3500 BC to 550 BC

Rock art and early peoples

Thousands of rock carvings at Gobustan, south of Baku, show hunters, boats and dancers made over many thousands of years. From about 3500 BC the Kura-Araxes culture spread across the South Caucasus. In the first millennium BC the kingdom of Manna and then the Medes rose to the south, before the Persian Empire took the region in the sixth century BC.