100 Fun Facts About Ancient History

Which ancient civilization developed cuneiform, the wedge-shaped script that is one of the earliest writing systems?

Mesopotamia's Sumerians developed cuneiform around 3500 BCE for record-keeping; its wedge-shaped marks evolved from pictographic proto-writing.

Howard Carter found the nearly intact tomb of which pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings in November 1922?

Tutankhamun's tomb was the best-preserved pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings, one of the few royal burials left largely undisturbed by grave robbers.

In Greek mythology, who was considered the king of the gods?

Zeus was the supreme ruler of the Olympian gods, associated with the sky, thunder, and justice. He was often depicted with a lightning bolt and an eagle.

Which power was Rome's primary adversary in the three Punic Wars?

The Punic Wars were a series of three major conflicts between the Roman Republic and Carthage, a powerful maritime empire located in modern-day Tunisia, fought for control of the Western Mediterranean.

Which dynasty is considered the first imperial dynasty of China, unifying the country in 221 BCE?

Qin Dynasty, founded by Qin Shi Huang, ran only from 221 to 206 BCE, yet the word 'China' itself may derive from its name.

The Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders, were said to be in which ancient city?

Babylon, near present-day Hillah in Iraq, is where legend places them, built by King Nebuchadnezzar II for his wife.

Which renowned Greek philosopher was a student of Plato and later tutored Alexander the Great?

Aristotle spent 20 years at Plato's Academy, then tutored Alexander until the boy was 16 and later founded his own school, the Lyceum.

Which French scholar announced the decipherment of Egyptian scripts in Paris in 1822, using the Rosetta stone?

Jean-Francois Champollion announced the decipherment in his Lettre a M. Dacier, read in Paris in September 1822, after matching the Rosetta Stone's three parallel versions of a single Ptolemaic decree.

Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by a group of senators on which date in 44 BC?

The Ides of March, 15 March 44 BC: Caesar was stabbed at a Senate meeting in the Curia of Pompey, inside the Theatre of Pompey complex, about a month after being named dictator in perpetuity.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built as the tomb of which pharaoh?

Khufu, second king of Egypt's Fourth Dynasty, had the Great Pyramid built around 2560 BC; his vizier Hemiunu is credited by many scholars as its architect.

Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were the great cities of which Bronze Age culture of north-western South Asia?

The Indus Valley Civilisation lasted from about 3300 to 1300 BCE; Harappa and Mohenjo-daro flourished in its mature urban phase between 2600 and 1900 BCE.

Born Gaius Octavius, who reigned as Rome's first emperor from 27 BC to AD 14?

Augustus, meaning 'the revered one', was the honorific the Senate granted Octavian on 16 January 27 BC; he ruled until his death at Nola in August AD 14.

The stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi was rediscovered in 1901 at which site in present-day Iran?

Susa, the Elamite capital, is where Jacques de Morgan's French expedition unearthed the stele in the winter of 1901-02; the Elamite king Shutruk-Nakhunte had carried it off from Babylonia around 1158 BC.

Which museum has held the stele of the Code of Hammurabi since 1902?

The Louvre has held the 2.25-metre stele since 1902, the year after French excavators found it at Susa; it stands in the Richelieu wing's Mesopotamian galleries.

For roughly how long did the Great Pyramid of Giza remain the world's tallest human-made structure?

More than 3,700 years: finished around 2560 BC at 146.6 metres, the Great Pyramid was the tallest structure on Earth until Lincoln Cathedral's spire topped it around 1311.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built from an estimated how many large stone blocks?

About 2.3 million blocks, mostly local limestone averaging over two tonnes each, went into the Great Pyramid, a total mass of roughly 6 million tonnes.

The three texts on the Rosetta Stone are hieroglyphic, Ancient Greek and which other script?

Demotic, the cursive script of everyday Egyptian, is the stone's middle text; all three versions carry the same decree issued in 196 BC for Ptolemy V, which made the stone the key to decipherment.

The Rosetta Stone was found in July 1799 by an officer of which country's army?

France: Lieutenant Pierre-Francois Bouchard of Napoleon's expeditionary army spotted the stone in July 1799 while his men rebuilt Fort Julien near Rashid, the Rosetta of the Nile Delta.

