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6000-3100 BC
Ancient Egypt · Go deeperPredynastic Egypt and Early Settlements
EGYPT · GIZA
Hollywood shows the pyramids rising under the whip.
Excavation beside Giza found the workers' own town: bakeries, breweries, honoured burials. They were fed, paid and buried with respect.
c. 2560 BC
↓ 408 YEARS
EGYPT · THE HYKSOS
Foreign kings ruled the Nile delta for a century.
The horse-drawn war chariot appears in Egypt in their time — and became the core of the army that drove them back out.
c. 1650 BC
↓ 100 YEARS
PERSIA · ZOROASTER
We know what Zoroaster taught.
We cannot date him. Scholarly estimates of when he lived are spread across roughly nine centuries, from about 1500 to 600 BC.
900 YEARS
EGYPT · TUTANKHAMUN
Egypt erased Tutankhamun from its own king lists.
Which is why his tomb was forgotten — and why it survived nearly intact, while the grander tombs around it were emptied by robbers.
c. 1323 BC
↓ 79 YEARS
PERSIA · THE CYLINDER
The Cyrus Cylinder is called the first bill of rights.
Historians reject it: a standard Mesopotamian foundation text. What is unusual is that a Persian king wrote it in Babylon's own idiom.
539 BC
↓ 29 YEARS
PERSIA · PERSEPOLIS
Carved on the great stairway: every nation of the empire.
23
DELEGATIONS
0
IN CHAINS
Each appears in its own dress, its own beard, its own headgear. Persian ushers lead them forward by the hand.
c. 518 BC
PERSIA · THE ROYAL ROAD
Sardis to Susa: one road, 2,700 kilometres.
7days
BY COURIER
90days
ON FOOT
Darius did not build a faster road. He put rested horses along it, and let each rider carry the message one stage only.
c. 500 BC
ALEXANDER · THE LIMIT
He wept for lack of worlds left to conquer.
Plutarch says he wept on hearing there were infinite worlds, having taken not one. His own army then refused to go a step further.
326 BC
CLEOPATRA · THE DISTANCE
Cleopatra belongs to the age of the pyramids.
She lived nearer in time to the Moon landing than to the Great Pyramid, which was already some 2,500 years old on the day she was born.
30 BC
PERSIA · CTESIPHON
The ancient world's largest brick vault has no frame.
The Taq Kasra was raised with no framework beneath it: bricks laid in leaning courses, each ring holding itself up. It still stands.
6th c. AD
↓ 80 YEARS
PERSIA · GUNDESHAPUR
The Islamic Golden Age is told as starting in 762.
It didn't. But the tidy story — one Persian academy handing Baghdad its method — is disputed. What holds up is the physicians.
3rd c. AD
↓ 70 YEARS
PERSIA · THE FALL
The Sasanian empire had outlasted Rome in the east.
427years
THE EMPIRE
15years
THE FALL
The last king was killed near Merv, reportedly by a miller for the money he carried. A line reaching back to Cyrus ended for a purse.
AD 651
↓ 94 YEARS
BAGHDAD · THE GREEN DOME
A horseman on Baghdad's dome turned toward the next revolt.
Later writers say so; the earliest descriptions do not. One night the dome came down in a rainstorm, having warned nobody of anything.
AD 941
↓ 25 YEARS
FEZ · AL-QARAWIYYIN
A future pope studied at al-Qarawiyyin in Fez.
Dozens of articles say so. Gerbert of Aurillac did learn Arabic-derived mathematics — in Catalonia. Nothing has ever placed him in Fez.
AD 859
↓ 35 YEARS
BAGHDAD · THE BIMARISTAN
The man vetting Baghdad's physicians was not a Muslim.
Sinan ibn Thabit came from the Sabians of Harran — and later fled the very caliph who had pressed him to convert.
AD 931
↓ 36 YEARS
BUKHARA · IBN SINA
He could recite Aristotle's Metaphysics from memory.
