While the Sumerians were inventing writing, people in China were building dams.
Around 5,000 years ago the city of Liangzhu in the Yangtze delta raised a system of flood-control dams, among the oldest in the world.
The events
- The city of Liangzhuc. 3300 BC · Liangzhu, near Hangzhou. In the Yangtze delta, around 3300–2300 BC, stood the walled city of Liangzhu, covering almost 3 km². Its people built a system of dams against floods and carved ritual jade bi discs and cong tubes. In 2019 the ruins were listed by UNESCO as evidence of an early state in China.
- Invention of writing in Sumerc. 3200 BC · Uruk. Scribes in the Sumerian city of Uruk began recording accounts with signs on clay tablets, which evolved into cuneiform. One of the world's first writing systems, it shaped Near Eastern culture for three millennia.
33rd century BC · 32nd century BC
More amazing facts
- 3300 BC · 3200 BC Ötzi died in the Alps around 3300 BC, about when writing appeared in Sumerian Uruk.
- 3300 BC Cacao was first used not in Mexico but in Ecuador, 5,300 years ago. The South American Mayo-Chinchipe culture domesticated it, and only later did it reach Mesoamerica, the Olmecs and the Maya.
- 3300 BC · 1902 Malta's underground temple was found by builders, who at first tried to hide it. In 1902 workers cutting cisterns for new houses broke through the roof of the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, later found to hold the remains of some 7,000 people.
- 3300 BC Ötzi, who died in the Alps 5,300 years ago, has 61 tattoos.
- 3300 BC Ötzi's last meal is known down to its ingredients.
- 3200 BC Possibly the first personal name ever written belongs not to a king but to an accountant.