You must add a |reason= parameter to this Cleanup template – replace it with {{Cleanup|reason=<Fill reason here>}}, or remove the Cleanup template.

For other uses of the word ancient, see Ancient (disambiguation).

Ancient history is from the period of time when writing and historical records first appear, roughly 3,500 BC. For some, the discovery of agriculture, roughly 6,000 BC, is the beginning of ancient history. The most common date for an end of ancient history in Europe is AD 476 (the fall of the Western Roman Empire), however the exact date is still disputed among various historians. In Europe, ancient history was followed by Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000-5,500 years, with Sumerian cuneiform possibly being the oldest form of writing. Genetic evidence, however, points to the first appearance of human beings about 150,000 years ago. There is also a growing body of evidence that Homo sapiens first left Africa about 60,000 years ago.

What is written on ancient history?

Ancient history is remote, selective, ill-documented and biased. Ab Urbe Condite by Livy was a history of Rome in 142 books. Only 35 of them survive. Ancient history's written records are the memory of things said and done. The recorded memory is not confused with the event itself by the critical modern historian. In the ancient world historians copied from one another, epitome, without footnotes and not always recording their sources. Independent research and the questioning of earlier writers and their primary sources were rare. Personal interviews and the use of interrogation techniques to determine "what really happened or why" were non-existent. The more data that are discovered, the more the ancient past can seem even more confusing. For example, if only one version of an event exists, the knowledge of that event seems secure, whereas if four different accounts are known, particularly if they are strongly contraditary, there is often little that can be done to determine which is most factually accurate. The existence of a single duplicate account does not make an event known with any certainty. One of the great fallacies of ancient history is "the closer the event is to time it was recorded the truer it becomes". This fails to take human creativity, hearsay, and the notorious unreliability of eye-witness testimony into account. The goal of the modern ancient historian is objectivity. There is usually an educational guess, based on the interpretation of surviving physical evidence, about the "reason" events occurred, but not necessarily what happened. Since the critical modern ancient historian is affected by preconceived ideas and bias that will effect his perception, inference and translation of ancient texts he, or she, should be cautious.

Chronology

Beginning of ancient history

10th millennium BC- invention of agriculture is the earliest given date for the beginning of Ancient Era
5th millennium BC-Possible introduction of writing. Tartaria tablets in the lower Danube Valley date from this period.
4th millennium BC - First writings in the cities of Uruk and Susa (cuneiform writings). Hieroglyphs in Egypt.
33rd century BC - oldest historical documents

Important events

3300 BC - Bronze Age begins in the Near East, slowly spreads to the rest of Eurasia
3000 BC - First known use of papyrus by Egyptians
2580 BC - Completion of the Great Pyramid of Giza
2000 BC - Domestication of the horse
1600 BC - Beginning of Hittite dominance of the Eastern Mediterranean region
c. 1200 BC - Theorized time of the Trojan War
c. 1180 BC - Disintegration of Hittite Empire
800 BC - Rise of Greek city-states
753 BC - Founding of Rome (traditional date)
653 BC - Rise of first Persian state
c. 512 BC - Persian Empire at largest extent under Darius I
509 BC - Expulsion of the last King of Rome, founding of Roman Republic (traditional date)
490 BC - Greek city-states defeat Persian invasion at Battle of Marathon
404 BC - End of Peloponnesian War between the Greek city-states
323 BC - Death of Alexander the Great
202 BC - Scipio Africanus defeats Hannibal at Battle of Zama
149 BC-146 - Third and final Punic War; destruction of Carthage by Rome
146 BC - Roman conquest of Greece, see Roman Greece
49 BC - Roman Civil War between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great
44 BC - End of Roman Republic; beginning of Roman Empire
6 BC - Earliest theorized date for birth of Jesus of Nazareth
9 - Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the Roman Army's bloodiest defeat
14 - Death of Emperor Augustus (Octavian), ascension of his adopted son Tiberius to the throne
68 - Year of the four emperors in Rome
117 - Roman Empire at largest extent under Emperor Trajan
285 - Emperor Diocletian splits the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western Empires
313 - Edict of Milan declared that the Roman Empire would be neutral toward religious worship
378- Battle of Adrianople, Roman army is defeated by the Germanic tribes
395- Roman Emperor Theodosius I outlaws all pagan religions in favor of Christianity
410- Alaric sacks Rome for the first time since 390 BC
476- Romulus Augustus, last Western Roman Emperor is forced to abdicate by Odoacer, a half Hunnish and half Scirian chieftain of the Germanic Heruli. Odoacer returns the imperial regalia to Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno in Constantinople in return for the title of dux of Italy. Traditional end of ancient history.

End of ancient history in Europe

The exact date era of ancient history ends is still disputed among historians. Most common dates are:

293 - reforms of Roman Emperor Diocletian, the earliest given date for the end of Ancient Era
395 - the division of Roman Empire into the Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire
476 - the fall of Western Roman Empire. This date is most commonly used to denote the end of Ancient Era
529 - closure of Platon Academy in Athens by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I
622 - Muhammad migrates to Medina
962 - coronation of Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XII, the translatio imperii. This is the latest given date for the end of Ancient Era.

Civilizations

The most prominent civilisations of the Ancient Era:

Ancient China
Ancient Persia
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Greece
Ancient Rome
Ancient India
African Ancient Kingdoms: Axumite Kingdom, Kush, etc.
Assyria
Babylonia
Byzantines (Early Eastern Roman Empire, until 476 BC)
Hellenic civilization (Greeks)
Hittites
Indus Valley civilization, unified from 2600 BC - 1900 BC.
History of ancient Israel and Judah
Kingdom of Israel
Kingdom of Judah
Mesopotamia
Mitanni
Native America
Roman Empire
Sumeria
Susa
Urartu -- Kingdom from 860 BC to 585 BC
Mayans south america
Aztecs south america

References and Further Reading

[1] Everyman His Own Historian, Carl Becker (1931) Speech delivered to the American Historical Association

Eyewitness Testimony, Elizbeth Loftus, Harvard, (1996)

Decoding Ancient History : A toolkit for the historian as detective, Carol G. Thomas, D.P. Wick, Prentice Hall. (1993)

Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary, Ramsay MacMullen, Princeton (1993)

Greeks and the Irrational, E. R. Dodds, U of Calif Press (1964)

History of Magic and Experimental Science, Lynn Thorndike (1923)

Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest & Alienation in the Empire, Ramsay MacMullen, Harvard (1966)

[2] Directory of Ancient Historians in the USA

The Idea of History, R.G. Collingwood (1946)

What is History?, E.H. Carr

(Becker 1931, Loftus 1996, MacMullen 1990, Thorndike 1923, MacMullen 1966, Thomas & Wick 1993)