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Core Ancient Civilisations
- Ancient Iran also known as Persia
Ancient Iran, historic region of southwestern Asia that is only roughly coterminous with modern Iran. - The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 B.C.)
The Achaemenid Persian empire was the largest that the ancient world had seen, extending from Anatolia and Egypt across western Asia to northern India and Central Asia.
The Persian Empire - The Rise and Fall of one of the Greatest Empires in History
- Ancient PersiaPersia (roughly modern-day Iran) is among the oldest inhabited regions in the world. Archaeological sites in the country have established human habitation dating back 100,000 years to the Paleolithic Age with semi-permanent settlements (most likely for hunting parties) established before 10,000 BCE.
- Indus civilisationIndus civilisation, also called Indus valley civilisation or Harappan civilisation, the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent.
- What was the Indus Valley Civilisation?The Indus Valley Civilisation is one of the oldest civilisations in human history. It arose on the Indian subcontinent nearly 5,000 years ago — roughly the same time as the emergence of ancient Egypt and nearly 1,000 years after the earliest Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia.
John Green teaches you about the Indus Valley Civilisation, one of the largest of the ancient civilisations. John teaches you the who, how, when, where, and why of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
- Indus Valley CivilisationThe Indus Valley Civilisation was a cultural and political entity which flourished in the northern region of the Indian subcontinent between c. 7000 - c. 600 BCE.
One of the earliest urban civilisations in India and in fact, in the world, was the Indus Valley Civilisation, also called the Harappan Culture. About 5000 years ago, a group of nomads traveling from Sumeria (present-day Iran) entered North Western India, near present day Karachi. These nomads found a land so richly fertile by the banks of the river Indus that they settled there without hesitation. This area was abundant with water, fodder and fuel. Over the next thousand years, the immigrants spread over an area of half a million square miles. Excavations prove that the level of urban planning and architecture prevalent here was incomparable. The anchor for this civilisation lay in the beautiful twin cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. The name Mohenjo-Daro means ‘Mound of the Dead’ in Sindhi. The city was built around 2600 BC and abandoned around 1700 BC. Evidence suggests that the city was highly prone to floods.
- Ancient Chinese Culture (1600–221 BC) — Development and FeaturesAncient Chinese culture, before the imperial era (from 221 BC), has obscure beginnings. Later invasions and contact with foreign cultures has coloured Chinese culture, but the underlying forms established during the Shang and Zhou eras.
- Ancient China
Includes links to: Geography of Ancient China; Silk Road; The Great Wall; Forbidden City; Terracotta Army; Inventions of Ancient China; Major Dynasties - Xia Dynasty, Shang Dynasty, Zhou Dynasty, Qin Dynasty, and Han Dynasty; Culture - Daily Life in Ancient China, Religion, Mythology, Festivals, Clothing, Entertainment and Games, Literature; People. - Ancient ChinaAncient China produced what has become the oldest extant culture in the world. The name 'China' comes from the Sanskrit Cina (derived from the name of the Chinese Qin Dynasty.
For as long as people have been talking about history there has been a China. So how did China become the world's oldest continuous civilisation. What's a dynasty, who's Confucius, and is it ever ok bury people alive.
- Ancient ChinaAncient China was one of the most amazing civilisations in history. In the 5th century BCE it was made up of several rival kingdoms.
- MayaThe Maya are Middle American Indians who live in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize. In the early 21st century there were more than five million Maya, who spoke about 30 different Mayan languages.
- Mayans: Overview of the Civilisation and HistoryThe Mayans are Mesoamerican civilisations developed by their people called the Maya. It is known for its advanced and beautiful writing system, culture, arts, math, calendar, and astronomical system.
- Maya CivilisationTimeline of periods.
Scroll to base of website for links to: Daily Life; Government; Gods and Mythology; Writing, Numbers, and Calendar; Pyramids and Architecture; Sites and Cities; Art
With their impressive city structures and advanced astronomical understanding, the Maya civilisation once dominated Mesoamerica. Learn about the Maya's influence in mathematics, how their cosmic calendars advised agricultural matters, and how the legacy of this ancient civilisation endures through Maya people today.
- Maya CivilisationThe Maya are probably the best-known of the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica. Originating in the Yucatán around 2600 B.C., they rose to prominence around A.D. 250 in present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern Belize and western Honduras.
- Maya CivilisationThe Maya are an indigenous people of Mexico and Central America who have continuously inhabited the lands comprising modern-day Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas in Mexico and southward through Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras.
- Minoan CivilisationMinoan civilisation, Bronze Age civilisation of Crete that flourished from about 3000 BCE to about 1100 BCE. Its name derives from Minos, either a dynastic title or the name of a particular ruler of Crete who has a place in Greek legend.
- History of Minoan CreteThe inhabitants of ancient Crete --whom we call Minoans-- produced a decentralised culture based on the abundance of the land's natural resources, and on intense commercial activity.
- Minoan CivilisationThe Minoan civilisation flourished in the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000 - c. 1500 BCE) on the island of Crete located in the eastern Mediterranean.
In this video, we discuss the history of the Minoans, the first civilisation to arise in Europe, and take a look at some other related topics, like the myth of the Labyrinth and the lost city of Atlantis.
