4th Millennium BC - Inventions, Discoveries, Introductions

Inventions, Discoveries, Introductions

• c. 4000 BC—potter's wheel in Sumer.
• 4000 BC—Susa is a center of pottery production.
• c. 4000 BC—Horses are domesticated in Ukraine.
• 3500 BC—2340 BC; Sumer: wheeled carts, potter's wheel, White Temple ziggurat, bronze tools and weapons.
• c. 3250 BC—potter's wheel appears in Ancient Near East.
• 3000 BC—Tin is in use in Mesopotamia soon after this time.
• Beginnings of urbanisation in Mesopotamia in Sumer and Egypt.
• First writings in the cities of Uruk and Susa (cuneiform writings). Hieroglyphs in Egypt.
• Kurgan culture of what is now Southern Russia and Ukraine; possibly the first domestication of the horse.
• Sails used in the Nile.
• Construction in England of the Sweet Track, the World's first known engineered roadway.
• Drainage and Sewage collection and disposal created in the Indus Valley civilization.
• 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.
• Sumerian writing, done on clay tablets, shows about 2,000 pictographic signs
• White painted pottery in Egypt and southeastern Europe
• Harps and flutes played in Egypt
• Copper alloys used by Egyptians and Sumerians; smelting of gold and silver known.
• Lyres and double clarinets (arghul, mijwiz) played in Egypt
• Earliest known numerals in Egypt
• Linen is produced in the Middle East