3rd millennium BC

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 |mb =4th millennium BC
 |m  =3rd millennium BC
 |ma =2nd millennium BC

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1 Events
2 Environmental changes
3 Significant persons
4 Cultures
5 Inventions, discoveries, introductions
6 Cultural landmarks
7 Centuries

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Events

The 3rd millennium BC represents the beginning of factual history, since it is the first time we do have real names to name and detailed stories to tell. And this new abundance of information may be best summarized as The rise of absolute ambition.

The last millennium had seen the emergence of advanced urbanized civilization, new bronze metallurgy extending the productivity of agricultural work, highly developed techniques of information treatment in the form of writing. These exciting potentials and riches were certainly too tempting to be left alone, and it was not long before powerful individuals were to prey on the new civilization all around for their aggrandizement, to accumulate more wealth and power, and mark their names in the written books of fame. The 3rd millennium BC saw the first explosive appearances of mega architecture, imperialism, organized absolutism and… revolution.

The civilization of Sumer and Akkad in Mesopotamia became a collection of irate city-states where war was the normal way of life and peace an unlikely event. Incessant wars drained all available resources, energies and populations. Ever bigger empires succeeded one another, conquerors were titled “The Great”, were depicted twice as tall as others on official representations, until the greatest of them all, Sargon of Akkad, pushed his empire to the whole Mesopotamia and more, so extended that it would not be surpassed in size before Assyrian times 1500 years later.

In the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the trend of absolute ambition was pushed even further. Military expeditions were thrown all around the kingdom to bring back thousands of slaves at a time. Egyptian pyramids were engineered so immense that they would remain the highest and most massive human constructions ever for thousands of years ahead. Pharaohs were now posturing themselves as living Gods made of an essence different than that of other human beings.

In Sumer as well as in Egypt, when some kings died tens of their suite, maids and guards, followed them into death. And even in still Neolithic Europe during the same period of time, the builders of megaliths were rising giant monuments of their own. Across the Near East and the Occident during the 3rd millennium BC, it seemed like if the spirit of the time was that limits do not exist.

But in Egypt the fall was to be on the same scale as the ambition, and the very first popular revolution recorded in history exploded at the end, bringing the living Gods back down to their human stature. Also by the end of the millennium, out of general exhaustion the Sumerians had finally learned the necessity of unifying and settling down into a stable form of national government, a relatively peaceful, well-organized, complex technocratic state called the 3rd dynasty of Ur. It could have lasted longer than it did, if it had not been for a wave of nomadic invaders known as the Amorites, that were to play some of the major roles during the following centuries.

Syria: Foundation of the city of Mari (29th century BC )
Iraq: Creation of the Kingdom of Elam
Germination of the Bristlecone pine tree "Methuselah" about 2700 BC, the oldest known tree still living now
Dynasty of Lagash in Sumeria
Golden age of Ur in Mesopotamia. (2474–2398 BC)
Third and Fourth dynasties in Egypt.
Unified Indus Valley Civilisation (2600 BC)
Indo-Europeans first invade Greece (23rd century BC)
Megalithic, Corded Ware culture and the Beaker flourish in Europe.
mid- to late 3rd millennium, Hellenic immigration to the Greek mainland.