History of modern man

See also: Timeline of modern man

The **history of the world**, in common parlance, is the **history of humanity** (or **human history**), as determined from archaeology, anthropology, genetics, linguistics, and other disciplines; and, for periods since the invention of writing, from recorded history and from secondary sources and studies.

Humanity's written history was preceded by its prehistory, beginning with the Palaeolithic Era ("Early Stone Age"), followed by the Neolithic Era ("New Stone Age"). The Neolithic saw the Agricultural Revolution begin, between 8000 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. Settlements developed on river banks as early as 3000 BCE in Mesopotamia, on the banks of Egypt's Nile River, in the Indus River valley, and along China's rivers. As farming developed, grain agriculture became more sophisticated and prompted a division of labour to store food between growing seasons. Labour divisions led to the rise of a leisured upper class and the development of cities, which provided the foundation for civilization. The growing complexity of human societies necessitated systems of accounting and writing.

With civilizations flourishing, ancient history ("Antiquity," including the Classical Age, up to about 500 CE) saw the rise and fall of empires. Post-classical history (the "Middle Ages," c. 500–1500 CE ) witnessed the rise of Christianity, the Islamic Golden Age (c. 750 CE – c. 1258 CE), and the early Italian Renaissance (from around 1300 CE). The mid-15th-century invention of modern printing, employing movable type, revolutionized communication and facilitated ever wider dissemination of information, helping end the Middle Ages and ushering in the Scientific Revolution. The Early Modern Period, sometimes referred to as the "European Age", from about 1500 to 1800, included the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Discovery. By the 18th century, the accumulation of knowledge and technology had reached a critical mass that brought about the Industrial Revolution and began the Late Modern Period, which started around 1800 and has continued through the present.

This scheme of historical periodization (dividing history into Antiquity, Post-Classical, Early Modern, and Late Modern periods) was developed for, and applies best to, the history of the Old World, particularly Europe and the Mediterranean. Outside this region, including ancient China and ancient India, historical timelines unfolded differently. However, by the 18th century, due to extensive world trade and colonization, the histories of most civilizations had become substantially intertwined. In the last quarter-millennium, the rates of growth of population, knowledge, technology, communications, commerce, weapons destructiveness, and environmental degradation have greatly accelerated, creating opportunities and perils that now confront the planet's human communities.

## Neolithic Revolution

Main articles: Prehistory, Human evolution
The Neolithic Revolution, beginning around 10,000 BCE, saw the development of agriculture, which fundamentally changed the human lifestyle. Farming developed around 10,000 BCE in the Middle East, around 7000 BCE in what is now China, around 6000 BCE in the Indus Valley and Europe, and around 4000 BCE in the Americas. Cultivation of cereal crops and the domestication of animals occurred around 8500 BCE in the Middle East, where wheat and barley were the first crops and sheep and goats were domesticated. In the Indus Valley, crops were cultivated by 6000 BCE, along with domesticated cattle. The Yellow River valley in China cultivated millet and other cereal crops by about 7000 BCE, but the Yangtze River valley domesticated rice earlier, by at least 8000 BCE. In the Americas, sunflowers were cultivated by about 4000 BCE, and maize and beans were domesticated in Central America by 3500 BCE. Potatoes were first cultivated in the Andes Mountains of South America, where the llama was also domesticated. Metal-working, starting with copper around 6000 BCE, was first used for tools and ornaments. Gold soon followed, with its main use being for ornaments. The need for metal ores stimulated trade, as many of the areas of early human settlement were lacking in ores. Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was first known from around 2500 BCE, but did not become widely used until much later.

Though early proto-cities appeared at Jericho and Catal Huyuk around 6000 BCE, the first civilizations did not emerge until around 3000 BCE in Egypt and Mesopotamia. These cultures gave birth to the invention of the wheel, mathematics, bronze-working, sailing boats, the pottery wheel, woven cloth, construction of monumental buildings, and writing. Writing developed independently and at different times in five areas of the world: Egypt (c. 3200 BCE), India (c. 3200 BCE), Mesopotamia (c. 3000 BCE), China (c. 1600 BCE), and Mesoamerica (c. 600 BCE).

