Events, Verisoph

210 BCE Terracotta Army and death of the First Emperor 0 cit. Qin Shi Huang died in 210 BCE and was buried with thousands of life-size terracotta soldiers guarding his tomb. The army was rediscovered in 1974. culture / politics ●●●●

c. 200 BCE to c. 200 The Bhagavad Gita is composed 0 cit. The Bhagavad Gita, Krishna's discourse to Arjuna within the Mahabharata, is composed sometime in the centuries around the turn of the era. It becomes one of Hinduism's most beloved and influential scriptures. culture / religion ●●●●

c. 161 BCE to c. 70 The Pharisees and the doctrine of the Oral Torah 0 cit. The Pharisees taught that alongside the Written Torah of Moses ran an Oral Torah, an unwritten body of interpretation and law handed down through the sages. This claim, rejected by the rival Sadducees, became the foundation of the later rabbinic and legal tradition of Judaism. culture / religion ●●●

c. 150 BCE Hellenistic astrology fuses Babylon and Egypt 0 cit. In Greek-ruled Egypt, Babylonian planetary science, the zodiac, and Egyptian ideas combine into horoscopic astrology, complete with the twelve houses and the rising sign. This Hellenistic synthesis is the direct ancestor of all Western astrology. culture / religion ●●●●

c. 140 BCE Hipparchus builds on Babylonian records 0 cit. The greatest Greek astronomer, Hipparchus, uses centuries of Babylonian eclipse and planetary records to build his own theories, borrowing their arithmetic and their degrees. Babylonian science is the hidden foundation beneath Greek astronomy. culture / science ●●●

c. 101 BCE The Celts honor Lugh, the Dagda, and Brigid 0 cit. Celtic peoples worshiped gods such as the skilled Lugh, the fatherly Dagda, and the goddess Brigid, known mostly from Irish texts and Roman accounts. Many local deities were tied to springs, rivers, and tribes. culture / religion ●●

c. 101 BCE The Nazca and their desert geoglyphs 0 cit. On the arid southern coast the Nazca culture etches enormous lines and figures into the desert floor, the Nazca Lines, and digs underground aqueducts called puquios to survive in a dry land. The exact purpose of the geoglyphs is still debated, with explanations ranging from ritual pathways to water and astronomical markers. culture / religion ●●

c. 100 BCE Founding of Teotihuacan 0 cit. The city of Teotihuacan was established in the Valley of Mexico. It grew into one of the largest cities in the ancient world with its great pyramids. culture / society ●●●●

c. 91 BCE Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian 0 cit. Sima Qian completed a comprehensive history of China from legendary times to his own era. It set the model for later Chinese official histories. culture ●●●

c. 51 BCE The cult of Isis reaches Rome and the wider empire 0 cit. The Egyptian goddess Isis gained a devoted following across the Roman Empire, with temples and mystery rites promising salvation. Her worship crossed classes and endured into late antiquity. culture / religion ●●

c. 50 BCE Salt as a medium of exchange 0 cit. Salt was valued for preserving food and was traded across long distances as a form of payment. Its economic importance survives in words and phrases tied to wages and value. culture / economy ●●

c. 45 BCE July and August are renamed for Julius Caesar and Augustus 0 cit. The month Quintilis was renamed July for Julius Caesar after his calendar reform, and Sextilis became August for the emperor Augustus. Both men were later honored as divine by the Roman state. culture / politics ●●

c. 29 BCE Pali Canon written down in Sri Lanka 0 cit. Sri Lankan monks commit the Buddhist scriptures to writing for the first time, according to Theravada tradition. The written Pali Canon anchors the Theravada school of Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. culture / religion ●●●

c. 20 BCE Herod the Great Expands the Temple 0 cit. Herod the Great, a Roman client king, launched a major expansion of the Second Temple and its complex in Jerusalem. The Western Wall is a remnant of that platform. culture / religion ●●

