Before the year 1

Kenya · c. 3.3 million years ago

Stone cores, flakes and anvils made 3.3 million years ago at Lomekwi 3 in West Turkana. They are the oldest known stone tools and predate the genus Homo.

Ethiopia · c. 2.6 million years ago

Sharp-edged stone flakes and cores from Gona in Ethiopia's Awash Basin, dated to about 2.6 million years ago, were the first abundant, securely dated record of deliberate stone toolmaking.

Tanzania · c. 2.6 million years ago; identified 1930s

The earliest widely accepted stone tool tradition, defined and named from tools excavated at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

Kenya · c. 1.76 million years ago

Large, deliberately shaped stone hand axes about 1.76 million years old from Kokiselei in West Turkana. They are among the earliest known tools of the Acheulean tradition.

Zambia · c. 476,000 years ago

Two logs joined by a cut notch, found at Kalambo Falls and dated to at least 476,000 years ago. It is the oldest known evidence of wood being shaped and fitted together to build a structure.

Zambia · c. 400,000 to 266,000 years ago

At Twin Rivers in central Zambia, early humans collected iron-rich minerals and ground them into colored powder between about 266,000 and more than 400,000 years ago. It is among the oldest evidence of systematic pigment use.

Morocco · c. 142,000 years ago

Perforated sea snail shells worn as ornaments at Bizmoune Cave in western Morocco at least 142,000 years ago. They are the oldest shell beads yet recovered and the earliest known evidence of this form of human signaling.

Morocco · c. 120,000 to 90,000 years ago

Shaped bone tools from Contrebandiers Cave on Morocco's Atlantic coast, 120,000 to 90,000 years old, used to work leather and fur. With skinned carnivore bones, they are the earliest archaeological evidence pointing to clothing.

Mozambique · c. 103,000 BCE

Stone grinders and scrapers from a cave near Lake Niassa carry starch from wild sorghum, the earliest direct evidence of people processing cereal grains, about 105,000 years ago.

South Africa · c. 100,000 years ago

A 100,000-year-old workshop at Blombos Cave where people ground ochre, mixed it with bone, charcoal and liquid, and stored the compound in abalone shells. It is early evidence of planned mixing and of containers.

Democratic Republic of the Congo · c. 88,000 BCE

Barbed harpoon points carved from bone about 90,000 years ago on the Semliki River, among the earliest known specialized fishing tools.

Slovenia · c. 58,000 BCE

A pierced cave bear thighbone from a cave near Cerkno, dated to 50,000 to 60,000 years ago and presented by the National Museum of Slovenia as a Neanderthal flute, the oldest known musical instrument.

Eswatini · c. 48,000 years ago

Lion Cavern at Ngwenya in Eswatini is the oldest known site of intensive ochre mining, where Stone Age people dug out pigment about 48,000 years ago.

Timor Leste · c. 42,000 years ago

Finds at Jerimalai cave in Timor-Leste are the oldest known evidence of deep-sea fishing, about 42,000 years old, along with one of the earliest known fish hooks.

Georgia · c. 30,000 BCE

Wild flax fibers that were spun, twisted, knotted and dyed by hunter-gatherers at Dzudzuana Cave in Georgia about 30,000 years ago, the oldest such fibers reported.

Democratic Republic of the Congo · c. 18,000 BCE

A notched bone tool about 20,000 years old, found on the Congolese shore of Lake Edward, whose grouped marks are read by many researchers as an early counting or tallying device.

Ukraine · c. 16,000 BCE

Circular shelters built from hundreds of mammoth bones and tusks by Ice Age hunter-gatherers at Mezhyrich in central Ukraine about 18,000 years ago. They are among the oldest surviving built structures.

Syria · c. 11,000 BCE

Plant remains from Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates in Syria suggest people were systematically cultivating cereals, rye among them, at least 13,000 years ago.

Turkey · c. 9600 to 8200 BCE

Round and rectangular stone enclosures with T-shaped limestone pillars up to 5.5 meters tall, raised by hunter-gatherers. UNESCO calls the site one of the first manifestations of human-made monumental architecture.

Mali · c. 9400 BCE

Potsherds from Ounjougou on the Bandiagara Plateau date to the 10th millennium BCE, the earliest evidence for pottery in sub-Saharan Africa.