Farming permitted far denser populations, which in time organized into states. Agriculture also created food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in food production. The development of agriculture permitted the creation of the first cities. These were centres of trade, manufacturing and political power. Cities established a symbiosis with their surrounding countrysides, absorbing agricultural products and providing, in return, manufactured goods and varying degrees of military control and protection.

The development of cities was synonymous with the rise of civilization. Early civilizations arose first in Lower Mesopotamia (3000 BCE), followed by Egyptian civilization along the Nile River (3000 BCE), the Harappan civilization in the Indus River Valley (in present-day India and Pakistan; 2500 BCE), and Chinese civilization along the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers (2200 BCE). These societies developed a number of unifying characteristics, including a central government, a complex economy and social structure, sophisticated language and writing systems, and distinct cultures and religions. Writing facilitated the administration of cities, the expression of ideas, and the preservation of information.

Entities such as the Sun, Moon, Earth, sky, and sea were often deified. Shrines developed, which evolved into temple establishments, complete with a complex hierarchy of priests and priestesses and other functionaries. Typical of the Neolithic was a tendency to worship anthropomorphic deities. Among the earliest surviving written religious scriptures are the Egyptian *Pyramid Texts*, the oldest of which date to between 2400 and 2300 BCE.

### Cradles of civilization

Main articles: Cradle of civilization, Bronze Age, Iron Age

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.

### Axial Age

Main articles: Axial Age, History of philosophy, Timeline of religion, History of religions

Beginning in the 8th century BCE, the "Axial Age" saw the development of a set of transformative philosophical and religious ideas, mostly independently, in many different places. Chinese Confucianism, Indian Buddhism and Jainism, and Jewish monotheism are all claimed by some scholars to have developed in the 6th century BCE. (Karl Jaspers' Axial-Age theory also includes Persian Zoroastrianism, but other scholars dispute his timeline for Zoroastrianism.) In the 5th century BCE, Socrates and Plato made substantial advances in the development of ancient Greek philosophy.

In the East, three schools of thought would dominate Chinese thinking well into the 20th century. These were Taoism, Legalism, and Confucianism. The Confucian tradition, which would become particularly dominant, looked for political morality not to the force of law but to the power and example of tradition. Confucianism would later spread to the Korean Peninsula and toward Japan.

In the West, the Greek philosophical tradition, represented by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers, along with accumulated science, technology, and culture, diffused throughout Europe, Egypt, the Middle East, and Northwest India, starting in the 4th century BCE after the conquests of Alexander III of Macedon (Alexander the Great).

### Regional empires

Main articles: Civilization, Empire
The millennium from 500 BCE to 500 CE saw a series of empires of unprecedented size develop. Well-trained professional armies, unifying ideologies, and advanced bureaucracies created the possibility for emperors to rule over large domains whose populations could attain numbers upwards of tens of millions of subjects.
The great empires depended on military annexation of territory and on the formation of defended settlements to become agricultural centres. The relative peace that the empires brought encouraged international trade, most notably the massive trade routes in the Mediterranean, the maritime trade web in the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road. In southern Europe, the Greeks (and later the Romans), in an era known as "classical antiquity," established cultures whose practices, laws, and customs are considered the foundation of contemporary Western culture.

There were a number of regional empires during this period. The kingdom of the Medes helped to destroy the Assyrian Empire in tandem with the nomadic Scythians and the Babylonians. Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was sacked by the Medes in 612 BCE. The Median Empire gave way to successive Iranian empires, including the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE),the Parthian Empire (247-224 BCE to CE) and the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE).

Several empires began in modern-day Greece. First was the Delian League (from 477 BCE) and the succeeding Athenian Empire (454–404 BCE), centred in present-day Greece. Later, Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE), of Macedon, founded an empire of conquest, extending from present-day Greece to present-day India. The empire divided shortly after his death, but the influence of his Hellenistic successors made for an extended Hellenistic period (323–31 BCE) throughout the region.

In Asia, the Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE) existed in present-day India; in the 3rd century BCE, most of South Asia was united to the Maurya Empire by Chandragupta Maurya and flourished under Ashoka the Great. From the 3rd century CE, the Gupta dynasty oversaw the period referred to as ancient India's Golden Age. From the 4th to 6th centuries, northern India was ruled by the Gupta Empire. In southern India, three prominent Dravidian kingdoms emerged: the Cheras, Cholas, and Pandyas. The ensuing stability contributed to heralding in the golden age of Hindu culture in the 4th and 5th centuries.

