400-499 (Abrittus)

Due to Rome´s defensive doctrine and friendly relations with the Sassanids, this is a century of relative peace, stability, innovations and increasing living standards in the Mediterranean space.

While the development of the slave-free Roman economy outpaces both their Celtic and Sassanid neighbours, the latter two are also at the height of their imperial glory.

The Celtic Empire conquers the entire British Isles and brings forth an empiricist philosophy which contributes greatly to the early development of modern sciences. Towards the end of the century, the Celtic Empire is indebted to its own citizens and has debased its currency greatly, though.

The Sassanid Empire controls Persia and the Gulf and all the Indo-Aryan lands formerly controlled by the Kushana and Shaka as well as Bactria, Sogdia and more of the Central Asian steppe beyond as well as the steppe between the Caspic Sea and the Aral Sea. In trade as well as in cultural exchange, the Sassanid Empire profits heavily from its intensified contacts to China, India and the Roman Empire. Scientific, theological and cultural innovations are created here. The latest among them, social revolutionary Mazdakism, shakes the foundation of the empire towards the end of the century.

400s
Sassanid / Roman Empire: Indian cotton carding bows come into use across the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

401
Celtic Empire: Caledonians and other Picts cross Antony`s wall and raid Northern Britannia. Caesar Spurius Cumbricus sends a massive army to the North.

402
Celtic Empire: After the last battles in the highlands and on several islands close to the shore, the entire larger British Isle is under control of the Celtic Empire. Clan chiefs are held as hostages or enslaved and several garrisons stationed in the low- and highlands.

404
Sassanid Empire (India): At the University of Barygala, mathematicians in the Devangari tradition come up with the idea of a numeral "0".

406
Celtic Empire: The two new provinces Caledonia and Pictandia become a part of the Empire, its inhabitants become Celtic citizens.

410s
Roman Empire: The technique of blowing glass over oil lamps is greatly improved in the Cyrenaic and Egyptian provinces.

411
Ostrogothic sea merchant guilds negotiate privileged access to Sassanid port towns because shah Yazdegerd wants to intensify the trade of his Persian and Indian satrapies with the Roman Empire and beyond but does not want Roman ships in his ports and prefers the unarmed Ostrogoths.

412
Roman Empire: At a Syrian Academia Vulcania in Damascus, the first vertical windmill is planned. A first  improved version is installed six years later near Caesarea.

413
Sassanid Empire / India: The allied Indian forces of Gupta and Vakataka attack the Sassanid`s Indian satrapies. They are joined by local kshatriyas and supported by anti-Sassanid brahmans. Shah Yazdegerd I. defeats the Gupta-Vakataka army at Ujjain. Chandragupta I. is killed in this battle.

414
Sassanid Empire / India: A Sassanid advance into Gupta India is stopped at the Ganges near Varanasi. Yazdegerd`s troops retreat and comb their satrapies for insurgents and illoyal traitors, leading thousands of kshatriyas and members of brahman families into slavery in the Persian mainland.

416
Celtic Empire: Anaraudus, professor of philosophy at the University of Lutetia, publishes his main work, "De organis scientiae", in which he rejects the "transcendental speculations" of (Neo-)Platonism as well as the New Academic school of scepticism, and defines standards for an empirical quest for truth. His philosophy quickly becomes the dominant paradigm at Celtic universities, helped along also by leading politicians who see a chance for identity building - which is ironic because historians of science attribute Anaraudus` empiricism to the mechanical revolution in the Roman Empire...

420
Roman Empire: Researchers at an Academia Cerealia in Thagaste (Africa Carthagensis) invent a mechanical cotton carding machine.

423
Persian Empire: The largest university of the Sassanid Empire in Gundishapur opens a mathematics department, where many scholars from India work. They introduce the Devanagari numerical system to the West of the Sassanid Empire.

426
Roman Empire: The first alcohol still is operated in Sicily. Licinus, a landowner, sells brandy made from wine in Syracuse.