Alexander the Great died in June 323 BC at what age?

32: born in July 356 BC, Alexander died in June 323 BC in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II at Babylon, a month short of his 33rd birthday, while planning an Arabian campaign.

At the capital of which ancient kingdom did Alexander the Great 'undo' an unsolvable knot?

Phrygia: its capital Gordium held the ox-cart knot of Gordias, which legend said only the future ruler of Asia could undo; Alexander reputedly cut it with his sword in 333 BC.

What was the background of Ptolemy I Soter, founder of Cleopatra's dynasty?

Ptolemy I Soter was a Macedonian Greek general of Alexander the Great who took the satrapy of Egypt after Alexander's death in 323 BC and proclaimed himself king in 305 BC.

What name was given to the son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar?

Caesarion, 'little Caesar', was the nickname of Ptolemy XV Caesar, born in 47 BC; Cleopatra made him co-ruler after her brother Ptolemy XIV died in 44 BC, and Octavian had him killed in 30 BC.

Which river did Julius Caesar cross in January 49 BC to ignite civil war with the Senate?

The Rubicon, the stream dividing Caesar's province of Cisalpine Gaul from Italy, was crossed with Legio XIII around 10 January 49 BC; Suetonius records the words 'alea iacta est'.

Which calendar, introduced in 45 BC, replaced Rome's republican lunisolar calendar?

The Julian calendar, in force from 1 January 45 BC, fixed a 365-day year with a leap day every fourth year; Pope Gregory XIII's reform replaced it in Catholic Europe in 1582.

What larger royal research institution in Alexandria included the famous Great Library?

The Mouseion, the Ptolemies' royal research institute, housed salaried scholars such as Euclid and Eratosthenes, and the Great Library was one of its departments.

The Library of Alexandria's daughter library stood in the temple of which god?

Serapis, a god fusing Osiris with the Apis bull and promoted by the Ptolemies, had his great Alexandrian temple, the Serapeum, which gained a daughter library under Ptolemy III Euergetes.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest surviving narrative, concerns the king of which Sumerian city?

Some of the best copies were found in the ruined library of the 7th-century BCE Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.

The Hittite Empire, which peaked in the 14th century BC, was centred on which capital city?

Hattusa, near modern Bogazkale, was the Hittite capital; its royal archive of clay tablets included a copy of the Egyptian-Hittite peace treaty that followed the Battle of Kadesh.

The Hittites settled in the early 2nd millennium BC in the north-central part of which region?

Anatolia: by about 1650 BC the Hittites held the central plateau inside the bend of the Kizilirmak (Halys) river, with their heartland around modern Bogazkale.

Who founded the Achaemenid Empire in 550 BC after defeating the Medes?

Cyrus the Great overthrew his Median overlord Astyages around 550 BC and took Babylon in 539 BC; at its peak the Achaemenid Empire covered about 5.5 million square kilometres.

China's first emperor, who unified the country in 221 BC, was born under what personal name?

Ying Zheng, born in 259 BC at Handan in the rival state of Zhao, became king of Qin at 13 and took the title Qin Shi Huangdi, 'First Emperor', after unifying China in 221 BC.

The Terracotta Army was discovered in 1974 by local farmers who were doing what?

Digging a well during a drought in March 1974, farmer Yang Zhifa, his brothers and a neighbour struck the first terracotta figures about 1.5 km east of the emperor's tomb mound near Xi'an.

By 2007 estimates, roughly how many soldiers do the three Terracotta Army pits contain?

More than 8,000 soldiers, by 2007 estimates, stand in the three pits alongside 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, most of them still in place.

Hannibal's family name Barca is a Semitic cognomen meaning what?

Lightning: Barca comes from the Punic root brq, 'thunderbolt', and the nickname is traditionally tied to the speed of his father Hamilcar's raids on the Romans in Sicily.

At which battle was Hannibal finally defeated, ending the Second Punic War in a Roman victory?

Zama, near Carthage, in 202 BC: Scipio Africanus's legions and Masinissa's Numidian cavalry broke Hannibal's army; Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae were all his own victories in Italy.

Under how many metres of volcanic ash and pumice was Pompeii buried in the eruption of AD 79?

