Interactive map
Travel through time
Drag the slider or press play to watch 3,700 years unfold. Each glowing marker shows what was happening in that part of the world, and dashed lines show the trade routes that linked them.
Marker size shows how powerful each culture was at the time. Dashed lines are trade routes. Choose a culture in the list to show its events below. Turn on sound for background music while you travel through time.
Turn on sound to hear music while you explore.
The world in 3200 BC
Latest events
Events
Showing 65 events
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Mesopotamia
Writing is invented
Scribes in the Sumerian city of Uruk press wedge-shaped marks into clay. This is cuneiform, one of the world's first writing systems.
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Scotland
Skara Brae is built
Farmers on Orkney build a village of stone houses with stone beds, shelves and hearths. Sand buried it, and a storm uncovered it again in 1850.
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Egypt
Egypt is unified
Upper and Lower Egypt are joined into one kingdom, beginning the age of the pharaohs.
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UAE
The Hafit tombs
People build beehive-shaped stone tombs on the slopes of Jebel Hafit near Al Ain, some of the oldest monuments in the UAE.
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Scotland
The Calanais Stones are raised
On the Isle of Lewis, people set up a cross-shaped circle of tall stones that may track the movements of the moon.
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Scotland
Maeshowe is built
A great chambered tomb is built on Orkney. At midwinter, the setting sun shines straight down its entrance passage.
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Egypt
The Step Pyramid of Djoser
The architect Imhotep stacks six stone platforms at Saqqara. It is the first large building in the world made entirely of cut stone.
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Mesopotamia
The Royal Tombs of Ur
Sumerian rulers are buried with gold jewellery and the famous Lyres of Ur, some of the oldest surviving stringed instruments.
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India
The great Indus cities rise
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa grow into planned cities with grid streets, brick houses and covered drains, among the most advanced of their time.
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Egypt
The Great Pyramid is completed
Built for the pharaoh Khufu at Giza, it stayed the tallest human-made structure for almost 4,000 years.
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Scotland
The Ring of Brodgar
A huge stone circle, about 104 metres across, is raised on Orkney within a landscape of Neolithic monuments.
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India
The Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro
A large waterproof brick pool is built at the heart of the city, perhaps for religious bathing.
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UAE
The Umm an-Nar tombs
People of the Umm an-Nar culture build large round stone tombs. The copper they mined in the Hajar Mountains was traded to Mesopotamia.
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India
The dockyard at Lothal
The port of Lothal in Gujarat has what may be one of the world's earliest known docks, linking the Indus to sea trade with the Gulf.
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Mesopotamia
Sargon of Akkad builds an empire
Sargon conquers the Sumerian cities and creates what is often called the world's first empire.
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UAE
Copper from the land of Magan
Mesopotamian kings boast of ships arriving from 'Magan', the ancient name for the UAE and Oman, carrying copper and stone.
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Mesopotamia
The Ziggurat of Ur
King Ur-Nammu builds a giant stepped temple of mud brick for the moon god Nanna. He also issues one of the oldest known law codes.
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Egypt
The Middle Kingdom begins
After a time of famine and civil war, Mentuhotep II reunites Egypt. Art, literature and trade flourish again.
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India
The Indus cities decline
As rivers shift and the climate changes, people slowly leave the great cities and move to smaller villages.
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Greece
The palace of Knossos rises on Crete
The Minoans build a huge palace with painted walls, running water and hundreds of rooms, which may have inspired the legend of the Labyrinth.
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Mesopotamia
Babylonian mathematics
Scribes count in sixties. It is why we still have 60 minutes in an hour and 360 degrees in a circle.
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Mesopotamia
The Code of Hammurabi
King Hammurabi of Babylon has 282 laws carved onto a stone stele for all to see.
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Greece
The Mycenaeans grow powerful
Warrior kings at Mycenae are buried with gold masks and weapons. They write an early form of Greek called Linear B.
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India
The Rigveda is composed
Hymns in Sanskrit are composed and passed down by memory for many centuries before they are written down.
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Egypt
Hatshepsut rules as pharaoh
One of the few women to rule Egypt as pharaoh, Hatshepsut sends a famous trading voyage to the land of Punt for incense and ebony.
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Egypt
Tutankhamun is buried
The young pharaoh is laid to rest in the Valley of the Kings. His tomb stayed almost intact until 1922.
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UAE
Saruq al-Hadid
In the desert south of Dubai, craftspeople make bronze and iron tools, gold jewellery and snake figures at a busy metalworking site.
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Egypt
The Battle of Kadesh
Ramesses II fights the Hittites in one of the largest chariot battles ever. Years later the two sides sign one of the earliest known peace treaties.
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UAE
Camels change desert trade
Domesticated camels let people carry goods across the desert, opening new overland trade routes across Arabia.
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UAE
Falaj channels bring water to the desert
Communities around Al Ain dig underground channels called aflaj to carry water to their fields. Some are still in use today.
