Key Dates in World History: Preamble & Attachment #1

Preamble: Key dates in history: my process and intention in assembling this “key date document”

• Capture seminal events: My intention is to capture seminal events in world history – ones upon which important future trends and ideas followed. While I have nearly 2100 “events”, there are countless possibilities that I researched and chose not to use.

• Events are ordered chronologically: History can be organized many ways, including chronologically, culturally, territorially, and thematically. I chose to look at it chronologically, finding this essential to my efforts in extracting what I was searching for. It became my main source document from which I drew my general themes and patterns. I wanted to get the order of important historical events sorted out, and compared. I stuck with the date order and was not tempted to group countries and events. 

• Sources: This personal scan of human history has been gleaned from a wide rage of sources: the library, media including the internet and my own travels. I wish I had done this “scan through history” many, many year ago. I would then have in my noggin a whole lot of useful and related information. While the act of Googling specific info is always available, the nuances around how they intersect and influence other events are critical. 

• Could ChatGPT have saved me a lot of effort? I have tested it on spans of years and depending on how you ask it, it does pick up key events, in either mammoth or Spartan detail, but little personality or colour. In amongst facts and stats I’ve tried to provide some interest and even reading pleasure in the form of anecdote or accessible vignettes and succinct summaries from complicated and complex sources. Search engines can drain the colour; I’d like to think I’ve provided colour and interest.

• Accuracy: I attempted to use professional and traditional sources and cross-checked most controversial subjects. Some data, particularly in the early days of the evolution of the universe and the earth, is changing as the science gets more professional and uses more accurate methods.

• My criteria for inclusion of an event: Is centred around what I intuitively felt was one that would influence future events, plus ones that were markers or representative of a certain degree of politics, religion, philosophy, exploration, education, science and technology, medical, invention, culture and sport, that signalled something more. 

• Significant seminal events: I’ve highlighted in larger type those activities that I feel have had a significant seminal impact on the world of today. There are many – we live in a complicated world, and it’s getting more so.

• Links: I have attempted to provide links between connected events by placing in brackets at the end of certain entries important dates or data to which the event may be linked.

• If there is a leaning at all in my selection it is for political history. As Barbara Rosenwein says in her “A Short History of the Middle Ages”: “1. Politics tells us a good deal about the uses and distribution of power, always important if we wish to consider general conditions of life, and 2. Politics, with its decisive events, provides a nice clear grid for everything else.”

• Why bother? I have assembled this document to provide a source for reflecting upon and extracting themes, patterns and conclusions. My intention is to write about these themes. It also became, in an indirect sort of way, a paean to the study of, and knowledge of history. I can’t emphasize this enough. Society has a problem when its citizens are incapable of fully understanding issues; people become passive bystanders as those in power make crucial decisions on our behalf. Democracy can’t function properly when its citizens don’t have a basic knowledge of history. As the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore said just before the First World War, “The past is always with us, for nothing that once was time can ever depart.” Going back to Leonardo da Vinci, we get his take: “The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.” 

• The questions of bias and selective history: Likely quite a bit of personal bias creeped in as some things influence me more than others, and of course it’s based on my own selection of reading materials and interests. I’m sure professional historians suffer the same affliction. To make this point another way, while all of the “facts” I have spelled out in these attachments are correct (to the best of my ability), the mere choice of facts is a form of selective history. There are so many other events or “facts” that I could have chosen, so I may be, in some small way, influencing history. Thus there is an undeniable autobiographical element in this historical writing. Historians must, in their present, select a particular past, from among many pasts, to explore. 

• Scope is broad (politically/geographically) but it has a Western leaning, and even a further leaning to Canadian and American history: I have made an honest attempt to be very broad in my scope of political and geographic (countrywide of course, as opposed to provincial or local) entities. However, as it would not be practical to include all world events in my list, there has been a leaning to Western events, and certainly extra weighting to American and particularly Canadian.

• Individuals as representative of a genre: History can focus on individuals – leaders or villains, artists or inventors, scientists or philosophers – that play an outsize role in the events, in the influencing of history. So, often a date will highlight these profiles, as I have sometimes chosen individuals as representative of a genre.

• Much didn’t make the cut: What is perhaps daunting is the obvious fact that a staggering numbers of events and people do not appear in this document. There are an incredible number of events, conflicts, inventions, kings, popes, generals, politicians, philosophers, artists and other colourful characters that didn’t make the cut. 

• Some years are really periods of time: Some of the important events happened in an instant (on a specific day or year); others occurred over many years. Examples might include what was happening during the campaign of political repression in many South American countries in the 1970s and 80s, or the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years; or the complicated to and fro of the The French Revolutionary Wars from 1792 to 1802 and then the transition between the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars; or the intrigues in the Middle East. It might even be the invention of something, where the date represents the year it was patented or actually working, or the commencement of the event or even the most critical activities associated with it.

• To add to the last point, when recording history, the act of reflecting the incredible complications lurking below the surface of a simple date becomes challenging. When searching through information and events of say, just a single country, massive amounts of detail can be found. For example, one search on the history of Austria brought up a source identifying well over 800 dates considered important enough to list for those interested in the country!  Another one for Korea immersed itself in countless levels of politics and wars and intrigue. I resisted going down many of these rabbit holes.

• Summary outlines were important, and they contain some assessments: I’ve provided a brief summary outline of each event to position it and tease out the relevant, and perhaps interesting, information, but not to attempt, of course, any in-depth description. I also felt it important to capture some of the stories, as well as facts. These summaries were important; I didn’t want just headlines. For certain entries I have taken some liberty and inserted my own commentary, and sometimes judgements and assessments. In some cases I have even observed whether I had some personal connection to that event (see my “personal aside” comment shortly – probably not very “historian-like” but then, I’m not an historian).

• Important historical events are increasing in pace: Note the increase in the number of significant events as the time table moves to the present – from big chunks of time down to actual months within the years as we move into the last two centuries (and even weeks and days when you consider the year 2024.) I also continue to remind myself that current “news” is very fleeting in time; its all-dominant when you are in the middle of it, but has a very short (probably three to four day) shelf life.

Why history is important

• History gives us context – and power and, importantly, involvement. Historical knowledge gives us roots: a context for our existence. Individuals who lack that context, lack a significant element of self-understanding but also an understanding of their relationship with the rest of society. Along with this appreciation of context comes an ability to interrogate evidence. Powerless people become easy targets for exploitation, propagandizing and manipulation, particularly by those who appear to offer a membership to a group or cause. Historical knowledge is power. This is a good thing to remember as we attempt, say in Canada, to integrate the lives and incidents involving such important areas as the histories of Indigenous people, non-European immigrants and women.

2. It allows us, forces us, to be critical thinkers. In the age of “fake news” engaged citizens need to be culturally literate, critical thinkers. It makes sure we don’t tell a story starting in the middle, as we need to know the history to understand how we got here. It provides nuance in this oversimplified era of brief sound bites (and 280 characters in the text content of a Tweet). There is the risk of creating an oversimplified narrative, the kind that, as historian Margaret MacMillan says in her The Uses and Abuses of History, “flattens out the complexity of human experience and leaves no room for different interpretations of the past.” In that critique, history can tempt us to move in confusing ways. 

A professor I was reading recently described a number of scenarios that differed from the conventional view of certain historical events and said it underlines “how history is polysemous”. I had to look up the word, but it’s quite a simple concept really – that something could have many meanings, i.e. that history is a grab bag from which each advocate pulls out a lesson to advance an agenda. So back to being a critical thinker and test for meaning and perspective.

3. It allows us to learn. Regarding whether Putin would still have gone ahead with his “special military operation” if he had known how it would turn out, Hu We, a political scholar based in Shanghai, has said “History does not entertain ‘what ifs,’ and what is lost can never be regained. We can only learn from the lessons, try our best to not cling obstinately to our course and to never repeat past mistakes. What is the most tragic is to witness a nation that does not remember its past mistakes.” It is important to remember that famous saying by the philosopher,  George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We should learn not to be tempted by a sort of amnesia that it is not, in the words of Yogi Berra, “déjà view all over again”.

4. It engages in important debate regarding historical continuity. Currently there is a lively and important disagreement whether the past is a good guide to our future. Some historians, such as Niall Ferguson, argue that “every generation thinks the world is falling apart, but then ultimately pulls through.” Others, such as Thomas Homer-Dixon disagree and say the “past isn’t a good guide to our present and future. Too many basic parameters – such as the energy imbalance at Earth’s surface – have changed. At the same time, we’re seeing new, deep links among crises that include synchronizing dynamics. The simple extrapolation of past trends doesn’t work any more.” As observers, we can follow and learn from the debate.

5. It helps us focus on who tells the story. This is important as it helps determine political, cultural and gender influence and the potential for bias. As history is about stories, the validity and background of the raconteur is important.

6. It can enable our institutions to develop adequate responses to external challenges. As the author Trilby Kent said in a Globe & Mail Opinion piece Oct 22, 2022 “In an era of environmental change, rising inequality, and seismic shifts in the international political arena, we need to understand how our institutions have developed in order to understand why they don’t always have adequate responses to these crises. History gives us this power. No other subject helps us understand so comprehensively what it is to be human.”

7. It helps in making sense of the daily news. Having a historical sense helps make sense of the often complex events, issues, relationships and patterns that bombard us daily. As we read, hear or view the news we should be able to place the events in context. As President Biden said in his February 7, 2023 State of the Union Address “We are not bystanders of history.” He meant that we all need to be involved.

8. History can remind us to be surprised – and that the recent state of things is unlikely to last. Looking forward, many things cannot and will not be predicted. History will continue to surprise. The accelerated deindustrialization of North America, Europe and Japan, and the shift to manufacturing to Asia and China in particular is one such example. There are so many.

9. Digging into history can provide what has been captured as a record. This is, however, not always a current record. History has the practical difficulty of distance in time from the event, thus not having ready access to sources close to the event, e.g. often the first records describing events were written several centuries after the fact, and may well have been coloured by the contemporary experiences of the chronicler. (Examples abound, like the use of gunpowder in warfare.)

10. History helps us become familiar with one another, which should help in growing together as opposed to the dangers of being apart. As historian Arnold Toynbee said in his famous A Study of History, “Mankind has not yet been united politically, and we are still strangers to each other in our local ways of life, which we have inherited from the times before the recent ‘annihilation of distance’. This is a terribly dangerous situation. The two World Wars and the present worldwide anxiety, frustration, tension, and violence tell the tale. Mankind is surely going to destroy itself unless it succeeds in growing together into something like a single family. For this we must become familiar with each other, and this means become familiar with each others history, since Man does not live just in the immediate present.” This was written in 1972; more than 50 years of somewhat anxious history has since passed, and his words and the hope behind them, while somewhat Panglossian, seem relevant.

11. History means curiosity: as human we should be curious about our past. Toynbee argues for studying history simply because we should be moved by curiosity. As he says, curiosity is one of the distinctive faculties of human nature. 

12. History makes us search for truth, for accuracy. The teaching and study of history becomes an opportunity to demonstrate how history must be told truthfully and accurately. Part of this is the search for evidence from primary sources and experts, not just websites and Twitter. Being critical consumers of social media is one desired outcome. The historian Will Durant said: “most of history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice”. A corollary can be… 

13. History can also provide a rebalancing of truth from the game of PR fiction or political intrigue or simply issues that governments feel the need to keep secret. “History is the best teacher, but its lessons are not on the surface,” observed Kenneth Thompson, an international-relations scholar. There is the question of what’s propaganda or truth. One example of many is Napoleon Bonaparte, who was not only a warrior but also a shrewd propagandist. (He is commonly given attribution to the quote “History is a set of lies agreed upon” although it’s likely just a paraphrase of his general attitude.) During his first campaign in Italy, he carefully crafted reports from the battlefield, designed to increase his glory while masking the ruthlessness with which he plundered the country. He even created his own newspapers which exalt his victories. Bonaparte himself actually writes some articles. He himself wrote: “Bonaparte flies like lightning and strikes like a thunderbolt.”

An example of point #13: There are many examples of historians digging into once classified documents or long lost letters, or whatever, to present an alternative view of past events. 

The Cuban Missile Crisis is a frightening example of how this unpacking through the opening of secret files and recordings can instruct us on the future. With the opening of the Soviet archives and the declassification of hours of audio recordings made in the White House (both in the 1990s) the tale unfolds differently and more terrifyingly than what the public was provided at the time it was all happening. 

Sheldon Stern, historian at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library from 1977 to 1999 listened to these recordings and wrote a book: “The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory”. He points out that American intelligence grossly underestimated the Soviet military presence in Cuba and didn’t know Soviet field commanders had tactical nuclear weapons with permission to fire on an invading army. A rogue captain at sea nearly launched missiles. Kennedy did not authorize a full-scale attack on Cuba or on the Soviet ships and submarines approaching the island, even though he was told that he was risking the defeat and destruction of the US. It illustrates the degree to which the difference between catastrophe and peace often comes down not to considered strategies but to pure chance.

We know that advisors around John F. Kennedy were misguided and too confidant. Khrushchev considered the missiles defensive. After all, the Americans had nuclear missiles in Turkey, so Khrushchev thought he was maintaining the balance of fear. Kennedy saved the day by trying to understand the reality of the nuclear gamble that was unfolding; he made a deal with Khrushchev to remove the American missiles in Turkey for the Soviet removal of their Cuban missiles. This was a secret for years. His decision spared the world a war that almost certainly would have involved nuclear weapons. 

The underlying message from this was that no one wins with nuclear weapons, and Kennedy “was the only person…who genuinely understood that nuclear war could never be a viable or rational choice.” It’s one that should be noted today. All this is important. It advises how the future can be handled. If we common citizens think the press is providing all we need on a given issue, then we are being very naive. If this is true of a society where there is an active and free pass, think what is available in a society not so fortunate.

What is “history”?

• History can cover all aspects of human society. It is not just about wars and politics. Thisstudy of change over time covers all aspects of the human social condition. It takes in economics, sociology, culture, religion, philosophy, science, medicine, geography, climate, military, archeology, technology, education, sport and on and on. It’s about how humans survived their environment. It’s about their inventions, and experiences, and learnings (both formal and practical), their socializing, and relationships through friendships, marriages, progeny that allows the human condition to survive, and prosper.

• History is the memory of the past experience of human affairs as it has been preserved largely in written records. While this captures much, there can be more. Even in the absence of a written record, information can be recovered by studying oral records, painting, drawings, carvings, and other artifacts.

• History is all about stories. The stories we tell ourselves about the past allow us to examine ideas and see the country or the event we want. It’s also about who tells these stories and how they are told. Do they have an agenda; is there a political, cultural or gender bias?

• The academic discipline of the study of history uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect and significance, and what narrative best explains an event – all supported by verifiable evidence.

Why I chose to tackle this subject:

1. It is simply extremely interesting. Reading about and studying the dynamics of our past history is fascinating.

2. It is a help in understanding the world I live in now, but also an attempt to ponder the future. Unearthing the themes and patterns in world affairs forces this on one (see page 8). 

3. It assists in the writing I do and in particular my blog (at powellponderings.com), the labelling of my photos, and the completing of my diaries in explaining what I have seen and feel. Because I am reasonably well travelled, I have had the good fortune to encounter bits of history in the flesh so to speak. I’ve been to nearly 140 countries and each has a story. Before going to a country I read about its history and places to visit. I have tangible, real time reflections of historical events. (I wrote a blog in 2021 on “personal travel as a window into dark history”. Here is the link to that blog: https://powellponderings.com/personal-travel-as-a-window-into-dark-history/.)

4. There is a need to sort from much data – to select, winnow, and prioritize what we know from a vast panoply, and study to make sense of it, and to learn from it. We have a unique problem in our current world of information because we now have so much information (some say too much, but that’s just what is) plus some of it is inaccurate. I thought I’d first of all make a try at this winnowing (in the five attachments). Then came the tough job – identifying and analyzing the broad themes and patterns.

My unexpected learnings 

• It forced me to determine my criteria and selection process: It quickly became apparent as I was doing the research that a selection process was constantly going on in my head. When faced with a mass of information you have to choose what’s in and what’s not. Historians need to do this, and by doing so they are using criteria that’s potentially tainted with bias. So, “is all history bias” and “what kind of bias”, are important questions to ask when one is reading and drawing conclusions.

• It was really an end in itself and supported the rationale of studying and understanding history: This “assembly of dates” attempt is rooted in the importance of the value of living with a historical sense. I felt, after I’d completed this, I really received so much joy out of the learning that occurred – that I didn’t really need to go any farther. I did, of course, but the personal history lesson I imposed upon myself was a great deal of fun. I certainly encountered a lot of excellent books, articles, stories and ideas. I’d like to think that a future reader would feel in a similar fashion.

• It was a delight to connect this with my own travels and experiences: Fortunately my connection to some of the history outlined in this summary is not just from reading. I’ve always been fascinated by travelling and have treated it as one of my core values – and consequently I have done quite a lot. As my travels have taken me all over the world, I would often nod and recall an event, idea, ruin, view, museum, tour guide, plaque, or whatever, that brought the event live in my mind. That’s where you will find in a number of places the phrase “Personal aside” with a few what I consider relevant comments.

