The first cities, the first writing, the first kings who called themselves gods. These articles cover Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus and the Bronze Age world that connected them.
Antiquity's 2019 report says a major conflagration destroyed Must Farm's Bronze Age stilt houses, whose contents sank into a Cambridgeshire river channel.
· 850 BCTwenty shell trumpets came from Chavín's Caracolas Gallery in 2001. In 2025 PNAS reported vilca and tobacco alkaloids on six artifacts from Gallery 3.
· 800 BCUnder the Arzhan 2 mound in Tuva, southern Siberia, a man and a woman of the 7th century BC lay with 33 other people, 14 horses and over 40 pounds of gold.
· 650 BCCalvert began digging Hisarlık in 1863; its nine layers span 3,000 years. Hittite texts name Wilusa, and in 2001 Korfmann and Kolb fought over its size.
· 1871On December 3, 1872, George Smith, self-taught in cuneiform, told a society what a Nineveh tablet said: a flood, a ship, a dove, a swallow, a raven.
· 1872Carter's journal for November 26, 1922 records his answer to Lord Carnarvon: "Yes, it is wonderful." The famous "wonderful things" is from his 1923 book.
· 1922
