It is generally agreed that " Unlike the Vedas, which have to be preserved letter-perfect, the epic was a popular work whose reciters would inevitably conform to changes in language and style ," so the earliest surviving components of this dynamic text are believed to be no older than the earliest external references we have to the epic, which may include an allusion in Panini's fourth century BCE grammar ( Ashtādhyāyī 4: 2: 56 ).

The earliest surviving documented allusion to Yeading dates from 757 AD, in which year Æthelbald of Mercia made a land grant which mentioned Geddinges ( Yeading ) and Fiscesburne ( Crane or Yeading Brook ).

The earliest allusion to spoken Georgian may be a passage of the Roman grammarian Marcus Cornelius Fronto in the 2nd century AD: Fronto imagines the Iberians addressing the emperor Marcus Aurelius in their incomprehensible tongue.

The earliest Catholic allusion to the custom of marking this week as a whole with special observances is to be found in the Apostolical Constitutions ( v. 18, 19 ), dating from the latter half of the 3rd century and 4th century.

What may perhaps be the earliest known allusion to the Donation is in a letter of 778, in which Pope Hadrian I exhorts Charlemagne to follow Constantine's example and endow the Roman church.

The earliest known evidence of this flag was recorded by Davies Gilbert in his 1838 work: ' The Parochial History of Cornwall ', where he gives reference to .." a white cross on a black ground was formerly the banner of St Perran and the Standard of Cornwall ; probably with some allusion to the black ore and the white metal of tin "

This is the earliest known printed allusion to Shakespeare by name ( aside from the title pages of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece ).

William Langland's famous 14th century poem The Visions of Piers Plowman ( 1362 ) was inspired by the Malvern Hills and the earliest poetic allusion to them occurs in the poem And on a Maye mornynge on Malverne hylles.

There is an allusion to the ballad in Beaumont and Fletcher's play The Knight of the Burning Pestle ( 1613 ); this is the earliest known reference.

This reference suggests that bans against football were unsuccessful and the listing of football players as a " fraternity " is the earliest allusion to what might be considered a football club.

In a tour around the stacks, he found that the earliest volumes began on the left and progressed clockwise around the room.

The earliest attested name is the Hittite Assuwa a region in central-western Anatolia which seems to be connected with the Mycenean Greek epithet a-si-wi-ja in Linear B inscriptions found at Pylos.

The earliest anchors were probably rocks, and many rock anchors have been found dating from at least the Bronze Age.

Trees from the earliest fortifications found in Germania Inferior are dated by dendrochronology to 99 / 100.

The earliest remains hitherto found on the site are tombs of the early Iron Age period of Graeco-Phoenician influences ( 1000-600 B. C .).

The earliest mention of the island of Abadan, if not the port itself is found in works of the geographer Marcian, who renders the name " Apphadana ".

Accounting is thousands of years old ; the earliest accounting records, which date back more than 7, 000 years, were found in Mesopotamia ( Assyrians ).

The earliest accounting records were found amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon, Assyria and Sumeria, which date back more than 7, 000 years.

The earliest evidence of settlements in the area of today's Berlin are a wooden beam dated from approximately 1192 and leftovers of wooden houseparts dated to 1174 found in a 2012 digging in Berlin Mitte.

The earliest beads were made of convenient natural materials ; when found, these could be readily drilled and shaped.

The earliest evidence for fist fighting with any kind of gloves can be found on Minoan Crete ( c. 1500 – 900 BC ), and on Sardinia, if we consider the boxing statues of Prama mountains ( c. 2000 – 1000 BC ).

The earliest Christian interpretations of Jonah are found in the Gospel of Matthew ( see and 16: 1-4 ) and the Gospel of Luke ( see Luke 11: 29-32 ).

One of the earliest accounts relating to a large unknown freshwater animal was in 1818, when Hamilton Hume and James Meehan found some large bones at Lake Bathurst in New South Wales.

One of the earliest evidence of Hindu influence in Southeast Asia were stone pillars which bear inscriptions in the Pallava script found in Kutai along the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan, dating to around the second half of the 300s AD.

Before this discovery, it is widely believed that bricks appeared about 3000 years ago in the Western Zhou dynasty since the earliest bricks were found in Western Zhou ruins.

Named " Baraka ", its earliest colonizers are later driven out by rivals from Al-Andalus and flee to the Loire Valley, where they found the city of Nsara.

The earliest account describing a possible plague epidemic is found in I Samuel 5: 6 of the Hebrew Bible ( Tanakh ).

All of the earliest chordate fossils have been found in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna, and include two species that are regarded as fish, which implies they are vertebrates.

Excavations in modern-day Iraq by Ernest de Sarzec in 1877 found evidence of the earliest known code of justice, issued by the Sumerian king Urukagina of Lagash ca 2300 BC.