c. 11 BCE Rome transports Egyptian obelisks to the imperial capital 0 cit. Emperor Augustus has obelisks shipped from Egypt to Rome to adorn the Circus Maximus and other public spaces, beginning a long practice of Western powers relocating Egyptian obelisks as trophies of conquest and prestige; later popes re-erected several in the 16th century as Christianized monuments topped with crosses. culture / politics ●●

c. 73 Fall of Masada 0 cit. According to the historian Josephus, the last Jewish rebels at the desert fortress of Masada died as Roman forces closed in around 73 or 74 CE. The site later became a national symbol in Israel. culture / war ●●

80 The Colosseum opens in Rome 0 cit. The emperor Titus opened the Colosseum with a hundred days of games. Gladiator fights and staged spectacles drew tens of thousands as mass public entertainment. culture / society ●●●●

c. 90 Pascha: Easter grows out of the Jewish Passover 0 cit. The earliest Christians tied Jesus's death and resurrection to the Jewish Passover, Pesach, at which it happened. In most of the world's languages Easter is still called some form of Pascha, from Passover, which is the festival's true root and name, not the Babylonian Ishtar of popular myth. culture / religion ●●●●

c. 95 Revelation names Rome 'Mystery, Babylon the Great' 0 cit. The Book of Revelation casts the Roman Empire as 'Babylon the Great, mother of harlots', turning Babylon into the enduring symbol of worldly power and corruption. The image still drives religious and conspiratorial talk of a 'Mystery Babylon' today. culture / religion ●●●

c. 98 The interpretatio romana matches foreign gods to Roman ones 0 cit. Romans routinely identified the gods of other peoples with their own, calling a Celtic or Germanic god by a Roman name they thought fit. Tacitus used this method to describe Germanic religion. culture / religion ●●●

98 Tacitus describes the gods of the Germans 0 cit. The Roman historian Tacitus writes Germania, the earliest account of Germanic religion, describing gods he equates with Mercury (Wodan), Hercules (Donar), and Mars (Tiwaz), and sacred groves without temples or idols. It is the first written window onto the faith that became Norse mythology. culture / religion ●●●

c. 100 to c. 900 Merkabah and Hekhalot mysticism 0 cit. An early current of Jewish mysticism centered on visionary ascents through heavenly palaces (hekhalot) toward the divine throne-chariot. Its texts describe angelic hierarchies, hymns, and techniques for the ascent of the soul. culture / religion ●●●

c. 100 Ancient Greek melody survives in full 0 cit. The Seikilos epitaph, cut into a stone column, is the oldest complete piece of music with notation that survives. It sets a short poem about enjoying life to a written tune. culture ●●

c. 100 Hermes Trismegistus merges the Greek Hermes with Egyptian Thoth 0 cit. In the Hellenistic world the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian god of writing Thoth were fused into Hermes Trismegistus, a supposed sage of hidden wisdom. Texts attributed to him shaped later magic, alchemy, and the occult. culture / religion ●●

c. 100 The planetary seven-day week spreads through the Roman world 0 cit. The seven-day week with days named for the sun, moon, and five planets, rooted in Babylonian astrology and merged with the Jewish sabbath, takes hold across the Roman Empire. It is the direct ancestor of the modern week and the planetary names still carried by the days. culture / religion ●●●

c. 100 The Moche of the north coast 0 cit. The Moche build irrigation networks, large adobe pyramids such as the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna, and produce some of the finest ceramics and metalwork of the ancient Americas. Their elite tombs, like the Lord of Sipan, reveal a stratified society and rich ritual life. There was no single Moche state but a shared culture across several river valleys. culture / society ●●

c. 100 to c. 900 Merkabah and Heikhalot mysticism 0 cit. An early current of Jewish mysticism focused on visionary ascents through heavenly palaces, the heikhalot, toward the divine throne-chariot, the merkabah of Ezekiel's vision. Its texts describe angelic hierarchies and hymns, and rabbinic law restricted such study to a few advanced initiates. culture / religion ●●

