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One machine made books cheap enough for ordinary people.
Around 1450 in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg combined movable metal type, oil-based ink and a press. His Bible, printed about 1455, showed books could be made by the hundred.
Why it matters: Printing spread literacy and new ideas faster than ever before.
The Gutenberg Bible — Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1455)
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Baghdad once gathered much of the world's knowledge under one roof.
Under the Abbasid caliphs in the 8th and 9th centuries, scholars in Baghdad translated Greek, Persian and Indian works into Arabic and built on them in mathematics, astronomy and medicine.
Why it matters: Much of this knowledge later reached Europe through Arabic-to-Latin translations.
Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) — Abbasid Baghdad (9th century)
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Students travelled to Taxila to learn more than 2,000 years ago.
Taxila, near today's Islamabad, was a great centre of Gandhara culture, with successive cities at Bhir Mound, Sirkap and Sirsukh and many Buddhist monasteries and stupas.
Why it matters: It shows how ideas, art and trade moved between South Asia, Central Asia and the Greek world.
Taxila — UNESCO World Heritage Centre (c. 6th century BCE – 5th century CE)
World Heritage Site, inscribed 1980
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About 4,500 years ago, a city in Sindh had planned streets and covered drains.
Mohenjo-daro, built around 2500 BCE by the Indus Valley Civilisation, had a grid of streets, brick houses with bathing areas, and covered drains — among the earliest urban sanitation known.
Why it matters: It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and proof that city planning in this land is ancient.
Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro — UNESCO World Heritage Centre (c. 2500 BCE)
World Heritage Site, inscribed 1980
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