EduNETConnect.com - Time Machine

Please select a historical period:

25 years ago / 50 years ago / 80 years ago / 125 years ago / 150 years ago
250 years ago / 400 years ago / 700 years ago / 1,200 years ago
1,500 years ago / 2,000 years ago / 3,000 years ago / 4,000 years ago / 5,000 years ago / 10,000 years ago

5,000 Years Ago in West Asia

The find of a furnace that was used to smelt bronze in Goltepe, Turkey, is probably the oldest known, and shows that the production of metal alloys (bronze is a mixture of tin and copper) was well established as early as 3290BC. The discovery that tin mixed with copper made a much harder metal, allowed people for the first time to produce a moldable material that could be used to make tools more durable than stone and with a cutting blade almost as sharp.

The Vulture Stela of Eannatum shows the earliest recorded military campaign in history. The bas relief sculpture shows a phalanx or shield wall of well-armed Sumerian soldiers. Eannatum was called King of Kish. Kish was a Sumerian city, but the title "King of Kish" was usually given to the ruler over all of the Sumerian cities. Sumerian city states began to develop between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers around 3200BC. There was much warfare between the different cities, and the stela shows Eannatum's conquest of Umma.

The oldest book, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was written not on paper but on clay tablets using a system of writing invented by the Sumerians called cuneiform. They would use the shaped end of a hard reed to make marks in soft clay. Around 2500BC, Gilgamesh was king of Uruk, a Sumerian city. Little is really known about Gilgamesh's real life, and the stories about him include legends that date far earlier than his time.

The Sumerians are credited with a number of technical innovations including the invention of the wheel and the use of domesticated donkeys to pull wheeled carts or chariots. They also built towering temples called ziggurats.

back to map