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Scotland
Crannogs are built on lochs
Iron Age families build round houses on stilts or artificial islands in lochs, reached by causeways or boats.
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Greece
The first recorded Olympic Games
Athletes gather at Olympia to honour Zeus. The games are held every four years for over a thousand years.
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Rome
Rome is founded (according to legend)
Roman tradition says the twins Romulus and Remus founded the city on the Palatine Hill.
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Greece
Homer's epics are composed
The Iliad and the Odyssey, poems about the Trojan War and Odysseus's journey home, are sung by bards to the sound of the lyre.
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Mesopotamia
The Library of Ashurbanipal
The Assyrian king collects thousands of clay tablets at Nineveh, including the Epic of Gilgamesh.
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Mesopotamia
The Ishtar Gate
Nebuchadnezzar II builds a gate into Babylon covered in blue glazed bricks with lions, bulls and dragons.
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Mesopotamia
Cyrus the Great takes Babylon
The Persian king captures Babylon, and Mesopotamia becomes part of the vast Persian Empire.
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Rome
The Roman Republic begins
The Romans expel their last king and are governed by elected officials and the Senate.
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Greece
Democracy begins in Athens
Cleisthenes reforms the government so that male citizens can vote on laws in the assembly. It is the world's first known democracy.
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Greece
The Battle of Marathon
A heavily outnumbered Athenian army defeats the invading Persian forces.
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Greece
Thermopylae and Salamis
King Leonidas and his Spartans hold a narrow pass against the Persians, then the Athenian navy wins a great sea battle at Salamis.
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India
The Buddha teaches
Siddhartha Gautama gives up his life as a prince and teaches a path to end suffering. Buddhism later spreads across Asia.
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Greece
The Parthenon is built
Athens builds a great marble temple to its patron goddess Athena on the Acropolis.
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Scotland
Brochs rise across the north
Communities build tall, double-walled stone towers called brochs. The broch of Mousa in Shetland still stands over 13 metres high.
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Greece
Alexandria is founded
Alexander the Great founds a city in Egypt that becomes a centre of learning, home to its famous library.
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India
The Mauryan Empire is founded
Chandragupta Maurya unites much of northern India into one of the largest empires of the ancient world.
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Rome
The Appian Way is begun
Rome starts its first great paved road and its first aqueduct. Roads like this let armies and traders cross Italy quickly.
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India
Emperor Ashoka's edicts
After the bloody Kalinga war, the Mauryan emperor Ashoka turns to Buddhism and has messages of peace carved on rocks and pillars across India.
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Rome
Hannibal crosses the Alps
The Carthaginian general leads an army, with war elephants, over the mountains to attack Rome during the Second Punic War.
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UAE
Mleiha mints its own coins
The trading town of Mleiha, in today's Sharjah, strikes silver coins and links Arabia with India and the Mediterranean.
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Egypt
The Rosetta Stone is carved
A royal decree is carved in hieroglyphs, demotic script and Greek. In 1822 it helped Jean-François Champollion finally decode hieroglyphs.
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Rome
Julius Caesar is assassinated
On the Ides of March, senators stab Caesar to death, fearing he wants to rule as a king. Civil war follows.
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Egypt
Cleopatra VII dies
The last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt dies after her defeat by Octavian. Egypt becomes a province of Rome.
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Rome
Augustus becomes emperor
Octavian takes the title Augustus and becomes the first Roman emperor.
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UAE
The port of Ed-Dur
On the lagoon of Umm al-Quwain, a trading port receives Roman glass, Indian goods and pottery from across the region.
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Rome
Mount Vesuvius erupts
The towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum are buried under volcanic ash, preserving a snapshot of Roman life.
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Rome
The Colosseum opens
Emperor Titus opens the great amphitheatre with 100 days of games. It could hold around 50,000 spectators.
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Scotland
The Battle of Mons Graupius
The Roman general Agricola defeats the Caledonian tribes somewhere in the north-east. The Roman writer Tacitus records the battle.
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Scotland
The Deskford carnyx
A bronze war trumpet with a boar's head is made in north-east Scotland. Its deep blast was meant to terrify enemies.
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Rome
Hadrian's Wall is begun
Emperor Hadrian orders a stone wall across northern Britain, marking the edge of the empire for almost 300 years.
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Scotland
The Antonine Wall is built
Rome builds a turf wall across central Scotland, the empire's most northerly frontier. It is abandoned after only about 20 years.
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UAE
The Sasanian Persians arrive
The Sasanian Empire gains control over much of the Gulf coast and its ports, linking the region to Persia.
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Scotland
The Picts are first named
A Roman writer mentions the 'Picti', the 'painted people' of the north. They go on to carve mysterious symbol stones.
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India
The Gupta Empire begins
A golden age of science, art and literature begins. Indian mathematicians later develop the decimal system with zero that we use today.
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Rome
The Western Roman Empire falls
The last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, is removed from power. Historians often use this to mark the end of the ancient era.