Bolivia · c. 8350 BCE

People in the savanna of northern Bolivia were growing manioc and squash on human-made forest islands more than 10,000 years ago, making the region one of the early centers of plant cultivation.

Iran · c. 8200 BCE

The management and breeding of wild bezoar goats by early villagers in the Zagros Mountains, which gave the world one of its first livestock animals.

Brazil · c. 8000 to 6000 BCE

The turning of a wild Amazonian shrub into cassava, a starchy root crop, by Indigenous farmers in what is now southwestern Brazil and northern Bolivia. It became a staple across the tropics.

Turkey · c. 8000 BCE

The turning of wild einkorn into a farmed crop. DNA fingerprinting traced cultivated einkorn to wild stands in the Karacadağ mountains of southeastern Turkey.

Papua New Guinea · c. 8000 to 5000 BCE

Mound cultivation and ditch drainage of a highland swamp at Kuk, evidence that farming arose independently in New Guinea at least 7,000 years ago.

Papua New Guinea · c. 8000 BCE

The selection of sweet, thick-stemmed Saccharum officinarum from a wild grass in New Guinea, the parent of the crop that now supplies most of the world's sugar.

Palestinian Territory · c. 8000 BCE

An 8.5-meter stone tower with an internal staircase built at Jericho around 8000 BCE, one of the oldest known works of monumental architecture.

Sudan · Early Holocene, c. 8000 to 5000 BCE

Ceramics with incised wavy line decoration made by hunter-fisher-gatherers of the central Nile in the Mesolithic. They are among the oldest known pottery.

Jordan · c. 7200 BCE

Large human figures modeled in lime plaster over reed frames at 'Ain Ghazal near Amman about 9,000 years ago, among the earliest large-scale statues of the human form.

Pakistan · c. 7000 to 5500 BCE

The earliest known drilling of living human teeth, done with flint-tipped drills in a Neolithic farming village in Balochistan between 9,000 and 7,500 years ago.

Mexico · c. 7000 BCE

The breeding of maize from the wild grass teosinte in the Balsas River valley of southwestern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. It produced one of the world's staple crops.

Jordan · c. 7000 BCE

A stone engraved in southeastern Jordan about 9,000 years ago shows a nearby hunting trap to scale. With a later stone from Saudi Arabia it is the oldest known plan drawn to scale.

Nigeria · c. 6000 BCE

A dugout canoe about 8,000 years old found in Yobe State, the oldest known boat in Africa and one of the oldest in the world.

Georgia · c. 6000 BCE

The earliest chemically confirmed grape wine, made in pottery jars at Neolithic villages in what is now Georgia around 6000 to 5800 BCE.

Kuwait · c. 5500 to 5000 BCE

Bitumen-coated reed-bundle boats used on the Gulf between about 5500 and 5000 BCE, known from fragments found at site H3 in Kuwait, the oldest known remains of seagoing boats.

Bulgaria · c. 5500 to 4200 BCE

Boiling spring brine in ceramic vessels to make hard salt cakes, practiced at Provadia-Solnitsata from about 5500 BCE. It is the earliest recorded use of the technique in Europe.

Brazil · c. 5500 BCE

Simple fired clay bowls made by fishing people near present-day Santarem on the lower Amazon. They are the earliest pottery yet found in the Americas.

Saudi Arabia · c. 5200 BCE

Long rectangular stone enclosures built across northwestern Arabia about 7,000 years ago, apparently for ritual. More than 1,000 are known, making them one of the oldest traditions of large stone monuments.

Chile · c. 5050 BCE to 1800 BCE

The oldest known technique for deliberately preserving human bodies, practiced on the Atacama coast near Arica from about 5050 BCE, some two thousand years before Egypt.

Papua New Guinea · c. 5000 BCE

The earliest known deliberate planting of bananas, dated to about 6,950 to 6,440 years ago at Kuk Swamp, where the wild ancestor of edible bananas was cultivated.

Bulgaria · 5th millennium BCE

Open trench mining of copper carbonate ores near Stara Zagora in the 5th millennium BCE, one of the earliest copper mines known in Europe.

Serbia · c. 5000 BCE

Extraction of copper metal from ore by heat at the Vinca culture site of Belovode about 5000 BCE, the earliest securely dated copper smelting known anywhere.