In Europe, the Roman Empire, centered in present-day Italy, began in the 7th century BCE. In the 3rd century BCE the Roman Republic began expanding its territory through conquest and alliances. By the time of Augustus (63 BCE – 14 CE), the first Roman Emperor, Rome had already established dominion over most of the Mediterranean. The empire would continue to grow, controlling much of the land from England to Mesopotamia, reaching its greatest extent under the emperor Trajan (died 117 CE). In the 3rd century CE, the empire split into western and eastern regions, with (usually) separate emperors. The Western empire would fall, in 476 CE, to German influence under Odoacer. The eastern empire, now known as the Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, would continue for another thousand years, until Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.

In China, the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), the first imperial dynasty of China, was followed by the Han Empire (206 BCE – 220 CE). The Han Dynasty was comparable in power and influence to the Roman Empire that lay at the other end of the Silk Road. Han China developed advanced cartography, shipbuilding, and navigation. The Chinese invented blast furnaces, and created finely tuned copper instruments. As with other empires during the Classical Period, Han China advanced significantly in the areas of government, education, mathematics, astronomy, technology, and many others.

In Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum, centred in present-day Ethiopia, established itself by the 1st century CE as a major trading empire, dominating its neighbours in South Arabia and Kush and controlling the Red Sea trade. It minted its own currency and carved enormous monolithic steles such as the Obelisk of Axum to mark their emperors' graves.

Successful regional empires were also established in the Americas, arising from cultures established as early as 2500 BCE. In Mesoamerica, vast pre-Columbian societies were built, the most notable being the Zapotec Empire (700 BCE – 1521 CE), and the Maya civilization, which reached its highest state of development during the Mesoamerican Classic period (c. 250–900 CE), but continued throughout the Post-Classic period until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century CE. Maya civilization arose as the Olmec mother culture gradually declined. The great Mayan city-states slowly rose in number and prominence, and Maya culture spread throughout the Yucatán and surrounding areas. The later empire of the Aztecs was built on neighbouring cultures and was influenced by conquered peoples such as the Toltecs.

Some areas experienced slow but steady technological advances, with important developments such as the stirrup and moldboard plough arriving every few centuries. There were, however, in some regions, periods of rapid technological progress. Most important, perhaps, was the Hellenistic period in the region of the Mediterranean, during which hundreds of technologies were invented. Such periods were followed by periods of technological decay, as during the Roman Empire's decline and fall and the ensuing early medieval period.

### Declines, falls, and resurgence

The ancient empires faced common problems associated with maintaining huge armies and supporting a central bureaucracy. These costs fell most heavily on the peasantry, while land-owning magnates increasingly evaded centralized control and its costs. Barbarian pressure on the frontiers hastened internal dissolution. China's Han dynasty fell into civil war in 220 CE, beginning the Three Kingdoms period, while its Roman counterpart became increasingly decentralized and divided about the same time in what is known as the Crisis of the Third Century. The great empires of Eurasia were all located on temperate and subtropical coastal plains. From the Central Asian steppes, horse-based nomads, mainly Mongols and Turks, dominated a large part of the continent. The development of the stirrup and the breeding of horses strong enough to carry a fully armed archer made the nomads a constant threat to the more settled civilizations.

The gradual break-up of the Roman Empire, spanning several centuries after the 2nd century CE, coincided with the spread of Christianity outward from the Middle East. The Western Roman Empire fell under the domination of Germanic tribes in the 5th century, and these polities gradually developed into a number of warring states, all associated in one way or another with the Catholic Church. The remaining part of the Roman Empire, in the eastern Mediterranean, continued as what came to be called the Byzantine Empire. Centuries later, a limited unity would be restored to western Europe through the establishment in 962 of a revived "Roman Empire", later called the Holy Roman Empire, comprising a number of states in what is now Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Italy, and parts of France.

In China, dynasties would rise and fall, but, by sharp contrast to the Mediterranean-European world, dynastic unity would be restored. After the fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the demise of the Three Kingdoms, nomadic tribes from the north began to invade in the 4th century, eventually conquering areas of northern China and setting up many small kingdoms. The Sui Dynasty successfully reunified the whole of China in 581, and laid the foundations for a Chinese golden age under the Tang dynasty (618–907).

