The world's oldest pile carpet is a contemporary of Socrates.
Woven around the 5th century BC, it survived in the permafrost of an Altai burial mound and is now in the Hermitage.
The events
- The Pazyryk kurgansc. 400 BC · Pazyryk valley, Altai Mountains. The nomads of the Pazyryk culture buried their elite in kurgans in the high Altai, where water seeped into the graves and froze. The permafrost preserved felt rugs, clothing, saddles, horse harness and tattooed bodies. The oldest known pile carpet, now in the Hermitage, comes from here.
- Trial of Socrates399 BC · Athens. An Athenian jury sentenced the philosopher Socrates to death for impiety and corrupting the youth; he drank hemlock. His pupil Plato immortalised him in dialogues, and the Socratic method became a foundation of Western philosophy.
More amazing facts
- 440 BC Herodotus wrote that in India gold was dug up by ants bigger than foxes.
- 400 BC The principle behind the camera was first described by the Chinese philosopher Mozi around 400 BC: light passing through a pinhole into a dark room paints an upside-down image.
- 399 BC Socrates' last words were about a rooster he owed.
- 396 BC · 392 BC Women could not compete at Olympia, yet in 396 BC the Spartan princess Cynisca became an Olympic champion.
- 356 BC Tradition holds that the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus burned on the very day Alexander the Great was born.
- 356 BC · 221 BC In 356 BC Alexander the Great was born, and the state of Qin began Shang Yang's reforms.