c. 100 Arcana imperii, the secrets of state 0 cit. The Roman historian Tacitus used the phrase arcana imperii, the secrets of empire, for the hidden knowledge and methods that let rulers keep power. The idea that a state holds truths too dangerous for the public runs from Rome through Renaissance thinkers and into the modern world. Historians read Tacitus as describing this practice, not endorsing it. culture / politics ●●

c. 150 Babylonian astrology survives in the zodiac and horoscopes 0 cit. The zodiac signs and the practice of reading fate in the planets grew from Babylonian star lore, spread by Greek writers like Ptolemy. Their god-named planets still anchor astrology today. culture / science ●●

c. 150 Ptolemy's Almagest preserves the Babylonian sky 0 cit. Ptolemy's Almagest, the astronomy textbook of the next 1,400 years, is built in part on Babylonian observations and their base-60 arithmetic. Through it, Babylonian science reached the medieval Islamic and European world and shaped astronomy until Copernicus. culture / science ●●●●

c. 150 Ptolemy compiles the Almagest 0 cit. Claudius Ptolemy compiles the Almagest, a mathematical model of an Earth-centered universe with a catalogue of over a thousand stars, built on centuries of Babylonian and Greek observation. It would be the authoritative account of the heavens for fourteen hundred years. culture / science ●●●●

c. 200 The Mishnah is compiled 0 cit. Judah ha-Nasi redacts the Mishnah, the first written compilation of Jewish oral law. It becomes the foundation of the Talmud and of all later rabbinic Judaism. culture / religion ●●●●

c. 200 to c. 600 Composition of the Sefer Yetzirah 0 cit. The Sefer Yetzirah, or Book of Formation, sets out a cosmology in which the world is created through the ten sefirot and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Its date is debated, with most scholars placing it between the second and sixth centuries. culture / religion ●●●●

c. 200 The Natya Shastra codifies Indian performing arts 0 cit. The Sanskrit treatise Natya Shastra set out the rules of drama, dance, and music in ancient India. It has guided Indian performing arts for close to two thousand years. culture ●●●

c. 200 Judah ha-Nasi compiles the Mishnah 0 cit. Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi gathered the accumulated oral law into the Mishnah, a concise ordered code of rulings and debates in six divisions. Committing the Oral Torah to a fixed text preserved it after the loss of the Temple and gave rabbinic Judaism its legal backbone. culture / religion ●●●

c. 250 Cacao beans as money in Mesoamerica 0 cit. Maya and later Aztec societies used cacao beans as a common medium of exchange for goods in the marketplace. The beans could buy food and other everyday items and were counted out for small transactions. culture / economy ●●●

c. 250 Rise of the Maya City-States 0 cit. The Classic Maya period saw the flourishing of independent city-states across Mesoamerica. They advanced writing, astronomy, and monumental architecture. culture / science ●●●●●

c. 300 The concept of the ten sefirot 0 cit. The sefirot are ten divine emanations or attributes through which the hidden God becomes active in creation. First named in the Sefer Yetzirah, they were later elaborated into the central map of Kabbalistic theology. culture / religion ●●●●

c. 300 Rise of Tiwanaku 0 cit. Tiwanaku grew into a major Andean state near Lake Titicaca. It influenced a wide region through its religion, architecture, and agriculture. culture / society ●●●

c. 300 The halo in Christian art descends from images of the sun gods 0 cit. The radiant halo used to mark holy figures grew out of the sun-rays shown around gods and emperors, such as Sol and Helios. Early Christian art adopted the device for Christ, saints, and angels. culture / religion ●●

c. 325 Lent becomes the forty-day fast 0 cit. In the fourth century the church formalizes Lent, a forty-day season of fasting and penance before Easter, echoing Jesus's forty days in the wilderness. The forbidding of eggs and rich food during Lent is one reason eggs became a feast food at Easter's end. culture / religion ●●●