40times
HE READ IT
3dirham
THE FIX
He still could not follow it. What opened the book was a thin commentary by al-Farabi, pressed on him at a bookstall by a broker.
c. AD 997
EUROPE · THE FIRST CRUSADE
In 1095 no European army has marched on Jerusalem.
1095
Pope Urban II calls for the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont.
1096
The first contingents set out overland for Constantinople.
1099
The crusader army takes Jerusalem after a five-week siege.
1099
AL-ANDALUS · IBN RUSHD
His books were burned in al-Andalus.
Three centuries later Raphael painted him into the School of Athens, in the pope's own library — the only Muslim in a hall of Greeks.
c. 1510
↓ 44 YEARS
SALADIN · THE ESTATE
He died ruling both Egypt and Syria.
His treasury reportedly held one gold coin and forty-seven silver dirhams — not enough for his own funeral. He had given the rest away.
1193
MALI · THE VOYAGE
A Malian king crossed the Atlantic before Columbus.
He never existed. The name is a nineteenth-century mistranslation of Ibn Khaldun — Musa's real predecessor was Muhammad ibn Qu.
1324
CONSTANTINOPLE · THE CHAIN
An iron chain sealed the Golden Horn against his fleet.
In a single night some 70 ships were hauled overland on greased log rollers, up and over a hill, and lowered in behind the chain.
1453
EXPLORATION · TWO YEARS
Columbus reaches the Americas on 12 October 1492.
1492
Columbus reaches the Americas, beginning sustained contact with the New World.
1493
Pope Alexander VI issues bulls dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal.
1494
The Treaty of Tordesillas draws the line 370 leagues west of Cape Verde.
1494
PERSIA · SAFAVID
Iran's Shia identity looks ancient.
In practical terms it dates from a decision taken by a fourteen-year-old whose own poetry was written in Azerbaijani Turkish.
1501
FRANCE · ONE SUMMER
In May 1789 France is still an absolute monarchy.
MAY 5
The Estates-General convenes at Versailles for the first time since 1614.
JUN 20
The Tennis Court Oath: the Assembly vows not to disperse without a constitution.
JUL 14
The storming of the Bastille.
AUG 4
The Assembly abolishes feudalism and the privileges of nobility and clergy.
1789
NAPOLEON · THE MEASURE
A whole complex is named after how short he was.
He stood about five feet six or seven — roughly average for a Frenchman of his day. The nickname outlived the measurement.
5 FT 6 IN
TESLA · MADISON SQUARE
The word drone did not exist in Tesla's lifetime.
He steered a radio-controlled boat around a pool at Madison Square Garden. Onlookers searched it for a trained animal inside.
1898
↓ 25 YEARS
1914 · FOUR DAYS
On 1 August 1914 Germany is at war with Russia alone.
AUG 1
Germany declares war on Russia and begins mobilization.
AUG 3
Germany declares war on France and invades Belgium.
AUG 4
Britain declares war on Germany over the invasion of Belgium.
1914
TURKEY · THE VOTE
Turkish women voted before French or Italian women.
Women in France voted for the first time in 1944, in Italy in 1946 — a decade after women in Turkey had already done it.
1934
CURIE · THE NOTEBOOKS
Her laboratory notebooks are still not safe to open.
They sit in lead-lined boxes; handling one needs protective gear and a signed waiver. Radium-226 has a half-life near 1,600 years.
1934
1941 · FOUR DAYS
On 6 December 1941 the United States is not at war.
DEC 7
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into the war.
DEC 8
The United States and Britain declare war on Japan.
DEC 11
Germany and Italy declare war on the United States.
1941
1949 · SIX MONTHS
In 1949 the United States still holds the only atomic bomb.
APR 4
NATO is formed as a military alliance between Western nations.
AUG 29
The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, ending the American monopoly.
OCT 1
The People's Republic of China is proclaimed under Mao Zedong.
1949