societies settled in hillforts and duns, drawn from Britain and Ireland contrasts with the urban settlements present in the core Hallstatt and La Tene areas, with the many significant oppida of Gaul late in the first millennium BC, and with the towns of Gallia Cisalpina.There is archaeological evidence to suggest that the pre-Roman Celtic societies were linked to the network of overland trade routes that spanned Eurasia. Large prehistoric trackways crossing bogs in Ireland and Germany have been found by archaeologists. They are believed to have been created for wheeled transport as part of an extensive roadway system that facilitated trade.[34] The territory held by the Celts contained tin, lead, iron, silver and gold.[35] Celtic smiths and metalworkers created weapons and jewelry for international trade, particularly with the Romans. Celtic traders were also in contact with the Phoenicians: gold works made in pre-Roman Ireland have been unearthed in archaeological digs in Palestine and trade routes between Atlantic societies and Palestine dating back to at least 1600 BC. Local trade was largely in the form of barter, but as with most tribal societies they probablhad a reciprocal economy in which goods and other services are not exchanged, but are given on the basis of mutual relationships and the obligations of kinship. Low value coinages of potin, silver and bronze, suitable for use in trade, were minted in most Celtic areas of the continent, and in South-East Britain prior to the Roman conquest of these areas.
        There are only very limited records from pre-Christian times written in Celtic languages. These are mostly inscriptions in the Roman, and sometimes Greek, alphabets. The Ogham script was mostly used in early Christian times in Ireland and Scotland (but also in Wales and England), and was only used for ceremonial purposes such as inscriptions on gravestones. The available evidence is of a strong oral tradition, such as that preserved by bards in Ireland, and eventually recorded by monasteries. The oldest recorded rhyming poetry in the world is of Irish origin and is a transcription of a much older epic poem, leading some scholars to claim that the Celts invented Rhyme. They were highly skilled in visual arts and Celtic art produced a great deal of intricate and beautiful metalwork, examples of which have been preserved by their distinctive burial rites.In some regards the Atlantic Celts were conservative, for example they still used chariots in combat long after they had been reduced to ceremonial roles by the Greeks and Romans, though when faced with the Romans in Britain, their chariot tactics defeated the invasion attempted by Julius Caesar.Homosexuality Athenaeus, the Greek rhetorician and grammarian, repeating assertions made by Diodorus, wrote:The Celts, though they have very beautiful women, enjoy young boys more: so that some of them often have two lovers to sleep with on their beds of animal skins."  According to Aristotle, the Celts openly approved of male lovers (Politicss II 1269b). There are in fact very few reliable sources regarding Celtic views towards gender divisions, though some archaeological evidence does suggest that their views towards gender roles may have been different to those of their contemporary classical counterparts.  Sexual normsThere are instances recorded where women participated both in warfare and in kingship, although they were in the minority in these areas. Plutarch reports Celtic women acting as ambassadors to avoid a war amongst Celts chiefdoms on the Po valley during the fourth century BC. The sexual freedom of Celtic women was noted by Cassius Dio: " ...a very witty remark is reported to have been made by the wife of Argentocoxus, a Caledonian, to Julia Augusta. When the empress was jesting with her, after the treaty, about the free intercourse of her sex with men in Britain, she replied: "We fulfill the demands of nature in a much better way than do you Roman women; for we consort openly with the best men, whereas you let yourselves be debauched in secret by the vilest." Such was the retort of the British woman. " —Cassius Dio Celtic women as warriorsThere are some general indications coming from Iron Age burial sites in the Champagne and Bourgogne regions of Northeastern France suggesting that women may have had roles in combat during the earlier portions of the La Tène period. [43] The evidence is, however, far from conclusive. Examples of individuals buried with both torcs (generally associated as being female grave goods), and weaponry have been identified, and there are some questions regarding the sexing of some skeletons that were buried with warrior assemblages. [44] While such archaeological remains do suggest the possibility that women had a role in warfare, they are not conclusive as to that fact. Women could have been buried with these objects to show a social role, or in some cases the bi-engendered gravegood burials could represent men buried with female associated objects. Regardless, such archaeological evidence does suggest that women could have served as warriors within the Celtic populations, but certainly indicate that gender roles were not as readily divided into the classic male/female divide as is normally interpreted.Among the insular Celts, there is a greater amount of historic documentation to suggest warrior roles for women however. In addition to commentary by Tacitus about Boudica, there are indications from later period histories that also suggest a more substantial role for "women as warriors" in symbolic if not actual roles.Despite the fact that Celtic Princesses were cross-dressing symbols of sex and politics, rather than historical representations of real fighting women, Posidonius and Strabo described an island of women, where men could not venture for fear of death, and women ripped each other apart.[45] Other writers such as Ammianus Marcellinus, Tacitus mentioned Celtic women inciting, participating, and leading battles.   Poseidonius anthropological comments on the Celts had common themes, primarily primitivism, extreme ferocity, cruel sacrificial practices, and the strength and courage of their women. Contemporary historians ascribe this to the Romans and Greeks want for a upside-down world for the barbarians, who both frightened and fascinated them. It is interesting to note that the Celtic God of Martial Arts was, in all fact, a woman.Tribal warfare appears to have been a regular feature of Celtic societies. While epic literature depicts this as more of a sport focused on raids and hunting rather than organised territorial conquest, the historical record is more of tribes using warfare to exert political control and harass rivals, for economic advantage, and in some instances to conquer territory.The Celts were described by classical writers such as Strabo, Livy, Pausanias, and Florus as fighting like "wild beasts", and as hordes. Dionysius said that their "manner of fighting, being in large measure that of wild beasts and frenzied, was an erratic procedure, quite lacking in military science. Thus, at one moment they would raise their swords aloft and smite after the manner of wild boars, throwing the whole weight of their bodies into the blow like hewers of wood or men digging with mattocks, and again they would deliver crosswise blows aimed at no target, as if they intended to cut to pieces the entire bodies of their adversaries, protective armour and all". Such descriptions have been challenged by contemporary historians.The Celts as head-huntersAmongst the Celts the human head was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, centre of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world." —Paul Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art.The Celtic cult of the severed head is documented not only in the many sculptured representations of severed heads in La Tène carvings, but in the surviving Celtic mythology, which is full of stories of the severed heads of heroes and the saints who carry their decapitated heads, right down to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where the Green Knight picks up his own severed head after Gawain has struck it off, just as St. Denis carried his head to the top of Montmartre. Separated from the mundane body, although still alive, the animated head acquires the ability to see into the mythic realm.A further example of this regeneration after beheading lies in the tales of Connemara's St. Feichin, who after being beheaded by Viking pirates carried his head to the Holy Well on Omey Island and on dipping the head into the well placed it back upon his neck and was restored to full health.Diodorus Siculus, in his 1st century History had this to say about Celtic head-hunting:"They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and carry off as booty, while striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold." The Celts believed that if they attached the head of their enemy to a pole or a fence near their house, the head would start crying when the enemy was near. If the head was taken from an enemy who was important enough, they would put it in a church and pray to it believing it had magic powers.The Celtic headhunters venerated the image of the severed head as a continuing source of spiritual power. If the head is the seat of the soul, possessing the severed head of an enemy, honorably reaped in battle, added prestige to any warrior's reputation. According to tradition the buried head of a god or hero named Bran the Blessed protected Britain from invasion across the English Channel.
        Religion. PolytheismMany Celtic gods are known from texts and inscriptions from the Roman period, such as Aquae Sulis, while others have been inferred from place names such as Lugdunum "stronghold of Lug". Rites and sacrifices were carried out by priests, some known as Druids. The Celts did not see their gods as having a human shape until late in the Iron Age. Celtic Shrines were situated in remote areas such as hilltops, groves and lakes. Celtic religious patterns were regionally variable, however some patterns of deity forms, and ways of worshiping these deities, appear over a wide geographical and temporal range. The Celts worshipped both gods and goddesses. In general, the gods were deities of particular skills, such as the many-skilled Lugh and Dagda, and the goddesses associated with natural features, most particularly rivers, such as Boann, goddess of the River Boyne. This was not universal, however, as Goddesses such as Brighid and The Morrígan were associated with both natural features (holy wells and the River Unius) and skills such as blacksmithing, healing and warfare.Triplicities are a common theme in Celtic cosmology and a number of deities were seen as threefold.  The Celts had literally hundreds of deities, some unknown outside of a single family or tribe, while others were popular enough to have a following that crossed boundaries of language and culture. For instance, the Irish god Lugh, associated with storms, lightning, and culture, is seen in a similar form as Lugos in Gaul and Lleu in Wales. Similar patterns are also seen with the Continental Celtic horse goddess Epona, and what may well be her Irish and Welsh counterparts, Macha and Rhiannon, respectively.Roman reports of the druids mention ceremonies being held in sacred groves. La Tène Celts built temples of varying size and shape, though they also maintained shrines at sacred trees, and votive pools.Druids fulfilled a variety of roles in Celtic religion, as priests and religious officiants, but also as judges, sacrificers, teachers and lore-keepers. In general, they were the "college professors" of their time. Druids organized and ran the religious ceremonies, as well as memorizing and teaching the calendar. Though generally quite accurate, the Celtic calendar required manual correction about every 40 years, therefore knowledge of mathematics was required. Other classes of druids performed ceremonial sacrifices of crops and animals for the perceived benefit of the community.Celtic Christianity While the regions under Roman rule adopted Christianity along with the rest of the Roman empire, unconquered areas of Scotland and Ireland moved from Celtic polytheism to Celtic Christianity in the fifth century AD under missionaries from Britain such as Patrick. Later missionaries from Ireland were a major source of missionary work in Scotland, Saxon parts of Britain and central Europe (see Hiberno-Scottish mission). This brought the early medieval renaissance of Celtic art between 390 and 1200 A.D., developing many of the styles now thought of as typically Celtic, and found through much of Ireland and Britain, including the north-east and far north of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland. This was brought to an end by Roman Catholic and Norman influence, though the Celtic languages, as well as some and some influences from Celtic art, continued.
        Halloween era un festival que celebraban los Celtas, (una  sociedad controlada por sacerdotes druidas que vivía en las regiones de Irlanda, Inglaterra y parte de Francia, 300 A.C.),  señalando el principio del invierno (Cavendish). Estas    sociedades druidas adoraban y servían a Samhain, dios de la   muerte. Cada año, el 31 de octubre, los druidas celebraban la   víspera del año nuevo céltico en honor de su dios Samhain,    brindándole sacrificios animales y humanos.   El origen de esta celebración está cargado de supersticiones,   leyendas, paganismo, ocultismo,, brujería y todo tipo de   actividades del mundo de las tinieblas. ¿Qué hacían esa noche?  Los druidas se vestían esa noche con cueros y cabezas de  animales. Disfrazados de fantasmas, espíritus y brujas; iban  por todo el vecindario recogiendo ofrendas para el dios de la   muerte y las tinieblas Samhain, para brindarle su honor y   sacrificios, Si los sacerdotes no quedaban conformes o a gusto   con los obsequios, ellos le hacían el TRICK o truco a la familia de la casa, quemándole su terreno, llevándose a la  doncella, matando su ganado o poniéndole enfermedades en la familia. Este es el origen de la frase "Trick or Treat".Al haber recogido y reunido todas las ofrendas, los sacerdotes  druidas hacían grandes fogatas "BONFIRE" (de ahi se deriva la  palabra fogata en inglés: bonfire: hueso(bone) y fuego(fire))  ofreciendo en ellas sacrificios humanos o animales para adorar  a su dios. Ese día los druidas llevaban consigo un nabo hueco por dentro y con una cara grabada en la parte frontal, que representaba a  un espíritu diabólico. El nabo estaba iluminado por una vela  dentro de él, que era usado como linterna por los Druidas  cuando iban de casa en casa por la noche. Cuando esta práctica  llegó a América, los nabos no eran tan abundantes, pero si  tuvieron un vegetal nativo que pronto lo sustituyó.  "La calabaza".


150    BC PALESTINE. Later, following the Jewish rebellions in the 1st and2nd centuries C.E., Rome united the entire Levant in a new province bearing its Greco-Latin name, Syria-Palaestina.  During the Byzantine Period, this entire region (including Syria, Palestine, Samaria, and Galilee) was renamed Palaestina and then subdivided into Diocese I and II. The Byzantines also renamed an area of land including the Negev, Sinai, and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula as Palaestina Salutoris, sometimes called Palaestina III. Since the Byzantine Period, the Byzantine borders of Palaestina (I and II) have served as a name for the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.Holy textsThe Holy Land, or Palestine, showing not only the Ancient Kingdoms of Judah and Israel in which the 12 Tribes have been distinguished, but also the their placement in different periods having been done as indicated in the Holy Scriptures.

150    IRAN. These were the third native dynasty of ancient Iran (Persia) and lasted five centuries. After the conquests of Media, Assyria, Babylonia and Elam, the Parthians had to organize their empire. The former elites of these countries were Greek, and the new rulers had to adapt to their customs if they wanted their rule to last. As a result, the cities retained their ancient rights and civil administrations remained more or less undisturbed. An interesting detail is coinage: legends were written in the Greek alphabet, a practice that continued until the 2nd century AD, when local knowledge of the language was in decline and few people knew how to read or write the Greek alphabet. The empire of Parthia, the arch-rival of Rome, at its greatest extent (c. 60 BC), superimposed over modern borders.Parthia was the arch-enemy of the Roman Empire in the east, limiting Rome's expansion beyond Cappadocia (central Anatolia). By using a heavily-armed and armored cataphract cavalry, and lightly armed but highly-mobile mounted archers, the Parthians "held their own against Rome for almost 300 years".[31] Rome's acclaimed general Mark Antony led a disastrous campaign against the Parthians in 36 BCE in which he lost 32,000 men. By the time of Roman emperor Augustus, Rome and Parthia were settling some of their differences through diplomacy. By this time, Parthia had acquired an assortment of golden eagles, the cherished standards of Rome's legions, captured from Mark Antony, and Crassus, who suffered "a disastrous defeat" at Carrhae
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149    Fourth Macedonian war.  Until 148. Macedonia becomes a Roman province.
        Third Punic war.  To 146. Romans destroy Carthage.

149    -146    Third Punic War. Carthage destroyed
        ROME. Carthage because of its privileged position, once again becomes a center for trade and commerce. Rome again declares war. The siege lasts about three years. It was finally taken by storm in a maneuver directed by Scipio's adopted grandson, Cispio Aemilianus. On his instructions from Rome the city was totally destroyed: it was set fire to and burned for 16 days. Then all the land where ruins were still smouldering was ploughed over and an eternal curse was laid on it. The spoils from the Punic wars made Rome a wealthy world power. A procession of Aemilius Paulus's soldiers loaded with talens, art, weapons, gold and silver, took 3 days to march into Rome. Another victory yielded 1,280 elephants's tusks, 234 gold garlands, 187 thousand pounds of silver, 224 thousand Greek silver coins, 140 thousand gold Macedonian coins, and large amounts of jewelry.  All this led to a rapid expansion of Rome's trading and financial dealings. Whole groups of tax collectors and money lenders sprang up. There was a tremendous expansion in the slave population. The first Punic war alone brought Rome 25,000 slaves. Another conquest yielded 20,000 slaves, another 30,000. After Epirus 150,000 were sold as slaves. At the destruction of Carthage, the entire population was enslaved.  In the Delos market 10,000 slaves were sold in one day. After the conquest of Sardinia, the phrase "as cheap as a Sardinian" was popular. Educated slaves, teachers, actors cooks and dancers pulled down prices in the thousands. Cato the Elder writes on the care of slaves, recommending the work in the rain and on holidays. Wars, including conscription of the peasants, undermined the peasant economy. Impoverished peasants leave to seek work in town while the work of the slaves gradually constitutes the backbone of Roman agriculture. Small and middle peasants, unable to afford slaves faced starvation and ruin. All of these factors point to the polarization of Roman society into two opposed classes, those of slaves and slaveholders.

148    BC ANTIOCH. The first great earthquake in recorded history was related by the native chronicler John Malalas. It occurred in 148 BC and did immense damage.Local politics were turbulent. In the many dissensions of the Seleucid house the population took sides, and frequently rose in rebellion, for example against Alexander Balas in 147 BC, and Demetrius II in 129 BC. The latter,enlisting a body of Jews, punished his capital with fire and sword. In the last struggles of the Seleucid house, Antioch turned against its feeble rulers, invited Tigranes of Armenia to occupy the city in 83 BC, tried to unseat Antiochus XIII in 65 BC, and petitioned Rome against his restoration in the following year. Its wish prevailed, and it passed with Syria to the Roman Republic in 64 BC, but remained a civitas libera. Roman periodThe Roman emperors favoured the city from the first, seeing it as a more suitable capital for the eastern part of the empire than Alexandria could be, because of the isolated position of Egypt. To a certain extent they tried to make it an eastern Rome.

146    Sack of Corinth. Greece becomes vassal of Rome.
        Cabbages, and parsnips  are  familiar foods.

145    BC GAZA, In 145 BC Gaza was conquered by Jonathan the Hasmonean (Brother of Judah the Maccabee). The new leaders under the rule of Alexander Jannaeus brought destruction and massacres around 96 BC. The start of the Gaza era as dated by the Pompey's calendar.
        Ptolemy VII Neos Philopator, ruler of Egypt under the regency of his mother Celopatra II. Ptolemy VIII Euergetes seizes the throne to 116, marrying first Cleopatra II then her daughter Cleopatra III.

143    Simon Maccabeus, elder brother of Judas and Jonathan leader of Jews to 134.

142    The Jews liberate Jerusalem and make it their capital. MACCABEES.  Jonathan was assassinated by Diodotus Tryphon, a pretender to the Seleucid throne, and was succeeded by Simon Maccabee, the last remaining son of Mattathias. Simon gave support to Demetrius II Nicator, the Seleucid king, and in return Demetrius exempted theMaccabees from tribute. Simon conquered the port of Joppa and the fortress of Gezer and expelled the garrison from the Acra in Jerusalem. In 140 BCE, he was recognised by an assembly of the priests, leaders and elders as high priest, military commander and ruler of Israel. Their decree became the basis of the Hasmonean kingdom. Shortly after, the Roman senate renewed its alliance with the Hasmonean kingdom and commanded its allies in the eastern Mediterranean to do so also. Although the Maccabees won autonomy, the region remained a province of the Seleucid empire and Simon was required to provide troops to Antiochus VII Sidetes, the brother of Demetrius II. When Simon refused to give up the territory he had conquered, Antiochus took them by force.

141    Jerusalem liberated by the Jews. Judaea is proclaimed an independent kingdom.  -63 BCPALESTINE.    : Jews revolted under the Maccabees and set up an independent  state.


140    -87    China flourishing under Han Dynasty. Wu Ti Martial emperor to 86.
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136    -132    First servile war. Revolt of slaves in Sicily under Eunus.
        ROME. In Sicily, large landowning magnates had estates worked by thousands of slaves. Damophilus' cruelty inspired the first slave revolt. He was murdered and his villa was burned down. This gave rise to a mass revolt. Slaves under Eunus took Enna and Cleon took Agrigentum.The two camps joined forces. By this time almost all of Sicily was in the hands of slaves. They conferred the Syrian name for king (Antiochus)  on Eunus..The Romans struggled against the revolt for four bitter years when it was suppressed with extreme cruelty. After thirty years a new revolt broke out.

134    John Jyrcanus, son of Simon Maccabeus, ruler of Judea to 104. MACCABEES. Simon was murdered by his son-in-law Ptolemy, and was succeeded as high priest and king by his son John Hyrcanus I. Antiochus conquered the entire district of Judea, but refrained from attacking the Temple or interfering with Jewish observances. Judea was freed from Seleucid  rule on the death of Antiochus in 129 BCE.

