In ancient Egypt a pregnancy test used grain: a woman urinated on wheat and barley, and if they sprouted, she was pregnant.
When scientists tried it in 1963, the method worked in about 70% of cases.
14th century BC · 20th century
More amazing facts
- 1400 BC The oldest substantially complete piece of written music is about 3,400 years old: a hymn to the goddess Nikkal, notated in cuneiform on a clay tablet from Ugarit in Syria around 1400 BC.
- 1370 BC We even know the season when the Egtved Girl was buried in Denmark: summer, 1370 BC. The tree rings of her oak coffin say so, and a yarrow flower had been laid on it.
- 1323 BC · 1922 Tutankhamun's dagger was forged from a meteorite.
- 1323 BC · 1939 Tutankhamun's trumpets were silent for over 3,000 years, then played live on BBC radio in 1939 to some 150 million listeners.
- 1323 BC · 1200 BC A near-contemporary of Tutankhamun in China was an army general.
- 1305 BC · 1982 One of the richest Bronze Age shipwrecks was found by a sponge diver who sketched 'metal biscuits with ears'. They were copper ingots: ten tonnes of them on a 14th-century BC ship off Turkey, plus a gold scarab of Nefertiti.