• While educational, it was humbling. The ancient Chinese proverb hovered over my journey of assembling information: “To learn is to come face to face with one’s own ignorance.” That sure happened.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner

Caveat

Assembling the following document has provided many revelations. A series of themes emerges that help us both link various historical events so they can be better understood and provide guidance for future actions; as well they help predict future events and in the prediction perhaps reveal helpful actions for response optimization.

One pattern emerges and that is the increased number of volatile events occurring since WWII. And the risks associated with these events is substantially greater, such as nuclear, climate apocalypse, AI, pandemics and aging diseases.

As the Globe and Mail states in a May 18 opinion piece, “Polycrises occur when disparate shocks interact such that their overall impact exceeds the sum of each part.”

So how bad is it? The historian Niall Ferguson recently suggested that a third world war was plausible. Wars in Europe, the Middle East and potentially East Asia are intersecting and the possibilities escalating. Furthermore, as more nuclear powers become embroiled in real wars, the risks of a nuclear confrontation are rising. (See my June 23, 2023 blog on The Nuclear Reality: https://powellponderings.com/themes-and-patterns-emerging-from-a-scan-of-history/.)

Why are these polycrises proliferating? Likely the reality suggests that the wrenching transition the global order is undergoing may be the cause. The world is shifting from a unipolar world briefly dominated by the US to a multipolar system where power is more distributed across states, companies and other non-state actors.

The US remains the dominant military power, but slowly a shift eastward to Asia is taking place in technological, economic and political. China and the US are locked in a battle for geography as well as technology, and AI will play an ever increasing place in this power equation.

An important future issue will be the institutions that were designed in the mid-20th century to prevent military escalation are increasingly “fragile, dysfunctional and irrelevant”, as the Globe and Mail article suggested. The UN Security Council is paralyzed by division and there is limited cooperation to tackle current threats, much less emerging ones. 

The international community has entered a new arms race; and is even more unpredictable because of AI.

Broad themes and patterns – the gestalt – that emerge from this scan

The world has become a lot more complicated as the years advance. It faces many and increasingly complex crises.

Most categories are interrelated. Tech issues with inventions, religion and wars, energy and climate change, demographics with health, etc. Thus there are a range of possibilities, over the course of human history, that can be selected as broad themes. This is my selection of what I think are important themes and patterns for our future.

1. The nuclear weapon reality: This has been superimposed upon history since 1945, i.e. the consequences to the world since the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. In tracking advances in military systems and strategies over history (from chariots to guns to tanks to drones, even to AI and gene manipulation), no event comes remotely close in importance. (As I just pointed out, I have addressed the first “theme” – the nuclear weapon reality in my June 23, 2023 blog entitled “Themes and Patterns Emerging From A Scan of History, Theme 1: The Nuclear Reality.”  It can be found at: https://powellponderings.com/themes-and-patterns-emerging-from-a-scan-of-history/.)

2. Demographic realities and the link to health: This is a theme that’s becoming more critical as the human race expands over this planet, consuming resources all the time and emitting carbon with serious consequences. Human life span and health links, and specifically the societal consequences aging, are obvious issues.

3. Wars and mankind’s continuous engaging in them: A male dominated pattern weaves its way through the centuries. As well, technology has improved our capacity for destruction and mayhem. Think drones and cell phone/walkie-talkie explosions as the latest innovations. Just when we think the world is seeking peace, the world is increasingly being fragmented into a mosaic of regional clubs and shrinking islands of stability. Thus (according to the May 18/24 Globe and Mail) “expansionist-minded politicians, opportunistic warlords and intrepid criminals are stepping into the vacuum.” 

4. The clash of political/philosophical governing positions from democratic ideals to dictators: Increased levels of dissatisfaction with democracy are at their highest levels since since the mid-1990.  This considers the rise and fall of civilizations and nations leading to the current global upheaval triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rejigging of resulting global alliances. Proliferation of multi-country organizations and trading blocks should also be considered. See my caveat on page 7.

5. Philosophy and religion/belief systems: Mankind’s constant search for meaning and the many, often conflicting answers, and the determined adherence to these beliefs dominates. Are they all right; are they all wrong; what’s the important learnings; is there a “correct” path?

6. Culture, language and writing: This started when tens of thousands of years ago evolution kept selecting for the trait of “having language”, as those that did, gained a crucial advantage over those that didn’t, with homo sapiens winning the lottery. An extremely fast forward leads directly to the current fear that AI has hacked language – the operating system of our civilization. The world of intellect, including education, culture, language, literature, art, music, should be considered.

7. Energy sources, be they hydrocarbon, nuclear, renewables: They have evolved over the years – and the way they impact the next theme…

8. Climate and the change it is undergoing: From a pre-industrial small population earth, we have reached hydrocarbon driven economies presenting serious consequences. At some point mankind will have to bring direction to the issue of growth of societies, of cities, of countries. How much can the earth’s resources handle growth?

9. Remarkable personalities, and how certain individuals have influenced history, which leads to…

10. Gender, and the evolving roles of males and females and transgender.

11. The cruel side of mankind: This must be addressed as history has so many terrible examples. Exterminations and assassinations are part of the equation.

12. Disasters and major traumas and how influential they have been in history: This will include such areas as environment related (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and weather) and human influenced (famines, epidemics and plagues, even diasporas). For example, plagues have shaped history, from the typhus that crippled Napoleon’s invasion of Russia to the COVID-induced isolation that might have aggravated Vladimir Putin’s paranoia.

13. Race and class issues, including the ancient history of slavery: Economic and cultural discrimination has evolved over time.

14. Inventions and discoveries, including specifically artificial intelligence and the advances made in medicine and health: Man’s inexhaustible and clever ability to discover new ways to do things; the ways to measure (time, distance, volume, weight, etc.); science, technology and the new cyber world dominate.

15. The worlds of outer space and inner exploration: Circling the earth then breaking free to visit the moon and beyond; then going the other way in the “resolution revolution” and the potential of electron cryo-microscopy.

16. The world of transportation: From the invention of the wheel, automobile, through to high speed trains, planes, to space ships out into the universe.

17. The world of food and farming: Sustainability; animal based and alternatives; the inequities that exist around the world should be considered

18. The world of work, including the rise of capitalism: This would include the world of currencies, banking, trade, markets, plus the concept of time driving productivity 

19. The world of recreation, sport, entertainment and leisure: Synched with the world of work and the connection with money and power.

They are all so interconnected. It is all so complex. And there are other themes that could be addressed. Humans have emerged from being hunter-gatherers, where all we had to worry about was food and shelter, maintaining life long enough to procreate to continue our lineage, to the present where we are asking where is the power cord for our electronic devises so we can order food and be entertained.

As noted I have addressed the first “theme” – the nuclear weapon reality. In subsequent blogs, I’ll address others.

My source documents: Attachments #1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

• Caveat: While the material I assembled in Attachments #1 to 5 has been/will be pivotal in the writing task, it is not necessary to read these documents to understand and react to a given blog itself. I do warn the reader that these documents are quite extensive. They are also very, very interesting!

• Nevertheless, I do present them: 

* Attachment #1: Key Dates in World History: The Big Bang to 4 BC

* Attachment #2: Key Dates in World History: 4 BC to 1798 AD

* Attachment #3: Key Dates in World History: 1800  to 1945 

* Attachment #4: Key Dates in World History: 1945 to 1999

* Attachment $5: Key Dates in World History: The 21st Century, 2000 to Present

Attachment #1: 

Key Dates in World History: The Big Bang to 4 BC

The Universe

To help understand the human condition rationally I felt is was helpful to step way back and position man’s development in the broad scheme of the universe. So I begin at the beginning, as we know it.

On the question of scale: time, distance, mass and quantity: An important learning in this examination is the one of scale – in four areas. The first is the one of time. We humans deal in a natural life span of a mere 80 or so years and that’s our reference point. So we have difficulty with billions of years. It’s been convenient to divide the chronology of the universe since it originated into five parts; (it is generally considered meaningless or unclear whether time existed before this chronology):

• The very early universe, i.e. the first picosecond (one trillionth of a second) during which currently established laws of physics may not have applied). The four known fundamental interactions or forces emerged (first, gravitation, and later the electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions; and the accelerated expansion of the universe due to cosmic inflation)
• The early universe (lasted around 370,000 years)
• The Dark Ages (from 370,000 years until about 1 billion years). At some point around 200 to 500 million years, the earliest generation of stars and galaxies form
• The universe as it appears today, i.e. from 1 billion years, and for about 12.8 billion years, the universe has looked much as it does today and it will continue to appear very similar for many billions of years into the future. The present-day universe is understood, but beyond about 100 billion years of cosmic time (about 86 billion years in the future) we are less sure which path the universe will take
• The far future and ultimate fate: at some time the current era (the Stelliferous Era) will end, as stars are no longer born, and the expansion the universe will mean that the observable universe becomes limited to local galaxies

Also with respect to recording history by date, initially there are huge intervals between noteworthy events. They then begin to shrink from enormous spans of hundreds of millions to mere hundreds of thousands of years. When we get into the last two or three centuries, we are down to years, and then months. 

The second is the one of distance, for it too is enormous. To we humans, who think of crossing the Atlantic to England as being far away, the reality that our own Milky Way galaxy is about 800 light years away from earth (a light year is the distance light travels in a year, 9.5 trillion kilometres; light travels at 186,000 miles a second, so a light year works out to six trillion miles) is mind boggling. The nearest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years away, or about 24 trillion miles. The Milky Way in our galaxy is estimated to be 100,000 light years across. Our sun is about a quarter the way in. The average star in our galaxy is over 32,000 light years away. 

The third is the one of mass or size. Astronomers have recently discovered a quasar with a black hole at its heart growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a sun a day. The black hole powering this distant quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than our sun. It may also be the brightest object in the universe; it shines 500 trillion times brighter than our sun. The galaxy we call home is unfathomably enormous. With enough room for an estimated 100 billion planets, the Milky Way stretches about 100,000 light-years across, although estimates of its size vary. Earth is situated approximately two-thirds of the way from our galaxy’s centre; we’re essentially in the suburbia of the Milky Way. Light from the centre of the Milky Way takes nearly 25,000 years to reach our planet (meaning it dates back to when humans were still in the Stone Age.)

Over the past nine years astronomers have been observing the death of a large star in our Milky Way. This breaking up supernova is believed to have a mass of at least eight times greater than our sun; it will cool down now over many millions of years until eventually it will form new stars. Now that’s size! 

The fourth is quantity: estimates vary, but there are something on the order of two trillion galaxies in the universe, each of which contains something like 100 billion stars. Some of those 200 billion trillion stars are bound to have planets revolving around them, some of which would have the conditions necessary for life to evolve, some smaller number of which would/could have produced intelligent life.

So all the dimensions of our universe are extraordinarily immense. (They can also be very small, as science discovers more and more ways to examine Earth’s minutia.) 

Regarding the concept of a multiverse: a term that scientists use to describe the idea that beyond the observable universe, other universes may exist as well. Multiverses are predicted by several scientific theories that describe different possible scenarios – from regions of space in different planes than our universe, to separate bubble universes that are constantly springing into existence. Even though certain features of the universe seem to require the existence of a multiverse, nothing has been directly observed that suggests it actually exists. So far, the evidence supporting the idea of a multiverse is purely theoretical, and in some cases, philosophical.

On the question of geologic time vs human time: A passage in author John McPhee’s book “Annals of the Former World” (a compilation of four previous books on geology and one unpublished essay that won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction) puts it all in perspective: 

“When a volcano lets fly or an earthquake brings down a mountainside, people look upon the event with surprise and report it to each other as news. People, in their whole history, have seen comparatively few such events; and only in the past couple of hundred years have they begun to sense the patterns the events represent.  

Human time, regarded in the perspective of geologic time, is much too thin to be discerned – the mark invisible at the end of a ruler. If geologic time could somehow be seen in the perspective of human time, on the other hand, sea levels would be rising and falling hundreds of feet, ice would come pouring over continents and as quickly go away. Yucatans and Florida would be under the sun one moment and underwater the next, oceans would swing open like doors, mountains would grow like clouds and come down like melting sherbet, continents would crawl like amoebae, rivers would arrive and disappear like rainstreaks down an umbrella, lakes would go away like puddles after rain, and volcanoes would light the earth as if it were a garden full of fireflies. 

At the end of the program, man shows up – his ticket in his hand. Almost at once, he conceives of private property, dimension stone, and life insurance. When a Mt. St. Helens assaults his sensibilities with an ash cloud eleven miles high, he writes a letter to the New York Times, recommending that the mountain be bombed.”

And finally to the tantalizing question of life: Earth is home to all known life in the universe – and all of that life has been found in just 1% of the planet’s mass. That tiny fraction refers to Earth’s crust, which is 25 miles deep and has been home to every life-form ever known. 

Beneath the crust lies the planet’s mantle, which contains solid rocks, minerals, and areas of semi-solid magma. Even deeper, there’s the Earth’s core, which is extremely hot – parts are as hot as the surface of our sun – and mostly made of metal. 

There is no evidence of intelligent life beyond our planet Earth, although many believe that it’s out there. The fact that there are many extreme and chemically harsh ecosystems on Earth that do support forms of life (hydrothermal vents, acidic hot springs, volcanic lakes, etc.) are examples of life forming under difficult circumstances, and could provide parallels to the extreme environments on other planets and give hope to the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

If extraterrestrial life exists, it could range from simple microorganisms and multicellular organisms similar to animals or plants, to complex alien intelligences akin to humans. When scientists talk about extraterrestrial life, they consider all those types. Although it is possible that extraterrestrial life may have other configurations, scientists use the hierarchy of lifeforms from Earth for simplicity, as it is the only one known to exist. 

Key Dates

• 13.8 billion (or Ga) years ago: The Big Bang – when the universe was created out of a tiny, dense fireball (some see it a “singularity”) that exploded. (Other sources say it was 13.7 billion years ago). Some say it was an explosion from a point without dimension. Until this big bang, there was no space, so it would be meaningless to say this point was small. Also, with this explosion, time itself was born – so there was no such thing as “before”; there was only after. For the next 9 billion years, gravity pulled gases and elements together, forming giant clouds. The Solar System formed from a large, rotating cloud of interstellar dust and gas called the solar nebula. It was composed of hydrogen and helium (See “1964” and “2012, July”)

• 13.8-13.6 billion: First stars created. Most stars are between 1 billion and 10 billion years old. Some stars may even be close to 13.8 billion years old – the observed age of the universe. The 7 ton James Webb Space Space Telescope initiated January 4, 2022, and 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, is now hunting down light from these stars. It’s like a time machine – when they stare across great distances, they are also staring back in time. (Hubble was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile) (See  “1990, April” and “2022, Jan”) 

• 13.6-12.8 billion: First galaxies formed. One theory, which has gained strength in recent years, says the young universe contained many small “lumps” of matter, which clumped together to form galaxies. The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed many such lumps, which may be the precursors to modern galaxies. According to this theory, most of the early large galaxies were spirals. But over time, many spirals merged to form ellipticals 

• 13.6 billion: Our Galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, is only one of billions of other Galaxies that exist within the universe. In the vast, expanding space known as the universe, humans reside on a small, rocky planet called Earth. Earth is part of a discrete solar system in an arm of the spiral shaped and second largest Galaxy of the Local Group – a Galaxy called the Milky Way. Earth is located in one of the spiral arms of this Milky Way (called the Orion Arm) which lies about two-thirds of the way out from the centre of the Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to contain 100-400 billion stars and at least that number of planets

• 13.5 billion: A collection of stars has been detected a mere 290 million years after the Big Bang. Called JADES-GS-z14-0, the James Webb Space Telescope made the discovery. The most interesting aspect of the latest observation is not so much the great distance involved but rather its size and brightness. Webb measures the galaxy to be more than 1,600 light years across. Many of the most luminous galaxies generate the majority of their light via gas falling into a supermassive black hole. But the scale of JADES-GS-z14-0 indicates that is not the explanation in this case. Instead, the researchers believe the light is being produced by young stars. This much starlight implies that the galaxy is several hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun! 

• 13.2 billion: Scientists have discovered the oldest black hole yet, a mere 470 million years after the big bang, and it’s a whopper. Observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory teamed up over the past year to confirm what were theories before, that supermassive black holes existed at the dawn of the universe. It is 10 times bigger than the black hole in our own Milky Way, and is believed to weigh from 10% to 100% the mass of all the stars in its galaxy

• 13.2 billion: Six massive galaxies have been uncovered by the James Webb Telescope dating back to within 600 million years of the Big Bang. Astronomers (in a Feb 22/23 report) have estimated that each of these apparent mega-galaxies weigh billions of times more than our sun. In one of them the total weight of all its stars may be as much as 100 billion times greater than our sun

• 4.6 billion: Our Sun was formed from a solar nebula, but will eventually burn up our Earth and then collapse. This spinning cloud of gas and dust collapsed under its own gravity. During its stellar birth, nearly all of the nebula’s mass became the sun, leaving the rest to form the planets, moons, and other objects in our solar system. Even today, the sun makes up 99.8% of all mass in the solar system. In a billion years the sun will kill all life on earth as it is steadily getting hotter. The earth will (between 600 million and 1.5 billion years) experience a runaway greenhouse effect induced by our warming sun that will evaporate all water on Earth and make life impossible. The sun has about another 5 billion years to go before it uses up all its hydrogen, expands into a red giant, and eventually collapses into a white dwarf. Where does this philosophically leave the human race, as over time it cannot survive in this home galaxy? 