Peru · c. 5000 BCE or earlier

Andean farmers bred the cultivated potato from wild tubers more than 7,000 years ago. DNA studies trace all cultivated potatoes to a single origin in the broad area of southern Peru.

Libya · Fifth millennium BCE

The earliest dated dairying in Africa. Herders in what is now southwestern Libya processed cattle milk in pottery in the fifth millennium BCE.

Serbia · c. 4650 BCE

A foil of copper alloyed with tin from the Vinca culture site of Plocnik, dated about 4650 BCE and reported as the oldest tin bronze known.

Australia · c. 4600 BCE

A network of stone channels, weirs and dams built by the Gunditjmara people to trap, store and harvest eels, among the oldest aquaculture systems known.

Bulgaria · c. 4600 to 4200 BCE

Gold ornaments made on the Black Sea coast between about 4600 and 4200 BCE, widely described as the oldest worked gold treasure known.

Armenia · c. 4100 BCE

A wine press, fermentation vat and storage jars in a cave near Areni, Armenia, dated to about 4100 to 4000 BCE, the earliest known complete wine-making installation.

Pakistan · c. 4000 BCE

The oldest known object made by lost-wax casting is a 6,000-year-old copper amulet from Mehrgarh in Balochistan; the technique is still used in foundries.

Colombia · c. 4000 BCE

Decorated clay pots strengthened with plant fibers, made about 6,000 years ago at San Jacinto in the Caribbean lowlands of Colombia. They are among the oldest known ceramics in the Americas.

Ethiopia · c. 4000 to 1000 BCE

Teff is a tiny-seeded cereal grass domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands. It is the grain of injera flatbread and is grown mainly in Ethiopia.

Malta · c. 4000-2500 BCE

A three-level underground burial complex cut into limestone at Paola, Malta, between about 4000 and 2500 BCE, with chambers carved to imitate above-ground temple architecture.

Poland · c. 3900 BCE

A Neolithic system of shafts, galleries and chambers for mining striped flint and making axes, among the most complete prehistoric mining complexes known.

Malta · c. 3600-2500 BCE

Prehistoric stone temples built on Malta and Gozo from about 3600 BCE, ranked by UNESCO among the earliest free-standing stone buildings in the world.

Armenia · c. 3500 BCE

A one-piece cowhide shoe about 5,500 years old, found in 2008 in the Areni-1 cave in Armenia, the oldest known piece of leather footwear.

Kazakhstan · c. 3500 BCE

The Botai culture of northern Kazakhstan left the earliest claimed evidence of horses being harnessed and milked, about 5,500 years ago. Whether those horses were truly domesticated is contested.

Central African Republic · Late Neolithic, dates debated (c. 3500 BCE to 1st millennium BCE)

Groups of standing stones set on burial-like tumuli around Bouar in the west of the country, among the few megalithic traditions of Central Africa. They are on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative List.

Iraq · c. 3500 BCE

A small engraved cylinder rolled across wet clay to leave a continuous impression. Invented at Uruk around 3500 BCE, it worked as a signature and administrative mark.

Jordan · c. 3500 BCE

A masonry gravity dam built in the 4th millennium BCE in the Black Desert of eastern Jordan, often regarded as the oldest known dam in the world.

Iraq · c. 3500 to 3250 BCE

A rotating platform for shaping clay vessels. Many scholars trace it to the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, and it made faster, more uniform pottery possible.

China · before c. 2500 BCE

The rearing of silkworms and reeling of their cocoons into thread, which began in Neolithic China. Silk became one of China's chief exports and gave its name to the Silk Road.

Ecuador · c. 3500 BCE

Bowls, jars and small female figurines made by the Valdivia culture of coastal Ecuador, among the oldest ceramics in the Americas and some of the earliest representational images in the hemisphere.

Georgia · c. 3400 BCE

An underground gold mine in southern Georgia worked by Kura-Araxes miners from about 3400 BCE, described by its excavators as the oldest known gold mine in the world.

Libya · c. 3400 BCE

Deliberate preservation of a child's body by Neolithic herders in southwestern Libya around 3400 BCE. It is the oldest known mummy in Africa.

Iraq · c. 3350 to 3200 BCE

A script of signs pressed into clay, first used by administrators at Uruk in southern Iraq. It is one of the oldest known forms of writing and served about 15 languages over 3,000 years.