133    ROME. Agrarian revolt of Roman plebeians. Reforms of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus
        At the same time a democratic movement grows in Rome known as the Gracchi. Tiberius Gracchus was born into the plebeian section of the nobility, related to Sempronius and Cipios. He developed a plan for an agrarian law to limit the size of landed estates and confiscate surplus land to be distributed among the poorest citizens. A commission of three persons was to be elected and have an absolutely free hand. His proposals were violently opposed by the majority of senators, all who were wealthy landowners. A bitter struggle ensued. On the day of voting Tiberius put the question as to whether a tribune acting against the interests of the people should remain in office. The unanimous answer was negative. Octavius was stripped from office and Tiberius, his father in law and his brother were elected to form the commission.  The wave of hatred of the nobility and senators for the Gracchi grew. A year later a skirmish broke out in the popular assembly. Tiberius and 300 of his supporters were killed and their bodies were thrown in the Tiber. Opponents of reform triumphed briefly. En medio de la arrolladora política de expansión en el Merráneo, la República de Roma del segundo siglo antes de Cristo debe afrontar un gran problema interno: la miseria de muchísimos ciudadanos romanos reducidos a subproletariado urbano por la enorme extensión del latifundio y de la crisis agraria. Según los historiadores, la ya fuerte concentración de la  posesión de las tierras cultivables, había sido en aquellos años  ulteriormente acentuada por el empleo como mano de obra, en las haciendas de los nobles romanos, de los esclavos provenientes de las tierras  conquistadas por el ejército republicano. Esto -como diríamos hoy- había creado una formidable (e inicua) ventaja competitiva para las haciendas administradas por los ricos propietarios terratenientes romanos. La  reducción de los precios de los productos agrícolas (a los cuales contribuían también la creciente  importación de las provincias) había puesto "fuera del mercado" la pequeña propiedad de   la  tierra, induciendo a  la cesión de las tierras, al aumento de la extensión latifundista y, en  fin, a la expulsión de grandes cantidades de campesinos de los campos y su transformación en miserable plebe metropolitana.  La expansión del subproletariado urbano de Roma genera fenómenos que,   también para nosotros los modernos observadores, no es difícil imaginar.  Se forma una masa de desesperados manipulados por la política y por los   potentes de turno, ante todo por la clase senatorial y las familias   nobles; explotan guerras y conflictos entre miserables, unos, de nueva   generación, provenientes de los campos, los otros, que ya constituían la  plebe urbana de Roma. Se difunde la criminalidad, la ilegalidad y la  prostitución. Algunos de los barrios de la Urbe, como la famosa Suburra   (hoy la bellísima urbanización Monti, alrededor de la colina del  Esquilino), se transforman en espantosos guetos urbanos, rendido peligroso  no sólo por la criminalidad sino por el peligro de incendios y derrumbes   de la insulae, edificios altos hasta de cinco pisos, donde las familias  plebeyas se agolpan en apartamentos miserables. La Roma republicana es de ese modo un lugar de grandes contradicciones    sociales, económicas y humanas. Pero es también un lugar de conflictos de  clases que podríamos evaluar y comprender solamente renunciando a nuestras  actuales categorías de progresistas y conservadores, derecha e izquierda.  Tiberio y Cayo Gracco descienden de una de las familias más en vista,  cultas y potentes de Roma. Son hijos de Cónsul Gracco, héroe de la Guerra  de España, y de Cornelia, matrona de la nobleza romana y madre de doce   hijos (así como cruz y delicia de los pequeños estudiantes de latín, por    aquel legendario haec ornamenta mea, referido a Tiberio y Cayo, de cuya   carrera política se ocupó denodadamente). Cornelia es hija de Escipión el africano, triunfador en la guerra de África (y de la espantosa matanza de  los cartagineses). De su padre, Cornelia tiene la fuerza de ánimo, la   inteligencia y los gustos culturales. En Roma anima el Círculo de los   Escipiones, un grupo de nobles romanos que promueven la filosofía y la  cultura griega, logrando penetrar los círculos intelectuales de la sociedad romana, que –en el segundo siglo AC– estaba tratando de hacer   crecer el intelecto además de la fuerza. La cultura helenista promueve principios de abertura, renovación, igualdad, democracia. La educación de Tiberio y Cayo se forma sobre estos principios. Sus acciones serán consecuentes con sus ideas, en pleno contraste con la nobleza,  mezquinamente cerrada en el propio egoísmo, hasta meterlos en conflicto  con la misma familia de los Escipiones, reluctantes a conducir hasta el   fondo una lucha por esos deseos helenizadores, hacia los cuales nutrían  tanta simpatía. Tiberio, el primero de los dos hermanos, baja en la liza política con una  visión fuertemente renovadora. Este no es solamente un intelectual. Muy  joven, ha combatido valientemente en África y España, demostrando coraje y  humanidad. Ha conquistado el aprecio del ejército y del pueblo romano, que  lo reconoce como un líder político. Está consciente de la situación de  pobreza de amplios estratos de la población romana y ha conocido el abandono de los campos y la miseria de los campesinos. Tiberio reputa que  repoblar los campos por una clase libre y trabajadora de campesinos es  vital para Roma. [...] Para alcanzar este objetivo él considera que una intervención fundamental es mejorar y hacer más equitativa la utilización de las tierras demaniales, que tienen ya una extensión inmensa. Estas  tierras eran confiscadas a los pueblos vencidos en batalla y eran en parte  vendidas, en parte asignadas a los ciudadanos pobres tras el pago de una  pequeña contribución. Las familias nobles romanas habían logrado sin  embargo adquirir grandes extensiones de tierra. De ese modo el estado romano había tratado de regular el uso de las  tierras del demanio. Para evitar la excesiva concentración de la tierra en  pocas manos, la ley había previsto que nadie pudiera poseer más de 500  yugadas de tierras demaniales (una yugada estaba formada por 2.518 metros cuadrados). Sin embargo, la ley no había logrado impedir la prepotencia de  la nobleza romana. Progresivamente, las familias patricias romanas habían  logrado igualmente, evadiendo las prohibiciones, mantener la posesión de  vastas extensiones de tierras demaniales, adquiriéndolas a poco precio de los pequeños propietarios, obligados a cederlas por la imposibilidad de  explotarlas adecuadamente, y por consiguiente, por las deudas y la miseria  que se acumulaban.  Cuando es elegido tribuno de la plebe, en el 133 a.c., Tiberio tiene menos  de treinta años. Pone en marcha con decisión su estrategia de reforma agraria y refuerza la ley agraria precedente. De ese modo, nadie puede poseer más de 500 yugadas de terreno público para sí mismo y 250 por cada uno de los hijos varones. Los propietarios de extensiones de tierra  superiores a estos límites habrían tenido que restituir al Estado las   tierras excedentes, que habrían sido restituidas entre la plebe en lotes de 30 yugadas. Las tierras distribuidas no podían ser vendidas de nuevo  sino transmitidas de padre a hijo, para evitar la reformación del   latifundio. Sustancialmente Tiberio no ha hecho otra cosa que confirmar la  vieja ley. Los efectos, sin embargo, son radicales, porque la ley  determina la expropiación de los latifundios y la asignación de los  latifundios a las familias campesinas. En el año 133 antes de Cristo, Tiberio Gracco presenta así al Senado su   proyecto de reforma agraria:  "También las fieras de la jungla tienen sus cuevas y grutas en las cuales   guarecerse: en cambio los hombres que han combatido y han muerto por   Italia no poseen otra cosa que aire y luz. Ellos, privados de un techo,   vagabundean con las esposas y los hijos. Los comandantes engañan a los soldados cuando, en los campos de batalla, los exhortan a combatir para defender de los enemigos sus tumbas y sus hogares; ellos mienten, porque   la mayoría de los soldados no tiene ni un hogar paterno ni la tumba de los  antepasados. Ellos tienen solamente el nombre de Romanos, señores del mundo, pero tienen siempre que morir por el lujo de los otros, sin poder  llamar propia ni siquiera una pequeña porción de tierra". De Plutarco,  Vite parallele La oposición de la nobleza romana a la ley agraria de Tiberio es muy   firme. Marco Octavio, el otro tribuno de la plebe, es persuadido a  oponerse a la propuesta de ley, bloqueando la aprobación. Tiberio  reacciona a esta situación con una decisión sin precedentes contra las   reglas constitucionales y el derecho romano. Llama a los ciudadanos a   votar por la destitución de Marco Octavio de su cargo de tribuno y  justifica este acto extraordinario, que no está  previsto en el  ordenamiento jurídico, sosteniendo que es Marco Octavio el que ha violado   las leyes, actuando contra el pueblo y traicionando de este modo su  mandato como tribuno de la plebe. El voto popular decide de manera  aplastante la destitución de Marco Octavio. La nueva ley agraria entra en  vigor y Tiberio, en un triunvirato formado junto al hermano Cayo y al suegro Apio Claudio, es electo por el pueblo como ejecutor de la ley  (Triumviri agris iudicandis adsignandis).  La aplicación de la ley encuentra serias dificultades, por la muy fuerte   tensión política y el obstruccionismo del Senado   "Los ricos propietarios se vistieron de luto y merodeaban por el foro con  comportamiento lastimero para suscitar compasión; pero mientras tanto   tramaban el asesinato de Tiberio y y reclutaban gente decidida a matarlo,  así que Tiberio se ató un puñal bajo el vestido de esos que llamaban dolon ". De Plutarco, Vite parallele. La ley corre el riesgo de fallar también por razones económicas. La  creación de nuevas haciendas agrícolas en los terrenos liberados del latifundio tendría, de hecho, necesidad de grandes inversiones, que se  hacen imposibles dada la escasez de capitales y de la pobreza de las   familias adjudicatarias. Tiberio trata de resolver esta situación, que podría conducir al malogro de su ley agraria, sacando ventaja de una   imprevista oportunidad. El rey de Pérgamo (ciudad del Asia menor conocida  hoy como Bergama), Attalo III, antes de morir había dejado en herencia al   Estado Romano su patrimonio. Tiberio propone que, sobre la base del voto   popular, el "tesoro" de Atallo III sea asignado a los pequeños  propietarios para consentirles comprar el ganado y las máquinas agrícolas  necesarias para la valorización de sus tierras. Esta decisión de Tiberio  constituye sin embargo una violación a las reglas republicanas porque al Senado estaba reservado el derecho, establecido por la constitución, de tomar todas las decisiones que atañían a la provincia de Roma. La oposición del Senado a Tiberio, ya aumentada por esta decisión, explota   cuando éste se lanza como candidato también para el año sucesivo, forzando  la praxis constitucional, con la evidente intención de ocuparse   personalmente de la completa actuación de su ley La oligarquía romana considera que no tiene más posibilidades de mediación  política para defender sus propios intereses. El choque se hace directo y  mortal. La situación se precipita rápidamente. Se difunde sabiamente la  voz de un golpe de estado organizado por Tiberio, que quería par sí mismo   la corona de rey y la disolución de la república. Se desencadena un   tumulto conducido por Escipión Nasica, primo de Tiberio, que además de ser   uno de los mayores latifundistas de Roma, cubre el cargo de Pontifex   maximus, máxima autoridad religiosa de la antigua Roma. Los enemigos de Tiberio prevalecen en una feroz agresión con piedras y bastones; Tiberio  es asesinado cruelmente, quizás por el mismo Escipión Nasica, y su cuerpo  arrojado al Tíber. Trescientos ciudadanos romanos encuentran la muerte en   el choque entre las dos facciones. Muchos sostenedores de Tiberio fueron   ajusticiados sucesivamente tras algunos procesos sumarios.  El asesinato de Tiberio Gracco es un cambio de dirección dramático en la   historia romana. Por primera vez dos facciones del pueblo romano se   enfrentan sanguinariamente, en campo abierto, sin que la política logre  encontrar un punto de equilibrio. Es el inicio de un recorrido que llevará  a la guerra civil y a la disolución de la república Reformas revolucionarias de Cayo Gracco  El asesinato de Tiberio y la sucesiva represión no sofocan las  aspiraciones de rescate de la plebe romana. Escipión Nasica tiene que  dejar Roma nombrado como embajador en Pérgamo, donde muere un año después.  El Senado, temiendo la reacción popular, no bloquea la actuación de la ley  agraria y no se opone a la distribución de las tierras.

132    -35 BC     PALESTINE.    : Jews revolts erupted, numerous Jews were killed, many were sold into slavery, and the rest were not allowed to visit Jerusalem. Judea was renamed Syria Palaistina.
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    123    ROME. Gaius Gracchus was elected tribune. He openly opposed the senate and sought support from the poorest sections of the city. He put through the grain law that stipulated that grain from state granaries should be subsidized. Also in the interest of the poor he introduced a law for the foundations of a number of colonies, among them Carthage, upon which a curse had been laid. He proposed that rights and privileges of Roman citizens be granted to all immigrant Italic peoples.

    121    ROME. Almost the whole population of Rome was divided into two hostile camps. Gracchus supporters seized the Aventine Hill and prepared for a siege. The senate declared a state of war and the Gracchus resistance was suppressed. Gracchus ordered one of his slaves to kill him. The victors slew 3,000 of Gracchus supporters. The movement was suppressed but it was to make itself felt in the subsequent history of Rome. It sowed the seeds for a revolutionary movement that started in Rome then spread throughout Italy among the peasants and the city poor. This movement was a fight for land, political rights and a more democratic state. The basic contradictions in Roman society now were between slave owners and slaves, but there was another class- free producers, that is, middle and poor peasants and artisans. The highest estate was that of the nobility ,the Senators, the noble and rich families. Their main source of wealth was their landed estates. The second estate was of the equites. These were rich citizens not of the nobility, traders and money lenders.   The rest of the population were plebs; peasants, artisans, small traders, master craftsmen and shopkeepers. Lastly were the slaves. The Senators were the most reactionary politically. The plebs were the most democratic. The equites occupied a position between the two. Politically, the slaves, who created the wealth, were totally disenfranchised. After the revolt of the Gracchi, democratic forces became stronger. In the war with the Numidian King, Jugurtha, some Senators and Generals had been bribed by him to lose the war. Not until Gaius Marius took over command did the Roman legions succeed in subduing Jugurtha. The scandal disgraced the Senators and generals.  Marius allowed proletarii into the army, and this resulted in radical changes in its social structure. The influence of the poorer social strata began to make itself felt more. Followers of the Gracchi introduced a law for the distribution of land to Marius's soldiers and a new reduction on the price o f bread.   
     
         Cayo Gracco es nueve años más joven que el hermano. En un primer momento se mantiene lejos de la actividad política, pero crece demostrando grande ingenio, mucho coraje y sobre todo una gran elocuencia, superior a la de   Tiberio, que conquista la plebe romana. También demuestra grandes  capacidades militares, combatiendo en Cerdeña. Se defiende de falsas  acusaciones por parte de los nobles romanos que buscan desacrarlo, y en el 123 a.c. opta por el cargo de tribuno del pueblo, siendo electo con  gran aceptación. Cayo inmediatamente hace declarar ilegales las  disposiciones adoptadas para afectar los seguidores del hermano; hace  aprobar una ley de provisión de fomento, según la cual cada ciudadano  podía retirar mensualmente una cierta cantidad de fomento, a precio favorable, de los graneros del Estado. Esta ley, de carácter evidentemente  popular, le permite la reelección como tribuno para el año siguiente  también, durante el cual puede llevar a cabo otras reformas  revolucionarias con tres objetivos principales: ampliar el ascenso  alrededor de su figura, contrarrestar el poder del Senado y mejorar las condiciones del pueblo. Cayo extiende a los pueblos itálicos, del que  estaban excluidos, los beneficios de la ley agraria de Tiberio; refuerza  la clase de los caballeros (compuesta por comerciantes, empresarios,  licitadores, banqueros, etc., que sacaban los propios recursos del mundo  de los negocios, poseían capitales líquidos, se comprometían a investir)  confiándoles funciones judiciales y de recaudación de impuestos; revoca  gran parte de las prerrogativas judiciales de los senadores. Cayo promete  la realización de importantes óperas públicas. "Se comprometió, sobre todo, a la construcción de vías, tomando en cuenta  no solamente la utilidad práctica sino también la conveniencia y la   belleza. Esas eran trazadas derechas, a través de los campos, sin curvas;  eran empedradas con piedras lisas y hechas compactas con un fondo de arena   comprimida". De Plutarco, Vite parallele. Para ensanchar las bases del consentimiento a la propia política y acelerar su ejecución, propone extender a todos los Latinos la ciudadanía  romana y pide que a todos los Itálicos les fuera concedido el derecho  latino con el que se reconocían algunos privilegios como la facultad de  casarse en Roma (ius conubili) o la posibilidad de obtener de nuevo la  ciudadanía romana con solo transferirse a Roma (ius migrandi).  Pero la concesión de la ciudadanía romana a amplios estratos de habitantes  de la Península no hace sino caer en contraste con el miserable egoísmo de  todos los ciudadanos romanos, pobres o ricos, celosos custodias de   antiguos privilegios. El Senado, por eso, juega una buena partida al despertar el orgullo instintivo de los romanos para poner en tela de   juicio al valiente tribuno y hacer bloquear su propuesta con el veto del   tribuno Livio Druso.  Además el Senado, aprovechando de la ausencia temporánea de Cayo Gracco,   que había ido a África para presidir la fundación de una colonia en el   territorio de Cartago (Colonia Iunonia) para dar al proletariado romano   nuevas posibilidades de trabajo y mejorar las condiciones de vida de los   jornaleros agrícolas, hace tomar por Livio Druso una serie de   disposiciones con un claro matiz demagógico, que resquebrajan   profundamente el prestigio de Cayo Gracco, no pudiendo lograr el ser   reelecto como tribuno por tercera vez.Así las cosas, la oligarquía del Senado explotando hasta el fondo el  propio éxito, hace abrogar algunas de las disposiciones graquianas. Se  suceden entonces, como consecuencia, graves tumultos provocados por los seguidores de los hermanos Gracco y el Senado. Una vez más con tal  pretexto declara que la República está en peligro y se procede a la  represión armada durante la cual los graquianos son terriblemente   asesinados y Cayo Gracco se hace matar por un siervo para no caer vivo en las manos del enemigo. Más de tres mil seguidores son asesinados y sus  patrimonios confiscados.De este modo fallan los generosos intentos de los hermanos Gracco que habían querido poner remedio a las injusticias sociales, a la miseria, a  la desocupación. Pero el malogro de la iniciativa de los Gracco, mientras agudiza por un lado los contrastes entre los ricos y los pobres, por el  otro aumenta el malestar de un Estado que no sabía resolver con equidad  sus problemas. De este fondo mórbido de rencores, de incertidumbres y de   odio derivan las luchas civiles y la guerra social que ensangrientan el suelo de la patria. La oligarquía del Senado aún cuando se asegura por algunos decenios el  predominio público, no puede eliminar las demandas que los Gracco habían   buscado interpretar con disposiciones más que nunca oportunas y   tempestivas. La oligarquía había logrado bloquear la evolución democrática de la república, pero los desequilibrios sociales no podían ser sofocados  con la prepotencia por mucho tiempo. Por otra parte la lograda potencia  política de los caballeros y la conciencia que el proletariado tenía de la   propia fuerza en las elecciones de los tribunos eran los elementos nuevos   que se introducían en la lucha por el poder.También la aspiración de los Itálicos a la ciudadanía romana era un motivo para nada secundario de  disturbio dentro del Estado. Fue seguramente miopía política el haber  querido contrastar las reformas graquianas, que hubieran prevenido   aquellos trastornos que poco después habría tenido que afrontar la   república. Así, el haber impedido la reconstitución una por una de las propiedades agrícolas había quitado al estado la posibilidad de poder   reclutar sus soldados entre aquellos cultivadores directos que un tiempo    habían dado las mayores y mejores fuerzas al ejército. Hubo que recurrir   por eso al reclutamiento de proletarios, escasamente amantes de la   disciplina y del honor republicano, por lo que fue fácil para hábiles y   astutos jefes comprar a precio de oro y con grandes promesas sus servicios   que iban solo a aventajar a tales caudillos y a los intereses que  representaban. De este modo el concepto de Estado decae y las guerras   civiles ensangrientan la República.
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118     BCLeather money issued in ChinaThis consists of pieces of white deerskin, about one foot square, with a value of 40,000 cash. (The cash was the name of a base metal coin).

116    Ptolemaic empire split up under the will of Ptolemy VIII followed by years of strife.

111    War begins between Rome an Jugurtha, King of Numidia in northern Africa.



108    Emperor Wu Ti of China conquers Choson.
        Celtic Cimri ravages Gaul.

106    Gaius Marius elected consul sent to Africa.

105    Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla defeat Jugurtha of Numidia, who is take to Rome and killed.

104    -99    Second servile war. Aristobulus I king of Judeah to 103.

103     Alexander Jannaeus King of Judeah to 76. Second Servile war in Rome to 99.

100    Asparagus is a popular food among Greeks and Romans.

100    ETHIOPI A first century BC, the Aksumite Kingdom, ancestor of medieval and modern Ethiopia, which was able to reunite the area.   They established bases on the northern highlands of the Ethiopian Plateau and from there expanded southward. The Persian religious figure Mani listed Aksum with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the
        four great powers of his time.

100    ESPANA. VASCOS. 100     BC.  VASCOS El origen de los vascos
        ha llevado a muchas teorías, desde su llegada al país vasco con el Hombre de Cro-Magnon hasta el origen legendario de Tubal o el parentesco con pueblos como los pictos, etruscos, bereberes,etc. Estas teorías se pueden ver en Historia de los vascos. Dominio romano  Todo el noroeste de España, incluidas las actuales regiones vascas, fue ocupado el siglo I a. C. por los romanos bajo el mando de Pompeyo, pero su dominio no fue consolidado hasta tiempos del emperador Augusto. ...

    100    CHINA.      BEIJING - Imagine we were to discover a series of  ancient manuscripts revealing that Plato actually  copied all of his ideas from Parmenides, a  preceding philosopher from Elea in southern Italy;  that Aristotle rewrote treatises originally penned  by Archytas, another philosopher from Taranto; and  actually the whole philosophical debate in ancient  Greece was about politics (a very sensitive  subject for the Roman Empire), not truth (a topic  more consistent with later widespread Christian  beliefs).  The same manuscripts could prove the Romans copied  everything they had from the Etruscans, and  history was later doctored by Roman emperors to  undermine the importance of other Italian civilizations conquered by Rome and present their  home city as the one true representative of   culture from Italy, which was then ruling the   Mediterranean world.  This discovery would make our heads spin and make  us reassess the trajectory of history and all our  considerations about the future.  Something similar actually happened in the West in   the 18th century with the discovery of the ruins of Pompeii by German historian Johann Joachim  Winkelmann, which sparked the fire of  Enlightenment. And it is happening in China now   possibly on an even grander scale with the   discovery and first understanding of three sets of    manuscripts buried at the end of the 4th century   BC. They cast a totally new light on the history  and philosophical debate in ancient China.   The discovery of Pompeii proved to 18th century   Europe, which was growing disaffected with   Christianity and the Christian tradition, the  importance of pagan history and its legacy. It  helped to free European minds from the fetters of  dogmatism, justified by a superficial reading of the Bible, and launched Europe on the path to  developing the modern world. This discovery had a  further support with the then immense influence of  literature and ideas coming from China through the   translations of Jesuits. That literature proved   the existence of a non-Christian state with a high   level of civilization and yet introduced to Europe  through the work of the ultra loyal branch of the   Church, the Jesuit order.  On August 30, 2013, at an international conference   organized by Dartmouth College with Beijing's  Tsinghua University, participants will discuss the  findings from the first work on interpretation of  the Tsinghua manuscripts acquired in 2008.  Three massive sets of bamboo slip manuscripts  buried around 300 BC have now been found; one in a  tomb in Hubei, in a site next to the capital of   the ancient state of Chu; another looted from   tomb and sent to Hong Kong before being bought for   the Shanghai Museum.  The Tsinghua University set, also bought back  after looting, is probably the most significant  because of its historical nature and relationship  to several of the Confucian classics. The   manuscripts are written in the script of the Chu   state, so many characters are unknown (they are  not the standard Chinese characters adopted after   the unification under the first Qin emperor), and  many others are illegible.  According to Professor Sarah Allan, the organizer   of the conference at Dartmouth, and along with  Tsinghua Professor Li Xueqin one of the main  forces behind the reading of the manuscripts, it  will take decades to fully understand the  material. The discovery of Pompeii also took  decades to be fully understood and internalized by  European culture.
         In any event, there are already quite a few very   important findings, according to Professor Allan.  The manuscripts revolutionize our understanding of  ancient Chinese history, philosophical debate,  writing, and circulation of ancient texts. The  writing system was standardized by the Qin   emperor, who also destroyed much of the  traditional literature, so these texts give us a  glimpse of what texts were really like before they  were reconstructed - in practice often rewritten -   in the Han dynasty (the dynasty ruling China from  the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD).  The writing is in a regional style and has many  unique characters, but the spoken language it  reflects is similar that that of the central   plains. Perhaps there was already a common spoken  language, like later Mandarin or today's   putonghua. It also appears that ancient texts were  not organized in finished sets like the ones we  have now, but were more open-ended collections of  writings, perhaps transcribed from oral dictation.   However, the bigger revelations are about history  and philosophical debate. Not much contradicts  presently known facts, Professor Allan says, but  so much more becomes known that the interpretation  may become totally different. It is as if we were   just seeing a sweet face and from that we guessed  it belonged to a girl, but then the frame expands  and we see the body of a person who is clearly a boy. Li Xueqin just this month made Chinese headlines [2] by arguing that the Qin people (who unified  the Chinese empire) came from the east - not the  west, as previously thought - and might have been  related to the Shang Dynasty, which ruled the   central plains before the 11th century BC and   preceded the Zhou Dynasty. Moreover, as Professor Li was reportedly arguing,  "What kind of culture was that of Qin? At the  time, what was the peculiarity that historically  shaped the Qin power in relation with other cultures of the time? We research the problem of  the formation and the origin of the Qin culture.  If we simply see the Qin culture as one of  violence and military prowess, then it was a backward and closed culture. Then by using the Qin culture to unify the whole country, from the whole  historical point of view, this was not useful for  progress and development. This point is especially  important to consider now."  The point Li is making is extremely important for  modernity, as the Qin emperor and his culture were  the model of statecraft openly used by Mao during   the Cultural Revolution.    On the other hand, research by Professor Allan has  cast a different light on a mostly neglected  aspect of the ancient political debate. Professor  Allan found a large body of evidence supported the importance of debate in the selection of the  new king through abdication: a king chooses his successor from any walk of life, abdicates, and  promotes him as the new king. This idea, according  to the extant texts, seemed a quirk of Mozi (a  philosopher of the 4th century BC and adversary of  Confucius). But the manuscripts prove now that it  had very wide support, in opposition to the idea  that prevailed at the time and was supported by  Confucians of succession through blood lineage.  This seems more in line with the present choice of   the Communist Party to renounce blood succession  and select leaders according to their merit. In a   way, at the 18th Party Congress, Hu Jintao, like  the ancient mythical kings Yao and Shun, abdicated  and gave power to Xi Jinping.  The political parallels are of course too   simplistic when considering the complex influence   these findings will have on the rewriting of   ancient history. Yet these archeological  discoveries, casting a new light on Chinese history, find a parallel in the immense influence on China of a foreign culture which is reshaping the Chinese vision of the world and of its future. Here there is a new analogy with the discovery of  Pompeii.  Moreover, Confucius, the mainstay of Chinese culture for centuries, here appears a part of a  broader movement of rujia "soft scholars", who  were very widespread at the time and included a  broad spectrum of political ideas that were avidly  debated. Most importantly, the whole body of  Chinese culture that we have about the period begins to appear now almost as a doctored  selection of texts from which many ideas   inconsistent with the ideology of later times have been expunged or simply lost through disinterest.  Two elements concealed by this ideology begin to  surface, and thus can be attributed to Han (the dynasty ruling China from the 2nd century BC to   the 2nd century AD) "spin doctors". One is that the Qin, cast as a semi-barbaric culture from the "wild west", now appears to be part of the core of  the Chinese culture, actually from a dynasty  preceding the Zhou Dynasty (the model of   civilization for Confucius, the ideal thinker for  the Han ideologues).  Another is that the idea of blood succession,  punctuated by dynastic change, which prevailed  through 3,000 years of Chinese history, was   powerfully challenged at the time. If these two concepts were basically expunged from present  texts, how many more ideas and facts were hidden  or cancelled by the Qin and Han rulers, eager to  spread their own propaganda through history? Was there an idea of one China already? It is hard  to answer to this question from the distance of over two millennia, when their idea of state and territory was so different. It is true, there were big differences, but the texts also reflect a  language was largely similar to that used by the  people people of the states located in central  plains. The debate we find in the manuscripts is   consistent with the tradition we have; it was not  totally different. Then this indicates the  existence of a strong cultural community where  everybody was talking about the same things. This  cultural community possibly allowed the political  unity of China to endure for many centuries. Chinese identity and Chinese history are  intimately entwined and the findings in the next  decades could change forever the understanding of  history.
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91    War between Rome an Italian cities. Civil war in Rome. Sulla defeats Marius.

