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1166 BCE

This year falls in the Iron Age (c. 1200–500 BCE). Iron tools and weapons spread, and new powers rise, among them Assyria, Babylon, the Zhou dynasty in China and the Greek city-states. Alphabets and coined money spread, and the Persian Empire is founded in the sixth century BCE.

Within fifteen years

Ruler · High and Late Middle Ages · MongoliaGenghis Khanc. 1162–1227Founder of the Mongol Empire, born Temujin about 1162 and dead in 1227, proclaimed Genghis Khan in 1206. He united the warring Mongol tribes and turned them into an army that conquered northern China, Central Asia and Persia. At his death his empire was already the largest contiguous land empire in history.