Region
The Ghassulian culture produced the Levant's first sophisticated copper metallurgy, painted shrines and clay ossuaries before declining by the middle of the fourth millennium BC.
Sherratt's model remains influential, but scientific evidence shows that milking began thousands of years earlier, while traction and wool spread mainly in the fourth millennium BC.
The hoard revealed the advanced metalworking of the Ghassulian Chalcolithic and is now displayed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Wheeled carts and wagons spread across much of western Eurasia within a few centuries, transforming farming, trade and later warfare.
An early centre of public administration whose palace and metal hoard were inscribed with the site on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021.
A large Bronze Age city of the Helmand delta that flourished through crafts and long-distance trade, later abandoned; a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2014.
One of the earliest surviving works of narrative relief sculpture, it was stolen in April 2003 and returned damaged in June 2003, then restored.
Uruk grew into the largest settlement of its time, where monumental temples, mass administration and writing first appeared together, setting the model for Mesopotamian cities.
Bookkeeping signs on clay developed into cuneiform, a script used for about 3,000 years to write more than a dozen languages of the ancient Near East.
Mesopotamian scribes created the first known place-value number system, in base 60, whose legacy survives in hours, minutes, seconds and the 360-degree circle.
A leading Bronze and Iron Age port of the Levant whose name gave Greek its word for papyrus and, indirectly, the word Bible.
About 1,850 graves were excavated, including 16 so-called royal tombs with lavish treasures and the remains of sacrificed attendants.
