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4000 The wooden plow is being used in central Europe.

4000 It is hypothesized that in the Eurasian steppes, horses have begun to be domesticated.

3600 In southwest Asia, copper is being mixed with tin to produce a metal harder than copper: bronze.

3500 Sumerians have migrated to Mesopotamia and have taken over villages and the agriculture of others. Food surpluses are allowing a diversity of occupations to develop: soldier, farmer, craftsperson, merchant. Individual possession of land has been replacing communal possession.

3500 Desert is forming in North Africa. People have fled from drought to the Nile River, where they trap water for irrigation and begin an intense agriculture in what is otherwise desert.

3500 Settlements exist in what today is northern Israel.

3500 In what today is Kazakhstan, people are riding, milking and eating horses.

3000 In what today is western Finland, people were chewing a gummy, sugarless birch bark tar which had antiseptic properties. It helped fight gum infections and chewing after meals helped fight tooth decay.

3000 Among the Sumerians, democratic assemblies are giving way to the authority of kings. Priesthood is becoming distinct from working alongside others in the fields. Field labor is described as deserved subservience to the gods. Hardship is seen as a product of sin. People and animals are still sacrificed to gods. Floods are common and a story of a great flood exists. Trade and wealth are pursued. Competition for power between the kings of city-states produces wars of conquest. The warrior tradition continues with men dominating women. With commerce, writing develops.

3000 Commerce and writing develop in Egypt. Egypt is united through warfare. Human and animal sacrifices continue. Egyptians have many gods but Egypt is without rain and has no myth of a flood. The rule of Egyptian kings is claimed to be associated with the gods. Kings are believed descended from the gods and deserving much more than common folk.

2700 It is estimated that around this time Minoan civilization, on the island of Crete, begins. It is built by seagoing tradesmen. Rule is to be by the wealthy with a well-organized bureaucracy. Workmen will produce fine vases, sheet metal, tweezers, stonework and other artifacts.

2700 In the Americas, corn, beans, chilies and squash are among cultivated plants.

2600 Agricultural people give rise to the Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley.

2600 In the Middle East, oxen are pulling wooden plows, cutting deeper into soil.

2300 Indo-Europeans move into southern Greece. They conquer and make themselves an aristocracy over those who had migrated there many centuries before. These latest migrants are to be known as the Mycenae Greeks, who have gods similar to other Indo-Europeans, including a father god of the sky called Zeus, whom they believe has power over the entire world.

2300 In what today is England, the stone monument Stonehenge is built. (Carbon dating performed in the year of 2008.)

2250 The Mycenae Greeks are in contact with sea-going tradesmen, the Minoans of Crete - a commercial society ruled by the wealthy.

2200 Troy, a coastal town in Asia Minor, known as Troy II among archaeologists (a second level settlement with numerous others to be built on top in coming centuries) is destroyed by fire.

2200 A Semite to be known as Sargon the Great takes power in the Sumerian city of Kish. He conquers in the name of the Sumerian god Enlil and builds an empire across Mesopotamia and Syria.

2200 The settlements in what today is northern Israel have been abandoned.

2150 The empire of Sargon's grandson, Naramsim, is overrun by migrating Gutiens. Naramsin's subjects blame their misfortune on their having angered their gods.

2130 Reduced waters in the Nile are accompanied by political upheaval. By now instability within the royal families of Egypt have ended various dynasties, and now an eighth dynasty of kings loses power. Two hundred years of political chaos has begun. Common folks attack the rich and local lords assume power independent of any king.