c. 336 Saturnalia's midwinter customs feed into Christmas 0 cit. The Roman festival of Saturnalia brought feasting, gift-giving, and a loosening of rules in late December, and some of its spirit carried into Christmas. The church set the Nativity in the same season of older winter festivals. culture / religion ●●●

c. 336 Christmas is placed on December 25, the date of the sun's rebirth 0 cit. December 25 was celebrated as the birthday of the Unconquered Sun near the winter solstice, and Christian Rome fixed the birth of Christ on the same day. Scholars still debate how far the sun festival shaped the choice. culture / religion ●●●

c. 350 The great stelae of Aksum are raised 0 cit. Aksum's kings marked royal graves with towering carved granite obelisks, the largest single pieces of stone ever quarried and raised as monuments in the ancient world. The tallest that once stood reached over 30 metres before it fell and broke. One great stele looted by Italy in 1937 stood in Rome for decades and was finally returned to Ethiopia in 2005. culture / religion / technology ●●

c. 380 'Pagan' becomes the name for the old religions 0 cit. As Christianity spreads, Christians borrow the Latin word paganus, a country-dweller or civilian, as a dismissive label for followers of the old gods. 'Pagan' was never a religion anyone chose to belong to; it was an outsider's name for everyone else. culture / religion ●●●

c. 400 Jerusalem Talmud compiled 0 cit. Rabbis in the Galilee complete the Jerusalem Talmud, a commentary on the Mishnah. Though later overshadowed by the Babylonian Talmud, it preserves the legal tradition of the Land of Israel. culture / religion ●●

c. 400 Avesta compiled under the Sasanians 0 cit. Zoroastrian priests under the Sasanian dynasty collect and write down the Avesta, the scriptures of Zoroastrianism, after centuries of oral transmission. The canon anchors the faith that was then Persia's state religion. culture / religion ●●

c. 400 The mother-and-child image passes from Isis to Christian art 0 cit. The widespread image of Isis nursing the infant Horus is often compared to later depictions of Mary and the Christ child. Art historians note the visual echo between the two devotional images. culture / religion ●●

c. 400 The Germanic gods name the days of the week 0 cit. Germanic peoples map the Roman planetary week onto their own gods: Tiw's day (Tuesday), Woden's day (Wednesday), Thunor's day (Thursday), and Frigg's day (Friday). Four days of the modern English week still carry the names of the Norse gods. culture / religion ●●●●

c. 400 Redaction of the Jerusalem Talmud 0 cit. Scholars in the Galilee produced the Jerusalem Talmud, a commentary and expansion on the Mishnah known as the Gemara. Left unfinished under Roman pressure, it remained shorter and less authoritative than its Babylonian counterpart. culture / religion ●●

c. 405 Mesrop Mashtots creates the Armenian alphabet 0 cit. The monk and scholar Mesrop Mashtots devises a distinct alphabet for the Armenian language, reportedly to make scripture and learning available in the vernacular. The script gives Armenians a durable written identity that outlasts every empire that later rules them. It remains in use, little changed, to this day. culture / religion / science ●●●

c. 405 to c. 500 Golden Age of Armenian letters 0 cit. With the new alphabet, the fifth century becomes a golden age of Armenian writing. Scholars translate the Bible and Greek and Syriac works into Armenian, and historians such as Movses Khorenatsi and Koryun set down the nation's early history. This literary foundation helps preserve Armenian culture through later centuries of foreign rule. culture / religion ●●

c. 420 The deicide charge and Augustine's doctrine of the Jewish witness 0 cit. Early Church writers accused the Jewish people as a whole of killing Christ, a charge known as deicide that fed centuries of hostility. Augustine of Hippo argued that Jews should not be killed but preserved in a subjected state as living witnesses to the truth of Christian scripture, citing the psalm verse slay them not. His witness doctrine both justified their subjugation and, in principle, restrained outright massacre. culture / religion / society ●●●