According to Emile Benveniste ( 1954 ), the earliest written occurrence in English of civilisation in its modern sense may be found in Adam Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society ( Edinburgh, 1767 – p. 2 ): " Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation.

The earliest known Wiccan version is found in a document dating from the late 1940s, Gereald Gardner's ritual notebook titled Ye Bok of Ye Art Magical ( fomerly in the collection of Ripley's International, Toronto ).

The earliest handheld crossbow stocks with bronze trigger, dating from the 6th century BC, comes from Tomb 3 and 12 found at Qufu, Shandong, capital of the State of Lu.

The earliest evidence of the Chinese calendar is found on the oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty ( late second millennium BC ), which seem to describe a lunisolar year of 12 months, with a possible intercalary 13th, or even 14th, added empirically to prevent calendar drift.

The two oldest printed Chinese calendars are dated 877 and 882 ; they were found at the Buddhist pilgrimage site of Dunhuang ; Patricia Ebrey writes that it is no surprise that some of the earliest printed items were calendars, since the Chinese found it necessary to calculate and mark which days were auspicious and which were not.

The earliest records in the Akkadian language date to the time of Sargon.

The earliest " year names ", whereby each year of a king's reign was named after a significant event performed by that king, date from the reign of Sargon the Great.

While the earliest artifacts date to the Middle Neolithic era, there have been documented habitations in Attica from the Early Neolithic ( 6th millennium BC ).

While there are many competing claims for the earliest powered, heavier-than-air flight, the most widely-accepted date is December 17, 1903 by the Wright brothers.

A small indicator about the earliest possible date may be in which mentions the Province of Cilicia.

According to Richard I. Pervo, " Townsend's methodologically adventurous but ultimately cautious essay is another valuable lesson in the danger of establishing the date of Acts – or any work – by arguing for the earliest possible time of origin.

The earliest known date for a simple glue is 200, 000 BC and for a compound glue 70, 000 BC.

The earlier date, 293, is sometimes assigned and apparently supported by the authority of a " Coptic Fragment " ( published by Dr. O. von Lemm among the Mémoires de l ' académie impériale des sciences de S. Péterbourg, 1888 ) and corroborated by the maturity revealed in his two earliest treatises Contra Gentes ( Against the Heathens ) and De Incarnatione ( On the Incarnation ), which were admittedly written about the year 318 before Arianism had begun to make itself felt, as those writings do not show an awareness of Arianism.

The earliest tours date back to 1888, when a 21-man squad visited Australia and New Zealand.

The earliest tin-alloy bronzes date to the late 4th millennium BC in Susa ( Iran ) and some ancient sites in China, Luristan ( Iran ) and Mesopotamia ( Iraq ).

The earliest bronze archeological finds in Indonesia date from 1 – 2 BCE, including flat plates probably suspended and struck by a wooden or bone mallet.

The last events in Chronicles take place in the reign of Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who conquered Babylon in 539 BCE ; this sets an earliest possible date for the book.

Determining the composition of the Memorial depends on the dates of Nehemiah's mission: It is commonly accepted that " Artaxerxes " was Artaxerxes I ( there were two later kings of the same name ), and that Nehemiah's first period in Jerusalem was therefore 445-433 BC ; allowing for his return to Susa and second journey to Jerusalem, the end of the 5th century BC is therefore the earliest possible date for the Memorial.

Those who favour the later date appeal to the earliest external testimony, that of the Christian father Irenaeus ( c. 150-202 ), who wrote that he received his information from people who knew John personally.

The earlier date, first proposed in modern times by John Robinson in a closely argued chapter of " Redating the New Testament " ( 1976 ), relies on the book's internal evidence, given that no external testimony exists earlier than that of Irenaeus, noted above, and the earliest extant manuscript evidence of Revelation ( P98 ) is likewise dated no earlier than the late 2nd century.

( The latter prohibition took effect 1 January 1808, the earliest date on which Congress had the power to do so under Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution.

The earliest reasonably reliable date for the crossbow in the Greek world is from the 5th century BC.

The sweet chocolate residue found in jars from the site of Puerto Escondido in Honduras from around 1100 BC is the earliest found evidence of the use of cacao to date.

The earliest genealogical records of the descendants of Cináed mac Ailpín may date from the end of the tenth century, but their value lies more in their context, and the information they provide about the interests of those for whom they were compiled, than in the unreliable claims they contain.

The earliest genealogical records of the descendants of Kenneth MacAlpin may date from the end of the 10th century, but their value lies more in their context, and the information they provide about the interests of those for whom they were compiled, than in the unreliable claims they contain.

The earliest known Eskimo cultures ( pre-Dorset ) date to 5, 000 years ago.

The earliest references to the Euphrates come from cuneiform texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq and date to the mid-3rd millennium BCE.