4th millennium BC

The 4th millennium BC saw major changes in human culture. It marks the beginning of the Bronze Age and of writing. The city states of Sumer and the kingdom of Egypt are established and grow to prominence. Agriculture spreads widely across Eurasia. World population in the course of the millennium doubles, approximately from 7 to 14 million people.

Events

• Sumerian city of Ur in Mesopotamia (40th century BC); Sumerian hegemony in Mesopotamia, with the development of writing, base-60 mathematics, astronomy and astrology, civil law, complex hydrology, the sailboat, the wheel, and the potter's wheel, 4000–2000 BC.
• c. 4000 BC - 2000 BC - Women and animals, rock-shelter painting in Cogul, Lerida, Spain, was painted. It is now at Museo Arqueologico, Barcelona.
• Epoch of the modern Hebrew Calendar occurred on 7 October 3761 BC.
• Jewish chronology dates Creation to September 25 or March 29 3760 BC.
• In Colombia, circa 3600 BC, first rupestrian art Chiribiquete (Caqueta).
• 3500 BC - 3400 BC - Jar from Hierakonpolis (today in the Brooklyn Museum) was created.
• 3500 BC - 2800 BC; First cities developed in Southern Mesopotamia. Inhabitants migrated from north.
• Ötzi the Iceman dies near the present-day border between Austria and Italy c. 3300 BC, only to be discovered in 1991 buried in a glacier of the Ötztal Alps. His cause of death is believed to be homicide.
• New Stone Age people in Ireland build the 250,000 ton Newgrange solar observatory c. 3200 BC.
• c. 3150 BC - Predinastic period ended in Ancient Egypt. Early Dynastic (Archaic) period started (according to French Egyptologist Nicolas Grimal. The period include 1st and 2nd Dynasties.
• c. 3100 BC - 2600 BC - Neolithic settlement at Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, is inhabited.
• 3000 BC – Menes unifies Upper and Lower Egypt, and a new capital is erected at Memphis.
• First to Fourth dynasty of Kish in Mesopotamia.
• Discovery of silver.
• The beginnings of Iberian civilizations, arrival to the peninsula dating as far back as 4000 BC.
• Circa 3000 BC - First pottery in Colombia at Puerto Hormiga (Magdalena), considered one of the first pottery of the New World. First settlement at Puerto Badel (Bolivar).

Cultures

• Mesopotamia
  • Sumer
  • Proto-Elamite
• Neolithic Europe and Western Eurasia
  • Crete: Rise of Minoan civilization.
  • The Yamna culture (“Kurgan culture”), succeeding the Sredny Stog culture is the locus of the Proto-Indo-Europeans according to the Kurgan hypothesis
  • The Maykop culture of the Caucasus, contemporary to the Kurgan culture, is a candidate for the origin of bronze production and thus the Bronze Age.
  • Vinca culture
• Indian Subcontinent
  • Mehrgarh III–VI
• Africa
  • Naqada culture on the Nile, 4000–3000 BC. First hieroglyphs appear thus far around 3500 BC as found on labels in a ruler's tomb at Abydos.
  • Nok culture, situated at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers

Environmental changes

Based on studies by glaciologist Lonnie Thompson (professor at Ohio State University and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center) [1] a number of indicators shows there was a global change in climate 5,200 years ago:

• The climate was altered suddenly with severe impacts.
• Plants buried in the Quelccaya Ice Cap in the Peruvian Andes demonstrate the climate had shifted suddenly and severely to capture the plants and preserve them until now.
• A man trapped in an Alpine glacier (“Oetzi”) is frozen until his discovery in 1991.
• Tree rings from Ireland and England show this was their driest period.
• Ice core records showing the ratio of two oxygen isotopes retrieved from the ice fields atop Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro, a proxy for atmospheric temperature at the time snow fell.
• Major changes in plant pollen uncovered from lakebed cores in South America.
• Record lowest levels of methane retrieved from ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica.
• Beginning of desertification of Sahara (35th century BC). The shift by the Sahara Desert from a habitable region to a barren desert.

Invention of wheel was in 3000 B.C.

Significant persons

• Ötzi the Iceman lived c. 3300 BC.
• Predynastic pharaohs, Tiu, Thesh, Hsekiu, Wazner
• Early Dynastic Period pharaohs, Ro, Serket, Narmer

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

• 4000 BC - 3000 BC; potter's wheel in Egypt.
• c. 4000 BC - Beaker, from Susa (modern Shush, Iran) was made. It is now in Musee du Louvre, Paris.
• 3500 BC - 2340 BC; Sumer: wheeled carts, potter's wheel, White Temple ziggurat, bronze tools and weapons.
• 3300 BC - 3000 BC; Sumerians invented writing (pictographs).
• c. 3300 BC - Pictographs in Uruk.
• c. 3250 BC - Potter's wheel appeared in Ancient Near East.
• The belief that heads of state represented God on Earth began.
• Beginnings of urbanisation in Mesopotamia with the Sumerians.
• First cities in Egypt (35th century BC).
• First writings in the cities of Uruk and Susa (cuneiform writings). Hieroglyphss in Egypt.
• Kurgan culture of what is now southern Russia and Ukraine domesticates the horse.
• Potter's wheel used in Middle East.
• Sails used in the Nile.
• Construction in England of the Sweet Track, the World's first known engineered roadway.
• Drainage and sewerage system in India.
• Dams, canals, stone sculptures using inclined plane and lever in Sumer.
• Copper was in use, both as tools and weapons.
• Bronze was in use, specifically by the Maykop culture.
• Mastabas, the predecessors of the Egyptian pyramids.
• The earliest phase of the Stonehenge monument (a circular earth bank and ditch) dates to c. 3100 BC.
• The Céide Fields in Ireland, arguably the oldest field system in world, are developed.

Mythology

• The Maya calendar dates the Creation of the Earth to August 11 or August 13, 3114 BC (establishing that date as day zero of the Long Count 13.0.0.0.0).
• Korean mythology: According to Silla scholar Bak Jesang (), the state Hwanguk () collapsed around 3898 BC.
• According to Hindu mythology, the Epoch of the Kali Yuga occurred at midnight (00:00) on 18 February 3102 BC, the traditional death of Krishna.

Centuries

• 40th century BC
• 39th century BC
• 38th century BC
• 37th century BC
• 36th century BC
• 35th century BC
• 34th century BC
• 33rd century BC
• 32nd century BC
• 31st century BC

External references

• 3200 BC Climate Change