    91  Emperor Wu of China is seventy-five and violence erupts over who will succeed him.

86  Emperor Wu is succeeded by a compromise choice: an eight-year-old who is put under the regency of a former general, Huo Guang.

83  For the Romans, compromise and toleration have not been working politically. General Marcus Sulla returns from wars in the East, and in a civil war and bloodbath he takes power in Rome. Sulla creates a new constitution that gives rule to the Senate and that he believes will restore the republic, order and dignity to Rome.

79  Sulla retires. He believes that peace had been established at home and abroad and that Rome's government is functioning as it had in its glorious past. He grows cabbages and studies Epicureanism.

77  Around this year, the last book of the Old Testament, the Book of Esther, is translated into Greek.

74  Emperor Zhao dies at the age of twenty and is succeeded by another child, Emperor Xuan.

73  A Roman slave, Spartacus, escapes with seventy-seven other prisoners and seizes control of nearby Mount Vesuvius. News of the revolt encourages other slaves, and they join Spartacus on Mount Vesuvius – an army of from fifty to a hundred thousand.

71  Spartacus and other slaves are crucified on the major road in and out of Rome: the Appian way. The latest slave uprising has lowered the demand for slaves. Landowners start replacing gangs of slaves with a less frightening alternative: free people farming as tenants.

68  Regent Huo Guang dies peaceably, but palace rivalry leads to charges of treason against Huo Guang's wife, son and many of Huo Guang's relatives and family associates, and they are executed. With Huo Guang gone, Emperor Xuan is able to exercise more control.

67  The Maccabees family has been renamed the Hasmonaeans. Two Hasmonaean brothers, John Hyrcanus II and Judas Aristobulus, are competing for power, and a civil war erupts.

63   The Roman general, Gneaus Pompey, is in Syria with a Roman army in response to disorder there. Syria is annexed to the Roman Empire. The Hasmonaeans still have an alliance with Rome, and the two warring Hasmonaean brothers seek arbitration from Rome. Pompey and his army march into Judah. Fighting erupts between Jews and the Roman army. The Romans take possession of Judah – territory they call Judea.

58  Julius Caesar goes to Gaul as military-governor.

53  The Parthians annihilate an army of 40,000 Romans.

52 (Oct 3) Leader of the Gauls, Vercingetorix, surrenders to Julius Caesar, ending the battle of Alesia.

50  Around this year the Parthians extend their empire to the Indus Valley. A people called Kushans have been pushing into Bactria against the Scythians there, and the Scythians are pushing into India (to be known in India as Sakas).

49  Rome's senate has worried over Caesar's popularity and has ordered him home from Gaul. On January 10 Caesar crosses the Rubicon River with his army, a forbidden move which means civil war.

48  China has a new emperor, Emperor Yuan, age twenty-seven. He is a timid intellectual who is to spend much time with his concubines. Rather than govern, he will leave power in the hands of his eunuch secretaries and members of his mother's family.

48 (Aug 9)  Caesar's civil war: Battle of Pharsalus - Julius Caesar decisively defeats Pompey at Pharsalus and Pompey flees to Egypt.

48 (Sep 28)  Pompey the Great is assassinated on orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt after landing in Egypt.

47  Caesar returns to Rome as victor. Many Romans think their troubles are over, that at last a champion of the people has secured power and that the gods have granted Caesar good fortune. Caesar is conciliatory with former enemies.

45 (Jan 1)  Julius Caesar's reform calendar, the Julian calendar, goes into effect: twelve months (January to December in English), 365 days per year and one day added in February every four years.

 

 

44  Caesar is murdered by Stoic idealists in order to preserve the Roman republic. Reconciliation has not worked.

32  Emperor Cheng has succeeded his father. He also has little enthusiasm for governing and is most concerned with personal pleasures.

30  Civil war has followed Caesar's assassination, and it reduces to Caesar's nephew, Octavian, against Antony and Cleopatra. Antony dies on August 1, at the age of 53. Cleopatra dies eight days later at 39.

29  Octavian returns to Rome a hero. He is to be worshipped as the bringer of peace.

27  Octavian renounces his consulship and declares that he is surrendering all powers, including control of the army. The Senate returns his powers and gives him a title that has the ring of his being divinely chosen, Augustus Caesar, and the Senate makes it law that he be included in the prayers of Rome's priests. In appearance, the Roman Republic had been restored, but ultimate power is still held by Octavian.

23  South of Egypt, the Romans drive back, as far as Napata, the rival imperialist army of Meroe.

19  Augustus Caesar is associating morality with the well-being of the state and the pleasing of the gods. To stay on the good side of the gods he has begun a crusade to revive temperance and morality. He tries setting an example by dressing without extravagance and by living in a modest house. He asks Virgil to write the Aeneid, a story about the gods and the founding of the Roman race.

15  Livy, the Roman historian, is in his forties. He has been writing his history of Rome since the year 29. He investigates the story of the founding of Rome, which is popular among the Romans. It is the story of Romulus and Remus, ending with Romulus vanishing into a thunderstorm, becoming a god and then reappearing, descending from the sky and declaring that it is the will of heaven that Rome be the capital of the world.

6  Emperor Cheng is succeeded by Emperor Ngai, who lives in the company of homosexual boys, one of whom he appoints commander-in-chief of his armies. With the decline in quality of monarchs following the reign of Emperor Wu, some Confucian scholars declare that the Han dynasty has lost its Mandate from Heaven, and this is widely believed.

1  Augustus Caesar has laws passed that he hopes will reduce inter-breeding between Romans and non-Romans. He is encouraging marriage. Romans believe in the family, and they agree that adultery should be illegal. They believe that the virtue of their women helped win favor for their city from their gods. And they continue to be disgusted by criminality.


90    -88 The social war. Revolt of Italian towns against Rome The civil war ends only when the Italics are promised equal rights with Romans, signaling Roman loss of power and importance, to Italy's gain. Revolt of Pharisees in Judeah.
90BC NABATAEAN. The Nabataeans were allies of the
    first Hasmoneans in their struggles against the Seleucidmonarchs. They then became rivals of the Judaean dynasty, and a chief element in the disorders which invited Pompey's intervention in Judea. Many Nabataeans were forcefully converted to Judaism by the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus.[7] It was this King who after putting down a local rebellion invaded and occupied the Nabataean towns of Moab and Gilead and imposed a tribute of an unspecified amount. Obodas I knew that Alexander would attack, so was able to ambush Alexander's forces near Gaulane destroying the Judean army (90 BC).The Roman military were not very successful in their campaigns against the Nabataeans. In 62 BC, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus accepted a bribe of 300 talents to lift the siege of Petra, partly because of the difficult terrain and the fact that he had run out of supplies. Hyrcanus who was a friend of Aretas was despatched by Scaurus to the King to buy peace. In so obtaining peace King Aretas retained all his possessions, including Damascus, and became a Roman vassal


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89-64    ROME.    Rome at war with Mithridates VI of Pontus Mithridates was tall and strong and commanded 22 languages. He was the champion of the peoples of the East. He invaded Roman possessions in Asia Minor with a large army. The local population welcomed him as liberator when his army slew 30,000 Romans in one     day.The Roman Sulla was entrusted to meet Mithridates, but since he was a supporter of the Senate, the Popular Assembly decided to appoint Marius in Sulla's place. Sulla won his men round and marched on Rome. Fighting broke out in the streets. Sulpicus Rufus was killed  and Marius fled. For the first time Rome was captured by rebel soldiers. Sulla then march ed into  Greece and Mithridates sued for peace. Sulla emerged as victor after marching on Rome        a second time and set up a dictatorship. In order to revenge himself upon his enemies he             introduced a system of reward for killing certain people he chose to outlaw. In this way       more        than 100 Senators and 2,500 equites were slain. Sulla introduced a reign of terror which did not last long, and the repressive laws he introduced were soon abolished.   Roman army under Sulla regains control of Italy. All italians granted Roman citizenship.

88    First Mithriadatic war to 84. Rome against Mithridates IV Eupator, king of Pontus. Civil war in Rome to 82. Sulla victorius.

87    Sulla defeats Mithridates and takes Athens.
    Death of emperor WuTi leads to period of disorder in China.
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    78   BC CYRENAICA.  AFRICA. LIBYA. The Latin name Cyrenaica dates to the 1st century BCE. Although some confusion exists as to the exact territory Rome inherited, by 78 BCE it was organized as one administrative province together with Crete. It became a senatorial province in 20 BC, like its far more prominent western neighbor Africa proconsularis, and unlike Egypt itself which became an imperial domain sui generis (under a special governor styled praefectus augustalis – Diocese of Egypt) in 30 BC.

    75 BC - by Titus Lucretius Carus (c.  99 - 55 B.C.) Titus Lucretius Carus, a devoted student and follower of Epicurus and perhaps the most widely published vehicle for Epicurean thought, was born in Rome sometime between 99 an 95 B.C.  The son of a ruling-class family, he lived during a time when eminent Greek teachers of the Epicurean sect were deeply influential among the governing class.  Lucretius' On the Nature of Things has been compiled into five books, and although it is apparent that the general direction the writings on Epicurean philosophy takes is expository, it is also quite poetic and at times even whimsical.  For this reason there are many who thought Lucretius to be unsound, as can be derived from the account of St.  Jerome, written four centuries after the philosopher's death:Titus Lucretius the poet is born.  He was rendered insane by a love-philtre [potion] and after writing during intervals of lucidity, some books ...  he died by his own hand in the forty-third year of his life.This report cannot be validated, but historians have verified that love potions did occasionally produce madness, perhaps giving credence to St.  Jerome's account.  Other historians, however, consider this biographical sketch an attempt by critics of Epicurean thought to discredit Lucretius, and, by extension, Epicureanism.  It should be noted that critics of Epicurean beliefs have often misunderstood this philosophic movement, considering it hedonistic.  Actually, Epicurus proposed that greater happiness could come from pleasures of the mind, rather than those of the body.In any case, Lucretius, Epicurus' disciple and a gifted poet, sought to explain his ideas to the "unbusied ears" of his readers, urging then not to "abandon [them] with disdain before they are understood.  For I will assay to discourse to you on the most high system of heaven and the gods."Since Lucretius' poetic and philosophic foundation is based on Epicurean thought, therefore a basic understanding of Epicureanism's founder proves invaluable to an understanding of Lucretius' work.

        73-71   ROME. Third servile war. Great revolt of slaves in southern Italy under SpartacusThe initial conspiracy of 200 slaves took place at a gladiator school in Capua. The conspiracy was discovered but 80 slaves escaped. They set up a camp on Mount Vesuvius and chose Spartacus to lead them. A gifted leader, he came from Thrace and had served in the Roman auxiliary before being sold for desertion. Spartacus's forces quickly grew and the Romans sent out a detachment of 3,000 against him. They cut off the slave army's communications, but the slaves made ropes of vines and made their way to the rear of the enemy and succeeded in routing them. Soon Spartacus's army numbered in the thousands and the slaves had overrun most of southern Italy. Since there were slaves from different nationalities, it was difficult for them to act in concert, and two detachments split from the main army and were defeated by the Romans. Spartacus moved north and a victory near Mutina added men to his army until it totaled 120,000. After Mutina Spartacus turned toward Rome. The Romans were in a panic not seen since the days of Hannibal. Under emergency powers, slave-owning Marcus Crassus led the legions against Spartacus. After a bloody battle in the field the slaves were defeated. Spartacus was killed in the field. The slave revolt was brutally suppressed. Six thousand slaves were crucified on the road from Capua to Rome. The Spartacus revolt was an indication of how acute the contradictions in Roman society had grown. 

SPARTACUS: Ye call me chief; and ye do well to call him chief who for twelve long years has met  upon the arena every shape of man or beast the broad Empire of Rome could furnish, and who never yet lowered his arm. If there be one among  you who can say that ever, in public fight or  private brawl, my actions did belie my tongue,  let him stand forth and say it. If there be three in all your company dare face me on the  bloody sands, let them come on. And yet I was  not always thus,--a hired butcher, a savage chief of still more savage men. My ancestors  came from old Sparta, and settled among the  vine-clad rocks and citron groves of Syrasella.  My early life ran quiet as the brooks by which I  sported; and when, at noon, I gathered the sheep  beneath the shade, and played upon the  shepherd's flute, there was a friend, the son of  a neighbor, to join me in the pastime. We led our flocks to the same pasture, and partook  together our rustic meal. One evening, after the  sheep were folded, and we were all seated  beneath the myrtle which shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon   and Leuctra; and how, in ancient times, a little  band of Spartans, in a defile of the mountains,  had withstood a whole army. I did not then know  what war was; but my cheeks burned, I know not  why, and I clasped the knees of that venerable man, until my mother, parting the hair from off  my forehead, kissed my throbbing temples, and bade me go to rest, and think no more of those old tales and savage wars. That very night the  Romans landed on our coast. I saw the breast  that had nourished me trampled by the hoof of  the war-horse,--the bleeding body of my father  flung amidst the blazing rafters of our  dwelling! To-day I killed a man in the arena;  and, when I broke his helmet-clasps, behold! he  was my friend. He knew me, smiled faintly, gasped, and died;--the same sweet smile upon his  lips that I had marked, when, in adventurous  boyhood, we scaled the lofty cliff to pluck the  first ripe grapes, and bear them home in  childish triumph! I told the prætor that the  dead man had been my friend, generous and brave;   and I begged that I might bear away the body, to  burn it on a funeral pile, and mourn over its  ashes. Ay! upon my knees, amid the dust and   blood of the arena, I begged that poor boon,  while all the assembled maids and matrons, and   the holy virgins they call Vestals, and the   rabble, shouted in derision, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale and tremble at the sight of  that piece of bleeding clay! And the prætor drew back as I were pollution, and sternly said, "Let  the carrion rot; there are no noble men but  Romans." And so, fellow-gladiators, must you,   and so must I, die like dogs. O Rome! Rome! thou  hast been a tender nurse to me. Ay! thou hast   given to that poor, gentle, timid shepherd lad, who never knew a harsher tone than a flute-note,   muscles of iron and a heart of flint; taught him  to drive the sword through plaited mail and  links of rugged brass, and warm it in the marrow  of his foe;--to gaze into the glaring eyeballs  of the fierce Numidian lion, even as a boy upon a laughing girl! And he shall pay thee back, until the yellow Tiber is red as frothing wine,  and in its deepest ooze thy life-blood lies  curdled! Ye stand her now like giants, as ye  are! The strength of brass is in your toughened  sinews, but to-morrow some Roman Adonis, breathing sweet perfume from his curly locks,  shall with his lily fingers pat your red brawn,  and bet his sesterces upon your blood. Hark!  hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three  days since he has tasted flesh; but to-morrow he  shall break his fast upon yours,--and a dainty  meal for him ye will be! If ye are beasts, then  stand here like fat oxen, waiting for the  butcher's knife! If ye are men, follow me!  Strike down yon guard, gain the mountain passes,  and there do bloody work, as did your sires at old Thermopylæ! Is Sparta dead? Is the old  Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that you do  crouch and cower like a belabored hound beneath  his master's lash? O comrades! warriors!  Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for   ourselves! If we must slaughter, let us  slaughter our oppressors! If we must die, let it   be under the clear sky, by the bright waters, in noble, honorable battle!

    
        Spartacus ( Spártakos; Latin:  (c. 109–71 BCE) was a Thracian gladiator, who, along with the Gauls Crixus, Oenomaus, Castus and Gannicus, was one of the slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable. All sources agree that he was a former gladiator and an accomplished military leader.The gladiator rebellion, interpreted  as an example of oppressed people fighting for their freedom against a slave-owning oligarchy, has been an inspiration to many political thinkers, and has been featured in literature, television, and film. Although not contradicted by classical historians, no historical account mentions that the goal of the rebels was to end slavery in the Roman Republic, nor do any of the actions of rebel leaders, who themselves committed numerous atrocities, seem specifically aimed at ending slavery.Balkan tribes, including the Maedi.The ancient sources agree that Spartacus was a Thracian. Plutarch describes him as "a Thracian of Nomadic stock". Appian says he was "a Thracian by birth, who had once served as a soldier with the Romans, but had since been a prisoner and sold for a Gladiator".Florus (2.8.8) described him as one "who from Thracian mercenary, had become a Roman soldier, of a soldier a deserter and robber, and afterward, from consideration of his strength, a gladiator". The authors refer to the Thracian tribe of the Maedi, which occupied the area on the southwestern fringes of Thrace, along its border with the Roman Macedonia - present day south-western Bulgaria. Plutarch also writes that Spartacus' wife, a prophetess of the Maedi tribe, was enslaved with him.The name Spartacus is otherwise attested in the Black Sea region: kings of the Thracian dynasty of the Cimmerian Bosporus and Pontus are known to have borne it, and a Thracian "Sparta" "Spardacus" or "Sparadokos", father of Seuthes I of the Odrysae, is also known.Enslavement and escape. The extent of the Roman Republic at 100 BCE.According to the differing sources and their interpretation, Spartacus either was an auxiliary from the Roman legions later condemned to slavery, or a captive taken by the legions. Spartacus was trained at the gladiatorial school (ludus) near Capua belonging to Lentulus Batiatus. In 73 BCE, Spartacus was among a group of gladiators plotting an escape. The plot was betrayed but about 70 men seized kitchen implements, fought their way free from the school, and seized several wagons of gladiatorial weapons and armor. The escaped slaves defeated a small force sent after them, plundered the region surrounding Capua, recruited many other slaves into their ranks, and eventually retired to a more defensible position on Mount Vesuvius. Once free, the escaped gladiators chose Spartacus and two Gallic slaves—Crixus and Oenomaus—as their leaders. Although Roman authors assumed that the slaves were a homogeneous group with Spartacus as their leader, they may have projected their own hierarchical view of military leadership onto the spontaneous organization of the slaves, reducing other slave leaders to subordinate positions in their accounts. The positions of Crixus and Oenomaus—and later, Gannicus and Castus—cannot be clearly determined from the sources. Third Servile War For more details on this topic, see Third Servile War. The statue of Spartacus in Sandanski, Bulgaria.The response of the Romans was hampered by the absence of the Roman legions, which were already engaged in fighting a revolt in Hispania and the Third Mithridatic War. Furthermore, the Romans considered the rebellion more of a policing matter than a war. Rome dispatched militia under the command of praetor Gaius Claudius Glaber, which besieged Spartacus and his camp on Mount Vesuvius, hoping that starvation would force Spartacus to surrender. They were surprised when Spartacus, who had made ropes from vines, climbed down the cliff side of the volcano with his men and attacked the unfortified Roman camp in the rear, killing most of them.The slaves also defeated a second expedition, nearly capturing the praetor commander, killing his lieutenants and seizing the military equipment. With these successes, more and more slaves flocked to the Spartacan forces, as did "many of the herdsmen and shepherds of the region", swelling their ranks to some 70,000.In these altercations Spartacus proved to be an excellent tactician, suggesting that he may have had previous military experience. Though the slaves lacked military training, they displayed a skillful use of available local materials and unusual tactics when facing the disciplined Roman armies. They spent the winter of 73–72 BCE training, arming and equipping their new recruits, and expanding their raiding territory to include the towns of Nola, Nuceria, Thurii and Metapontum. The distance between these locations and the subsequent events indicate that the slaves operated in two groups commanded by the remaining leaders Spartacus and Crixus. In the spring of 72 BCE, the slaves left their winter encampments and began to move northward. At the same time, the Roman Senate, alarmed by the defeat of the praetorian forces, dispatched a pair of consular legions under the command of Lucius Gellius Publicola and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus. The two legions were initially successful—defeating a group of 30,000 slaves commanded by Crixus near Mount Garganus—but then were defeated by Spartacus. These defeats are depicted in divergent ways by the two most comprehensive (extant) histories of the war by Appian and Plutarch. Alarmed by the apparently unstoppable rebellion, the Senate charged Marcus Licinius Crassus, the wealthiest man in Rome and the only volunteer for the position, with ending the rebellion. Crassus was put in charge of eight legions, approximately 40,000–50,000 trained Roman soldiers, which he treated with harsh, even brutal, discipline, reviving the punishment of unit decimation. When Spartacus and his followers, who for unclear reasons had retreated to the south of Italy, moved northward again in early 71 BCE, Crassus deployed six of his legions on the borders of the region and detached his legate Mummius with two legions to maneuver behind Spartacus. Though ordered not to engage the slaves, Mummius attacked at a seemingly opportune moment but was routed. After this, Crassus' legions were victorious in several engagements, forcing Spartacus farther south through Lucania as Crassus gained the upper hand. By the end of 71 BC, Spartacus was encamped in Rhegium (Reggio Calabria), near the Strait of Messina. According to Plutarch, Spartacus made a bargain with Cilician pirates to transport him and some 2,000 of his men to Sicily, where he intended to incite a slave revolt and gather reinforcements. However, he was betrayed by the pirates, who took payment and then abandoned the rebel slaves. Minor sources mention that there were some attempts at raft and shipbuilding by the rebels as a means to escape, but that Crassus took unspecified measures to ensure the rebels could not cross to Sicily, and their efforts were abandoned. Spartacus' forces then retreated toward Rhegium. Crassus' legions followed and upon arrival built fortifications across the isthmus at Rhegium, despite harassing raids from the rebel slaves. The rebels were now under siege and cut off from their supplies.The Fall of Spartacus. At this time, the legions of Pompey returned from Hispania and were ordered by the Senate to head south to aid Crassus. While Crassus feared that Pompey's arrival would cost him the credit, Spartacus unsuccessfully tried to reach an agreement with Crassus. When Crassus refused, a portion of Spartacus' forces fled toward the mountains west of Petelia (modern Strongoli) in Bruttium, with Crassus' legions in pursuit. When the legions managed to catch a portion of the rebels separated from the main army, discipline among Spartacus' forces broke down as small groups were independently attacking the oncoming legions. Spartacus now turned his forces around and brought his entire strength to bear on the legions in a last stand, in which the slaves were routed completely, with the vast majority of them being killed on the battlefield. The final battle that saw the assumed defeat of Spartacus in 71 BCE took place on the present territory of Senerchia on the right bank of the river Sele in the area that includes the border with Oliveto Citra up to those of Calabritto, near the village of Quaglietta, in High Sele Valley, which at that time was part of Lucania. In this area, since 1899, there have been finds of armor and swords of the Roman era.Plutarch, Appian and Florus all claim that Spartacus died during the battle, however Appian also reports that his body was never found. Six thousand survivors of the revolt captured by the legions of Crassus were crucified, lining the Appian Way from Rome to Capua. Objectives. Classical historians were divided as to what the motives of Spartacus were. Plutarch writes that Spartacus merely wished to escape north into Cisalpine Gaul and disperse his men back to their homes. If escaping the Italian peninsula was indeed his goal, it is not clear why Spartacus turned south after defeating the legions commanded by the consuls Lucius Publicola and Gnaeus Clodianus, which left his force a clear passage over the Alps. Appian and Florus write that he intended to march on Rome itself. Appian also states that he later abandoned that goal, which might have been no more than a reflection of Roman fears. None of Spartacus' actions overtly suggest that he aimed at reforming Roman society or abolishing slavery.Based on the events in late 73 BCE and early 72 BCE, which suggest independently operating groups of slaves and a statement by Plutarch that some of the escaped slaves preferred to plunder Italy, rather than escape over the Alps

