Year 200 ce

Communication

The Zapotec of Monte Albán (near Oaxaca, Mexico) develop the crude pictographic writing of their Olmec predecessors into a full-fledged hieroglyphic script that is used to record mostly dates and events. See also 200 bce Archaeology.

The Maya center at Tikal, built about this time, has shrines at the peaks of pyramids that are roofed with corbel arches, the only arches of any kind known in the Americas. See also 100 ce Construction.

At Moche, the apparent capital of the Moche (Mochica) civilization of coastal Peru, two huge adobe structures are built. The Huaca del Sol is a terraced platform 2400 by 160 m (1120 by 530 ft) at the base and 41 m (135 ft) high, built from about 130,000,000 mold-made adobe bricks. The Huaca de la Luna is on a platform about half that size and is a terraced complex of many separate rooms decorated with painted murals. See also 100 ce Archaeology.

The Chinese invent the whiffletree (a.k.a. whippletree), a device that allows two oxen to pull a single cart together. It is a bar attached by a swivel to the front of the cart -- the oxen are harnessed to the bar. It is reinvented in the West in the eleventh century for use with horses. See also 100 ce Food & agriculture.

The Chinese develop improved ceramic techniques, a step toward the first production of porcelain, perhaps 600 years later. See also 800 ce Materials.

Chinese mathematicians are using powers of ten to express numbers, and also red counters to represent positive numbers and black counters to represent negative numbers. See also 250 ce Mathematics.