Phoenicia

State · 1,150–501 BCE · at its largest around 615 BCE

Seafaring Canaanite city-states on the Levantine coast, including Tyre, Sidon and Byblos, renowned for trade, purple dye and the spread of their alphabet.

On its lands while it lasted

Minoan civilization (c. 3,000–1,100 BCE): Bronze Age civilization centred on Crete, known for palace complexes such as Knossos, vivid frescoes and the undeciphered Linear A script.
Tyre (2,750–501 BCE): Capital of Phoenicia (1150 BCE–501 BCE).
Mycenaean Greece (c. 1,750–1,050 BCE): Last phase of the Bronze Age in mainland Greece, dominated by palace centres such as Mycenae, Pylos and Tiryns, which collapsed around 1200 BCE.
Sidon (c. 1,150–501 BCE): Capital of Phoenicia (1150 BCE–501 BCE).
Phoenician alphabet (c. 1,050 BCE): The Phoenicians developed a 22-letter consonantal alphabet that spread through Mediterranean trade and became the ancestor of the Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic scripts.
Sparta (c. 900 BCE): Dorian city-state in Laconia, famous for its militarised society and its leading role in the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars.
Carthage (c. 814–146 BCE): Traditionally founded by Phoenician settlers from Tyre, Carthage grew into the capital of a maritime empire that dominated the western Mediterranean until Rome destroyed it.
Pergamon (801 BCE – 62 CE): Capital of Kingdom of Pontus (281 BCE–62), Kingdom of Pergamon (279 BCE–133 BCE).
Aramaic alphabet (c. 800 BCE): Aramaic, written in a branch of the Phoenician alphabet, became the common language of the Assyrian and Persian empires; its script is the ancestor of the Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic and Mongolian scripts.
Greek alphabet (c. 800 BCE): Greeks adapted the Phoenician script and added letters for vowels; the result became the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.
Oracle of Delphi (c. 800 BCE): The sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi housed the Pythia, the most prestigious oracle of the Greek world, consulted by cities and rulers for over a thousand years.
First Olympic Games (776 BCE): Traditional date of the first Olympic Games at Olympia, a festival for Zeus with athletic contests held every four years until the late 4th century CE.
Iliad (c. 750 BCE): Epic poem attributed to Homer about the Trojan War, generally dated to the 8th century BCE; with the Odyssey, a foundational work of Western literature.
First coins in Lydia (c. 620 BCE): Lydia in western Anatolia issued some of the earliest known coins, made of electrum; later King Croesus introduced coins of pure gold and silver.
Athenian democracy (508 BCE): The reforms of Cleisthenes in 508/507 BCE created a system in which male citizens voted directly on laws, the earliest well-documented democracy.