From the first cities of Sumer on the banks of the Euphrates to the empire of the Incas in the high Andes — the full story of human civilisation across every continent. Each civilization is covered in depth with original, referenced prose, every key term explained, every timeline date expanded into a flipping study card, and every significant individual given their own page. This is one unified history website: browse Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, or the Civilizations below.
Filter by world region and era using the buttons below. Every card links to a complete civilization article.
c. 4500–1900 BC. The "cradle of civilization" between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Sumerians invented writing (cuneiform), the wheel, the first cities, irrigation and mathematics.
Open Mesopotamia →c. 2334–2154 BC. Founded by Sargon of Akkad, the first empire in history to unite the Sumerian city-states under a single ruler.
Open Akkad →c. 1894–539 BC. The great city of Hammurabi's law code and Nebuchadnezzar II's legendary Hanging Gardens. It was the largest city in the ancient world at its height.
Open Babylon →c. 2025–609 BC. The greatest military power of the ancient Near East, famed for iron weapons, siege engines and its capital Nineveh.
Open Assyria →c. 1500–300 BC. Master sailors and traders of Tyre and Sidon who spread a 22-letter alphabet across the Mediterranean — the ancestor of our own.
Open Phoenicia →c. 1600–1180 BC. The Anatolian empire of iron-working and chariot warfare, a rival to Egypt that fought the Battle of Kadesh.
Open Hittites →c. 550–330 BC. The Achaemenid Empire of Cyrus the Great, Darius I and Xerxes — the largest empire the world had yet seen — with its ceremonial capital at Persepolis.
Open Persia →c. 3100–30 BC. The Nile's 3,000-year wonder — the pyramids, the pharaohs, hieroglyphs and the most durable civilisation of the ancient world.
Open Egypt →c. 1070 BC–AD 350. The Nubian kingdom of Napata and Meroë that once ruled Egypt itself as the "black pharaohs" of the 25th Dynasty.
Open Kush →c. AD 100–c. 900. The great Red Sea trading empire of Ethiopia and Eritrea, one of the four great powers of the ancient world, an early Christian state.
Open Aksum →c. AD 1235–1600. The West African empire of Mansa Musa, perhaps the richest man in history, and the scholarship of Timbuktu.
Open Mali →c. AD 1464–1591. The successor to Mali, centred on Gao and Timbuktu, it was the largest empire in West African history.
Open Songhai →c. AD 1100–1500. The great stone-walled trading kingdom of south-eastern Africa, which gives its name to modern Zimbabwe.
Open Great Zimbabwe →c. AD 300–1240. The Wagadu empire that controlled the trans-Saharan gold-salt trade — unrelated to the modern country of the same name.
Open Ghana →c. 2600–1900 BC. The Harappan civilisation of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa — planned cities, advanced drainage, undeciphered writing.
Open Indus Valley →c. 321–185 BC. The first great empire to unite India, founded by Chandragupta, perfected by Ashoka, who spread Buddhism across Asia.
Open Maurya →c. AD 320–550. India's "Golden Age" — the invention of zero, Aryabhata's astronomy, Kalidasa's poetry, and the height of Sanskrit learning.
Open Gupta →AD 1526–1857. The Islamic empire of Babur, Akbar and Aurangzeb that ruled most of India and built the Taj Mahal.
Open Mughal →c. 1600–256 BC. The first historical Chinese dynasties — oracle bones, bronze ritual vessels, and the Mandate of Heaven.
Open Shang & Zhou →221 BC–AD 220. Qin Shi Huang, the Terracotta Army, the first Great Wall, the Silk Road and the imperial civil service.
Open Qin & Han →AD 618–1279. China's greatest age — paper, printing, gunpowder, the compass, movable type and the world's first paper money.
Open Tang & Song →AD 1368–1644. The Forbidden City, the modern Great Wall, and Admiral Zheng He's treasure voyages across the Indian Ocean.
Open Ming →57 BC–AD 1910. The Three Kingdoms, the Goryeo dynasty (which gave Korea its English name), and the Joseon dynasty of Hangul.
