Timeline
Every guide, in its time.
Read across eras and regions, then open a guide to see the sources behind its dates. A shared date is a question to investigate, not evidence of contact.
57 of 57 guides
Before 5000 BCE 6
- 10500 BCE onward
Whose walls are the walls of Jericho?
Jericho: eleven thousand years in one mound.
Jordan Valley, Palestine · Anatolia & the Levant · Early cities
Tell es-Sultan preserves twenty-nine phases of occupation beside a spring. Learn why a site's oldest date must not be borrowed for its youngest walls.
- 9600–8200 BCE
Who built monuments before cities?
Göbekli Tepe: monuments raised before farming towns.
Şanlıurfa, southeastern Türkiye · Anatolia & the Levant · Early cities
Visit a hilltop in southeastern Türkiye where carved stone enclosures stand at the edge of the Neolithic, and learn how a site's dates are framed.
- 7400–6200 BCE
What did a Neolithic neighbourhood look like?
Çatalhöyük: a town without streets.
Konya plain, central Anatolia, Türkiye · Anatolia & the Levant · Early cities
Visit two mounds on the Konya plain where densely packed houses were entered from the roof, and learn to keep each claim with its mound and level.
- 5450–890 BCE
Why prepare the dead for seven thousand years?
Chinchorro: the oldest artificial mummies.
Arica and Parinacota, northern Chile · South America · Deep time & first peoples
Marine hunter-gatherers on the Atacama coast practised artificial mummification millennia before Egypt. Learn to read a long cultural range as a container, not an event.
- 5300–4100 BCE
What comes before a city?
Ubaid: the villages before the first cities.
Southern Mesopotamia, Iraq · Mesopotamia · Early cities
Meet the Ubaid period of Mesopotamia and see why one research record keeps two different date ranges side by side instead of averaging them.
- 5200–4700 BCE
What happens when new dates arrive?
Mehrgarh: when a date moves by two thousand years.
Kachi plain, Balochistan, Pakistan · South Asia · Early cities
Watch a chronology dispute in progress: older literature placed Mehrgarh's Neolithic in the eighth millennium BCE, and direct radiocarbon dates published in 2025 propose a much later start.
5000–3000 BCE 3
- 4500–2500 BCE
How do you know a language that left no texts?
Proto-Indo-European: reconstructing a language nobody wrote.
Reconstructed; no attested texts · Across regions · Writing & languages
Thousands of years before writing reached Europe, a language ancestral to Sanskrit, Latin, and English was spoken. Learn what a reconstruction is and what it is not.
- 4000–2686 BCE
How did Egypt become a kingdom?
From Naqada to the first dynasties.
Upper Egypt and the Nile Valley · Egypt & Nubia · Kingdoms & monuments
Trace the thousand years in which Upper Egyptian communities became the Early Dynastic state, and compare a relative chronology with new radiocarbon dates.
- 4000–3100 BCE
Where does the first city begin?
Uruk: reading the first urban horizon.
Southern Mesopotamia, Iraq · Mesopotamia · Early cities
Follow the Uruk period in southern Mesopotamia, where monumental architecture, administration, and early writing appear, and learn to read a period's dates as approximate.
3000–1000 BCE 13
- 3000–1800 BCE
Where do cities begin?
Caral: a wider map of early urban life.
Supe Valley, Peru · South America · Early cities
Visit an early urban center in Peru and learn why a shared timeline helps us compare societies without assuming a connection.
- 2900–2350 BCE
Who decided when a period begins?
Early Dynastic Sumer: how a period gets its subdivisions.
Diyala region and southern Mesopotamia, Iraq · Mesopotamia · Kingdoms & monuments
Use the Square Temple at Tell Asmar to see how the Early Dynastic period of Mesopotamia was constructed by archaeologists, and why its subdivisions are debated.
- 2600–1900 BCE
How do you date a city without a king list?
The Indus cities: an era of integration.
Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra basins, Pakistan and India · South Asia · Early cities
Explore the Mature Harappan phase of the Indus civilization and see how archaeologists build a chronology from artifact sequences and radiocarbon dates rather than royal names.
- 2600–1900 BCE
Can you study a script you cannot read?
Indus inscriptions: a function before a reading.
Indus civilization sites, Pakistan and India · South Asia · Writing & languages
The Indus script remains undeciphered. See how a 2023 study argues for what the short inscriptions were used for, and why that is a different question from what they say.
- 2450–1500 BCE
What makes a state a state?
Kerma: an independent state on the Middle Nile.
Northern Sudan, Middle Nile · Egypt & Nubia · Early cities
Meet Kerma, the early Kushite center south of Egypt, and see which kinds of evidence let archaeologists describe it as an independent urban state.
- 2250–1700 BCE
Can one civilization have two chronologies?
Gonur Depe and the Oxus civilization: a Bronze Age world with two clocks.
Murghab delta, Turkmenistan · Central Asia · Early cities
Enter the Oxus civilization of Central Asia through its largest site and learn why two published chronologies are kept as separate candidates.
- 2000–1600 BCE
How good was a Babylonian approximation?
YBC 7289: the square root of two on a school tablet.
Mesopotamia (provenance unknown) · Mesopotamia · Mathematics & measurement
A small round clay tablet from the Old Babylonian period shows a square with its diagonals and a number close to the square root of two. Read the numbers as a scribe would.
- 1800 BCE
What is a table of numbers for?
Plimpton 322: a Babylonian table and its interpreters.
Mesopotamia · Mesopotamia · Mathematics & measurement
Meet a clay tablet from around 1800 BCE whose columns of numbers have been read in several ways. Separate the object from the interpretations.
- 1550–1500 BCE
What counts as medicine in an ancient text?
Papyrus Ebers: a medical scroll from the end of the 16th century BCE.
Thebes, Egypt · Egypt & Nubia · Medicine & natural knowledge
Open a scholarly digital edition of the Papyrus Ebers, one of the longest Egyptian medical texts, and learn to read remedies, incantations, and cosmology as separate layers.
- 1550 BCE
How did an Egyptian scribe do mathematics?
The Rhind Papyrus: a scribe's handbook of problems.
Thebes, Upper Egypt · Egypt & Nubia · Mathematics & measurement
Open the British Museum's record for the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, a collection of 84 worked problems, and learn why an object's date and its text's origin are different questions.
- 1525–1401 BCE
Where does medicine end and magic begin?
Papyrus Berlin 3027: spells and remedies for mother and child.
Egypt (find spot unknown) · Egypt & Nubia · Medicine & natural knowledge
An 18th Dynasty papyrus collects incantations and recipes for mothers and children. Use it to test the line between medicine and ritual that modern categories draw.
- 1500–300 BCE
When a site names a culture, which came first?
Chavín: a ceremonial centre before the Andean states.
Ancash, Peru · South America · Kingdoms & monuments
Chavín de Huántar gave its name to a style found across the Andes. Learn why the site's building sequence and the cultural horizon need separate dates.
- 1500–1000 BCE
How old is a text that was not written down?
The Rig Veda: dating a tradition that was spoken first.
Northwestern South Asia · South Asia · Writing & languages
The Rig Veda was composed orally and copied much later. Learn to keep four different dates apart: sacred chronology, estimated composition, oral transmission, and surviving manuscripts.
1000 BCE – 1 CE 13
- 1000 BCE onward
When did Russian begin?
From Proto-Slavic to Russian: a continuum, not a birthday.
Eastern Europe · Mediterranean & Europe · Writing & languages
Follow the Slavic branch from its Balto-Slavic ancestor through Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic to modern Russian, and see why the record refuses single-date origins.
- 1000–500 BCE
How do you catalogue the sky in clay?
MUL.APIN: a Babylonian compendium of the sky.