• 4.6 billion: Eight planets emerge around our Sun. Due to the gravitational attraction of every particle to every other, each cloud gradually pulled together, spinning closer and tighter, until it compacted into a round body turning on its own axis and revolving like its seven sisters, around the sun. Earth was one of eight clouds of astral dust coalescing around a local star. (Pluto was a ninth planet but it has been demoted to a dwarf planet. There even may be one out beyond Pluto – “Planet Nine”?)

• 4.6 billion: Earth came into existence.At this point (some say 4.54 billion), Earth was a ball of molten lava. Some of the space rocks that were floating around crashed into earth; they contained water and ice, and when the water and ice met the lava, it created steam. This steam began to accumulate to create the atmosphere, significantly cooling down the temperature of the Earth. Once the Earth was cool enough, molten morphed into land, and it continued raining until the Earth was covered in water

• 4.48 billion: New evidence suggests the Moon formed, 4.48 ± 0.02 Ga, or 70–110 million years after the start of the Solar System. It was thousands of miles closer to Earth when it was first formed. The moon likely formed when a protoplanet around the size of Mars hit Earth knocking debris loose which subsequently merged together to form the moon. It is now 27% the size of Earth, bigger than Pluto and helps stabilizes Earth from tilting too quickly

• 4 billion: The first permanent accumulations of water were present on Earth, forming the oceans and other bodies of water. Water moves between these different reservoirs through the hydrological cycle. The temperature finally dropped below water’s boiling point of 212 degrees Fahrenheit, and the vapour turned into rain. It showered for centuries, filling the deepest points on the planet’s surface and building up moisture in the atmosphere. This was essential for life developing on Earth. Water is evaporated from the oceans, lakes, streams, the surface of the land, and plants (transpiration) by solar energy. It is moved through the atmosphere by winds and condenses to form clouds of water droplets or ice crystals. It comes back down as rain or snow and then flows through streams and rivers, into lakes, and eventually back to the oceans. Water on the surface and in streams and lakes infiltrates the ground to become groundwater. Groundwater slowly moves through the rock and surface materials; some returns to other streams and lakes, and some goes directly back to the oceans. Water is stored in various reservoirs as it moves through this cycle. The largest, by far, is the oceans, accounting for 97% of the volume. Of course, that water is salty. The remaining 3% is fresh water. Two-thirds of our fresh water is stored in ice and one-third is stored as groundwater. The remaining fresh water – about 0.03% of the total – is stored in lakes, streams, vegetation, and the atmosphere. Today, our planet is in the perfect zone for water solids, liquid, and gas to form: A little closer to the sun and all we’d have is vapour, whereas a little farther away there would be no vapour at all

• 3.7 billion: Life is nearly as old as Earth itself; physical evidences of life appear.This includes graphite, a biogenic substance (a product made by or of life forms), in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in southwestern Greenland. Microfossils have also been observed in a band of prehistoric iron deposits in northern Quebec and appear to have lived within hydrothermal vent precipitates. These bacteria ate iron, breathed carbon dioxide (as opposed to oxygen) and produced rust as waste, which they deposited into the teleological record

• 3.5 billion: New life in oceans (or 3.7 billion, as “Nature” program says. The author, Vaclav Smil says “we will never be able to pinpoint this event: it has been dated to as early as 3.7 and as late as 2.5 billion years ago.”). These are the first simple, single-celled photosynthetic microbes in shallow seas: they absorb near-infrared radiation – that which is just beyond the visible spectrum – and do not produce oxygen. The first microorganisms that emergeare rare and hidden, and are associated with alkaline hydrothermal vents at the ocean’s floor

• 3.3-3.2 billion: Earth’s first continents, known as the cratons, emerge from the ocean. The extensive central cratons of continents may consist of both shields and platforms. A shield is that part of a craton in which (usually) Precambrian basement rocks crop out extensively at the surface. By contrast, in a platform the basement is overlain by horizontal or subhorizontal sediments

• 3/2.5 -1 billion: The Great Oxidation Event; life evolves the ability to capture sun’s energy through photosynthesis. During this period, microorganisms in the ocean were consuming sunlight and converting it into energy to feed themselves (photosynthesis). In other words ocean cyanobacteria begin to use the energy of the visible incoming solar radiation to convert CO2 and water into new organic compounds and release oxygen. This is a radical shift that will eventually create Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere. While this is the beginning of the oxygenated atmosphere it took quite a while (with the oxygen levels fluctuating widely) before the gases reached their modern concentration; today’s atmospheric oxygen levels are nearly 21% of the Earth’s atmosphere by volume. There’s evidence of so-called oxygen whiffs cropping up here and there even before oxygen became a major component of Earth’s atmosphere

• 1.9 billion: Fossil bacterial colonies formed by the organisms producing the oxygen we breathe today. Called stromatolites, they have been found in the Canadian Arctic. Fossil stromatolites are natural colonies formed by photosynthetic bacteria; within the stromalites one can see microscopic forms reminiscent of bacteria. (Personal aside: I’ve photographed them at Port Epworth on the Coronation Gulf.) They lived at the ocean bottom of shallow warm seas. (There is now some evidence of stromatolites found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia.)

• 1.2 billion: New, more complex aquatic organisms appear. The rise and diffusion is seen of brilliantly coloured red algae (due to the photosynthetic pigment phycoerythrin) and of much larger, brown algae

• 1 billion: Immobile filter feeders (sponges) found in Canada’s Mackenzie Mountains

• 900 million (or Ma or .9 billion; or mya = millions of years ago): First cells with nuclei

• 645-659 million: Green algae arrives: sparking the formation of complex life and human existence on the Earth. The algal population went up by a factor of a hundred to a thousand and the diversity went right up in one big bang, and never went back again. The algae boom corresponds to a time in geologic history dubbed Snowball Earth. Around 700 million years ago, ice sheets covered our planet. But then some 650 million years ago the cold was disrupted. Volcanic eruptions built up greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere that helped heat the planet, melting the ice and warming the oceans. Around 14 million years later, the Earth cooled and the Snowball returned. It was during this time that algae rose to global dominance. Before the big freeze, the oceans were low in phosphate. But the millions of years of glaciers grinding and pulverizing rock created vast amounts of the nutrient that eventually flowed into the oceans, feeding the algae and causing it to move from the fringes of life to the centre stage. The phosphate came first, algae came second, animals came third.A sudden dominance of the green stuff was the push our planet needed in the development of complex life. We have algae to thank for our existence on the Earth when the algae took over the seas

• 650 million: New proliferation of marine plants

• 650 million: Multicellular organisms emerge, require oxygen, and are mobile.This is an epochal discovery: the existence of the first organisms made of differentiated cells. These flattish, soft, bottom-dwelling creatures (known as Ediacaran fauna after their Australian domicile) are the first simple animals requiring oxygen for their metabolism and, unlike algae that are merely tossed by waves and currents, they are mobile

• 650 million: The first supercontinent, Rodinia, formed before it separated into the current continental landmasses. It is unclear exactly how big Rodinia was, although it is likely that its core landmass was the land that is now North America. The familiar shapes and locations of today’s continents were not the same – both Asia and Africa were split into pieces, Antarctica butted up against India and Australia, and the Americas were warped into unrecognizable shapes (See”1915” and “1968”)

• 541 million: First fish appeared. The period starts with the Cambrian explosion of small marine bottom dwellers, dominated first by tribolites; they were jawless (as are modern lampreys and hagfish). They were known as agnathans. Although some of these creatures developed formidable-looking armour and spikes, agnathans were largely phased out after jawed fish, the gnathostomes, surfaced around 450 million years ago (See “485-445 million”)

• 538.8-present: Humans evolved during the coldest epoch of the Phanerozoic (our current period – from 538.8 million years ago to the present), when global average temperatures were as low as 51.8°F (11°C). But life on earth has endured climates far hotter than the one people are now creating through planet-warming emissions. Scientists say that without action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures could reach nearly 62.6°F (17°C) by the end of the century – a level not seen since the Miocene epoch, more than 5 million years ago. Humans haven’t lived in a warmer climate; we built our civilization around the geologic landscapes of an icehouse

• 500 million: First land plants to colonize the Earth originated(Cambrian period). The establishment of plant life on land is one of the most significant evolutionary episodes in Earth history: the very first plants were beginning to get a toehold on the land

• 485-445 million: A period when marine invertebrates ruled and the earth was a hothouse climate. Jawed fish now seem to have originated as early as this period – the Great Ordovician Biodiversification. The explosion was when most major animal groups started to appear in the fossil record, a time of rapid expansion of different forms of life on Earth. Earth was in what is known as a hothouse climate, with no polar ice caps and average temperatures above 86°F (30°C). The oceans teemed with mollusks and arthropods

• 450 million: The earliest fossil evidence for sharks (a few scales), during the Late Ordovician Period (458 to 444 million years ago)

• 443 million: The first of the “big five” major mass extinction events (the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction, LOME). Temperatures began to slowly decline over the next 30 million years, as atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) was pulled from the air before plummeting into what scientists call a coldhouse state. Ice sheets spread across the poles and global temperatures dropped more than 18°F (10°C). The extinction was global, eliminating 49-60% of marine genera and nearly 85% of marine species (as sea levels fell and the chemistry of the oceans changed). This rapid cooling was thought to have triggered the extinction

• 439-436 million: Earliest known vertebrates (backboned animals) that possessed jaws appear. Evidence of this was found in China, 2022. We can trace almost all our organs in the human body to the first jawed fishes. The evolution of the jaw was one of the most critical steps in the evolution of vertebrate life. It’s essential to 99.8% of living vertebrates (from biting food to vocalizing)

• 420 million: The oldest fire recorded on Earth.This has been identified from charcoal in rocks formed during the late Silurian Period (around 420 million years ago). Though plants had spread on land at that point, fluctuating levels of atmospheric oxygen meant that the first extensive wildfires recorded came somewhat later, dating from around 345 million years ago, the early Carboniferous Period (See “7 million”)

• 383 million: First evidence of seeded plants appear – some of the most important organisms on earth. These were very simple seeds that had no integument, or layer of protection, like we see with modern seeds. Gymnosperms were the first seed plants to have evolved. Life on land as we know it is shaped largely by the activities of seed plants. Since the beginning of the Mesozoic (252-66 million years ago), however, most trees and forests have consisted of seed plant. The period was also the “Age of Reptiles.” Or the “Age of Dinosaurs” (See “245 million”)

• 372-359 million: The Late Devonian Extinction was an interval of high diversity loss, concentrated into two extinction events. The first annihilated coral reefs and numerous tropical benthic (seabed-living) animals such as jawless fish, brachiopods, and trilobites. The second wiped out the armoured placoderm fish and nearly led to the extinction of the newly-evolved ammonoids. These two closely-spaced extinction events collectively eliminated about 19% of all families, 50% of all genera and at least 70% of all species. (Note: an extinction event is a widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp change in the diversity and abundance of multicellular organisms.) 

• 360 million:  The first evidence of trees (with “true” woody stems) at the start of the Carboniferous period. (The Carboniferous is a geologic periodthat spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period 358.9 million years ago to the beginning of the Permian Period, 298.9 million.) This was the period during which both terrestrial animal and land plant  life was well established. The period is sometimes called the Age of Amphibiansbecause of the diversification of early amphibians. Vast swaths of forests and swamps covered the land, which eventually became coal beds

• 251.9 million: “The Great Dying” was the Earth’s most severe known extinction event. Also called the End-Permian Extinction, it resulted in the extinction of 57% of biological families, 83% of genera, 81% of marine species (the seas became acidic and hot; the warmer waters could not hold enough oxygen for animals to survive) and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species (acid rain fell across the continents). It was the largest known mass extinction of insects. It left behind a planet unrecognizable and virtually uninhabitable. The main cause of extinction was the large amount of carbon dioxide emitted by massive volcanic eruptions. As the gases accumulated temperatures rapidly fluctuated, oxygen levels plummeted, and the ocean became more acidic from acid rain. Ash that blocked the sun initially caused Earth’s temperature to plummet, but lava soon burned coal deposits that released the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, raising the temperature. By about 18°F (10°C) There have been five major extinctions in Earth’s history, but only the End-Permian has been called “the Great Dying”. It is widely understood in the scientific community that a sixth major extinction is underway, and that it is wholly due to human activity

• 252-201 million: The rise of reptiles and the first dinosaurs during the Triassic Geologic Period. All continents during the Triassic Period were part of a single land mass called Pangaea. This meant that differences between animals or plants found in different areas were minor. The climate was relatively hot and dry, and much of the land was covered with large deserts. Unlike today, there were no polar ice caps. Toward the end of the Triassic, a series of earthquakes and massive volcanic eruptions caused Pangaea to slowly begin to break into two. This was the birth of the North Atlantic Ocean

• 245 million: Dinosaurs arrive. Non-bird dinosaurs lived between about 245 and 66 million years ago, in a time known as the Mesozoic Era which in turn is divided into three periods: the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. During this era, the land gradually split from one huge continent into smaller ones. The associated changes in the climate and vegetation affected how dinosaurs evolved (See “383 million” and “225 million”)

• 225 million: The world’s landmasses (once assembled into one great continent, called Pangaea) begin to split. Pangaea began to split into a northern continent, called Laurasia, and its southern counterpart, Gondwana. Each continent carried its own cargo of animals. Based on the known fossil record, scientists believed that the ancestors of mammals alive today emerged in the north, and then migrated south, all the way to Antarctica and Australia, as land bridges episodically developed between the continents. However, recently paleontologists have dug deeper into the fossil record of southern continents. They are finding evidence of advanced mammals far older than any known in the north. Geneticists have recently found evidence that mammals began to diversify into today’s 18 living orders much earlier than the fossil record shows. Fossils suggest that most modern groups appeared around 60 million years ago, after the dinosaurs were gone. Molecular data suggest they actually began diversifying about 100 million years ago 

• 210 million: Mammals arrive: all living mammals today, including humans, descend from the one line that survived. Deep in their bones, all mammals are related. The earliest known mammals were the morganucodontids, tiny shrew-size creatures that lived in the shadows of the dinosaurs 210 million years ago. They were one of several different mammal lineages that emerged around that time. All living mammals today, including humans, descend from the one line that survived. During the next 145 million years of evolution, the dominance of dinosaurs ensured that our distant mammalian ancestors remained no larger than a cat. But when a catastrophic asteroid or comet – maybe a few comets, as some scientists are now arguing – finished off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, mammals got the most important evolutionary opportunity they would ever have. With dinosaurs gone, mammals could exploit the planet’s resources themselves. Within a few million years of the impact the fossil record shows an explosion in mammalian diversity

• 201-145 million: The Jurassic Period ushered in birds and mammals. At the end of the Triassic Period there was a mass extinction, the causes of which are still hotly debated. Many large land animals were wiped out but the dinosaurs survived, giving them the opportunity to evolve into a wide variety of forms and increase in number. Despite the Pangaea land mass separation that started 225 mya, similarities in their fossil records show that there were some land connections between the two continents early in the Jurassic. These regions became more distinct later in the period. Plants such as ferns and horsetails grew over huge areas. Some of this vegetation became the fossil fuels that we mine today. Elsewhere there were forests of tall conifer trees such as sequoias (See “225 million”)

• 170 million: The start of Canada’s oil sands: the decomposition of marine animals, plants and algae formed what is now known as the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, which holds almost all of Canada’s onshore oil and gas reserves. Microbe bacteria contained within the oxygenated water fed off the lighter hydrocarbon molecules in a process known as biodegredation, leaving behind a heavier complex hydrocarbon, which is referred to as bitumen. There are an estimated 1.8 trillion barrels of bitumen contained in the oil sands, but less than 10% can be economically recovered with current technology. That works out to 161 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The industry currently extracts about 1 billion barrels a year. Canada is home to the world’s third largest oil reserves, and almost all of those barrels are contained within the oil sands

• 145-66 million: Cretaceous Period where the first snakes evolved, the first flowering plants and various insect groups appeared. During this period the land separated further into some of the continents we recognize today, although in different positions. This meant that dinosaurs evolved independently in different parts of the world, becoming more diverse. Other groups of organisms also diversified. The first snakes evolvedduring this time, as well as thefirst flowering plants. Various insect groups appeared, including bees, which helped increase the spread of flowering plants. The first fully marine turtles emerged. And mammals now included tree climbers, ground dwellers and even predators of small dinosaurs. Sea levels rose and fell repeatedly. Accelerated plate collision caused mountains to build along the western margin of North America 

• 65 million (some say 66 million): A mass extinction event occurred because of a six mile wide asteroid hitting the Yucatan Peninsula (and carving out a 177 kilometres wide crater known as Chicxulub). Tsunamis 150 meters high battered North America. The temperature reached 500 degrees in parts of the world. It caused both a dramatic cooling period followed by a period of warming that lasted 100,000 years. 75% of plant and animal species became extinct. The key to survival was to be small. Mammals fit that profile. They suddenly found themselves in a world without large carnivores – the non-bird dinosaurs were gone. Restraints were off. Within 270,000 years they were diversifying and growing bigger

• Note: the Paleocene was notable for being the geologic stretch of time immediately following the extinction of the dinosaurs – which opened up vast ecological niches for surviving mammals, birds, reptiles and marine animals. The Paleocene (65-56 million years ago) was the first epoch of the Paleogene period (65-23 million years ago), the other two being the Eocene (56-34 million years ago) and Oligocene (34-23 million years ago where some mammals had begun to grow to respectable sizes, though they weren’t nearly as impressive as their descendants of the ensuing Neogene period which was 23-2.6 million years ago); all these periods and epochs were themselves part of the Cenozoic Era (65 million years ago to the present).

