29th century BC

The 29th century BC is the period from 2900 to 2801 BC. It is part of the Early Bronze Age, an era when urban societies flourished in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), Egypt, and the Indus Valley.

The history of this century is based largely on estimates. Written records are scarce and fragmented, so most dates of events in this period are calculated using a general chronology (chronology) based on king lists, archaeological data, and radiocarbon dating.

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia was in the Early Dynastic period of Sumer. City-states such as Uruk, Ur, Kish, Lagash, and Nippur each had their own governments, with a major temple and a religious and political leader at the head of each. Cuneiform writing, pressed into soft clay, had by this time moved beyond serving merely as a tool for accounting to recording language itself.

Egypt

Egypt was in the Early Dynastic period or the beginning of the Old Kingdom. The state consolidated central administration extending from the north to the south of the Nile Valley, and left behind written records (hieroglyphic script) and large tomb structures made of mud brick (mastaba). The construction of the great pyramids came later, in the 27th and 26th centuries.

Elsewhere

The Indus Valley was in the Early Harappan period, with large settlements emerging. Europe was at the end of the Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age; large stone structures (megaliths) such as Stonehenge had permanent architectural features. Farming, herding, and long-distance trade in copper and tin linked distant regions together.