Ancient History and Civilizations Quiz

• Ancient history spans from the earliest records of human activity to the end of the classical period.

• The three-age system periodsizes ancient history into the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.

• Recorded history generally begins with the Bronze Age.

• The world population was already exponentially increasing due to the Neolithic Revolution during ancient history.

• Few people were capable of writing histories at the beginning of ancient history, and literacy was not widespread until long after the end of ancient history.

• Prehistory is the period before written history.

• Evidence for agriculture emerges in about 9000 BC in what is now eastern Turkey and spreads through the Fertile Crescent.

• Settlement at Göbekli Tepe began a process of early human migration and cultural evolution.

• Cultivation of millet, rice, and legumes began around 7000 BC in China.

• Animal domestication began with the domestication of dogs, which dates to at least 15,000 years ago, and perhaps even earlier.

• Sheep and goats were domesticated around 9000 BC in the Fertile Crescent, alongside the first evidence for agriculture.

• Other animals, such as pigs and poultry, were later domesticated and used as food sources.

• Cattle and water buffalo were domesticated around 7000 BC and horses, donkeys, and camels were domesticated by about 4000 BC.

• All of these animals were used not only for food, but to carry and pull people and loads, greatly increasing human ability to do work.

• The invention of the simple plough by 6000 BC further increased agricultural efficiency.

• Metal use in the form of hammered copper items predates the discovery of smelting of copper ores, which happened around 6000 BC in western Asia and independently in eastern Asia before 2000 BC.

• Gold and silver use dates to between 6000 and 5000 BC.

• How to make metal alloys began with bronze in about 3500 BC in Mesopotamia and was developed independently in China by 2000 BC.

• Pottery developed independently throughout the world,[23] with fired pots appearing first among the Jomon of Japan and in West Africa at Mali.

• Sometime between 5000 and 4000 BC the potter's wheel was invented.

• By 3000 BC,[25] the pottery wheel was adapted into wheeled vehicles which could be used to carry loads further and easier than with human or animal power alone.

• Writing developed separately in five different locations in human history: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, and Mesoamerica.

• By 3400 BC, "proto-literate" cuneiform spread in the Middle East.

• Egypt developed its own system of hieroglyphs by about 3200 BC.

• By 2800 BC the Indus Valley civilization had developed its Indus script, which remains undeciphered.

• Writing in China was developed in the Shang Dynasty dating to the period 1600 to 1100 BC.

• Writing in Mesoamerica dates to 600 BC with the Zapotec civilization.

• The Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians were some of the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia.

• Babylonia emerged as a major power in the region around 1800 BC.

• The Neo-Babylonian Empire, or Chaldea, was a major empire that controlled most of the Fertile Crescent from the 7th to 6th centuries BC.

• The Akkadian Empire was one of the most powerful empires in the region during the 20th and 18th centuries BC.

• The Achaemenid Empire was one of the largest empires in the world at its peak in the 6th century BC.

• The Parthian Empire was an Iranian civilization that controlled most of the Iranian plateau from the mid-1st century BC to the mid-3rd century AD.

• The Achaemenid dynasty and empire fell to Alexander the Great in 330 BC.

• The Seleucid dynasty ruled most of the area after the Achaemenid dynasty fell.

• The Parthian Empire was a major power in the ancient world.

• The Arsacid dynasty led Parthia and by around 155 BC they had mostly conquered the Seleucid Empire.

• Parthia had many wars with the Romans, but it was rebellions within the empire that ended it in the 3rd century AD.

• The Sassanid Empire began when the Parthian Empire ended in AD 224.

• Their rulers claimed the Achaemenids as ancestors and set up their capital at Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia.

• Their period of greatest military expansion occurred under Shapur I, who by the time of his death in AD 272 had defeated Roman imperial armies and set up buffer states between the Sassanid and Roman Empires.

• After Shapur, the Sassanids were under more pressure from the Kushans to their east as well as the Roman then Byzantine empire to its west. But the Sassanids rebuild and founded numerous cities and their merchants traveled widely and introduced crops such as sugar, rice, and cotton into the Iranian plateau.

• But in AD 651, the last Sassanid emperor was killed by the expanding Islamic Arabs.

• The Hittites first came to Anatolia about 1900 BC and during the period 1600-1500 they expanded into Mesopotamia where they adopted the cuneiform script to their Indo-European language.

• By 1200 their empire stretched to Phoenicia and eastern Anatolia.

• They improved two earlier technologies from Mesopotamia and spread these new techniques widely – improved iron working and light chariots with spoked wheels in warfare.

• The Hittites introduced the casting of iron with molds and then hammering it which enabled weapons and tools to be made stronger and also cheaper.

• Although chariots had been used previously, the use of spoked wheels allowed the chariots to be much lighter and more maneuverable.

• Israel and Judah were related Iron Age kingdoms of the ancient Levant and had existed during the Iron Ages and the Neo-Babylonian, Persian and Hellenistic periods.

• Israel had emerged by the middle of the 9th century BC, when the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III names "Ahab the Israelite" among his enemies at the battle of Qarqar (853).

• Judah emerged somewhat later than Israel, probably during the 9th century BC, but the subject is one of considerable controversy.

• Israel came into conflict with the Assyrians, who conquered Israel in 722 BC.

• The Neo-Babylonian Empire did the same to Judah in 586.

• Following the fall of Babylon to the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great allowed the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem,

• and some of the exiles from Judah returned to Judea, where they remained under Persian rule until the Maccabean revolt led to independence during Hell

Test your knowledge of ancient history and civilizations with this quiz covering the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, the Neolithic Revolution, early human migration, animal domestication, metal use, writing systems, and ancient empires.