The First Writing System

Humanity has been vulnerable to rapidly spread illnesses because disease propagates more easily in concentrated populations without adequate sanitation.

Advances in sanitation have allowed people to live near one another in cities with less risk to their health, in particular, safe disposal of effluent to spare the water supply from contamination.

The Indus Valley civilization arose in the floodplains of the Indus and Sarasvati rivers around 5000 years ago.

In the largest structure in the city Mohenjo-Dar was an immense, elevated public bathhouse, measuring almost 900 square feet. The status of the bathhouse as the city's largest structure suggests that the people highly valued cleanliness.

• In the 5th century BCE, Athens housed a significant number of geniuses and innovators, such as the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the historians Thucydides and Herodotus, the physician Hippocrates, and philosophers Socrates and Plato.
• Socrates is known for the Socratic method of inquiry, which uses questions to draw out critical thinking. Plato became the father of idealism and is often thought to be the father of Western political philosophy.
• By the 4th century BCE, philosopher Aristotle was added to the luminaries of Athens. Athens also became home to the forerunners of modern universities, such as Plato's Academy, an institution of higher learning, and the Lyceum, a temple that served as a center for education, debate, and scholarship.

The Acropolis is a distinctive feature of today's Athens that was built in the 5th century BCE. It is a cluster of buildings on a rocky outcrop. The famous Parthenon temple on the Acropolis was built to honor Athena and to serve the city's treasury.

Athens during the 5th century BCE was lively. The heart of Athens was its marketplace, or Agora (a place where people gather.) The structures surrounding the Agora's market stalls included stone benches, various altars, and temples, a building named the Aiakeion where laws and legal decisions were displayed, and various stoas or covered porticos.

Alexandria was founded in 331BCE by the Macedonian leader Alexander the Great. Alexander left Egypt a few months later, leaving his viceroy Cleomenes in charge.

Alexander passed away in 323 BCE, and one of his deputies, Macedonian general Ptolemy Lagides, took control of Egypt. Ptolemy executed Cleomenes and declared himself pharaoh. He started the Ptolemaic dynasty and made Alexandria his capital in 305 BCE.

The city's population grew to around 300,000 people. It remained the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt, as well as Roman and Byzantine Egypt, for almost a thousand years.

Alexandria was designed by the architect Dinocrates of Rhodes, using a Hippodamian gridiron street plan. The city was cosmopolitan and diverse. It consisted of Greeks, Jew, and Egyptian Arabs.

The earliest athletic competitions seem to be simple wrestling contests that are represented in cave paintings.

Other popular sports included foot-races, chariot-races, boxing, swimming, and archery. The Ball Game was probably the first sport that resembled modern team ball sports.

Chichen Itza was founded by the Itza, a Mayan tribe, and was once one of the greatest Mayan centers of the Yucatan peninsula. The Mayan civilization created the most highly developed writing system in the Americas before Columbus landed. The Mayans are also known for a sophisticated calendar and huge architecture.

Today Chichen Itza is a sprawling ruined city in the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula in modern Mexico. Several prominent stone structures of the city are well-preserved, such as the Warrior's Temple, the Temple of Kukulcan, and the El Caracol - a circular observatory.

Ancient Rome built sophisticated infrastructure ranging from bridges, amphitheatres, aqueducts and even sewer systems.

The Roman network of roads, called Viae Romanae and meaning ‘Roman Ways’ was a huge breakthrough in quick and easy transportation of trade goods, military supplies, and free movement of civilians and soldiers.

• The first roads were invented in the Bronze Age in 4000 BCE, created by the older Indus Valley Civilization. This was the first time that straight, 90 degree intersecting roads were seen.
• The Roman civilization created advanced road systems that encouraged travel and connection, forming a lifeline of connecting various cultures, institutions and beliefs.
• The Romans managed to create major roadways and highways with traffic segregation, something unheard of before.
• They had 372 roads with 29 major highways. The first major roadway was called the Appian Way, connecting Rome with Capua, back in 312 BCE. This road was used efficiently during the Samnite Wars in the same era.

It is estimated that the early hunter-gatherers, called ‘Natufians’ settled gradually in this oasis of a city, domesticating dogs and other animals on the way.

Agriculture and farming would have been mostly trial and error, with them noticing the scattered seeds producing edible plants. The ancient figs would probably be the first cultivated crop.

Some archaeological evidence shows that the Natufians enjoyed alcoholic beverages like beer by fermenting cereals, serving as an initial motivation to farm.

This may have led to advanced agriculture in the ancient civilization, with grains and cereals remaining a better choice due to its ability to be stored, unlike the forage for wild animals and fruits.

• Also known as Twenty Squares, this 4500-year-old game, first unearthed in ancient Mesopotamia, is impressive in its complex rules and intricate design.
• The beautiful game board uses twenty squares and has a narrow bridge in the middle part, was played in Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Turkey and many other ancient civilizations.
• To finish the game as winners, players had to race their opponent to the opposite end of the board, moving pieces according to knucklebone dice rolls.

• Named after the Egyptian serpentine deity, Mehen is also known as the Egyptian Snake Game and was played between 3100 to 2300 BC.
• Six players could simultaneously play this spiral board, each having a piece crafted in the shape of a lion or a sphere.
• The rules of this game are not very clear because it lost its popularity after the decline of Egypt’s Old Kingdom and is hardly found in archaeological records.

• The wheel and the axle didn't suddenly spring up, but were a gradual, phased invention, starting with rollers that reduced friction on the ground, and helped the Egyptians and Mesopotamians move heavy objects.
• The oldest discovered axle was found inside a potter’s wheel in a miniature, toy-like form in Mesopotamia. The fact that the center of the wheel is stationary as compared to the circumference is in fact the greatest mechanical insight ever known.
• Combining the wheel with an axle was genius, leading to the invention of the wagon and other transport vehicles.

• The name given to the first full-size wheel, according to paleolinguits, was ‘Kweklos’ which meant ‘to turn’.
• The time of this invention is said to be about 5400 years ago, though the exact location of the invention varies from Russia to Slovenia.
• The inventor was a genius in the conception and craft, as he was able to solve engineering, design and woodworking problems to scale up a toy into a full-size wagon.
• It had a profound effect on the productivity of farmers, and it even helped populations move towards other places that were not close to the river and were thus unexploited.

Iron has been collected, mined and processed into its metallic form since 1200 BCE. Large scale production only started in 1750, at the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Steel, an alloy of Iron and Carbon is known for its purity and strength, and was patented by British inventor Sir Henry Bessemer in 1857. Steel helped humanity make stronger and larger tools, paving the way for industrialized progress.

Scaling up of iron production in Great Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, led to a dramatic increase in the demand for wood. The creation of steel takes its toll on forests, with the requirement of charcoal, a residue of wood, to smelt iron and carbon.

Charcoal production, leading to demand for wood, has since then led to widespread deforestation with thousands of square kilometers of forests cut annually.

Chinese literature is based on the Book of Songs, a collection of simple poems that have accrued much interpretation and commentary.

The Book of Songs enshrined poetry as the most important form of literature across East Asia.

As more and more parts of the world became literate, new technologies such as paper and print increased the reach and influence of written stories. More readers meant new stories started to appear.

When Dante Alighieri wrote his Comedy in the spoken dialect of Tuscany, it helped to turn the dialect into a legitimate language we now call Italian.