• 55-50 million: The subcontinent India slowly crashed into Eurasia causing Earth to crumble where the two plates met, creating the Himalayas. A gigantic mountain uplift resulted in the world’s tallest mountains (3000 km of the Himalayas with Mount Everest being the highest peak at 8848 metres). The effect of that was heavy rain which created dense forests in Southeast Asia and in the sub-continent called India. Drained of moisture the winds kept blowing south into Africa, warming up as they moved along. The warm dry air altered the vegetation of eastern Africa

• 56-33.9 million: The Eocene epoch opened yet more ecological niches for mammals plus our own order, the primates. Eocene is derived from the Greek eos, for “dawn,” referring to the appearance and diversification of many modern groups of organisms, especially mammals and mollusks. Then a rapid increase in global temperature encouraged the spread of forests around the world – even near both Poles. This abundance of rich vegetation opened yet more ecological niches for mammals to exploit. Mammal diversity soared. The start of the Eocene is marked by the appearance of two new groups of animals: the perissodactyls (which include horses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs), and the artiodactyls (deer, cattle, and sheep). The epoch marks the first appearance of the two completely marine mammal groups, the cetaceans (whales, porpoises, and dolphins.) and the sirenians (akin to the modern manatees and dugongs). One of the newcomers in the fossil record was our own order, the primates. The earliest primates belonged to the lemur branch (See ”4000 BC”)

• 34 million: The ocean temperature plunged in response to shifts in tectonic plates and a drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide. As South America and Australia broke away from Antarctica, oceanic currents dramatically changed and affected marine food webs across the globe. Mammals diversified rapidly, evolving new ways to feed, move about, and keep warm in the chilled ocean waters

• 34 million: Smarter, bigger, and more aggressive monkeys evolved (the first chapter of human history?) Fossils from the Faiyûm Depression, where Elwyn Simons of Duke University has led a dig since 1961, reveal how anthropoids were changing. Catopithecus, one of many anthropoids his team has uncovered, has a skull the size of a small monkey’s, a relatively flat face, and a bony enclosure at the rear of its eye sockets. It is the first anthropoid to show the same arrangement of teeth humans have – two incisors, one canine, two premolars, and three molars – leading Simons to argue, “This is the first chapter of human history.”

• 16-11.6 million: Middle Miocene Epoch; taproot of human ancestry or Late Miocene ancestry. Early in the Miocene, Africa’s long isolation ended when it and Arabia came back into contact with Eurasia. That’s when the ancestors of many mammals we think of as native to Africa arrived there. First came the ancestors of antelope, cats, giraffes, and rhinos. Later, around ten million years ago, North American mammals – camels, horses, and dogs – began to arrive. Almost every animal that roams the Serengeti today is a relative newcomer to the continent. Apes moved into Eurasia and flourished. Elephants and their relatives spread across the globe, reaching as far as the tip of Patagonia (See “4000 BC”)

• 11.6-5.3 million: Early apes. Geology and climate changed the world once again for mammals as the Miocene drew to a close. The Earth grew colder and drier still. Ice caps formed in the Arctic. The Sahara began taking over North Africa, and savannas spread across much of the continent. The changing climate restricted the range of the primates to the equatorial zone. The surviving apes became larger and more specialized

• 7 million: At least one offshoot of the African apes began walking on two legs

• 7 million: The first “discovery” of fire would have involved seeing and following fire on the African savannas. It was the spread of grasses and grasslands such as the savannas of Africa that made a big impact, not only on the environment but also on the animals living there. Savannas need regular fire, or else the vegetation may convert to scrub and forest. In this context, early humans living on the savannas would often have seen fire on the landscape (See “420 million”)

• 5.3-2.6 million: Pliocene era: early hominins.The Pliocene is bookended by two significant events in the evolution of human ancestors. The first is the appearance of the hominin Australopithecus anamensis in the early Pliocene, around 4.2 million years ago (fossil’s of which were found at a lake in the Kenyan Rift Valley). The second is the appearance of Homo, the genus that includes modern humans and their closest extinct relatives, near the end of the Pliocene at 2.6 million years ago. Key traits that evolved among hominins during the Pliocene include terrestrial bipedality and, by the end of the Pliocene, encephalized brains (brains with a large neocortex relative to body mass)and stone tool manufacture

• During this period the Pacific tectonic plate butted up against the Caribbean and South American plates and the Isthmus of Panama began to take shape. This tectonic collision caused volcanic activity and the formation of mountains that stretched from North America to South America. This caused cooling and continental ice sheet growth especially in the Northern Hemisphere. The resultant drop in sea level further expanded the Panama land bridge. As the Caribbean was cut off from the Pacific, the Atlantic Ocean became slightly saltier, and the Gulf Stream strengthened and propelled warm water from the equator up into the north. Today, the salty water of the Atlantic is a major engine for global ocean circulation. Ecosystems, too, reacted to the closure of the seaway. Cordoned off from the nutrient-rich waters of the Pacific, Caribbean species adapted

• 3.67 million: Fossil of Little Foot found near Johannesburg, SA considered a direct ancestor of humans (blended ape-like and human-like traits) 

Prehistory (also known as pre-literary history)

The end of prehistory came at very different dates in different places. It is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems.

• 4 to 2.5 mya (million year ago): First hominids diverged from other primates in East Africa; while diverse they shared bipedalism trait; only one hominoid survived: homo sapiens (all others became extinct) 

• 3.3 mya: The first stone tools by hominins. All hominins are hominids but not all hominids are hominins. Hominins (the tribe Hominini) are all modern and extinct humans and their immediate ancestors. Hominids (the genus Hominidae) are all hominins and great apes (including gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans), and all their immediate ancestors

• 3.2 mya: A 3’ tall bipedal ape was found – Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis). She was found in 1974 by Don Johanson in Ethiopia. (A debate re who is really our direct ancestors?). Then in 1978 Mary Leakey found a 3.6 million year old hominin footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania; then 1984 Leakey’s son found 90% complete Homo erectus skeleton at Lake Turkana, northern Kenya

• 3-2.5 mya: South America became linked to North America through the Isthmus of Panama during the Pliocene, separating the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and causing the creation of the Gulf Stream which grew stronger. It made possible the Great American Interchange (in which land and freshwater fauna migrated from North America via Central America to South America and vice versa, as the volcanic Isthmus of Panama rose up from the sea floor and bridged the formerly separated continents). It brought a nearly complete end to South America’s distinctive native ungulate fauna,though other South American lineages like its predatory mammals were already extinct by this point and others like zenarthrans (e.g. anteaters, tree sloths, armadillos) continued to do well afterwards. The formation of the Isthmus had major consequences on global temperatures, since warm equatorial ocean currents were cut off and an Atlantic cooling cycle began, with cold Arctic and Antarctic waters dropping temperatures in the now-isolated Atlantic Ocean

• 2.58 mya-11,700 years ago: The Ice Age (the Pleistocene geological epoch), spanning the earth’s most recent period of repeated glaciations

• 2.1 mya: A mega-eruption of the Yellowstone super-volcano occurred. Two more, in 1.3 mya and 640,000 years ago, formed a 70 by 45 kilometre caldera

• 2 mya: The Dead Sea no longer connected to the ocean. The Jezreel Valley once acted as the channel by which the Mediterranean Sea, at the north-western end of the valley, connected to the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan Valley and ultimately to the Dead Sea. About two million years ago, as the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordon Rift Valley rose (this geographic region includes the entire length of the Jordon River and then continues through the Arabah depression, the Gulf of Aqaba, until finally reaching the Red Sea), this connection was lost, and the periodic floods from the Mediterranean Sea ceased. This resulted in the Dead Sea (the lowest point in the Jordon Rift Valley – the shore of the Dead Sea is the lowest land on earth, at 400 m below sea level) no longer having a connection to the ocean, and over time, due to greater evaporation than precipitation plus surface water inflow, it has become heavily saline. The Sea of Galilee, on the other hand, consists of fresh water

• 2 mya: Six fossil skeletons of Australopithecus sediba were discovered near Johannesburg, South Africa, at the Cradle of Mankind World Heritage Site. Scientists have argued that A. sediba was an immediate ancestor of Homo erectus, the ancient form from which modern humans arose, but this is contested

• 2 mya: The oldest known DNA was extracted from a sediment deposit in Peary Land, northern Greenland. Reported in December 2022 in the journal Nature, DNA fragments suggest a mix of Arctic plants as well as traces of animals including geese, hares, reindeer and lemmings along with that of a mastodon

• 1.9 mya: Homo habilis, probably the first early human species, occupied Olduvai Gorge, Africa, although they had been around since probably 3 mya. It made, and more or less systematically used, tools of wood or flint stone; it exhibited a novel, more advanced type of social behaviour: It consumed food not where it was obtained but at the group’s campsites. The territory occupied by these early humans covered some 4 million square kilometres of wooded savanna-land between today’s Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. Homo habilis yielded its place to Homo ergaster, which, having quadrupled the territory it occupied in Africa, spread to Europe and to southern Asia; then came… 

• 1.8 mya: A contemporary australopithecine, Paranthropus boisei; they were bipedal, and they are dentally similar to humans, but with a brain size not much larger than that of modern non-human apes. They were followed by…

• 1.8 to .25 mya: Homo erectus – an early human ancestor that was both widespread and long-lived. Fossils found on the Indonesian island of Java have been dated to 1.5 million years ago suggests that members of the species might have been the first humans to have ventured out of Africa (Java man); two other branches of humanity later emerged: Homoneanderthalensis (Neanderthal man) in Europe and Homo sapiens in Africa and south Asia

• 1 mya: Fire for cooking was used by Homo erectus; new evidence suggests that it has been connected to hand-held flint tools. This supports the theory that the use of fire for cooking was a turning point in human evolution because it offered easier access to the calories available in plant and animal tissue (and could explain the emergence of larger human brains and smaller digestive tracts which show up in Homo erectus about 2 mya) (See also “420 million” and “40,000 yrs ago”)

• 700,000 yrs ago: The Peking Man Site contains one of the first specimens of Homo erectus. Fossils were discovered in a cave system near Beijing. It contains one of the first specimens of Homo erectus (Homo erectus pekinensis). (Proposed dates for when Peking Man inhabited this site vary greatly, including: 700,000–200,000 years ago, 670,000–470,000 years ago, or no earlier than 530,000 years ago.)

• 350,000-250,000 yrs ago: Our species Homo sapiens emerges: the first prototype or anatomically modern humans – the ultimate mammals. They emerged from their early hominid predecessors roughly this long ago. Homo sapiens (humans) are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. They occupied the Olduvai Gorge site 17,000 years ago. A collection of hominid bones were discovered at Omo Kibish, Turkey. Both of the specimens, Omo I and Omo II, are classified as anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens), but they differ from each other. The Omo I fossils indicate more modern traits. 

• Modern human beings: I’ll now switch to “we” as it’s us I’m talking about! We share defining traits with the first mammals: We are warm-blooded. We have specialized jaws, whose hinges came together early in our evolution to create the ear bones that let us hear better than other animals. We have complex teeth that let us grind and chew our food so that we get more nutrition out of it. We have hair. We are superb mothers whom evolution has supplied with physical adaptations – such as breasts and placental birth – that give mammalian young an important head start. We humans are among the most recent to evolve, and we use our big mammalian brains to reason and solve problems and struggle for goals beyond our basic needs. We ask about our past and wonder what it might tell us about the future

• 100,000-70,000 yrs ago: First modern human beings migrated out of Africa. Some turned left into Europe; some right to populate Asia, Australasia and eventually the Americas via the land-bridge at Bering Strait. (The descendants of the ones who turned left never saw the descendants of those who turned right again until 1021 AD in Newfoundland!) A period 60,000 years ago is also accepted as most non-African humans today can trace their origins back to a large exodus around that time. However smaller migrations may have started much earlier. Fossil evidence shows that groups of foragers arrived in Asia around 120,000 years ago. Other fossil discoveries, including a 210,000-year-old skull found in Greece, suggests some humans left Africa even earlier (See “1021”)

• 100,000 yrs ago: Humans first came to North America. Canadian archaeologist Paulette Steeves argues that the settlement of the Americas may have occurred closer to 100,000 or even 130,000 year ago. “We’re supposed to believe that early hominids got to northern Asia 2.1 million years ago and then for some reason didn’t go any farther north,” Steeves explained. “A few thousand more kilometres, they would have been in North America. So it does not make any sense whatsoever.” (See “12,000 years ago”)

• 100,000-20,000 yrs ago: The giant mammals of the Ice Age disappeared in this period: mammoths, horses, camels, and dozens of other large Ice Age mammals. They all vanished by about 11,000 years ago. Many scientists cite climate change. Others say it was humans, arguing that newly arrived Homo sapiens killed off the giants with their spears

• 65,000 yrs ago: First occupation of the Australian continent, predating modern human settlement of Europe and the Americas

• 50,000-10,000 yrs ago: Cro-Magnons were the first early modern humans to settle in Europe. This was a population of early Homo sapiens dating from the Upper Paleolithic Period, i.e. between 50,000 and 10/12,000 years ago, or the beginning of the Holocene (migrating from Western Asia from possibly as early as 56,800 years ago)

• 50,000-30,000 yrs ago: Language developed. History really begins with language, with evolution selecting for the trait. True language begins when words can join with other words to form an infinite variety of meaningful combinations. Words are not language. Language is vocabulary imbedded in grammar and syntax. At this point in history creatures who had language gained a crucial advantage over those who didn’t. Evolution kept selecting for the trait until we humans were full-blown language users and the only ones on Earth. Thereupon, we outcompeted all the other tool-making bipedal primates to extinction. Note: roughly 7,000 languages are spoken in the world today

• 47,000 yrs ago: People first resided in Siberia and spread out east and west to populate Europe and the Americas (according to DNA profiling), including the prehistoric Jomon people of Japan (the indigenous hunter-gatherer population that lived in the Japanese archipelago), who are the ancestors of the modern Ainu ethnic group 

• 43,900 yrs ago: The oldest pictorial record of storytelling and the earliest figurative artwork in the world has been found. They are figurative cave paintings depicting pig hunting in Sulawesi, Indonesia (situated east of Borneo). It has been determined that much of the cave art was done by women. These primitive markings serve as visual expressions of early human experience, beliefs, and cultural practices, laying the groundwork for the development of more sophisticated writing systems ((See “19,000-17,000 yrs ago”)

• 40,000 yrs ago: Humans gained not only the ability to start a fire but manage its use. This allowed the development of cooking, thus expanding diet. Cooking may have played a role in the expansion of our brains. The hearth would have probably formed a social focus, helping the development of language. The use of flints to start fire may have occurred as far back as 400,000 to one million years ago, but concrete evidence only comes from as recently as 40,000 years ago. This is important: that it is the first extra somatic use of energy –  external to one’s body. This controlled combustion converts the chemical energy of plants into thermal energy and light, enabling the hominids to eat previously hard-to-digest foods, warming them through the cold nights, and keeping away dangerous animals (See “420 million” and “1 mya”)

• 40,000-35,000 yrs ago: Our ancient cousins, the Neanderthals, died out. They had lived across Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years. They died out shortly after our species, the Homo sapiens, arrived in Europe from Africa

• 33,00-20,000 yrs ago: Ice sheets were at their greatest extent covering much of Northern North America, Northern Europe, and Asia. (The Last Glacial Maximum.) This had a profound effect on Earth’s climate: drought, desertification, large drop in sea levels; the average global temperature around 21,000 years ago was about 6 °C colder than today (the Big Chill), and the sea level was about 125 meters lower. It created a continuous land mass, for example, that stretches between Papua New Guinea and Tasmania. Then deglaciation commenced, causing an abrupt rise in sea level

• 33,000-31,000 yrs ago: New research pushes back dates for human dispersal in the Western Hemisphere at least to this period. This includes: Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico, the Bluefish Caves in Canada, and the Santa Elina shelter in Brazil (See “100,000 yrs ago”)

• 29,000 yrs ago: The earliest ceramic objects. Pottery has been around since before the Neolithic period. As one of the oldest human inventions, the practice of pottery has developed alongside civilization

• 21,000 yrs ago: Evidence found of humans living in New Mexico due to a 2017 analysis of fossilized footprints at White Sands National Park. By this date they had split into two lineages: Ancient Native Americans (ANE) and Ancient Beringians (AB)

• 19,000-17,000 yrs ago: The walls of Lascaux Cave in southwestern France were painted. Close to 600 paintings in this Palaeolithic cave have been identified, mostly of animals. This early example of cave art was completed by clearly skilled hands and made by people who had not yet learned how to keep cattle, nor know how to farm, so they depended upon hunting for their food supply. As well they knew nothing about metal, so their weapons were made of wood, bone, or stone. The paintings were well hidden and were in darkened areas well back from the cave entrance, and of animals that were all scrambled together on the cave walls so it brings up obvious questions regarding why they were made. The cave was found in 1946 by four boys (See “43,900 yrs ago”)

