Nidhi

Legacy. Our 60-minute hours and 360-degree circle are widely traced to Mesopotamian base-60 mathematics. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1754 BCE) is one of the earliest extensive written law codes.

Connections. Traded with the Indus cities, which cuneiform texts call Meluhha. Persia absorbed Babylon in 539 BCE.

Legacy. Few ancient cities matched its sanitation and planning. Because the script is undeciphered, much of what we know comes from archaeology alone.

Connections. Indus seals have been found in Mesopotamia, which points to long-distance sea trade.

Legacy. Its 365-day solar calendar influenced the later Roman calendar, and surviving medical papyri show a practical approach to treatment. The Rosetta Stone, carved in 196 BCE, let Jean-François Champollion decipher hieroglyphs in 1822.

Connections. Egypt was ruled for a time by the Nubian kings of Kush (25th Dynasty), and was annexed by Rome after Cleopatra VII died in 30 BCE.

Legacy. Greek myths of King Minos, the Minotaur and the Trojan War echo these Bronze Age worlds. Linear B, deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952, shows Greek was written more than 600 years before the alphabet.

Connections. The eruption of Thera (Santorini) around 1600 BCE buried the town of Akrotiri; the palace societies collapsed c. 1200 BCE.

Legacy. Caral shows that complex societies in the Americas arose at about the same time as Egypt's pyramids. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009.

Connections. Coastal fishing and inland cotton farming were tied together by trade; later Andean societies built on these traditions.

Legacy. Kush built more pyramids than Egypt, and Meroë was a major iron-working centre. Meroitic was an early African alphabetic script.

Connections. Traded gold, ivory and ebony with Egypt, later Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt.

Legacy. Maya scribes used a place-value number system with a symbol for zero and tracked Venus and eclipses with great accuracy. Millions of Maya people live today and still speak Maya languages.

Connections. Trade and ideas linked the Maya with Teotihuacan in central Mexico, and they shared traditions with the earlier Olmec.

Legacy. Confucian thought, a standard written script and the idea of a unified empire shaped China for two thousand years. Paper was being made by the early 2nd century CE and later spread west.

Connections. The Han opened the Silk Road after Zhang Qian's missions (from c. 138 BCE), linking China to Central Asia, Persia and Rome.

Legacy. Their 22-letter alphabet, written without vowels, was adapted by the Greeks and became the ancestor of the Latin alphabet.

Connections. Carthage fought Rome in three Punic Wars before its destruction in 146 BCE.

Legacy. Many later Mesoamerican traditions, including the ball game and rubber use, appear first or most clearly in Olmec contexts; scholars debate how far they influenced neighbouring peoples.

Connections. Sometimes called the 'mother culture' of Mesoamerica, although other regions developed in parallel.

Legacy. Greek ideas about democracy, logic, geometry and drama still shape modern education. After Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE), Greek culture spread across Egypt and Asia in the Hellenistic world.

Connections. Alexander's armies reached the Indus in 326 BCE, where Greek and Indian traditions met, as in the Gandhara art.

Legacy. Roman law, Latin (the parent of the Romance languages) and engineering such as roads, aqueducts and concrete domes like the Pantheon still define much of the modern world. The Western Empire ended in 476 CE; the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire lasted until 1453.

Connections. Roman merchants traded with India for pepper and gold coins found in southern India show that link; Rome annexed Egypt in 30 BCE.

Legacy. Cyrus's capture of Babylon in 539 BCE let exiled peoples return home; the Cyrus Cylinder is sometimes cited as an early statement of tolerance, though historians debate that framing.

Connections. Fought the Greeks in the Persian Wars (490–479 BCE) and fell to Alexander the Great, who burned Persepolis in 330 BCE.