1. Smith, John D., trans., 2009. The Mahabharata. London: Penguin, p. 590.
2. Lal, B. B. 1992. The Painted Grey Ware Culture of the Iron Age. In A. H. Dani and V. M. Masson, eds. History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol. 1, The Dawn of Civilization: Earliest Time to 700 B.C. Paris: UNESCO, pp. 421–41.
3. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, John T. Scott, trans., 2012. The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two Discourses and the Social Contract. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p. 93.
4. Drennan, Robert D., and Christian E. Peterson, 2008. Centralized Communities, Population, and Social Complexity after Sedentarization. In Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel and Ofer Bar-Yosef, eds. The Neolithic Demographic Transition and Its Consequences. Dordrecht: Springer, p. 383.
5. Similar carvings and paintings are found all over the globe: in Valcamonica in Italy, the Akakus Mountains in Libya, Fulton’s Cave in Lesotho, Tassili n’Ajjer in Algeria, and Bhimbetka in India.
6. Meyer, Christian, et al. 2015. The Massacre Mass Grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten Reveals New Insights into Collective Violence in Early Neolithic Central Europe. PNAS, vol. 112, no. 36, pp. 11217–22.
7. Image retrieved from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/436919601323913392/visual-search/?x=1&y=72&w=99&h=28. Similar finds are discussed in: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996. Ancient Art from the Shumei Family Collection. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 23–5.
8. Image retrieved from: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/25/4b/16/254b16811f97f13735f4cf56b63ca37f.jpg.
9. For the Dashly Complexes, see: Kohl, Phil, 1987. The Ancient Economy, Transferable Technologies and the Bronze Age World-System: A View from the Northeastern Frontier of the Ancient Near East. In Michael Rowlands et al., eds. Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 19–22.
10. Evelyn-White, Hugh G., trans., 1914. The Homeric Hymns. In Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica. London: William Heinemann, pp. 433–5. Note: the hymns were once attributed to Homer, but this is now disputed.
11. Van De Mieroop, Mark, 2016. A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–323 BC. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, p. 151.
12. Bryce, Trevor, 2003. Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East: The Royal Correspondence of the Late Bronze Age. London: Routledge, p. 102.
13. Anderson, Kenneth, 1985. Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, p. 75.
14. Barras, Colin, 2016. World War Zero Brought down Mystery Civilisation of ‘Sea People’. New Scientist, no. 3074 (21 May).
15. Morkot, Robert G., 2005. The Egyptians: An Introduction. London: Routledge, p. 185. Haring, B. J. J., 1997, Divine Households: Administrative and Economic Aspects of the New Kingdom Royal Memorial Temples in Western Thebes. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, p. 375.
16. Walker, Cameron, 2004. Ancient Egyptian Love Poems Reveal a Lust for Life. National Geographic (20 April).
17. Musée du Louvre, inv. no. E27069.
18. Moran, William L., 1987. Les lettres d’El Amarna: correspondence diplomatique du pharaon. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, p. 8.
19. Weinstein, James M., 1998. The World Abroad. Egypt and the Levant in the Reign of Amenhotep III. In David O’Connor and Eric H. Cline, eds. Amenhotep III: Perspectives on His Reign. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, p. 227.
20. Niebuhr, Carl, J. Hutchinson, trans., 1901. The Tell El Amarna Period: The Relations of Egypt and Western Asia in the Fifteenth Century B.C. According to the Tell El Amarna Tablets. London: David Nutt, p. 39.
21. Lichtheim, Miriam, 1976. Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 2, The New Kingdom. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, p. 71.
22. Bauer, Susan Wise, 2007. The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome. New York: W. W. Norton, p. 238.
23. Lichtheim, Miriam, 1973. Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 1, The Old and Middle Kingdom. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 141–2. Note: this poem was first written in the twentieth century BCE.
24. Abulhab, Saad D., 2016. The Epic of Gilgamesh: Selected Readings from Its Original Early Arabic Language. New York: Blautopf, p. 172.
25. Dalley, Stephanie, 2013. The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 48.
26. Drake, Brandon, 2012. The Influence of Climatic Change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages. Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 39, no. 6, pp. 1862–70. Kaniewski, David, et al. 2015. The Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Early Iron Age in the Levant: The Role of Climate in Cultural Disruption. In Susanne Kerner et al., eds. Climate and Ancient Societies. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp. 157–76.
27. Younger, K. Lawson, Jr, 2007. The Late Bronze Age / Iron Age Transition and the Origins of the Arameans. In K. Lawson Younger Jr, ed. Ugarit at Seventy-Five. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. pp. 159, 161.
28. Li, Feng, 2006. Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou, 1045–771 BC. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
29. Keightley, David N., 1985. Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 33–4. Peterson, Barbara Bennett, et al., eds., 2015. Notable Women of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century. Abingdon: Routledge, p. 14.
30. Modern estimates vary between 50,000 and 70,000 combatants for each army.
31. The oldest text containing the characters meaning ‘the centre under heaven’, or ‘Middle Kingdom’ is inscribed on the He zun (wine vessel), which dates from 1039.
32. Shaughnessy, Edward L., 1991. Sources of Western Zhou History: Inscribed Bronze Vessels. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 188–9.
33. Wyatt, Don J., 2010. Shao Yong’s Numerological-Cosmological System. In John Makeham, ed. Dao Companion to Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer, p. 24.
34. Cartier, Michel, 2002. La Population de la Chine au fil des siècles. In Isabelle Attané, ed. La Chine au seuil de XXIe siècle: questions de population, questions de société. Paris: INED, p. 22.
35. The ‘Indo-Aryan Migration’ remains the focus of debate between those scientists who believe that the Aryan tribes originated in South Asia and those who argue that they originated elsewhere.
36. Smith, John D., trans., 2009. Op. cit., p. 322.