4 to 6 metres of ash and pumice buried Pompeii in AD 79; Herculaneum was entombed even deeper, under roughly 20 metres of pyroclastic flows.

Which writer left a first-hand account of the eruption of Vesuvius, watched from Misenum?

Pliny the Younger, then 17, watched from Misenum and described the eruption in two letters to Tacitus written about 25 years later; his uncle Pliny the Elder died at Stabiae leading a rescue.

Which local betrayed the Greeks at Thermopylae by showing the Persians a path behind their lines?

Ephialtes of Trachis led Hydarnes and the Immortals along the Anopaea mountain path by night to outflank the pass; Herodotus says the Greeks later put a price on his head.

Alongside the 300 Spartans, how many Thespians stayed with Leonidas for the final stand at Thermopylae?

700 Thespians under Demophilus chose to stay and die beside Leonidas's 300 Spartans, Herodotus records; the 480 BC land battle coincided with the naval fight at Artemisium.

Which Athenian general wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War?

Thucydides, an Athenian general exiled after losing Amphipolis in 424 BC, wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War; it breaks off in 411 BC, and Xenophon's Hellenica continues the story.

To which year did the Roman antiquarian Varro date the founding of Rome?

753 BC, traditionally 21 April, is Varro's date and the base of the ab urbe condita count; archaeological traces of settlement on the Palatine go back to around 1000 BC.

Which emperor began construction of the Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum?

Vespasian began the Colosseum around AD 72, paid for with spoils from the Jewish War; his son Titus inaugurated it in AD 80 with 100 days of games, and the Flavian family name stuck.

Which early Mesoamerican civilization is best known for its colossal carved stone heads?

The Olmecs, who flourished in Veracruz and Tabasco from about 1200 to 400 BC, carved 17 known colossal basalt heads, the largest over three metres tall, at sites such as San Lorenzo and La Venta.

The Bronze Age Minoan civilization, often called Europe's first, was centred on which island?

Crete's Minoans never called themselves that; the name is a modern coinage after the mythical King Minos, popularised by the excavator Arthur Evans.

The Library of Ashurbanipal's 30,000 clay tablets were found in which Assyrian capital?

The site of Kouyunjik lies within modern Mosul, and its holdings included the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Which seafaring people's script gave rise to the Greek alphabet, and through it Latin and Cyrillic?

The Phoenicians' 22-letter consonantal script, carried by their traders across the Mediterranean, was adopted by the Greeks around the 8th century BC, who added vowels; Latin and Cyrillic both descend from the Greek alphabet.

Emperor Ashoka embraced Buddhist 'dhamma' after the brutal conquest of which region around 260 BC?

Kalinga, on India's east coast in modern Odisha, fell to Ashoka around 261 BC; his 13th Rock Edict says 100,000 were killed and 150,000 deported, and the remorse turned him to dhamma.

Which empire's intervention on Sparta's side in 413 BC helped decide the Peloponnesian War?

Persia, through the satrap Tissaphernes and later the prince Cyrus the Younger, paid for the Spartan fleet after Athens' Sicilian disaster, letting Lysander win the decisive sea battle at Aegospotami.

Göbekli Tepe, home to some of the world's oldest megaliths, is in which modern country?

Turkey: Gobekli Tepe stands near Sanliurfa in the country's south-east; its name means 'Potbelly Hill', and its T-shaped pillars carved with wild animals date from about 9500 BC, long before pottery.

Whose army captured and burned Persepolis, the Achaemenid ceremonial capital, in 330 BC?

Alexander the Great took Persepolis early in 330 BC and burned Xerxes' palace, by one account at the urging of the courtesan Thais, possibly as revenge for the Persian sack of Athens in 480 BC.

In which year did Athens defeat the first Persian invasion at the Battle of Marathon?

490 BC: Darius I's force under Datis and Artaphernes landed to punish Athens and Eretria for backing the Ionian revolt, and Miltiades's hoplites routed them on the plain of Marathon.

Hatshepsut's famous trading expedition, which brought back 31 myrrh trees, went where?

Punt, probably on the Red Sea coast of Sudan or Eritrea, is shown in reliefs at Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari, including a strikingly realistic portrait of its queen, Ati; the 31 myrrh trees were planted at the temple.