427
Celtic Empire: After Scotian attacks on Pictandia, caesar Marcus Vasco commands the largest invasion fleet in the history of the Celtic Empire into the Hibernian Sea and conquers Scotia (the North-Eastern tip of the island called Ireland in OTL).

429
Celtic Empire: Having consolidated control of Scotia, Marcus Vasco decides to ride the wave of Celtic nationalism and conquer the rest of the island, too. He forges an alliance with the Ulaid of Emain Macha against the Gael of Tara, who were the most powerful overkings in Hibernia, and prepares a joint campaign.

430
Celtic Empire: Celtic legions and the Ulaid defeat the Gael in open battle, assume control over all other kingdoms in Hibernia and lay siege on Tara.

431
Celtic Empire: Tara falls. Celtic Caesar Marcus Vasco and Ulaid High King Brian divide the island among themselves, with the entire South falling to the Celtic Empire. Roman Empire: To preserve Visigothic culture within the Roman province of Dacia, king Alanaric founds the first Gothic-speaking university in Vipjabaurg.

433
Celtic Empire: Scotia and Hibernia become provinces of the Celtic Empire. Arabia / Sassanid Empire: Supported by Saba, which seeks to gain control over the Strait of Hormuz, the South-Eastern arabian tribe of the Azd revolts against Sassanid leadership. The Sassanids unleash their Arabian allies, the Lakhmids, whose mounted archers defeat the revolting Azd. Some rebels flee into remote mountain regions.

434
Roman Empire: To aid trade and the dissemination of inventions, the Senate decides to expand the "cursus publicus" (the Roman postal system) and open it for the use by private persons. Post offices are opened in cities and towns across the empire. Retired professional soldiers are employed in these post offices, on the post ships and as post riders.

Arabia: The Jafnids, led by the Jewish king Jabalah III. ibn al Nu´man, seize the opportunity and attack and plunder al-Hira, the capital of the Lakhmids. Jabalah dies in the battle for al-Hira, though. While still in al-Hira, his three sons each attempt to mobilise support for their claim to leadership.

435
St Kinnon founds the Celtic Church; a pelagianist brand of Christianity.

Persian Empire: Hephtalites invade and plunder Bactria and Sogdia. The huge and diverse Sassanid cavalry, employing knights from Arabia, Persia and India, chases, confronts and defeats them, following the retreating tribes far into their Central Asian steppe territories. In a copy of the Hun Campaign of 384, the Sassanid army enslaves tens of thousands of nomad men, women and children and deports them into Persia and India.

436
Persian Empire: The Sassanids leave a strong military presence in garrisons North of Bactria and Sogdia. In the new garrison towns, soldiers from India as well as Arabia mingle and create a uniquely culturally mixed society.

437
Arabia: In return for Lakhmid support in the war against the Hepthalites, the Sassanid shah Bahram V. lends military support for the reconquest of al-Hira.

438
Arabia: Lakhmids defeat the internally divided Jafnids and conquer them.

439
Persian Empire: Positional notation with Devangari numerals and the "0", which allows elegant calculations, is accepted at all new mathematical faculties across the empire.

441
Celtic Empire / Ulster: Brian, High King in Eamain Macha, dies. Quarrels break out among his sons, who mobilise different petty kings into a war of succession.

442
Roman Empire: In the process of the extension and modernisation of the dams and mills at Leptis Magna, the first waterpowered cotton carding machines are built and used.

Celtic Empire: Celtic legions intervene in the war of Ulain succession. They install Mahon as High King. Emain Macha becomes tributary to the Celtic Empire.

444
Persian Empire: Shah Yazdegerd II. order the construction of canals and irrigation systems to make the Central Asian steppe which his troops now firmly control fit for agricultural use, to provide cheap grain for the growing population of his blossoming empire.

446
Saban colonists found the city of Barawa at Africa`s East Coast.

447
Arabia: With military support from Rome, the Jewish Jafnids manage to shake off Lakhmid rule again.

449
Persian Empire: Sassanid shah Yazdegerd II. orders the implementation of a mail system analogous to the Roman cursus publicus in the Sassanid Empire, too.

