The earliest written forms of dao are bronzeware script and seal script characters from Zhou Dynasty ( 1045 – 256 BCE ) bronzes and writings.

These bronzes which were used as vessels, amulets, pendants and sacrificial tools, are among some of the earliest made bronzes ever found in Nigeria.

Images of an ancient bird have appeared in China for over 4, 000 years, the earliest as Shang Dynasty pottery motifs, then appearing decorating bronzes, as well as jade figurines ( many of the most beautiful from the Liao Period ).

The late Shang oracle bone writings, along with a few contemporary characters in a different style cast in bronzes, constitute the earliest significant corpus of Chinese writing, which is essential for the study of Chinese etymology, as Shang writing is directly ancestral to the modern Chinese script.

The phenomenon of giving a high value to ancient artifacts is found in other cultures, notably China, where Chinese ritual bronzes, three to two thousand years old, have been avidly collected and imitated for centuries, and the Pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica, where in particular the artifacts of the earliest Olmec civilization are found reburied in significant sites of later cultures up to the Spanish Conquest.

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.

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 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 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 allusion to pandeism found to date is in 1787, in translator Gottfried Große ’ s interpretation of Pliny the Elder ’ s Natural History:

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.

His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic.

Leonardo studied the flight of birds in developing engineering schematics for some of the earliest flying machines in the late fifteenth century.

The first authoritative knowledge of the earliest ballroom dances was recorded toward the end of the 16th century, when Jehan Tabourot, under the pen name " Thoinot-Arbeau ", published in 1588 his Orchésographie, a study of late 16th-century French renaissance social dance.

The earliest parts of the book are possibly chapters 2 – 11, the story of the conquest ; more certain is that this section was then incorporated into an early form of Joshua that was part of then original Deuteronomistic history, written late in the reign of king Josiah ( reigned 640 – 609 BCE ); it seems clear that the book was not completed until after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586, and possibly not until after the return from the Babylonian exile late in the 6th century.

He was one of the earliest founders and movement leaders of the Mujahideen in the late 1970s, right before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

One of the earliest controversies to center on BJU was the break that occurred in the late 1950s between separatist fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals represented by the newly prominent evangelist Billy Graham.

The earliest known record of " Chicano " was thought to be in the late 19th or turn of the 20th century in Northwest Indiana.

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 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 earliest evidence, anywhere in the world, for a crank and connecting rod in a machine appears in the late Roman Hierapolis sawmill from the 3rd century AD and two Roman stone sawmills at Gerasa, Roman Syria, and Ephesus, Asia Minor ( both 6th century AD ).

" Although several twigs of dill were found in the tomb of Amenhotep II, they reported the earliest archeological evidence for its cultivation comes from late Neolithic lakeshore settlements in Switzerland.

Another important source appears to have been Apuleius's The Golden Ass, one of the earliest known novels, a picaresque from late classical antiquity.

The earliest account of Cornish tin mining was written by Pytheas of Massilia late in the 4th century BC after his circumnavigation of the British Isles.

In the late mid-sixteenth century, among groups of English Protestant exiles fleeing from Queen Mary I, some of the earliest anti-monarchist publications emerged.

It is a social dance form, which has earliest documented instances in the late 16th century.

Attested as early as the late 15th century BC, it is the earliest known form of Greek ( its precursor, Linear A, has not been deciphered to this day ).

The terminus ad quem, or latest possible date, for Luke is bound by the earliest papyri manuscripts that contains portions of Luke ( late 2nd / early 3rd century )< ref > P < sup > 4 </ sup >, P < sup > 45 </ sup >, P < sup > 69 </ sup >, P < sup > 75 </ sup >, and P < sup > 111 </ sup ></ ref > and the mid to late 2nd century writings that quote or reference Luke.

The earliest compulsory education in the West began in the late 17th century and early 18th century in the German states of Gotha, Calemberg and, particularly, Prussia.

The late direct Capetian kings were considerably more powerful and influential than the earliest ones.

Although some books ( in particular guidebooks ) suggest that the mazes on cathedral floors served as substitutes for pilgrimage paths, the earliest attested use of the phrase " chemin de Jerusalem " ( path to Jerusalem ) dates to the late 18th century when it was used to describe mazes at Reims and Saint-Omer.

Some books ( guidebooks in particular ) suggest that mazes on cathedral floors originated in the medieval period as alternatives to pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but the earliest attested use of the phrase " chemin de Jerusalem " ( path to Jerusalem ) dates to the late 18th century when it was used to describe mazes at Reims and Saint-Omer.