page_title: 1st millennium BC
section_title: Inventions, discoveries, introductions
hierarchical_section_title: 1st millennium BC / Ancient history / Inventions, discoveries, introductions
caption_attribution_description: English: Human-headed winged bull or Lamassu facing. Bas-relief from the m wall, k door, of king Sargon II's palace at Dur Sharrukin in Assyria (now Khorsabad in Iraq). Français&#160;: Taureau androcéphale ailé tourné de face. Bas-relief de la façade m, porte k, du palais bâti par Sargon II à Dur Sharrukin, en Assyrie (actuelle Khorsabad, Iraq)
context_page_description: The 1st millennium BC was the period of time between from the year 1000 BC to 1 BC.
  It encompasses the Iron Age in the Old World and sees the transition from the Ancient Near East to classical antiquity.
  World population roughly doubled over the course of the millennium,
  from about 100 million to about 200–250 million.
context_section_description: 8th century BC
  Greek alphabet, the first alphabet with vowels.
  7th century BC
  Trireme
  6th century BC
  paved trackway
  Pythagorean theorem
  Monotheism
  5th century BC
  Blast furnace China
  Atomism
  crossbow
  siege engine
  4th century BC
  formal grammar
  Kyrenia ship
  3rd century BC
  Lighthouse of Alexandria
  Malleable Cast iron China
  buoyancy (Archimedes)
  Spherical earth
  water clock
  Qin built and unified various sections of the Great Wall of China.
  Qin built Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum guarded by the life-sized Terracotta Army.
  2nd century BC
  Antikythera mechanism
caption: Lamassu facing forward. Bas-relief from the king Sargon II's palace at Dur Sharrukin in Assyria (now Khorsabad in Iraq), c. 713–716 BC. From Paul-Émile Botta's excavations in 1843–1844.
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