450s
The empiricist philosophy of Anaraudus and his eleves have become an important philosophical paradigm at Roman and Sassanid universities, too, where they are referred to as "Celtic philosophy".

450
Persian Empire: Sokotra is conquered by the Sassanids. In response, Saba forges a formal alliance with its fellow Christian kingdoms of Aksum, Armenia and Iberia because Rome does not want to imply itself against the Sassanids.

451
Arabia: After the Nabateans managed to convert a Quraish clan to Simonism, social conflict erupts in Mecca.

452
Aksumite colonists found the city of Kismayu.

Celtic Empire: As the Celtic imperial treasury becomes emptier and emptier, higher tributes are demanded from the Ulster vassal. Mahon refuses to pay such high tributes. Caesar Titus Aquitanus moves six legions into Ulster. Emain Macha falls. The treasure of the Ulain kings is confiscated, their land comes under direct Celtic control.

454
Arabia: The Simonists are defeated among the Quraish.

455
Celtic Empire: The Celtic Empire gets its own mail system, too.

456
Arabia: The Quraish attack the Nabateans. After the battle, the Nabateans must assure to abstain from further proselytising among the Quraish.

457
Roman Empire: The extremely wealthy Augustini family, who operates many mills and buys larger and larger amounts of cotton from the Imaziyen, who in turn buy it mostly from the Mandinke in the Wagadu kingdom, awards a great sum of money to Iulianus, an engineer from Carthage`s Academia Vulcania, who has invented a mechanical spnning device that can be integrated into the company`s mechanical system powered by the Leptis Magna dam. The first spinning machine is used in the same year.

459
Roman Empire: After the Augustini have installed twelve more waterpowered spinning machines, their devices are destroyed by infuriated Simonist workers, whose jobs in the rising cotton textile industry were lost. The wild strike is finally ended at the intervention of the African Conventum. The Augustini are compensated and order new machinery.

460
Roman Empire: At a naval Academia Martiana in Alexandria, a functional flamethrower with pumps and large containers of oleum petrae is developed.

462
Celtic Empire: The first post mill is built in Batavia.

463
Celtic Empire: The conquered Ulster territories are integrated into the province of Scotia, its inhabitants are granted Celtic citizenship.

464
Persian Empire / Caucasus: The Sabirs and Onogurs, de facto client chiefdoms of the Sassanid Empire in the Caucasus, call shah Peroz I. for help against the Awars.

465
Persian Empire: The Sassanid army under Peroz I. defeats the Awars and commits another genocidal campaign against them, depopulating the entire steppe between the Caspic and Aral Seas, enslaving the surviving population. There are no more soldiers available to garrison them there, so a colonisation is postponed.

466
Roman Empire: The first experimental flamethrowers are installed on Roman war ships in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

468
Saban colonists found the city of Bar ul-Zandj.

470s
Roman Empire: The Augustini of Leptis Magna have become the wealthiest family in the entire empire. Cotton trade with Africa has increased at the factor 50 over the last 50 years. Africa becomes a wealthy province. New textile mills open up in other provinces, too, now.

Celtic Empire: A dozen monasteries of the Celtic Church have sprung up across Ireland, Britain and Spain. They attract the educated, who would previously have called themselves "druids", but are dissatisfied with the scientific, anti-metaphysical trend of "Celtic philosophy" druidism at the universities.

475
Imaziyen / Wagadu: Gwafa, a Simonist missionary, preaches the Amazigh Simonist brand of Christianity to the Mandinke in cities across the Wagadu Empire. He is imprisoned and staked at the order of Wagadu`s Divine King. Back home, he is declared a martyr and a saint.

