Civilization facts and facts about civilizations, from the Random Facts shelf.
123 facts on this shelf
In 1996, lotteries in North America awarded $52 million in prizes every day – that’s $36,000 every minute, 24 hours a day. This didn’t just suddenly happen. Lotteries have been around nearly as long as civilization has been around. People love lotteries.
The Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza is the largest museum in the world devoted to a single civilization.
Ancient Mesoamerican cultures made wheeled toys, but never used wheels for transportation, likely because they had no large animals to pull carts.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered in 1822 by French scholar Jean-François Champollion, using the Rosetta Stone, which had the same text in three scripts.
Ancient Egyptian civilization lasted about 3,000 years, longer than any other ancient civilization.
Ancient Egyptians considered cats sacred to the goddess Bastet and mummified millions of them as offerings.
The first recorded labor strike in history happened in ancient Egypt around 1157 BC, when tomb builders stopped work because their rations were late.
Ancient Egyptians made toothpaste from ingredients like crushed eggshells, ash, and salt.
Ancient Egyptians created one of the first 365-day calendars.
Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamun's nearly intact tomb in 1922.
During mummification, Egyptians often removed the brain through the nose but usually left the heart in the body.
Women in ancient Egypt could own property and get divorced.
Cleopatra was from a Greek ruling family and was reportedly the first in her dynasty to learn the Egyptian language.
A 2023 MIT study found that Roman concrete can partly heal its own cracks, which helps explain why Roman buildings have lasted for thousands of years.
The Romans built a road network of about 250,000 miles, including roughly 50,000 miles of paved roads.
Roman aqueducts carried fresh water into cities over long distances.
Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian all developed from Latin, the language of ancient Rome.
July is named after Julius Caesar, and August is named after Emperor Augustus.
Romans used urine to clean clothes, and Emperor Vespasian taxed its collection.
Ancient Romans bought hot food from street-side counters called thermopolia, a kind of ancient fast food.
The Roman city of Pompeii was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
The Eastern Roman Empire lasted until 1453.
Roman numerals had no symbol for zero.
Democracy began in Athens around 507 BC.
The first recorded Olympic Games were held in 776 BC, and athletes competed nude.
The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient Greek device often called the world's first analog computer.
The ancient Greeks created tragedy and comedy as forms of theater.
Greek scholar Eratosthenes estimated Earth's circumference around 240 BC with remarkable accuracy.
The Hippocratic Oath, an ethical code for doctors, is named after the Greek physician Hippocrates.
The word "alphabet" comes from "alpha" and "beta," the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.
The marathon is inspired by the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger who ran from Marathon to Athens.
The Parthenon has almost no perfectly straight lines. Its builders used subtle curves to make it look straighter to the eye.
Ancient Athenians could vote to banish a citizen for 10 years by writing names on pottery shards, a practice called ostracism.
"Mesopotamia" means "land between rivers," referring to the Tigris and Euphrates.
Cuneiform, developed in Mesopotamia around 3200 BC, is one of the earliest writing systems.
The Code of Hammurabi, from around 1754 BC, is one of the oldest written law codes.
The Epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia is considered the oldest surviving great work of literature.
There are 60 minutes in an hour because the Mesopotamians used a base-60 number system.
The oldest known customer complaint, from around 1750 BC, is a clay tablet in which a man named Nanni complains to a merchant named Ea-nasir about low-quality copper.
Mesopotamians brewed beer and wrote a hymn to the goddess Ninkasi that describes how to make it.
Uruk in Mesopotamia was one of the world's first cities.
Ziggurats were huge stepped temple towers built in Mesopotamia.
Some historians doubt the Hanging Gardens of Babylon ever existed, or think they may have been in Nineveh instead.
China's Terracotta Army, about 8,000 clay soldiers, was discovered in 1974 by farmers digging a well.
China's Four Great Inventions are paper, printing, the compass, and gunpowder.
China kept silk-making a secret for centuries until monks reportedly smuggled silkworm eggs to the Byzantine Empire in the 500s.
The earliest known Chinese writing appears on oracle bones from the Shang dynasty.
German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen coined the term "Silk Road" in 1877.
China used civil service exams to choose government officials from about 605 AD until 1905.
Chinese scientist Zhang Heng invented the first known seismoscope in 132 AD.
China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, standardized writing, coins, and even cart axle widths.
China's Grand Canal is the longest artificial waterway in the world.
Chinese legend says Emperor Shennong discovered tea when leaves blew into his boiling water.
The Indus Valley script has never been deciphered.
Indus Valley cities like Mohenjo-daro had grid-patterned streets and advanced drainage systems.
The Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro is one of the earliest known public water tanks.
The Indus Valley civilization used standardized weights.
The Indus Valley civilization was at its peak from about 2600 to 1900 BC.
The Indus Valley civilization covered a larger area than ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia combined.
The "Dancing Girl" is a famous bronze statue from Mohenjo-daro.
Archaeologists have found few grand palaces in Indus Valley cities.
The Indus Valley civilization was identified by archaeologists in the 1920s.
In the 1850s, railway builders used bricks from the ancient city of Harappa as railroad ballast.
The Maya developed the concept of zero independently.
The idea that the Maya calendar predicted the end of the world in 2012 was a myth. It just marked the end of a cycle.
During the equinoxes, shadows on the pyramid at Chichén Itzá look like a serpent slithering down the steps.
Millions of Maya people still live in Mexico and Central America today.
The Maya played a ballgame with heavy rubber balls.
In 2018, lidar scans revealed about 60,000 hidden Maya structures in Guatemala.
Maya blue is an extremely durable pigment.
Only four Maya books, called codices, are known to survive.
Tikal was a major Maya city in what is now Guatemala.
The Maya used a base-20 number system.
The Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, was built on an island in Lake Texcoco and may have had about 200,000 people.
The Aztecs grew crops on chinampas, artificial islands sometimes called floating gardens.
Mexico's flag shows an eagle on a cactus eating a snake, from the legend of how the Aztecs chose where to build their capital.
English words like "chocolate," "tomato," "avocado," and "chili" come from Nahuatl, the Aztec language.
Aztec children received formal education.
The Aztec Sun Stone weighs about 24 tons.
The Aztecs called themselves the Mexica.
The Aztec ruler Moctezuma kept a large zoo.
A smallpox epidemic in 1520 devastated the Aztec population.
The Aztec Templo Mayor was rediscovered in 1978 after electrical workers in Mexico City found a giant carved stone.
The Inca Empire was the largest empire in the Americas before European arrival.
The Inca kept records using quipu, knotted strings.
The Inca road network stretched about 25,000 miles and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Inca relay runners called chasquis carried messages across the empire.
Hiram Bingham brought Machu Picchu to international attention in 1911, though local people already knew about it.
The Inca fit stones together without mortar so tightly that their walls survive earthquakes.
The Inca didn't use wheels for transportation and relied on llamas instead.
The Inca capital, Cusco, was said to be laid out in the shape of a puma.
Moray, a set of Inca terraces in circular rings, may have been an agricultural experiment station.
The Inca called their empire Tawantinsuyu, meaning "four parts together."
Cyrus the Great founded the Persian Empire around 550 BC, and his Cyrus Cylinder is sometimes called an early statement of human rights.
The Persian Empire was the largest empire of its time.
An inscription on a New York post office about couriers delivering mail through snow and rain comes from the Greek historian Herodotus describing Persian messengers.
Persepolis was a ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire.
Persians built qanats, underground channels that carried water across deserts.
Ancient Persians built yakhchals, dome-shaped structures that stored ice in the desert.
Zoroastrianism was the main religion of the Persian Empire.
The daric was a standardized gold coin of the Persian Empire.
The Persian Empire was divided into provinces called satrapies.
The Persian king Darius I completed a canal connecting the Nile River to the Red Sea.
Vikings didn't wear horned helmets. The idea comes largely from 19th-century opera costumes.
Leif Erikson and the Vikings reached North America around 1000 AD, and their settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Canada is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
"Viking" originally described an activity, sea raiding, not an ethnic group.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are named after Norse gods.
Vikings may have used crystals called sunstones to find the Sun on cloudy days.
Vikings combed their hair and bathed regularly.
Bluetooth technology is named after Viking king Harald Bluetooth.
Iceland's Althing, founded in 930, is one of the world's oldest parliaments.
A 2017 DNA study found that a famous Viking warrior grave in Birka, Sweden, belonged to a woman.
English words like "sky," "egg," and "knife" come from Old Norse.
The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in history.
Genghis Khan was born Temüjin.
The Mongol Empire used a relay system called the yam to deliver messages.
A 2003 genetic study suggested that about 16 million men alive today may be descended from Genghis Khan.
The Mongol Empire was known for religious tolerance.
The Pax Mongolica was a period of increased trade across Asia under Mongol rule, when Marco Polo visited Kublai Khan.
Genghis Khan's tomb has never been found.
The Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty in China used paper money.
"Kamikaze," meaning "divine wind," originally referred to typhoons that wrecked Mongol invasion fleets heading to Japan in the 1200s.
Mongol soldiers traveled with several horses each.