Mesopotamia · Mesopotamia · Astronomy & calendars
Read the British Museum's record for the first tablet of MUL.APIN, a Late Babylonian astronomical treatise, and see how a copy's date differs from a tradition's age.
- 900–270 BCE
When did the direction of power reverse?
Napata: the kingdom that ruled Egypt from the south.
Gebel Barkal and the Napatan region, Sudan · Egypt & Nubia · Kingdoms & monuments
Follow Napatan Kush from its sacred mountain at Gebel Barkal to the 25th Dynasty, when kings from Kush ruled Egypt and revived older pharaonic forms.
- 900 BCE – 350 CE
How many pyramids are there, really?
The pyramids of Sudan: counting what survives.
Meroë, Nuri, Gebel Barkal, and Sedeinga, Sudan · Egypt & Nubia · Kingdoms & monuments
Sudan's royal cemeteries hold more pyramidal monuments than Egypt, but every total depends on a counting rule. Learn to read a number together with its definition.
- 700–601 BCE
How did Assyrian scribes divide?
K.2069: a reciprocal table from the library at Nineveh.
Kouyunjik, Nineveh, Iraq · Mesopotamia · Mathematics & measurement
A seventh-century tablet from Nineveh lists reciprocals for sexagesimal arithmetic. Learn why the date of an artifact is not the date of the mathematics on it.
- 652–651 BCE
What did someone see in 652 BCE?
Astronomical Diaries: a dated record of the Babylonian sky.
Babylon · Mesopotamia · Astronomy & calendars
Enter the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries through a single tablet, BM 32312, and learn why a dated observation is kept apart from what it was taken to mean.
- 500 BCE onward
How closely related are English and German?
English and German: two daughters of West Germanic.
Northwestern Europe · Mediterranean & Europe · Writing & languages
English and German descend from a shared western branch of Germanic. Follow the family tree in the research record, and see why its stages are conventions rather than birthdays.
- 500 BCE – 500 CE
What were the geoglyphs for?
The Nasca lines: a date range is not a function.
Coastal plain of southern Peru · South America · Kingdoms & monuments
The geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa are dated to a thousand-year span. Learn why that range cannot by itself tell you what any one figure was made to do.
- 323–31 BCE
Can fragments reveal a machine?
Antikythera: how much can a fragment reveal?
Eastern Mediterranean · Mediterranean & Europe · Technology & instruments
Follow the evidence behind an ancient astronomical mechanism and distinguish surviving material from a proposed reconstruction.
- 287–212 BCE
Which Archimedes are you reading?
Archimedes: what survives of his works.
Syracuse, Sicily · Mediterranean & Europe · Mathematics & measurement
The treatises of Archimedes reach us through manuscripts made a thousand years after his death. Learn to keep an author's lifetime, a text's composition, and a copy's date apart.
- 250 BCE – 450 CE
What does 'deciphered' actually mean?
Meroitic: a script we can sound out but not fully read.
Kingdom of Kush, Sudan · Egypt & Nubia · Writing & languages
The Meroitic script of Kush has known sign values and an unresolved language. Learn the difference between reading signs, reconstructing grammar, and translating a text.
- 202–186 BCE
Which is older, the buried text or the famous one?
Writings on Reckoning: an excavated text beside a transmitted classic.
Zhangjiashan, Hubei, China · East Asia · Mathematics & measurement
Compare the Suan shu shu, a mathematical manuscript on bamboo strips from a Han tomb, with the transmitted Nine Chapters, and learn how excavated witnesses test a textual tradition.
- 196 BCE
How do you read a lost script?
One decree. Three scripts. A way back into a language.
Egypt · Egypt & Nubia · Writing & languages
Begin with the Rosetta Stone: see how comparison turns an inscription into a research question you can follow.
1–500 CE 6
- 1–699 CE
Who wrote the first alchemy?
Zosimos, Stephanos, and Pseudo-Democritus: alchemy with names attached.
