Posted on September 13, 2020
It's a bit tough to be sure of dates from history. Records weren't always kept, or accurate; and records are sometimes destroyed. Also, calendar systems used to vary all over the world, and the modern Gregorian calendar was adopted by various places at different times, so we have to translate not just between languages, but between different calendar systems. 
Of course, the problem with accuracy in dating gets worse as we go farther and farther back - so dates on ancient monuments and scrolls are pretty iffy. Still, we are pretty certain of the day-and-year dates of a surprising number of ancient events.
Which brings us to two events that happened on this date during ancient times:
On this date in 509 BCE, the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus was dedicated. The temple was located on Rome's Capitoline Hill.
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| We don't know exactly what the temple looked like. This model is based on an educated guess. |
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| This is a model of what the Capitoline Hill in Rome looked like in ancient times. |
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| Nowadays, people climb stairs (above) up the hill to the plaza (below). |
On this date in 379 CE, Yax Nuun Ahiin I was crowned the 15th Ajaw of Tikal. This occurred in the Mayan city that is now located in Guatemala, south of Mexico.
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| Evidence tells archeologists that Tikal included many buildings (above); people can visit the ruins today (below). |
I got to thinking about these two events. They occurred pretty far apart, globe-wise - Italy and Guatemala are an ocean away from one another. But they occurred really far apart, time-wise, too. 870 years stretch between the two dates, so even though we tend to think of "ancient times" as one big lump, those "times" lasted a reaaaalllllyyy long time!
After all, there's only been 244 years between this:
...and this:
I got to wondering...what defines "ancient history"?
Apparently, it dates from the beginning of writing - and therefore recorded history - to around 500 CE. The latter date is close to the time of the Fall of Ancient Rome (476 CE) and the beginning of the Dark Ages or Middle Ages. The Dark Ages are called "dark" because a lot of knowledge was lost.
The span of ancient history, therefore, is about 5,000 years. The oldest "coherent" texts from the oldest known writing, Sumerian cuneiform, dates from around 2600 BCE. So ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans from 3,000 BCE to 500 CE. Also on this date:
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