As Hammurabi was carving his laws, North Americans were piling up giant earthworks.
The concentric ridges of Poverty Point in Louisiana were built around 1700 BC by hunter-gatherers who did not farm.
The events
- Poverty Point earthworksc. 1700 BC · Poverty Point. In the lower Mississippi Valley, hunter-gatherers raised a vast complex of concentric earthen ridges and mounds. It is one of the largest monuments of its age in North America, built without farming.
- Code of Hammurabic. 1754 BC · Babylon. King Hammurabi of Babylon had 282 laws on trade, family, property and punishment carved on a basalt stele. It is one of the oldest and most complete written legal codes in history.
18th century BC · 17th century BC
More amazing facts
- 1900 BC The oldest known joke is a fart joke.
- 1800 BC The oldest beer recipe was written as a hymn to a goddess.
- 1800 BC · 530 BC Babylonians tabulated 'Pythagorean triples' more than a thousand years before Pythagoras.
- 1754 BC · 44 BC · 313 About 1,710 years passed between Hammurabi's laws and Caesar's assassination — nearly as long as separates us from the Edict of Milan of 313.
- 1750 BC The oldest known customer complaint, from around 1750 BC, is about bad copper.
- 1700 BC A Babylonian student worked out the square root of two to six decimal places.