Egypt and Byzantium · Mediterranean & Europe · Technology & instruments
Three Greek alchemical texts carry three kinds of author problem: a known writer, a disputed one, and a borrowed name. Learn how each changes what a shared recipe can prove.
- 100–1381 CE
How does a book travel across languages?
The Almagest: one book, four cities, a thousand years.
Alexandria, Baghdad, Toledo, Saragossa · Across regions · How knowledge travelled
Follow Ptolemy's astronomical treatise from second-century Alexandria through Arabic translation in Baghdad and Latin translation in Toledo to a dated copy made in Saragossa in 1381.
- 200–700 CE
How old is a text that says it is ancient?
The Corpus Hermeticum: dating a collection that claims to be older.
Graeco-Roman Egypt · Egypt & Nubia · How knowledge travelled
The Hermetic treatises present themselves as the wisdom of an Egyptian sage. Learn why the record dates each treatise separately and never projects the corpus into pharaonic prehistory.
- 270–299 CE
Is a recipe book alchemy or craft?
Leiden Papyrus X and the Stockholm Papyrus: recipes for metals, dyes, and stones.
Roman Egypt · Egypt & Nubia · Technology & instruments
Two Greek papyri from late Roman Egypt collect technical recipes for working metals, dyeing, and imitating gems. Learn how scholars read them and why their relationship is treated with caution.
- 400–900 CE
Does a shared style mean a shared ruler?
Tiwanaku: a capital on the altiplano.
Lake Titicaca basin, Bolivia · South America · Kingdoms & monuments
Follow Tiwanaku from urban florescence to decline, and learn why the record refuses to date every monument by the city's best-known centuries.
- 499 CE
Why keep the composition date apart from the manuscripts?
The Āryabhaṭīya: dating a work and its witnesses.
South Asia · South Asia · Astronomy & calendars
The Āryabhaṭīya is traditionally dated to 499 CE. See how its critical edition lets the research record keep the composition, the author, and each surviving manuscript as separate objects.
500–1000 CE 1
- 800–1199 CE
Why translate the same book twice?
Hunayn ibn Ishaq: translating Galen into Syriac, Arabic, and beyond.
Abbasid Baghdad, later Béziers · Islamic world & the Middle East · How knowledge travelled
The ninth-century translator Hunayn ibn Ishaq rendered Galen into Syriac and Arabic for different patrons. Learn why those were separate commissions, and how an Arabic version can preserve what Greek lost.
1000–1500 CE 8
- 1200–1599 CE
Why is a shared mistake better evidence than a shared design?
The Tusi couple in Greek: the Schemata of the Stars.
Maragha, Constantinople, and the Italian Renaissance · Across regions · How knowledge travelled
A Greek astronomical text carries a Persian lunar model and, with it, the same numerical error. Learn why a shared error is a stronger fingerprint than a shared diagram.
- 1235–1291 CE
What can a dated instrument prove?
Two astrolabes: reading an instrument through its museum record.
Jazira and Yemen · Islamic world & the Middle East · Technology & instruments
Compare two thirteenth-century astrolabes, one in London and one in New York, and see how a museum record, a dated inscription, and a surviving treatise support different kinds of claims.
- 1300–1599 CE
What can a copied table prove?
Bianchini's tables in Copernicus's own hand.
Cracow, Padua, and Uppsala · Mediterranean & Europe · How knowledge travelled
A copy of planetary-latitude tables circulated by Giovanni Bianchini survives in Copernicus's handwriting. Follow what that artifact establishes, what it only suggests, and what the almanacs argue against.
- 1300–1599 CE
How far can a resemblance be traced?
From Maragha to Copernicus: tracing a transmission claim.
Damascus, the Veneto, Cracow, Uppsala · Across regions · How knowledge travelled
Copernicus's planetary models resemble those of Ibn al-Shatir of Damascus. Follow a research case that grades each link in the chain, from verified fact to unsupported story.