What is the modern name of Akhetaten, the capital Akhenaten built for the Aten?

Amarna, in Middle Egypt, is the modern name of Akhetaten; abandoned soon after Akhenaten's death, the city was rediscovered in the 19th century and excavated by Flinders Petrie in 1891-92.

A replica of the Egyptian-Hittite treaty that followed the Battle of Kadesh hangs where?

United Nations headquarters in New York displays a replica of the Egyptian-Hittite treaty, concluded around 1259 BC some 15 years after Kadesh; it is the earliest known treaty whose text survives from both parties.

Which king is widely regarded as the unifier of Egypt and founder of its First Dynasty?

Narmer's ceremonial palette shows him wearing both the white crown of Upper Egypt and the red crown of Lower Egypt; whether he is the legendary Menes is still debated.

Sargon the Great, often called history's first emperor, ruled which empire?

He conquered the Sumerian city-states in the 24th and 23rd centuries BC. A later legend says he was set adrift in a reed basket as a baby and raised by a gardener.

Which Babylonian king built the Ishtar Gate and rebuilt the Etemenanki ziggurat?

Nebuchadnezzar II, who reigned 605-562 BC, built the glazed-brick Ishtar Gate reconstructed in Berlin's Pergamon Museum and restored the Etemenanki ziggurat; he also destroyed Jerusalem's temple in 587 BC.

The trilingual Behistun inscription is carved on a cliff in which modern country?

Iran: Darius I's inscription is cut into a cliff at Mount Behistun near Kermanshah in the country's west; its Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian texts let Henry Rawlinson crack cuneiform in the 1830s and 1840s.

Which Athenian general led the Greek fleet that beat Xerxes at Salamis in 480 BC?

Themistocles lured Xerxes' fleet into the narrow Salamis straits, where Persian numbers became a liability; ostracised around 472 BC, he ended his days in Persian service at Magnesia.

Sentenced to death in 399 BC, Socrates carried out his own execution by drinking what?

Hemlock, Conium maculatum, was the Athenian state poison; Plato's Phaedo describes the numbness creeping up from Socrates' feet as he talked with friends, after his conviction for impiety and corrupting the young.

In which year did the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta end?

404 BC: after Lysander destroyed the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in 405 BC, a blockaded and starving Athens surrendered, pulled down its Long Walls and accepted Spartan terms.

Which Persian king did Alexander the Great crush at Gaugamela in 331 BC?

Darius III fled the field at Gaugamela, near modern Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, and was murdered in 330 BC by his own satrap Bessus; the Achaemenid Empire effectively ended with him.

Alexander the Great founded the city of Bucephala in India in honour of whom or what?

Bucephalus had carried him since boyhood, when he tamed the animal by turning it away from its own shadow. The horse died around the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC.

Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier in 212 BC during the sack of which Sicilian city?

Syracuse fell to Marcus Claudius Marcellus in 212 BC after a two-year siege in which Archimedes' war machines held the Romans off; Marcellus had ordered the mathematician spared, but a soldier killed him.

The first ancient Olympic Games are traditionally dated to which year?

776 BC is the traditional date, drawn from the victor list compiled by Hippias of Elis around 400 BC; later Greeks counted years in four-year Olympiads from it, and the first recorded champion was a cook, Coroebus of Elis.

Rome's kings were expelled and the Republic founded in which traditionally accepted year?

509 BC is the traditional date for the expulsion of Tarquin the Proud after Sextus Tarquinius' outrage against Lucretia, and for the first consuls, Brutus and Collatinus; modern scholars doubt the details but keep the year.

Which wealthy Roman finally crushed Spartacus's revolt in the Third Servile War?

Crassus, Rome's richest man, broke Spartacus's army in 71 BC and had 6,000 captured rebels crucified along the Appian Way; Pompey, arriving late, claimed credit for finishing the war.

Who commanded Octavian's fleet against Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BC?

Marcus Agrippa, Octavian's lifelong friend and admiral, won Actium on 2 September 31 BC; the same engineer later built the first Pantheon and Rome's first great public baths.

Which emperor, according to Suetonius, planned to make his horse Incitatus a consul?

Caligula, emperor AD 37-41, gave Incitatus a marble stable and ivory manger, Suetonius says; the consulship never actually happened and may have been a jibe at the Senate.

