1200 BC

Events in 1200 BC 3

• 1200 BC Iron Smelting The Iron Age The process of extracting iron, which remains the most used metal in modern infrastructure.
• 1200 BC Oracle bone script — earliest Chinese writing Divination records become the oldest Chinese texts Shang dynasty diviners inscribed questions to royal ancestors on ox bones and turtle shells, then applied heat to crack them and read the omens. These oracle bones, discovered at Anyang in 1899, contain the earliest confirmed Chinese writing — over 4,500 distinct characters. They record royal hunts, harvests, wars, and astronomical observations, giving us a vivid window into Shang court life.
• 1200 BC – 550 BC Zoroaster and the rise of Zoroastrianism One of the world's earliest monotheistic faiths The prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra) taught a dualist vision of a single supreme god, Ahura Mazda, locked in cosmic struggle with evil. Zoroastrianism became the dominant religion of the Persian empires for over a thousand years and influenced ideas of heaven, hell and judgement in later faiths.