The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks

It was around this time that the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism became more established. Originally developing from Iran c. 600 BC, its concepts of resurrection, the final judgment, and heaven and hell would also influence the world religions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

Between the fifth and twelfth centuries it had spread from the Frankish kingdoms of France to much of Western Europe. Here, kings leased land known as ‘fiefs’ to powerful lords or vassals in return for their allegiance. The lords, or religious institutions, then divided their lands into manors or estates for which lesser nobles or tenants were obliged to pay homage. At the bottom of the heap was a class of bonded peasants (serfs or villeins) who lived entirely under the jurisdiction of their master. Out of this system grew fortified castles (as it was necessary for lords to defend their domains), knights and a code of behaviour known as chivalry. In 1066, the Normans, who had settled in northern France, defeated the English King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings and replaced the Anglo-Saxons as the ruling class in England. Their leader William (‘the Conqueror’) set up a particularly efficient feudal system, drawing up a list of every property and village in the land (as written in the Domesday Book), which he then bestowed to his nobility as ‘fiefs’. The Normans also went on to conquer Wales, parts of Ireland and Scotland, and under their great leader, Robert Guiscard, they fought the Arabs and Byzantines and conquered Sicily and southern Italy. From around the 1400s onwards, the feudal system in Western Europe began to fragment, partly in response to population decline brought about by the Black Death as well as the growth of commerce (see here). In central and Eastern Europe, however, the institution of serfdom – bonded labour that underpinned feudalism – persisted well into the mid-nineteenth century. THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE From around the eleventh and twelfth centuries, trade increased in Europe, stimulated in part by the Crusades, improvements in roads and shipping, and the establishment of the Mongol Empire, which had opened up trade routes between East and West. Towns and cities began to grow around areas of production and commerce: the ports of Venice (probably the richest city in Europe in the medieval period), Pisa and Genoa in Italy and Lübeck and Danzig in Germany became major centres of imports, and Bruges, Ghent and Ypres in Flanders and the Tuscan city of Florence dominated the cloth industry (Europe’s most important export).

The pale-coloured Aryans initially refused to intermingle with the dark-skinned inhabitants of India and a rigid social hierarchy developed, made up of four divisions: the Brahmin (priests or scholars), Kshatriyas (soldiers), Vaishyas (farmers or merchants) and Shudras (servants). These formed the basis of the Hindu caste system.

In about 5000 BC, farmers settled on the fertile land of southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) known as Sumer, and from these humble beginnings the world’s first great civilization formed.

It’s thought that the Hittites were the first civilization to produce iron on a large scale, using it for tools and weaponry, thus initiating the Iron Age (although iron wasn’t used by most civilizations until several centuries later). Hittite power suddenly collapsed when migrants, including Aegean Sea people (a mysterious coalition of migrants from the eastern Mediterranean), invaded the region c. 1193 BC.

In 559 BC, a young king named Cyrus II (the Great) came to power in Persia and over the next decade built an empire that would eventually rule over a fifth of the world’s population.

Following the death of Egypt’s last great pharaoh, Rameses III, in 1070 BC, Egypt went into slow decline as it split into several small kingdoms. In around 719 BC, the Kushites (see here) conquered Egypt and ruled as pharaohs until they were pushed back to their own borders by Assyrians in 656 BC. Assyrian rule was followed by Persian conquest in 525 BC, occupation by Alexander the Great in 332 BC and finally Roman conquest in 30 BC.

The first great dynasty of Babylon lasted about 300 years from around 1894 BC, reaching the peak of its influence under King Hammurabi (c. 1795–1750 BC).

The first great civilization in Africa began with the settlement of the Nile valley in the north-east of the continent in around 5000 BC.

Hammurabi is famed for instituting the world’s first known set of laws (the code of Hammurabi) and also promoting science and scholarship.

The Franks were a warrior society based in modern-day Belgium, a group of whom moved to Gaul in France where they established the Merovingian dynasty. They were to have a greater influence on the shaping of Western Europe than any other barbarian people.