The Nordic Bronze Age period in Denmark, from about 1500 BCE, features a culture that buries its dead, with their worldly goods, beneath burial mounds.

The many finds of gold and bronze from this era include beautiful religious artifacts and musical instruments, and provide the earliest evidence of social classes and stratification.

A new type of settlement appears in Istria, called 'gradine', or Hill-top fortifications.

Many Late Bronze Age bone objects, such as tools for smoothing and drilling, sewing needles, as well as spiral bronze pendants, will be found in the area around Pula/Pola.

The type of materials found in Bronze Age sites in Istria connects these with sites along the Danube.

The inhabitants of Istria in the Bronze Age are known as Proto Illyrians.

Mystery enshrouds the exact origins of today's Albanians.

Most historians of the Balkans believe that the Albanian people are in large part descendants of the ancient lllyrians, who, like other Balkan peoples, were subdivided into tribes and clans.

The name Albania is derived from the name of an Illyrian tribe called the Arber, or Arbereshe, and later Albanoi, that live near Durres.

The Illyrians are Indo-European tribesmen who appeared in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula about 1000 BCE, a period coinciding with the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age.

They will inhabit much of the area for at least the next millennium.

Archaeologists associate the Illyrians with the Hallstatt culture, an Iron Age people noted for production of iron and bronze swords with winged-shaped handles and for domestication of horses.

The Illyrians occupy lands extending from the Danube, Sava, and Morava rivers to the Adriatic Sea and the Sar Mountains.

At various times, groups of Illyrians migrate over land and sea into Italy.

The Illyrians carry on commerce and warfare with their neighbors.

The ancient Macedonians probably have some Illyrian roots, but their ruling class will adopt Greek cultural characteristics.

The Illyrians also mingle with the Thracians, another ancient people with adjoining lands on the east.

In the south and along the Adriatic Sea coast, the Illyrians are heavily influenced by the Greeks, who found  trading colonies here.

The present-day city of Durrës (Dyrrachium) evolves from a Greek colony known as Epidamnos, which is founded at the end of the seventh century BCE.

Another famous Greek colony, Apollonia, arises between Durrës and the port city of Vlorë.

Cleisthenes, besides reforming the city's constitution to the advantage of the Ionians and replacing Dorian cults with the worship of Dionysus, has gained renown as the chief instigator and general of the First Sacred War in the interests of the Delphians.

Sicyon is in about this time developing the various industries for which it is noted in antiquity.

As the abode of the sculptors Dipoenus and Scyllis, it gains preeminence in woodcarving and bronze work such as is still to be seen in the archaic metal facings found at Olympia.

Its pottery, which resembles Corinthian ware, is exported with the latter as far as Etruria.

In Sicyon also, the art of painting was supposed to have been invented.

Patrons of the arts and of religion, the Kushans are instrumental in spreading Buddhism in Central Asia and China and in developing Mahayana Buddhism and the Gandhara and Mathura schools of art.

Kushan power peaks under King Kanishka, who lives between CE 78-151, whose empire stretches from Mathura in north central India beyond Bactria as far as the frontiers of China in Central Asia.

The Kushans become affluent through trade, particularly with Rome, as evidenced by their large issues of gold coins bearing figures of Greek, Roman, Iranian, Hindu, and Buddhist deities.

Inscriptions on the coins, in adapted Greek letters, indicate the toleration and syncretism in religion and art that prevail in the Kushan empire. (Further evidence of the trade and cultural achievement of the period, recovered at the Kushan summer capital of Bagram, north of Kabul, includes painted glass from Alexandria; plaster matrices, bronzes, porphyries, and alabasters from Rome; carved ivories from India; and lacquers from China.)

The Chinese establish an imperial bureau for the manufacture of porcelain.

Their technology will advance further under the Tang Dynasty, which unites China in this era.

The Chinese also begin using large orchestras.

The calculation of the Chinese calendar begins to use true motions of the sun and moon modeled using two offset opposing parabolas.

An important but unidentified Anglo-Saxon ruler is buried on a heath about eight miles (thirteen kilometers) northeast of present Ipswich in Suffolk, England.

His “coffin” is a clinker-built vessel approximately seventy-nine feet (twenty-four meters) long and eight feet (two-and-a-half meters) in the beam.

Thirty-seven Merovingian gold coins, probably accumulated between the years 620 and 630, suggest the date of interment; the tomb (according to arguments advanced by several experts) may be that of Raedwald, king of the East Angles and high king of the Anglo-Saxons, who dies in about 627, succeeded by his son Eorpwald.

Grave-goods include a Swedish helmet and shield, a sword and spears, cauldrons and bowls of Coptic as well as Celtic craftsmanship, a huge silver dish with stampings on it of Emperor Anastasius I, two Byzantine silver baptismal spoons bearing the names Paulos and Saulos, and numerous other jewelry items. (Modern archaeologists refer to this find as the Sutton Hoo ship burial.)

The grave may, alternately, be that of Eorpwald, who is murdered and succeeded by Ricberht, a member of the East Anglian elite, who will reestablish paganism during his rule.

Knowledge of the opium poppy reaches China in about the late seventh or early eighth century when Arab traders first introduce Opium thebaicum from the Egyptian fields at Thebes.

Barcelona falls in about 717 to the Moors, who open the port to Arab shipping from the eastern Mediterranean.

The earliest historical records of the Port of Chittagong date back to the fourth century BCE, when sailors from the area embarked on voyages to Southeast Asia.

The second century Greco-Roman geographer Ptolemy mentioned the port on his map as one of the finest harbors in Asia and the eastern frontier of the Indian subcontinent.

The seventh-century traveling Chinese scholar and poet Xuanzang described it as "a sleeping beauty emerging from mists and water".

Arab and Persian traders arrived in the eighth century, and the region emerges as a major trading center on the maritime silk route, renowned for its pearls, rice, and textiles.

Chittagong also attracts many Sufi missionaries who settle in the region and play an instrumental role in the spread of Islam.