c. 432 Saint Patrick's mission and the Christianising of Ireland 0 cit. Later tradition dates the mission of Saint Patrick, a Romano-British cleric once enslaved in Ireland, to around 432. His own writings survive, but much of his life is legend added by later medieval writers. Over the fifth and sixth centuries Christianity spread across a Gaelic Ireland that lay beyond the old Roman frontier, blending with existing Celtic culture rather than arriving by conquest. culture / religion ●●

c. 460 Buddhist cave temples of Yungang and Longmen 0 cit. Under the Northern Wei, artisans carved monumental Buddha images into cliff faces at Yungang and later Longmen. The grottoes mark the deep rooting of Buddhism in China. culture / religion ●●●●

c. 476 The empire that called itself Roman 0 cit. Its people never called themselves Byzantines. They were Rhomaioi, Romans, heirs of an unbroken state that ran from Augustus to 1453. The label 'Byzantine' was coined by the German scholar Hieronymus Wolf in 1557 and spread among later historians, partly to deny the Greek-speaking Orthodox east a claim on the Roman name. The term is a modern convenience for a state that saw itself simply as Rome. culture / society ●

c. 500 The Babylonian Talmud is completed 0 cit. The academies of Babylonia complete the core redaction of the Babylonian Talmud, a vast record of legal debate and lore built on the Mishnah. It becomes the central text of Jewish law and study. culture / religion ●●●●

c. 500 Compilation of the Babylonian Talmud 0 cit. Jewish scholars in Babylon compiled the Babylonian Talmud around 500 CE, a central text of rabbinic law and tradition. Babylon remained a major center of Jewish learning for centuries. culture / religion ●●●

c. 500 The Kaaba and pre-Islamic Arabia 0 cit. Before Islam, Mecca is a trading town whose Kaaba shrine houses idols of many tribal gods; Muslims later call this era the jahiliyya, the age of ignorance. Pilgrimage and trade fairs draw Arabian tribes to the city. This is the world into which Muhammad is born around 570. culture / religion / society ●●

c. 500 Tiwanaku rises by Lake Titicaca 0 cit. On the high altiplano near Lake Titicaca, Tiwanaku grows into a major ceremonial and political center with monumental stonework such as the Gateway of the Sun. It spread its influence through colonies and trade across the southern Andes before declining around 1000 CE, possibly amid drought. culture / society ●●

c. 500 to c. 600 Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud 0 cit. The academies of Babylonia produced the Talmud Bavli, a vast record of legal argument, story, and debate built on the Mishnah. Editors such as Ravina and Rav Ashi are credited with its main redaction, though final polishing by the later Savoraim ran into the following century. It became the central text of rabbinic study. culture / religion ●●●

529 Justinian closes the Academy of Athens 0 cit. The emperor Justinian shuts the Neoplatonic Academy of Athens, the last school of pagan philosophy descended from Plato. It is often taken as the symbolic end of ancient paganism. culture / religion ●●●

534 The Corpus Juris Civilis codifies Roman law 0 cit. A commission under the jurist Tribonian gathered centuries of tangled Roman law into a single ordered body, begun in 529 and revised by 534. The Code, Digest, and Institutes preserved Roman legal thought and carried it to later ages. Rediscovered in the medieval west, it became the foundation of the civil-law tradition across much of Europe. culture / politics / society ●●●