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67    BC    PALESTINE. Ancient Egyptian texts called the entire Levantine coastal area along the Mediterranean Sea between modern Egypt and Turkey R-t-n-u (conventionally Retjenu). Retjenu was subdivided into three regions and the southern region, Djahy, shared approximately the same boundaries as Canaan, or modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories.During the Iron Age, the Kingdom of Israel of the United Monarchy may have reigned from Jerusalem over an area approximating modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories, extending farther westward and northward to cover much (but not all) of the greater Land of Israel, although archaeological evidence for this period is very rare and disputed.The Philistines dwelt in cities and controlled much of the coast, and the term Palestine' is cognate with the word Philistine,[3] That area was known in Greek sources from the mid 5th century BCE as Palaistina. When the Romans defeated the Jewish rebellion of 67-70 C.E., and merged the province of Judea with Galilee, Samaria and Idumaea, the name Palaestina was applied to the newly formed larger unit.The ethnic affiliation of the Philistines is not yet clarified. Philistine names as preserved on inscriptions appear to 'contradict the notion that they were Greek-speakers'.[4] Yet some scholars now argue that they were a non-Semitic group, originating from Southern Greece, and closely related to early Mycenaean civilization.[5] Inhabiting a smaller area on the southern coast called Philistia, whose borders approximate the modern Gaza Strip, Philistia comprised a confederation of five city states: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod on the coast and Ekron, and Gath inland.Egyptian texts of the temple at Medinet Habu, record a people called the P-r-s-t (conventionally Peleset), one of the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt in Ramesses III's reign. This is considered very likely to be a reference to the Philistines. The Hebrew name Peleshet (???? P?léshseth), usually translated as Philistia in English, is used in the Bible to denote their southern coastal region.
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65-63    ROME. Pompey's eastern Campaigns
    A new war breaks out against Mithridates. The Roman campaign is commanded by Lucullus. His extreme severity evokes strong dissatisfaction in the Popular Assembly and the command of the Eastern Army is given to Pompey. Pompey had fights against the Spartacist revolt, and is successful in fighting pirates terrorizing the Merranean coast. Pompey carries out his next task- the defeat of Mithridates- successfully also. He not only routes the army of the Pontic king but enters Armenia and turns it into a vassal kingdom, gives support to the uprising in the Kingdom of the Bosporus, after which Mithridates commits suicide, and finally conquers Syria and Judea. Pompey defeats 22 kings, conquers 1, 538 towns and fortresses and subjugats some 12 million people. When Pompey returns to Rome, Catiline, a patrician leads a movement aimed at a coup d'etat and abolishing debts. The second aim of the move attracts the younger aristocrats, who are up to their eyes in debt, and the poorer sections of the townspeople. Cicero opposes Catiline. He has Catiline banished and arrests the conspirators, who are later executed. Catiline gathers a small army in Etruria, against which the Senate sends troops under consul Antonius. In the ensuing battle Catiline and supporters are k illed.       Outstanding poet Horace, author of Satires, Epodes, Odes, and Epistles. He like Virgil sang the praises of Augustus. Famous poem Exegi Monumentum

    63BC MACCABEES. Hasmonean rule lasted , when the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem and subjected Israel to Roman rule, while the Hasmonean dynasty itself ended in 37 BCE when the Idumean Herod the Great became king of Israel[3] and king of the Jews.Mention in deuterocanonThe story of the Maccabees is told in 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees, which are part of the Septuagint, and in 3 Maccabees and 4 Maccabees, which are not. The name Maccabee[10] is sometimes seen used as a synonym for the entire Hasmonean Dynasty, but the Maccabees proper were Judah Maccabee and his four brothers. The name Maccabee was a personal epithet of Judah, and the later generations were not his direct descendants. Although there is no definitive explanation of what the term means, one suggestion is that the name derives from the Aramaic maqqaba, "the hammer", in recognition of his ferocity in battle.It is also possible that the name Maccabee is an acronym for the Torah verse "Mi chamocha ba'elim YHWH", "Who is like unto thee among the mighty, O Lord!" Holy Maccabean Martyrs Woman with seven sonsSeven Jewish brothers, their mother and their teacher are known in Christianity as the Holy Maccabean Martyrs or Holy Maccabees, although they are not said to be of the Maccabee family. They are so named from the description of their martyrdom in 2 and 4 Maccabees.According to one tradition, their individual names are Habim, Antonin, Guriah, Eleazar, Eusebon, Hadim(Halim), Marcellus, their mother Solomonia, and their teacher Eleazar

63     BC :    PALESTINE.     Jerusalem was overrun by Rome. Herod was appointed King of Judea.  He slaughtered the last of the Hasmoneans and ordered a lavish restoration  and extension of the Second Temple. A period of great civil disorder   followed with strife between pacifists and Zealots, and riots against the  Roman authorities. The sicaris carried knives (sicar) and dedicated themselves to killing Roman in crowded markets.

    63    Judah  becomes  puppet  state of the Romans under Pompey, leaving Hyrcanus in charge Roman rule (63 BCE) PALESTINE. Palestine in the Time of Christ as rendered by as B.W. Johnson (189-1) in The People's New Testament.Though General Pompey arrived in 63 BCE, Roman rule was solidified when Herod, whose dynasty was of Idumean ancestry, was appointed as king.  Urban planning under the Romans was characterized by cities designed around the Forum - the central intersection of two main streets - the Cardo, running north-south and the Decumanus running east-west. Cities were connected by an extensive road network developed for economic and military purposes. Among the most notable archaeological remnants from this era are Herodium (Tel al-Fureidis) to the south of Bethlehem and Caesarea.Around the time that Jesus is believed to have been born, Roman Palestine was in a state of disarray and direct Roman rule was re-established.
    63BC    GAZA. As they were expelled and Judea was made a client kingdom of Rome by Pompey in 63 BC, Gaza fell under the rule of Hyrcanus and later by Herod the Great around 30 BC.[1]In 6 AD, it was placed under direct Roman rule.

    61BC    PALESTINE. About 61 B.C., Roman troops under Pompei invaded Judea and sacked Jerusalem in support of King Herod. Judea had become a client state of Rome.  Initially it was ruled by the client Herodian dynasty. The land was divided into districts of Judea, Galilee, Peraea and a small trans-Jordanian section, each of which eventually came under direct Roman control. The Romans called the large central area of the land, which included Jerusalem, Judea. According to Christian belief, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, Judea, in the early years of Roman rule. Roman rulers put down Jewish revolts in about A.D. 70 and A.D. 132.
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    60    First Triumvirate. Pompey, Caesar, Crassus ROME. Christened the 3-headed monster, the triumvirate was formed after the Catiline revolt. Gaius Julius Caesar was a man of tremendous ambition, energy and talent. As consul he tried to pursue the policies of the democratic tribunes. He allotted land to Pompey's former soldiers (veterans).  Caesar realized that the plebs and other democratic sections of the population could not give him the support he needed to realize his ambition, and as governor of Gaul he raised an army to conquer it
        Livy is author of voluminous history of Rome in 142 books, Ab urbe condita libri. Pliny the Elder's writings include Historia Naturalis, a treatise on natural sciences.

    60BC- Early life and career of Julius Caesar /wGaius Julius Caesar (Classical Latin:  July 100 BC– 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general, statesman, Consul, and notable author of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. In 60 BC, Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey formed a political alliance that was to dominate Roman politics for several years. Their attempts to amass power through populist tactics were opposed by the conservative ruling class within the Roman Senate, among them Cato the Younger with the frequent support of Cicero. Caesar's conquest of Gaul, completed by 51 BC, extended Rome's territory to the English Channel and the Rhine. Caesar became the first Roman general to cross both when he built a bridge across the Rhine and conducted the first invasion of Britain. These achievements granted him unmatched military power and threatened to eclipse the standing of Pompey, who had realigned himself with the Senate after the death of Crassus in 53 BC. With the Gallic Wars concluded, the Senate ordered Caesar to lay down his military command and return to Rome. Caesar refused, and marked his defiance in 49 BC by crossing the Rubicon with a legion, leaving his province and illegally entering Roman territory under arms. Civil war resulted, from which he emerged as the unrivaled leader of Rome.
        After assuming control of government, Caesar began a program of social and governmental reforms, including the creation of the Julian calendar. He centralised the bureaucracy of the Republic and was eventually proclaimed "dictator in perpetuity". But the underlying political conflicts had not been resolved, and on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC, Caesar was assassinated by a group of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus. A new series of civil wars broke out, and the constitutional government of the Republic was never restored. Caesar's adopted heir Octavian, later known as Augustus, rose to sole power, and the era of the Roman Empire began. Much of Caesar's life is known from his own accounts of his military campaigns, and from other contemporary sources, mainly the letters and speeches of Cicero and the historical writings of Sallust.
        The later biographies of Caesar by Suetonius and Plutarch are also major sources. Caesar is deemed to be one of the greatest military commanders in  history. Sulla_Glyptothek_Munich_ Lucius Cornelius Sulla Caesar was born into a patrician family, the gens Julia, which claimed descent from Iulus, son of the legendary Trojan prince Aeneas, supposedly the son of the goddess Venus.  The cognomen "Caesar" originated, according to Pliny the Elder, with an ancestor who was born by caesarean section (from the Latin verb to cut, caedere, caes-). The Historia Augusta suggests three alternative explanations: that the first Caesar had a thick head of hair (Latin caesaries); that he had bright grey eyes (Latin oculis caesiis); or that he killed an elephant (caesai in Moorish) in battle.  Caesar issued coins featuring images of elephants, suggesting that he favored this interpretation of his name. Despite their ancient pedigree, the Julii Caesares were not especially politically influential, although they had enjoyed some revival of their political fortunes in the early 1st century BC. Caesar's father, also called Gaius Julius Caesar, governed the province of Asia, and his sister Julia, Caesar's aunt, married Gaius Marius, one of the most prominent figures in the Republic. His mother, Aurelia Cotta, came from an influential family. Little is recorded of Caesar's childhood. In 85 BC, Caesar's father died suddenly, so at sixteen Caesar was the head of the family. His coming of age coincided with a civil war between his uncle, Gaius Marius, and his rival Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Both sides, whenever they were in the ascendancy, carried out bloody purges of their political opponents. While Marius and his ally, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, were in control of the city, Caesar was nominated to be the new high priest of Jupiter, and married to Cinna's daughter Cornelia. But following Sulla's final victory, Caesar's connections to the old regime made him a target for the new one. He was stripped of his inheritance, his wife's dowry and his priesthood, but he refused to divorce Cornelia and was forced to go into hiding. The threat against him was lifted by the intervention of his mother's family, which included supporters of Sulla, and the Vestal Virgins. Sulla gave in reluctantly, and is said to have declared that he saw many a Marius in Caesar..Gaius Marius, Caesar's uncle
        Caesar left Rome and joined the army, where he won the Civic Crown for his part in an important siege. On a mission to Bithynia to secure the assistance of King Nicomedes's fleet, he spent so long at his court that rumors that he had had an affair with the king arose, which Caesar would vehemently deny for the rest of his life. Ironically, the loss of his priesthood had allowed him to pursue a military career, as the high priest of Jupiter was not permitted to touch a horse, sleep three nights outside his own bed or one night outside Rome, or look upon an army.Hearing of Sulla's death in 78 BC, Caesar felt safe enough to return to Rome. Lacking means since his inheritance was confiscated, he acquired a modest house in Subura, a lower-class neighborhood of Rome, which gave him insights and sympathy for the poor. He turned to legal advocacy, and became known for his exceptional oratory, accompanied by impassioned gestures and a high-pitched voice, and ruthless prosecution of former governors notorious for extortion and corruption. On the way across the Aegean Sea, Caesar was kidnapped by pirates and held prisoner. He maintained an attitude of superiority throughout his captivity. When the pirates thought to demand a ransom of twenty talents of silver, he insisted they ask for fifty. After the ransom was paid, Caesar raised a fleet, pursued and captured the pirates, and imprisoned them. He had them crucified on his own authority, as he had promised while in captivity—a promise the pirates had taken as a joke. As a sign of leniency, he first had their throats cut. He was soon called back into military action in Asia, raising a band of auxiliaries to repel an incursion from the east.On his return to Rome, he was elected military tribune, a first step in a political career. He was elected quaestor for 69 BC, and during that year he delivered the funeral oration for his aunt Julia, and included images of her husband Marius, unseen since the days of Sulla, in the funeral procession. His wife, Cornelia, also died that year. After her funeral, in the spring or early summer of 69 BC, Caesar went to serve his quaestorship in Spain. While there he is said to have encountered a statue of Alexander the Great, and realized with dissatisfaction he was now at an age when Alexander had the world at his feet, while he had achieved comparatively little. On his return in 67 BC, he married Pompeia, a granddaughter of Sulla, whom he later divorced. In 63 BC, he ran for election to the post of Pontifex Maximus, chief priest of the Roman state religion. He ran against two powerful senators. There were accusations of bribery by all sides. Caesar won comfortably, despite his opponents' greater experience and standing. When Cicero, who was consul that year, exposed Catiline's conspiracy to seize control of the republic, several senators accused Caesar of involvement in the plot.After serving as praetor in 62 BC, Caesar was appointed to govern Spain, probably with proconsular powers. He was still in considerable debt and needed to satisfy his creditors before he could leave. He turned to Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of Rome's richest men. In return for political support in his opposition to the interests of Pompey, Crassus paid some of Caesar's debts and acted as guarantor for others. Even so, to avoid becoming a private citizen and thus be open to prosecution for his debts, Caesar left for his province before his praetorship had ended. In Spain, he conquered two local tribes and was hailed as imperator by his troops, reformed the law regarding debts, and completed his governorship in high esteem. As imperator, Caesar was entitled to a triumph. However, he also wanted to stand for consul, the most senior magistracy in the republic. If he were to celebrate a triumph, he would have to remain a soldier and stay outside the city until the ceremony, but to stand for election he would need to lay down his command and enter Rome as a private citizen. He could not do both in the time available. He asked the senate for permission to stand in absentia, but Cato blocked the proposal. Faced with the choice between a triumph and the consulship, Caesar chose the consulship. Consulship and military campaigns  Main articles: Military campaigns of Julius Caesar and First Triumvirate  In 60 BC, Caesar sought election as consul for 59 BC, along with two other candidates. The election was sordid – even Cato, with his reputation for incorruptibility, is said to have resorted to bribery in favor of one of Caesar's opponents. Caesar won, along with conservative Marcus Bibulus. Caesar was already in Crassus' political debt, but he also made overtures to Pompey. Pompey and Crassus had been at odds for a decade, so Caesar tried to reconcile them. The three of them had enough money and political influence to control public business. This informal alliance, known as the First Triumvirate ("rule of three men"), was cemented by the marriage of Pompey to Caesar's daughter Julia. Caesar also married again, this time Calpurnia, who was the daughter of another powerful senator. Caesar proposed a law for the redistribution of public lands to the poor, a proposal supported by Pompey, by force of arms if need be, and by Crassus, making the triumvirate public. Pompey filled the city with soldiers, a move which intimidated the triumvirate's opponents. Bibulus attempted to declare the omens unfavorable and thus void the new law, but was driven from the forum by Caesar's armed supporters. His bodyguards had their ceremonial axes broken, two high magistrates accompanying him were wounded, and he had a bucket of excrement thrown over him. In fear of his life, he retired to his house for the rest of the year, issuing occasional proclamations of bad omens. These attempts to obstruct Caesar's legislation proved ineffective. Roman satirists ever after referred to the year as "the consulship of Julius and Caesar." When Caesar was first elected, the aristocracy tried to limit his future power by allotting the woods and pastures of Italy, rather than the governorship of a province, as his military command duty after his year in office was over.  With the help of political allies, Caesar later overturned this, and was instead appointed to govern Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy) and Illyricum (southeastern Europe), with Transalpine Gaul (southern France) later added, giving him command of four legions. The term of his governorship, and thus his immunity from prosecution, was set at five years, rather than the usual one.  When his consulship ended, Caesar narrowly avoided prosecution for the irregularities of his year in office, and quickly left for his province. Conquest of Gaul  Main article: Gallic Wars  Caesar was still deeply in debt, but there was money to be made as a governor, whether by extortion or by military adventurism. Caesar had four legions under his command, two of his provinces bordered on unconquered territory, and parts of Gaul were known to be unstable. Some of Rome's Gallic allies had been defeated by their rivals at the Battle of Magetobriga, with the help of a contingent of Germanic tribes. The Romans feared these tribes were preparing to migrate south, closer to Italy, and that they had warlike intent. Caesar raised two new legions and defeated these tribes. In response to Caesar's earlier activities, the tribes in the north-east began to arm themselves. Caesar treated this as an aggressive move and, after an inconclusive engagement against the united tribes, he conquered the tribes piecemeal. Meanwhile, one of his legions began the conquest of the tribes in the far north (directly opposite Britain). During the spring of 56 BC, the Triumvirs held a conference, as Rome was in turmoil and Caesar's political alliance was coming undone. The Lucca Conference renewed the First Triumvirate and extended Caesar's governorship for another five years. The conquest of the north was soon completed, while a few pockets of resistance remained. Caesar now had a secure base from which to launch an invasion of Britain.
        The extent of the Roman Republic in 40 BC after Caesar's conquests. In 55 BC, Caesar repelled an incursion into Gaul by two Germanic tribes, and followed it up by building a bridge across the Rhine and making a show of force in Germanic territory, before returning and dismantling the bridge. Late that summer, having subdued two other tribes, he crossed into Britain, claiming that the Britons had aided one of his enemies the previous year possibly the Veneti of Brittany. His intelligence information was poor, and although he gained a beachhead on the coast, he could not advance further, and returned to Gaul for the winter. He returned the following year, better prepared and with a larger force, and achieved more. He advanced inland, and established a few alliances. However, poor harvests led to widespread revolt in Gaul, which forced Caesar to leave Britain for the last time. While Caesar was in Britain his daughter Julia, Pompey's wife, had died in childbirth. Caesar tried to re-secure Pompey's support by offering him his great-niece in marriage, but Pompey declined. In 53 BC Crassus was killed leading a failed invasion of the east. Rome was on the edge of civil war. Pompey was appointed sole consul as an emergency measure, and married the daughter of a political opponent of Caesar. The Triumvirate was dead. In 52 BC another, larger revolt erupted in Gaul, led by Vercingetorix. Vercingetorix managed to unite the Gallic tribes and proved an astute commander, defeating Caesar in several engagements, but Caesar's elaborate siege-works at the Battle of Alesia finally forced his surrender. Despite scattered outbreaks of warfare the following year,  Gaul was effectively conquered. Plutarch claimed that the army had fought against three million men during the Gallic Wars, of whom one million died, and another million were enslaved. The Romans subjugated 300 tribes and destroyed 800 cities. However, in view of the difficulty in finding accurate counts in the first place, Caesar's propagandistic purposes, and the common exaggeration of numbers in ancient texts, the stated totals of enemy combatants are likely to be too high.

