Ancient Civilizations
From the first cities to the first empires — Sumer, Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, Greece, Rome, Mesoamerica, and the rest. Four and a half millennia of human civilisation, sorted.
What's in this category
Ancient Civilizations covers the cradle of cities and writing through the early medieval period: the founding of Sumer and the invention of cuneiform, dynastic Egypt, the Indus Valley, Shang and Zhou China, the Greek city-states and Hellenistic kingdoms, the rise and fall of Rome, the Olmec and Maya, Persian and Achaemenid empires, the Han and Tang dynasties, the early Americas, and the transitions into the medieval world.
What it's not: not a single-civilisation category — events are global, with attention to civilisations that are often under-covered in Western timelines. Modern-era continuations (e.g., the Italian Renaissance, Ottoman Empire) live in European History.
Sample events
- Founding of Sumer — 3500 BCE
- Invention of Cuneiform Writing — 3200 BCE
- Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt — 3100 BCE
- Indus Valley Civilization Flourishes — 2600 BCE
- First Olympic Games Held (representative) — 776 BCE
- Fall of Babylon to Persians — 539 BCE
- Fall of the Western Roman Empire (representative) — 476 CE
- Cahokia Becomes Largest North American City — 1050
+ 101 more events. New events added through corrections and ongoing verification.
How to play this category
Free for everyone. Open Sorting History, tap Play, select Ancient Civilizations, choose a game length (5, 10, 15, 20, or 30 events), and sort. No subscription needed. Free users see ads between rounds; Explorer and Historian subscribers play ad-free.
Related categories
- European History
- World Wars
- Scientific Discoveries
- Japanese History