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Home›World history

Ancient civilizations

The first cities grew up beside rivers: the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, the Indus and the Yellow River. Eight units cover how those societies farmed, built, wrote, made laws and worked metal, with maps, timelines and flashcards. Dates before about 1000 BCE are approximate, and each unit says where scholars disagree.

Progress

About this course

The oldest writing we have is mostly receipts: barley, beer and sheep counted on clay in Uruk about 5,300 years ago. A Sumerian poem tells its own story of how writing began. King Enmerkar of Uruk kept sending a messenger across the mountains to a distant lord, and each message grew longer. In the end the messenger could not hold it all in his head, so the king patted a lump of clay flat and set the words down on it. Dates before about 1000 BCE are approximate, and each unit says where scholars disagree.

The eight units are built around rivers and then around things people invented. Mesopotamia comes first, where scribes in southern Iraq counted in sixties more than 4,000 years ago, and Egypt follows, where the Great Pyramid rose 146 metres and no building was taller for more than 3,800 years. The Indus builders made bricks in the same proportions, 1 : 2 : 4, in cities about 600 kilometres apart. The Yellow River unit explains that the oldest large body of Chinese writing survived because pharmacies sold it as "dragon bones" until 1899. A first look at Greek city-states gives 776 BCE as the first firm date. Then come how writing began, Hammurabi's laws on a black basalt stone over 2.25 metres tall with 282 rulings, and the wheel and Bronze Age, with a wheel about 5,200 years old found in a Slovenian marsh in 2002.

Some stories show how we learned all this. French soldiers found the Rosetta Stone in July 1799, and Champollion announced in 1822 that he could read hieroglyphs. In the 1850s railway contractors carried away bricks from Harappa as ballast, and only in the 1920s did excavators realise those bricks were more than 4,000 years old.

Before you start

This course opens the world history series, so you can start here. The first cities all grew beside rivers, and knowing where the Tigris, the Nile, the Indus and the Yellow River run, from Rivers and mountains or Continents and oceans, makes the maps easier to follow.

When you finish

Afterwards you can explain why the first cities grew beside rivers, say what the name Mesopotamia means and when the Nile usually flooded, and compare the brick cities of the Indus with the oracle bones of the Shang. You can trace writing from clay receipts in Uruk to the Phoenician alphabet, describe Hammurabi's 282 rulings and date the oldest wooden wheel.

  1. 1Mesopotamia: the first citiesYour clock still counts in sixties because scribes in southern Iraq did so more than 4,000 years ago.
  2. 2Ancient Egypt and the NileThe Great Pyramid rose 146 metres, and for more than 3,800 years no building was taller.
  3. 3The Indus Valley civilizationIndus builders made bricks in the same proportions, 1 : 2 : 4, in cities about 600 kilometres apart.
  4. 4The Yellow River and the ShangThe oldest large body of Chinese writing came to scholarly attention in 1899 when inscriptions were recognized on "dragon bones" sold by pharmacies.
  5. 5Greek city-states: a first lookThe first firm date in Greek history is 776 BCE, worked out more than three centuries later from a list of Olympic sprint winners.
  6. 6How writing beganThe oldest writing we have is mostly receipts: barley, beer and sheep counted on clay in Uruk about 5,300 years ago.
  7. 7Hammurabi’s lawsThe Louvre’s Hammurabi stone is over 2.25 metres of black basalt carrying 282 rulings.
  8. 8The wheel and the Bronze AgeThe oldest wooden wheel yet found, about 5,200 years old, came out of a marsh in Slovenia in 2002.

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Sources for this course (13)
  • The Met Heilbrunn Timeline essays "Uruk: The First City", "The Origins of Writing", "The Akkadian Period (ca. 2350-2150 B.C.)", "Egypt in the Old Kingdom", "Egypt in the Middle Kingdom", "Shang and Zhou Dynasties: The Bronze Age of China" (metmuseum.org/essays) and Met collection records for Indus seals (2600-1900 BCE) and Shang oracle bones
  • British Museum: "Hieroglyphs: decipherment timeline", "How to write cuneiform", Rosetta Stone pages (britishmuseum.org)
  • Louvre: "The Code of Hammurabi" (louvre.fr/en/the-code-of-hammurabi)
  • Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art: "Oracle Bone Script" (asia-archive.si.edu)
  • Smarthistory: Law Code Stele of Hammurabi, Pyramid of Khufu, Cuneiform (smarthistory.org)
  • Institute of Nautical Archaeology: Uluburun shipwreck (nauticalarch.org)
  • Manning et al. 2009, absolute age of the Uluburun ship
  • Government of Slovenia / City Museum of Ljubljana: Ljubljana Marshes wheel (slovenia.si, mgml.si)
  • Britannica: Huang He floods, Greek alphabet, Olympic Games 776 BCE
  • University of Cambridge: decipherment of Linear B (cam.ac.uk)
  • Archaeology (AIA) 1999: Abydos tomb U-j labels
  • UN gifts: replica of the Code of Hammurabi. Map coastlines: Natural Earth 1:110m (public domain)
  • river lines are hand-placed approximations.

Checked: 2026-10-17