27 December 537 The Hagia Sophia rises over Constantinople 0 cit. Justinian rebuilt the great church of Holy Wisdom after the Nika fire, crowning it with a dome so wide and light it seemed to hang from heaven. On entering it he is said to have exclaimed that he had outdone Solomon. For nearly a thousand years it was the largest cathedral in Christendom and the heart of Orthodox worship, later a mosque and now a monument. culture / religion / technology ●●●

c. 550 The island of saints and scholars 0 cit. From the sixth century a network of Irish monasteries such as Clonmacnoise, Glendalough and Iona became centres of learning and manuscript work. Irish monks like Columba and Columbanus carried Latin and Christian scholarship back into a post-Roman Europe, which gave Ireland its reputation as an island of saints and scholars. The claim that Irish monks singlehandedly saved Western civilisation is a popular framing that historians treat as an overstatement. culture / religion ●●

c. 578 Founding of Kongo Gumi 0 cit. Prince Shotoku brings builders from Baekje to construct the Shitenno-ji temple, and the Kongo family firm they establish becomes the world's oldest documented company. It builds Buddhist temples in Japan for over 1,400 years. culture / economy / religion ●●●

c. 600 Brigid the goddess passes into a Christian saint and Candlemas 0 cit. The Irish goddess Brigid and her festival Imbolc in early February shaded into the cult of Saint Brigid and the feast of Candlemas. The blending shows how a pagan figure could be reworked as a Christian one. culture / religion ●●

c. 605 China's imperial examination system takes shape 0 cit. Under the Sui dynasty China began selecting officials through written exams on the classics, the keju system. For over a thousand years it tied learning to state service and shaped East Asian attitudes to testing. culture / politics ●●●●

c. 650 Uthman standardizes the Quran 0 cit. Caliph Uthman commissions a standard written text of the Quran and orders variant copies destroyed. The Uthmanic codex becomes the basis of the Quranic text used across the Muslim world. culture / religion ●●●●

c. 700 Invention of woodblock printing 0 cit. Chinese craftsmen developed woodblock printing during the Tang, allowing texts and images to be reproduced. The Diamond Sutra of 868 CE is the oldest surviving dated printed book. culture / technology ●●●●

c. 700 The Irminsul and continental Germanic paganism 0 cit. The continental Germanic peoples, the Saxons and their neighbors, worship at sacred pillars such as the Irminsul, a great column upholding the heavens, and in holy groves. Their gods were the southern cousins of the Norse Aesir. culture / religion ●●

c. 700 The Aesir, the Vanir, and the world-tree Yggdrasil 0 cit. Pre-Christian Scandinavians worship the Aesir, led by Odin, Thor, and Frigg, and the Vanir of fertility, in a cosmos held together by the world-ash Yggdrasil and its nine worlds. Their myths would outlast their temples by a thousand years. culture / religion ●●●

712 Kojiki compiled, recording Shinto tradition 0 cit. The Japanese court compiles the Kojiki, followed by the Nihon Shoki in 720, recording the myths of the kami and the divine descent of the imperial line. The chronicles give Shinto its first written formalization. culture / religion ●●●

c. 725 Easter carries the name of a goddess through Bede 0 cit. The monk Bede wrote that the English word Easter came from Eostre, a spring goddess whose month gave the festival its name. The German Ostern and English Easter still preserve the old name. culture / religion ●●

725 Bede records the goddess Eostre 0 cit. The English monk Bede writes that the month of Easter was named for Eostre, a Germanic goddess of spring. English and German are almost the only languages that name the festival for her instead of for Passover, the one genuine pagan thread in the holiday's name. culture / religion ●●●

c. 726 The Iconoclasm controversy erupts 0 cit. Emperor Leo III moved against religious images, and for over a century the empire tore itself apart over whether icons were holy aids or forbidden idols. Iconoclasts smashed and whitewashed sacred art while iconodules defended it, and the quarrel deepened the rift with Rome. The dispute finally ended in 843 with the restoration of the icons, remembered in Orthodoxy as the Triumph of Orthodoxy. culture / politics / religion ●●

c. 750 to c. 900 The four Sunni schools of law take shape 0 cit. The legal traditions of Abu Hanifa, Malik, al-Shafii, and Ibn Hanbal crystallize into the four madhhabs of Sunni jurisprudence. Together they define how Sunni Muslims interpret Islamic law to this day. culture / religion ●●●