After the Great Fire of AD 64, Nero was rumoured to have wanted space for which palace?

The Domus Aurea, or 'Golden House', sprawled across burnt districts with a colossal statue of Nero at its entrance; later emperors buried it, and the Colosseum rose over its artificial lake.

In which language did Marcus Aurelius write his private notebooks, the Meditations?

Greek was the language of philosophy even for a Roman emperor. The 12 books were never meant for publication, which is part of their appeal.

Constantine defeated which rival emperor at the Milvian Bridge on 28 October AD 312?

Maxentius, who held Rome, drowned in the Tiber when a pontoon bridge collapsed during the rout; the two were brothers-in-law, Constantine having married Fausta, Maxentius' sister.

Which barbarian general deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476, ending the Western Empire?

Odoacer, a Germanic officer of the Roman army, deposed the boy emperor on 4 September 476, sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople and ruled Italy as king; Romulus was pensioned off to a villa in Campania.

Which people, led by King Alaric, sacked Rome on 24 August 410?

The Visigoths under Alaric entered by the Salarian Gate and sacked Rome for three days, the first foreign capture of the city since the Gauls in 390 BC; Jerome in Bethlehem wrote that his voice stuck in his throat.

Boudica, who led a revolt against Rome in AD 60 or 61, was queen of which British tribe?

The Iceni of modern Norfolk rose after Rome seized their kingdom on King Prasutagus' death; Boudica's forces burned Camulodunum, Londinium and Verulamium before the governor Suetonius Paulinus destroyed them.

Which Gallic chieftain surrendered to Caesar after the siege of Alesia in 52 BC?

Vercingetorix, the Arvernian who united the Gallic tribes, surrendered after Caesar's double ring of siege works at Alesia beat off a huge relief army; he was paraded in Caesar's triumph and strangled in 46 BC.

Who led the Germanic ambush that wiped out three Roman legions at Teutoburg Forest?

Arminius, a Cheruscan prince with Roman citizenship who commanded auxiliaries under Varus, led the AD 9 ambush that destroyed three legions; Augustus supposedly cried 'Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!'

The hilltop fortress of Masada fell to Rome in AD 73 at the end of which conflict?

The First Jewish–Roman War of AD 66–73 ended at Masada, where Legio X Fretensis built a huge earthen ramp; Josephus says 960 defenders chose suicide over capture, a story archaeology has not settled.

Which Roman orator conferred on Herodotus the title 'The Father of History'?

Cicero gave Herodotus the title pater historiae in his De Legibus; Plutarch, less impressed, wrote an essay titled On the Malice of Herodotus attacking his bias.

What is the oldest known surviving set of laws, three centuries older than Hammurabi's?

The Code of Ur-Nammu, written in Sumerian around 2100 BC under the founder of Ur's Third Dynasty, mostly imposes fines in silver rather than the 'eye for an eye' penalties of later Babylonian law.

Meroë, with more than 200 pyramids, was for centuries the capital of which kingdom?

Kush, the Nubian kingdom in modern Sudan, moved its capital south to Meroe around 590 BC; Meroe's iron-smelting industry was so large it has been called the Birmingham of Africa.

The Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders, depicted which Greek god?

Helios, the sun god and patron of Rhodes, was the subject of the 33-metre bronze statue finished around 280 BC; the Rhodians funded it by selling siege gear abandoned by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and an earthquake toppled it in 226 BC.

In which city did the Temple of Artemis that Herostratus burned in 356 BC stand?

Ephesus, on the Ionian coast near modern Selcuk, held the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders; the city banned mention of Herostratus' name, and the fire reportedly fell on the night Alexander was born.

Ötzi the Iceman was found in the Alps on the border between Italy and which country?

Austria: the Simon couple from Nuremberg found him in September 1991 at the Tisenjoch pass in the Otztal Alps, 92 metres inside Italy; an arrowhead in his left shoulder shows he was killed around 3300 BC.

Which mentor-turned-minister helped Chandragupta Maurya found the Maurya Empire?

Chanakya, also called Kautilya, is traditionally named as author of the Arthashastra, a ruthless manual of statecraft; the Maurya Empire he helped found around 321 BC was based at Pataliputra in Magadha, present-day Bihar.

