World population growth relaxed after the burst due to the Neolithic Revolution.
World population was largely stable, at roughly 60 million, with a slow overall growth rate at roughly 0.03% p.a.[1]
The Bronze Age began in the Ancient Near East roughly between 3000 BC and 2500 BC. The previous millennium had seen the emergence of advanced, urbanized civilizations, new bronzemetallurgy extending the productivity of agricultural work, and highly developed ways of communication in the form of writing. In the 3rd millennium BC, the growth of these riches, both intellectually and physically, became a source of contention on a political stage, and rulers sought the accumulation of more wealth and more power. Along with this came the first appearances of monumental architecture, imperialism, organized absolutism and internal revolution.
The civilizations of Sumer and Akkad in Mesopotamia became a collection of volatile city-states in which warfare was common. Uninterrupted conflicts drained all available resources, energies and populations. In this millennium, larger empires succeeded the last, and conquerors grew in stature until the great Sargon of Akkad pushed his empire to the whole of Mesopotamia and beyond. It would not be surpassed in size until Assyrian times 1,500 years later.
In the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the Egyptian pyramids were constructed and would remain the tallest and largest human constructions for thousands of years. Also in Egypt, pharaohs began to posture themselves as living gods made of an essence different from that of other human beings. In Europe, which was still largely neolithic during the same period, the builders of megaliths were constructing giant monuments of their own. In the Near East and the Occident during the 3rd millennium BC, limits were being pushed by architects and rulers.
Towards the close of the millennium, Egypt became the stage of the first popular revolution recorded in history. After lengthy wars, the Sumerians recognized the benefits of unification into a stable form of national government and became a relatively peaceful, well-organized, complex technocratic state called the 3rd Dynasty of Ur. This dynasty was later to become involved with a wave of nomadic invaders known as the Amorites, who were to play a major role in the region during the following centuries.
A model of the prehistoric town of Los Millares, with its walls.
Certain 4th millennium BC events were precursors to the 3rd millennium BC:
c.3700-1800 BC: Caral-Supe flourished between the fourth and second millennia BC, with the formation of the first city generally dated to around 3500 BC, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area. It is from 3100 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction become clearly apparent, which lasted until a period of decline around 1800 BC.
c.3500 BC-3000 BC Huaricanga is the earliest city of the Norte Chico civilization, called Caral or Caral-Supe in Peru and Spanish language sources. "It existed around 3500 BC and was the oldest city in the Americas and one of the earliest cities in the world." It is located in the arid Fortaleza Valley on Peru's north central coast and is 14mi (23km) inland from the Pacific Ocean. The site covers a total area of 100 hectares, and is the largest Late Archaic construction in the Norte Chico region. The three earthwork mounds on the large site are believed to be remains of pyramidal-shaped structures. Two standing stones, known as huancas, also survive. Excavation in 2007 revealed a structure believed to be a temple, of a design similar to, but predating, the Mito architectural tradition seen in the Peruvian highlands. In addition, later research in the Fortaleza and Pativilca valleys has found evidence of maize cultivation, as well as fourteen other domesticated species of fruits and vegetables. This suggests that agriculture may have been more important to the development of Caral-Supe civilization than previously thought, as it was for other independent civilizations of the world, such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and India.
The kunga was first bred in Ancient Syria and Mesopotamia by hybridizing captured now-extinct Syrian wild ass males with domestic donkey females between 2600 and 2000 BCE. It later fell out of favor when both domestic horses and their donkey hybrids, mules, arrived in the ancient Near East at the end of the millennium.
Jean-Noël Biraben, "Essai sur l'évolution du nombre des hommes", Population 34-1 (1979), 13–25, estimates 40 million at 5000 BC and 100 million at 1600 BC, for an average growth rate of 0.027% p.a. over the Chalcolithic to Middle Bronze Age.
Scarre, Chris (1993). Smithsonian Timelines of the Ancient World. Smithsonian Institution. p.176. ISBN978-1-56458-305-5. Both the dromedary (the one-humped camel of Arabia) and the Bactrian camel (the two-humped camel of Central Asia) had been domesticated since before 2000 BC.
Bulliet, Richard W. (1990) [1975]. The Camel and the Wheel. Morningside Book Series. New York: Columbia University Press. p.183. ISBN978-0-231-07235-9. As has already been mentioned, this type of utilization [camels pulling wagons] goes back to the earliest known period of two-humped camel domestication in the third millennium BC.