## Post-classical history

Main articles: Post-classical history

The Post-classical Era, though deriving its name from the Eurocentric era of "Classical antiquity", refers to a broader geographic sweep. The era is commonly dated from the 5th-century fall of the Western Roman Empire, which fragmented into many separate kingdoms, some of which would later be confederated under the Holy Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire survived until late in the Post-classical, or Medieval, period. The Post-classical period also encompasses the Early Muslim conquests, the subsequent Islamic Golden Age, and the commencement and expansion of the Arab slave trade, followed by the Mongol invasions in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the founding around 1280 of the Ottoman Empire. South Asia saw a series of middle kingdoms of India, followed by the establishment of Islamic empires in India.

In western Africa, the Mali Empire and the Songhai Empire developed. On the southeast coast of Africa, Arabic ports were established where gold, spices, and other commodities were traded. This allowed Africa to join the Southeast Asia trading system, bringing it contact with Asia; this, along with Muslim culture, resulted in the Swahili culture. China experienced the successive Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties. Middle Eastern trade routes along the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road through the Gobi Desert, provided limited economic and cultural contact between Asian and European civilizations. During the same period, civilizations in the Americas, such as the Inca, Maya, and Aztecs, reached their zenith; all would be compromised by, then conquered after, contact with European colonists at the beginning of the Modern period.

### Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia

Main articles: History of the Middle East, History of North Africa, History of Central Asia, Islamic Golden Age
Prior to the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the Middle East was dominated by the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Sasanian Empire, which frequently fought each other for control of several disputed regions. This was also a cultural battle, with the Byzantine Hellenistic and Christian culture competing against the Persian Iranian traditions and Zoroastrian religion. The formation of the Islamic religion created a new contender that quickly surpassed both of these empires. Islam greatly affected the political, economic, and military history of the Old World, especially the Middle East.

From their centre on the Arabian Peninsula, Muslims began their expansion during the early Postclassical Era. By 750 CE, they came to conquer most of the Near East, North Africa, and parts of Europe, ushering in an era of learning, science, and invention known as the Islamic Golden Age. The knowledge and skills of the ancient Near East, Greece, and Persia were preserved in the Postclassical Era by Muslims, who also added new and important innovations from outside, such as the manufacture of paper from China and decimal positional numbering from India.

Much of this learning and development can be linked to geography. Even prior to Islam's presence, the city of Mecca had served as a centre of trade in Arabia, and the Islamic prophet Muhammad himself was a merchant. With the new Islamic tradition of the *Hajj*, the pilgrimage to Mecca, the city became even more a centre for exchanging goods and ideas. The influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was tremendous. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant economy, in contrast to the Europeans, Indians, and Chinese, who based their societies on an agricultural landholding nobility. Merchants brought goods and their Islamic faith to China, India, Southeast Asia, and the kingdoms of western Africa, and returned with new discoveries and inventions.

Motivated by religion and dreams of conquest, European leaders launched a number of Crusades to try to roll back Muslim power and retake the Holy Land. The Crusades were ultimately unsuccessful and served more to weaken the Byzantine Empire, especially with the 1204 sack of Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire began to lose increasing amounts of territory to the Ottoman Turks. Arab domination of the region ended in the mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuq Turks, migrating south from the Turkic homelands in Central Asia. In the early 13th century, a new wave of invaders, the Mongol Empire, swept through the region but were eventually eclipsed by the Turks and the founding of the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey around 1280.

North Africa saw the rise of polities formed by the Berbers, such as the Marinid dynasty in Morocco, the Zayyanid dynasty in Algeria, and the Hafsid dynasty in Tunisia. The region will later be called the Barbary Coast and will host pirates and privateers who will use several North African ports for their raids against the coastal towns of several European countries in search of slaves to be sold in North African markets as part of the Barbary slave trade.

Starting with the Sui dynasty (581–618), the Chinese began expanding into eastern Central Asia, and confronted Turkic nomads, who were becoming the most dominant ethnic group in Central Asia. Originally the relationship was largely cooperative, but in 630 the Tang dynasty began an offensive against the Turks, capturing areas of the Mongolian Ordos Desert. In the 8th century, Islam began to penetrate the region and soon became the sole faith of most of the population, though Buddhism remained strong in the east. The desert nomads of Arabia could militarily match the nomads of the steppe, and the early Arab Empire gained control over parts of Central Asia.