Teotihuacan's largest pyramid, finished by about AD 100, is named for what?

The Pyramid of the Sun, about 65 metres high and over 200 metres across its base, was finished by about AD 100; the Aztecs found the city in ruins centuries later and named it Teotihuacan, roughly 'birthplace of the gods'.

Which archaeologist unearthed the Standard of Ur in the Royal Cemetery at Ur in 1927-28?

Leonard Woolley, leading a joint British-American expedition, found the box in grave PG 779 of the Royal Cemetery; he guessed it was carried on a pole as a battle standard, a use never confirmed.

Which self-taught linguist and architect deciphered the Mycenaean script Linear B in 1952?

Michael Ventris, an architect by profession, showed in 1952 that Linear B recorded an early form of Greek, building on Alice Kober's grids; he died in a car crash in 1956 aged 34.

In legend, Dido fled which Phoenician city before founding Carthage in North Africa?

Tyre: Dido, sister of its king Pygmalion, fled after he murdered her husband; she supposedly bought only as much African land as an ox-hide could cover, then cut the hide into strips to enclose the Byrsa hill.

The term 'Pyrrhic victory' comes from a king of which Greek kingdom who fought Rome?

Epirus, in north-west Greece, was ruled by Pyrrhus, who beat Rome at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC at such cost that he reportedly said one more such victory would ruin him.

Found in the ruins of Babylon in 1879, the Cyrus Cylinder is held by which institution?

The British Museum has held the Cyrus Cylinder since Hormuzd Rassam's 1879 excavation for the museum; its Akkadian text records Cyrus's capture of Babylon in 539 BC and his restoration of temples.

Croesus, credited with the first standardised gold coins, was the last king of where?

Lydia, in western Anatolia with its capital at Sardis, fell to Cyrus the Great in 546 BC after Croesus misread the Delphic oracle's warning that a great empire would fall; his wealth gave us 'rich as Croesus'.

Most Egyptologists credit which vizier with designing Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara?

Imhotep, Djoser's vizier around 2650 BC, is credited with the Step Pyramid, the first large-scale stone building; Manetho called him the inventor of building in stone, and he was later deified and equated with Asclepius.

Which world record does the dome of Rome's Pantheon hold?

Largest unreinforced concrete dome: at 43.3 metres across, the Pantheon's dome, completed under Hadrian around AD 126, has never been surpassed; its builders lightened the mix with pumice toward the top and left an open oculus.

Petra, the rock-cut city in southern Jordan, was built by which nomadic Arab people?

The Nabataeans, Arab traders who settled Petra by the 4th century BC, grew rich controlling the incense route from southern Arabia; they called the city Raqmu, and Rome annexed their kingdom in AD 106.

Zenobia, who defied Rome in the 3rd century, was queen of which empire based in Syria?

The Palmyrene Empire, ruled by Zenobia from the oasis city of Palmyra, took Egypt and much of Anatolia before Aurelian crushed it in 272; tradition has her paraded in gold chains and retired to a villa near Tivoli.

Who was the first Roman emperor ever taken captive in battle, seized after Edessa in 260?

Valerian was seized by the Sasanian king Shapur I after the battle of Edessa in 260; Shapur's rock reliefs at Naqsh-e Rostam show him grasping the captive emperor's wrist, and Lactantius claims he was used as a mounting step.

Oracle bones, carrying the earliest major body of Chinese writing, date to which dynasty?

The Shang dynasty, in its late capital at Yinxu near Anyang around 1250-1050 BC, left tens of thousands of oracle-bone inscriptions; diviners heated ox shoulder blades and turtle plastrons and read the cracks, recording the royal genealogy.

The best-known Vindolanda tablet, written around AD 100 by Claudia Severa, is what?

A birthday invitation: Claudia Severa asked Sulpicia Lepidina, the fort commander's wife, to her birthday on 11 September, adding a greeting in her own hand, perhaps the oldest surviving Latin written by a woman.

One theory says Qin Shi Huang died from an immortality elixir containing which metal?

Mercury pills, prescribed by court alchemists as an elixir of life, are the suspected cause of his death in 210 BC; Sima Qian says his tomb holds rivers of mercury, and soil tests there show unusually high levels.