1000–300 BCE: (Commerce and Empire — The First Millennium BCE Marked Across Eurasia by the Rise of the First Empires of Great Geographical Extent, Historians…

1000–300 BCE: (Commerce and Empire — The First Millennium BCE Marked Across Eurasia by the Rise of the First Empires of Great Geographical Extent, Historians Long Giving Prime Attention to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Empires of Alexander and His Successors, the Maurya Empire in India, the Roman Empire, and the Chinese Empire Initiated by the Qin Dynasty and Consolidated by the Han, What Historians Generally Neglect Being the Parallel Rise During the Same Age of New Large States in Africa): The first millennium BCE was marked across Eurasia by the rise of the first empires of great geographical extent — and not only across Eurasia. Historians have long given prime attention to such realms as the Neo-Assyrian Empire of the first half of the first millennium BCE, the Persian Empire of the middle centuries, the empires of Alexander and his successors, the Maurya Empire in India of the late fourth to early second centuries BCE, and the Roman Empire and, far to the east, the Chinese Empire initiated in the late third century BCE by the short-lived Qin dynasty and consolidated by the Han dynasty over the next four centuries. What historians generally neglect to give equal attention to, however, is the parallel rise during the same age of new large states in the African continent. The roster of first millennium BCE empires reads, in any standard world history textbook, like a Eurasian monopoly: Assyria, Persia, Alexander, Maurya, Rome, Han. The African entry is either absent or relegated to a footnote. But empires were rising in Africa during the same centuries, built by African peoples, governing African populations, and operating on a scale that rivaled or exceeded their Eurasian contemporaries. The omission is not accidental. It is structural — a consequence of a historiographic tradition that defined empire as a Eurasian phenomenon and then treated the evidence as if the definition were a fact. Ehret corrects the record.