The Hephthalites were the most powerful of the nomad groups in the 6th and 7th centuries, and controlled much of the region. In the 9th through 13th centuries the region was divided among several powerful states, including the Samanid Empire the Seljuk Empire, and the Khwarezmid Empire. The largest empire to rise out of Central Asia developed when Genghis Khan united the tribes of Mongolia. The Mongol Empire spread to comprise all of Central Asia and China as well as large parts of Russia and the Middle East. After Genghis Khan died in 1227, most of Central Asia continued to be dominated by a successor state, Chagatai Khanate. In 1369, Timur, a Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the region and founded the Timurid Empire. Timur's large empire collapsed soon after his death, however. The region then became divided into a series of smaller khanates that were created by the Uzbeks. These included the Khanate of Khiva, the Khanate of Bukhara, and the Khanate of Kokand, all of whose capitals are located in present-day Uzbekistan.

### Europe

Main articles: History of Europe, Middle Ages
Europe during the Early Middle Ages was characterized by depopulation, deurbanization, and barbarian invasion, all of which had begun in Late Antiquity. The barbarian invaders formed their own new kingdoms in the remains of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East, once part of the Eastern Roman Empire, became part of the Caliphate after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, most of the new kingdoms incorporated as many of the existing Roman institutions as they could. Christianity expanded in western Europe, and monasteries were founded. In the 7th and 8th centuries the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, established an empire covering much of western Europe; it lasted until the 9th century, when it succumbed to pressure from new invaders—the Vikings, Magyars, and Saracens.

During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and crop yields to increase. Manorialism—the organization of peasants into villages that owed rents and labour service to nobles—and feudalism—a political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rents from lands and manors—were two of the ways of organizing medieval society that developed during the High Middle Ages. Kingdoms became more centralized after the decentralizing effects of the breakup of the Carolingian Empire. The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were an attempt by western Christians from nations such as the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire to regain control of the Holy Land from the Muslims and succeeded for long enough to establish some Christian states in the Near East. Italian merchants imported Armenians, Balts, Circassians, Georgians, Greeks and Slavs to work as household slaves and in processing sugar. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism and the founding of universities, while the building of Gothic cathedrals was one of the outstanding artistic achievements of the age.

The Late Middle Ages were marked by difficulties and calamities. Famine, plague, and war devastated the population of western Europe. The Black Death alone killed approximately 75 to 200 million people between 1347 and 1350. It was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. Starting in Asia, the disease reached Mediterranean and western Europe during the late 1340s, and killed tens of millions of Europeans in six years; between a third and a half of the population perished.

The Middle Ages witnessed the first sustained urbanization of northern and western Europe. Many modern European states owe their origins to events unfolding in the Middle Ages; present European political boundaries are, in many regards, the result of military and dynastic events during this tumultuous period. The Middle Ages lasted until the beginning of the Early modern period in the 16th century, marked by the rise of nation states, the division of Western Christianity in the Reformation, the rise of humanism in the Italian Renaissance, and the beginnings of European overseas expansion which allowed for the Columbian Exchange.

In Central and Eastern Europe, in 1386, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the latter including territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine), facing depredations by the Teutonic Knights and later also threats from Muscovy, the Crimean Tatars, and the Ottoman Empire, formed a personal union through the marriage of Poland's Queen Jadwiga to Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila, who became King Wladyslaw II Jagiello of Poland. For the next four centuries, until the 18th-century Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Prussia, Russia, and Austria, the two polities conducted a federated condominium, long Europe's largest state, which welcomed diverse ethnicities and religions, including most of the world's Jews, furthered scientific thought (e.g., Copernicus's heliocentric theory), and—in a last-ditch effort to preserve their sovereignty—adopted the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the world's second modern written constitution after the U.S. Constitution that went into effect in 1789.