Ecuador · c. 3300 BCE

Residues on pottery from Santa Ana-La Florida in southeastern Ecuador show that the Mayo-Chinchipe people were preparing cacao about 5,300 years ago, some 1,500 years before the earliest evidence from Mesoamerica.

Egypt · c. 3320-3150 BCE

A writing system of pictorial signs that emerged in Upper Egypt before 3100 BCE. Labels from Tomb U-j at Abydos are its oldest known examples.

Slovenia · c. 3200 BCE

A wooden wheel and axle from a prehistoric pile dwelling near Ljubljana, radiocarbon dated to about 5,100 to 5,350 years ago, the oldest wooden wheel yet discovered.

Oman · c. 3200 to 2000 BCE

Bronze Age mining and smelting of copper in the Omani mountains. Oman, the Magan of cuneiform texts, was a main copper source for Mesopotamia.

Egypt · by c. 3150 BCE

A writing sheet made from the pith of the Nile papyrus plant. It was the chief writing material of ancient Egypt and later of the Greek and Roman world.

Iran · c. 3050-2900 BCE

A writing system of numerical and ideographic signs used on clay tablets across the Iranian plateau around 3000 BCE, the earliest in Iran.

Taiwan · c. 3000 BCE to 500 CE

A Neolithic craft of cutting and drilling green nephrite from eastern Taiwan into tools and ornaments. Its products traveled across a 3,000 kilometer sea network around the South China Sea.

Iraq · 3rd millennium BCE

A way of counting in sixties that began with the Sumerians and passed to the Babylonians. It survives in the 60-minute hour, the 60-second minute and the degrees of angles.

India · 3rd millennium BCE onward

An underground structure in which flights of steps descend to groundwater, built on the Indian subcontinent since the 3rd millennium BCE as a water source and store. Rani-ki-Vav in Gujarat is the best-known example.

Egypt · 3rd millennium BCE

A schematic year of 12 months of 30 days plus five extra days. It is the first calendar known to use a 365-day year.

Egypt · c. 27th-26th century BCE

The Step Pyramid complex at Saqqara translated earlier brick, wood and reed architecture into quarried stone on a monumental scale.

Pakistan · c. 2600 to 1900 BCE

A uniform system of small stone cube weights used across the Indus cities, rising by doubling from a unit of about 0.86 grams and then by decimal steps.

Iraq · c. 2550 to 2450 BCE

Box lyres of wood, gold, silver and lapis lazuli made at Ur about 4,500 years ago. They are the oldest surviving stringed instruments.

Egypt · c. 2500 BCE

A calcium copper silicate pigment made by heating sand, lime, a copper source and an alkali. It is regarded as the first synthetic pigment.

Mali · c. 2500 BCE

Pearl millet, the first indigenous crop domesticated in western Africa, has its earliest domesticated evidence in pottery from northern Mali dated to the third millennium BCE.

Pakistan · c. 2500 BCE

A city-wide system of household washrooms, brick drains and covered street sewers built at Mohenjo-daro in the 3rd millennium BCE, among the first of its kind.

Syria · c. 2400 BCE

Scribes at Ebla in Syria compiled Sumerian and Eblaite word lists on clay tablets before about 2250 BCE. They have been called the oldest known dictionaries.

Iraq · by c. 2300 BCE

An ox-drawn plow fitted with a funnel that dropped seed straight into the furrow. Mesopotamian farmers used it to plow and sow in one pass.

Bahrain · c. 2200 to 1750 BCE

Between 2200 and 1750 BCE the people of Dilmun on Bahrain built thousands of tombs as low cylindrical stone towers, a construction type UNESCO describes as globally unique.

Bahrain · c. 2100 BCE

The Gulf-type seal is a circular steatite stamp seal developed on Bahrain, ancient Dilmun, around 2100 BCE and used by merchants trading between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

Thailand · c. 2000 to 1500 BCE

Villagers at Ban Chiang in northeastern Thailand made bronze tools and ornaments in prehistory. The site holds the earliest evidence of metal production found in Southeast Asia.

Central African Republic · c. 2000 BCE (contested)

An excavated iron forge at Oboui that returned eight consistent radiocarbon dates around 2000 BCE. If the dates hold, it is among the earliest iron-working sites known anywhere and supports an independent African invention of iron metallurgy.

