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.

In the first millennium AD, an urban tradition developed in the Khmer region of Cambodia, where Angkor grew into one of the largest cities ( in area ) of the world.

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.

In the first large-scale depictions during the early archaic period ( 640 – 580 BC ), the artists tried to draw one's attention to look into the interior of the face and the body which were not represented as lifeless masses, but as being full of life.

The period 2700 – 2300 BC saw the first appearance of the Sumerian abacus, a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system.

During the Achaemenid Persian Empire, around 600 BC the Persians first began to use the abacus.

The first known references to mouth rinsing is in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, about 2700 BC, for treatment of gingivitis.

The oldest known name for Anatolia, " Land of the Hatti " was found for the first time on Mesopotamic cuneiform tablets from the period of the Akkadian dynasty ( 2350 – 2150 BC ).

Anatolia is known as the birthplace of minted coinage ( as opposed to unminted coinage, which first appears in Mesopotamia at a much earlier date ) as a medium of exchange, some time in the 7th century BC in Lydia.

This month was originally named Sextilis in Latin, because it was the sixth month in the original ten-month Roman calendar under Romulus in 753 BC, when March was the first month of the year.

: Leucippus ( first half of 5th century BC )

The first known smelting of iron began in Anatolia, around 1800 BC.

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.

* 1457 BC – Likely date of the Battle of Megiddo between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh, the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail.

Amber is discussed by Theophrastus, possibly the first historical mention of the material, in the 4th century BC.

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.

2285 – 2250 BC, is the first poet in history whom we know by name.

At first unsuccessful, Alexander finally defeated Demetrius Soter in 150 BC.

He won his first Lenaean victory in the 350s BC, most likely, where he was sixth after Eubulus, and fourth after Antiphanes.

The excavators discovered the final stage of the Temple of Aphrodite, also known as Aphrodisias, which dates approximately to the first century BC.

Amos, an older contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah, was active c. 750 BC during the reign of Jeroboam II, making the Book of Amos the first biblical prophetic book written.

After a first unsuccessful attempt at colonisation in 497 BC by the Milesian Tyrant Histiaeus, the Athenians founded a first colony at Ennea-Hodoi (‘ Nine Ways ’) in 465, but these first ten thousand colonists were massacred by the Thracians.

The first nine probably date from the 3rd century BC, they are usually included among the Cynic epistles, and reflect how the Cynic philosophers viewed him as prefiguring many of their ideas ; the tenth letter is quoted by Diogenes Laertius, it is addressed to Croesus, the proverbially rich king of Lydia, it too is fictitious:

* Livius Andronicus ( c. 284 BC – 204 BC ), introduced drama to the Romans and produced the first formal play in Latin in c. 240 BC