477
Roman Empire: Slavs attempt to cross the Limes Dacicus, but are thrown back.

478
Persian Empire: The Zoroastric priest Mazdak jr. begins to proclaim his ideas about the evil nature of private property, the divinity of communal work, the superfluousness of an institutionalised clergy, the evil dark of  patriarchal monogamy which suppresses love, and the virtuousness of joy, especially shared joy. Falling on fertile ground in a well-off society, where the aristocracy has acquired incredible amounts of wealth, Mazdakism gains much more followers than in OTL and will become one of the world`s most influential religions / social philosophies.

482
Celtic Empire: The bridge of the Bracchium Truculi (OTL Firth of Tay) is finished. It is the longest bridge in the entire world, and the ultimate symbol of a massive and very expensive program of upgrading the infrastructure of the new Celtic provinces of Caledonia, Pictandia, Scotia and Hibernia and integrating them into the economy of the Celtic Empire. Fuelled by Celtic nationalism (which in turn is fuelled by an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the Roman neighbour, whose economic development outpaces that of the Celts), the new provinces, inhabited by Celts, are treated extremely well. Its professional elites are integrated into Celtic collegia, universities are founded in Eblana (OTL Dublin) and Lothiana (OTL Edinburgh), where the sons of druids not only learned Latin, empiricist natural philosophy etc., but were also allowed to research into their own language and history. Roads and ports were brought up to the imperial standard and cities fortified against Scandinavian pirates. Celtic self-esteem is at a peak  but all of this came at a price... the new provinces don`t bring a lot of venues and taxes in return, and the Celtic state treasury is not only completely empty, it is also indebted to its citizens, and its currency is so seriously debased that Celtic merchants who trade e.g. with the Franks or the Alemanni have to use Roman denarii instead.

483
Persian Empire: Mazdak and his followers close several Zoroastric temples and convert them into public spaces where - at least according to opponents - wild orgies are celebrated. But the Mazdakists also begin to call for the empire-wide abolition of private property and the dissolution of the army.

484
Saxony: Widukind, a North-Albingian noble, defeats his Anglian neighbours. For the first time in more than 100 years, Saxony`s territory is extended. Widukind does not transplant the Saxon model onto the Anglians, but grants them relative independence as a dukedom tributary to him.

485
Saxony: The Hermunduri plunder and pillage Southern and South-Eastern Saxony. The Saxon ethelinga army is unable to confront and defeat them.

486
Saxony / Venedia: In spring, more Hermundurian attacks in the South of Saxony. In July, bands of Milceni cross the Elbe and threaten Saxon possessions, too. After Wagrians cross the Elbe, too, in August, thousands of frilinga decide to fight under Widukind instead of trusting their ethelinga to choose an appropriate war leader. While a weakened ethelinga army has trouble stopping the Hermunduri, Widukind`s new Saxon army pushes back all Venedian tribes across the Elbe, then tackles the Hermunduri in autumn and defeats them. In the course of this war, Widukind is called "king", for the first time in Saxony,

487
Saxony: The Hermunduri are integrated into Saxony after the Anglian model, becoming the Dukedom of Thuringia.

Persian Empire: Mazdakism is declared a heresy by the Mobadan Mobad Kartir. Mazdakist herbads are removed from temple service.

488
Roman Empire: The guild of mechanical engineers establishes itself empire-wide and employs a legate in Rome whose job is to "inform" (i.e.: influence) the Senate in the interests of the guild. Thus, the first modern industrial lobbying is institutionalised.

489
Saban colonists found the city of Mombasa.

490
Persian Empire: Kavadh I. becomes shahanshah of the Sassanid Empire. He turns out to be a great supporter of Mazdak.

491
Baiuvaria: The first guild (gaffers) in the Germanic world is founded in Linza (vis-a-vis the Roman city of Lentia across the Danube, with which the Baiuvarians trade a lot).

492
Persian Empire: Kavadh I. rehabilitates Mazdakist herbads and closes more Zoroastric fire temples.

493
Persian Empire: The first smock mill is built in India near Barygala.

Shah Kavadh I. abolishes slavery in the entire Sassanid Empire and starts welfare programs to feed and house the poor, which are implemented in many provinces. His Mazdakist measures swell the ranks of this social and religious movement even further.

