I should acknowledge that I’m slowly creating this from a direct copy of Professor C. Patrick Doncaster’s wonderful “timeline of the human condition,” for which I intend to thank him some day. It is apparent from his work that we think very much alike, so it seems unlikely that he will sue me for copyright infringement. But if he does, that’s fine too — it will only draw attention to our shared goal of helping humanity save itself. Again, this is a work in progress — I intend to modify and make selections for the timeline that will compress it into 365 (or 366) entires, corresponding to the days of the year.
I
| 1 | a8 | 13,800,000,000 | Earliest anything: Big Bang singularity, cosmic inflation, creation of all particles of matter and counterpart antimatter, and the laws of physics governing their interactions; expansion and cooling of space → formation of the observable Universe, its galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets, moons, asteroids and comets. Photon epoch starts 10 seconds after big bang. | |
| 2 | b8 | 13,700,621,000 | Earliest hydrogen: End of photon epoch, beginning of recombination (electrons and protons bind to form hydrogen and then helium), and the “dark ages” of the universe. “Recombination” is a name that stuck; there’s no reason to believe that electrons and protons bound prior to 370Ka after Big Bang. | |
| 3 | c8 | 13,550,000,000 | Earliest galaxies: Dark ages end and cosmic dawn begins with ignition of hydrogen stars and the period of “reinionzation” begins. First galaxies form (350-450 million years after the Big Bang). Heavier elements helium and carbon are produced by nuclear fusion in stars (although as above, helium already existed during recombination). | |
| 4 | d8 | 13,000,000,000 | Beginning of Milky Way: Milky Way galaxy forms: now a warped disc of 100 billion stars, one of 2 trillion galaxies in the observable Universe | |
| 5 | e8 | 12,200,000,000 | Earliest water: First water forms as interstellar vapor., and repository for oxygen | |
| 6 | f8 | 11,000,000,000 | Event: Beginning of post-collision Milky Way. Gaia-Enceladus Galaxy Collides and merges with Milky Way (11B), Creates Thin Disk | |
| 7 | g8 | 8,170,000,000 | Event: End of Milky Way formation: Milky Way stops forming stars [but what about sun??] and is now a thick, warped disk of 100 billion stars. It’s one of 22 trillion galaxies in the universe. | |
| 8 | h8 | 4,570,000,000 | Beginning of Sun. Sun forms over a period of 50 million years, along with solar system. By now, the Milky Way is orbiting a supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, every 220 million years. Solar system also begins to form with the start of the Hadean eon (4.567B, so named for hellish conditions on earth, lasts until 4B); | |
| 4,540,000,000 | Beginning of Earth | |||
| 9 | h7 | 4,510,000,000 | Beginning of Moon Planet Theia collides with proto-Earth and forms the moon. | |
| 10 | g7 | 4,500,000,000 | Beginning of Earth as we know it: Earth completes its formation, rotating eastward around a tilted axis that results in opposite seasons in North and South hemispheres. | |
| 11 | f7 | 4,400,000,000 | Beginning of oceans and moist atmposphere. Oceans appear and moist atmosphere forms; molten iron core generates magnetosphere that shields earth from solar wind and cosmic rays | |
| 12 | e7 | 4,400,000,000 | Beginning of crust subduction: First subduction of Earth’s crust, culminating in formation of continental plate tectonics by 3 billion years ago, unique to Earth in the Solar System | |
| 13 | d7 | 4,300,000,000 | Earliest RNA: forms on basaltic lava glass (experiments verify that RNA forms on basaltic glass) and the pre-biotic RNA world begins. | |
| 14 | c7 | 4,000,000,000 | Beginning of Archean eon: Hadean eon ends as Archean eon begins with appearance of single-celled prokaryotic Archaea, having stable, inherited DNA with protein-encoding instructions for RNA that produce the proteins that perform cell functions in ribosomes | |
| 15 | b7 | 3,500,000,000 | Earliest photosynthesis; Photosynthesising single-celled bacteria appear, which convert sunlight into chemical energy to power the cell | |
| 16 | a7 | 3,400,000,000 | Earliest oxygen: Atmospheric oxygen appears at low levels | |
