History.

The King's School in Canterbury, England, traces its foundation to 597 CE, when Augustine of Canterbury established a cathedral school after arriving in England. It is widely regarded as the oldest continuously operating school in the world.

A painting in Leang Karampuang cave in the Maros-Pangkep region of Sulawesi, Indonesia, showing three human-like figures interacting with a wild pig, was dated to at least 51,200 years old. The result, published in Nature in July 2024 by Indonesian and Australian researchers, makes it the oldest known figurative art and the earliest known visual storytelling scene.

Two interlocking logs joined by an intentionally cut notch, found waterlogged at Kalambo Falls in Zambia, were dated to at least 476,000 years ago. Reported in Nature in September 2023 by a team led by Larry Barham, it is the oldest known wooden structure and predates the emergence of Homo sapiens.

The Tower of Jericho, an 8.5-meter stone tower with an internal staircase built in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period around 8000 BCE, is the oldest known stone tower — roughly 10,000 years old. It was uncovered at Tell es-Sultan in the West Bank by Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s, and the site was inscribed by UNESCO in 2023.

Queen Elizabeth II reigned over the United Kingdom for 70 years and 214 days, from February 6, 1952, until her death on September 8, 2022 — the longest verified reign of any female monarch in history, and the longest reign of any British monarch of either sex.

The skeleton of a young adult buried in Liang Tebo cave in East Kalimantan, Borneo, about 31,000 years ago lacks the lower left leg, which was cleanly removed in childhood; bone remodeling shows the person survived another six to nine years. Published in Nature in September 2022, it is the oldest known evidence of surgical amputation, by more than 20,000 years.

Norse explorers led by Leif Erikson reached North America around 1000 CE, establishing a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in present-day Newfoundland, Canada — confirmed by archaeological excavation in the 1960s and later precisely dated to 1021 CE via tree-ring analysis of wood artifacts. This predates Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage by nearly 500 years, correcting the popular misconception that Columbus was the first European to reach the Americas.

Fossilized human footprints preserved in ancient lakebed sediments at White Sands National Park, New Mexico, are dated to about 21,000–23,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum. First reported in Science in 2021 and supported by independent dating in 2023, they are the oldest known evidence of humans in the Americas, though some researchers still dispute the dates.

Thirty-three perforated sea-snail (Tritia gibbosula) shell beads from Bizmoune Cave in western Morocco were dated to at least 142,000 years ago, and possibly as old as 150,000 years. Reported in Science Advances in November 2021, they are the oldest known jewelry made by early Homo sapiens.

The Chinchorro fishing communities of the Atacama coast in what is now northern Chile and southern Peru began artificially mummifying their dead around 5000 BCE, about two thousand years before the ancient Egyptians. UNESCO inscribed the Settlement and Artificial Mummification of the Chinchorro Culture as a World Heritage Site in 2021.

The first ancient Olympic Games with a reliably recorded date were held in 776 BCE at Olympia, Greece, featuring a single event — a foot race called the stadion — held every four years as a religious festival honoring Zeus, continuing for nearly 12 centuries until being banned in 393 CE.

Japan's Imperial dynasty traces an unbroken line traditionally dated to Emperor Jimmu's legendary founding in 660 BCE, making it, by tradition, the longest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world at over 2,600 years — though historians generally consider the reigns before roughly the 5th-6th century CE to be legendary or semi-legendary rather than historically verified, with the dynasty's continuity only becoming solidly documented from that later period onward.

Sumerian cuneiform, developed in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), is generally recognized as the oldest known writing system, with the earliest examples dating to around 3200 BCE — over 5,200 years old — initially used for accounting and record-keeping before evolving to record language more fully.

The Achaemenid Persian Empire, under Darius I in the late 6th century BCE, built the Royal Road and an associated relay system of mounted couriers stationed at intervals who could carry messages across roughly 2,700 km in a matter of days — described admiringly by the Greek historian Herodotus, and often cited as one of the earliest large-scale organized postal relay systems, though similar courier networks likely existed in earlier Near Eastern empires as well.

A crosshatched pattern of red ochre lines drawn on a silcrete flake from Blombos Cave, South Africa, is about 73,000 years old. Published in Nature in September 2018 by Christopher Henshilwood and colleagues, it is the oldest known drawing, predating earlier known drawings by at least 30,000 years.

Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Türkiye contains rings of carved T-shaped limestone pillars, some over 5 meters tall, built by hunter-gatherers between about 9600 and 8200 BCE — roughly 11,600 years ago and some 6,000 years before Stonehenge. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018.

Tomb workers at Deir el-Medina, in ancient Egypt, staged what is generally considered the first recorded labor strike in history around 1157 BCE, during the reign of Ramesses III, when their wages of grain were delayed — they sat down and refused to work, a protest documented on a surviving papyrus, making it one of the earliest known examples of organized labor action anywhere.