494
Persian Empire: Shah Kavadh I. declares women and men equal in rights.

495
Persian Empire: Shah Kavadh I. prepares a land and a military reform, which would legally abolish the aristocracy, empower the landless peasantry and replace the knight-army with a yeomen self-defense force. Resistance forms. A first attempted assassination fails.

Roman Empire: Italian natural philosophers in the Celtic empiricist tradition discover a variety of highly inflammable liquids that can be gained by distilling petra oleum.

496
Persian Empire: A conspiracy of aristocrats and the clergy against shah Kavadh I., Mazdak and their followers begins. As the first Mazdakist communities are attacked and their members killed, Kavadh I. and Mazdak flee from Ctesiphon into the Arab desert and find asylum among Nabatean Simonists.

Djamasp becomes the new shahansha. He restores the Zoroastric clergy and abandon`s Kavadh`s reform plans, but also stops the violence against the Mazdakists.

497
Burgundy: The Burgundian yeomen army defeats Slavic tribes who entered their territories.

498
Persian Empire: Shah Djamasp passes a progressive tax reform, easing the burden on the peasantry and demanding a greater contribution from the wealthy elites.

Even though moderate reforms are begun, Mazdakist gatherings become greater and greater; they demand the return of Kavadh and Mazdak and all-out social reform. Violence returns. Urban craftsmen and tradesmen in the heartland are divided between supporters and opponents of Mazdakist thought and plans.

Following disagreements with the Simonists, Mazdak and Kavadh move into the Roman province of Syria Paleastina, where they find refuge among a Jewish community of Essenes.

499
Roman Empire: Gaffers in the Roman Empire found an empire-wide guild, too.

Pot stills are used in all provinces of the empire now. Apart from wine, fermented barley concoctions are also used for burning spirits. The overall consumption of hard drinks has skyrocketed in the Roman Empire, and business-minded Ostrogothic and Roman merchants sell the stuff to the Celts, the Germans, the Persians, the Arabs and the Aksumite Africans, too.

Persians have copied the glass production techniques and produce their own stills and their own alcohol, too.

///THE REST WILL BE INCORPORATED INTO THE ABOVE CHRONOLOGY///

Nations of Asia:
Salvador79 (talk) 17:13, March 5, 2014 (UTC)
 * Indian society in the Sassanid North-West undergoes (more or less subtle) transformations and modernises itself, bringing forth several new religious, philosophical and cultural trends and schools, but also increased social conflicts, aggravated by increasing indebtment. In the last third of this glorious century, the Zoroastric priest Mazdak comes up with his social-revolutionary, egalitarian, hedonistic and altruistic-communalistic brand of Zoroastrism. Due to the well-being of the Sassanid Empire and the intense cultural contacts to the East and West, Mazdakism is a much stronger movement than in OTL. In the 490s, shah Kavadh tries to implement Mazdakist reforms and excites the wrath of the Sassanid nobility, culminating in the First Persian Civil War.
 * India: Gupta-Vakataka further consolidates its position and pursues its path of development, which often copies and adapts Sassanid innovations. In the rich port towns, the crafts develop with only a few decades of innovation timelag after the Roman Empire. Both Buddhism and Hinduism are promoted greatly. Trade enterprises and new manufactures present an investment outlet for the monasteries' gold. Growing stronger and stronger, Gupta-Vakataka reduces dozens of Southern Indian dynasties to vassalage. This is the India which extends its trade with South-East Asia and heavily influences societies there:
 * Dvaravati is stabilised, its towns grow and flourish.
 * Kaundinya, the King of Funan, introduces Shaivist Hinduism to his kingdom.
 * In Lam Ap, Hinduism and Indian political philosophy arrive, too.
 * In Palembang, a new centre of Mahayana Buddhism and a new powerhub on the Indonesian Archipelago develops, which will soon under the imperial name of Sri Vijaya challenge Funan for the control over Indian-Chinese trade.

Abrittus