but why did the Old Chinese postulate five elements, when the Ancient Near East -- which may have initiated the idea that natural elements exerted influence in human life and activities -- recognized only four??

Frenzied women like Sibyls from whose lips the god speaks are recorded in the Near East as Mari in the second millennium BC.

There is no agreement on when and where this Urheimat existed, though the language is generally believed to have originated somewhere in or near the region stretching from the Levant / Near East to the area between the Eastern Sahara and the Horn of Africa, including Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan.

From the neolithic age Asia Minor was the route of the forward-Asiatic cultural stream which moved from the Near East to the west and spread the agriculture to the east coasts of Greece and Crete during the 5th millennium BC and then to the Balkan region and the whole of Europe.

It has recently been suggested that the regional decline at the end of the Akkadian period ( and First Intermediary Period of the Ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom ) was associated with rapidly increasing aridity, and failing rainfall in the region of the Ancient Near East, caused by a global centennial-scale drought.

* Cities of the ancient Near East

Category: Ancient Near East

As with the West Africa theory, this idea does not have the backing of serious historians, nor contemporary written records of the time in the Near East.

* Van de Mieroop, Mark ( 2004 ): A History of the Ancient Near East, Oxford.

Muwaffaq al-Din Muhammad ' Abd al-Latif ibn Yusuf al-Baghdadi (; 1162 – 1231 ), more commonly known as ' Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi or ' Abdallatif al-Baghdadi (), born in Baghdad, Iraq, was a celebrated physician, historian, Egyptologist and traveller, and one of the most voluminous writers of the Near East in his time.

* Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East by Theodor Gaster.

The destruction of cities by foreign invaders, and its resulting catastrophic suffering, unfortunately, was very common in the ancient Near East and, therefore, we can observe examples of the lament form / genre concerning destroyed cities and temples from extra-biblical sources, particularly from early Sumerian Literature dating to the late third and early second millennia BC.

According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Egypt ( hieroglyphs ), the Near East ( cuneiform )— and the Mediterranean, with the Mycenaean culture ( Linear B )— had viable writing systems.

At that time, Sloane's collection consisted of around 71, 000 objects of all kinds including some 40, 000 printed books, 7, 000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants, prints and drawings including those by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Ancient Near and Far East and the Americas.

Ethnographical fieldwork was carried out in places as diverse as New Guinea, Madagascar, Romania, Guatemala and Indonesia and there were excavations in the Near East, Egypt, Sudan and the UK.

Formerly the Department of the Ancient Near East, with a collection numbering some 330, 000 works, the British Museum possesses by far the world's largest and most important collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq.

The collections represent the civilisations of the ancient Near East and its adjacent areas.

This haplogroup, rare in Europe, has its highest concentration in Ethiopia and in the Near East ( Jordan, Yemen ).

A total of twenty Ptolemaic constellations are directly continued from the Ancient Near East.

Parallels to the earliest Babylonian ( Sumerian ) star catalogues suggest that the ancient Chinese system did not arise independently from that of the Ancient Near East.

Skeat “… in at least three cases and probably in all, in the form of codices " and he theorized that this form of notebook was invented in Rome and then “… must have spread rapidly to the Near East …” In his discussion of one of the earliest pagan parchment codices to survive from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, Eric Turner seems to challenge Skeat ’ s notion when stating “… its mere existence is evidence that this book form had a prehistory ” and that “ early experiments with this book form may well have taken place outside of Egypt .” Early codices of parchment or papyrus appear to have been widely used as personal notebooks, for instance in recording copies of letters sent ( Cicero Fam.

The Chaldeans, like the rest of Mesopotamia and much of the ancient Near East and Asia Minor, from the 10th to late 7th centuries BC, came to be dominated by the vast Assyrian Empire, based in northern Mesopotamia.

" Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin 50 ( 2005 ): 15-26.

The Chicago River is the south border ( right ) of the Near North Side, Chicago | Near North Side and Streeterville and the north border ( left ) of Chicago Loop, Lakeshore East and Illinois Center ( from Lake Shore Drive's Link Bridge with Trump International Hotel and Tower ( Chicago ) | Trump International Hotel and Tower at jog in the river in the center )

Near the southern entrance to the city lies a ' rubbish mountain ' called the Makab, a 600, 000 cubic meter heap that reaches the height of a four-storey building.

It is believed to be about 5, 600 years old, and to have arrived with the Neolithic expansion from the Near East.

