Ancient Civilizations
The early societies whose ideas and achievements still echo today.
Ancient Rome
An empire that fell over 1,500 years ago and still runs your local plumbing, legal system, and calendar.
The Maya
A civilization that invented the concept of zero independently, then built some of the tallest structures in the Americas without metal tools or the wheel.
Mesopotamia
Between two rivers, Mesopotamia gave us writing, cities, and law codes, which is why it's called the cradle of civilization.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was never one country, just feuding city-states that somehow still gave us democracy, philosophy, and the Olympics.
Ancient Egypt
A civilization so stable that it lasted longer than the time separating us from Cleopatra separates her from the building of the pyramids.
The Spartans
Sparta built an entire society around its army, and the cost fell heavily on the people it ruled.
The Sumerians
They invented a way to press ideas into clay, and in doing so gave history its first draft.
The Minoans
Europe's first advanced civilization left us dazzling paintings, a labyrinth legend, and a script nobody can read.
Ancient China
Farmers digging a well in 1974 stumbled onto thousands of life-sized clay soldiers, buried for over two millennia to guard an emperor.
The Phoenicians
The Phoenicians never built a great land empire, yet the letters you're reading right now trace back to their merchants.
The Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus Valley built grid-planned cities with serious drainage, then left behind a writing system nobody has ever deciphered.