Mauritania · c. 2000 BCE

Neolithic herders on the sandstone cliffs of southern Mauritania grew domesticated pearl millet from about 2000 BCE, among the earliest dated in West Africa.

North Macedonia · c. 1900 BCE

A Bronze Age hilltop site where notches cut in rock marked the rising points of the Sun and Moon through the year and were used to keep a lunar calendar.

Greece · Minoan era (c. 3200 to 1100 BCE)

Terracotta pressure pipes, stone sewers large enough to walk in, and toilets flushed with water, built in the Bronze Age palaces of Crete.

Egypt · c. 19th-16th century BCE

The earliest known alphabetic script, in which a small set of picture signs each stood for one consonant. Later alphabets descend from it.

Lebanon · 18th to 15th century BCE

An undeciphered writing system of roughly a hundred signs, known from inscriptions at Byblos and dated to the second millennium BCE.

Mexico · c. 1600 BCE

The making of elastic rubber by mixing tree latex with morning glory juice, practiced in ancient Mexico by 1600 BCE. It preceded industrial vulcanization by more than 3,000 years.

Cyprus · c. 1550 BCE

An undeciphered syllabic writing system used on Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age, from about 1550 to 1050 BCE, and the ancestor of the later Cypriot syllabary.

Egypt · 16th century BCE

A stone vessel that drained through a small hole, with scales inside to read the hour. The oldest surviving example and the oldest record of one both come from Egypt.

Niger · 2nd millennium BCE (disputed)

Iron-working remains in the Termit Massif of eastern Niger with radiocarbon dates in the second millennium BCE, central to the argument that iron smelting was invented independently in Africa.

Greece · c. 1450 BCE

A syllabic script in which each sign stands for a syllable, used by Mycenaean Greeks for palace records. It preserves the oldest known form of the Greek language.

Syria · c. 1400 BCE

Clay tablets from Ugarit dating to about 1400 BCE record hymns with musical instructions. One, the Hymn to Nikkal, is the oldest surviving substantially complete piece of written music.

Syria · c. 1400 BCE

A 30-sign alphabet written in wedge-shaped marks on clay, used at Ugarit on the Syrian coast from about the 15th to the 13th century BCE. It is one of the earliest known alphabets.

Lebanon · From c. 1200 BCE

A colorfast purple textile dye made from the mucus of murex sea snails, produced on an industrial scale by the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon and prized across the ancient Mediterranean.

United Arab Emirates · c. 1100 to 800 BCE

Wild one-humped camels were first domesticated on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula around 1100 to 800 BCE, according to a DNA study using bones from sites in the present-day UAE.

El Salvador · Early Preclassic, c. 1100 to 800 BCE

A Preclassic pottery technique that leaves pale wavy lines on a darker surface by resist decoration. It began in western El Salvador and spread across southern Mesoamerica.

Cyprus · c. 11th century BCE

A script of 56 syllable signs used on Iron Age Cyprus to write Greek and a local language, in use for centuries after the rest of the Greek world had adopted the alphabet.

Lebanon · c. 11th century BCE

A 22-letter consonantal script written right to left, attested earliest at Byblos. It is the probable ancestor of the Greek alphabet and so of all Western alphabets.

Mali · c. 1000 BCE

African rice (Oryza glaberrima) was domesticated independently of Asian rice; a 2018 genome study placed its cradle in the Inner Niger Delta of Mali.

Turkmenistan · c. 1000 BCE

A desert horse breed selected by Turkmen tribes for speed and stamina. It is among the oldest surviving horse breeds and shaped several later ones.

Mauritania · c. 1st millennium BCE

Prehistoric miners near Akjoujt dug and smelted arsenic-rich copper from the 2nd or 1st millennium BCE, an early metal industry of West Africa.

United Arab Emirates · c. 1000 BCE

Gently sloping underground channels that carry groundwater to oases. Examples at Hili and other sites near Al Ain date to about 1000 BCE and are among the oldest known.

Bolivia · c. 1000 BCE

Raised planting platforms separated by water-filled canals let farmers grow crops on the cold, waterlogged plain around Lake Titicaca. The Tiwanaku culture expanded the system on a large scale.

South Korea · c. 1000 BCE onward

The Korean system of heating a room by passing smoke and hot air from a firebox through flues under a masonry floor. It shaped the floor-centered Korean house and continues as hot-water floor heating.

