Mesopotamian Chronology

10,000 B.C.

Wooden reaping knives set with flint blades used in Palestine

9,000 B.C.

End of the Ice Age; domesticated sheep in the North Tigris Valley

7,700 - 5,700 B.C.

Çatal Huyuk in Turkey; obsidian mined for tools; fertilitity cult indicates use of domesticated cattle.

7,500 B.C.

Extensive settlement at Jericho, weaving, fortification, remains of cultivated cereals.

7,000 B.C.

Pottery begins.

6,500 B.C.

Copper used in Turkey for trinkets; a dugout canoe used in Holland.

6,000 B.C.

Farming in Macedonia; pottery plentiful.

5,000 B.C.

Use of copper in Macedonia begins.

3,300 B.C.

Writing begins in Sumer; wheeled vehicles and wheel-made pottery, sailboats, and animal-drawn plows in Sumer; agriculture reaches Ireland.

3,100 B.C.

Invention of heiroglyphic writing in Egypt.

3,000 B.C.

Sumerian fashions prevelant in Ashur.

2,800 B.C.

Akkadian conquest of Diyala region.

2,700 B.C.

Agriculture reaches China; royal inscriptions appear in Sumer; Sumerian script used in Akkad; Sumerian fashions used in Mari.

2,500 B.C.

Writing in Mari (Sumerian script); keeping of daily accounts in Sumer; the pyramids completed.

2,400 B.C.

Writing in Assyria (Sumerian script).

2,350 B.C.

Sargon I of Agade, first known empire.

2,300 B.C.

Copper common in Sumer; writing in the Indus valley (local script).

2,250 B.C.

The fall of the Dynasty of Sargon.

2,100 - 2,000 B.C.

Supremecy of Ur on lower Mesopotamia.

2,100 B.C.

The laws of Ur-Nammu of Ur, the earliest preserved law book.

1,800 B.C.

Assyrian temple built for a Sumerian God (Enlil)

1,750 B.C.

Hammurabi of Babylon rules most of Mesopotamia; financial transactions in Sumer and Accad now commonly in silver.

1,600 B.C.

Fall of the dynasty of Hammurabi.

reprinted from The Columbia History of the World, 1972, published by Harper & Row, edited by Jahn A. Garraty & Peter Gay