THE WORLD ATLAS

Chapter · Iron Age

The Assyrian Colossus

The world in 700 BCE

In 700 BCE the Neo-Assyrian Empire is the greatest power the world has yet seen. King Sennacherib rules from Nineveh over Mesopotamia, Syria, the Levant and parts of Anatolia and Iran; a year earlier his army besieged Jerusalem, and he has just put his own son on the throne of Babylon.

Egypt is ruled by pharaohs from Kush in Nubia, whose Twenty-fifth Dynasty is set on a collision course with Assyria. To the north, Urartu and Phrygia, the kingdom of King Midas, famous from Greek legend but a real ruler (the Mita of Assyrian records), face raids by Cimmerian horsemen. In Greece, a new age of city-states, colonies, Olympic games and the poems of Homer has begun, while Rome is a young town of kings and Carthage a growing Phoenician colony. In China, the Zhou kings have fled east and lost real power to great feudal states. In India, the first kingdoms of the Ganges plain are forming, and in Mexico the Olmec of La Venta are at their peak.

Open the map in 700 BCE

The great powers

Region by region

Southern Africa

Southern Africa remains the land of Khoisan hunter-gatherers. Bantu-speaking farmers have reached the region of the Great Lakes, where iron-working will soon develop, but have not yet moved south of the rainforest in large numbers.

Northern Africa

Egypt is ruled by the Kushite Twenty-fifth Dynasty, kings from Napata in Nubia who conquered Egypt under Piye around 728 BCE; Shabaka or Shebitku (their order is debated) now rule Kush and Egypt together. The Phoenician colony of Carthage, founded around 814 BCE, is growing on the Tunisian coast. Berbers, Saharan nomads and early Nok farmers in Nigeria live beyond the river valleys.

Europe

Greece is entering the Archaic Age: city-states such as Athens, Sparta and Corinth found colonies across Sicily, southern Italy and the Black Sea, and the Olympic games and Homer's epics are new. Rome is a small kingdom, said to have been founded in 753 BCE, and the Etruscans dominate central Italy. The Hallstatt culture, ancestor of the Celts, rises in central Europe, and Cimmerians and early Scythians hold the steppe.

Middle East & South Asia

Sennacherib of Assyria rules an empire from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean; Assyria destroyed the kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, and Sennacherib has forced Judah under Hezekiah to pay tribute. Urartu, under Argishti II, rules the Armenian highlands, Phrygia under Midas holds central Anatolia, Elam resists from Susa, and the Medes, still divided among many local chiefs, live in western Iran. In India, Later Vedic kingdoms such as Kosala, Videha and Kuru-Panchala are growing into the first states of the Ganges plain.

Northern & Central Asia

Scythian and other Iranian-speaking nomads, fighting from horseback with powerful bows, dominate the steppes from the Black Sea to the Altai. Cimmerian raiders have pushed south through the Caucasus into Urartu and Anatolia. The Siberian forests remain the land of Finno-Ugric and Paleo-Siberian hunters.

East Asia

The Zhou kings, forced to move their capital east to Luoyi in 770 BCE, now reign but do not rule; King Huan of Zhou is a figurehead while powerful states such as Zheng, Qi, Jin, Chu and Qin compete in the Spring and Autumn period. Korea is home to Bronze Age farmers who build dolmens, and Japan to the Final Jōmon foragers.

Southeast Asia

Bronze-working rice farmers live in villages across mainland Southeast Asia, and early Đông Sơn culture is developing in northern Vietnam. Austronesian peoples sail and trade among the islands of Indonesia and the Philippines.

Northern North America

Paleo-Eskimo peoples inhabit Arctic Canada and Greenland, where the Dorset culture is about to emerge. Subarctic forest hunters live inland, and Pacific Northwest peoples fish for salmon along the coast.

Southern North America

The Olmec are at their height at La Venta, a great ceremonial centre with a clay pyramid and colossal heads. Early Maya villages are growing in the lowlands of Guatemala, while woodland peoples of the Ohio valley are on the eve of the Adena mound-building culture.

Northern South America

The Chavín religious cult, centred on its temple at Chavín de Huántar, is spreading across Peru, carrying its feline and serpent imagery. Chorrera potters flourish in coastal Ecuador, and Amazonian peoples farm manioc along the rivers.

Southern Cone

Hunter-gatherers live across the Pampas, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Small farming communities are beginning to appear in north-west Argentina and northern Chile, influenced by the Andes.

Australasia & Oceania

Aboriginal Australians and Papuan farmers live as before. Descendants of the Lapita people have settled Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, where a distinct Polynesian culture is beginning to develop. Most of the Pacific and New Zealand remain unsettled.

Events

  1. First recorded Olympic Games in Greece (traditional date)
  2. Western Zhou falls; the Zhou court moves east to Luoyi the next year (770 BCE)
  3. Legendary founding of Rome by Romulus
  4. Piye of Kush conquers Egypt (c. 728 BCE)
  5. Assyria captures Samaria and ends the kingdom of Israel
  6. Sargon II of Assyria defeats Urartu
  7. Sennacherib invades Judah and besieges Jerusalem

Moments of this period

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