Civilisations

Seven regions, their timelines and the memos that belong to them — and the master chart that runs them side by side.

Civilisations

Levant

The land between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the peoples who held it — Canaanite, Israelite, Philistine, Assyrian, Persian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Hasmonean, Herodian and Roman.

Egypt

Three thousand years from the unification to the fall of Alexandria — the pyramids, the long decline, and the dynasty that wrote it all down in Greek.

Rome

From the Alban legend to the Julio-Claudians, and the name that became an office of state.

India

The Indus cities, the renouncer traditions, the Mauryan empire, and four centuries of contact with the Greek and Roman west.

China

The oracle bones, the Mandate of Heaven, the hundred schools, the first emperor, and the road that reached Rome.

Japan

The oldest pottery in the world, a settled culture without agriculture, and an early record that survives almost entirely in Chinese books.

Europe

The Normans and their descendants — Møre to Normandy, Normandy to England, Sicily and Scotland — and the lines that run from them.