Timeline Chronology: VIII century BCE
Ancient History
800 BCE
- Archaic Sparta; Archaic Athens
- Hallstatt culture appears in Europe
- Chavín de Huántar founded
- Olmec, Zapotec, and Maya cultures in Central America
- Chavín culture in Peru; Chorrera culture in Ecuador
- Neo-Elamite period
- Kingdom of Magadha in India; Mahavira; Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha
776 BCE
- First pan-Hellenic games held at Olympia in Greece, and every four years thereafte
775 BCE
- Start of Greek colonization of Mediterranean
771-221 BCE
- Zhou capital moves east to Luoyang, marking beginning of Eastern Zhou period in China
- Confucius
- Laozi
753 BCE
- Traditional date for founding of Rome by Romulus
c. 750 BCE
- Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey written down
- End of the "Dark Age"; first attestations of the poleis
- First decennial archons at Athens
- So-called "second Greek colonization
- Kushite rulers of Nubia send armies into Egypt, conquering it by 747 BCE
c. 730 BCE
- First Messenian War
- Hoplite warfare
- The Great Rhetra of Lycurgus at Sparta?
744 BCE
- Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria’s reign begins (to 727 BCE)
722 BCE
- End of the northern Hebrew kingdom
- Sargon II takes Assyria
714 BCE
- Sargon II defeats Urartu and sacks its major sacred site of Mususir
705 BCE
- Assyrian capital moves to Nineve