A carved stone head of the god Shiva from the Gupta period
Head of Shiva, ca. 6th century
Marked Pataliputra

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Gupta age

Under the Gupta kings, north India saw great achievements in mathematics, astronomy and literature. Aryabhata calculated with a decimal place-value system, and the zero as a number was written down within a century of the empire’s end.

Place
Pataliputra · Ujjain · Ajanta · Delhi’s iron pillarAsia
Laid out as
An empireOne power across a long stretch of time: how it grew, held together, and came apart.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IThe Gupta kings
  2. IIAryabhata
  3. IIIZero and the decimal system
  4. IVKalidasa’s plays
  5. VAjanta’s painted caves
  6. VIIron that does not rust

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Chandragupta II
  • Aryabhata
  • Kalidasa
  • Brahmagupta

Objects

  • The iron pillar of Delhi
  • Gold coins
  • The Bakhshali manuscript

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

AD 320 to AD 550. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?