• 16,500 yrs ago: A small human population of at most a few thousand arrived in Beringia (the grassland steppe, including the land bridge, that stretched for hundreds of kilometres into the continents of Siberia and America on either side) from eastern Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum before expanding into the settlement of the Americas sometime after this date. This would have occurred as the American glaciers blocking the way southward melted, but before the bridge was covered by the sea about 11,000 yrs ago (See “1648”)

• 14,000 yrs ago: Evolution of sedentary vs nomadic cultures in Iraq (Sumerians). The ancient culture that dwelled in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq, Kuwait and Syria) has been accounted for as far back as 10,000 BC. They cultivated wheat and barley which they used to bake bread, brew beer and make porridge. A few thousands of years later, they made some of civilization’s first steps into animal husbandry. The cuneiform writing system, used to establish the Code of Hammurabi, is among the most famous Mesopotamian advancements. They also created the base 60 numeric system, which led to the 60-second minute, 60-minute hour and 360-degree circle. And it was Babylonian astronomy that first divided the year into 12 periods named after constellations. The transition from simpler societies to the complex society of a civilization is gradual. Characteristics of this include: the formation of urban settlements (cities), a sedentary non-nomadic population, monumental architecture, the existence of social classes and inequality, and the creation of a writing system for communication (See “3200-3000 BC” and “1754 BC”)

• 12,000 yrs ago: Land bridge across to Alaska from present-day Siberia. Archaeologists long believed that the first peoples to set foot on the North American continent arrived by crossing this land connection, the Bering Strait, from Siberia at the end of the last ice age, around 11,500 to 12,000 years ago. They are often called “Clovis people” – named after the first discovery of stone tools used around this time, at a site near Clovis, New Mexico. This is now being challenged. Some say migrants may have crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America more than 20,000 years ago (See “100,000 yrs ago”)

• 12,000-7,000 yrs ago: Sea level rises (during the early Holocene period). A significant jump in level by about 60 m (197 ft) occurred. There were many consequences, e.g. Tasmania separated from mainland Australia, etc. There was also a sudden global temperature decrease 8,200 years ago for 2 to 4 centuries

Pre-history: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age

• Pre 10,000 was the Stone Age; post 10,000: agricultural era and animal domestication. The three-age system is the periodization of human pre-history (with some overlap into the historical periods in a few regions) into three time-periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. Note: the list of archaeological periods varys enormously from region to region

• Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems 
• The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 4000 BC and 2000 BC, with the advent of metalworking. The final division of the Stone Age in Europe, Asia and Africa was the Neolithic or New Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This “Neolithic package” included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement. (The term ‘Neolithic’ was coined by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system
• The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. (This age is the second principal period of the three-age  system proposed in 1836 for classifying and studying ancient societies and history.)
• The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity (a period between prehistory and history during which a culture or civilization has not yet developed writing). It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic – the Old Stone Age, Mesolithic – Middle Stone Age, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic – regular human manipulation of copper). The concept has been mostly applied to Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East, but also, by analogy, to other parts of the Old World. The duration of the Iron Age varies depending on the region under consideration. It is defined by archaeological convention. The “Iron Age” begins locally when the production of iron or steel has advanced to the point where iron tools and weapons replace their bronze equivalents in common use

Recorded Human History

10,000 yrs ago (8,000 BC): Recorded human history begins. Most of the world had been colonized (except for a few ocean islands (like Madagascar, New Zealand); world population around 4 to 5 million. Note: I’m switching to BC designation; then AD (from “years ago”)

• 11,000-4,000 BC: The domestication of plants and animals moves quickly 

• 11,000 BC: Evidence of domestication of lentils, vetch, pistachios and almonds in Greece and cultivation of rye in Syria. The appearance of agriculture (in this Neolithic era) allowed for larger, more complex societies

• 9100 BC: Oldest known agricultural settlement, at Klimonos, Cyprus. Cereals were obtained from the area of the historical region of greater Syria, which includes present day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestine territories and most of Turkey, i.e. the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia

• ~8500 BC: Jericho, the first walled town in the world, probably militarized, to protect its great asset, an aquifer (which meant food in the dry time); up to 3,000 people lived there

• 8000 BC: The world is on the brink of agricultural revolution. The adoption of crop cultivation results in the first patches of deliberately cultivated plants as a small share of the Earth’s total photosynthesis becomes controlled and manipulated by humans who domesticate – select, plant, tend, and harvest – crops for their (delayed) benefit. Farming is fully established along the Nile River, Egypt; rice and millet are domesticated in China; maize and squash are being domesticated in Mexico 

• 7100-5700 BC: The first known city in the world – Catal Huyuk (or Çatalhöyük), Turkey; it is the first place where surrounding villages came together and formed a central location and began the sort of urban civilization that dominates the modern world. It was a community of 5-7,000 people in an era when all the “founder crops” and goats, sheep, pigs and cattle were being domesticated

• 7000 BC: The first domestication of animals, starting with cattle. (They are used for field work, for lifting water from wells, for pulling or carrying loads, and for providing personal transportation.) Before that happens, human muscles are the only prime movers –  that is, converters of chemical (food) energy to the kinetic (mechanical) energy of labour. (There is some evidence of sheep domestication in central and southwest Asia in 9,000 BC.) (See “4000 BC”)

• 7000 BC: The Jiahu settlement of China is the country’s oldest recognized civilization. It is located in the central plain of ancient China, an area known today as the Henan Province. Records have been uncovered of the earliest examples of Chinese writing and proof that they were producers of the world’s oldest wine. A remarkable discovery is a bone flute which is considered the oldest working musical instrument. Typically carved from the wing bone of a crane, these flutes were most likely used in special ceremonies. The settlement’s end came around 5700 BC when the nearby rivers overflowed and flooded the area 

• 6500 BC: Wells dug to assure steady water supply have been found in the Jezreel Valley. The size of human settlements was largely dependent on nearby available water

• 6100 BC: Mother tongue of major branches of the Indo-European language family tree developed in Stone Age farmers in Eastern Turkey.These Neolithic farmers lived in a part of Turkey that sits at the northern end of the Fertile Crescent. As well, pastoralists who roamed the Steppe in Ukraine and southern Russia became a “second homeland” around 4000 BC, from which Indo-European speakers carried the forerunners of Italic, Celtic and Germanic languages westward into Europe. This Proto-Indo-European ancestral tongue diverged into hundreds of languages now spoken by more than three billion people worldwide. Indo-European languages are spoken by 46% of the world’s population, with the most prevalent being English, Hindu-Urdu, Spanish, Bengali, French, Russian, Portuguese, German and Punjabi

• 6000 BC: Waterwheels developed. Ancient Persia (modern day Iran) used irrigation as far back as the 6th millennium BCE to grow barley in areas with insufficient natural rainfall

• 6000 BC: Irrigation utilized. The site of Choga Mami, in Iraq on the border with Iran, is believed to be the earliest to show the first canal irrigation in operation. Irrigation was used as a means of manipulation of water in the alluvial plains of the Indus Valley Civilization, the application of which is estimated to have begun around 4500 BC and drastically increased the size and prosperity of their agricultural settlements. The Indus Valley Civilization developed sophisticated irrigation and water-storage systems, including artificial reservoirs at Girnar dated to 3000 BC, and an early canal irrigation system from c. 2600 BC. Large-scale agriculture was practiced, with an extensive network of canals used for the purpose of irrigation. (See also Qanats “~1000 BC”)

• 6000 BC: The ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh was founded and was the largest city in the world for approximately fifty yearsuntil the year 612 BC when, after a bitter period of civil war in Assyria, it was sacked by a coalition of its former subject peoples, after which it was razed. Most of the people in the city who could not escape were either massacred or deported. Ninevehwas an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq (the city encloses the ruins of Nineveh on its east side). (It is still referred to as in the Iraqi province of “the original people”)

• 6000-4000 BC: The first potter’s wheel was invented in Mesopotamia sometime between these dates. This brought about a revolution in the way ancient people could create items out of clay. No longer were pottery makers restricted to the long process of hand molding clay – they were then able to have more freedom in experimenting with new forms and aesthetics

• 4500 BC: Uruk (in modern-day Iraq) is considered the first true city in the world. It was founded by Sumerian King Enmerkar. It is most famous for its great king Gilgamesh. He was the legendary protagonist of the world’s first written epic poem (see 2700 BC). Uruk was known in the Aramaic language as Erech which, it is believed, gave rise to the modern name for the country of Iraq (See next)

• 4500-3000 BC: Some of the first cities emerge in Mesopotamia (nowmodern-day Iraq, Kuwait, Turkey and Syria). The Sumerians create their first settlement in Eridu (and then it became the first city in Mesopotamia). Then there was the Sumerian cities of Lavash, Ur and as noted Uruk. The Sumer leader, Sargon, was the first notable conqueror known to history by name. He left records of his deeds in the form of clay documents stamped with cuneiform (See “2334-2154”)

• 4000 BC and before: Man started to domesticate horses in the in the steppelands north of the Black Sea from Ukraine to Kazakhstan. The mtDNA data clearly indicates that there were multiple sites of domestication, with a large number of mares in the first populations, and that genetic input from local wild horses had been introduced into the domestic gene pool as domesticated horses spread. The mtDNA data also shows that the modern horse is a mixture of ancient lineages, all of which can be traced back to an “Ancestral Mare,” which lived 130,000 to 160,000 years ago; thus, there is no clear mtDNA signature for modern horse breeds. It is possible that throughout history far more mares contributed to the founding of the domestic horse than stallions, because stallions can be difficult to handle. Questions surrounding horse domestication indicate that the horse has a diverse ancestry, that there was more than one domestication event, and that domestic horses have been widely interbred throughout the history of their domestication

• 4000-3000 BC: Civilizations in West Asia and the Caucasus Mountains began making bronze as early as this period. But most experts believe humans would not learn to reliably extract iron from ore until the end of the second millennium BC. Smelting iron requires temperatures of roughly 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. It a big deal too: when you start making smelted iron you can make weapons which are not expensive to produce

• 4000-1500 BC: Standing stones (or menhirs) erected by Neolithic people in the British Isles and Brittany. They also occur elsewhere in the world. There may be single standing stones, circles, lines or groups of them. Theyare stones set into the ground vertically. Since Neolithic peoples did not have writing, little is known about their use. It is generally thought they had both practical (meeting place) and ceremonial or religious uses. They were constructed by people with different ideas about religion, ritual and social hierarchy. Well-known examples in the UK include those at Stonehenge, the Marden Henge (the largest Neolithic henge enclosure discovered in the UK), the Rudston Monolith (the tallest prehistoric standing stone in Britain). Also Carnac in France is one of the most extensive Neolithic menhir collections in the world (See “2400-2200 BC”)

• 4000 BC: A 6,000-year-old trackway found in London, England. It isLondon’s oldest timber structure, which predates Stonehenge by about 500 years. Built during the Neolithic period, the trackway was used to make a boggy area more navigable – an early example of people adapting the natural landscape to meet human needs. The tracks consisted of crossed poles of ash, oak and lime which were driven into the waterlogged soil

• 3500 BC: The first battle between real enemies took place in today’s Iraq (the land of Sumer). Wars, however, were not frequent, for the Sumerians very early hit upon the device of using religion as a non-military source of authority to settle disputes. They didn’t have kings or permanent secular leaders, but they did have temple priests whose role, apart from pleasing the gods, was to settle disputes peacefully

• 3500 BC: People turned to farming when climate had a dry phase. As wild food sources dwindled, water was also scarce so by 3,200 BC walls were going up around cities 

• 3500 BC: The plow was first invented. The earliest surviving evidence of ploughing has been dated to 3500–3800 BC, on a site in Bubeneč, Czech Republic. A ploughed field, from c. 2800 BC, was also discovered at Kalibangan, India. (Then fast forward 4500 years or so to the invention of the heavy plough in the period 900 to 1400 AD.)

• 3400 BC: The development of spinning and weaving began in ancient Egypt. The tool originally used for weaving was the loom. From 2600 BC onwards, silk was spun and woven in China. Later in Roman times the European population was clothed in wool and linen 

• 3300-1200 BC (approximately): The Bronze Age is a historic period that was characterized by the use of bronze, in some areas proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age system for classifying and studying ancient societies and history (See “Pre-history”)

• 3300 BC: The wheel was invented (then the chariot); it enabled the horse nomads to load their belongings into wagons, plus they had domesticated horses (that were domesticated in the in the steppelands north of the Black Sea from Ukraine to Kazakhstan some time before 4,000 BC; they also had a longer-range composite bow). Most believe the wheel was invented in Mesopotamia, but the world’s oldest wheel was discovered in Slovenia and could be vintage 5100 BC

• 3275 BC: Ötzi (the Iceman) died in the Ötztal Alps (hence the nickname “Ötzi”) on the border between Austria and Italy. Because the body was covered in ice shortly after his death, it had only partially deteriorated. He was likely a high-altitude shepherd. Discovered in 1991, he is Europe’s oldest known natural human mummy, offering an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Europeans

• 3200-3000 BC: The invention of writing systems (such as cuneiform and hieroglyphics): the beginning of recorded history. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5000 to 5500 years ago and it took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted. Sumerians of Mesopotamiacreated a writing system called cuneiform – the world’s oldest known writing system(early pictorial signs appeared first and slowly evolved into complex characters representing the sounds of the Sumerian language; they consisted of wedge-shaped characters carved into clay tablets). The Egyptians created hieroglyphics, respectively around 3200-3000 BC. (The Sumerians also based their numerical system on powers of 60 – instead of 100 – subdivided into multiples of 10. It was from this system that Sumero-Babylonians developed the time system that we use today: each hour divided into 60 minutes, which are divided into 60 seconds.) (See”19,000-17,000 yrs ago”, “14,000 yrs ago”, “1200-1100 BC” and “700-601 BC”)

• 3150 BC: The ancient Egyptian royal cubit is the earliest attested standard measure. Cubit rods were used for the measurement of length. A number of these rods have survived: two are known from the tomb of Maya, the treasurer of the 18th dynasty pharaoh Tutankhamun, in Saqqara; another was found in the tomb of Kha in Thebes. Early evidence for the use of this royal cubit comes from the Early Dynastic Period; on the Palermo Stone, the flood level of the Nile river during the reign of the Pharaoh Djer is given as measuring 6 cubits and 1 palm (See “1799” and “1875, May”)

• 3000 BC: Creation of currency. Sumerians started using barley money. Barley in itself held value because it could be eaten and sowed, but around that same time the Mesopotamians started using silver shekels. Silver held little intrinsic value because it couldn’t be eaten or sowed and it’s too soft for building and tool-making. The concept of its value sparked a major shift in society. Around 600 BC, King Alyattes of Lydia started printing coins. They were gold and silver alloy and guaranteed by the King. Anyone caught making counterfeits paid a price

• 3000 BC: Sails utilized – the first inanimate movers. Egyptians created the first-known examples of sails first for traveling on the Nile and later for trips into the Mediterranean. Egyptian boats commonly featured oars in addition to sails, because they were traveling on the narrow channel of the Nile where winds were variable

• 2700 BC: The discovery of silk in China. The story of the discovery of silk is recorded in writing by Confucius. According to his tale, the Chinese Empress Leizu discovered silk by accident when a silkworm cocoon dropped into her cup of tea. Hot water softens the silk fibre that the silkworm cocoon is made of, and thus the cocoon began to lose its cohesiveness. When Leizu lifted the cocoon from her teacup, the end of the silk thread was loosened, and the cocoon began to unravel. Leizu noticed that the cocoon was made out of a single long strand of silk, and she had the innovative idea of weaving this fine thread into a piece of fabric. The invention is said to be the start of sericulture, i.e. the process of farming silkworms to create silk fabrics, which became a very profitable industry in China

• 2667-2648 BC: The oldest pyramid in the world was built – the Step Pyramid of Djoser. It doesn’t have the smooth sides we associate with Egyptian pyramids today. It is located  in Saqqara, a necropolis about 15 miles south of Cairo

• 2550 BC: The Great Pyramid of Giza was built near Cairo, Egypt. It took 27 years to build and is the largest Egyptian pyramid and tomb of Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu (at 481 feet high it was the tallest building in the world for thousands of years). The four corners are aligned extremely accurately with the four cardinal directions (N, S, E, and W). His Great Pyramid is the largest in Giza and towers above the plateau. (It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact.) Khufu’s son, Pharaoh Khafre, built the second pyramid at Giza, circa 2520 BC. His necropolis also included the Sphinx, circa 2540 BC, a mysterious limestone monument with the body of a lion and a pharaoh’s head. The third of the Giza Pyramids is considerably smaller than the first two. Built by Pharaoh Menkaure circa 2490 BC, it featured a much more complex mortuary temple 

• 2500-2000 BC: The first true human-made glass occurred in coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) or Egypt. People were melting basic ingredients to create the lustrous material. From across the former Roman Empire, archaeologists have recovered glass objects that were used in domestic, industrial and funerary contexts. Anglo-Saxon glass has been found across England during archaeological excavations of both settlement and cemetery sites. Glass in the Anglo-Saxon period was used in the manufacture of a range of objects, including vessels, beads, windows, and was even used in jewellery. Ever since, cultures have developed new types, improved manufacturing methods, and found innovative uses, making glass a central part of daily life. Glass has seen more technological and industrial developments in the past half century than in the previous millennium

• 2500 BC: The Indus script is the oldest written language on the Indian subcontinent but the language remains incomprehensible because it has no bilingual text like the Rosetta Stone. This is a major reason why the Indus Valley Civilization is one of the least-known major civilizations in ancient history