Iran · c. 1000 BCE

A gently sloping tunnel that taps groundwater at the foot of hills and carries it by gravity to farms and towns. It made settlement possible across arid Iran.

Burkina Faso · 8th century BCE

Tall clay furnaces that smelted iron ore using only the natural flow of air, with no bellows. Sites in Burkina Faso record iron production from the 8th century BCE and a distinct furnace tradition that lasted more than 2,700 years.

Rwanda · Early 1st millennium BCE

Early Iron Age smelters in what are now Rwanda and Burundi made iron in furnaces built of clay coils over a pit that caught the slag. Their sites are among the oldest evidence of iron smelting in Africa.

Greece · 8th century BCE

A script that took the Phoenician consonant letters and added signs for vowels. It is often considered the first true alphabet and the ancestor of later European scripts.

Yemen · c. 8th century BCE

A Sabaean masonry and earth dam about 550 meters long with sluice gates, built to capture seasonal floods and irrigate the Marib oasis. It worked for over a thousand years and ranks among antiquity's great engineering works.

Sudan · c. 650 BCE to 320 CE

Steep-sided royal tomb pyramids built by the rulers of Kush at Nuri and Meroe. More than 200 survive in Sudan, the largest group of pyramids in the world.

Turkey · late 7th century BCE

Small stamped ingots of uniform weight, first struck in electrum in Lydia in western Anatolia. The stamp of the issuer replaced weighing and testing metal at every payment.

Saudi Arabia · mid-1st millennium BCE

An alphabet developed in the oasis of Dadan, modern AlUla, in the first millennium BCE and used for inscriptions of the kingdoms of Dadan and Lihyan. It is one of the home-grown writing systems of ancient Arabia.

Greece · c. 600 BCE

A limestone trackway with guiding grooves that carried ships and cargo across the Isthmus of Corinth on wheeled vehicles. Historians describe it as a rudimentary railway.

Ecuador · c. 600 BCE to 400 CE

Goldsmiths of the La Tolita culture on the northern coast of Ecuador worked platinum and plated it onto gold many centuries before European metallurgists could handle the metal at all.

India · c. 600 BCE

A surgical technique for rebuilding a lost nose from a flap of living skin, described in the Sushruta Samhita and practiced in India for centuries. It became a foundation of plastic surgery.

Turkey · first half of the 6th century BCE

A way to part gold from silver by heating electrum with salt. The refinery at Sardis is the earliest known evidence for the process anywhere.

Greece · 6th century BCE

A water tunnel more than 914 meters long cut through a mountain on Samos from both ends. It is the first known tunnel dug from two sides with a geometry-based method.

Iran · c. 520 BCE

A purpose-built script of 36 phonetic signs created for the Persian kings. Its simplicity later made it the key to deciphering all cuneiform.

Greece · c. 515 BCE

A hoist that lifts building stone on a rope. Tool marks on temple blocks show Greek builders adopted it around 515 BCE in place of earth ramps.

Vietnam · c. 500 BCE to 100 CE

Large cast bronze drums made by the Dong Son culture of the Red River valley in northern Vietnam between about 500 BCE and 100 CE, found across Southeast Asia.

Tunisia · c. 500 BCE

Mago of Carthage wrote a 28-book manual of farming that the Roman Senate had translated into Latin after 146 BCE. Greek and Roman writers called him the father of farming.

Laos · c. 500 BCE to 500 CE

More than 2,100 large carved stone jars made for funerary use by an Iron Age society on the Xiengkhuang plateau of Laos, quarried and moved over several kilometers.

Nigeria · c. 500 BCE

Iron smelting in clay furnaces by the Nok culture of central Nigeria from about the 5th century BCE, among the earliest in sub-Saharan Africa.

Iran · 5th century BCE to 3rd century CE

A linked set of weirs, canals, tunnels and mills on the Karun River that supplied a city and irrigated 40,000 hectares. UNESCO lists it as a masterpiece of creative genius.

India · mid-1st millennium BCE

A high-carbon steel made in sealed clay crucibles in southern India and exported as ingots. It was the raw material of Damascus blades and later spurred modern metallurgy.

Iraq · c. 500 BCE

A division of the sky's central band into twelve equal signs of 30 degrees, devised in Babylon around 500 BCE. It gave astronomers a coordinate system and is still the basis of horoscopes.