| 17 | a6 | 3,200,000,000 | Beginning of continents: First continents emerge from the ocean, supporting microbial mats in Earth’s first land ecosystem | |
| 18 | b6 | 2,330,000,000 | Beginning of Proterozoic Eon with the Great Oxygenation Event – 1 -10 million years of rapidly accumulating photosynthesized atmospheric oxygen – ends the Archean Eon and ushers in the Proterozoic Eon) | |
| 19 | c6 | 2,100,000,000 | Earliest multicellular life: prokaryotes with cell-to-cell signalling and coordinated responses → 37 trillion mutually-dependent cells in an adult human body | |
| 20 | d6 | 1,700,000,000 | Earliest eukaryotes: formed from the merger of an archaeon with a bacterium, sexual reproduction — meiosis and recombination of genetic material from two parents – begins | |
| 21 | e6 | 1,000,000,000 | Earliest fungi: shallow-water estuarine Ourasphaira giraldae | |
| 22 | f6 | 890,000,000 | Earliest animals – Metazoa – appear in the form of sponges that descended from fungi prior to Snowball Earth episodes of worldwide glaciation | |
| 23 | g6 | 700,000,000 | Event: Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event begins 100 million years of rising photosynthesis, accompanied by lengthening days as Earth’s rotational speed slows; conditions for complex life improve as a result | |
| 24 | h6 | 635,000,000 | Earliest sleep cycle: Sleep cycle first appears in nervous system of stem Cnidaria, ancestor of jellyfish and immortal hydra without sleep we die | |
| 25 | h5 | 550,000,000 | Earliest animals with left-right symmetry (bilaterians): appear as the Ediacaran Period begins, Examples are burrowing Ikaria with mouth and gut for scavenging, segmented Yilingia with paired legs and musculature for roaming | |
| 26 | g5 | 540,000,000 | Beginning of Cambrian explosion and Cambrian period; animals diversify rapidly over over 20 million years (earliest Cambrian Period); emergence of modern body plans, resolving to phyla over 40 million years | |
| 27 | f5 | 535,000,000 | Earliest chordates: Chordates appear with notochord and pharyngeal gill slits | |
| 28 | e5 | 520,000,000 | Earliest eyes: appearing as compound stalked eyes of stem arthropods, leading to further diversification | |
| 29 | d5 | 500,000,000 | Earliest land plants; plants begin to appear on land as algae, probably facilitated by fungi, create soil, rivers, and continental greening. | |
| 488,300,000 | Event: Ordovician period begins at 488.3M | |||
| 30 | c5 | 480,000,000 | Earliest mineralized skeleton, armour, and scales in chordates | |
| 31 1/31 | b5 | 445,000,000 | Event: Volcanic activity and/or glaciers likely cause mass extinction in two pulses across 1 million years, eliminating more than three-quarters of all species (Late Ordovician Period) | |
| 32 | a5 | 420,000,000 | Earliest yawning: Capacity for yawning begins with jawed vertebrates among fishes (Late Silurian Period) → diversification of feeding niches; capacity for yawning, omnipresent across disparate modern lineages | |
| 33 | a4 | 407,000,000 | Earliest sound production: Aquatic vertebrates develop sound production and hearing for signalling, displaying and surveillance (i.e. acoustic communication) (early Devonian). | |
| 34 | b4 | 407,000,000 | Earliest woody stemmed plants: Driven by hydraulic constraints, vascular plants develop woody stems (Early Devonian Period), paving the way for taller plants | |
| 35 | c4 | 394,000,000 | Earliest limbs: Vertebrate tetrapods replace fins with limbs (Devonian Period) while remaining fully aquatic | |
| 36 | d4 | 385,000,000 | Earliest forests: Forests start to grow in New York State, North America (Devonian period), providing a three-dimensional terrestrial habitat for life; trees are connected by mycorrhizal fungi; atmospheric O₂ rises and CO₂ decreases. | |
| 37 | e4 | 380,000,000 | Earliest multichambered heart: Vertebrate placoderm fish develop first multi-chambered heart (Devonian Period) | |
| 38 | f4 | 375,000,000 | Event: Climatic cooling likely causes another mass extinction in a series of pulses over 20 million years, eliminating more than two-thirds of all species (Late Devonian Period) | |
| 39 | g4 | 350,000,000 | Earliest amphibians reach land: Semi-aquatic amphibian tetrapods reach land (Early Carboniferous Period) | |