• 2400-2200 BC: Stonehenge is constructed. A prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England, it consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 4.0 m high, 2.1 m wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice. It could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings

• 2400-2300 BC: A prehistoric artificial chalk mound, Silbury Hill, is constructed in the English county of Wiltshire. It is the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe and one of the largest in the world; similar in size to the pyramid of Menkaure at the Giza pyramid complex in Egypt. The hill displays immense technical skill and prolonged control over labour and resources. The multiple and overlapping construction phases – almost continuous remodelling – suggest there was no blueprint and that the process of building was probably the most important thing of all: perhaps the process was more important than the hill 

• 2334-2154 BC: The first empire in history, the Akkadian Empire, was the world’s first known ancient empire of Mesopotamia. A leader called Sargon seized power and built a capital (Akkad) in the fertile Mesopotamian plains. It was later destroyed in 2159 BC. (Sargon – a man who set out to conquer the world – was the prototype of Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler. He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire.) (See next)

• ~2255 BC: First named author who signed work was a woman called Enheduanna. A number of works in Sumerian literature, such as the Exaltation of Inanna, feature her (2285-2250 BC) as the first-person narrator, and other works, such as the Sumerian Temple Hymns may identify her as their author (some debate exists on this). Her father was Sargon of Akkad, founder of the Akkadian Empire 

• ~2250 BC: The first heroic narrative – the Epic of Gilgamesh – was written. This epic poem recounts the adventures of Gilgamesh, a legendary king of Uruk, and the epic tale of his quest for immortality (written history is kicking in). It is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts (the oldest, Ancient Egyptian finery texts, dating to the late Old Kingdom). Its universal themes of friendship, love, and mortality resonate across millennium influencing later literary works, like the Homeric epics. Most scholars agree that the Epic of Gilgamesh exerted substantial influence on the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems written in ancient Greek during the 8th century BC (See “700-601 BC” and “286 BC”)

• 2205-1766 BC: There was supposedly a Xia dynasty in China but they are not mentioned in the oldest Chinese texts. Some scholars consider the dynasty legendary (So go to “1766 BC” for the Shang dynasty)

• 2000 BC: Water and sewage systems beginning to develop. The ancient Greek civilization of Crete, known as the Minoan civilization, built advanced underground clay pipes for sanitation and water supply. Their capital, Knossos, had a well-organized water system for bringing in clean water, taking out waste water and storm sewage canals for overflow when there was heavy rain. People constructed flushed toilets in ancient Crete, like in ancient Egypt (See “1546” and “1592”)

• 2000 BC: The first use of bitumen (more commonly known as tar or asphalt) occurred in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where it was used as mortar in massive construction projects. (Today the Alberta tar sands or the oil sands is one of the biggest known petroleum reserves in the world.)

• 2000-1500 BC: Dark Ages period, when pastoral people equipped with war-chariots conquered all of the centres of civilization in Eurasia

• 1900 BC: Birth of Abraham in Mesopotamia. The Old Testament tells how God appeared to him and offered him and his people the Promised Land in Canaan

• 1894 BC: The Amorites built the city of Babylon along both banks of the Euphrates river, just south of present-day Baghdad. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia (which means “the land between the rivers”). This area is referred to as “the cradle of civilization”. Originating in Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab river, which empties into the Persian Gulf. From this capital they ruled the (first) Babylonian Empire

• 1766-1027 BC: The first known Chinese dynasty, the Shang dynasty.Based in northern China, the dynasty was an aristocratic society that used priests to keep government records. It was an agricultural economy, cultivating millet, wheat, barley and silkworms. They made bronze weapons and tools and worshipped their ancestors and gods, one of whom was Shang Ti (or Shangdi) was revered as the supreme deity. (Note: Chinese religion believes that there is a continuous overlap between the supernatural and reality. Whereas in Western religion there is one omnipotent being that oversees all other beings in a separate world, Chinese religion has an ever-present supernatural realm that interacts with every aspect of human life and nature. A significant matter of value for Chinese religions lies in harmony: between the supernatural and human reality, and between the self and society.) The last Shang ruler was overthrown by the King of Chou – the dynasty that ruled for another 800 years before its demise. Note: there is enough evidence to confirm that Chinese civilization has a continuous history tracing back 3700 years 

• 1754 BC: Babylonian King Hammurabi issues one of the Earliest Legal Codes – the Code of Hammurabi. There is admiration for its perceived fairness and respect for the rule of law (See “14,000 BC”)

• 1600 BC: The Minoan eruption devastated the Aegean island of Thera, Greece (now called Santorini). This catastrophic volcanic eruption created a destructive tsunami. The eruption was one of the largest volcanic events on Earth in human history (categorized as 7 out of 8 on the volcanic explosively index). The Minoans, a wealthy maritime power centred on the nearby island of Crete, went into decline around the same time

• 1500 BC: The world’s first timepiece was introduced – the clepsydra, a water clock. Time was measured by the regulated flow of water. Later developments of the clepsydra would drop a metal ball into a bowl upon the hour. Before that time was told mostly by sundials

• 1500 BC: Open ocean navigation was first developed by the Polynesians when they set off from New Guinea and moved eastward in the Pacific Ocean. Historians believed they navigated using stars, ocean swells, the sun, the moon, and migratory birds, and even simply by using the waves themselves and how tidal patterns interact. They initially travelled to the adjacent Solomon Islands and then on to Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Tahiti, then further to Hawaii, populating the entire Polynesian Triangle, the three corners of which are Hawaii, Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island), and New Zealand. Their vessel of choice was a double canoe with two hulls connected with crossbeams, like a catamaran. Later the use of compasses evolved (See “200 BC”) 

• 1500 BC: The mother culture of Mesoamerica, the Olmecs, first settled along the Gulf of Mexico. In 900 BC the Olmec capital near the modern day city of San Lorenzo (60 km from the Gulf of Mexico) had a population of 1,000 people – then it was abandoned. They built a new capital at modern-day La Venta; then in 400 BC, it, too, collapsed and they disappeared 

• 1478 BC: Queen Hatshepsut assumed the position of pharaoh of Egypt and ruled until 1458 BC, the year of her death. Her reign is well-known for increased prosperity, large-scale construction projects such as the Karnak Temple Complex and the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. Construction on the Karnak Temple began 500 years earlier when Thebes (where modern-day Luxor is located on the Nile) was chosen as the site of the new Egyptian capital. Hatshepsut and her supporters used traditional religious beliefs to re-enforce her role as pharaoh and king (queen!), despite these being considered men’s roles. She was the only female ruler to do so in a time of prosperity, and had more powers than her female predecessor. After her death, she was not mentioned in official accounts of Egyptian historiography by her successors, possibly due to sibling rivalry, political expediency, or due to her gender 

• 1400 BC: The oldest known song/melody in human history. When it comes to recorded history, specific melodies are hard to come by. That’s why the cuneiform tablet known as “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” is such an incredible artifact. As the name suggests, the song was originally composed by the Hurrians, an ancient people who lived in parts of modern-day Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Originally a dedication to the Mesopotamian goddess Nikkal, the hymn was unearthed in the Syrian city of Ugarit in the 1950s. The tablet contains not only near-complete musical notation and lyrics, but also instructions on how to perform the song on a nine-stringed lyre, a U-shaped harp that was popular throughout Mesopotamia

• 1279 BC: Ramses II becomes pharaoh of Egypt. A great warrior, Ramses II (1310-1224 BC) was the third ruler of the 19th dynasty which saw Egypt’s fortunes reach their last peak. Along with Thutmose III he is often regarded as the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh of the New Kingdom (the period in ancient Egyptian history between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC, covering the 18th, 19th, and 20th dynasties of Egypt. It was Egypt’s most prosperous time and marked the peak of its power.)

• 1274 BC: The battle of Kadesh, sometimes called the first world war, featured one of the largest-ever chariot battles involving between 5,000 and 6,000 chariots in total. It is the earliest pitched battle in recorded history for which details of tactics and formations are known. (As a result of discovery of multiple Kadesh inscriptions and the Egyptian-Hittite peace treaty, it is the best documented battle in all of ancient history.) It was fought in present-day Syria near the border with Lebanon between the Egyptians under Pharaoh Ramses II, and the Hittites under King Muwatalli II, who were supported by eighteen of their allied and vassal states. The Hittite army was ultimately forced to retreat, but the Egyptians were unsuccessful in capturing Kadesh – so it was a draw

• 1250-1050 BC: Another briefer Dark Age marked by the collapse of most Middle Eastern civilizations. The mysterious demise of the Mycenaean civilization occurred in stages. There is no evidence, in the early part of the Dark Age anyway, of long-distance trade, and ceramics show a marked decline in style. There is no evidence of a writing system of any kind, and agricultural production declined as did the population. The entire civilization of ancient Greece seems to have paused for approximately 200 years before it began again (See “1177 BC”)

• 1244-1208 BC: Assyria reached its greatest extent during this Middle Assyrian period under the warrior king Tukulti-Ninurta I who reigned during this period. He defeated the ruler of Babylonia to the south and installed puppet kings to govern the region for some thirty-two years. He established a new royal city on the opposite side of the Tigris from Ashur and named it Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta

• 1200-1050 BC: Various current Chinese characters used to represent the Chinese language have been traced back to the late Shang Dynasty (about 1200–1050 BC) but the process of creating characters is thought to have begun some centuries earlier. After a period of variation and evolution, Chinese characters were standardized under the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC)

• 1200-1100 BC: Phoenicians created the oldest verifiable alphabet. It was made up of 22 letters – all consonants. This was a big leap forward in the history of writing; this early alphabet greatly simplified the process of writing and reading, paving the way for the development of many other alphabetic scripts like Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic. The origin of our present-day alphabet stems from the city of Byblos in Lebanon (one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, dating from 5000 BC), as it was partially carved into the stone coffin of King Ahiram. It became known as the Phoenician Tablet and was spread throughout the region by local traders. (BTW, the word “bible” is derived from this city’s name.”) Around 800 BC the Greeks created the first true alphabet – an alphabet with both consonants and vowels; it had 24 letters. The alphabet had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. Its simplicity not only allowed its easy adaptation to multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. This upset the long-standing status of literacy as an exclusive achievement of royal and religious elites, scribes who used their monopoly on information to control the common population (See “3200-3000 BC”)

• 1198-1196 BC: A prolonged drought in central Anatolia (Asia Minor) occurred and It appears the Hittite empire quickly collapsed around this time. The drought must have disrupted the essential supply of grain from Hittite farms. The region’s climate became drier and cooler over the 300 years after 1200 BC but research pinpoints a severe drought in 1198, 1197, and 1196 BC. That would have led to widespread food shortages; combined with factors like wars, social upheavals or outbreaks of disease this brought the Hittite empire to its end

• 1183 BC: The legendary fall of Troy including the battle under the walls of Troy and the use of the Trojan Horse (that Homer wrote about in 800 BC in his Iliad). The siege of Troy lasted for ten years, during which time the Greeks were unable to breach the city’s walls. However, they eventually succeeded in infiltrating the city by using the famous Trojan Horse, a massive wooden horse filled with Greek soldiers, which the Trojans unwittingly brought inside their walls. The Greek soldiers then emerged from the horse and opened the city gates to allow their army to enter. Whether there is any historical reality behind the Trojan War remains an open question. Many scholars believe that there is a historical core to the tale

• 1177 BC: Egypt slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations; a dark age lasted centuries. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. (In Egypt, marauding groups known only as the “Sea Peoples” invaded – in the year 1177. The pharaoh’s army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory weakened them.) Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium BC, which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. A dark age was ushered in that lasted centuries

• 1050 BC: The Chou dynasty begins to rule China (to 255 BC). It defined Chinese society across a period of great advances in writing, philosophy, technology, agriculture and communications. The Chou were rivals of the Chang; by 1050 the Chou had taken control of all China. 

• 1000 BC: Qanats (irrigation methods) were developed in ancient Persia. The word “qanat” is Arabic for “conduit”; they are among the oldest known irrigation methods still in use today. They are now found in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. The system comprises a network of vertical wells and gently sloping tunnels driven into the sides of cliffs and of steep hills to tap groundwater. The noria, a water wheel with clay pots around the rim powered by the flow of the stream (or by animals where the water source was still), first came into use at about this time among Roman settlers in North Africa (See “6000 BC”)

• ~1000 (range from 1500-400) BC: Hinduism founded – the first religion in the world. Hindus roughly follow the same central traditions, understandable to all the religion’s multifarious adherents. The first and foremost of these is a belief in The Vedas – four texts compiled between the 15th and 5th centuries BC on the Indian subcontinent, and the faith’s oldest scriptures – which make Hinduism the oldest religion in existence. It has since evolved into a diverse and flexible tradition 

• 1000-901 BC: Ephesus was founded on the coast of Ionia, Turkey as an Attic-Ionian colony. Ephesus was one of the largest cities of Roman Asia Minor. It remained the most important city of the Byzantine Empire in Asia after Constantinople in the 5th and 6th centuries. The city was famous in its day for the nearby Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), which has been designated one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Its many monumental buildings included the Library of Celsus and a theatre capable of holding 24,000 spectators. The loss of its harbour, today 5 kilometres inland (it was slowly silting up by the river) caused Ephesus to lose its access to the Aegean Sea, which was important for trade. People started leaving the lowland of the city for the surrounding hills  (See “550 BC”)
• (Personal aside: I have spent two days exploring its well-preserved ruins.)

• 900 BC (around): Writing began to take shape in Mesoamerica and influenced ancient civilizations like the Zapotecs, Olmecs, Axztecs, and Maya. Sadly little is known about the history of many Mesoamerican languages, as Catholic priests and Spanish conquistadors destroyed a lot of the surviving documentation

• 800 BC: The reed pen is THE mother hen of all pens. It was used during Classical Antiquity (800 B.C- 400 A.D roughly) for literature. Archeologists have found these writing utensils in sites from Egypt and Greece, where most literature was produced during this time period. Usually, this pen was constructed out of reed or bamboo, from the stalk of the plant. The pen is usually 8 inches long and is cut into a shaft-like shape. One end is cut off obliquely. The soft inside part is shaved away by means of a knife laid flat against it, leaving the hard outer shell. This creates a nib, which is the point of the pen that the scribe uses to write. The nib acts essentially like a pen tip on a modern ballpoint pen. The nib is laid, back up, on the slab, and the knife-blade being vertical – the tip is cut 05′ at right angles to the shaft. This creates the tip shape. After the tip is shaped, the knife blade is then used to make a slit, which is very important to the design of the writing instrument, as it stores ink. Last but not least, the nib is bent slightly upwards. Regarding ink: during Classical Antiquity, much of the ancient world burned down organic material such as wood and oils to make what is called Carbon Black Ink. The remains were then mixed with water. Tree gum was then added to keep the particles from clumping together. The gum also helped the ink stay on the papyrus. For the next pen development see the quill pen (See “501-600”) 

• 800-300 BC (8th to 3rd century): The period where the Greeks produced their keenest thinkers and finest artists. The Greek tribes built up a great civilization of their own (they had learned a great deal from the Cretans – who were conquered by warlike tribes that came into Greece from around the north in 1100 BC.) The tribes settled and formed separate states, each named after its main city. Athens, in the region called Attica, became the most important of these city-states. Masterpieces of Greek art, the temples and statues remain, although the paintings on the temple and house walls were destroyed

• 776 BC: First Olympics – in Greece. They were held in honour of Zeus. The games were held every four years, or Olympiad, which became a unit of time in historical chronologies. They continued to be celebrated when Greece came under Roman rule, 2nd century BC (See “1936, Aug” and “2008, Aug”)

• 753 BC: Legend has it that the city of Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus. Romulus was the first king of Rome and also its founder, thus the city was called after him. He formed the Roman Senate with one hundred men and gave the inhabitants of Rome a body of laws. Roman years (using the abbreviation AUC – from the founding of Rome, “ab urbe condita”) were counted from that legendary event. The current year 2024 would be AUC 2777. (The archaeological evidence of human occupation of the area of modern-day Rome dates from about 14,000 years ago.) The twin brothers got into a fight and Romulus killed Remus

• 722 BC: The dispersion of the Jews began with the Assyrian and Babylonian deportations (in 722 and 597 BC). Jews spread throughout the Mediterranean world and into Armenia and Iran

• 700 BC: The Odyssey and Iliad are two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer (born 8th century BC). They are among the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. They were originally composed in Homeric Greek in around the 8th or 7th century BC and, by the mid-6th century BC, had become part of the Greek literary canon. The Iliad is a poem about the Trojan War, while The Odyssey is a story about a survivor of the war attempting to get home. They are believed to be the first epics. They tell us about life and culture in Ancient Greece during the time of the Trojan War (See “1183 BC”)

• 700-601 BC (7th century): The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal is a collection of more than 30,000 clay tablets and fragments containing texts of all kinds from the 7th century BCE, including texts in various languages. (It is named after Ashurbanipa, the last great king of the Assyrian Empire.) Among its holdings was the famous Epic of Gilgamesh. In his Outline of History, H. G. Wells calls the library “the most precious source of historical material in the world”. The materials were found in the archaeological site of Kouyunjik (ancient Nineveh, capital of Assyria) in northern Mesopotamia. The site is in modern-day northern Iraq, within the city of Mosul. Most tablets were taken to England and can now be found in the British Museum (See “3200-3000 BC”, 2100 BC” and “286 BC”)