Senet, an ancient Egyptian board game, has surviving examples dating to around 3100 BCE — over 5,000 years old — found in tombs including that of Tutankhamun, making it the oldest known board game with surviving physical evidence, though its exact rules were never fully recorded and remain partly reconstructed by modern historians.

The Treaty of Kadesh, signed around 1259 BCE between Ramesses II of Egypt and Hattusili III of the Hittite Empire following the Battle of Kadesh, is the oldest known peace treaty with a surviving full text — inscribed in both Egyptian hieroglyphics and Hittite cuneiform, with a copy displayed at the United Nations headquarters as a symbol of international diplomacy.

The Code of Ur-Nammu, from ancient Sumer, dates to around 2100-2050 BCE — roughly 300 years older than the more famous Code of Hammurabi (circa 1754 BCE), which is often mistakenly cited as the oldest — making Ur-Nammu's code the oldest known surviving written legal code, established by the founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur.

Skull, jaw, and tooth fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco were dated to about 315,000 years ago in studies published in Nature in June 2017 by Jean-Jacques Hublin and colleagues. They are the oldest known Homo sapiens remains, pushing the origin of our species back by about 100,000 years.

Athenian democracy, established through the reforms of Cleisthenes around 508-507 BCE, is generally recognized by historians as the first democracy in recorded history — granting political power to a body of free male citizens (excluding women, slaves, and foreigners) through direct participation rather than representation.

Two parchment leaves of the Quran in the Mingana Collection at the University of Birmingham, UK, were radiocarbon dated by the University of Oxford in 2015 to between 568 and 645 CE with 95.4% probability, placing them among the oldest surviving Quran manuscripts. The range overlaps the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632), though the date applies to the animal skin rather than to the writing itself.

Stone cores, flakes, and anvils excavated at the Lomekwi 3 site near Lake Turkana in Kenya are about 3.3 million years old, roughly 700,000 years older than the earliest Oldowan tools. The discovery, published in Nature in 2015 by Sonia Harmand and colleagues, predates the earliest known fossils of the genus Homo.

The Indus Valley (Harappan) civilization, flourishing from around 2600 to 1900 BCE, used a remarkably standardized system of cubical stone weights following a binary and decimal ratio, found consistently across sites separated by hundreds of kilometers — among the earliest known highly standardized weight systems in the ancient world.

The Kingdom of Lydia, in what is now western Turkey, minted the first standardized coins around 600 BCE, made of electrum (a natural gold-silver alloy) — a major innovation over earlier barter and weighed-metal trade, since standardized coins carried a guaranteed value stamped by the issuing authority.

The oldest known evidence of wheeled vehicles dates to around 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia — roughly 5,500 years ago — based on pictographic depictions and archaeological remains of early wheels, initially used for pottery-making (the potter's wheel) before being adapted for transport.

The Great Pyramid of Cholula, in Mexico, has an estimated total volume of approximately 4.45 million m³ — larger by volume than Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza (about 2.6 million m³), despite being considerably shorter (66 m versus 146.6 m), because Cholula is a much wider, stepped structure built up over multiple construction phases across roughly 1,000 years.

The Babylonian Map of the World (Imago Mundi), a clay tablet dating to around 600 BCE, is among the oldest known maps — depicting Babylon at the center of a world surrounded by a circular ocean — though older cave paintings and rock carvings with possible map-like features (from as far back as 25,000 years ago) are debated among archaeologists as to whether they qualify as true maps versus symbolic art.

Nine small tubular beads found in a grave at Gerzeh, Egypt, dated to around 3200 BCE, are the oldest known iron artifacts — about 5,200 years old. A 2013 analysis by Thilo Rehren and colleagues showed they were hammered from meteoritic iron rich in nickel, long before iron smelting was developed.

A series of pits discovered at Warren Field, Scotland, dating to around 8000 BCE — roughly 10,000 years old — is believed by archaeologists to represent the oldest known calendar system, tracking lunar months and likely correcting for the solar year, predating the previously oldest known formal time-measurement systems by thousands of years.

The Nebra sky disc, a bronze disc about 32 cm across inlaid with gold symbols for the Sun or full Moon, a crescent Moon, and stars including the Pleiades, was buried around 1600 BCE in what is now Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Illegally excavated in 1999 and recovered by police in 2002, it was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2013 as the oldest known concrete depiction of the cosmos.

Pottery sherds from Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi Province, China, were dated to 20,000–19,000 years ago in a 2012 Science study by Wu Xiaohong and colleagues. They are the oldest known pottery, made by hunter-gatherers about 10,000 years before the beginning of farming.

Burned bone and ashed plant remains found alongside Acheulean stone tools deep inside Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa's Northern Cape date to about 1 million years ago. The 2012 PNAS study by Francesco Berna and colleagues is widely cited as the oldest secure in-situ evidence of controlled fire, though older claims from open-air sites in East Africa exist.

