page_title: Human history
section_title: Cradles of civilization
hierarchical_section_title: Human history / Ancient history / Cradles of civilization
caption_attribution_description: العربية: أهرامات الجيزة، مصر Deutsch: Alle Pyramiden von Gizeh auf einem Bild. English: All Giza Pyramids in one shot. Русский: Все пирамиды Гизы на изображении. Español: Las Pirámides de Guiza (Egipto). Français&#160;: Les Pyramides de Gizeh (Egypte). Català: Les Piràmides de Giza, a Egipte. Polski: Wszystkie Piramidy w Gizie w jednym ujęciu. 日本語: 三大ピラミッド
context_page_description: Human history, also known as the history of the world, is the carefully researched description of humanity's past. It is informed by archaeology, anthropology, genetics, linguistics, and other disciplines; and, for periods since the invention of writing, by recorded history and by secondary sources and studies.
  Humanity's written history was preceded by its prehistory, beginning with the Palaeolithic Era, followed by the Neolithic Era. The Neolithic saw the Agricultural Revolution begin, between 10,000 and 5000 BCE, in the Near East's Fertile Crescent. During this period, humans began the systematic husbandry of plants and animals. As agriculture advanced, most humans transitioned from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle as farmers in permanent settlements. The relative security and increased productivity provided by farming allowed communities to expand into increasingly larger units, fostered by advances in transportation.
  Whether in prehistoric or historic times, people always needed to be near reliable sources of potable water.
context_section_description: The Bronze Age is part of the three-age system (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age) that for some parts of the world describes effectively the early history of civilization. During this era the most fertile areas of the world saw city-states and the first civilizations develop. These were concentrated in fertile river valleys: the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in the Indian subcontinent, and the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers in China.
  Sumer, located in Mesopotamia, is the first known complex civilization, developing the first city-states in the 4th millennium BCE. It was in these cities that the earliest known form of writing, cuneiform script, appeared around 3000 BCE. Cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. These pictorial representations eventually became simplified and more abstract. Cuneiform texts were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn with a blunt reed used as a stylus. Writing made the administration of a large state far easier.
  Transport was facilitated by waterways—by rivers and seas. The Mediterranean Sea, at the juncture of three continents, fostered the projection of military power and the exchange of goods, ideas, and inventions. This era also saw new land technologies, such as horse-based cavalry and chariots, that allowed armies to move faster.
  These developments led to the rise of territorial states and empires. In Mesopotamia there prevailed a pattern of independent warring city-states and of a loose hegemony shifting from one city to another. In Egypt, by contrast, first there was a dual division into Upper and Lower Egypt which was shortly followed by unification of all the valley around 3100 BCE, followed by permanent pacification. In Crete the Minoan civilization had entered the Bronze Age by 2700 BCE and is regarded as the first civilization in Europe. Over the next millennia, other river valleys saw monarchical empires rise to power. In the 25th – 21st centuries BCE, the empires of Akkad and Sumer arose in Mesopotamia.
  Over the following millennia, civilizations developed across the world. Trade increasingly became a source of power as states with access to important resources or controlling important trade routes rose to dominance. By 1400 BCE, Mycenaean Greece began to develop. In India this era was the Vedic period, which laid the foundations of Hinduism and other cultural aspects of early Indian society, and ended in the 6th century BCE. From around 550 BCE, many independent kingdoms and republics known as the Mahajanapadas were established across the subcontinent.
  As complex civilizations arose in the Eastern Hemisphere, the indigenous societies in the Americas remained relatively simple and fragmented into diverse regional cultures. During the formative stage in Mesoamerica (about 1500 BCE to 500 CE), more complex and centralized civilizations began to develop, mostly in what is now Mexico, Central America, and Peru. They included civilizations such as the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Moche, and Nazca. They developed agriculture, growing maize, chili peppers, cocoa, tomatoes, and potatoes, crops unique to the Americas, and creating distinct cultures and religions. These ancient indigenous societies would be greatly affected, for good and ill, by European contact during the early modern period.
caption: Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
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