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Ancient World: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
The First Cities
Some of the first cities grew in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, over 5,000 years ago. Uruk may have held tens of thousands of people.
Key fact
Mesopotamia means “land between the rivers”.
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt grew along the Nile for about 3,000 years. Its rulers, the pharaohs, built pyramids and temples, and scribes wrote in hieroglyphs.
Key fact
Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing than to the Great Pyramid’s building.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was a patchwork of city-states like Athens and Sparta. Athens tried an early form of democracy about 2,500 years ago.
Key fact
Athens and Sparta fought each other in the long Peloponnesian War.
The Silk Roads
The Silk Roads were a web of land and sea routes linking China, India, Persia and the Mediterranean. Silk, spices, ideas and religions travelled along them.
Key fact
The name “Silk Road” was only coined in 1877, by a German geographer.
Republic to Empire
Rome was a republic for nearly 500 years, run by elected officials. After years of civil war, Augustus became its first emperor in 27 BCE.
Key fact
Julius Caesar was never emperor; he was killed in 44 BCE.
The Fall of Rome
The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, when a Germanic leader removed the last emperor. The eastern half, the Byzantine Empire, lasted almost 1,000 years more.
Key fact
Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, fell to the Ottomans in 1453.
Ancient China
In 221 BCE, Qin Shi Huang united China and became its first emperor. He standardised writing, coins and measurements.
Key fact
He was buried with an army of about 8,000 terracotta soldiers.
Fun facts
The Sumerians of Mesopotamia invented one of the first writing systems, cuneiform, pressed into clay tablets.
Tombs found near Giza suggest the pyramids were built by paid workers, not slaves.
Unlike women in Athens, Spartan women could own land and trained in sports.
Silk-making was a closely kept Chinese secret until monks smuggled silkworm eggs to Byzantium, around 550 CE.
The Roman Republic never had one leader: two consuls shared the top job, and each served just one year.
The last Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was a teenager, and was allowed to retire to a villa.
The terracotta army was found in 1974 by farmers digging a well.
Story: Wonderful Things
Wonderful Things
1922. After years of fruitless digging in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, Howard Carter’s team finds a step cut into the rock.
It leads to a sealed door. Carter peers in by candlelight. Asked if he can see anything, he says: “Yes, wonderful things.”
It’s the tomb of the young pharaoh Tutankhamun, packed with over 5,000 objects, including his famous gold mask.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
Mesopotamia lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
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True. In what is now mostly Iraq.
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Question 2 of 10
Ancient Egypt relied on the Nile’s yearly floods for farming.
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True. The floods left rich soil along the riverbanks.
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Question 3 of 10
Athens and Sparta were Greek city-states.
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True. Each had its own government, army and way of life.
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Question 4 of 10
The Silk Roads were a network of routes, not one single road.
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True. Many overland and sea routes, shifting over the centuries.
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Question 5 of 10
Augustus was Rome’s first emperor.
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True. He took the title in 27 BCE, after the civil wars.
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Question 6 of 10
The Eastern Roman Empire outlasted the Western one by centuries.
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True. It lasted until 1453.
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Question 7 of 10
Qin Shi Huang was China’s first emperor.
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True. He united the warring states in 221 BCE.
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Question 8 of 10
The first cities appeared about 500 years ago.
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False. They appeared over 5,000 years ago.
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Question 9 of 10
Hieroglyphs were decoded before the Rosetta Stone was found.
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False. The Rosetta Stone, found in 1799, was the key; they were cracked in 1822.
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Question 10 of 10
Ancient Greece was ruled as one unified country.
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False. It was made of many independent city-states.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Ancient World has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia — Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Silk Road
- The British Museum — The Rosetta Stone
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Roman Republic, fall of Rome, Qin dynasty
- UNESCO — Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Kush, Alexander the Great, Indus civilization, Achaemenian dynasty, Hannibal, Library of Alexandria
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Archaeological Sites of the Island of Meroe
