1st millennium
From Freepedia
(1st millennium BC – 1st millennium – 2nd millennium – other millennia)
Contents |
Events
If we had to caracterize the 1st millenium AD, it may be called The era of division. The millenium before had seen in the Western world a long process of global unification culminating with the Roman Empire, which then played the role of a rather neutral, including power protecting a vast synthesis of all cultural contributions accumulated from the past.
The first millenium AD basically saw the complete disintegration of this unified world, on all levels : social, economical, geopolitical and religious.
Geopolitical divisions : The Romans tried but failed to conquer Germania at a time when it was still possible. Soon the Germanic tribes grew powerful enough to revert the direction of invasion and took over the Western Roman Empire, dividing it into a number of regional kingdoms. The now independent Eastern Roman Empire took a life of its own centered around Constantinople, and regained its Greek identity. The Arab and Slavic invasions reduced the Byzantine Empire again, as well as capturing parts of Southern Europe. And toward the end the millennium Viking and Magyar raids made a political dust of whatever regional powers could have remained from the old order.
Social and economical disintegration : constant warfare brought general poverty in Western Europe, almost bringing the level of civilization back to the point where it was at the turn of the 1st millenium BC, with economy reduced to autarky and barter, literacy reserved to a few priests and political direction owned by a war aristocracy.
The underground trend across all these complex events was that starting from a vast world where everyone identified themselves as being part of one common civilization, the 1st millenium AD saw the emergence of organized opposition between cultural identities, the birth of conscious fanaticism. Germanic peoples in Roman times were never opposed to Roman civilization and actually wanted to be part of it. Starting from the 1st millenium AD, there was now a Germanic world that did not want to be the Latin one, that would never want to be the Greek one either. There was now Islam that was absolutely opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, that was impossible in its turn to reconliliate with the Eastern Orthodox Church, and so forth.
- Beginning of Christianity (30s) and Islam (7th century)
- London founded by Romans as Londinium
- Diaspora of the Jews
- The Olympic Games observed until 393
- The Library of Alexandria, largest library in the world, burned
- High point, and fall of the Roman Empire
- Germanic kingdoms established in Northern and Western Europe
- Maya civilization at its height
- Three kingdoms in China
- The height of Hindu culture in India under the Gupta Dynasty
- Islamic conquest of the Middle East and North Africa
- Viking raids common in northern Europe in the 9th and 10th centuries.
- Beginning of the Middle Ages in Europe
Significant persons
- Caesar Augustus, Roman emperor (63 BC-14)
- Jesus, central figure in Christianity (b. about 6–4 BC and d. about AD 29–33)
- Plutarch, Greek historian
- Paul of Tarsus, Israelite Apostle to the gentiles, created Christianity
- Cai Lun, Chinese inventor of paper
- Zhang Heng, Chinese astronomer and mathematician
- Ptolemy, Greek astronomer and mathematician
- Constantine I, Roman emperor
- Attila, Hunnic king and warlord
- Muhammad, prophet and founder of Islam (c. 570-632)
- Charlemagne, Frankish conqueror and founder of the Holy Roman Empire
- al-Khwarizmi, Persian mathematician
Inventions, discoveries, introductions
- Paper invented in China
- Algebra developed in the Middle East
- Various horse-riding improvements including the horseshoe and the stirrup
- Hop (plant) added to beer for the first time
- Ptolemaic system used to describe the motion of the planets
- Chess developed, gaining widespread use
- Magnetic compass invented
- Steel first used in India
