Timeline of human history
version 2 -
by Finn Sivert Nielsen

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Timeline 14 - 6,000 BP to Present
A Short History of Civilization. Bronze Age Collapse. Alexandrian, Roman, Islamic, and other empires

Timeline 14 covers the last 6,000 years before the present and gives mention to many, if not most, of the major political entities that have existed during this time, positioning them chronologically and geographically.
 
It also allows us to see more clearly how the Indo-European influence was met with in various cases: in Europe being absorbed into existing local cultures, in Anatolia founding empires, in Egypt invading (as the Hyksos) and later being expelled, in India laying the foundations of the dominant religion.
 
A few hundred years later, the Mediterranean world is rocked by "The Bronze Age Collapse," in which Hittite and Assyrian Empires are destroyed, along with Mycenean civilization. The Collapse may have been caused (wholly or in part) by the dramatic global cooling that took place after the peak temperatures of the Minoan Climate Optimum.
 
The Bronze Age Collapse marks a transition of sorts. The empires, up until this time, had been mainly local, confined to regions such as Mesopotamia or Egypt. After the Collapse, we see the growth of multiregional empires with global pretensions, the Persian Empire being the first of its kind, but its prototype being Alexander the Great's Hellenic empire, and its greatest successors the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic empires.
 
Still further on along the timeline we note the coinciding devastations of the Mongols and the Black Death and the later explosive expansion of European Empires.

© 2018 Finn Sivert Nielsen (fsnielsen.com)