### Sub-Saharan Africa

Main articles: History of Africa

Medieval Sub-Saharan Africa was home to many different civilizations. The Kingdom of Aksum declined in the 7th century as Islam cut it off from its Christian allies and its people moved further into the Ethiopian Highlands for protection. They eventually gave way to the Zagwe dynasty who are famed for their rock cut architecture at Lalibela. The Zagwe would then fall to the Solomonic dynasty who claimed descent from the Aksumite emperors and would rule the country well into the 20th century. In the West African Sahel region, many Islamic empires rose, such as the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire, and the Kanem–Bornu Empire. They controlled the trans-Saharan trade in gold, ivory, salt and slaves.

South of the Sahel, civilizations rose in the coastal forests where horses and camels could not survive. These include the Yoruba city of Ife, noted for its art, and the Oyo Empire, the Kingdom of Benin of the Edo people centred in Benin City, the Igbo Kingdom of Nri which produced advanced bronze art at Igbo-Ukwu, and the Akan who are noted for their intricate architecture.

Central Africa saw the birth of several states, including the Kingdom of Kongo. In what is now modern Southern Africa, native Africans created various kingdoms such as the Kingdom of Mutapa. They flourished through trade with the Swahili people on the East African coast. They built large defensive stone structures without mortar such as Great Zimbabwe, capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, Khami, capital of Kingdom of Butua, and Danangombe (Dhlo-Dhlo), capital of the Rozwi Empire. The Swahili people themselves were the inhabitants of the East African coast from Kenya to Mozambique who traded extensively with Asians and Arabs, who introduced them to Islam. They built many port cities such as Mombasa, Zanzibar and Kilwa, which were known to Chinese sailors under Zheng He and Islamic geographers.

### South Asia

Main articles: History of India

In northern India, after the fall (550 CE) of the Gupta Empire, the region was divided into a complex and fluid network of smaller kingly states. Early Muslim incursions began in the west in 712 CE, when the Arab Umayyad Caliphate annexed much of present-day Pakistan. Arab military advance was largely halted at that point, but Islam still spread in India, largely due to the influence of Arab merchants along the western coast. The Tripartite Struggle for control of northern India took place in the ninth century. The struggle was between the Pratihara Empire, the Pala Empire and the Rashtrakuta Empire. Some of the important states that emerged in India at this time included the Bahmani Sultanate and the Vijayanagara Empire. Post-classical dynasties in South India included those of the Chalukyas, the Hoysalas, the Cholas, the Islamic Mughals, the Marathas and the Mysores. Science, engineering, art, literature, astronomy, and philosophy flourished under the patronage of these kings.

### East Asia

Main articles: History of East Asia
After a period of relative disunity, China was reunified by the Sui dynasty in 581 and under the succeeding Tang dynasty (618–907) China entered a Golden Age. The Tang Empire competed with the Tibetan Empire for control of areas in Inner and Central Asia. The Tang dynasty eventually splintered, however, and after half a century of turmoil the Song dynasty reunified China, when it was, according to William McNeill, the "richest, most skilled, and most populous country on earth". Pressure from nomadic empires to the north became increasingly urgent. By 1142, North China had been lost to the Jurchens in the Jin–Song Wars, and the Mongol Empire conquered all of China in 1279, along with almost half of Eurasia's landmass. After about a century of Mongol Yuan dynasty rule, the ethnic Chinese reasserted control with the founding of the Ming dynasty (1368).

In Japan, the imperial lineage had been established by this time, and during the Asuka period (538–710) the Yamato Province developed into a clearly centralized state. Buddhism was introduced, and there was an emphasis on the adoption of elements of Chinese culture and Confucianism. The Nara period of the 8th century marked the emergence of a strong Japanese state and is often portrayed as a golden age. During this period, the imperial government undertook great public works, including government offices, temples, roads, and irrigation systems. The Heian period (794 to 1185) saw the peak of imperial power, followed by the rise of militarized clans, and the beginning of Japanese feudalism. The feudal period of Japanese history, dominated by powerful regional lords (*daimyos*) and the military rule of warlords (*shoguns*) such as the Ashikaga shogunate and Tokugawa shogunate, stretched from 1185 to 1868. The emperor remained, but mostly as a figurehead, and the power of merchants was weak.