    50 BC --Civil war Main article: Caesar's Civil War , the Senate, led by Pompey, ordered Caesar to disband his army and return to Rome because his term as governor had finished. Caesar thought he would be prosecuted if he entered Rome without the immunity enjoyed by a magistrate. Pompey accused Caesar of insubordination and treason. In January 49 BC, Caesar crossed the Rubicon river (the frontier boundary of Italy) with only one legion and ignited civil war. Upon crossing the Rubicon, Caesar, according to Plutarch and Suetonius, is supposed to have quoted the Athenian playwright Menander, in Greek, "the die is cast". Erasmus, however, notes that the more accurate Latin translation of the Greek imperative mood would be "alea iacta esto" let the die be cast. Pompey and much of the Senate fled to the south, having little confidence in his newly raised troops. Despite greatly outnumbering Caesar, who only had his Thirteenth Legion with him, Pompey did not intend to fight. Caesar pursued Pompey, hoping to capture him before his legions could escape. Pompey managed to escape before Caesar could capture him. Heading for Spain, Caesar left Italy under the control of Mark Antony. After an astonishing 27-day route-march, Caesar defeated Pompey's lieutenants, then returned east, to challenge Pompey in Greece where, in July 48 BC at Dyrrhachium, Caesar barely avoided a catastrophic defeat. In an exceedingly short engagement later that year, he decisively defeated Pompey at Pharsalus. bust of Cleopatra VII. In Rome, Caesar was appointed dictator, with Mark Antony as his Master of the Horse (second in command); Caesar presided over his own election to a second consulship and then, after eleven days, resigned this dictatorship. Caesar then pursued Pompey to Egypt, arriving soon after the murder of the general. There Caesar was presented with Pompey's severed head and seal-ring, receiving these with tears. He then had Pompey's assassins put to death. Caesar then became involved with an Egyptian civil war between the child pharaoh and his sister, wife, and co-regent queen, Cleopatra. Perhaps as a result of the pharaoh's role in Pompey's murder, Caesar sided with Cleopatra. He withstood the Siege of Alexandria and later he defeated the pharaoh's forces at the Battle of the Nile in 47 BC and installed Cleopatra as ruler. Caesar and Cleopatra celebrated their victory with a triumphal procession on the Nile in the spring of 47 BC. The royal barge was accompanied by 400 additional ships, and Caesar was introduced to the luxurious lifestyle of the Egyptian pharaohs. Caesar and Cleopatra never married, as Roman law recognized marriages only between two Roman citizens. Caesar continued his relationship with Cleopatra throughout his last marriage, which lasted fourteen years – in Roman eyes, this did not constitute adultery – and may have fathered a son called Caesarion. Cleopatra visited Rome on more than one occasion, residing in Caesar's villa just outside Rome across the Tiber. Late in 48 BC, Caesar was again appointed Dictator, with a term of one year. After spending the first months of 47 BC in Egypt, Caesar went to the Middle East, where he annihilated the king of Pontus; his victory was so swift and complete that he mocked Pompey's previous victories over such poor enemies. On his way to Pontus, Caesar visited from 27 to 29 May 47 BC, (25–27 Maygreg.) Tarsus, where he met enthusiastic support, but where, according to Cicero, Cassius was planning to kill him at this point. Thence, he proceeded to Africa to deal with the remnants of Pompey's senatorial supporters. He quickly gained a significant victory in 46 BC over Cato, who then committed suicide. After this victory, he was appointed Dictator for ten years. Pompey's sons escaped to Spain; Caesar gave chase and defeated the last remnants of opposition in the Battle of Munda in March 45 BC. During this time, Caesar was elected to his third and fourth terms as consul in 46 BC and 45 BC (this last time without a colleague). Dictatorship and assassination While he was still campaigning in Spain, the Senate began bestowing honors on Caesar. Caesar had not proscribed his enemies, instead pardoning almost all, and there was no serious public opposition to him. Great games and celebrations were held in April to honor Caesar's victory at Munda. Plutarch writes that many Romans found the triumph held following Caesar's victory to be in poor taste, as those defeated in the civil war had not been foreigners, but instead fellow Romans. On Caesar's return to Italy in September 45 BC, he filed his will, naming his grandnephew Gaius Octavius (Octavian) as his principal heir, leaving his vast estate and property including his name. Caesar also wrote that if Octavian died before Caesar did, Decimus Junius Brutus would be the next heir in succession. In his will he also left a substantial gift to the citizens of Rome. During his early career, Caesar had seen how chaotic and dysfunctional the Roman Republic had become. The republican machinery had broken down under the weight of imperialism, the central government had become powerless, the provinces had been transformed into independent principalities under the absolute control of their governors, and the army had replaced the constitution as the means of accomplishing political goals. With a weak central government, political corruption had spiraled out of control, and the status quo had been maintained by a corrupt aristocracy, which saw no need to change a system that had made its members rich. Between his crossing of the Rubicon River in 49 BC, and his assassination in 44 BC, Caesar established a new constitution, which was intended to accomplish three separate goals. First, he wanted to suppress all armed resistance out in the provinces, and thus bring order back to the empire. Second, he wanted to create a strong central government in Rome. Finally, he wanted to knit together the entire empire into a single cohesive unit.The first goal was accomplished when Caesar defeated Pompey and his supporters. To accomplish the other two goals, he needed to ensure that his control over the government was undisputed, and so he assumed these powers by increasing his own authority, and by decreasing the authority of Rome's other political institutions. Finally, he enacted a series of reforms that were meant to address several long neglected issues, the most important of which was his reform of the calendar. Dictatorship  When Caesar returned to Rome, the Senate granted him triumphs for his victories, ostensibly those over Gaul, Egypt, Pharnaces and Juba, rather than over his Roman opponents. Not everything went Caesar's way. When Arsinoe IV, Egypt's former queen, was paraded in chains, the spectators admired her dignified bearing and were moved to pity. Triumphal games were held, with beast-hunts involving 400 lions, and gladiator contests. A naval battle was held on a flooded basin at the Field of Mars. At the Circus Maximus, two armies of war captives, each of 2,000 people, 200 horse and 20 elephants, fought to the death. Again, some bystanders complained, this time at Caesar's wasteful extravagance. A riot broke out, and only stopped when Caesar had two rioters sacrificed by the priests on the Field of Mars.After the triumph, Caesar set out to pass an ambitious legislative agenda. He ordered a census be taken, which forced a reduction in the grain dole, and that jurors could only come from the Senate or the equestrian ranks. He passed a sumptuary law that restricted the purchase of certain luxuries. After this, he passed a law that rewarded families for having many children, to speed up the repopulation of Italy. Then he outlawed professional guilds, except those of ancient foundation, since many of these were subversive political clubs. He then passed a term limit law applicable to governors. He passed a debt restructuring law, which ultimately eliminated about a fourth of all debts owed. The Forum of Caesar, with its Temple of Venus Genetrix, was then built, among many other public works. Caesar also tightly regulated the purchase of state-subsidised grain and reduced the number of recipients to a fixed number, all of whom were entered into a special register. From 47 to 44 BC he made plans for the distribution of land to about 15,000 of his veterans.The most important change, however, was his reform of the calendar. The calendar was then regulated by the movement of the moon, and this had left the calendar in a mess. Caesar replaced this calendar with the Egyptian calendar, which was regulated by the sun. He set the length of the year to 365.25 days by adding an intercalary/leap day at the end of February every fourth year. To bring the calendar into alignment with the seasons, he decreed that three extra months be inserted into 46 BC (the ordinary intercalary month at the end of February, and two extra months after November). Thus, the Julian calendar opened on 1 January 45 BC. This calendar is almost identical to the current Western calendar. Shortly before his assassination, he passed a few more reforms. He established a police force, appointed officials to carry out his land reforms, and ordered the rebuilding of Carthage and Corinth. He also extended Latin rights throughout the Roman world, and then abolished the tax system and reverted to the earlier version that allowed cities to collect tribute however they wanted, rather than needing Roman intermediaries. His assassination prevented further and larger schemes, which included the construction of an unprecedented temple to Mars, a huge theater, and a library on the scale of the Library of Alexandria. He also wanted to convert Ostia to a major port, and cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Militarily, he wanted to conquer the Dacians and Parthians, and avenge the loss at Carrhae. Thus he instituted a massive mobilization. Shortly before his assassination, the Senate named him censor for life and Father of the Fatherland, and the month of Quintilis was renamed July in his honor. He was granted further honors, which were later used to justify his assassination as a would-be divine monarch: coins were issued bearing his image and his statue was placed next to those of the kings. He was granted a golden chair in the Senate, was allowed to wear triumphal dress whenever he chose, and was offered a form of semi-official or popular cult, with Mark Antony as his high priest. Political reforms Main article: Constitutional Reforms of Julius Caesar  The history of Caesar's political appointments is complex and uncertain. Caesar held both the dictatorship and the tribunate, but alternated between the consulship and the Proconsulship. His powers within the state seem to have rested upon these magistracies. He was first appointed dictator in 49 BC possibly to preside over elections, but resigned his dictatorship within eleven days. In 48 BC, he was re-appointed dictator, only this time for an indefinite period, and in 46 BC, he was appointed dictator for ten years. In February 44 BC, one month before his assassination, he was appointed dictator for life. Under Caesar, a significant amount of authority was vested in his lieutenants, mostly because Caesar was frequently out of Italy. In October 45 BC, Caesar resigned his position as sole consul, and facilitated the election of two successors for the remainder of the year which theoretically restored the ordinary consulship, since the constitution did not recognize a single consul without a colleague. In 48 BC, Caesar was given permanent tribunician powers, which made his person sacrosanct and allowed him to veto the Senate,  although on at least one occasion, tribunes did attempt to obstruct him. The offending tribunes in this case were brought before the Senate and divested of their office. This was not the first time that Caesar had violated a tribune's sacrosanctity. After he had first marched on Rome in 49 BC, he forcibly opened the treasury although a tribune had the seal placed on it. After the impeachment of the two obstructive tribunes, Caesar, perhaps unsurprisingly, faced no further opposition from other members of the Tribunician College. Denarius (42 BC) issued by Cassius Longinus and Lentulus Spinther, depicting the crowned head of Liberty and on the reverse a sacrificial jug and lituus, from the military mint in Smyrna.  In 46 BC, Caesar gave himself the title of "Prefect of the Morals", which was an office that was new only in name, as its powers were identical to those of the censors. Thus, he could hold censorial powers, while technically not subjecting himself to the same checks that the ordinary censors were subject to, and he used these powers to fill the Senate with his own partisans. He also set the precedent, which his imperial successors followed, of requiring the Senate to bestow various titles and honors upon him. He was, for example, given the title of "Father of the Fatherland" and "imperator". Coins bore his likeness, and he was given the right to speak first during senate meetings. Caesar then increased the number of magistrates who were elected each year, which created a large pool of experienced magistrates, and allowed Caesar to reward his supporters. Caesar even took steps to transform Italy into a province, and to link more tightly the other provinces of the empire into a single cohesive unit. This addressed the underlying problem that had caused the Social War decades earlier, where individuals outside Rome and Italy were not considered "Roman", and thus were not given full citizenship rights. This process, of fusing the entire Roman Empire into a single unit, rather than maintaining it as a network of unequal principalities, would ultimately be completed by Caesar's successor, the emperor Augustus. When Caesar returned to Rome in 47 BC, the ranks of the Senate had been severely depleted, and so he used his censorial powers to appoint many new senators, which eventually raised the Senate's membership to 900. All the appointments were of his own partisans, which robbed the senatorial aristocracy of its prestige, and made the Senate increasingly subservient to him. To minimize the risk that another general might attempt to challenge him, Caesar passed a law that subjected governors to term limits. Near the end of his life, Caesar began to prepare for a war against the Parthian Empire. Since his absence from Rome might limit his ability to install his own consuls, he passed a law which allowed him to appoint all magistrates in 43 BC, and all consuls and tribunes in 42 BC. This, in effect, transformed the magistrates from being representatives of the people to being representatives of the dictator. Assassination  On the Ides of March (15 March; see Roman calendar) of 44 BC, Caesar was due to appear at a session of the Senate. Mark Antony, having vaguely learned of the plot the night before from a terrified Liberator named Servilius Casca, and fearing the worst, went to head Caesar off. The plotters, however, had anticipated this and, fearing that Antony would come to Caesar's aid, had arranged for Trebonius to intercept him just as he approached the portico of Theatre of Pompey, where the session was to be held, and detain him outside. (Plutarch, however, assigns this action to delay Antony to Brutus Albinus). When he heard the commotion from the senate chamber, Antony fled. According to Plutarch, as Caesar arrived at the Senate, Tillius Cimber presented him with a petition to recall his exiled brother. The other conspirators crowded round to offer support. Both Plutarch and Suetonius say that Caesar waved him away, but Cimber grabbed his shoulders and pulled down Caesar's tunic. Caesar then cried to Cimber, "Why, this is violence!" ("Ista quidem vis est!")._the senators encircle Caesar. A 19th-century interpretation of the event by Carl Theodor von Piloty.  At the same time, Casca produced his dagger and made a glancing thrust at the dictator's neck. Caesar turned around quickly and caught Casca by the arm. According to Plutarch, he said in Latin, "Casca, you villain, what are you doing?" Casca,  frightened, shouted, "Help, brother!" in Greek ( "adelphe, boethei"). Within moments, the entire group, including Brutus, was striking out at the dictator. Caesar attempted to get away, but, blinded by blood, he tripped and fell; the men continued stabbing him as he lay defenceless on the lower steps of the portico. According to Eutropius, around 60 or more men participated in the assassination. He was stabbed 23 times. According to Suetonius, a physician later established that only one wound, the second one to his chest, had been lethal. The dictator's last words are not known with certainty, and are a contested subject among scholars and historians alike. Suetonius reports that others have said Caesar's last words were the Greek phrase  (transliterated as "Kai su, teknon?": "You too, child?" in English). However, for himself, Suetonius says Caesar said nothing. Plutarch also reports that Caesar said nothing, pulling his toga over his head when he saw Brutus among the conspirators. The version best known in the English-speaking world is the Latin phrase "Et tu, Brute?" ("And you, Brutus?", this derives from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, where it actually forms the first half of a macaronic line: "Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar." It has no basis in historical fact and Shakespeare's use of Latin here is not from any assertion that Caesar would have been using the language, rather than the Greek reported by Suetonius, but because the phrase was already popular when the play was written. According to Plutarch, after the assassination, Brutus stepped forward as if to say something to his fellow senators; they, however, fled the building.  Brutus and his companions then marched to the Capitol while crying out to their beloved city: "People of Rome, we are once again free!" They were met with silence, as the citizens of Rome had locked themselves inside their houses as soon as the rumor of what had taken place had begun to spread. Caesar's dead body lay where it fell on the Senate floor for nearly three hours before other officials arrived to remove it. Caesar's body was cremated, and on the site of his cremation the Temple of Caesar was erected a few years later (at the east side of the main square of the Roman Forum). Only its altar now remains. A lifesize wax statue of Caesar was later erected in the forum displaying the 23 stab wounds. A crowd who had gathered there started a fire, which badly damaged the forum and neighboring buildings. In the ensuing chaos Mark Antony, Octavian (later Augustus Caesar), and others fought a series of five civil wars, which would end in the formation of the Roman Empire. Aftermath of the assassination The result unforeseen by the assassins was that Caesar's death precipitated the end of the Roman Republic. The Roman middle and lower classes, with whom Caesar was immensely popular and had been since before Gaul, became enraged that a small group of aristocrats had killed their champion. Antony, who had been drifting apart from Caesar, capitalised on the grief of the Roman mob and threatened to unleash them on the Optimates, perhaps with the intent of taking control of Rome himself. To his surprise and chagrin, Caesar had named his grandnephew Gaius Octavian his sole heir, bequeathing him the immensely potent Caesar name and making him one of the wealthiest citizens in the Republic. The crowd at the funeral boiled over, throwing dry branches, furniture and even clothing on to Caesar's funeral pyre, causing the flames to spin out of control, seriously damaging the Forum. The mob then attacked the houses of Brutus and Cassius, where they were repelled only with considerable difficulty, ultimately providing the spark for the Liberators' civil war, fulfilling at least in part Antony's threat against the aristocrats. Antony did not foresee the ultimate outcome of the next series of civil wars, particularly with regard to Caesar's adopted heir. Octavian, aged only 18 when Caesar died, proved to have considerable political skills, and while Antony dealt with Decimus Brutus in the first round of the new civil wars, Octavian consolidated his tenuous position.
        To combat Brutus and Cassius, who were massing an enormous army in Greece, Antony needed soldiers, the cash from Caesar's war chests, and the legitimacy that Caesar's name would provide for any action he took against them. With the passage of the lex Titia on 27 November 43 BC, the Second Triumvirate was officially formed, composed of Antony, Octavian, and Caesar's loyal cavalry commander Lepidus. It formally deified Caesar as Divus Iulius in 42 BC, and Caesar Octavian henceforth became Divi filius ("Son of a god"). Because Caesar's clemency had resulted in his murder, the Second Triumvirate reinstated the practice of proscription, abandoned since Sulla. It engaged in the legally sanctioned murder of a large number of its opponents to secure funding for its forty-five legions in the second civil war against Brutus and Cassius. Antony and Octavius defeated them at Philippi. Octavianus, Caesar's adopted heir.  Afterward, Mark Antony formed an alliance with Caesar's lover, Cleopatra, intending to use the fabulously wealthy Egypt as a base to dominate Rome. A third civil war broke out between Octavian on one hand and Antony and Cleopatra on the other. This final civil war, culminating in the latter's defeat at Actium, resulted in the permanent ascendancy of Octavian, who became the first Roman emperor, under the name Caesar Augustus, a name that raised him to the status of a deity. Julius Caesar had been preparing to invade Parthia, the Caucasus and Scythia, and then march back to Germania through Eastern Europe. These plans were thwarted by his assassination.  His successors did attempt the conquests of Parthia and Germania, but without lasting results. Deification Divus Julius and Caesar's Comet  Julius Caesar was the first historical Roman to be officially deified. He was posthumously granted the title Divus Iulius or Divus Julius (the divine Julius or the deified Julius) by decree of the Roman Senate on 1 January 42 BC. The appearance of a comet during games in his honour was taken as confirmation of his divinity. Though his temple was not dedicated until after his death, he may have received divine honors during his lifetime: and shortly before his assassination, Mark Antony had been appointed as his flamen (priest).  Both Octavian and Mark Antony promoted the cult of Divus Iulius. After the death of Antony, Octavian, as the adoptive son of Caesar, assumed the title of Divi Filius (son of a god). Personal life Health and physical appearance Based on remarks by Plutarch, Caesar is sometimes thought to have suffered from epilepsy. Modern scholarship is "sharply divided" on the subject, and some scholars believe that he was plagued by malaria, particularly during the Sullan proscriptions of the 80s. Despite the commonly held belief that Caesar suffered from epilepsy, several specialists in headache medicine believe that a more accurate diagnosis would be migraine headache. Other scholars contend his epileptic seizures were due to a parasitic infection in the brain by a tapeworm. Caesar had four documented episodes of what may have been complex partial seizures. He may additionally have had absence seizures in his youth. The earliest accounts of these seizures were made by the biographer Suetonius, who was born after Caesar died. The claim of epilepsy is countered among some medical historians by a claim of hypoglycemia, which can cause epileptoid seizures. In 2003, psychiatrist Harbour F. Hodder published what he termed as the "Caesar Complex" theory, arguing that Caesar was a sufferer of temporal lobe epilepsy and the debilitating symptoms of the condition were a factor in Caesar's conscious decision to forgo personal safety in the days leading up to his assassination. A line from Shakespeare has sometimes been taken to mean that he was deaf in one ear: Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf. No classical source mentions hearing impairment in connection with Caesar. The playwright may have been making metaphorical use of a passage in Plutarch that does not refer to deafness at all, but rather to a gesture Alexander of Macedon customarily made. By covering his ear, Alexander indicated that he had turned his attention from an accusation in order to hear the defense. The Roman historian Suetonius describes Caesar as "tall of stature with a fair complexion, shapely limbs, a somewhat full face, and keen black eyes." Name and family  Main articles: Etymology of the name of Julius Caesar and Julio-Claudian family tree  Using the Latin alphabet as it existed in the day of Caesar (i.e., without lower case letters, "J", or "U"), Caesar's name would be rendered "GAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR"; the form "CAIVS" is also attested, using the old Roman representation of G by C; it is an antique form of the more common "GAIVS". The standard abbreviation was, and this is not archaic, "C. IVLIVS CAESAR". (The letterform "Æ" is a ligature, which is often encountered in Latin inscriptions where it was used to save space, and is nothing more than the letters "ae".) In Classical Latin, it was pronounced kajsar. In the days of the late Roman Republic, many historical writings were done in Greek, a language most educated Romans studied. Young wealthy Roman boys were often taught by Greek slaves and sometimes sent to Athens for advanced training, as was Caesar's principal assassin, Brutus. In Greek, during Caesar's time, his family name was written , reflecting its contemporary pronunciation. Thus, his name is pronounced in a similar way to the pronunciation of the German Kaiser. In Vulgar Latin, the plosive /k/ before front vowels began, due to palatalization, to be pronounced as an affricate – hence renderings like [?t?e?sar] in Italian and [?tse?sar] in German regional pronunciations of Latin, as well as the title of Tsar. With the evolution of the Romance languages, the affricate [ts] became a fricative [s] (thus, [?se?sar]) in many regional pronunciations, including the French one, from which the modern English pronunciation is derived. The original /k/ is preserved in Norse mythology, where he is manifested as the legendary king Kjárr. Caesar's cognomen would itself become a title; it was greatly promulgated by the Bible, by the famous verse "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's". The title became the German Kaiser and Slavic Tsar/Czar. The last tsar in nominal power was Simeon II of Bulgaria whose reign ended in 1946; for two thousand years after Julius Caesar's assassination, there was at least one head of state bearing his name. Parents Father Gaius Julius Caesar the Elder  Mother Aurelia (related to the Aurelii Cottae) Sisters Julia Caesaris "Major" (the elder)  Julia Caesaris "Minor" (the younger) Wives First marriage to Cornelia Cinnilla, from 83 BC until her death in 69 or 68 BC Second marriage to Pompeia, from 67 BC until he divorced her around 61 BC  Third marriage to Calpurnia Pisonis, from 59 BC until Caesar's death Children Cleopatra and her son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion at the Temple of Dendera.  Julia with Cornelia Cinnilla, born in 83 or 82 BC  Caesarion, with Cleopatra VII, born 47 BC. He was killed at age 17 by Caesar's adopted son Octavianus.  adopted: Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, his great-nephew by blood, who later became Emperor Augustus.  Marcus Junius Brutus: The historian Plutarch notes that Caesar believed Brutus to have been his illegitimate son, as his mother Servilia had been Caesar's lover during their youth. Grandchildren Grandson from Julia and Pompey, dead at several days, unnamed. Lovers Cleopatra VII mother of Caesarion  Servilia Caepionis mother of Brutus  Eunoë, queen of Mauretania and wife of Bogudes Notable relatives Gaius Marius (married to his Aunt Julia)  Mark Antony  Lucius Julius Caesar  Julius Sabinus, a Gaul of the Lingones at the time of the Batavian rebellion of AD 69, claimed to be the great-grandson of Caesar on the grounds that his great-grandmother had been Caesar's lover during the Gallic war. Political rumors Roman society viewed the passive role during sexual activity, regardless of gender, to be a sign of submission or inferiority. Indeed, Suetonius says that in Caesar's Gallic triumph, his soldiers sang that, "Caesar may have conquered the Gauls, but Nicomedes conquered Caesar." According to Cicero, Bibulus, Gaius Memmius, and others (mainly Caesar's enemies), he had an affair with Nicomedes IV of Bithynia early in his career. The tales were repeated, referring to Caesar as the Queen of Bithynia, by some Roman politicians as a way to humiliate him. It is very likely that the rumors were spread only as a form of character assassination; Caesar himself denied the accusations repeatedly throughout his lifetime, and according to Cassius Dio, even under oath on one occasion. This form of slander was popular during this time in the Roman Republic to demean and discredit political opponents. A favorite tactic used by the opposition was to accuse a popular political rival as living a Hellenistic lifestyle based on Greek and Eastern culture, where homosexuality and a lavish lifestyle were more acceptable than in Roman tradition. Catullus wrote two poems suggesting that Caesar and his engineer Mamurra were lovers, but later apologised. Mark Antony charged that Octavian had earned his adoption by Caesar through sexual favors. Suetonius described Antony's accusation of an affair with Octavian as political slander. Octavian eventually became the first Roman Emperor. Literary works During his lifetime, Caesar was regarded as one of the best orators and prose authors in Latin—even Cicero spoke highly of Caesar's rhetoric and style.  Only Caesar's war commentaries have survived. A few sentences from other works are quoted by other authors. Among his lost works are his funeral oration for his paternal aunt Julia and his Anticato, a document written to defame Cato in response to Cicero's published praise. Poems by Julius Caesar are also mentioned in ancient sources.

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        58-51    ROME. Caesar's conquest of Gaul        The first enemy he encountered was the Helveti, now Switzerland. Then he was faced with the Suebi led by Ariovistus. Finally after a long fight against the Belgae, Gaul was conquered and declared a Roman province. Celebrations in Rome lasted fifteen days. Caesar later carried out an expion to the Rhine to subdue Germanic tribes, and in 54 he landed in Britain
.58     and 50 BC BRITAIN and invaded Britain in Julius Caesar conquered Gaul

55     & 54 BCJulius Caesar raids Britain In his account of his two raids Caesar notes scornfully that the Britons still used sword blades as currency. However a number of the Celtic tribes had begun to mint their own coins of gold, silver, bronze and potin  (alloys of copper and tin). or 54 BC,BRITAIN thereby bringing the island into close contact with the  Roman world. Caesar's description of Britain at the time of his invasions is the first coherent account extant. BC ENGLAND.Julius Caesar invaded southern Britain in 55 and 54 BC and wrote in De Bello Gallico that the population of southern Britannia was extremely large and shared much in common with the Belgae of the Low Countries. Coin evidence and the work of later Roman historians have provided the names of some of the rulers of the disparate tribes and their machinations in what was Britannia. Until the Roman Conquest of Britain, Britain's British population was relatively stable, and by the time of Julius Caesar's first invasion, the British population of what wasold Britain was speaking a Celtic language generally thought to be the forerunner of the modern Brythonic languages. After Julius Caesar abandoned Britain, it fell back into the hands of the Britons.The Romans began their second conquest of Britain in 43 AD, during the reign of Claudius. They annexed the whole of modern England and Wales over the next forty years and periodically extended their control over much of lowland Scotland.Post Roman Britain

    54-51    ROME. Revolt of Gauls against Romans
        Gaul was far from subdued. Wide scale uprisings broke out. The initiators were the Arverni led by Vercingetorix. Caesar had only 60,000 against 300,000. Caesar's maneuvering, organizational and military leadership and diplomacy helped by a feud in the ranks of the insurgent army enabled the Romans to emerge victorious. Caesar subjugated 300 tribes, took 800 towns by storm and took a million prisoners. The booty was so overwhelming that the price of gold dropped and it was sold by the pound. Caesar's popularity swelled. After Caesars term in office had expired, he was required to disband his legions, and this he refused to do. The Senate instructed Pompey to raise an army against him. Caesar did not waste time waiting for Pompey. He crossed the Rubicon (the boundary between Caesar's territory and Italy) with the words "the die is cast". Northern Italy put up little resistance. Pompey took refuge in the Balkans. He was followed by a large number of Senators. Caesar entered Rome without resistance. From there he set off for Spain where there were seven legions loyal to Pompey. Caesar defeated them and crossed over to the Balkans. The decisive battle against Pompey was fought near Pharsalus. Pompey's army was defeated and he fled to AFRICA where he was eventually murdered.  Caesar followed Pompey into AFRICA. He interfered in local affairs and state intrigues, coming to the aid of Queen Cleopatra against her brother. This led to an outbreak in Alexandria which he was hard put to suppress. After that Caesar was obliged to move east against Pahrnaces, son of Mithridates. Caesar brought that campaign to a conclusion in five days, when he sent his message to the Senate "veni, vidi vici". Pompey's remaining forces were now in Africa under Cato the Younger. Near Tunis Cato's army was routed once and for all and he committed suicide. After subduing Numidia, Caesar returned to Rome where lavish celebrations were held in honor of his victories over Gaul, AFRICA, Pontus and Numidia. It remained to fight Pompey'sons, but the civil war was finally over in 45.

