It was domestic problems that tipped the first domino to their downfall. Imperial in-fighting led to wars that axed the Shang Dynasty in the year 1046 B.C., leading to the close of the era during which China’s ancient culture rose to sparkling heights. The Mayan presence in Central America is thousands of years old, but archaeologists like to pin the culture’s real beginnings on the Preclassic period. Around the year 1800 B.C. marked the moment that hunters and gatherers decided to settle down and build permanent homes.

The history of the world doesn’t start and end with these 16 civilizations — the world has stood witness to many other groups who have come and gone over the last 50,000 years. Ancient Egypt developed over at least three and a half millennia. [63] It began with the incipient unification of Nile Valley polities around 3100 BC, traditionally under Menes. [66] The civilisation of ancient Egypt was characterised primarily by intensive agricultural use of the fertile Nile Valley; [67] the use of the Nile itself for transportation; [68] the development of writing systems – first hieroglyphs and then later hieratic and other derived scripts – and literature; [69] the organisation of collective projects such as the pyramids; [70] trade with surrounding regions; [71] and a polytheistic religious tradition that included elaborate funeral customs including mummification. [72] Overseeing these activities were a socio-political and economic elite [73] under the figure of a (semi)-divine ruler from a succession of ruling dynasties. [74] The writing is generally clear and free of grammatical errors. Though the spelling (transliteration) of proper names and technical terms is not always accurate and consistent.Kinzl, Konrad H. (1998). Directory of Ancient Historians in the USA, 2nd ed. Claremont, Calif.: Regina Books. ISBN 978-0-941690-87-4. Archived from the original on 15 February 2010 . Retrieved 24 February 2008. Web edition is constantly updated.

In the 1920s, somebody noticed “old-looking” artifacts near the Indus River, and what started as a single discovery of a small memory led to uncovering of the surprisingly big Indus Valley civilization. Conflict typically arises when people clump together in large societies, but where archaeologists fully expected to find signs of warfare in a civilization this big, there wasn’t a single mangled skeleton, any burnt buildings, or evidence that the Indus people raided other nearby cultures. I did not notice any grammatical errors. However, I am not good at noticing them while reading a book.

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Further information: History of science in early cultures and History of mathematics Ancient technology

The Ancient Egyptians are synonymous with pyramids, mummies, and pharaohs (sometimes all at once), but there exist two more cornerstones of Egyptology — the culture’s distinctive art and a crowd of gods possessed by a rich mythology. First starting with small neolithic villages scattered across the vast landscape, from this cradle came the famous dynasties that first sprouted along the Yellow River in the north.

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The text does not treat non-western peoples seriously. European history is given too much attention. The implication is that only the west matters in history. As many scholars have indicated in recent decades, the centers of the world were in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia before 1500. The Aztec leader, Montezuma, died a suspicious death in custody, and not long after, the man’s nephew expelled the invaders. But Cortés returned again in 1521, and he tore Tenochtitlan to the ground, ending the Aztec civilization. Stager, Lawrence E. (1998). "Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel". In Coogan, Michael D. (ed.). The Oxford History of the Biblical World. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-513937-2. Where ‘Ain Ghazal showcased the huge human shift of the gatherer-farmer transition, Çatalhöyük is the best example known to demonstrate an early urban civilization immersed in agriculture. Wilson, Andrew (2008). "Hydraulic Engineering and Water Supply". In Oleson, John Peter (ed.). Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp.285–318. ISBN 978-0-19-973485-6.