Humanity

Chronology

1. 911 BCE – 609 BCE

   The Neo-Assyrian empire and Nineveh's libraries

   The first true imperial system — professional army, provincial administration, royal roads — ruled from Nineveh, where kings collected tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets.

2. 550 BCE – 330 BCE

   Cyrus founds the Achaemenid Persian empire

   Cyrus the Great conquered Media, Lydia and Babylon; his successors ruled the largest empire yet seen through satrapies, tribute and relative tolerance of local customs and religions.

3. 334 BCE – 323 BCE

   Alexander's campaigns fuse East and West

   In a decade Alexander carried Macedonian arms from Greece to the Indus; the Hellenistic kingdoms that followed mixed Greek, Persian, Egyptian and Indian worlds.

4. 322 BCE – 185 BCE

   The Mauryan empire unifies most of South Asia

   Chandragupta Maurya, advised by the strategist Kautilya, built a centralized empire with provinces, spies, and the statecraft manual Arthashastra.

5. 221 BCE – 206 BCE

   Qin Shi Huang unifies China

   The Qin ended the Warring States period by standardizing script, currency, axle widths and law across China — through legendary harshness.

6. 27 BCE – 14 CE

   Augustus turns the republic into an empire

   Octavian won the civil wars and ruled as 'first citizen', keeping republican forms while concentrating power — the principate.

7. 1206 – 1294

   The Mongol empire and the Yam relay network

   The largest contiguous land empire in history ran on the yam: a network of relay stations where couriers changed horses, moving messages hundreds of kilometres a day.