54    -53    ROME.    Campaign of Crassus against Persians

53    IRAN. During Parthian, and later Sassanid era, trade on the Silk Road was significant factor in the development of the great civilizations of China,Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Indian subcontinent, and Rome, and helped to lay the foundations for the modern world. Parthian remains display classically Greek influences in some instances and retain their oriental mode in others, a clear expression of "the cultural diversity that characterized Parthian art and life".[33] The Parthians were innovators of many architecture designs such as that of Ctesiphon, which later on "influenced European Romanesque architecture". Fourth Iranian Empire: Sassanid Empire The Sassanid Empire at its greatest extent under Khosrau II, superimposed over modern borders.The end of the Parthian Empire came in 224 CE, when the empire was loosely organized and the last king was defeated by Ardashir I, one of the empire's vassals. Ardashir I then went on to create the Sassanid Empire. Soon he started reforming the country both economically and militarily.Bust of Shapur II the Great displays the craftsmanship commanded by Sassanid artisans.The Sassanids established an empire roughly within the frontiers achieved by the Achaemenids, referring to it as Erânshahr (or Iranshahr, "Dominion of the Aryans", i.e. of Iranians), with their capital at Ctesiphon.During their reign, Sassanid battles with the Roman Empire caused such pessimism in Rome that the historian Cassius Dio wrote: "Here was a source of great fear to us. So formidable does the Sassanid   king seem to our eastern legions, that some are liable to go over to him,   and others are unwilling to fight at all."The Romans suffered repeated losses particularly by Ardashir I, Shapur I, and Shapur II.[Under the Sassanids, Persia expanded relations with China, the arts, music, and architecture greatly flourished, and centers such as the School of Nisibis and Academy of Gundishapur became world renowned centers of science and scholarship.After roughly six hundred years of confrontation and rivalry with the Roman Empire, raids from the Arab peninsula began attacking the Sassanin and Byzantine frontiers in which a war-exhausted Persia was defeated in the Battle of al-Qâdisiyah, paving way for the Islamic conquest of Persia.

50    The tiny skeleton of a sacrificial dog is unearthed at the Silchester dig.By the gap in a hedge bordering the entrance off a muddy lane in Hampshire, the young diggers on one of the most fascinating archaeological sites in Britain have made a herb garden: four small square plots. The sudden blast of sunshine after months of heavy rain has brought everything into bloom, and there's a heady scent of curry plant and dill, marigold and mint.Many of the plant seeds are familiar from Roman sites across Britain, as the invaders brought the flavours and the medical remedies of the Mediterranean to their wind-blasted and sodden new territory, but there is something extraordinary about the seeds from the abandoned Iron Age and Roman town of Silchester.The excavation run every summer by Dr Amanda Clarke and Professor Michael Fulford of the archaeology department at Reading University, using hundreds of volunteer students, amateurs and professionals, now in its 15th season, is rewriting British history. The banal seeds are astonishing because many came from a level dating to a  century before the Romans. More evidence is emerging every day, and it is clear  that from around 50BC the Iron Age Atrebates tribe, whose name survived in the  Latin Calleva Atrebatum, the wooded place of the Atrebates, enjoyed a lifestyle  that would have been completely familiar to the Romans when they arrived in  AD43. Their diet would also be quite familiar to many in 21st-century Britain. The  people ate shellfish – previously thought to have been eaten only in coastal  settlements – as well as cows, sheep, pigs, domesticated birds such as chicken  and geese as well as wild fowl, and wheat, apples, blackberries, cherries and  plums. They ate off plates, again previously thought a finicky Roman  introduction, and flavoured their food with poppy seed, coriander, dill, fennel,  onion and celery. They had lashings of wine, imported not just in clay amphorae  but in massive barrels, and olive oil. And they had olives. One tiny shrub in the herb garden represents the recent  discovery, news of which went round the world: a single battered, charred olive  stone excavated from the depths of a well, the earliest ever found in Britain.  All the Atrebates needed for the perfect pizza was tomatoes to arrive from the  new world. They had other luxury imports, too: glass jugs and drinking glasses, gold from Ireland, bronze jewellery and weapons from the continent, beautiful delicate pottery from Germany and France.They also had town planning, another presumed later introduction. The Romans were undoubtedly better road engineers; in the torrential rain earlier this summer, their broad north-south road, built with a camber and drainage ditches, stayed dry, while the Iron Age road turned into a swampy river. But the evidence is unarguable: the Iron Age people lived in regular house plots flanking broad gravelled roads, aligned with the sunrises and sunsets of the summer and winter solstices, in a major town a century earlier than anyone had believed.They feared gods who demanded sacrifices as startling as anything in a gothic novel. Ravens have been found buried across the site, as well as dozens of dog burials, not just slung into a well or cesspit but carefully buried, often with other objects, one with the body of an infant, one standing up as if on guard for 2,000 years. Another tiny skeleton, no bigger than a celebrity's handbag dog, was one of a handful ever found in Europe from such an early date: the evidence suggests it lived for up to three years, and was then laid curled as if asleep into the foundations of a house. Only last Friday the skeleton of a cat turned up, carefully packed into a clay jar. Part of a folding knife carved in exquisite detail from elephant ivory and found at Silchester. A unique folding knife showing two dogs mating, another fabulously expensive import, was also deliberately buried."We are only just beginning to get a handle on all this, as our excavation is really the first ever major modern exposure of a late Iron Age town in Britain, and we still have a long way to go," says Fulford, who has been digging at Silchester since he was a junior lecturer in the 1970s, and expects the work to continue long after his day.Fulford spends the winters brooding on each summer's finds, and has reached the conclusion, startling even to him, that the town was at its height of population and wealth before the Romans arrived.He believes it was founded around 50BC by Commius, an Atrobates leader once a trusted ally of Julius Caesar, who then joined an unsuccessful rebellion against him and had to leave Gaul sharpish. Whether Commius headed for an existing Atrobates settlement at Silchester, or started to build on a greenfield site, a defensible hill with excellent views, near the navigable Kennet and Thames, is, Fulford suggests, "a million-dollar question – why here?" They have found nothing earlier than 50BC – yet.Commius's town flourished, trading across Britain, Ireland and both Roman and Iron Age tribal Europe. The Callevans paid for their luxuries with exports of metalwork, wheat – the site is still surrounded by prime farm land, and there is evidence of grain-drying on an industrial scale – hunting dogs, and, almost certainly, slaves: British slaves and dogs were equally prized in continental Europe. They have also found evidence in little flayed bones for a more exotic craft industry, puppy-fur cloaks.Commius was succeeded by three quarrelsome sons – significantly dubbing themselves on coins as "rex" or king – who successively deposed one another. The third, Verica, was toppled by local tribes and made a move that would change the course of British history: he fled to Rome and asked for help – and in AD43 the Romans came.This summer the diggers are right down at the earliest Roman level, which suggests light, short-lived, possibly military buildings, in contrast with substantial pre-invasion structures including one massive rectangular house that may prove to be the largest Iron Age house in Britain. This week they are clearing a cesspit so neatly dug it must be military, so may soon know whether the Romans ate British wheat or Roman fish sauce.Within 20 years, large parts of the town were torched, possibly in Boudicca's rebellion of 60-61AD. More Roman buildings followed, including baths, temples, a forum market place and a huge basilica, but it would take another two centuries before the Atrebates street grid was wholly abandoned for the Roman compass points.People have been fascinated by Silchester for centuries: there are records of King John visiting in the 13th century, and an inscribed memorial stone was excavated in the 16th century. From the 1890s the Society of Antiquaries mounted a 20-year excavation that uncovered the heart of the Roman town (missing much beyond the reach of Victorian science) but in the 1860s and 70s the vicar of Stratfield Saye, the memorably named James Joyce, a passionate amateur antiquarian, had already conscripted local agricultural labourers as excavators, with the backing of his landlord, the Duke of Wellington.A bronze eagle found at Silchester 1866. Photograph: All Rights Reserved/Copyright Reading Museum (Reading Borough Council) Joyce recorded his finds in beautiful watercolours, including the wonderful bronze eagle he found on 6 October 1866, the single most famous from the site. He interpreted it as a regimental standard, the pride and honour of its men, wrenched from its post and buried to save it from whatever disaster came in the scorched layer overlying it. The find inspired Rosemary Sutcliffe's 1954 novel The Eagle of the Ninth, and last year's Hollywood movie The Eagle.Fulford believes the bird, though wonderful, is actually part of a monumental sculpture of a god or an emperor, which escaped being melted down when the great basilica became a scrapyard and workshop.The eagle is in a major gallery in Reading museum with wonderful finds from the site, but although the gallery was redisplayed only a few years ago, there is very little on the earliest years of Calleva Atrebatum: that story is only emerging from the ground now.Some time between the fifth and seventh centuries, it all ended. Arguments break out regularly among the diggers about what happened: with the foundation and the Romanisation of the town, it is the third great research question that the excavation was set up to answer.Jesse Coxey, a postgraduate archaeologist from Vancouver, who learned of the excavation while on a dig in Israel – "the folks there said you'd learn more in a fortnight at Silchester than in your entire degree course, and they were right" – still holds the traditional view that it was abandoned as the Roman empire began to disintegrate."I think the Romans just packed up and left – it was all falling apart, and if they didn't go then they'd be left behind. There might have been a few squatters afterwards, but basically that was it."Clarke, after supervising the excavation of two noisome wells every season, up to six metres deep, and usually sodden and stinking at the bottom, wonders if they didn't eventually just poison all their water sources. "We've been digging down through wells which became latrines over older wells and older latrines, layer upon layer. There must have been enormous problems with contaminated water on a site like this with no river. Maybe finally they just ran out of new places to dig wells."Whatever the cause, everyone left. They tumbled the walls of imposing civic buildings that had long since become workshops or cattle sheds, burying fine mosaic floors already scorched and cracked by fires lit directly on top of the subtle decoration. They filled in the wells. They may have cursed the site with ritual burials including pots symbolically "killed" by holes deliberately punched through them, so nobody else could live among the ruins.Windblown soil filled the ditches and covered the paved roads, grass grew over the forum and the temple courtyards, and the great Iron Age hall, where once a tiny dog far from the land where it was born yapped for its share of the coriander-flavoured stew, became a low mound in a green field. Only the jagged broken teeth of the Roman brick and flint walls remained above ground.Towns went on but Silchester didn't. The settlements reached by the Romans' main roads – Winchester, Dorchester, Cirencester, and Londinium far to the east – flourished. With the exception of one small medieval manor, now part of a farm, and the church of St Mary, which probably stands on a Roman temple, nobody ever built on or lived at Calleva Atrebatum to this day – except the archaeologists, who set up their tent city every summer, and resume the attempt to peel back the earth and time itself.   

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49     Just before Easter 1900, Greek spongefishers were on their way to the waters of Tunisia when a violent storm threw their boats to Antikythera, a tiny island located north of Crete in the Aegean.After the storm, the spongefishers explored the waters of Antikythera for sponges. One of the divers, Elias Stadiatis, discovered the remnants of an ancient ship full of statues -horses, men, women and vases.Of several treasures, the most preci­ous was a very small piece of metal with gears, which the archaeologists of the Nation­al Museum in Athens originally dubbed astrolabe, which in Greek means, "star catcher." Astrolabes helped figure out the position of the sun and the stars in the sky. Astrolabes were not complicated devices. However, the machine of Antikythera was complex and, eventually, Greek archaeologists renamed it the Antikythera Mechanism and dated it from 150 to 100 BCE.The shipwreck probab­ly happened in the middle of the first century BCE. The doomed Roman ship was sailing from Rhodes to Rome. It carried looted Greek treasure: more than 100 bronze and marble statues, amphorae and coins.One statue, the Antikythera Youth, is a bronze masterpiece of a naked young man from the fourth century BCE.

    49-45    Roman Civil War. Julius Caesar becomes dictator for life. There were no limits to his power. The Assembly carried out his every wish and state office were allotted according to his recommendations ROME. Caesar becomes dictator, introduces the Julian Calendar, again defeats Sextus in Spain. He adopts his nephew Gaius Octavius a s his heir. Caesar's despotism created dissatisfaction among the  senators. A conspiracy was organized against him and on March 15th, 44 Caesar was murdered in the senate, stabbed to death by a group led by Brutus and Cassius. 23 wounds were found on his body. . Unrest breaks out after Caesar's murder. Brutus and Cassius are obliged to flee Rome, leaving Mark Anthony virtual master of Rome. A new rival appears on the scene, Caesar's adopted son Octavian, who directs all his energies in skillful oratory against the new tyrant. The Senate commissions Octavian to take up arms against Mark Anthony, who is defeated. While the Senate is getting ready to celebrate its success, Octavian betrays them by coming to an agreement with Mark Anthony and Lepidus, and sets up the second Triumvirate


    48    LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA.DestructionAncient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the partial or complete destruction of the Library of Alexandria: Julius Caesar's Fire in The Alexandrian War, in 48 BC  The attack of Aurelian in the 3rd century AD; Caesar's conquest in 48 BCThe ancient accounts by Plutarch,[14] Aulus Gellius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and Orosius agree that Caesar accidentally burned the library down during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC.Plutarch's Parallel Lives, written at the end of the 1st or beginning of the 2nd century AD, describes a battle in which Caesar was forced to burn his own ships: "when the enemy endeavored to cut off his communication by sea, he was  forced to divert that danger by setting fire to his own ships, which,  after burning the docks, thence spread on and destroyed the great library.William Cherf argued that this scenario had all the ingredients of a firestorm and in turn set fire to the docks and then the library, destroying it. This would have occurred in 48 BC, during the fighting between Caesar and Ptolemy XIII. In the 2nd century AD, the Roman historian Aulus Gellius wrote in his book Attic Nights that the Royal Alexandrian Library was burned by mistake when some of Caesar's soldiers started a fire. Furthermore, in the 4th century, both the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus and the Christian historian Orosius wrote that the Bibliotheca Alexandrina had been destroyed by Caesar's fire. The anonymous author of the Alexandrian Wars writes that the fires Caesar's soldiers had set to burn the Egyptian navy in the port of Alexandria went as far as burning a store full of papyri located near the port.[16] However, the geographical study of the location of the historical Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the neighborhood of Bruchion suggests that this store cannot have been the Great Library.[17] It is most probable here that these historians confused the two Greek words bibliothekas, which means "set of books", with bibliotheka, which means library. As a result, they thought that what had been recorded earlier concerning the burning of some books stored near the port constituted the burning of the famous Alexandrian Library.In any case, whether the burned books were only some books found in storage or books found inside the library itself, the Roman stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65) refers to 40,000 books having been burnt at Alexandria.[18] During Marcus Antonius' rule of the eastern part of the Empire (40–30 BC), he plundered the second largest library in the world (that at Pergamon) and presented the collection as a gift to Cleopatra as a replacement for the books lost to Caesar's fire. Abaddi speaks to this story as anti-Antony propaganda, from Rome, to show his loyalty to Egypt.Theodore Vrettos describes the damage caused by the fire: "The Roman galleys carrying the Thirty-Seventh Legion from Asia Minor had now reached the Egyptian coast, but because of contrary winds, they were unable to proceed toward Alexandria. At anchor in the harbor off Lochias, the Egyptian fleet posed an additional problem for the Roman ships. However, in a surprise attack, Caesar's soldiers set fire to the Egyptian ships, and the flames, spreading rapidly in the driving wind, consumed most of the dockyard, many structures near the palace, and also several thousand books that were housed in one of the buildings. From this incident, historians mistakenly assumed that the Great Library of Alexandria had been destroyed, but the Library was nowhere near the docks... The most immediate damage occurred in the area around the docks, in shipyards, arsenals, and warehouses in which grain and books were stored. Some 40,000 book scrolls were destroyed in the fire. Not at all connected with the Great Library, they were account books and ledgers containing records of Alexandria's export goods bound for Rome and other cities throughout the world."[19]However, the Royal Alexandrian Library was not the only library located in the city. There were at least two other libraries in Alexandria: the library of the Serapeum Temple and the library of the Cesarion Temple. The continuity of literary and scientific life in Alexandria after the destruction of the Royal Library, as well as the flourishing of the city as the world's center for sciences and literature between the 1st and the 6th centuries AD, depended to a large extent on the presence of these two libraries and the books and references they contained. Thus, while it is historically recorded that the Royal Library was a private one for the royal family as well as for scientists and researchers, the libraries of the Serapeum and Cesarion temples were public libraries accessible to the people.Furthermore, while the Royal Library was founded by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the royal quarters of Bruchion near the palaces and the royal gardens, it was his son Ptolemy III who founded the Serapeum temple and its adjoined "Daughter" Library in the popular quarters of Rhakotis.


by Luciano Canfora (translated by Martin Ryle), University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989
One of the great flowerings of Western civilization sprang to life at the end of the 4th century B.C.  with the establishment of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.  Bearing the name of its illustrious founder, Alexander the Great, and laid out—as many ancient visitors described it—"like an emperor's cloak" sweeping down to the Egyptian seashore, the capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty soon became the cultural center of the Hellenistic world.
At the heart of the city's glory stood the Library and Museum of Alexandria.  Within the walls of this great complex, labeled by one Greek poet as "The Cage of the Muses" (hence the edifice's title of "museum"), the Ptolemies and their royal librarians managed to systematically collect, study, translate, and classify all the books of the ancient world.  The debt we owe to the Library and its creators and curators is immeasurable.  Similarly, the magnitude of the loss we have suffered through its mysterious destruction sometime between the first six centuries A.D.  is incalculable.
In The Vanished Library, Luciano Canfora combines the intellectual rigor of a historian with the narrative gifts of a novelist to resurrect the ancient splendors of the Library and Museum.  Dividing his fascinating work into two parts—the first a narrative history of the Library and the second an annotated bibliography of his sources—Canfora also lays out a carefully reasoned and provocative scenario to explain the mystery of the fire that destroyed the Library—a conflagration that has haunted Western culture for centuries.
Canfora begins his chronicle with an overview of the historical forerunners of the Library and Museum of Alexandria.  There are two, in particular, to which he draws our attention:  the Ramesseum in Thebes, which was the mausoleum of the Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II; and the Peripatos in Athens, which housed the Lyceum—the school founded by Aristotle.
Comparing ancient eyewitness accounts of the Library and the mausoleum of Rameses II, Canfora suggests that the Ramesseum served as the architectural model for the Museum complex.  Indeed, Canfora argues that the "two buildings ...  were identical."  Both contained a "covered walk" which "gave access to numerous rooms or chambers," including a "sacred library" in the Ramesseum.  Both opened onto a huge, circular, "sumptuous room with the triclinia or couches."  Finally, both buildings were "organized" around the Soma, or body, of a dead ruler.  "The Soma of Alexander [the Great]," says Canfora, "was to be found [within] the Museum ...  precincts, just as the Soma of Rameses was to be found [within] the hall in the Mausoleum."
But if the Museum owed its architectural legacy to an Egyptian pharaoh, the spiritual breath that created and sustained it was Greek.  Specifically, it was the breath of Aristotle, caught and molded into solid reality by the driving hand of Alexander the Great.
As Canfora reminds us, Alexander was born in the mid-4th century B.C.  into the royal house of Macedonia—at that time still a semi-barbaric, untamed cultural outpost in the minds of the heartland Greeks to the South.  His father, King Philip II, anxious to implant the refinements of high Hellenic culture within his borders, dared to invite Aristotle himself—appealing to the illustrious thinker's own origins as a native Macedonian son—to come back home and serve as the young Alexander's personal tutor.
Aristotle accepted; and, not surprisingly, by the time the Macedonian prince turned his hand to the conquest of the Middle East, the Hellenic vision, as embodied by Aristotle, had been burned into his blood.  At the core of Alexander's great campaigns blazed the ideal of a great, new, unified world order, enlightened throughout by the culture and language of Greece.  "Pray for a new heart among mankind," he told his generals; and the key to achieving that "new heart" lay in the establishment of new Hellenic cities and cultural centers throughout the lands of their conquest.
At Alexander's death in 323 B.C., the three generals who divided his empire among them retained this ardent—and shrewdly practical—vision.  In fact, Ptolemy, now designated as the new ruler of Egypt, eagerly commissioned another disciple of Aristotle—Demetrius, the ex-governor of Athens—to educate his own son at Alexandria.  And this son was to become Ptolemy II, the greatest ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and the founder of the Library and Museum.
Following Alexander's vision and Aristotle's personal example at the Preipatos in Athens, Demetrius and Ptolemy quickly expanded the scope of the Library collection, beginning with a series of "books on kingship and the exercise of power."  Canfora writes:  ... They had calculated that they must amass some five hundred thousand scrolls altogether [in order] to collect at Alexandria "the books of all the peoples of the world."  [Wherefore] Ptolemy composed a letter "to all the sovereigns and governors on earth" imploring them "not to hesitate to send him" works by authors of every kind:  "poets and prose-writers, rhetoricians and sophists, doctors and soothsayers, historians, and all the others too."  He gave orders that any books on board ships calling at Alexandria were to be copied:  the originals were to be kept, and the copies given to their owners.
In this way, Canfora observes, Ptolemy I and his successors quickly and purposefully built up a "Universal Library" of several hundred thousand scrolls.  Endlessly acquisitive and curious, the Ptolemies and their royal librarians continued throughout several centuries to enlarge the Library's collection.  In one project, for instance, the Library not only acquired all "the books of Jewish law," but also conducted a symposium in which "the Sages of Jerusalem" were invited to Alexandria to translate the Pentateuch into Greek.  All the while, the Museum's librarians made copies of the books and transcribed the rapidly deteriorating scrolls into book form.
As the Museum's collection grew, its curators undertook the operation of cataloguing and classifying all its holdings according to genres.  The result—the famous Catalogues of Callimachus—gives us a tantalizing glimpse of the Library's extensive collection:  Callimachus devoted six sections to poetry and five to prose:  his categories included epics, tragedies, comedies, historical works, works of medicine, rhetoric and law, and miscellaneous works.
Of these works, many had been produced at the Library itself.  The Greek geographer and historian Strabo, for example, wrote the Egyptian portions of his classic work Geography while he was a resident scholar at the Library.  Apollonius of Rhodes compiled the classic epic Jason and the Argonauts while serving as the royal Librarian.  In the field of literary scholarship, the Library and its staff amended and organized the Iliad and the Odyssey in the forms that we currently read them.  The day's most distinguished scholars lectured in its great hall.  In short, presided over by the ghost of Aristotle, the Library of Alexandria played a key role in conserving and shaping Western culture as we know it today.
It is easy to see, then, why the building's destruction, and the mystery surrounding it, have plagued the imagination of historians for some two millennia.  The most widely accepted historical accounts attribute the catastrophe to Julius Caesar—who, ironically, frequently attended lectures there.  According to Roman annals, during the Alexandrian war (48 to 47 B.C.) Caesar torched the Ptolemaic fleet which lay anchored in the city's harbor.  Ancient sources go on to report that the fire spread to the shipyards and then to the warehouses "in which 'grain and books' were stored."  The crucial question that then remains, of course, is whether these "forty thousand scrolls of excellent quality" were part of the Great Library.  Canfora thinks not.  Returning to his earlier discussion of the architectural resemblances between the Library and the Ramesseum, he notes that our uncertainty about the Library's location derives from the way we have come, over time, to define the word library.  The Latin-based -arium ending which gives us our English "libr-ary," does in fact denote either a "room" or "receptacle" (solarium, planetarium, etc.).  However, the etymological derivation of the word in the original Greek—and, for that matter, in Canfora's own Italian—bibliotheke translates instead to mean a "case," an "envelope," or a "shelf" rather than a room or building in which books are placed.  Canfora maintains, then, that the Alexandrian Library, like the "sacred library" of the Ramesseum, must have been a shelf or a series of shelves which ran part way round the circular walls of the inside of the Museum:  Since the treasures of the Museum cannot possibly have been outside the palace walls, let alone stored in the port alongside the grain depots, we need hardly stress that the scrolls which went up in flames were quite unconnected with the royal Library.
Canfora has another explanation for the forty thousand books that burned in the port warehouses.  He recalls that Seneca often attacked "the fashionable taste that led so many rich people [in Rome] to fill their houses with thousands of books, collected [not for study but] for the sake of mere ostentation."  So, he argues, the books that were destroyed might much more plausibly have been volumes waiting in storage for export to the personal libraries of wealthy Romans.  Moreover, Canfora observes that the resident Library scholar/historian Strabo, writing just twenty years after the port fire, makes no mention of the loss of any books from the Library.
Canfora proposes another theory to account for the Library's ultimate ruin—a demolition of the royal palace and its attached Museum that took place some 600 years later.  Using a history of the Islamic conquest of Alexandria in A.D.  641, he suggests that the Library's collection was burned on the orders of the Arab Caliph Omar.  Shortly after Omar's general, Emir Amrou Ibn el-Ass, had conquered Alexandria, he apparently wrote to Omar asking him what he should do about the city's extraordinary library.  After a delay of several weeks, Amrou received his answer from Omar:  "As for the books you mention, here is my reply.  If their content is in accordance with the book of Allah, we may do without them, for in that case the book of Allah more than suffices.  If, on the other hand, they contain matter not in accordance with the book of Allah, there can be no need to preserve them.  Proceed, then, and destroy them."
Canfora writes that Amrou, though greatly saddened by the Caliph's orders, then "set about his task of destruction":  The books were distributed to the public baths of Alexandria, where they were used to feed the stoves which kept the baths so comfortably warm.  [Islamic historian] Ibn al-Kifti writes that "the number of baths was well known, but I have forgotten it ...  They say," continues Ibn al-Kifti, "that it took six months to burn all that mass of material."
The only volumes spared, notes the Emir in his chronicle, were the works of Aristotle—whom the Arabs already knew and revered as an astronomer and logician from the days when his works were first made known to them by the Greek rulers of the Middle East after the conquests of Alexander the Great.
In the epilogue to his extraordinary history, Canfora attempts to contextualize the significance of the Library of Alexandria, noting that it was "the starting point and the prototype" of all libraries to come.  Because of the vast historicity of the Museum's collection and its irreplaceable nature, Canfora considers the wanton destruction of the majestic edifice at Alexandria especially lamentable:  The great concentrations of books, usually found in the centres of power, were the main victims of [the] ruinous attacks, sackings and fires ...  In consequence, what has come down to us is derived not from the great centres but from "marginal locations," such as convents, and from scattered private copies.


