THE WORLD ATLAS

Chapter · Early Bronze Age

The First Kings

The world in 3000 BCE

Around 3000 BCE the first states in history have only just appeared. In Egypt, the Nile valley has recently been united under a single king, and the pharaohs of the First Dynasty rule from Memphis, building tombs at Abydos and Saqqara.

In southern Mesopotamia, Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur have invented writing, first as clay-tablet accounts and soon as cuneiform script. Elam in south-west Iran is developing its own Proto-Elamite writing, and farming towns along the Indus are growing toward the great Harappan cities to come. Elsewhere, almost everyone still lives in villages or bands. Herders of the Yamnaya culture ride the grasslands north of the Black Sea with ox-drawn wagons, Neolithic farmers in Britain are digging the first ditch at Stonehenge, and on the coast of Peru the Norte Chico people are beginning to build monumental platforms. Copper and bronze tools are spreading, but stone tools are still the norm for most of humanity.

Open the map in 3000 BCE

The great powers

Region by region

Southern Africa

Africa south of the equator is home to hunter-gatherers, ancestors of today's San and other Khoisan-speaking peoples, who have lived here for tens of thousands of years. Bantu-speaking farmers have not yet begun their great migration; their homeland is still in West-Central Africa around present-day Cameroon and Nigeria. Rock art and stone tools record a long-established way of life.

Northern Africa

Egypt has just been unified, traditionally by Narmer (Menes), and First Dynasty kings rule the Nile valley from Memphis. South of the First Cataract live the A-Group people of Lower Nubia, trading with Egypt. The Sahara, green and dotted with lakes a few thousand years earlier, is drying out, pushing cattle herders toward the Nile and the Sahel.

Europe

Europe is a patchwork of Neolithic and Copper Age farming peoples. Megalith builders raise tombs and stone circles along the Atlantic coast, and the first earthwork at Stonehenge is dug around this time. On Crete, early Minoan villages and the Cycladic islanders are trading by sea, while Yamnaya herders dominate the steppe of Ukraine and southern Russia.

Middle East & South Asia

Southern Mesopotamia is a land of rival Sumerian city-states such as Uruk, Ur and Kish, each ruled by its own king or temple elite, with writing newly invented. Elam, centred on Susa, is its eastern neighbour, while Semitic-speaking peoples live across Syria and Arabia and probably the ancestors of the Hurrians in the northern hills. In the Indus valley, Early Harappan farming towns are laying the groundwork for one of the world's first great urban civilizations.

Northern & Central Asia

The Afanasevo culture, probably related to the Yamnaya herders of the west, raises cattle and sheep in the Altai and southern Siberia. In the oases of southern Turkmenistan, Namazga farming towns grow wheat and barley with irrigation. Across the vast forests of Siberia, people live as hunters, fishers and gatherers.

East Asia

There are no states yet in China. Late Neolithic cultures such as Yangshao on the Yellow River give way to the Longshan, while the Liangzhu culture of the lower Yangtze builds a walled centre and carves fine jade. In Japan the Jōmon people make some of the world's oldest pottery, and the Dapenkeng culture farms and fishes on Taiwan.

Southeast Asia

Mainland Southeast Asia is home to hunter-gatherers and the first small farming communities. In Taiwan and southern China, Austronesian-speaking peoples are preparing the great seaborne migrations that will soon carry them to the Philippines and Indonesia. Rice farming is only beginning to spread south from the Yangtze region.

Northern North America

Canada and Alaska are inhabited by Archaic hunting, fishing and gathering peoples who follow the seasons, with caribou and salmon important in the north. The far eastern Arctic and Greenland are still largely empty of people; Paleo-Eskimo hunters will cross from Alaska only around 2500 BCE.

Southern North America

Across North America, Archaic peoples hunt, fish and gather wild plants, and in Louisiana some have already built earthen mounds such as Watson Brake. In Mexico, people grow early, small-cobbed maize alongside squash, but still move with the seasons. Villages and pottery are still centuries away.

Northern South America

On the dry coast of Peru, the Norte Chico (Caral-Supe) people are beginning to build platform mounds and sunken plazas, among the oldest monuments in the Americas. In coastal Ecuador, the Valdivia culture lives in villages and makes some of the earliest pottery in the Americas. The Amazon basin is home to foragers and early cultivators.

Southern Cone

The southern cone is inhabited by hunter-gatherers. On the Atacama coast of northern Chile, the Chinchorro fishing people have been mummifying their dead for two thousand years, long before the Egyptians. Guanaco hunters roam the Pampas and Patagonia, and shellfish gatherers live along the coasts of Tierra del Fuego.

Australasia & Oceania

Aboriginal Australians, who arrived at least 50,000 years ago, live as hunter-gatherers across the whole continent, with Tasmania cut off by rising seas since about 10,000 BCE. In the highlands of New Guinea, farmers have been growing taro and bananas for thousands of years. The remote Pacific islands and New Zealand have not yet been reached by humans.

Events

  1. Wheeled carts appear in Mesopotamia and Europe (c. 3500 BCE)
  2. Ötzi the Iceman dies in the Alps (c. 3300 BCE)
  3. Writing is invented in Sumer, first as accounting tablets at Uruk (c. 3200 BCE)
  4. Upper and Lower Egypt are united, traditionally by Narmer (c. 3100 BCE)
  5. First circular ditch and bank dug at Stonehenge (c. 3000 BCE)
  6. Norte Chico people begin monumental building on the Peruvian coast (c. 3000 BCE)

Moments of this period

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