c. 750 Golden age of Tang poetry 0 cit. Poets such as Li Bai and Du Fu produced works regarded as the peak of Chinese verse. Their poems remain central to Chinese literary culture. culture ●●●

c. 780 Islam reaches the East African coast 0 cit. Islam arrived on the coast through Indian Ocean trade from about the eighth century, and early mosques such as the one excavated at Shanga in the Lamu archipelago show Muslim worship taking root among coastal communities. The faith spread first among townspeople tied to the ocean trade rather than by conquest. Over time the coast became firmly Muslim while the interior kept its older religions. The earliest dates come from archaeology, so they are approximate. culture / religion ●●●

c. 789 Cathedral and monastic schools spread in medieval Europe 0 cit. Charlemagne's Admonitio generalis of 789 pushed monasteries and cathedrals to run schools and teach clergy to read. These schools preserved literacy and Latin learning through the early Middle Ages and later grew into universities. culture / religion ●●●

c. 800 Adi Shankara and Advaita Vedanta 0 cit. The philosopher Adi Shankara travels across India teaching Advaita Vedanta, the doctrine that the self and Brahman are one, and founds monastic centers. His synthesis deeply shapes later Hindu thought. culture / religion ●●●

c. 800 Gregorian chant takes shape 0 cit. Church singers across Europe settled on a shared body of plainchant for the Latin Mass. It became the main sacred music of the medieval West. culture / religion ●●●

c. 800 Thor, the thunder god, guards the Norse world with his hammer 0 cit. Thor wielded the hammer Mjolnir against giants and was the most widely worshiped Norse god among common people. His name survives in the weekday Thursday. culture / religion ●●●

c. 800 The House of Wisdom gathers Greek and Indian learning 0 cit. Under the Abbasid caliphs, scholars in Baghdad translated Greek, Persian, and Indian mathematical texts into Arabic and pushed them further. This effort preserved works of Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius that might otherwise have been lost, and it carried Indian numerals westward. The golden age of Islamic mathematics grew from this meeting of traditions. culture / religion / science ●●●

c. 800 Rise of the Swahili coast city-states 5 cit. Trading towns grew along the coast where African communities met merchants crossing the Indian Ocean, producing the Swahili language and an urban, Muslim, stone-built culture. Ports such as Mombasa, Malindi, Lamu, and the walled town of Gede exported ivory, gold, and enslaved people and imported cloth, beads, and porcelain, tied by the monsoon winds to Arabia, Persia, and India. The towns rose gradually from roughly the eighth century, so the date is approximate. culture / economy / religion ●●

c. 800 The Book of Kells 0 cit. The Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels in Latin, was produced by Columban monks around 800, probably begun on Iona and finished at Kells. Its intricate decoration marks the high point of insular Christian art. It survives today at Trinity College Dublin and stands as a symbol of early medieval Irish culture. culture / religion ●●

c. 800 Swahili city-states rise along the coast 0 cit. Trading towns grew where coastal Africans met merchants crossing the Indian Ocean, producing an urban, Muslim, stone-built culture and the Swahili language. Ports such as Mombasa, Malindi, Lamu, and the walled inland town of Gede were governed by their own patrician clans and, in several cases, sultans, tied to one another by trade and rivalry rather than a single empire. The towns rose gradually from about the eighth century, so the date is approximate. culture / economy / politics ●●●

c. 830 House of Wisdom and the Islamic Golden Age 0 cit. In Baghdad the Abbasid caliphs sponsor a major translation and research effort often linked with an institution called the House of Wisdom. Scholars translate Greek, Persian, and Indian works and advance mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. The era anchors Islam's reputation as a carrier of learning. culture / religion / science ●●●

c. 830 The House of Wisdom gathers the world's learning in Baghdad 0 cit. Under Abbasid patronage, scholars in Baghdad translated Greek, Persian, and Indian works into Arabic and pushed them forward. The picture of a single grand library called the House of Wisdom is partly a modern simplification of a broader translation movement. Either way, this era preserved and advanced knowledge that Europe had largely lost. culture / science ●●