47    BC ANTIOCH. Julius Caesar visited it in 47 BC, and confirmed its
        freedom. A great temple to Jupiter Capitolinus rose on Silpius, probably at the insistence of Octavian, whose cause the city had espoused. A forum of Roman type was laid out. Tiberius built two long colonnades on the south towards Silpius. Agrippa and Tiberius enlarged the theatre, and Trajan finished their work. Antoninus Pius paved the great east to west artery with granite. A circus, other colonnades and great numbers of baths were built, and new aqueducts to supply them bore the names of Caesars, the finest being the work of Hadrian. The Roman client, King Herod, erected a long stoa on the east, and Agrippa encouraged the growth of a new suburb south of this.
         Julius Caesar  was not assassinated because he was a despot, as the common view holds, but because he was a reformer! Being a reformer who got ride of the policy of tax farming, which gave the job of tax collecting to persons outside government, instead rationalizing tax collection and reducing the tax bite. This was great for the common people, but not for the coalition that had put him in power -- the powerful "influentials and essentials" -- who ended up cutting him down -- literally


    46    Caesar returns to Rome with Cleopatra and crushes a mutiny by the tenth legion. Caesar defeats Pompey's son Sextus in Africa, which becomes part of a Roman province.

44-BC -  by  William Shakespeare(1564 - 1616)Type of work:Tragic dramaSetting: Rome; 44 B.C.Principal characters: Julius Caesar, popular Roman general and statesmanBrutus, a prominent and devout Roman, and close friend to CaesarCassius, a conspiring enemy of CaesarMarcus Antonius, Caesar's supporter, a brilliant politician STory Overview:Rome was in an uproar. General Julius Caesar had just returned after having defeated his rival, Pompey. His many military triumphs had made him the most powerful man in Rome. The commoners - blindly cheering whoever was in power - flocked into the streets to hail him. As Caesar passed through the city, a soothsayer caught his attention and called out: "Beware the Ides of March." But the general ignored the warning; he was too busy refusing the crown offered to him by his compatriot and fellow politician, Marcus Antonius. This humble denial of power fanned within the masses an even greater devotion to their beloved Caesar.Meanwhile, among the throng stood Cassius, Caesar's avowed political opponent, and Brutus, the general's personal friend. Envious of Caesar's growing popularity, Cassius probed to discover where Brutus' deepest sympathies lay. He voiced a concern he had: Caesar was becoming overly "ambitious." Unless something was done to check his fame, he would soon seize all power for himself. This could, effectively, turn the Roman Republic into a dictatorship. Cassius then apprised Brutus of a plot he had hatched: He and a band of other prominent Romans were planning to assassinate Caesar. Was Brutus willing to join in the conspiracy?Brutus admitted that he shared the same inner concern: "I do fear the people choose Caesar for their king." But still Brutus hesitated to involve himself in such a plot. After all, he dearly loved and admired Caesar. Even so, he couldn't deny that Caesar's rapid rise to power constituted a potential threat to the Republic. Brutus promised Cassius that he would consider the matter, but would withhold his decision until the following day.The dilemma weighed upon Brutus throughout the night: should he aid in the killing of his beloved friend Caesar, or should he sit by and watch as Caesar destroyed the State? The plotting band, hoping to gain the support of the highly respected Brutus, paid him an early morning visit. Referring to Caesar as an "immortal god," presenting false evidence of his intentions, and playing on Brutus' immense love for Rome, Cassius finally prevailed on him to help see to the man's death; Brutus agreed to take part in his friend's assassination, to "think of him as a serpent's egg, which, hatched, would as his kind, grow mischievous, and kill him in the shell." Assassination - a certain "righteous treason" - Brutus reluctantly decided, was justified under the circumstances.Caesar had announced that he would appear before a vast crowd at the Capitol the next morning - the Ides of March. There the conspirators planned to attack and dagger him to death.After an eery night, filled with reports of gaping graves and wandering ghosts throughout the city, Caesar set out early toward the Capitol, despite three separate warnings: an oracle, the self same soothsayer from before, and finally, his wife, Calpurnia, who experienced a violent and horrible dream, all prophesied that his life was in jeopardy. As predicted, while Caesar stood addressing the multitude, his conspirators surrounded him and stabbed him, one by one. As Brutus finally stepped forward to thrust his dagger into his friend's side, Caesar whispered, "Et tu, Brute?" ("You too, Brutus?"). The great general then fell dead from twenty-three knife wounds.The onlooking Romans were stunned and horrified, and Brutus immediately arranged for a public funeral where he could placate the masses by justifying the assassination. Then the conspirators bathed their hands in Caesar's blood and marched through the marketplace, brandishing their weapons over their heads, crying, "Peace, freedom, and liberty!"At the funeral, Brutus sought to convince the angry mourners why it was requisite that Caesar die. Despite his love for Caesar, he frankly and honestly felt that he had been forced to kill him in order to save Rome from dictatorship. "Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more," he began. As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There are tears, for his love; joy, for his fortune; honour, for his valor; and death for his ambition...  as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself when it shall please my country to need my death.His eloquence won over the heart of every Roman in the throng. They forgave Brutus and even cried, "Let him be Caesar!" But then, ill-advisedly, Brutus invited Marcus Antonius, Caesar's right-hand man, to address the crowd. Though Antonius had pretended at the time to tolerate the conspirators and accept their action, in fact, he regarded them as "butchers," and secretly vowed to avenge the murder. Antonius rose to deliver an even more brilliant and impassioned speech, in which he defended Caesar and forcefully, yet indirectly, condemned Brutus: Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones; so let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious; If it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath Caesar answer'd it, here, under leave of Brutus and the rest....  For Brutus is an honourable man; so are they all, all honourable men.Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious: And Brutus is an honourable man. He [Caesar] hath brought many captives home to Rome, whose ransoms did the general coffers fill; Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept; ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, surely, he is an honourable man...  Antonius' listeners were so moved by his words that they now turned in rage against Brutus, driving him and his cohorts from the city. Then Antonius, with the help and encouragement of his friend, Octavian, an adopted relative of Caesar's, raised an army to hunt down the confederates.But Brutus, having fled to Sardis, mustered his own army to counter this attack. Joined by Cassius and other insurgents, he determined to meet Antonius' troops at Phillipi.The night before the battle, however, everything went askew for Brutus and his allies. Cassius and Brutus quarrelled constantly over military strategy; then, news came that Brutus' wife, ashamed by her husband's actions, had killed herself at Rome; and, if this were not enough, Brutus received a visit to his tent from an alarming guest: none other than the Ghost of Caesar himself. The tide of fortune had long turned against the conspirators; they were soundly defeated the next day. In the heat of battle, Cassius, rather than be captured, took his life with his own sword, while calling up slain Caesar's spirit with the words: "Caesar, thou art revenged, even with the sword that killed thee." Brutus, seeing Cassius' body, likewise sensed the presence of Caesar's ghost, and cried, "O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!"When Brutus found his army surrounded, he begged that his men kill him. They refused. The commander then ordered a servant to hold his sword and to avert his face. Brutus ran onto the sword and died an agonizing death.Before returning to Rome, Octavian, the future emperor, along with Caesar's loyal friend Antonius, paid tribute to Brutus; for here was a man, struggling in the midst of a tragic clash between two great loyalties, who, though deceived, had proved with his own blood and the blood of a friend he loved, his unconquerable devotion to his country. "This was the noblest Roman of them all...  "Commentary:The reader cannot study Julius Caesar with an eye to learning Roman history. As usual, Shakespeare significantly alters actual sequences and events. For instance, the play is compressed into six days' time, while the events, as recorded in history, took place over the space of three years.The play's central figure turns out to be not Julius Caesar at all, but Brutus, who (like Hamlet) feels compelled to commit a murder for the sake of a principle. All his life noble Brutus had been faithful; and through a labyrinthine tangle of plots, politics, and power bids, he had distinguished himself for his integrity, honor, and courage, so that, even after his defeat, his enemies recognize him as their moral superior.Aside from the political intrigue of the plot, the play is filled with brilliant speeches, timeless both for their declamatory techniques and for the passions they reflect and evoke. Read from Cassius' speech as he fumes over Caesar's faults; or turn to the touching plea of Brutus' wife for her husband to surrender and return home to her. And certainly, the two speeches delivered by Brutus and Antonius at the funeral are classics in oratory.
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    43-    Second Triumvirate. Anthony, Octavian, Lepidus    ROME. This alliance is officially recognized by the Assembly. The triumvirs unleash a reign of unprecedented terror-many thousands perish and one of the first is Mark Anthony's implacable enemy Cicero. Meanwhile, the former leaders of the conspiracy against Caesar collect an army in the Balkans.
Third great poet of Rome, Ovid. Worte love poetry, such as Metamorphoses. And Fasti, in which ancient legends are arranged as a Roman calendar and include holidays and festivals
Trsitia, Epistulae and ex Ponto are other works..

42    The two armies meet in Phillipi in Macedonia. In the battle Brutus and Cassius are killed in a final defeat of supporters of the former Senate Republic.

42    Caesar is deified. A temple to him is dedicated in the Forum.

40    ROME. Anthony marries Octavian's sister, Octavia. Mark Anthony sets off for AFRICA and forms an alliance with Cleopatra and set himself up not only as the new Roman governor in Egypt, but as a new autocrat, if not successor to Alexander the Great. He disposes of Rome's eastern territories as if they were his personal possessions making gifts of whole provinces to Cleopatra's children.
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    37    -4 BC :    PALESTINE.     During the rule of King Herod  Jesus of Nazareth, was born. And years after, he began his teaching mission. His  attempts to call people back to the pure teachings of Abraham and Moses were judged subversive by the authorities. He was tried and sentenced to  death; "yet they did not slay him but only a likeness that was shown to them."

                        37  -  The  Romans  drive  the  Parthians out of Jerusalem. Herod                      becomes king of Judea.

36    Death of Pompey.

    32     Anthony divorces Octavia. Rome declares war on Anthony and Cleopatra. The Romans officially declare war on Cleopatra and the Egyptian fleet is defeated at the battle of Actium. Soon afterwards Octavian's troops put in at Alexandria and Anthony and Cleopatra commit suicide. Thus Egyptian AFRICA, the last of the Hellemistic states becomes part of  Rome. Its sole ruler is Octavian, who possesses unlimited powers. The civil war is at an end.
    Egypt subdued by Romans

    32 BC NABATAEAN In 32 BC during King Malichus II's reign Herod the Great started a war against Nabataea, with the support of Cleopatra. The war started with Herod's army plundering Nabataea and with a large cavalry force, and the occupation of Dium. After this defeat the Nabataean forces amassed near Canatha in Syria, but were attacked and routed. Athenio (Cleopatra's General) sent Canathans to the aid of the Nabataeans, and this force crushed Herod's army which then fled to Ormiza. One year later, Herod's army overran Nabataea.Colossal Nabataean columns stand in Bosra, Syria.After an earthquake in Judaea, the Nabateans rebelled and invadedIsrael, but Herod at once crossed the Jordan river to Philadelphia (modern Amman) and both sides set up camp. The Nabataeans under Elthemus refused to give battle, so Herod forced the issue when he attacked their camp. A confused mass of Nabataeans gave battle but were defeated. Once they had retreated to their defences, Herod laid siege to the camp and over time some of the defenders surrendered. The remaining Nabataean forces offered 500 talents for peace but this was rejected. Lacking water, the Nabataeans were forced out of their camp for battle, but were defeated in this last battle.An ally of the Roman Empire, the Nabataean kingdom continued to flourish throughout the 1st century. Its power extended far into Arabia along the Red Sea to Yemen, and Petra was a cosmopolitan marketplace, though its commerce was diminished by the rise of the Eastern trade-route from Myoshormus to Coptos on the Nile. Under the Pax Romana they lost their warlike and nomadic habits, and were a sober, acquisitive, orderly people, wholly intent on trade and agriculture.The kingdom was a bulwark between Rome and the wild hordes of the desert except in the time of Trajan, who reduced Petra and converted the Nabataean client state into the short-lived Roman province of Arabia Petraea By the 3rd century, the Nabataeans had stopped writing in Aramaic and begun writing in Greek instead, and by the 4th century they had converted to Christianity. The new Arab invaders who soon pressed forward into their seats found the remnants of the Nabataeans transformed into peasants. Their lands were divided between the new Qahtanite Arab tribal kingdoms of the Byzantine vassals the Ghassanid Arabs and the Himyarite vassals the Kindah Arab Kingdom in North Arabia.The city of Petra was brought to the attention of Westerners by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812.

    30 BC - MARC ANTONY by William Shakespeare(1564 - 1616)Type of work:Historic tragedy Setting: Alexandria, Egypt and Rome, Italy (ca.  40-30 B.C.) Principal characters:Antony, a leader of the Roman Triumvirate Cleopatra, a beautiful and clever Egyptian Queen Caesar and Lepidus, other Roman leaders of the Triumvirate Pompey, a powerful Roman rebel Octavia, Caesar's sister and Antony's second wife Enobarbus, Antony's wise friend and counsellor Play Overview: Antony first met Cleopatra when she was the mistress of Julius Caesar.  Their affair began when Cleopatra—draped in gold and highly perfumed—sailed on a barge down the river Cydrus to meet Antony on matters of state.  His passion for her intensified as the years passed—and frequently kept him from his duties in Rome.  While Antony luxuriated in Alexandria with Cleopatra, Lepidus and Caesar, the other two members of the Roman Triumvirate, struggled with the threat of the insurrectionist Pompey, who continually pirated Roman fleets. Attended by their friends and servants, Antony and Cleopatra enjoyed every sensual pleasure in the palace at Alexandria.  Antony's friends, however, were troubled by his craving for the Egyptian Queen.  One of his friends complained that Antony's doting surpassed "the measure" of good sense and that the mighty Roman leader had been reduced to "a strumpet's fool."  But such thoughts certainly did not worry Cleopatra—who revelled in her lover's attentions—although she did have a concern of her own, namely, Antony's wife, Fulvia.Finally, when jealousy overcame her, Cleopatra sought proof of Antony's love for her.  One day when a messenger from Rome arrived, Cleopatra noticed the frown on Antony's face, an expression she attributed to a mysterious "Roman thought."  After leaving Antony with the messenger, she commanded one of her attendants to summon Antony to her side.  The moment he arrived, however, she feigned illness, hoping that he would dote on her.  Antony did not oblige.  Suspecting that it was Fulvia who preoccupied his mind, Cleopatra bristled with jealousy, saying, "hers you are." Perhaps amused by her passionate outburst, Antony listened intently to his lover's tirade.  Then he interrupted, informing her that he had to return to Rome, now besieged by Pompey's ships.  Then he stunned Cleopatra with more interesting news:  Fulvia was dead.  Cleopatra's reaction to these tidings greatly surprised Antony; she explained haughtily that surely her own death would someday be "received" as Fulvia's had been—coldly.  Antony comforted her, then took his leave, assuring her that his heart would "remain" with her. When Antony arrived in Rome, he met with Lepidus and Caesar.  Caesar had most strongly disapproved of Antony's sojourn in Alexandria, complaining to Lepidus that the general not only was in neglect of his stately duties, but "he fishes, drinks, and wastes" his time.  But now confronted with the threat of Pompey's forces, Caesar ceased his murmuring; saving Rome was paramount, and they would have to consolidate their forces in order to win.  Upon greeting Antony anew, however, he was unable to resist a brief chastisement, reminding Antony that he had reacted to his letters "with taunts" and that Fulvia and Antony's brother had conspired to overthrow Caesar.  Antony insisted that he had no part in his family's conspiracies.  Lepidus mediated, and Antony and Caesar reconciled their immediate differences.  At the suggestion of one of Caesar's friends, they cemented their alliance through marriage:  Antony agreed to wed Caesar's sister, Octavia, after professing that he had become wise through from past mistakes and that in the future, in his devotion to Octavia, all would be "done by th' rule." Antony's friend Enobarbus, however, doubted Antony's devotion to Octavia.  As he conjured up in his mind her figure adorned in "cloth-of-gold-of-tissue" riding upon her gold-leafed barge, Enobarbus knew that Antony would never forsake the allure of the beautiful Egyptian Queen. Back in Egypt, when Cleopatra received news of Antony's marriage, she became heart-broken and, characteristically, enraged.  In fact, she first threatened to stab the messenger, then quickly reconsidered; she could make good use of the man.  He would return to Rome and bring back to her a description of her new rival's "years," "her inclination," and "the color of her hair."  Indeed, Cleopatra already sensed that Octavia presented little threat to her:  where Antony preferred an untamed, garrulous woman, Octavia was a woman of most "holy, cold, and still conversation." Elsewhere, Pompey, Rome's nemesis, also recognized that Octavia could not hold Antony.  Summoned to Rome to effect a truce, the enemy general speculated that "first or last" Cleopatra's charms would again win Antony. Before long Pompey's words proved true.  On a state visit to Athens, Antony declared a separation from Octavia after learning that, in Antony's absence, her brother, Caesar, had broken the truce with Pompey.  Next, Caesar had stripped Lepidus of his power and sentenced him to death.  Vowing to "raise the preparation of a war on Caesar," Antony immediately sent Octavia back to Rome, while he set sail for Alexandria. In her palace, Cleopatra had been greatly relieved to hear her messenger's depiction of Octavia:  Antony's wife was rather short and "low-voiced."  Cleopatra, thus, ridiculed her rival as "dull of tongue and dwarfish."  Again confident of Antony's love, on his return to Alexandria she used her wiles to persuaded him to extend her sovereignty beyond Egypt into "lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia," united her forces with Antony's in a war against Caesar, and insisted on being with Antony on the battlefield.  Only Enobarbus dared caution that her presence in battle would take Antony's "heart," "brain," and "time" away from matters of war.  But Cleopatra would not listen.  Instead, she urged Antony to assemble his forces together with her own fleet to meet Caesar's troops at sea.  Enobarbus candidly tried to dissuade Antony from waging a sea battle, for the army was trained for land warfare, but Antony also dismissed Enobarbus' advice. In time, Antony and Cleopatra's forces clashed with Caesar's ships.  In the midst of battle at Actium, however, Cleopatra changed her mind and commanded her ships to return to Alexandria.  Antony panicked, "leaving the fight in height," and followed Cleopatra.  Back in the palace, Antony brooded, dejected.  The earth was "ashamed to bear" him, he concluded; he had "lost command."  Even Cleopatra could not soften his sorrow.  When she came to him, he wailed, "O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt?"  She beseeched her lover's pardon, and he forgave her, saying, "Fall not a tear"; to him, each one of her tears was worth "all that is won and lost." Soon, however, they comprehended the enormity of their defeat.  Caesar, gloating in his victory, sent word that, in exchange for the "grizzled head" of Antony, he would give Cleopatra whatever she wished.  Outraged, Antony challenged Caesar to meet him "sword against sword."  But of course Caesar would never agree to a duel.  By now desperate for some sort of victory, Antony wondered:  Why not lead another army against Caesar?  Elated by this new plan, he and Cleopatra celebrated—to feast and "mock the midnight bell." When Antony awoke the next morning, his thoughts were already on battle, and he immediately began to put on his armor.  When Cleopatra tried to help him, Antony told her happily that she was the "armorer" of his "heart."  Then he kissed her and departed for his camp.  There he heard troubling news:  Enobarbus, his friend, his counsellor, had defected over to Caesar's camp.  Within days, however, overcome with remorse for having deserted his friend, Enobarbus set off to find "some ditch wherein to die." Antony never did learn of Enobarbus' death.  Busy with the intricacies of warfare, Antony had another reason to despair.  From his vantage point in Alexandria, he watched as the Egyptian fleets again turned and fled from the battle.  "All is lost," he grieved.  Then, convinced that Cleopatra was to blame, he raged, "The foul Egyptian hath betrayed me ...  Fortune and Antony part here." Upon hearing that Antony considered her both a false lover and a false fellow ally, Cleopatra, greatly saddened, longed to once more have him at her side.  In a clever ploy to bring him there, she dispatched an attendant to tell Antony that she had died and that her body had been taken to her monument. "All length is torture; since the torch is out," Antony cried out when he heard the news.  Turning to one of his men, he commanded him to kill him with his sword.  The soldier, though reluctant, finally lifted his sword and said, "Farewell, great chief."  Antony bravely awaited death, but was stunned when the man instead thrust the sword into himself in order to "escape the sorrow" of witnessing his commander's death. "Thou teachest me," Antony lamented.  Then he fell on his own sword, but he did not die.  "O dispatch me!"  he called out.  When Antony's men came running to his side, he pleaded with them to kill him.  But no one dared. Soon, another of Cleopatra's attendants arrived, breathlessly explaining that news of Cleopatra's death had been a ploy.  Mortally wounded, Antony said, "Bear me, good friends where Cleopatra bides."  The Roman soldiers quickly conveyed Antony to Cleopatra's monument—which had been constructed to serve as her tomb.  Embracing and kissing him, Cleopatra condemned her foolish actions.  Antony, however, forgave her.  Then, before waning into death, sought to comfort his beloved: The miserable change now at my end Lament nor sorrow at, but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former fortunes, Wherein I lived the greatest prince o' the world ... Cleopatra, overcome with anguish, resolved to join him. In Rome, Caesar, learning of Antony's death, did not rejoice; instead he mourned Antony as a "brother" and as a "mate in empire."  Then he dispatched a messenger to invite Cleopatra to Rome, where he would treat her most "humble and kindly."  Others had already unmasked Caesar's true intentions:  she knew that he would make her his captive, parade her through the streets of Rome, and let her be "chastised by the sober eye" of her rival Octavia.  Nevertheless, Cleopatra accepted the invitation. Before Caesar and his men arrived to convey to Rome, however, Cleopatra arranged for a peasant to bring her a basket of figs.  "Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there?"  Cleopatra asked the man.  He assured her he did.  Among the figs, deadly asps slithered in the basket.  Once Cleopatra had dismissed the man, she asked one of her attendants to dress her in her robe and crown.  Putting an asp to her breast, Cleopatra then bade the serpent, "Be angry, dispatch," then, before dying, called out, "O Antony!" When Caesar and his men entered the monument, they found the bodies of the Egyptian Queen and two of her attendants.  "She shall be buried with her Antony," Caesar declared.  Then he marvelled at the "pity" and the "glory" of Cleopatra and her beloved Antony. Commentary: "Antony and Cleopatra" depicts a world rife with opposing forces:  honor clashing with dishonor, fidelity with promiscuity, domination with subjugation, trust with treachery.  Overriding the character flaws, however, is one primary conflict between all that is "Roman" and all that is "Egyptian."  "While there is one world in the play," critic Northrop Frye points out, "there are two aspects of it:  the aspect of `law and order' represented by Rome and the aspect of sexual extravagance and license represented by Egypt." Shakespeare uses a particularly clear-headed character, Enobarbus, to illuminate this conflict.  An insignificant player in the drama, Enobarbus is free to speculate on the relative attributes of both nation-states.  His primary role is simply to highlight the contrast between the intoxicating sensuality of Cleopatra's Egypt and the established mores of Antony's Rome—which Antony ultimately betrays to passion.