- PhoeniciaPhoenicia, ancient region along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean that corresponds to modern Lebanon, with adjoining parts of modern Syria and Israel. Its location along major trade routes led its inhabitants, called Phoenicians, to become notable merchants, traders, and colonisers in the 1st millennium BCE.
- Phoenician civilisationThe Phoenicians were the great mariners of the ancient world, and their thalassocracy (maritime realm) was organised into city-states akin to the Greeks. It is important to understand there was never a country or empire called “Phoenicia.”
- PhoeniciaPhoenicia was an ancient civilisation composed of independent city-states located along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea stretching through what is now Syria, Lebanon and northern Israel.
In this program, we'll take a look at the coastal Canaanite people whom the Greeks called the Phoenician. Though the Phoenicians left behind many inscriptions, few of them give any details with regard to their long and illustrious history.
- First Rulers of the MediterraneanThe ancient Phoenicians built a maritime civilisation around the Mediterranean Sea.
- HittitesThe ancient people known as the Hittites were warriors of Anatolia, the peninsula now known as Turkey. They inhabited much of what is now Turkey and Syria for more than 1,000 years beginning in the 2nd millennium BCE.
- Hittite cultureThe true extent of the Hittite civilisation was not revealed to the world until the last century. The Hittites had been mentioned several times in the Old Testament, but little was known about their civilisation prior to archaeologists excavating and studying the site of the Hittite capital: Hattusa (in the present-day Republic of Turkey).
- The HittitesThe Hittites occupied the ancient region of Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey) prior to 1700 BCE, developed a culture apparently from the indigenous Hatti (and possibly the Hurrian) people, and expanded their territories into an empire which rivalled, and threatened, the established nation of Egypt.
The Hittites were a people whose kings at one time ruled unchallenged in Anatolia and large swaths of the ancient Near East. They were so powerful that they destroyed sacked the great ancient states of Yamhad and Babylon and destroyed the once-mighty Kingdom of the Mitanni. However, they're fortunes rose and fell like the tides with their successes often being fleeting due to internal infighting and spreading their forces too thin.
- Ancient SyriaSyria is a country located in the Middle East on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea and bordered, from the north down to the west, by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. It is one of the oldest inhabited regions in the world with archaeological finds dating the first human habitation at c. 700,000 years ago.
- Ancient Syrian Facts, History and GeologyIn antiquity, the Levant or Greater Syria, which includes modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestinian territories, part of Jordan, and Kurdistan, was named Syria by the Greeks.
- Syrian StatesAncient Syria was much larger than its modern counterpart, being bordered by the Taurus Mountains in the north, the Upper Euphrates to the north-east, and the Syrian Desert to the south-east. The name is Greek, which they used to describe various Assyrian peoples.
From the Arabian Peninsula, we look at an ancient caravan route through the desert to Syria. ; Along the way, several lush oases in the otherwise barren Syrian desert come to our rescue in the form of Marib and Petra, cite of the great tomb of Aaron that is carved out of a rock face, along with the beautiful city of Palmyra in Syria.
More than 3,000 funerary portraits from ancient Palmyra survive in museums around the world, bringing us face to face with people who lived in Syria almost two millennia ago.
- BabyloniaBabylonia, ancient cultural region occupying southeastern Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (modern southern Iraq from around Baghdad to the Persian Gulf). Because the city of Babylon was the capital of this area for so many centuries, the term Babylonia has come to refer to the entire culture that developed in the area from the time it was first settled, about 4000 BCE.
- Babylonian EmpireThe Mesopotamian city-state of Babylon twice expanded to become an important world empire before being absorbed by Persia. Its two great expansions were sufficiently remarkable to earn it a place in history beside the two other significant Mesopotamian cultures: the Sumerians and Assyrians.
- BabylonBabylon is the most famous city from ancient Mesopotamia whose ruins lie in modern-day Iraq 59 miles (94 kilometres) southwest of Baghdad. The name is thought to derive from bav-il or bav-ilim which, in the Akkadian language of the time, meant 'Gate of God' or 'Gate of the Gods' and 'Babylon' coming from Greek.
This video goes into the history of the ancient city and why even thousands of years later, we still remember and are fascinated with it.
Hammurabi was a Amorite king who rose to great prominence during the 18th century BCE. A fearsome ruler and military commander, Hammurabi conquered all of Mesopotamia, with Babylon serving as the heart of his powerful new empire.
- AztecIn the 15th and early 16th centuries, the American Indian people known as the Aztec ruled a large empire in what is now Mexico. When Hernán Cortés and his Spanish soldiers reached the Valley of Mexico in 1519, they found a thriving city standing on an island in a lake.
- Aztec CivilisationIn just a century, the Aztec built an empire in the area now called central Mexico. The arrival of the Spanish conquistadors brought it to a sudden end.
- Aztec CivilisationThe Aztec Empire (c. 1345-1521) covered at its greatest extent most of northern Mesoamerica. Aztec warriors were able to dominate their neighbouring states and permit rulers such as Montezuma to impose Aztec ideals and religion across Mexico. Highly accomplished in agriculture and trade, the last of the great Mesoamerican civilisations was also noted for its art and architecture.
The Aztecs are famous for their clash with Cortes during the discovery of the New World. However for many this is where their story begins and ends. As such they are terribly misunderstood.
You may have heard of their calendars, seen their temples, or admired one of their cool looking sculptural artifacts in a museum, but chances are you have no idea what life was really like for the Aztecs.