Iron Age
4 recorded milestones at this point in the record.
City-states such as Tyre, Sidon and Byblos built cedar ships and ran regular routes across the Mediterranean, trading dye, glass, timber and metals.
Why it mattered
Phoenician shipping carried the alphabet west and made the Mediterranean a single commercial world.
The Zhou overthrew the Shang and justified their rule with the idea that heaven withdraws its mandate from unjust kings.
Why it mattered
It gave East Asia a political theory in which rulers can legitimately be replaced — a template used for three thousand years.
Teachers in the Ganges plain composed dialogues probing the self, consciousness and the nature of reality beyond ritual practice.
Why it mattered
These texts founded a philosophical tradition that shaped Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism alike.
The Iliad and Odyssey, long carried by singers, were shaped into fixed poems and soon after written in the new Greek alphabet.
Why it mattered
Oral memory became literature, giving Greece a shared cultural inheritance.
Sign in to amend this page or add a milestone — every edit is signed and kept in the record.
Andes
Mesopotamia
Levant
Italy
North Africa
Alps