• 650-490 BC: True coinage (and permanent retail shops) began soon after 650 BC. The 6th-century Greek poet Xenophanes ascribed its invention to the Lydians, “the first to strike and use coins of gold and silver.” The Lydians were a commercial people, who, according to Herodotus, had customs like the Greeks and were the first people to establish permanent retail shops. Their invention of metallic coinage, which the Greeks quickly adopted, played an important part as a catalyst in the commercial revolution that transformed Greek civilization in the 6th century BC

• 600 BC: The Carvaka school of thought was founded in India by the thinker Brhaspati. It stressed materialism as the means by which one understands and lives in the world. Materialism holds that perceivable matter is all that exists; concepts such as the soul and any other supernatural entities or planes of existence are simply inventions of imaginative people. The school’s followers believe that, when our bodies die, that is the end of us as well. The Carvaka vision rejects all supernatural claims, all religious authority and scripture, the acceptance of inference and testimony in establishing truth, and any religious ritual or tradition. The concepts anticipate the the work of Epicurus (341-270 BC) and his development of “enlightened hedonism” at his school in Athens. These thinkers, and those who followed them, would influence the empiricist and utilitarian philosophies of the 19th century and the existential movement of the 20th century. Carvaka, therefore, was a belief system far ahead of its time even if it did not directly influence these later systems 

• 600-501 BC (6th century BC):  The next four books of the Old Testament follow the first five (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings), forming a history of Israel from the Conquest of Canaan to the Siege of Jerusalem c.587 BC. There is a broad consensus among scholars that these originated as a single work (the so-called “Deuteronomistic History”) during the Babylonian exile (the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon) of the 6th century BC ) (See “332 BC“ and 538-332 BC”)

• 585 BC: The eclipse of Thales was a solar eclipse that was accurately predicted by the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus (626-548 BC) – according to ancient Greek historian Herodotus. If his account is accurate, this eclipse is the earliest recorded as being known in advance of its occurrence. The eclipse was interpreted as an omen, and interrupted a battle in a long-standing war between the Medes and the Lydians. American writer Isaac Asimov described this battle as the earliest historical event whose date is known with precision to the day, and called the prediction “the birth of science”. Thales was recognized as the first individual known to have entertained and engaged in scientific philosophy. He is often referred to as the Father of Science. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece 

• 566-483 BC: The life of Buddha; he founded Buddhism.Siddhartha Gautama (most commonly referred to as Buddha) was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia. He told his followers tread the world lightly, practice moderation, and perform certain techniques of meditation. This practice would loosen the grip of desire, the cause of all suffering, and release them into nirvana, enlightenment-liberation. Like Confucius, Buddha didn’t speak of gods. When students asked about supernatural matters, he replied that the question did not contribute to enlightenment. In the 19th century Buddhism was virtually extinct in India until a revival in the past 60 years due to the mass conversion, in 1956, of hundreds of thousands of Hindus who had previously been members of the so-called Scheduled Castes (also called Dalits; formerly called untouchables)

• 556 BC: Mahavira revived and preached Jainism in ancient India. He (599-527 BC) declared that people could escape from reincarnation by avoiding sex, violence and possessions. Jainism (and Mahavira followers) considered it a sect of Buddhism but there are important differences between the teachings of Mahavira and the Buddha, so the religions are now acknowledged as separate

• 550 BC: The Temple of Artemis was completed in Ephesus, Turkey – a city built in the 10th century BC by Attic and Ionian Greek colonists. The temple has been designated one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (See “1000-901 BC”)

• 550 BC: Start of Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest organized faiths. It is an Iranian religion, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It served as the state religion for the ancient Iranian empires for more than a millennium (from 600 BC to 650 AD), but declined from the 7th century AD onwards as a direct result of the Arab-Muslim conquest of Persia (633–654 AD), which led to the large-scale persecution of the Zoroastrian people.Recent estimates place the current number of Zoroastrians in the world at around 110,000-120,000 at most, with the majority of this figure living in India, Iran, and North America. The religion has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic study of being, and an end times view which predicts the ultimate conquest of evil by good. Zoroastrianism exalts an uncreated and benevolent deity of wisdom known as ‘Lord of Wisdom’ as its supreme being.  Historically, the unique features of Zoroastrianism, such as its monotheism, messianism, belief in free will and judgement after death, conception of heaven, hell, angels, and demons, among other concepts, may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including the Abrahamic religions and Gnosticism, Buddhism, and Greek philosophy 

• 550 BC: The Achaemenid Empire (the First Persian Empire), the largest empire yet seen and the first world empire, was founded by Cyrus the Great(or Cyrus II of Persia; 585-529; the empire – 550-330 BC – was also called the First Persian Empire.) Based in Western Asia, this ancient Iranian empire spanned a total of 5.5 million square kilometres from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east (parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan). The Empire has been recognized for its imposition of a successful model of centralized, bureaucratic administration; its multicultural policy; building complex infrastructure, such as road systems and an organized postal system (they had sort of a pony express, a corps of state-paid couriers that handed off his bag of messages to a fresh new courier); the use of official languages across its territories; and the development of civil services, including its possession of a large, professional army. Its advancements inspired the implementation of similar styles of governance by a variety of later empires. Its core is Iran, home to one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. In the Bible Cyrus is famous for freeing the Jewish captives in Babylonia and allowing them to return to their homeland. By 330 BC, the Achaemenid Empire was conquered by Alexander the Great of Macedonia

• 551-479 BC: Life of Confucius a Chinese philosopher and politician who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Confucius’s teachings and philosophy underpin East Asian culture and society. His philosophical teachings, called Confucianism, emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity

• 539 BC: Cyrus the Great captured Babylon. This denotes the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire after it was conquered by the Archaemenid Empire. Under Cyrus and the subsequent Persian king Darius I, Babylon became the capital city of the 9th Satrapy as well as a centre of learning and scientific advancement. The Jews went back to Israel at this point

• 538-332 BC: The first five books of the Old Testament (OT) reached their present form during this period – the Persian Period (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, book of Numbers, and Deuteronomy), and their authors were the elite of exiled returnees who controlled the Temple at that time. (The rest were produced over a period of centuries). It consists of many distinct books by various authors. (The OTis the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament.) (See “600-501 BC”)

• 537-400s BC: Birth of the Jewish religion, the world’s first fully formed, enduring monotheism took place in Babylon. The Jews declared that their god was not only the best god but the only god. He was everywhere; he had no physical form and was not to be conflated with any such form. Out of their tribal history, the Jews forged a religious narrative capable of incorporating both past historical events but current and future ones. In this narrative, God had made a pact with Abraham: the tribe would get its own land in exchange for worshipping no other god. During the exodus from Egypt, He renewed the covenant with those ten laws he gave to Moses. The Jews thereafter acknowledged their obligation to keep the human side of the bargain, which required moral conduct as defined by scriptures delivered to humanity through prophets. Learned scholars called rabbis, who were able to interpret this law, became community leaders rivalling priests 

• 530 BC: Pythagoras of Samos established the first Pythagorean community in opposition to the policies of the tyrant Polycrates. He was a Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of the secret society, Pythagoreanism. The teaching most identified with Pythagoras is metempsychosis, or the “transmigration of souls”, which holds that every soul is immortal and, upon death, enters a new body. Pythagoras (570-490 BC) promulgated a new more optimistic view of the fate of the soul after death and in founding a way of life that was attractive for its rigour and discipline and that drew to him numerous devoted followers. He was known for the mathematical achievement of the Pythagorean theorem (although the concepts were known much earlier in history) which states that the square of two sides of a right triangle is equal to the hypotenuse. He was also noted for his discovery that music had mathematical foundations. He influenced Plato (See “380 BC”) and Aristotle (See “335 BC”)

• 509 BC: The Roman Republic was installed after the Roman kingdom was overthrown. It lasts until 27 BC. The early years of the Republic are of political turmoil. The population was divided, some wanted a monarchy, others a republic, others favoured the king of Clusium, Lars Porsenna, and others wanted to form part of the Latin civilization. The nobles who had overthrown the king and his family had not come to an agreement regarding the type of government that would replace the monarchy. From this time on, Rome had a political system peculiar for the times, a government run by several hundred men called the senate. They were elected – but only by the patricians, the landowning elite of Rome. Each year the senate elected two of their ranks as chief executives or consuls. These men functioned in lieu of a king. They certainly brought in the concept that nobody is above the law   

• 500-201 (5th to 3rd century) BC: The Warring States period in China when a handful of states fought an endless series of wars. The Qin Emperor (a ruthless tyrant) finally brought the different states under his control in 221 BC. He is buried near Xi’an with ranks of terra-cotta warriors. Personal connection: I’ve viewed these amazing figures; near the large city of Xi’an archaeologists have located some 600 pits, a complex of underground vaults, across a 22-square-mile area. In one pit, long columns of warriors, reassembled from broken pieces, stand in formation. With their topknots or caps, their tunics or armoured vests, their goatees or close-cropped beards, the soldiers exhibit an astonishing individuality)

• 500-401 (5th century) BC: A military treatise, The Art of War, was attributed to the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. For him, the greatest victory is to win without actual combat. Convince the enemy army to surrender before battle even begins. It remains the most influential strategy text in East Asian warfareand has influenced both East Asian and Western military theory and thinking and has found a variety of applications in a myriad of competitive non-military endeavours across the modern world including espionage, culture, politics, business, and sports

• 500 BC to 500 AD: Creation of the lines in the soil of the NAZCA Desert in southern Peru. Depressions were made by removing pebbles and leaving different coloured dirt exposed. These geoglyphs either ran straight or are figurative designs of animals and plants

• 490 BC: Greeks defeated the Persians in the Battle of Marathon – a pivotal moment in Mediterranean and European history during the first Persian invasion of Greece marking a turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars (499–479 BC). They were overextended (1800 miles away from home) and their army could not stand up to the unified coherence of a people fighting at home, and they got trounced. The Persian force retreated to Asia. The battle was a watershed in the Greco-Persian wars, showing the Greeks that the Persians could be beaten. The battle also showed the Greeks that they were able to win battles without the Spartans, as Sparta was seen as the major military force in Greece. This victory was overwhelmingly won by the Athenians, and Marathon raised Greek esteem of them. The following two hundred years saw the rise of the Classical Greek civilization, which has been enduringly influential in Western society and so the Battle of Marathon is often seen as a pivotal moment in Mediterranean and European history

• 480 BC: The Greeks defeated the Persian fleet off the island of Salamis in the largest naval battle ever fought in the ancient world – even though the Persians had the biggest army the world had ever known and burnt down Athens. The Greek victory proved to be the turning point in the war, for the Persian king, Xerxes, returned to Asia with his surviving ships and the majority of his land troops

• 451-450 BC: Law of the Twelve Tables was the earliest written legislation of ancient Roman law. The code was formally posted in the Roman Forum. They were not a reform or a liberalizing of old custom. Rather, they recognized the prerogatives of the patrician class and of the patriarchal family, the validity of enslavement for unpaid debt, and the interference of religious custom in civil cases

• 432 BC: Completion of the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens. Itwas built in thanksgiving for the Hellenic victory over Persian invaders during the Greco-Persian Wars (499-449 BC). It is an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, democracy and Western civilization

• 430-426 BC: An epidemic in Athens decimated the population and contributed significantly to the decline and fall of classical Greece. It occurred at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War and caused the death of the statesman, Pericles. Likely cause was considered typhus or smallpox. 25 to 35% of the population of Athens perished

• 425 BC: Herodotus publishes his magnum opus – the first narrative history in the Western World. Herodotus was called the Father of History. His work, “The Histories”, is a history of the Greco-Persian Wars (499–479 BC). (The Greek word “historie” means “inquiry.”) Before Herodotus, no writer had ever made such a systematic, thorough study of the past or tried to explain the cause-and-effect. Rival historian Thucydides, who relied only on “factual” evidence to provide a less subjective account of “what had been done,” frequently criticized Herodotus for inserting “fables” into his narrative just to make it more “delightful” and pleasant to read. After Herodotus, historical analysis became an indispensable part of intellectual and political life. Herodotus (484-425 BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey)

• 404 BC: Sparta defeats Athens, ending the Peloponnesian War. The two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, had gone to war with each other from 431 to 405 BC. The Peloponnesian War marked a significant power shift in ancient Greece, favouring Sparta, and also ushering in a period of regional decline that signaled the end of what is considered the Golden Age of Ancient Greece. The Athenian historian, Thucydides, (~460-after 404 BC) wrote a historical account of the war, The History of the Peloponnesian War. This account of the conflict is widely considered to be a classic and regarded as one of the earliest scholarly works of history 

• 400-301 (4th century) BC: The two Books of Chronicles in the Old Testament probably date from this century. The uniformity of language, style, and ideas marks the work as the product of a single author, known as the Chronicler, who probably lived about 350–300 BC

• 400 BC: Four large Tamil empires developed from this date along the southern coasts of India and in Sri Lanka. Tamils were noted for their influence on regional trade throughout the Indian Ocean. The Tamil language is one of the world’s longest-surviving classical languages and is an official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore and was the first of six to be designated as a classical language of India. Although most Tamil people are Hindus (Shaivism – one of the largest Hindu denominations), many follow a particular way of religious practice that is considered to be the Ancient Tamil religion, venerating a plethora of village deities and Ancient Tamil Gods. A smaller number are Christians and Muslims

• 400 BC era (plus/minus): Emergence of the Hippocratic Corpus, the foundation upon which Western medical practice was built. This is a collection of around 60 early Ancient Greek medical works strongly associated with the teachings of Hippocrates of Kos (`~460-370 BC), a Greek physician and traditionally referred to as the “Father of Medicine”. The Corpus (or Hippocratic Collection) covers many diverse aspects of medicine, from Hippocrates’ medical theories to what he devised to be ethical means of medical practice, to addressing various illnesses. Hippocrates began Western society’s development of medicine, through a delicate blending of the art of healing and scientific observations. Whatever their disagreements, Hippocrates and the Hippocratic writers agree in rejecting divine and religious causes and remedies of disease in favour of natural mechanisms, i.e. disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits 

• 400 BC (approx): The paradigm of disease in the time of the physician Hippocrates included believing that existence was represented by the four basic elements. Hippocrates was considered the most influential in the evolution of medicine as a science. He believed that existence was represented by the four basic elements (earth, air, fire, and water) which in humans were related to the four basic humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile. Each humor was centred in a particular organ – brain, lung, spleen, and gall bladder – and related to a particular personality type – sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and choleric. Being ill meant having an imbalance of the four humors. Therefore treatment consisted of removing an amount of the excessive humor by various means such as bloodletting, purging, catharsis, diuresis, and so on

• 400 BC (approx): First articulation of the Hippocratic Oath for physicians. The oath is the earliest expression of medical ethics in the Western world, establishing several principles of medical ethics which remain of paramount significance today. These include the principles of medical confidentiality and non-maleficence (“first, do no harm”)

• 400 BC (approx): The Tao Te Ching was written by the sage Laozi. It is a fundamental text for Taoism (or Daoism, now both a philosophical tradition and an organized religion). Laozi fastened on to the Chinese idea of an underlying pattern to the universe, which he called the Tao (‘the way”). He identified human intention as the source of all trouble. He advised that people drop resistance to adversity, stop trying to make things happen, abandon agenda, and let the current carry them. By letting go they can get aligned with the Tao (or Dao). Currently those of a libertarian mode would agree with his suggestion that minimizing the role of government and letting individuals develop spontaneously would best achieve social and economic harmony

• 399 BC: The trial and death of Socrates. The trial was held to determine the philosopher’s guilt of two charges: impiety (“refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state”) and of moral corruption (“corrupting the youth”). He was found guilty. Athenian law prescribed death by drinking a cup of poison hemlock; he thus became his own executioner. Socrates (470-399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. He established the proposition that people could figure out what was good and true with no intercession from the gods, just by using their brains and engaging in conversations. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his student Plato. He was studied by medieval and Islamic scholars and played an important role in the thought of the Italian Renaissance, particularly within the humanist movement

• 387 BC: The Battle of the Allia was a battle fought between Gallic tribal nomads, who had invaded Northern Italy, and the Roman Republic. They attacked Rome and actually got into the city, but the Romans drove them off 

• 380 BC: Plato founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. It was the ultimate ancestor of the modern university (hence the English term academic). (Aristotle was also a member of the Academy for 20 years.) The most famous work by Plato (428-348 BC) is the Republic, which details a wise society run by a philosopher. His Theory of Forms asserts that the physical world is not really the ‘real’ world; instead, ultimate reality exists beyond our physical world. In the Republic, Plato undertakes to show what Justice is and why it is in each person’s best interest to be just. The trial of Socrates and his death sentence is the central, unifying event of Plato’s dialogues

• 356, July  BC: Herostratus destroyed the second Temple of Artemus in Ephesus. The name Herostratus represents someone who will do anything to gain notoriety. He sought it by destroying the temple, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The act prompted his execution and the creation of a law forbidding anyone to mention his name – which was ultimately ineffective