Brazil · c. 450 BCE to 950 CE

A dark, fertile soil made by Indigenous Amazonians by working charcoal, bone, pottery fragments and organic waste into poor tropical soil. It still holds nutrients centuries later.

Greece · 432 BCE

The rule that 19 solar years equal 235 lunar months almost exactly, so the Moon's phases return to the same dates. It became the basis of lunisolar calendars.

Bolivia · c. 400 BCE

A way of preserving potatoes by freezing them in the night frost of the Altiplano, pressing out the water and drying them in the sun. It let Andean people store food for years.

Laos · c. 400 BCE to 500 CE

Iron Age copper mining and smelting at Vilabouly in central Laos, using deep timber-braced vertical shafts. Its copper supplied much of mainland Southeast Asia.

Iran · c. 400 BCE

A domed mud-brick structure with shaded pools that made ice on winter nights and kept it through the desert summer without any machinery.

Greece · c. 370 BCE

A stone slab with rows of slots and a tube for dice, used in Athens to pick jurors and officials at random. It made the selection hard to rig.

Sri Lanka · from c. 300 BCE

Chains of small reservoirs built down a valley so that each tank's overflow fills the next. They made rice farming possible in Sri Lanka's dry zone for about two thousand years.

Guatemala · 300-200 BCE

A painted column of ten glyphs from San Bartolo, dated to 300-200 BCE, the earliest known example of Maya hieroglyphic writing.

Sudan · 3rd century BCE

Two alphasyllabic scripts, one hieroglyphic and one cursive, created in the Kingdom of Kush to write the Meroitic language. The signs borrow from Egyptian writing but work on a different principle.

Senegal · 3rd century BCE to 16th century CE

More than 1,000 monuments of iron-quarried laterite pillars built over about 1,500 years in Senegal and the Gambia, the densest concentration of stone circles in the world.

Egypt · c. 280 BCE

A stone tower more than 110 meters tall with a fire at its top, built to guide ships into Alexandria. It became the model for later lighthouses.

Egypt · 3rd century BCE

A pipe organ whose wind pressure was steadied by water, played from keys. It is the earliest known keyboard instrument and the ancestor of the pipe organ.

Guatemala · c. 200 BCE

A filter of zeolite and quartz sand used by the Maya at Tikal to clean drinking water, the oldest known use of zeolite for water purification.

Tunisia · c. 200 BCE

Carthage dug a ring-shaped naval harbor with roofed ship sheds for about 170 to 220 warships around a central command island. Excavations in the 1970s confirmed the ancient descriptions.

Mexico · by 2nd century BCE

A crimson dye made from a cactus-dwelling insect farmed in Mexico since at least the second century BCE. After the Spanish conquest it became a globally traded source of red.

China · 2nd century BCE to 1st century CE

A direction finder based on a magnetized lodestone or needle, first made in Han dynasty China for divination and adapted for navigation in the Song dynasty.

Italy · 3rd to 2nd century BCE

A hydraulic concrete of lime, volcanic ash and rubble developed in ancient Roman Italy. It could set underwater and produced structures that still stand.

Turkey · 2nd century BCE

Animal skin prepared as a smooth, durable writing surface. Pergamon made it in such quantity and quality that the material took the city's name.

Greece · 2nd century BCE

A hand-turned bronze geared device that followed the Sun and Moon through the zodiac and predicted eclipses. It is the oldest known analog computer.

Jordan · 2nd century BCE

A 22-letter consonantal alphabet used in the Nabataean kingdom of Petra from the 2nd century BCE, whose cursive form developed into the Arabic alphabet.

Armenia · c. 1st century BCE

A double-reed wind instrument carved from apricot wood, regarded as native to Armenia, with a warm, soft and slightly nasal tone.

Palestinian Territory · Roman period

Free-blown glassware made in Hebron by family workshops, a craft traced to the Roman period and first based on local sand and Dead Sea soda.

Greece · c. 50 BCE

An eight-sided marble tower in Athens that combined sundials, a water clock and a wind vane. It is the only clock tower surviving from classical antiquity.

Mexico · by 36 BCE

A day count written in place-value notation with a zero placeholder. The earliest known inscription, from Chiapa de Corzo in Chiapas, records a date in 36 BCE.