- 1300–1599 CE
Is a matching model a copied model?
Mercury models: how close is close?
Damascus and Frombork · Across regions · Astronomy & calendars
Copernicus's mature Mercury model closely matches Ibn al-Shatir's. See which parts of that correspondence the research case grades as strong, and which common arguments it calls insufficient.
- 1366 CE onward
Does any manuscript by an author prove his theory travelled?
Ibn al-Shatir's Nihayat: which manuscript counts?
Damascus and Oxford · Islamic world & the Middle East · How knowledge travelled
A fourteenth-century Damascus astronomer left a planetary theory that survives in several manuscripts. Learn why a manuscript on his astrolabe is not evidence for his Mercury model.
- 1400–1499 CE
Who translated Euclid, and how would we know?
Euclid in Latin: a fifteenth-century witness.
Paris and Toledo · Mediterranean & Europe · How knowledge travelled
A Paris manuscript carries a Latin Euclid made from Arabic. Learn why the record dates the copy, declines to name the translator, and keeps Euclid's own date far away from both.
- 1460–1540 CE
What does it mean for knowledge to arrive in pieces?
Three routes into Renaissance Italy.
Venice, Padua, and Mantua · Mediterranean & Europe · How knowledge travelled
A cardinal's library, a travelling scholar, and a Mantuan notebook each brought part of late Islamicate astronomy to Italy. See why the research case calls them partial carriers and names two gaps still open.
1500 CE onward 3
- 1580–1864 CE
Who built the star forts?
Star forts: what the construction records say.
Europe, the Americas, and Japan · Across regions · Kingdoms & monuments
Bastioned fortresses look alike from the air, which invites sweeping claims. Read five documented construction histories and see how different their dates and builders are.
- 1603–1739 CE
Does a name on a map prove a state?
Tartary on the map: what a label can and cannot tell you.
Northern and Central Asia on European maps · Across regions · Maps & geography
Three maps in the Library of Congress carry the label Tartary across northern Asia. Learn how a research record transcribes a map label without turning it into evidence of a political empire.
- 1611–1740 CE
What was there before the city?
St Petersburg, 1703: a city with a documented start.
Neva delta, Russia · Mediterranean & Europe · Kingdoms & monuments
Claims of a buried older city under St Petersburg circulate widely. Read three institutional records: the urban project of 1703, the Swedish fortress that preceded it, and a fortress built in phases.
Not tied to one period 4
- Ancient texts in Byzantine manuscripts
How old is the copy you are reading?
Ancient medicine in Byzantine hands: the Hippocratic corpus and the Vienna Dioscorides.
Greek world and Byzantium · Mediterranean & Europe · Medicine & natural knowledge
Two studies of Greek medical texts show the gap between when a work was composed and when its surviving manuscript was made. Learn to date the witness and the work separately.
- Roman sanctuary over earlier, undated remains
Does older occupation make a monument older?
Baalbek: earlier remains and a Roman podium.
Bekaa Valley, Lebanon · Anatolia & the Levant · Kingdoms & monuments
Baalbek's enormous podium stones attract bold claims. Learn how the research record separates attested earlier remains from the date of the monumental construction itself.
- Hypotheses about deep prehistory
Is there a mother of all languages?
How far back can language comparison reach?
Global · Across regions · Writing & languages
Nostratic, Borean, and Proto-World propose ancestors far deeper than Indo-European. Learn why the research record stores them as hypotheses with falling confidence rather than as ancestry.
- Rock art; disputed early occupation claims
How old is the oldest site in the Americas?
Serra da Capivara: rock art and the oldest-dates debate.
Piauí, northeastern Brazil · South America · Deep time & first peoples
A Brazilian park holds hundreds of rock-art sites and a claim of occupation far older than the regional consensus. See how the research seed keeps that claim open rather than accepted.
Keep the habit
Dates are ranges. Read them that way.
Each guide names its period, its place, and the records that support them.
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