but all too many observers have been misled by this fact into minimizing the degree of change which took place in the early first millennium.

no strikingly effective element of speech in the extant poems can with assurance be said not to have been a commonplace in the vaster epic corpus that may have existed at the beginning of the first millennium before Christ.

Speakers of the Akkadian language seem to have already been present in Mesopotamia at the dawn of the historical period, and soon achieved preeminence with the first Dynasty of Kish and numerous localities to the north of Sumer, where rulers with Akkadian names had already established themselves by the 3rd millennium BC.

During 248 AD, Philip the Arab celebrated Rome's first millennium, together with Ludi saeculares for Rome's alleged tenth saeculum.

During the later part of first millennium BC the use of brass spread across a wide geographical area from Britain and Spain in the west to Iran, and India in the east.

The worship of deities symbolized by the female breast in Greece became less common during the first millennium.

During the middle of the first millennium BC, Greek culture experienced a gradual change in the perception of female breasts.

The absence of native British literature during the early part of the first millennium means that Britain owes its knowledge of Boudica's rebellion solely to the writings of the Romans.

According to ancient Chinese, Indian and Javanese manuscripts, western coastal cities of Borneo had become trading ports, part of their trade routes, since the first millennium.

In ancient Greece, beginning in the early 1st millennium AD, there emerged independent city-states that evolved for the first time the notion of citizenship, becoming in the process the archetype of the free city, the polis.

Beginning in the first millennium AD, groups of Amerindians developed a political system, the cacicazgo, a pyramidal power structure headed by a cacique.

However, the origins of the modern city is generally traced back to a series of settlements in the first millennium.

The three finds push back the date of the invention of the crank and connecting rod back by a full millennium ; for the first time, all essential components of the much later steam engine were assembled by one technological culture:

This corresponds closely with the position of the Pharisee school of thought led by Shammai, at the start of the first millennium, with which Jesus would have been familiar.

The emergence of metallurgy occurred first in the Fertile Crescent, where it gave rise to the Bronze Age in the 4th millennium BC.

During the first millennium BCE in India, many texts were composed which attempted to codify aspects of daily life.

Docetism largely died out during the first millennium AD.

West Cornwall, around Mount's Bay, was traditionally thought to have been visited by metal traders from the eastern Mediterranean During the first millennium BC trade became more organised, first with the Phoenicians, who settled Gades ( Cadiz ) around 1100 BC, and later with the Greeks, who had settled Massilia ( Marseilles ) and Narbo ( Narbonne ) around 600 BC.

Thus, it is estimated that the Korean dolmens were built in the first millennium BC.

It has been used as an honored academic title for over a millennium in Europe, where it dates back to the rise of the first universities.

Approximately at the turn of the first millennium the Romans conquered the area and incorporated it into the province of Rhaetia.

Central areas of Eritrea and most tribes in today's northern Ethiopia share a common background and cultural heritage in the Kingdom of Aksum ( and its successor dynasties ) of the first millennium ( as well as the first millennium BC kingdom of D ’ mt ), and in its Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church ( today, with an autocephalous Eritrean branch ), as well as in its Ge ' ez language.

It is first attested by an inscription dated to 1224 or 1225 AD and by the Secret History of the Mongols, written in 1228 ( see Mongolic languages ).

Japanese is first attested in a few short inscriptions from the 5th century AD, such as the Inariyama Sword.

The first substantial text in Japanese, however, is the Kojiki, which dates from 712 AD.

Thus at the first Council of Constantinople, AD 448, 23 archimandrites or abbots sign, with 30 bishops.

The first case recorded of the partial exemption of an abbot from episcopal control is that of Faustus, abbot of Lerins, at the council of Arles, AD 456 ; but the exorbitant claims and exactions of bishops, to which this repugnance to episcopal control is to be traced, far more than to the arrogance of abbots, rendered it increasingly frequent, and, in the 6th century, the practice of exempting religious houses partly or altogether from episcopal control, and making them responsible to the pope alone, received an impulse from Pope Gregory the Great.

Aphrodite figures as a secondary character in the Tale of Eros and Psyche, which first appeared as a digressive story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius ' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the second century AD.

Augustus (, September 23, 63 BC – August 19, 14 AD ) was the founder of the Roman Empire and its first Emperor, ruling from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.

Saint Alcuin had a long career as a teacher and scholar, first at the school at York, founded in AD 627 ( now known as St Peter's School, York ) and later as Charlemagne's leading advisor on ecclesiastical and educational matters.

Vipsania Agrippina or most commonly known as Agrippina Major or Agrippina the Elder ( Major Latin for the elder, Classical Latin:, 14 BC – 17 October 33 ) was a distinguished and prominent Roman woman of the first century AD.

Anaxagoras wrote a book of philosophy, but only fragments of the first part of this have survived, through preservation in work of Simplicius of Cilicia in the sixth century AD.

The first Archbishop of Canterbury was St Augustine ( not to be confused with St Augustine of Hippo ), who arrived in Kent in 597 AD, having been sent by Pope Gregory I on a mission to the English.

Claudius was the first to hold magnificent celebrations in honour of the city's anniversary, in 48 AD, 800 years after the founding of the city.

* Tiberius Plautius Silvanus Aelianus, adopted nephew of Plautia Urgulanilla, first wife of Claudius ; consul 45 and 74 AD

The first known mention of the word was in the third century AD in a book called Liber Medicinalis ( sometimes known as De Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima ) by Quintus Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who prescribed that malaria sufferers wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of a triangle:

The high content of zinc in coinage and brass objects declined after the first century AD and it has been suggested that this reflects zinc loss during recycling and thus an interruption in the production of new brass.

Conversely the use of true brass seems to have declined in Western Europe during this period in favour of gunmetals and other mixed alloys but by the end of the first Millennium AD brass artefacts are found in Scandinavian graves in Scotland, brass was being used in the manufacture of coins in Northumbria and there is archaeological and historical evidence for the production of brass in Germany and The Low Countries areas rich in calamine ore which would remain important centres of brass making throughout the medieval period, especially Dinant – brass objects are still collectively known as dinanterie in French.

The Batavi were an ancient Germanic tribe, originally part of the Chatti, that lived around the Rhine delta, in the area that the Romans called Batavia and that is currently the Netherlands, from the second half of the first century BC to the third century AD.

They were first divided into separate books by the early Christian scholar Origen, in the 3rd century AD, and the separation became entrenched in the 5th century AD when it was followed by Jerome in his Latin translation of the Bible.

The " Bikini girls " mosaic showing women exercising, first quarter of the 4th century AD.

Sixty years ago most archaeologists believed that brochs, usually regarded as castles, were built by immigrants who had been displaced and pushed northward, first by the intrusions of Belgic tribes into what is now south-east England towards the end of the second century BC and later by the Roman invasion of southern Britain from AD 43 onwards.

Most accounts incorrectly attribute this story to Herodotus ; actually, the story first appears in Plutarch's On the Glory of Athens in the 1st century AD, who quotes from Heracleides of Pontus's lost work, giving the runner's name as either Thersipus of Erchius or Eucles.

The Jewish people still await the Messiah's first coming, while Christians await his second coming, when they believe he will fulfill those parts of Messianic prophecy left unfulfilled in the first century AD.