The major exception is the 4, 600, 000 Palestinian refugees under the authority of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East ( UNRWA ).

Near Glacier Point there is 2, 000 feet ( 600 m ) of mostly glacial sediment with at least six separate sequences of Lake Yosemite sediments.

This show had an attendance of over 3, 600 people and was widely released in 2004 as the double disk set The End Is Here, alongside The End Is Near.

Near Stolk-Helligbek, about 10 kilometers north of Schleswig, pursuing Austrians reached them, and in heavy fighting near Oversø, the 9th and 20th Regiments of the 8th Brigade lost 600 men dead, injured and captured.

Near The Palace of Auburn Hills, 50, 600 vehicles used the roadway on average in 2007.

The earliest definite evidence for its cultivation in the Near East is at the Iron Age levels at Tille Hoyuk in Turkey, with an uncorrected radiocarbon date of about 600 BC.

Luby's has its headquarters in Suite 600 of the 13111 Northwest Freeway building in the Near Northwest district and in Houston, Texas.

Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period ( early centuries AD ) and China until the 17th century.

The history of the Ancient Near East begins in the Lower Paleolithic period, and ends with either the arrival of the Achaemenid Empire in the late 6th century BC, or with the Arab Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia and the establishment of the Caliphate in the late 7th century AD, from which point the region came to be known as Iraq.

The second half of the millennium is characterized as the Early Middle Ages in Europe, and marked by the Viking expansion in the west, the rise of the Byzantine Empire in the east, and by the Islamic conquests throughout the Near East, North Africa and the Iberian peninsula, culminating in the Islamic Golden Age ( 700 – 1200 AD ).

Travel throughout the Mediterranean and Near East, especially for scholarly purposes, was popular during this era and was facilitated by the relative peace enjoyed throughout the reign of Augustus ( 27 BC – AD 14 ).

* Antonine Plague, an ancient pandemic in 165 – 189 AD brought to the Roman Empire by troops returning from campaigns in the Near East

Near the Bourne Spring two Roman buildings were discovered ; one was a bath-house dating from about AD 270 and the other a house of later date.

Near the fourteenth century AD, Māori arrived in Heretaunga or Hawke's Bay, settling in the river valleys and along the coast where food was plentiful.

** “ A Total Near Death Experience ,” written by Alan Grant, art by Barry Kitson, in 2000 AD # 629 – 630 ( 1989 )

Near the end of Wang Mang's Xin Dynasty ( AD 9 – AD 23 ), Lü Zhi's body was desecrated by Chimei rebels when they raided Gaozu's tomb.

* The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813.

From its origin as a city-state in Italy in the 8th century BC, to its rise as an empire covering much of Southern Europe, Western Europe, Near East and North Africa and fall in the 5th century AD, the political history of Ancient Rome was typically closely entwined with its military history.

Near East in 500 AD, showing the Sabirs and neighboring peoples.

The rise of Rome to dominate the overt politics of Europe, North Africa and the Near East completely from the 1st century BC to the 4th century AD, is the subject of a great deal of analysis by historians, military strategists, political scientists and increasingly also some economists.

* Christopher Lillington-Martin, " Archaeological and Ancient Literary Evidence for a Battle near Dara Gap, Turkey, AD 530: Topography, Texts & Trenches ", British Archaeological Reports ( BAR ) – S1717, 2007 The Late Roman Army in the Near East from Diocletian to the Arab Conquest Proceedings of a colloquium held at Potenza, Acerenza and Matera, Italy ( May 2005 ) edited by Ariel S. Lewin and Pietrina Pellegrini with the aid of Zbigniew T. Fiema and Sylvain Janniard.

Near the city emperor Diocletian, born in Salona, built the Diocletian's Palace ( around year 300 AD ), which is the largest and most important monument of late antique architecture in the World.

Near East in 565 AD, showing the Ghassanids and their neighbors.

The Antonine Plague, AD 165 – 180, also known as the Plague of Galen, who described it, was an ancient pandemic, either of smallpox or measles, brought back to the Roman Empire by troops returning from campaigns in the Near East.

Near to Carnoustie can be found the souterrains at Carlungie and Ardestie, which date from around the 2nd century AD.

Near Fertőrákos there are two Roman villas and a 3rd century AD Mithras temple open to visitors.

Near East in 700 AD, showing Makuria and its neighbors

Near East in 565 AD, showing Alodia and its neighbors.

Near East in 480 AD, showing Nobatia and its neighbors.