Open Korea →c. 660 BC–AD 1868. The imperial age — Yamato, the Heian court of The Tale of Genji, the samurai shogunates.
Open Japan →AD 802–1431. The Southeast Asian empire of Angkor, builder of Angkor Wat — the largest religious monument in the world.
Open Khmer →AD 683–c. 1500. The maritime empires of the Indonesian archipelago that controlled the spice sea lanes.
Open Srivijaya & Majapahit →c. 1500–400 BC. Mesoamerica's "mother culture" of the Gulf Coast — colossal stone heads, the first calendar and ballgame.
Open Olmec →c. 100 BC–AD 650. The "City of the Gods" in Mexico, the largest city in the Americas before the Aztecs — Pyramid of the Sun and Avenue of the Dead.
Open Teotihuacan →c. 2000 BC–AD 1500. Masters of writing, mathematics and astronomy — the zero, the Long Count calendar, the cities of Tikal and Chichén Itzá.
Open Maya →c. 1345–1521. The last great Mesoamerican empire, the island city of Tenochtitlan, Montezuma, and the coming of Cortés. Read the full entry.
Open the Aztec →AD 1438–1533. The largest empire in pre-Columbian America — Cuzco, Machu Picchu, the Qhapaq Ñan road and Pizarro.
Open Inca →c. AD 100–800. The desert cultures of Peru — the Moche's remarkable pottery and the Nazca's giant geoglyphs.
Open Moche & Nazca →c. AD 800–1400. The mound-builders of North America, whose capital at Cahokia was larger than London in 1200.
Open Cahokia →c. AD 100–1300. The cliff-dwellers of Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde in the American Southwest.
Open Ancestral Pueblo →c. 900–400 BC. The wealthy civilisation of central Italy who taught Rome its religion, engineering and art.
Open Etruscans →c. 800 BC–AD 200. Warlike, artistic Iron-Age peoples of the La Tène culture who ranged from the British Isles to Anatolia.
Open Celts →AD 793–1066. Raiders, traders and explorers of Scandinavia who reached Greenland, Newfoundland and the Black Sea.
Open Vikings →c. 900–200 BC. The horse-riding nomads of the Eurasian steppe, masters of goldwork and mounted archery.
Open Scythians →AD 1206–1368. Genghis Khan's empire — the largest contiguous land empire in history, stretching from the Pacific to the Danube.
Open Mongols →AD 330–1453. The Christian continuation of Rome from Constantinople — for its full story, see Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
Open Byzantium →AD 882–1240. The first East Slavic state, centred on Kiev, the ancestor of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Open Kievan Rus →c. 1500 BC–AD 1300. The greatest seafaring migration in history — how voyagers settled the entire Pacific, from Hawaii to New Zealand.
Open Polynesia →c. 65,000 years ago onwards. The oldest continuous culture on Earth, keeper of the Dreamtime and the world's oldest rock art.
Open Aboriginal Australia →This encyclopedia is part of one unified history website. Explore the full story of the classical world in the sibling volumes:
From Minoan Crete to Roman Greece — the Minoans, Mycenaeans, the Persian Wars, the Golden Age of Athens, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic world.
Open Ancient Greece →From Romulus to the fall of the Western Empire — the Monarchy, the Republic, the Punic Wars, the emperors, and why Rome fell.
Open Ancient Rome →This encyclopedia is compiled from established scholarly and reference works. The primary online source is the World History Encyclopedia (worldhistory.org), alongside the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Livius, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, and university research portals. Every civilization page cites its sources inline with direct, working URLs. Images are drawn from Wikimedia Commons and are either in the public domain or licensed under Creative Commons, and are attributed to their authors.
https://www.worldhistory.org/https://www.britannica.com/https://www.livius.org/https://www.britishmuseum.org/collectionhttps://www.metmuseum.org/toah/https://www.si.edu/https://commons.wikimedia.org/History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.— commonly attributed to Lord Acton and the study of the past