West Asian sailing – the Phoenicians
Earliest image of a sailing ship (Arabian peninsula, about 5000 BC) By the time the first people left Africa about 60,000 BC they already knew how to use boats, and some of them may [...]
West Asian numbers – Ancient Mesopotamia
Neolithic counting tokens Counting with tally sticks and tokens The earliest way of writing down numbers was to carve notches in tally sticks, and this method spread from Africa all over Europe and [...]
Babylonian math problem – West Asian science
A real Babylonian math problem on a clay tablet What math problems did Babylonian kids do? This is a real math problem assigned to Babylonian kids in Iraq about 1900 BC. See if [...]
West Asian mathematics – history of math
History of math: Sumerian multiplication table (2700 BC) Cuneiform multiplication table Once people in West Asia figured out how to write down numbers, about 3500 BC, they quickly began to want to use cuneiform to [...]
West Asian science – Mesopotamia and Iran
The constellation Orion What did Mesopotamians invent? From the Stone Age through the Islamic empires, great scientific discoveries have streamed out of West Asia. West Asia is one of the places where farming got started, [...]
Hanging Gardens of Babylon – West Asian science
Assurbanipal in the garden (see his enemy's head hanging in the tree?) One of the Seven Wonders Nobody knows for sure when or where the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were [...]
Zoroastrianism – Iran – West Asian religion
An Iranian fire sacrifice Zoroaster/Zarathustra himself Around 1000 BC (probably), about the same time that people in India were writing the Rig Veda, a man named Zoroaster (also called Zarathustra) was a priest in a small [...]
Who is Tammuz? Mesopotamia – West Asian religion
The god Tammuz (probably) with grain growing from his shoulders A West Asian god Tammuz (or Dumuzi) was a West Asian god who personified growing food, like Persephone in Greece or Osiris in Egypt. [...]
What is Nowruz? Zoroastrians – West Asian holidays
Persepolis may have been built in the 500s BC as a place to celebrate Nowruz. What is the holiday of Nowruz? Zoroastrianism became much more popular suddenly when the Persian kings [...]
Monotheism and polytheism – West Asian religion
The Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar or Inanna What is polytheism? The earliest people in West Asia were all polytheistic: they all worshipped many gods. From 3000 BC to 539 BC, the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Assyrians and the Babylonians all [...]