Postclassical Korea saw the end of the Three Kingdoms era, the three kingdoms being Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. Silla conquered Baekje in 660, and Goguryeo in 668, marking the beginning of the *North–South States Period* (?????), with Unified Silla in the south and Balhae, a successor state to Goguryeo, in the north. In 892 CE, this arrangement reverted to the Later Three Kingdoms, with Goguryeo (then called Taebong and eventually named Goryeo) emerging as dominant, unifying the entire peninsula by 936. The founding Goryeo dynasty ruled until 1392, succeeded by the Joseon dynasty, which ruled for approximately 500 years.

### Southeast Asia

Main articles:  History of Southeast Asia
The beginning of the Middle Ages in Southeast Asia saw the fall (550 CE) of the Kingdom of Funan to the Chenla Empire, which was then replaced by the Khmer Empire (802 CE). The Khmer's capital city Angkor was the largest city in the world prior to the industrial age and contained over a thousand temples, the most famous being Angkor Wat. The Sukhothai (1238 CE) and Ayutthaya (1351 CE) kingdoms were major powers of the Thai people, who were influenced by the Khmer. Starting in the 9th century, the Pagan Kingdom rose to prominence in modern Myanmar. Other notable kingdoms of the period include the Srivijayan Empire and the Lavo Kingdom (both coming into prominence in the 7th century), the Champa and the Hariphunchai (both about 750), the Ð?i Vi?t (968), Lan Na (13th century), Majapahit (1293), Lan Xang (1354), and the Kingdom of Ava (1364). Taiwanese indigenous peoples formed tribal alliances such as the Kingdom of Middag. It was during this period that Islam spread to present-day Indonesia (beginning in the 13th century) and saw the emergenece of the Malay states, including the Malacca Sultanate and the Bruneian Empire. Several Philippine polities have also risen during this period such as Caboloan, the Rajahnate of Maynila, the Rajahnate of Cebu, and the Sultanate of Sulu.

### Oceania

Main articles:  History of Oceania
In the region of Oceania, the Tu?i Tonga Empire was founded in the 10th century CE and expanded between 1200 and 1500. Tongan culture, language, and hegemony spread widely throughout Eastern Melanesia, Micronesia and Central Polynesia during this period, influencing East 'Uvea, Rotuma, Futuna, Samoa and Niue, as well as specific islands / parts of Micronesia (Kiribati, Pohnpei and miscellaneous outliers), Vanuatu and New Caledonia (specifically, the Loyalty Islands, with the main island being predominantly populated by the Melanesian Kanak people and their cultures). At around the same time, a powerful thalassocracy appeared in Eastern Polynesia centred around the Society Islands, specifically on the sacred Taputapuatea marae, which drew in Eastern Polynesian colonists from places as far away as Hawaii, New Zealand (Aotearoa), and the Tuamotu Islands for political, spiritual and economic reasons, until the unexplained collapse of regular long-distance voyaging in the Eastern Pacific a few centuries before Europeans began exploring the area. Indigenous written records from this period are virtually non-existent, as it seems that all Pacific Islanders, with the possible exception of the enigmatic Rapa Nui and their currently undecipherable Rongorongo script, had no writing systems of any kind until after their introduction by European colonists; however, some indigenous prehistories can be estimated and academically reconstructed through careful, judicious analysis of native oral traditions, colonial ethnography, archaeology, physical anthropology and linguistics research.

### Americas

Main articles: History of the Americas, History of North America, History of South America
In North America, this period saw the rise of the Mississippian culture in the modern-day United States c. 800 CE, marked by the extensive 12th-century urban complex at Cahokia. The Ancestral Puebloans and their predecessors (9th – 13th centuries) built extensive permanent settlements, including stone structures that would remain the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century. In Mesoamerica, the Teotihuacan civilization fell and the Classic Maya collapse occurred. The Aztec Empire came to dominate much of Mesoamerica in the 14th and 15th centuries. In South America, the 14th and 15th centuries saw the rise of the Inca. The Inca Empire of Tawantinsuyu, with its capital at Cusco, spanned the entire Andes Mountain Range, making it the most extensive Pre-Columbian civilization. The Inca were prosperous and advanced, known for an excellent road system and unrivaled masonry.

## Notes

1. ↑ The very word "civilization" comes from the Latin *civilis*, meaning "civil," related to *civis* ("citizen") and *civitas* ("city" or "city-state").