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4000  The wooden plow is being used in central Europe.

4000  It is hypothesized that in the Eurasian steppes, horses have begun to be domesticated.

3600  In southwest Asia, copper is being mixed with tin to produce a metal harder than copper: bronze.

3500  Sumerians have migrated to Mesopotamia and have taken over villages and the agriculture of others. Food surpluses are allowing a diversity of occupations to develop: soldier, farmer, craftsperson, merchant. Individual possession of land has been replacing communal possession.

3500  Desert is forming in North Africa. People have fled from drought to the Nile River, where they trap water for irrigation and begin an intense agriculture in what is otherwise desert.

3500  Settlements exist in what today is northern Israel. 

3500  In what today is Kazakhstan, people are riding, milking and eating horses.

3100  In the Fertile Crescent, objects made of conch shells are imported from what is today Pakistan. Transport costs leave the items of trade exclusive to those elites who possess the wealth to pay for them.

3000  In what today is western Finland, people were chewing a gummy, sugarless birch bark tar which had antiseptic properties. It helped fight gum infections and chewing after meals helped fight tooth decay.

3000  Among the Sumerians, democratic assemblies are giving way to the authority of kings. Priesthood is becoming distinct from working alongside others in the fields. Field labor is described as deserved subservience to the gods. Hardship is seen as a product of sin. People and animals are still sacrificed to gods. Floods are common and a story of a great flood exists. Trade and wealth are pursued. Competition for power between the kings of city-states produces wars of conquest. The warrior tradition continues with men dominating women. With commerce, writing develops.

3000  The Persian Gulf is a major artery of commerce. The ways of Mesopotamians are spreading to Egypt and Greece. Writing develops in Egypt.

3000  Egypt is united through warfare. There, human and animal sacrifices continue. Egyptians have many gods but Egypt is without rain and has no myth of a flood. The rule of Egyptian kings is claimed to be associated with the gods. Kings are believed descended from the gods and more deserving than common people.

2700  It is estimated that around this time Minoan civilization, on the island of Crete, begins. It is built by seagoing tradesmen. Rule is to be by the wealthy with a well-organized bureaucracy. Workmen will produce fine vases, sheet metal, tweezers, stonework and other artifacts.

2700  In the Americas, corn, beans, chilies and squash are among cultivated plants.

2600  Agricultural people give rise to the Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley.

2600  In the Middle East, oxen are pulling wooden plows, cutting deeper into soil.

2500  In the Fertile Crescent the new imports are ceramic jars, copper tools and jewelry. As in the year the century 3100, transport costs leave these items of trade mainly with those elites who possess the wealth to pay for them. Common people were using stone tools.

2500-2000  Farmers appear in the Philippines and eventually in what today is Indonesia. They are said to have had the Dapenkeng pottery style.

2300  Indo-Europeans move into southern Greece. They conquer and make themselves an aristocracy over those who had migrated there many centuries before. These latest migrants are to be known as the Mycenae Greeks, who have gods similar to other Indo-Europeans, including a father god of the sky called Zeus, whom they believe has power over the entire world.

2300  In what today is England, the stone monument Stonehenge is built. (Carbon dating performed in the year of 2008.)

2250  The Mycenae Greeks are in contact with sea-going tradesmen, the Minoans of Crete -- a commercial society ruled by the wealthy.

2200  Troy, a coastal town in Asia Minor, known as Troy II among archaeologists (a second level settlement with numerous others to be built on top in coming centuries) is destroyed by fire.

2200  A Semite to be known as Sargon the Great takes power in the Sumerian city of Kish. He conquers in the name of the Sumerian god Enlil and builds an empire across Mesopotamia and Syria.

2200  The settlements in what today is northern Israel have been abandoned.

2150  The empire of Sargon's grandson, Naramsim, is overrun by migrating Gutiens. Naramsin's subjects blame their misfortune on their having angered their gods.

2130  Reduced waters in the Nile are accompanied by political upheaval. By now instability within the royal families of Egypt have ended various dynasties, and now an eighth dynasty of kings loses power. Two hundred years of political chaos has begun. Common folks attack the rich and local lords assume power independent of any king.

timeline 300,000-4001 | timeline 2000 to 1001

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