The history of ancient Israel and Judah begins in the Southern Levant region of Western Asia during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. The earliest known reference to "Israel" as a people or tribal confederation is in the Merneptah Stele, an inscription from ancient Egypt that dates to about 1208 BCE, but the people group may be older. According to modern archaeology, ancient Israelite culture developed as an outgrowth from the pre-existing Canaanite civilization. Two related Israelite polities known as the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) and the Kingdom of Judah had emerged in the region by Iron Age II.
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Copper and Bronze Ages. It has also been considered as the final Age of the three-age division starting with prehistory and progressing to protohistory. In this usage, it is preceded by the Stone Age and Bronze Age. These concepts originated in describing Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East, but they now include other parts of the Old World.
The La Tène culture was a European Iron Age culture. It developed and flourished during the late Iron Age, succeeding the early Iron Age Hallstatt culture without any definite cultural break, under considerable Mediterranean influence from the Greeks in pre-Roman Gaul, the Etruscans, and the Golasecca culture, but whose artistic style nevertheless did not depend on those Mediterranean influences.
The Sarmatians were a large confederation of ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic peoples of classical antiquity who dominated the Pontic steppe from about the 3rd century BC to the 4th century AD.
The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished c. 2000–1150 BC, spanning from the southern Urals to the upper Yenisei River in central Siberia. Some researchers have preferred to term it an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon. The slightly older Sintashta culture, formerly included within the Andronovo culture, is now considered separately to Early Andronovo cultures. New research shows Andronovo culture's first stage could have begun at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, with cattle grazing, as natural fodder was by no means difficult to find in the pastures close to dwellings.
Tel Hazor, also Chatsôr, translated in LXX as Hasōr, named in Arabic Tell Waqqas / Tell Qedah el-Gul, is an archaeological tell at the site of ancient Hazor, located in Israel, Upper Galilee, north of the Sea of Galilee, in the northern Korazim Plateau. From the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age, Hazor was the largest fortified city in the region and one of the most important in the Fertile Crescent. It maintained commercial ties with Babylon and Syria, and imported large quantities of tin for the bronze industry. In the Book of Joshua, Hazor is described as "the head of all those kingdoms". Though some scholars do not consider the Book of Joshua to be historically accurate, archaeological excavations have emphasized its importance.
Poltavka culture was an early to middle Bronze Age archaeological culture which flourished on the Volga-Ural steppe and the forest steppe in 2800—2200 BCE.
Sintashta is an archaeological site in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. It is the remains of a fortified settlement dating to the Bronze Age, c. 2800–1600 BC, and is the type site of the Sintashta culture. The site has been characterised as a "fortified metallurgical industrial center."
The states called Neo-Hittite, Syro-Hittite, or Luwian-Aramean, were Luwian and Aramean regional polities of the Iron Age, situated in southeastern parts of modern Turkey and northwestern parts of modern Syria, known in ancient times as lands of Hatti and Aram. They arose following the collapse of the Hittite New Kingdom in the 12th century BCE, and lasted until they were subdued by the Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE. They are grouped together by scholars, on the basis of several cultural criteria, that are recognized as similar and mutually shared between both societies, northern (Luwian) and southern (Aramaean). Cultural exchange between those societies is seen as a specific regional phenomenon, particularly in light of significant linguistic distinctions between the two main regional languages, with Luwian belonging to the Anatolian group of Indo-European languages and Aramaic belonging to the Northwest Semitic group of Semitic languages. Several questions related to the regional grouping of Luwian and Aramaean states are viewed differently among scholars, including some views that are critical towards such grouping in general.
The history of Nigeria before 1500 has been divided into its prehistory, Iron Age, and flourishing of its kingdoms and states. Acheulean tool-using archaic humans may have dwelled throughout West Africa since at least between 780,000 BP and 126,000 BP. Middle Stone Age West Africans likely dwelled continuously in West Africa between MIS 4 and MIS 2, and Iwo Eleru people persisted at Iwo Eleru as late as 13,000 BP. West African hunter-gatherers occupied western Central Africa earlier than 32,000 BP, dwelled throughout coastal West Africa by 12,000 BP, and migrated northward between 12,000 BP and 8000 BP as far as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania. The Dufuna canoe, a dugout canoe found in northern Nigeria has been dated to around 6556-6388 BCE and 6164-6005 BCE, making it the oldest known boat in Africa and the second oldest worldwide.
Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5,000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
Arzhan is a site of early Saka kurgan burials in the Tuva Republic, Russia, some 60 kilometers (40 mi) northwest of Kyzyl. It is on a high plateau traversed by the Uyuk River, a minor tributary of the Yenisei River, in the region of Tuva, 20 km to the southwest of the city of Turan.
The Sintashta culture is a Middle Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Southern Urals, dated to the period c. 2200–1900 BCE. It is the first phase of the Sintashta–Petrovka complex, c. 2200–1750 BCE. The culture is named after the Sintashta archaeological site, in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, and spreads through Orenburg Oblast, Bashkortostan, and Northern Kazakhstan. The Sintashta culture is thought to represent an eastward migration of peoples from the Corded Ware culture. It is widely regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian languages, whose speakers originally referred to themselves as the Arya. The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare. Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture. Among the main features of the Sintashta culture are high levels of militarism and extensive fortified settlements, of which 23 are known.
Kaman-Kalehöyük is a multi-period archaeological site in Kırşehir Province, Turkey, around 100 km south east of Ankara, 6 km east of the town center of Kaman. It is a tell or mound site that was occupied during the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Ottoman periods. Excavations in the mound have been carried out since 1986 under the direction of Sachihiro Omura, on behalf of the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan and the Japanese Anatolian Archeology Institute. The distance to Hattusa, the Hittite capital, is about 100 km.
The Ingala Valley is an archaeological district in the area between the Tobol and Iset rivers. It is the largest one in the south of the Tyumen Oblast, and belongs to the Iset cultural and historical province. It has 177 kurgans, 55 archaeological sites of federal significance and 5 regional natural monuments.
The Eburran industry is the name of an East African tool assemblage that dates from 13,000 BCE and thereafter, found around Lake Nakuru in the Ol Doinyo Eburru volcano complex in the Rift Valley, Kenya.
The UAE's Iron Age I spanned 1,200–1,000 BCE; Iron Age II, 1,000–600 BCE and Iron Age III from 600–300 BCE. This was followed by the Hellenistic Mleiha era, from 300 BCE onwards through to the Islamic era which commenced with the culmination of the 7th century Ridda Wars.
The Sauromatian culture was an Iron Age culture of horse nomads in the area of the lower Volga River to the southern Ural Mountain, in southern Russia, dated to the 6th to 4th centuries BCE. Archaeologically, the Sauromatian period itself is sometimes also called the "Blumenfeld period", and is followed by a transitional Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian period, also called the "Prokhorov period".
The Filippovka kurgans are Late-Sauromatian to Early-Sarmatian culture kurgans, forming "a transition site between the Sauromation and the Sarmatian epochs", just north of the Caspian Sea in the Orenburg region of Russia, dated to the second half of the 5th century and the 4th century BCE.
The Itkul culture is one of these Early Saka culture, based in the eastern foothills of the Urals. The Itkul culture was part of an East to West mouvement of Asiatic Saka tribes towards the Ural regions during the Iron Age period. Other Saka groups, such as the Tasmola culture circa 600 BCE, were also involved in similar mouvements and settled in the southern Urals.