Copper slag and smelting debris from the Vinča-culture settlement of Belovode in eastern Serbia were dated to about 5000 BCE, roughly 7,000 years ago. Published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in 2010 by Miljana Radivojević and colleagues, it is the earliest securely dated evidence of copper smelting.

A complete cowhide moccasin-style shoe found stuffed with grass in the Areni-1 cave in Armenia was radiocarbon dated to about 3600–3500 BCE, roughly 5,500 years old. Described in PLoS ONE in 2010 by Ron Pinhasi and colleagues, it is the oldest known leather shoe, a few hundred years older than Ötzi the Iceman's footwear.

Proto-Sinaitic script, found inscribed at turquoise mining sites in the Sinai Peninsula and dated to roughly 1900–1700 BCE, is generally regarded by linguists as the earliest known alphabetic writing system — an adaptation of Egyptian hieroglyphic signs to represent Semitic consonant sounds, and the ancestor of the later Phoenician alphabet from which most modern alphabets descend.

The Library of Alexandria, founded in Egypt around 295-283 BCE under the Ptolemaic dynasty, is the most famous ancient library associated with broad scholarly access, aiming to collect a copy of every known text in the ancient world — though it was primarily a research institution for scholars rather than a public lending library in the modern sense, and its exact founding date and eventual destruction are both subjects of ongoing historical debate.

Codex Sinaiticus, a handwritten Greek Bible produced in the mid-4th century CE, contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, about 1,650 years old. Its surviving leaves are divided among the British Library, Leipzig University Library, St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, and the National Library of Russia, and were digitally reunited online in 2009.

The Tower of Hercules in A Coruña, Spain, was built by the Romans in the late 1st or early 2nd century CE and still serves as an active lighthouse, about 1,900 years later. Restored in the 1790s, it is the only Roman lighthouse still in use and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009.

The Dunhuang Star Chart, a Tang-dynasty manuscript found among the Dunhuang manuscripts and now in the British Library (Or.8210/S.3326), was made around the year 700 CE and depicts about 1,300 stars. It is regarded as the oldest known complete star atlas.

The Antikythera mechanism, a geared bronze device recovered from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, has been dated by researchers to approximately 100 BCE (with some estimates ranging as early as 150 BCE). It was used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses, and is widely regarded as the oldest known analog computing device, decades or centuries ahead of anything of comparable complexity.

The Rhodian Sea Law, developed by the maritime trading state of Rhodes in the ancient Greek world around 800-600 BCE, is the earliest known codified system of maritime law, establishing principles like 'general average' (shared loss compensation when cargo is jettisoned to save a ship) that remain foundational to maritime law today, over 2,600 years later.

The Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus is traditionally credited with predicting a solar eclipse that occurred in 585 BCE, famously said to have interrupted a battle between the Lydians and the Medes, who took the sudden darkness as a divine sign to make peace — though modern historians debate whether Thales genuinely predicted the eclipse's timing or simply knew from Babylonian records that eclipses recurred periodically in that region.

Pottery jars found at Jiahu, in China's Henan Province, contain chemical residue of a fermented rice, honey, and fruit beverage dated to approximately 7000-6600 BCE — roughly 9,000 years old — the oldest chemically confirmed alcoholic beverage discovered anywhere in the world.

Babylonian mathematicians, working in a base-60 (sexagesimal) positional number system, developed a consistent placeholder symbol for an empty position by around 300 BCE, with more sporadic precursor use extending back several centuries earlier — one of the earliest known uses of a zero-like placeholder, though it was not yet treated as a number that could be added, subtracted, or manipulated on its own, a development credited to Indian mathematicians centuries later.

Malbork Castle in northern Poland, built by the Teutonic Order from the late 13th century and made the seat of its Grand Master in 1309, covers about 143,591 square meters. It is recognized by Guinness World Records as the largest castle in the world by land area and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Uluburun shipwreck, discovered off the coast of southern Turkey and excavated between 1984 and 1994, dates to around 1300 BCE (the Late Bronze Age) and carried a rich cargo of copper, tin, glass, and luxury goods from across the eastern Mediterranean — one of the oldest and most completely excavated seafaring shipwrecks ever studied.

The Kondō (main hall) and five-story pagoda of Hōryū-ji temple in Nara Prefecture, Japan, date to the late 7th century CE, about 1,300 years ago, and are among the oldest surviving wooden buildings in the world. Dendrochronology dates the pagoda's central pillar to a tree felled in 594 CE, and the Buddhist Monuments in the Hōryū-ji Area became Japan's first UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993.

A clay tablet from Uruk, in ancient Sumer, dated to approximately 3400-3300 BCE, records transactions involving a person named 'Kushim,' apparently an accountant tracking barley — making Kushim the earliest named individual in recorded history, over 5,300 years ago, though it's debated among historians whether 'Kushim' names a specific person or a job title.