The year 3114 BCE is the mythical starting point of the current Mesoamerican Long Count calendar cycle, according to the most widely accepted correlations between the Western calendar and the calendar systems of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

The Long Count calendar, used and refined most notably by the Maya civilization but also attested in some other (earlier) Mesoamerican cultures, consisted of a series of interlocked cycles or periods of day-counts, which mapped out a linear sequence of days from a notional starting point.

The system originated sometime in the Mid- to Late Preclassic period of Mesoamerican chronology, during the latter half of the first millennium BCE.

The starting point of the most commonly used highest-order cycle—the b'ak'tun-cycle consisting of thirteen b'ak'tuns of 144,000 days each—was projected back to an earlier, mythical date.

This date is equivalent to August 11, 3114 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar (or 6 September in the proleptic Julian calendar), using the correlation known as the "Goodman-Martinéz-Thompson (GMT) correlation".

The GMT-correlation is worked out with the Long Count starting date equivalent to the Julian Day Number (JDN) equal to 584283, and is accepted by most Mayanist scholars as providing the best fit with the ethnohistorical data.

Two succeeding dates, the twelfth and thirteenth of August (Gregorian) have also been supported, with the thirteenth (JDN = 584285, the "astronomical" or "Lounsbury" correlation) attracting significant support as according better with astronomical observational data.

Although it is still contended which of these three dates forms the actual starting base of the Long Count, almost all contemporary Mayanists definitively accept the correlation to one of this triad of dates.

All other earlier or later correlation proposals are now discounted.

The end of the thirteenth b'ak'tun is either on December 21 or 23 of 2012.

The Aryans are a pantheistic people, following their tribal chieftain or raja, engaging in wars with each other or with other alien ethnic groups, and slowly becoming settled agriculturalists with consolidated territories and differentiated occupations.

Their skills in using horse-drawn chariots and their knowledge of astronomy and mathematics give them a military and technological advantage that lead others to accept their social customs and religious beliefs.

By around 1000 BCE, Aryan culture has spread over most of India north of the Vindhya Range and in the process assimilated much from other cultures that preceded it.

Near East (2,637 – 910 BCE) Bronze and Early Iron — Delta Kingdoms, Aegean City-Coasts, Arabian Caravan Seeds

Geographic and Environmental Context

The Near East includes Egypt, Sudan, Israel, most of Jordan, western Saudi Arabia, western Yemen, southwestern Cyprus, and western Turkey (Aeolis, Ionia, Doris, Lydia, Caria, Lycia, Troas) plus Tyre (extreme SW Lebanon).

• Anchors: the Nile Valley and Delta; Sinai–Negev–Arabah; the southern Levant (with Tyre as the sole Levantine node in this subregion); Hejaz–Asir–Tihāma on the Red Sea; Yemen’s western uplands/coast; southwestern Cyprus; western Anatolian littoral (Smyrna–Ephesus–Miletus–Halicarnassus–Xanthos; Troad).

Climate & Environment

• Nile floods oscillated; Aegean coastal plains fertile; Arabian west slope aridity increased, highland terraces scaled slowly.

Societies & Settlement

• Lower/Upper Egypt (full Pharaonic cores just south but contiguous influence); Aegean Anatolia (Minoan/Mycenaean interactions; later Aeolian/Ionian/Dorian successors).

• Levantine Tyre (within this subregion) arose as Phoenician node; Arabian west oases supported caravan precursors; Yemen west highlands nurtured terrace farming and incense beginnings.

Technology

• Bronze widespread; early iron in Anatolia/Levant; sail-powered shipping matured; terracing and cisterns in Hejaz–Yemen highlands.

Corridors

• Nile–Delta–Aegean maritime bridge; Tyre connected to Cyprus/Anatolia; Red Sea coastal cabotage began; Incense path seeds in Yemen–Hejaz.

Symbolism

• Egyptian temple cosmology radiated north; Aegean cults at capes; Tyrian Melqart/Asherah; Arabian highland local cults.

Adaptation

• Floodplain–coastal–terrace redundancy stabilized economies; incense gardens hedged aridity.

The priests rule from their temples, called ziggurats, which are essentially artificial mountains of sunbaked brick, built with outside staircases that taper toward a shrine at the top.

Because the well-being of the community depends upon close observation of natural phenomena, scientific or protoscientific activities occupy much of the priests' time.

For example, the Sumerians believe that each of the gods is represented by a number.

The number sixty, sacred to the god Anu, is their basic unit of calculation.

The minutes of an hour and the notational degrees of a circle are Sumerian concepts.

The site of Lagash (modern al-Hiba), located about one hundred and twenty miles (two hundred kilometers) northwest of Basra, Iraq, may have been first occupied about 3000.

The dynasty of Lagash, though omitted from the king list, is well attested through several important monuments and many archaeological finds.

Sumerian pictographs are evolving into phonograms during the period of about 2900 BCE to 2400 BCE.

Several centuries after the invention of cuneiform, the use of writing expands beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to be applied for the first time, about 2600 BCE, to messages and mail delivery, history, legend, mathematics, astronomical records, and other pursuits.

Forms of the Genesis story and the tale of the Flood (the earliest parts of the Bible) are written in Mesopotamia around this time.

Conjointly with the spread of writing, the first formal schools are established, usually under the auspices of a city-state's primary temple.

The Sumerian abacus, a table of successive columns that delimits the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system, first appears in the the period 2700–2300 BCE.

The Prisse Papyrus, c. 1900, contains the last two pages of the Instructions of Kagemni, who purportedly served under the Fourth Dynasty king Sneferu, and is a compilation of moral maxims and admonitions on the practice of virtue.

The only complete surviving copy of the Instruction of Ptahhotep follows the conclusion of the Instructions of Kagemni.

The so-called Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, a well known mathematical papyri along with the more recent Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, was most likely written down in the Thirteenth dynasty and based on older material probably dating to the Twelfth dynasty, roughly 1850 BCE.

In 1930, the Soviet Orientalist Vasily Vasilievich Struve divided its format, which is approximately eighteen feet long and varying between one and three inches wide, into twenty-five problems with solutions.

The Moscow Mathematical Papyrus is older than the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, while the latter is the larger of the two.

The cult of Marduk, Babylon’s chief deity, becomes important in the reign of Hammurabi.

The Enuma Elish, which represents the early roots of astrology based on celestial phenomena, recounts Marduk's rise to the top of the pantheon.

The son of Ea and Damkina, the immense god possessed of two heads and fiery breath, is dispatched by the other gods to do battle with Tiamat, the primordial dragon.

After killing her, Marduk creates earth, sea, and the heavens from her body.

From Tiamat's consort, Kingu, he fashions humankind.

Marduk then becomes the king of the gods.

Amorite Babylonian architecture is based on massive brick platforms elevated above the flood plain and often terraced to create the characteristic ziggurat form.

Babylon is one of the many city-states that dot the Mesopotamian plain and wage war on each other for control of fertile agricultural land.

Though many cultures co-exist in Mesopotamia, Babylonian culture had gained a degree of prominence among the literate classes throughout the Middle East.

Hammurabi, who ascends the Babylonian throne in 1728 BCE, subdues the other Mesopotamian cities and establishes an empire from the Persian Gulf to the north Euphrates, basing his code of laws on Sumerian cultural principles.