843 The Triumph of Orthodoxy restores the icons 0 cit. The Empress Theodora and a church council ended iconoclasm for good, confirming the veneration of icons first upheld at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. The settlement fixed the visual and devotional character of Orthodox Christianity for centuries after. Its anniversary is still kept as the Feast of Orthodoxy. culture / religion ●●

863 Cyril and Methodius bring letters to the Slavs 0 cit. The Byzantine brothers Cyril and Methodius were sent to preach among the Slavs and devised an alphabet to write their tongue, translating scripture into Slavonic. The script they created is generally identified as Glagolitic; the later Cyrillic alphabet, named for Cyril, was most likely developed by their disciples in Bulgaria. Their mission spread Orthodox Christianity and a written culture across the Slavic world. culture / diplomacy / religion ●●●

c. 867 The Macedonian Renaissance revives Byzantine culture 0 cit. Under the Macedonian dynasty founded by Basil I the empire entered a long revival of power, wealth, and learning. Scholars copied and studied the classical Greek texts that later reached the west, and a refined art and scholarship flourished. This 'Macedonian Renaissance' preserved much of the ancient heritage that would feed later European culture. culture / politics / society ●●

c. 900 Classic Maya Collapse 0 cit. Around 900 CE many of the great Maya cities of the southern lowlands were abandoned and their dynasties ended. Monument building stopped and populations declined sharply across the region. culture / politics ●●●●

c. 900 to c. 1100 Golden Age of Jews in Muslim Spain 0 cit. Under Muslim rule in Iberia, Jewish communities took part in a flourishing of philosophy, poetry and science, often called a golden age. Figures such as Maimonides emerged from this Sephardic world. culture / religion ●●●

c. 900 Rise of the Toltec at Tula 0 cit. The Toltec built their capital at Tula in central Mexico. Later Mesoamerican peoples, including the Aztecs, revered them as a model civilization. culture / politics ●●●

c. 900 Saqaliba and the word slave 0 cit. Medieval traders moved so many Slavic captives, called saqaliba, into Islamic lands that the ethnic name became the root of the word slave in several European languages. The trade ran across central and eastern Europe for centuries. culture / society ●●●

c. 900 The Germanic feast of Yule blends into Christmas 0 cit. The midwinter feast of Yule was folded into Christmas as northern peoples became Christian, and the word Yule still means Christmas. Customs such as evergreens and the Yule log carried over. culture / religion ●●

c. 900 The Merseburg Charms preserve a pagan German spell 0 cit. Two short spells written in Old High German, the Merseburg Charms, are the only surviving record of continental Germanic pagan incantation, naming Wodan and other gods. Almost everything else of that religion was erased by conversion. culture / religion ●●

c. 900 Jewish communities take root in the Rhineland 0 cit. Jewish traders and families settled in towns along the Rhine, drawn by bishops and rulers who wanted their commerce. These communities became the seed of Ashkenazi Jewry, a distinct branch named for Ashkenaz, the medieval Hebrew word for the German lands. Over the next century they built the synagogues, courts, and schools that would define Ashkenazi life for a thousand years. culture / religion / society ●●●

c. 960 Hasdai ibn Shaprut, courtier of Cordoba 0 cit. Hasdai ibn Shaprut served the caliph Abd al-Rahman III as physician, diplomat, and customs official in Cordoba, then the largest city in western Europe. He used his position to patronize Hebrew scholarship and poetry, drawing scholars to al-Andalus. His career marks the start of what later writers called the Golden Age of Sephardic Jewry. culture / politics / science ●●●