3872 entries. Last updated May 19, 2013.

1,000 BCE to 300 BCE Timeline Outline

  • Eras
  • Themes

The Oldest Known Evidence of the Phoenician Alphabet
(Circa 1,000 BCE)

A shard of ancient pottery found in the Elah Fortress, bearing Proto-Canaanite script which might compose the earliest known Hebrew inscription. (View Larger)
Possibly the Earliest Hebrew Inscription
(Circa 1,000 BCE)

The Gezer Calendar
(Circa 950 BCE)

The Cascajal Block, the Earliest Precolumbian or Mesoamerican Writing Yet Discovered
(Circa 950 BCE – 600 BCE)

The "Chicago Syllabary"
(Circa 900 BCE)

Perhaps the Oldest Surviving Tablet with an European Alphabet
(Circa 800 BCE)

A Pulley Depicted in a Bas-Relief from Nimrud, Assyria
(Circa 800 BCE)

The First Olympic Games
(776 BCE)

Homer
Standardization of the Homeric Texts Begins
(Circa 750 BCE)

Achilles
The "Fatal Letter" in the Iliad
(Circa 750 BCE)

Using Carrier Pigeons to Communicate the Results of the Olympic Games
(Circa 750 BCE)

The ancient Greek wine jug bearing the Dipylon inscription.
One of the Oldest Records of the Greek Alphabet
(Circa 740 BCE)

The Cup of Nestor. (View Larger)
One of the Oldest Known Examples of Writing in Greek
(Circa 740 BCE – 720 BCE)

The earliest Estruscan abecedarium, the Marsiliana d'Albegna tablet, which dates to c. 700 VCE. (View Larger)
The Marsiliana Tablet Abecedarium
(700 BCE)

The Taylor Prism, ME 91032 of the British Library. (View Larger)
The Taylor Prism and the Sennacherib Prism
(689 BCE – 691 BCE)

Knowledge as Power: The Earliest Systematically Collected Library as Distinct…
(668 BCE – 627 BCE)

The God of Writing. . . .
(Circa 646 BCE)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The tower of Babel, ca. 1556
Construction of the Etemenanki Ziggurat, Later Known as The Tower of Babel
(604 BCE – 562 BCE)

(View larger)
The Tower of Babel Stele
(604 BCE – 562 BCE)

The larger of the two silver scrolls, discovered in 1979 at Ketef Hinnom, which have been deemed the oldest suriving texts from the Hebrew bible. (View Larger)
The Oldest Surviving Texts from the Hebrew Bible
(Circa 600 BCE)

The Diolkos Paved Trackway for Ships Across the Isthmus of Corinth
(Circa 600 BCE – 50 CE)

Destruction of Solomon's Temple
(586 BCE)

The Duenos Inscription
(Circa 550 BCE)

The Yinqueshan bamboo strips, the earliest manuscript of Sun Tzu's 'Art of War,' on exhibition in a Chinese museum. (View Larger)
The Oldest Known Work on Military Strategy
(Circa 550 BCE)

The Greek Origin of Monumental Roman Stone Inscriptions
(Circa 550 BCE)

A Block Printed Gold Magic Amulet from Ancient Greece or Asia Minor
(Circa 550 BCE)

The front side of the Cyrus Cylinder. (View Larger)
The Earliest Known Document in the History of Religious Toleration
(537 BCE)

Ezra the Scribe
Ezra Introduces Public Reading of the Torah
(Circa 536 BCE)

Disappearance of the Ark of the Covenant and the Ten Commandments
(535 BCE)

The Behistun Inscription. (View Larger)
The Rosetta Stone of Cuneiform Script
(522 BCE – 486 BCE)

An Indian postage stamp, released in 2004, in honor of Pannini.
The Earliest Known Work on Descriptive Linguistics
(Circa 501 BCE)

The First Known Description of a Binary Numerical System
(Circa 500 BCE)

The Roman Census
(Circa 500 BCE)

Paper in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica
(Circa 500 BCE)

King Darius I
The Royal Road
(Circa 450 BCE – 420 BCE)

Beginnings of the Book Trade in Greece
(Circa 450 BCE)

How Herodotus Used Writing and Messages in his Histories
(Circa 450 BCE – 420 BCE)

Herodotus of Halicarnassus. (View Larger)
The Egyptians Reckon with Pebbles and Probably Use the Sandboard Abacus
(Circa 440 BCE)

One of the earliest surviving images of anyone reading a papyrus roll, preserved in the Louvre. (View Larger)
One of the Earliest Images of Someone Reading a Papyrus Roll
(440 BCE – 435 BCE)

Possible Libraries in Ancient Greece
(Circa 410 BCE)

Arabic numerals and their equivalents in the ancient Indian Brahmi. (View Larger)
Arabic Numerals are Invented in India by the Hindus
(Circa 400 BCE)

The Pronomos Vase from Naples shows the performers of a Greek satyr play. (View Larger)
The Pronomos Vase
(Circa 400 BCE)

A Wooden Dove Automaton
(Circa 400 BCE)

A bust of Xenophon. (View Larger)
Export of Books from Greece to the Euxine Coast
(399 BCE)

A statue of Brennus by an unknown French artist. (View Larger)
The Gauls Sack Rome and Destroy Most Records
(390 BCE – 387 BCE)

The Library of Aristotle
(384 BCE – 321 BCE)

Socrates on the Invention of Writing and the Relationship of Writing to Memory
(Circa 370 BCE)

Plato Compares Human Memory to Wax Tablets
(Circa 369 BCE)

Polybius (View Larger)
The Hydraulic Telegraph
(350 BCE)

The Acropolis stone.
The Earliest Example of Shorthand Writing
(Circa 350 BCE)

The Archives of the Athenian Cavalry
(Circa 350 BCE – 250 BCE)

Writing on Lead Tablets in Antiquity
(Circa 350 BCE – 250 BCE)

Probably the Earliest Surviving Papyrus of a Greek Text
(Circa 350 BCE)

The Oldest Map Clearly Marked with Distances
(343 BCE – 313 BCE)

The Earliest Datable Appearance of the Serif in Stone Inscriptions
(334 BCE – 330 BCE)

"The Founding Document of Mathematics"
(323 BCE – 283 BCE)