• 337 BC: Alexander the Great becomes Macedonian ruler. Alexander (356-323 BC) succeeded his father Philip II as king of Macedonia (Greece). From age 13 to 16 he was taught by Aristotle, who inspired him. 12 years after he took power he had conquered a vast empire stretching from Greece to India, including Egypt, founding cities, of which Alexandria is the most famous. His greatest rival was the Persian empire ruled by Darius, defeating it finally in 331 BC at Gaugamela (in Iraq). In 333 BC tradition records the apocryphal story of his cutting of the Gordian knot, which could only be loosed by the man who was to rule Asia

• 335 BC (approx): Aristotle wrote the Metaphysics in the same year he opened his own school in the Lyceum. It is considered to be one of the greatest philosophical works. Its influence on the Greeks, the Muslim philosophers, Maimonides thence the scholastic philosophers and even writers such as Dante was immense. Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in 334 BC and the wider Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects. Aristotle’s views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. Aristotle has been called the father of logic, biology (he created a classification system back then that’s remarkably similar to our modern one), political science, zoology, embryology, natural law, scientific method, rhetoric, psychology, realism, criticism, individualism, teleology, and meteorology (See “530 BC”)

• 332 BC: Alexander the Great conquered Egypt completing his control of the whole eastern Mediterranean coast. He founded the city of Alexandria near an arm of the Nile. In 327 BC he invaded India but his troops were exhausted. He then became convinced of the reality of his own divinity and to have required its acceptance by others. He died after reigning 12 years at age 33. At the time of his death, he left behind a vast empire, the largest the world had ever seen. It entailed lands from Greece all the way to the Indus river. The moment of Alexander’s death signalled a passage. Nothing would be the same as the Hellenistic world had just been born

• 332 BC: Proverbs from the Old Testament was possibly completed by the Hellenistic time (332–198 BC), though containing much older material as well. The other “wisdom” books of the Old Testament – Job, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Song of Solomon – have various completion dates (See “600-501 BC”)

• 322 BC: The Maurya Empire formed in India and ended up bigger than the Persian Empire, stretching from the tip of India to the Khyber Pass and beyond. It was founded by Chandragupta Maurya, a penniless orphan. It existed in loose-knit fashion until 185 BC giving rise to the Shunga Empire which was then replaced by the Kanva dynasty

• 312-63 BC: The Seleucid Empire, a Greek state in West Asia, existed and was one of the major powers during the Hellenistic period. The empire was founded by the Macedonia Greek general Seleucus I Nicator (358-281 BC) following the division of the Macedonian empire originally founded by Alexander the Great. The empire finally fell to Pompey the Great of Rome in 63 BC. The mighty Empire remained a dominant force for almost three centuries until they were eventually absorbed by the new superpower, Rome

• 312 BC: The first Roman aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, including the use of Roman concrete, was erected by the Roman leader Appius Claudius Caecus, which brought water to the growing population of Rome, feeding the city with an estimated 73,000 cubic metres (2,600,000 cu ft) of water per day. While the Romans didn’t invent the aqueduct – primitive irrigation systems can be found in Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian history – Roman architects perfected the idea. Roman concrete could essentially self-heal due to its lime clasts (small mineral chunks) and a process known as “hot mixing” (mixing in the lime at extremely high temperatures) resulting in the main reason for the aqueduct’s longevity (See “200 BC”) 

• ~300-200 BC: The Romans were successfully building with concrete by this era and even used animal products in their cement as an early form of admixtures. Roman concrete was based on a hydraulic-setting cement added to an aggregate (sand and gravel). With this marvel they could bridge any body of water, and their aqueducts could carry fresh water hundreds of kilometres, so they could put cities anywhere (See “312 BC”)

• 300-101 (or older): The Mahābhārata is the longest epic poem known. It has been compared in importance in the context of world civilization to that of the Bible, the Quran, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the works of Shakespeare. Within the Indian tradition it is sometimes called the fifth Veda. It is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyasa, who is also a major character in the epic. It is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the Rāmāyana. It’s an encyclopaedic kind of work that contains everything in its core of 24,000 verses (See “200 BC”)

• ~300 BC: The Greek mathematician Euclid, the father of geometry, produced his treatise on geometry, the Elements. This became the primary source of geometric reasoning, theorems, and methods at least until the advent of non-Euclidean geometry in the 19th century. It is sometimes said that, other than the Bible, the Elements is the most translated, published, and studied of all the books produced in the Western world. While considered the “father of geometry”, Euclid (~330 BC-~282 BC) flourished c. 300 BC, in Alexandria, Egypt) studied the nature of light and vision and published his work, Optics, on these subjects. He theorized that light propagated in rays and traveled in a straight line (See “150 AD”, “1826” and “1913”)

• 286 BC: The Library of Alexandria was (likely) built during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus. It housed a staggering number of documents, with some of the upper estimates placing the contents at around 400,000 scrolls at its height. Contrary to popular belief, the library went through a prolonged period of decline and not a sudden, fiery death (although it did burn in the first century BC and 40,000 priceless scrolls were lost). Ironically, the survival of ancient texts owes nothing to the great libraries of antiquity and instead owes everything to the fact that they were exhaustingly copied and recopied, at first by professional scribes during the Roman Period onto papyrus and later by monks during the Middle Ages onto parchment (See “700-601 BC” and “1-200 AD”)

• 284 BC (between that and 246 BC): The Lighthouse of Alexandria. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, for many centuries it was one of the tallest man-made structures in the world. It was severely damaged by three earthquakes between 956 and 1323 AD and became an abandoned ruin 

• ~280 BC (or later): Aristarchus of Samos presented the first known heliocentric model of the solar system that placed the Sun at the centre of the known universe, with the Earth revolving around the Sun once a year and rotating about its axis once a day. There was push back at the time and his ideas ultimately rejected, allowing geocentrism to flourish until Copernicus (See “1543”)

• 246 BC: Archimedes’ principle was developed by the most famous mathematician and inventor in ancient Greece. Archimedes (287-212 BC) is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Considered the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time, Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying the concept of the infinitely small and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometric theorems. These include: the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse. Archimedes is known for his formulation of a hydrostatic principle (known as Archimedes’ principle) and a device for raising water, still used, known as the Archimedes’ screw (around 234 BC)

• 240 BC: Eratosthenes of Cyrene was the first person known to calculate the circumference of the Earth. He was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. A man of learning, he (276-194 BC) became the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. His measurements enabled him to calculate the Earth’s circumference to be between 24,000 and 29,000 miles, where it actually measures 24,900 miles around the equator. He was also the first to calculate the Earth’s axial tilt, which has also proved to have remarkable accuracy. He created the first global projection of the world, incorporating parallels and meridians based on the available geographic knowledge of his era

• 226 BC: The Colossus of Rhodes collapsed during an earthquake. It was a statue of the Greek sun god Helios and was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was constructed in 280 BC to celebrate the successful defence of Rhodes city against an attack by Demetrius I of Macedon. It was the tallest statue in the ancient world (~ the height of the Statue of Liberty)

• 221-206 BC: The Qin dynasty was the first dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin state. (The ruling family of the Qin kingdom – what is conventionally called a “dynasty” – ruled for over five centuries, while the “Qin Dynasty,” the conventional name for the first Chinese empire, comprises the last fourteen years of Qin’s existence ending in 206 BC.) Qin Shi Huang di was the founder of the dynasty and the First Emperor (from 221-210) of a unified China. Despite its short reign, however, the lessons and strategies of the Qin shaped the Han dynasty and became the starting point of the Chinese imperial system that lasted from 221 BC, with interruption, development, and adaptation, until 1912. The Qin sought to create a state unified by structured centralized political power and a large military supported by a stable economy. The central government moved to undercut aristocrats and landowners to gain direct administrative control over the peasantry, who comprised the overwhelming majority of the population and labour force. This allowed ambitious projects involving three hundred thousand peasants and convicts: projects such as connecting walls along the northern border, eventually developing into the Great Wall of China, and a massive new national road system, as well as the city-sized Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor guarded by the life-sized Terracotta Army. The Qin introduced a range of reforms such as standardized currency, weights, measures and a uniform system of writing, which aimed to unify the state and promote commerce. Additionally, its military used the most recent weaponry, transportation and tactics

• 218 BC: The Carthaginian general Hannibal guided his army over the Alps and into Italy in just 16 days, and descended on Rome in an ambush from the north, where the nation least expected – an attack that was unprecedented in the history of warfare. (His army had 30,000 soldiers, 37 elephants and 15,000 horses.) When the crossing took place, the powerful nations of Carthage and Rome were at each other’s throats. Yet most forget that the Romans prevailed (the Second Punic War 218 to 201 BC) seizing and razing Carthage and hunting Hannibal down, hounding him into suicide 

• 216 BC: Famous battle of Cannas, with the Romans against the Carthaginians. It was a key engagement of the Second Punic War between the Roman Republic and Carthage, fought near the ancient village of Cannae in southeast Italy. The Carthaginian army under Hannibal destroyed a numerically superior Roman army. It is regarded as one of the greatest tactical feats in military history and one of the worst defeats in Roman history

• 214 BC: Work on the Great Wall of China begins. It’sa series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe, particularly the Xiongnu. Later on, many successive dynasties built and maintained multiple stretches of border walls. The best-known sections of the wall were built by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644)

• 206 BC: The Han dynasty, one of China’s most significant periods that influenced the identity of the Chinese civilization ever since, was founded and widely viewed as one of the pinnacles of Chinese culture. It was said that the Han could govern with grace what the First Emperor had built with blood. It was an imperial dynasty established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao). The Han emperors restored the primacy of Confucian thought and opened up a world-changing trade route with Europe: the Silk Road.. When Cao Pi, king of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian, the Han dynasty ceased to exist. The dynasty has influenced the identity of the Chinese civilization ever since. The period resulted in inventions such as the rudder, the blast furnace, the wheelbarrow, suspension bridges, and paper forever changed the way we live. Modern China’s majority ethnic group refers to themselves as the “Han people”. The dynasty ruled China for almost 400 years through to 220 AD, and was more or less constantly at war with its northern neighbours, the nomads of the European steppes (the Chinese called the nomads the Xiongnu; in Europe they were known as the Huns)

• 205-87 BC: A device to calculate astronomical positions of the sun, moon, and planets was developed, the oldest known example of an analogue computer. Users could enter a past or future date and turn a crank to make astronomical predictions. The Antikythera mechanism has been described as the oldest known example of an analogue computer. The instrument is believed to have been designed and constructed by Hellenistic scientists. Machines with similar complexity did not appear again until the astronomical clocks of Richard of Wallingford in the 14th century. This artefact was among wreckage retrieved from a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera in 1901

• 200 BC (approx): The first compass was invented in China, which among many benefits, enabled sea trade. The first compasses were made of lodestone, a naturally magnetized stone of iron, a naturally occurring magnet and aligns itself with the Earth’s magnetic field. This occurred during the Han Dynasty. The first usage of a compass in Western Europe was recorded in around 1190 and in the Islamic world 1232. (It has been hypothesized that the Olmec – the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization – might have used the geomagnetic lodestone earlier than 1000 BC for a method of divination, which if proven true, predates the Chinese use of magnetism by a millennium.) The invention of the compass made it possible to determine a heading when the sky was overcast or foggy, and when landmarks were not in sight. This enabled mariners to navigate safely far from land, increasing sea trade (See “1500 BC and “1190”)

• 200-101 BC (2cd century): Invention of paper in China. There is ample archaeological evidence of primitive paper types in China, largely using hemp. It is believed that the invention of this early form of paper was accidental after clothes, which were made of hemp, were left too long after washing, and a residue formed in the water which could then be pressed into a useful new material (See “105 AD”)

• 200 BC (approx): The Bhagavad Gita, one of the holy scriptures for Hinduism and the most revered of all the Hindu texts, is attributed to the sage Vyasa. It is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic Mahābhārata. It is one of the two important epics of Hinduism, known as the Itihasas, the other being the Mahābhārata (See “301-100 BC”). One scholar suggests that “if there is any one text that comes near to embodying the totality of what it is to be a Hindu, it would be the Bhagavad Gita”

• 200 BC: The first windmills were water pumps in ancient China and grain mills in ancient Persia. But practical  windmills didn’t appear until around 700-900 AD in Persia. The iconic windmills in the Netherlands started cropping up around 1200 AD after Middle East traders brought the technology north to Europe (See “700-900”)

• 196 BC: The Rosetta Stone, an ancient Egyptian stone bearing inscriptions in several languages and scripts, was created and eventually deciphered. Their decipherment led to the understanding of hieroglyphic writing. It is a granite rock inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and demotic scripts respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. Around this time, Egyptian demotic and hieroglyphics began to decline in favour of the Greek writing system, which is why all three scripts were etched on the stone. The decree has only minor differences between the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts. (The stone was discovered in 1799 northeast of Alexandria by a Frenchman.) (See “1799”)

• 100 BC to 201-300 AD: The Kushan empire briefly existed and were a ruling line descended from the Yuezhi, a people that ruled over most of the northern Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan, and parts of Central Asia. The Yuezhi conquered Bactria in the 2nd century BC and divided the country into five chiefdoms, one of which was that of the Kushans. A hundred years later the Kushan chief, Kujula Kadphises, secured the political unification of the Yuezhi kingdom under himself. They faded out of history, although successor kingdoms of various sizes kept emerging in the same area, i.e in supplanting the Central Asian kingdoms planted by Alexander, the Kushans absorbed some of their Hellenic residue; in overrunning the Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms of northern India they absorbed some of that cultural residue; in the west they lapped into the Persian world; and in the east, they encountered the tendrils of an expanding China

• 55 BC: Julius Caesar attacks Great Britain (start of the written history of Great Britain). In the course of his Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar invaded Britain twice: in 55 and 54 BC. On the first occasion Caesar took with him only two legions, and achieved little beyond a landing on the coast of Kent. The second invasion consisted of 628 ships, five legions and 2,000 cavalry. The force was so imposing that the Britons did not dare contest it. This is effectively the start of the written history, or at least the protohistory, of Great Britain 

• 49 BC: Julius Caesar and his army cross the Rubicon, starting the Roman Civil War. Crossing the Rubicon began a civil war that would end the Roman Republic. It was against the law to cross into Roman territory with an army, and Caesar knew this – he knew he was starting a civil war. The war that followed lasted five years. It ended with Caesar being named Rome’s “dictator for life.”

• 46 BC (or 708 AUC): A new calendar was imposed, the Julian calendar, by edict of Julius Caesar, so then there were two dating systems. Thus there were 365 days in a year divided into 12 months and a leap year every 4 years. Further, after that Julius forced Republican Rome to become Imperial. Years were also calculated from the date of the accession of absolute power by the then emperor, reporting, for instance, that a certain event happened “in the 16th year of the reign of Caesar Augustus.”

• 44 BC, March: Julius Caesar is assassinated in the Senate by Brutus, Cassius and others. The assassination would also mark the death knell of the Roman Republic; soon afterward, Rome spiralled into a civil war. To end the fighting a coalition – the Second Triumvirate – was formed made of the three belligerents: Octavian (Caesar’s chosen heir), Mark Antony and Lepidus, a Roman statesman 

• 43 BC: Cicero was killed on the direction of Mark Anthony. He had championed a return to the traditional republican government. Cicero (106-43 BC) was considered one of Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists and the innovator of what became known as “Ciceronian rhetoric”. Petrarch’s discovery of Cicero’s letters has been credited with initiating the 14th century Renaissance in humanism and classical Roman culture (See “1368”)

• 31 BC: Herod the Great became ruler of Judaea. He was established as king by Octavian (Augustus) as part of his policy of ruling certain regions through pro-Roman puppet monarchs. Herod (72-4 BC) jealously guarded his power through the massacre of rivals. He is attributed with the Massacre of the Innocents in an effort to wipe out Jesus

• 31 BC: Battle of Actium (off the coast of Greece)where Roman leader Octavian beat the forces of Roman Mark Antony and Cleopatra (queen of Egypt). (He was Octavius, then Octavian, then in 27 BC the Roman Senate conferred on him the name Augustus.)

• 30 BC: Egyptian empress Cleopatra VII commits suicide (after losing the Battle of Actium in 31 BC; it was won by Augustus Caesar), ending both the Hellenistic period and the Ptolemaic rule of Egypt, which became a Roman province with Octavian as its first emperor. She was the mistress of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony 

• 27 BC: Octavian became Augustus Caesar, the first and arguably most successful of all Roman emperors, and Rome became an empire. He ruled a peaceful, prosperous, and expanding Roman Empire until his death in 14 AD at the age of 75. He led Rome’s transformation from republic to empire during the tumultuous years following the assassination of his great-uncle and adoptive father Julius Caesar. He shrewdly combined military might, institution-building and lawmaking to become Rome’s sole ruler, laying the foundations of the 200-year Pax Romana (Roman Peace) and an empire that lasted, in various forms, for nearly 1,500 years. At its height in 117 AD, Rome controlled all the land from Western Europe to the Middle East, and was the most powerful political entity the world had yet seen. Our art, architecture, laws, technology, and engineering – even the very words we speak – have all been heavily influenced by the ancient Romans. A series of Gothic invasions heralded a general decline, and in 476, the Western Roman Empire fell. The Eastern Roman Empire – also known as the Byzantine Empire – remained until 1453, but the glory days of the Roman Empire had reached their end  (See “476” and “1453”)

• 29-19 BC; Virgil wrote the Aeneid, a Latin epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. The Aeneid incorporates the various legends of Aeneas and makes him the founder of Roman greatness