A timeline of human history
My woking list of the 50 most important historical discoveries, and inventions, and moments in history.
The timeline
300,000 years ago: Homo sapiens first appear in Africa. Around the same time we see the first evidence of frequent use of fire, in Israel.
100,000 to 210,000 years ago: Humans venture outside Africa. Earlier fossils are found in Israel and China.
70,000 years ago: Humans start building and using first arrows. The oldest know evidence comes from South Africa.
50,000 years ago: Mass migration outside Africa, via the Arabia Peninsula. Lower sea levels appear to have facilitated the migration.
10,000 BC: The domestication of plants and animals, in Mesopotamia. The region name can be translated to “between two rivers” referring to the Euphrates and Tigres (modern day Iraq).
3,500 BC: The (disputed) invention of the wheel in Mesopotamia. First evidence of wheels is used for pottery, for basic wheelded vehicles and used in the domestication of the horse. All around the Copper Age.
3,000 BC
The development of writing, also in Mesopotamia. Earliest uses of writing are found in Sumeria to document agricultural output and to create contracts.
Mesopotamia, via the Shekel is the first civilisation to have a currency
3,000-2,000 BC: The first large civilizations emerge in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and China. These are commonly known as the “Cradle of civilization”.
3,000-1,200 BC: The Bronze Age, which marks the first time humans work with metal.
1,200-500 BC: The Iron Age, where iron or steel tools became more popular than bronze.
1,200 BC– 600 AD: Ancient Greece civilization, a collection of regions in close proximity in the northeaster of the Mediterranean. The majority of the regions were only united once during the Alexandre the Great empire (336-323BC).
1,000-500 BC: The first empires in China, India, and the Mediterranean.
500 BC-AD 600: The spread of Buddhism and Hinduism. The earliest material evidence of Hinduism in Southeast Asia comes from Borneo in the 4th-century.
Beginning of Common Era
1: The birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem, described in the biblical gospels of Luke and Matthew.
27: The rise of the Roman Empire, founded by its first emperor Augustus, son of Julius Caesar. Augustus' reign marked the beginning of the Pax Romana, a period of relative peace and stability that lasted for over 200 years.
105: Invention of the first versions of what is considered “modern-day” paper by Cai Lun, in China. Unlike papyrus, this is considered “true paper” by its papermaking process.
142 : First mention of gun powder by alchemist Wei Boyang, in China. Gunpowder would later revolutionize warfare and become a key factor in the success of the Mongol Empire's conquests in the 13th and 14th centuries.
610: The birth of Islam, with the devine revelations of Muhammad
1206-1368 : The Mongol invasions, ranging from China in the East, Hungary in the East, and India in the South. The Mongol Empire became the largest contiguous empire in history, stretching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan.
14th-15th centuries: The Renaissance period, with its birthplace in Florence.
1440: Johannes Gutenberg develops of the printing press, starting the Printing Revolution.
15th-16th centuries: The Age of Discovery and colonialism, marked by extensive overseas exploration from Europeans, led by the Portuguese and the Spanish.
1517: Martin Luther published the Ninety-five Theses, starting the period known as the Protestant Reformation.
1543: Traditional year of the start of the Scientific Revolution, assumed to start with the Copernican Revolution that describes the Sun at the center of the Solar System, as opposed to the Earth as the center of the cosmos.
17th – 18th century
The Age of Enlightenment.
In 1637 Descartes' publishes Discourse on Method, and his rational philosophy is often considered the foundation for enlightenment thinking.
In 1686 Isaac Newton presents his three laws of motion in the “Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis”.
1775-1783: The American Revolution. A period of political upheaval and armed conflict in which the thirteen colonies of North America broke away from British rule and established the United States of America.
1789-1799: The French Revolution followed by the Napoleonic Wars
1712: Thomas Newcomen invents the first steam engine, improved in 1765 by Jammes Watt by adding an extra condenser.
1796: Edward Jenner inoculates a 13 year-old-boy with vaccinia virus (cowpox), and demonstrated immunity to smallpox. Two years later, the first smallpox vaccine is developed.
1800: Alessandro Volta's battery, or voltaic pile, of , made from alternating layers of zinc and copper.
1859: Charles Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”
1876
Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
Nicolaus Otto created the first modern internal combustion engine
1895: Guglielmo Marconi sents a wireless Morse Code message to a source more than a kilometer away. Marconi receives the official British patent for the radio.
1901: Albert Einstein publishes his theory of relativity
1903: The first successful powered flight by the Wright brothers
1914-1918
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
Start of World War I.
1917: Bolshevik Revolution
End of World War I
1923 : The first television is invented
1928: Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin at St. Mary's Hospital in London, leading to the introduction of antibiotics.
World War II (1939-1945)
1945: The founding of the United Nations
1945 - 1991: The Cold War, a period of tension and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union
1953: The discovery of the structure of DNA
1957 : The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was successfully launched into orbit by the Soviet Union.
1961: Yuri Gagarin is the first human to go into outer space and completes one orbit around the Earth.
1969
ARPAnet delivers its first message: a “node-to-node” from one computer (in UCLA) to another (in Stanford), starting what is now called the Internet.
The first manned moon landing
1975: The release of the Altair 8800, a pivotal moment in the creation of a market for commercial computers.
1989: The fall of the Berlin wall, followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
1992: The discovery of the first planet outside the Solar System
2001: September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania
2021: Launch of ChatGPT