Ancient Worlds
Long before modern countries existed, people built cities, wrote laws, traded across continents and created ideas that still shape life today. Explore ten windows into the ancient world.
The First Cities
Cities appeared when farming, trade and organisation allowed thousands of people to live together in one place.
Mesopotamia
Between the Tigris and Euphrates, cities developed writing, administration and some of the earliest recorded laws.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was a world of independent city-states connected by language, trade, religion and competition.
Ancient Rome
Rome grew from one city into a vast empire connected by roads, law, trade and military power.
The Indus Valley
One of the ancient world’s largest urban civilisations built planned cities whose writing we still cannot read.
Ancient China
Ancient Chinese states developed powerful kingdoms, writing traditions and technologies across thousands of years.
The Maya
Maya cities combined writing, mathematics, astronomy and monumental architecture across a vast region of Mesoamerica.
Trade Across the Ancient World
Ancient societies were more connected than they can appear on a modern map.
Writing, Numbers and Ideas
Some of the ancient world’s most lasting inventions were ways to store knowledge outside the human mind.
How We Rediscover the Ancient World
Archaeology rebuilds lost worlds from broken objects, buried buildings, texts and tiny traces that people left behind.