Our Earth's History

Timeline: Classical world

800 BC – AD 500 · 59 articles, earliest first. Browse this era by continent.

  1. 1000 BC · Oceania'Small scattered fragments do not a dwarf make': Palau, 2008
  2. 539 BC · West AsiaA cylinder from Babylon, 1879: a building text called a rights charter
  3. 500 BC · Oceania1,800 years in Tonga and Samoa: the long pause before East Polynesia
  4. 500 BC · West AsiaHow did Persia run the largest empire the world had seen?
  5. 494 BC · EuropeThe plebeians' walkout to the Sacred Mount and the first tribunes
  6. 487 BC · EuropeWhy Did Athens Choose Its Leaders by Lottery, Not Election?
  7. 487 BC · EuropeWhy Did Athens Vote to Exile Its Most Powerful Men — on Broken Pottery?
  8. 458 BC · EuropeCincinnatus, dictator for sixteen days and then back to his farm
  9. 400 BC · Central AsiaWhat did the frozen tombs of the Altai preserve for 2,400 years?
  10. 336 BC · EuropeAlexander's ten years from Macedon to the Punjab
  11. 331 BC · EuropeGaugamela, 331 BC, in Arrian's account and a Babylonian diary
  12. 323 BC · EuropeAlexander's empire split, and Greek stayed in the towns of the east
  13. 300 BC · AfricaMeroë's royal pyramids and the gold Ferlini took in 1834
  14. 280 BC · AfricaThe Pharos of Alexandria, a marble tower with a fire for ships
  15. 260 BC · South AsiaWhy did an emperor carve his regret for a war into rock across India?
  16. 250 BC · Central AsiaA Corinthian capital on the Oxus: the Greek city of Ai Khanoum
  17. 237 BC · AfricaHannibal's oath at the altar, as he told it to a king
  18. 227 BC · East AsiaJing Ke's dagger in the map, and how the king of Qin survived
  19. 222 BC · East AsiaSome 38,000 slips from a well in Liye: Qin rule in Qianling county
  20. 221 BC · East AsiaQin Shi Huang, from a hostage's son to the First Emperor
  21. 218 BC · AfricaHannibal over the Alps, 218 BC, with thirty-seven elephants
  22. 216 BC · AfricaCannae, 216 BC, the day a Roman army was surrounded
  23. 210 BC · East AsiaTerracotta Army: how many soldiers? Three pits, three kinds of count
  24. 200 BC · Central AsiaMithradatkert: the Parthian fortress at Old Nisa and its ivory rhyta
  25. 200 BC · East AsiaThe siege of Baideng and the price of peace with the Xiongnu
  26. 200 BC · OceaniaThree dark bands in a dune: Sigatoka's Levels 1, 2 and 3, dug in 1965
  27. 196 BC · AfricaWhat the Rosetta Stone says, and how it helped Champollion
  28. 170 BC · South AsiaBhir Mound, Sirkap, Sirsukh: John Marshall's three cities of Taxila
  29. 168 BC · East AsiaA lacquer box from Mawangdui Tomb 3: silk texts sealed in 168 BC
  30. 146 BC · AfricaTwo lines of Homer at Carthage in 146 BC and a salt story from 1930
  31. 138 BC · East AsiaZhang Qian's thirteen years in the west, and the two who came back
  32. 100 BC · EuropeBronze gears from a wreck off Antikythera modeled the Greek sky
  33. 99 BC · East AsiaWhy Sima Qian accepted castration to finish the Shiji
  34. 50 BC · South Asia'Carving done by the ivory-workers of Vedisa': who paid for Sanchi
  35. 36 BC · The AmericasThe Maya shell zero, and the Long Count it served
  36. 30 BC · AfricaWas Cleopatra a seductress, and was she Egyptian? What the ancient sources say
  37. AD 1 · OceaniaSand, reef and stick charts: settling the Marshall Islands
  38. AD 25 · Central AsiaA Tiberius aureus in tomb 3: the six graves of Tillya Tepe, 1978
  39. AD 50 · South Asia'A veritable Roman town': Arikamedu and the Arretine sherds of 1945
  40. AD 79 · EuropeHow the Herculaneum scrolls are being read without being opened
  41. AD 79 · EuropePompeii in AD 79, from Pliny's letters to the plaster casts
  42. AD 100 · EuropeA birthday invitation on a wooden leaf from Roman Vindolanda
  43. AD 100 · West AsiaA goat for Aaron's tomb: Burckhardt at Petra, August 22, 1812
  44. AD 100 · Central AsiaTwo walled-up rooms at Begram, 1937 and 1939: glass, ivory and lacquer
  45. AD 127 · Central AsiaHe put it into Aryan: the Rabatak inscription of Kanishka, found 1993
  46. AD 200 · The AmericasHow big was Teotihuacan, and who ran it?
  47. AD 200 · The AmericasHow did the Nazca draw figures they could never see whole?
  48. AD 200 · The AmericasMound City, twenty-four mounds in 1848 and an army camp in 1917
  49. AD 200 · OceaniaOne fifth of Babeldaob: the terraced hills of Palau, 500 BC to AD 650
  50. AD 245 · West AsiaA synagogue to Damascus, a church to Yale: Dura-Europos, 1920–1937
  51. AD 250 · The AmericasGold seized by police in February 1987 led archaeologists to Sipán
  52. AD 260 · West AsiaDid Persia really capture a Roman emperor alive in AD 260?
  53. AD 270 · West AsiaHow did a desert oasis get rich enough to challenge Rome?
  54. AD 449 · EuropeFragment 8 of Priscus: wooden cups at Attila's court, 448 or 449
  55. AD 470 · South AsiaThirty copies of Ajanta and the Crystal Palace fire of 1866
  56. AD 477 · South AsiaSihagiri in the Culavamsa: Kassapa I's rock palace at Sigiriya
  57. AD 630 · The AmericasJoya de Cerén: a Maya farming village sealed by Loma Caldera ash
  58. AD 790 · The AmericasThree painted rooms at Bonampak, c. 790, entered by outsiders in 1946
  59. 1967 · OceaniaMangaasi pottery, Efate, 1967: 17,000 sherds and a sequence reversed