The Americas in the classical world (800 BC – AD 500). Greece, Rome, Persia, the Qin and Han, the Maya: the age of the great classical states and the written histories that describe them. These articles cover their rise, their wars and the everyday lives their ruins preserve.
Mesoamerican scribes wrote a place-value zero, the Maya shell glyph, by 36 BC at Chiapa de Corzo, five centuries before India's date of about AD 500.
· 36 BCTeotihuacan covered eight square miles and held 100,000 people or more by AD 400, yet no portrait or tomb of a king has been found. Its rulers are unknown.
· AD 200They cleared dark stones off the desert to expose pale ground, scaling up small designs; near-zero rain kept the lines intact for about 2,000 years.
· AD 200