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30     BC - 14 ADReign of Augustus CaesarAugustus reforms the Roman monetary and taxation systems issuing new, almost pure gold and silver coins, and new brass and copper ones, and also  introduces three new taxes: a general sales tax, a land tax, and a flat-rate poll tax.

    28 LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA. The next account we have is Strabo's Geographia in 28 BC,[21] which does not mention the library specifically, but does mention—among other details—that he is unable to find a map in the city that he saw when on an earlier trip to Alexandria, pre-fire. Abaddi uses this account to infer the library was destroyed to its foundations and the collection destroyed.The certainty of this conclusion diminishes when one considers the context. The adjacent Museion was, according to the same account, fully functional—which requires the assumption that one building could be perfectly fine while another next door completely destroyed. Also, we do know that at this time the Daughter Library at the Serapeum was thriving and untouched by the fire, and as Strabo does not mention the library by name, we can assert that for Strabo omission does not necessarily denote absence.Finally, as mentioned above, Strabo confirms the existence of the "Museion", of which the Great Library was the royal collection, and in his other mentions of the Sarapeum and Museion, he and other historians are inconsistent in their descriptions of the entire compound or the temple buildings specifically. So we may not infer that by mentioning the father institute of the Museion, but not the library arm specifically, that it had in fact been demolished. Finally, as one of the world's leading geographers, it is entirely possible that in the twenty-plus years since his last visit to the library, the map he was referencing—*quite possibly a rare or esoteric map considering his expertise and the vast collection of the library—might have been either part of the library that was partially destroyed or just simply a victim of twenty years of wear, tear and disrepair in a library which no longer had the funds it once did to recopy and preserve its collection.

27 b.c.-14 c.e.Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus)


    27 BC The Roman Empire (27 BCE - 476 AD) was the first western civilization known to accurately define their borders, although these borders could be more accurately described as frontiers; instead of the Empire defining its borders with precision, the borders were allowed to trail off and were, in many cases, part of territory indirectly ruled by others.Roman and Greek ideals of nationhood can be seen to have strongly influenced Western views on the subject, with the basis of many governmental systems being on authority or ideas borrowed from Rome or the Greek city-states. Notably, the European states of the Dark Ages and Middle Ages gained their authority from the Roman Catholic religion, and modern democracies are based in part on the example of Ancient Athens.

27-14    Octavian rules Roman Empire as Augustus Caesar.
        ROME. The Republic ceases to exist and the era of the Roman Empire has begun. Octavian refers to himself as primus inter pares, or princeps. The political structure is called the Principate., a monarchy with the appearance of a Republic, since all the state offices are concentrated in one man's hands. In addition Augustus Caesar is declared commander in chief of the armed forces (imperator).Augustus Caesar's policy toward the masses is one of bread and circuses, where every effort is made to prevent the masses from participating in political life. Augustus draws his main support from the great landowners (latifundia). Augustus passes a law saying that if a slave owner is murdered, all the slaves in the household will be executed. He limites the number of slaves that can be granted their freedom and forbids the admission of free slaves to the higher estates of society. He sets up the Praetorian Guard,  a reliable personal bodyguard corps. He prefers to extend Roman power by negotiations rather than by war .He gains control of Armenia and the Bosporus. Augustus' reign coincides with the golden age of  Roman literature. Virgil writes the Bucolics, the Georgics, the Aenid,, thinly masking a eulogy of Julius Caesar. During the reign of Augustus the Roman Forum was rebuilt, and many buildings including the Ara Pacis Agustae were erected. Audustus points out that he found a city of brick and left a city of marble. During Augustus's reign a slave killed his owner. All his town slaves -400 of them- were killed in retaliation.

    25    LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA. Therefore, the Royal Alexandrian Library may have been burned after Strabo's visit to the city (25 BC) but before the beginning of the 2nd century AD when Plutarch wrote. Otherwise Plutarch and later historians would not have mentioned the incident and mistakenly attributed it to Julius Caesar. It is also most probable that the library was destroyed by someone other than Caesar, although the later generations linked the fire that took place in Alexandria during Caesar's time to the burning of the Bibliotheca.[22] Some believe that the most likely scenario was the destruction that accompanied the wars between Zenobia of Palmyra and the Roman Emperor Aurelian, in the second half of the 3rd century

        20     BC BRITAIN possible to distinguish two principal powers: the  Catuvellauni north of the Thames led by Tasciovanus, successor of Caesar's adversary Cassivellaunus, and, south of the river, the kingdom of the  Atrebates ruled by Commius and his sons Tincommius, Eppillus, and Verica.Tasciovanus was succeeded    ___________________________________________________________

15    Roman Empire extended to upper Danube

14-37 Tiberius (Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar)

12    Revolt in Pannonia (Yugoslavia). Quelled after 3 years by Augustus's stepson, Tiberius              Claudius Nero Caesar.

    10 - by Marjorie Holmes, Bantam Books, Old Tappan, New Jersey, 1972 Type of work:   Biblical novella Setting: Palestine, shortly before the birth of Jesus Christ Principal characters: Mary, a Galilean maiden Joseph, a young carpenter Hannah and Joachim, Mary's mother and father Elizabeth, Hannah's sister, mother of John the Baptist Commentary: Two From Galilee dramatizes both the love of God for man and the love of Joseph and Mary—a young betrothed couple living in the land of Palestine—for each other.  The New Testament accounts serve as an outline for the story of the pair who were called upon to raise Jesus Christ to adulthood. When Joseph of Nazareth learned that his betrothed had conceived a child before the consummation of their union, under Jewish law he could have broken his marriage contract—and, in fact, he was encouraged to do so.  But Joseph chose to share Mary's life as well as her persecution.  His love for Mary—like the love of God for mankind, which according to Christian doctrine inspired the miraculous birth at Bethlehem—would redeem her and reclaim her—"even in her shame." Story Overview: Hannah adored her first child Mary, and she was determined that her precious daughter—this chosen girl who carried the blood of the great King David in her veins—should marry into wealth and station.  Hannah brought Mary up in truth and love, and as Mary matured into a beautiful and gracious young woman, several young men in the village vied for her attentions.  She, however, was interested in only one:  Joseph, the handsome young son of a local carpenter, but she did not dare to hope that he would choose her. Then one day Mary summoned the courage to approach Joseph.  "Why haven't you ever been betrothed?"  she asked shyly.  "Can't you guess?"  he smiled.  "I'm waiting for you, little Mary."  After that, they kept their love a secret between them, a special secret almost too precious to put into words. Mary's mother, however, knew her daughter too well to be entirely oblivious to this liaison, and she resisted the idea that Joseph, who was six years older than Mary, should think of her daughter as a marriage prospect.  "Mary, their Mary, was meant for a finer fate than toiling and bearing children for a poor young carpenter." Fortunately for Mary, her father Joachim doted on her.  She never asked for much, and she was always obedient, so on the day when she came of age and asked that she be betrothed to Joseph, though he knew that Hannah would be furious, he could not find it in his heart to deny her. Even before their engagement was announced, Joseph began to build the home he and Mary would live in.  At night, he worked on the gifts he would present to his bride at the wedding:  a sewing box, a pair of doeskin slippers, and a table.  And now he found that, even as he worked, "a great silence had come upon him"—a euphoric silence akin to music.  "The music within him was too mighty for words, even those of David or Solomon.  He could make music only with his hands." In due time, the couple's betrothal was announced.  Some weeks later, Mary went to her family's stable to bring the donkey some water.  Bending to her task, she heard a voice call her name.  Then a shaft of light descended and within the light she beheld an angelic presence.  "Behold," pronounced the angel solemnly, "you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus ...  He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High ...  and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." "The Messiah!"  Mary gasped.  "But I am unworthy ...  How can I be the mother of this long awaited child?"  The angel gently replied, "God knows the secrets of his handmaiden's heart.  He does not expect perfection.  This child that he will send you will be human as well as holy.  The Lord God wills it so, in order that man, who is human, can find his way back to God." "I will strive to be worthy," Mary whispered, her hands still gripping the donkey's fur.  Then, suddenly, a dreadful thought occurred to her:  What would Joseph and her family think when they learned she was going to bear a child?  Fearful of their responses, she delayed telling anyone about the miracle that had transpired until her pregnancy began to show. Just as she had feared, her father was the only person who embraced the wondrous disclosure that she was the vessel chosen to bear the holy Messiah.  Hannah simply presumed the worst:  that her daughter had either lost her mind, or, worse still, her virtue.  And as for Joseph, his response was one of deep distress and bewilderment; he simply could not comprehend—nor believe—Mary's halting, though sincere, explanation. Mary herself was now deeply grieved; but then she remembered the angel's second pronouncement:  that her mother's sister Elizabeth was also to bear a child of prophecy, a child whose mission was to prepare the way for her own godly son.  Thus, to allay her own doubts as well as those of her mother, the troubled young woman traveled to Ain Karem, where her Aunt Elizabeth lived.  When Elizabeth saw Mary, she knew at once why she had come.  "Blessed are you among women," she greeted her niece, "and blessed is the fruit of your womb."  Then, weeping, Elizabeth knelt and kissed the girl's dusty feet. "Then you know?"  Mary asked.  "You already know how it is with me, my aunt?"  Elizabeth, overjoyed, answered:  "I know.  I knew it on the instant that my own child leapt.  How is it that I have deserved to be thus visited by the mother of my Lord?" Mary stood at the door, shaken and dazed.  Her aunt had borne witness; Elizabeth believed her.  It must be true, then. Mary spent the next several months with her Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Zacharias, healing and strengthening her soul.  Now in new ways she heard the voice of God.  It roused her at dawn when his seven silver trumpets at the Temple heralded the day's first sacrifice.  And every few hours the hills were pierced again by these wild and holy signals for songs and psalms. Joseph, tormented both by his own doubts and by the malicious rumors that had begun to spread through the village, awaited Mary's return to Nazareth.  Even his usually sympathetic mother suggested that he should break the marriage contract and put Mary aside, as Jewish law prescribed.  But though Joseph could not bring himself to accept Mary's wild claim, neither could he bring himself to give her up to disgrace. To clear his mind, Joseph retired to the solitude of their still unfinished house.  After hours of prayer and meditation, sleep began to overcome him.  Then, as he rested, suddenly a chill breeze blew through the open door, though a great moon seemed to have risen.  A moon whose light was so intense that he must shield his eyes.  He half-roused, blinking, his blood racing.  For it seemed to him that he was not alone.  "Who is it," he demanded.  "Where are you and what do you want?" Joseph was startled by the sound of his own voice.  Then another, heavenly voice spoke to him:  "It's all right, Joseph.  Fear not.  Be calm ...  I am sent to tell you that you must not fear to take Mary for your wife, for that which is conceived in her is indeed of the Holy Spirit, as she has said.  She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." Joseph rubbed his eyes and whispered under his breath, "Don't mock me.  Whoever you are, whether from God or the devil, in God's name don't torment me further!" "But it is true, Joseph," the voice answered, "even as she has told you.  Remember the prophecy:  `Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.' That prophecy is to be fulfilled, Joseph, son of David.  So delay no longer in taking her as your wife.  But know her not until she has borne this holy one." The next morning Joseph prepared to travel to Jerusalem to bring Mary back for their marriage.  However, on that very day his father died.  It seemed impossible that one heart could hold within it such conflicting emotions as Joseph's now did.  Jewish law bound him to stay in Nazareth through the time of mourning, "but he made his plans for the journey even as he grieved for Jacob." On the last day of Joseph's period of bereavement, Mary returned to Nazareth.  Because Joseph had touched his father's dead body, he was prohibited by law from embracing her until the sun had set.  Mary had long since conquered her impatience; all that mattered now was that she knew Joseph believed her and wanted her for his wife. But Hannah, the unhappy mother, was shocked when she learned that Joseph still planned to make Mary his bride.  "He's always loved you beyond all reason," she said, almost accusingly.  "But Joseph believes!  ... " Mary interceded.  "He is not taking me out of kindness to spare me, or even because of his love for me.  But only because at last he too believes." That very night Joseph came to claim Mary as his wife—and they entered together into their new home.  Life was not easy for the newlyweds; many of the villagers sought to twist their great and sacred honor into something shameful.  Still, the couple found joy in their abiding love, and awe at the holy calling which they shared. As the time for the birth of Mary's child drew near, word of a decree from the Roman ruler Augustus Caesar reached Nazareth:  Rome planned to levy new taxes on the Jews, and had ordered that a census be taken of all the males in Israel.  Each man was required to return to his place of birth to be registered and taxed.  In Joseph's case, this meant a trip to Bethlehem.  Mary chose to make the journey with him, knowing that the child who was to become the Jewish Messiah must be born in that tiny, insignificant city. As they neared Bethlehem, Mary began to experience the pains of labor.  Joseph frantically searched for a private room, but all the inns were full; even the stables were crowded with travelers.  Finally an innkeeper took pity on the couple and gave them shelter in some caves he used for storage. At the caves, Joseph did his best to make things comfortable for Mary.  He knew that he had to find a midwife, but he also knew he could not leave his beloved alone.  In the end, Joseph was forced to deliver the child himself. Though it was forbidden for men to witness childbirth, Joseph felt strangely justified in breaking with this tradition, as if it somehow emphasized the reality of a new beginning.  He lifted the child up for Mary to see:  And they looked upon him together and marveled at him, his wholeness, infinitely small and red and perfectly formed.  And when he squirmed in Joseph's arms and uttered his first cry, the thrill of all mankind ran through both of them, for this was life, human life, and they knew that a miracle had been achieved.

 10                    ISRAEL. Jews  are  divided  into  different sects. Their only link is  a  belief  in  the Messiah.  The Pharisees believe in the Last Judgment, The Essenes believe in monastic contemplation,  the  Sadducees  are a priestly caste and the Zealots are militant nationalists.. The Sadducees were a Jewish sect which flourished during the Second Temple period. One of their main arguments with the Pharisees (later known as Rabbinic Judaism) was over their rejection of an Oral Law as well as denying a resurrection after death. The disagreement was not strictly speaking about the Talmud, as this had not been written at the time.
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    9    Penetration of Germany is successful until the Romans are defeated at the battle of Teutoburger Wald

9    CHINA. Family background and life as imperial princeThen-Liu Jizi was born in 9 BC. His father Liu Xing (??) was the youngest son of Emperor Yuan and the younger brother of Emperor Cheng. His mother was one of Prince Xing's consorts, Consort Wei (??). Prince Jizi had three sisters (whose names are not recorded in history) but no brother. He was born with a heart ailment, which, when affliciting him, causes him to have circulation problems, manifesting itself outwardly as having his lips and appendages turn blue. He was raised by his paternal grandmother Consort Feng Yuan, a concubine of Emperor Yuan, who then had the title princess dowager in Prince Xing's principality.Around the time of Prince Jizi's birth, Prince Xing was considered a potential imperial heir, because Emperor Cheng had no heirs, but eventually Emperor Cheng chose his nephew (Prince Jizi's cousin) Liu Xin (??), because Emperor Cheng considered Prince Xin to be more capable than Prince Xing, and also wanted to adopt Prince Xin and make him his own son. When Emperor Cheng died in 7 BC, Prince Xin took the throne as Emperor Ai.Also in 7 BC, when Prince Jizi was just 2, Prince Xing died, and Prince Jizi inherited his principality as the Prince of Zhongshan (roughly modern Baoding, Hebei). He continued to be periodically afflicted with his heart disorder. As a result, his grandmother Princess Dowager Feng hired many physicians and often prayed to the gods. In 6 BC, Emperor Ai, hearing about his cousin's illness, sent imperial physicians along with his attendant Zhang You (??) to go to Zhongshan to treat Prince Jizi. This, however, would have dire consequences of Princess Dowager Feng.The imperial attendant Zhang was himself afflicted with a psychiatric condition (probably bipolar disorder), and when he got to Zhongshan, he suddenly, in a rage, left there and returned to the capital Chang'an. Once he did and was ordered to explain his conduct, he made up a false reason -- that he had discovered that Princess Dowager Feng was using witchcraft to curse Emperor Ai and his grandmother, Empress Dowager Fu. Empress Dowager Fu and Princess Dowager Feng were romantic rivals when they were both consorts to Emperor Yuan, and Empress Dowager Fu decided to use this opportunity to strike at Princess Dowager Feng. She sent an eunuch, Shi Li (??), to serve as investigator, and Shi tortured a good number of Princess Dowager Feng's relations (including her sister Feng Xi (??) and her sister-in-law Junzhi (??)), some to death, but still could not build a solid case against Princess Dowager Feng. Shi Li decided to show Princess Dowager Feng who was actually behind the investigation, by referring to an incident in which then-Consort Feng defended Emperor Yuan against a bear which had broken loose. Princess Dowager Feng, realizing that Empress Dowager Fu was behind the investigation, went back to her palace and committed suicide. In total, 17 members of the Feng clan died as a result of the investigations. Prince Jizi, then still a toddler, was spared. (Princess Dowager Feng's reputation would be restored, and her accusers severely punished, in 1 BC, after the deaths of Emperor Ai and Empress Dowager Fu.)In 1 BC, Emperor Ai died without an heir. His stepgrandmother, Grand Empress Dowager Wang, quickly seized power back from Emperor Ai's male favorite (and probable lover) Dong Xian, and recalled her nephew Wang Mang as regent. Wang Mang quickly carried out a wave of retaliation against Dong Xian and Emperor Ai's Fu and Ding (relatives of his mother Consort Ding) relations, purging them from government, and at the same time purging many actual or potential political enemies, while at the same time pretending to Grand Empress Dowager Wang to be faithful to Han. Prince Jizi, as the only surviving male descendant of Emperor Yuan (both Emperors Cheng and Ai having died without issue), was considered the logical successor, and he was welcomed to Chang'an to succeed his cousin. Early reign and Wang Mang's aggrandization of powerAlmost immediately after Emperor Ping took the throne, Wang Mang began to carry out a regime to return governmental structure to ancient days of the Zhou Dynasty and the even more ancient Xia Dynasty and Shang Dynasty. He also aggressively pursued a program to build up a personality cult about himself, wanting to have himself recognized as a holy regent on the scale of the Duke of Zhou. In 1, for example, after having his political allies convincing Grand Empress Dowager Wang of his great faithfulness and great achievements, he was created the Duke of Anhan (???, literally "Duke who made Han secure"), even though there had not been a single duke created in Han history up to that point. Further, to appease both the disaffected nobility and the people, Wang Mang insitituted a program to restore marquess titles to descendants of past imperial princes and marquesses, started a pension system for retired officials, and reduced taxes. He also bribed vassal states into making offerings of rare animals, viewed as signs of heavenly blessing, to Han. With all people praising Wang Mang, he managed to persuade Grand Empress Dowager Wang, then already 69 years old, to have him make the important state decisions, rather than have her do so, and Wang Mang immediately became the most powerful figure in the empire.To prevent Emperor Ping's Wei relations from becoming powerful potential rivals at court, Wang Mang limited the titles of Emperor Ping's uncles to acting marquesses  and his mother Consort Wei to "Princess Xiao of Zhongshan" ("Prince Xiao" being Prince Xing's posthumous name), and only created Emperor Ping's three sisters ladies (?). He also ordered that the Weis, including
    Consort Wei, and Emperor Ping's sisters not to be allowed to go to Chang'an to see him, but were to remain in Zhongshan.In 2, to reduce the burden of the people in naming taboo, Emperor Ping's name was changed to Kan (?), since Ji and Zi were commonly used characters.Also in 2, Wang Mang decided to have his daughter married to Emperor Ping to further affirm his position. Initially, he started a selection process of eligible noble young ladies (after declaring, in accordance with ancient customs, that Emperor Ping will have one wife and 11 concubines). However, then, in an act of false modesty intended to create the opposite result, he petitioned Grand Empress Dowager Wang that his daughter not be considered -- and then started a petition drive by the people to have his daughter be selected as empress. The petitioners stormed the outside of the palace, and Grand Empress Dowager Wang, overwhelmed by the display of affection for Wang Mang, ordered that Wang Mang's daughter be made empress. The Lü Kuan Incident and Wang Mang's seizure of absolute powerWang Mang's son Wang Yu (??) disagreed with his father's dictatorial regime and program to build up his personality cult, afraid that in the future the Wangs would receive a backlash when Emperor Ping was grown. He therefore formed friendships with Emperor Ping's Wei uncles, and told Consort Wei to offer assurances to Wang Mang that she would not act as Emperor Ai's mother and grandmother did, trying to become an empress dowager. Wang Mang still refused to let her visit the capital.In 3, Wang Yu formed a conspiracy with his teacher Wu Zhang (??), his brother-in-law Lü Kuan (??), and the Weis, to try to see what they can do to break Wang Mang's dictatorial hold. They decideed that they would create what appear to be supernatural incidents to make Wang Mang concerned, and then have Wu try to persuade Wang Mang to transfer power to the Weis. Wang Yu told Lü to toss a bottle of blood onto Wang Mang's mansion door to create that effect -- but Lü was discovered by Wang Mang's guards. Wang Mang then arrested Wang Yu, who then committed suicide, and his wife (Lü Kuan's sister) Lü Yan (??) was executed. Wang Mang then executed the entire Wei clan, except for Consort Wei. Wu was cut in half and then drawn and quartered. (It is not known what happened to Lü, but it would appear that there would be no way for him to escape death.)Wang Mang then took this opportunity to further wipe out potential enemies -- by torturing Wang Yu and Lü's coconspirators and then arrest anyone that they mentioned, and then have them either executed or forced them to commit suicide. The victims of this purge included Emperor Yuan's sister Princess Jingwu Wang Mang's own uncle Wang Li (??), and his own cousin Wang Ren He told Grand Empress Dowager Wang, however, falsely, that they had died of illnesses. Many other officials who were not willing to follow Wang Mang were also victimized in this purge. After this, Wang Mang's hold on power became absolute.   In 4, Emperor Ping officially married Wang Mang's daughter and created her empress.In 5, Wang Mang revived an ancient ceremony intended for those who have made great contributions to the state, and had himself given the nine bestowments. (The "nine bestowments" would, after Wang Mang, thereafter become a customary step for usurpers to receive before they usurp the throne.) DeathCirca 5, Emperor Ping, having grown older, appeared to have grown out of his earlier heart condition, and it became fairly plain that he resented Wang Mang for slaughtering his uncles and not allowing his mother to visit him in Chang'an. Wang Mang therefore resolved to murder the emperor. In winter 5, Wang Mang submitted pepper wine (considered in those days to be capable of chasing away evil spirits) to the 13-year-old emperor, but had the wine spiked with poison. As the emperor was suffering the effects of the poison, Wang Mang wrote a secret petition to the gods, in which he offered to substitute his life for Emperor Ping's, and then have the petition locked away. (Historians generally believed that Wang Mang had two motives in doing this -- one was, in case Emperor Ping recovered from the poisoning, to use this to try to absolve himself of involvement in the poisoning, and the second was to leave for posterity evidence of his faithfulness.) After a few days of suffering, Emperor Ping died. The throne would lie vacant for the next few years, as although Emperor Ping's cousin-once-removed, the infant Emperor Ruzi, would be selected as emperor, he would never actually take the throne. Wang Mang would serve as acting emperor and usurp the Han throne officially in 8.

8    Death of Roman poets Virgil and Horace   

5-4   -     Herod dies. Mary gives birth to Jesus.

        Kingdom is partitioned among Herod's sons, Herod Archaelaus, ethnarch of Samaria and Judea, Herod Antipas, tetrach of Galille, Phillip, tetrach of Iturea.