A little over a century after Vesuvius buried Pompeii, across the ocean in Teotihuacan the Pyramid of the Sun rose — one of the largest pyramids in the world.
The events
- Eruption of Vesuvius79 · Pompeii. Vesuvius buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae under ash and pyroclastic flows; the scholar Pliny the Elder died in the disaster. The entombed towns preserved a frozen snapshot of everyday Roman life for archaeologists.
- Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacanc. 200 · Teotihuacan. Around AD 200 the Pyramid of the Sun, one of the largest structures of the pre-Columbian Americas, was completed. Teotihuacan, with an estimated 100,000 people, became the largest city in the Americas and shaped all of Mesoamerica.
More amazing facts
- 202 BC In 202 BC, empires were decided at both ends of Eurasia: Scipio defeated Hannibal at Zama, and Liu Bang founded the Han dynasty.
- 36 BC · 31 BC The earliest known Long Count calendar date in Mesoamerica is 36 BC — just five years before the Battle of Actium.
- 105 · 751 China had paper by the early 2nd century, but according to tradition it reached the Islamic world only after the Battle of Talas in 751, via Chinese captives.
- 165 · 166 In 166, men claiming to be envoys of the ruler of Rome — probably Marcus Aurelius — reached China.
- 232 · 1280 The colossal Taupō eruption of around 232 struck a New Zealand with no people at all: Polynesians would arrive more than a thousand years later.
- 301 · 313 · 330 Among the first Christian states were Armenia (traditionally 301) and Aksum in Ethiopia (around 330).