| 40 | h4 | 340,000,000 | Earliest fully terrestrial tetrapods, laying amniote eggs (Carboniferous Period) | |
| 41 | h3 | 251,900,000 | Event: hot and acidifying volcanic CO₂ emissions from the Siberian Traps cause Earth’s largest mass extinction, eliminating nine tenths of all species over 61 thousand years (Permian-Triassic transition). But new species bounce back. | |
| 42 | g3 | 233,000,000 | Event: Modern age begins with more volcanic activity leading to rapid origination and development of conifers, insets, dinosaurs, reptiles, and stem mammals (Late Triassic Period) | |
| 43 | f3 | 201,300,000 | Event: Two-thirds of species wiped out in another mass extinction event, likely caused by volcanic CO2 emissions (Triassic-Jurassic transition). | |
| 44 | e3 | 200,000,000 | Earliest warm-blooded stem mammals (Late Triassic): they have faster metabolisms that enable them to survive in a cooler climate through endothermy | |
| 45 | d3 | 178,000,000 | Earliest true mammals: they have fur, endothermy, REM sleep, and a natural lifespan of 3,200 somatic mutations (modern humans average 47 annually) (Jurassic Period): | |
| 46 | c3 | 135,000,000 | Earliest flowers: Flowering plants (angiosperms) and their insect pollinators radiate widely in the Early Cretaceous Period and come to dominate plant life; Darwin called the rapid spread “an “abominable mystery”; current theory is that this was due to genome downsizing and thus cell size reduction and better energy use in the early Cretaceous | |
| 47 | b3 | 101,500,000 | aerobic bacteria embed into oxic sediment of the South Pacific Gyre, reviving after 101.5 million years to grow into microbial communities (worth keeping?) | |
| 48 | a3 | 90,000,000 | Earliest parasites (lice): including body-, pubic- and head-lice, bedbugs, screwworms and botflies, fleas, ticks, scabies and chiggers amongst the ectoparasites of modern humans, with 300 worm and 70 protozoan endoparasites (Cretaceous Period) | |
| 49 | a2 | 66,000,000 | Event: Asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Mexico instantly wipes out -quarters of all species, including non-avian dinosaurs (Cretaceous-Paleogene transition). This leads to rapid diversification of flowering plants and mammals | |
| 50 | b2 | 55,000,000 | Earliest primates: (Eocene Epoch), specializing in brachiation, i.e. swinging from one hold to the next in a tree. | |
| 51 | c2 | 44,000,000 | Event: New world primates diverge from Old World (Eocene Epoch); old world primates go on to develop color vision, opposable thumbs, sociality; capacity to grieve and to recognize deceptions; extended sexuality] | |
| 52 | d2 | 30,000,000 | Event: A virus embeds its DNA into a primate’s genome, evolving into an endogenous retrovirus → active in modern humans: domesticated and territorial, protecting the placenta | |
| 53 | e2 | 25,200,000 | Earliest Apes and dawn of speech: hominoids (apes) in Tanzania (Oligocene Epoch) are taller, have bigger brains, and have the ability to make contrasting vowel sounds (dawn of speech) [fill in “greats” for all of these] | |
| 54 | f2 | 16,800,000 | Earliest great apes: emerge in Asia from hominoid gibbons as earliest homonids: they are larger, have more sexual dimorphism, make nests, play, show empathy; gesture, and communicate over long distances by drumming; capacity for self-medication, as in other animals | |
| 55 | g2 | 13,000,000 | Earliest hominids: Pierolapithecus catalaunicus and Nyanzapithecus alesi appear in Spain and Kenya, respectively. These are possible ancestors of hominins and modern apes (also respectively); the former has an upright posture | |
| 56 | h2 | 7,000,000 | Earliest hominins: Sahelanthropus, followed by Orrorin and Ardipithecus emerge in Africa as the first hominins. They have reduced canines, arboreal habitat, and bipedal capability | |
| 57 | h1 | 4,200,000 | Earliest fully upright, bipedal hominin with free-striding gait: Australopithecus spp. replaces earlier hominins in Africa | |
| 58 2/27 | g1 | 3,300,000 | Earliest stone tool: Hominins in Kenya produce earliest knapped stone artefacts, including Lomekwian tools. Paranthropus sp. using Oldowan tools by c. 2.8 million years ago | |
| 59 3/1 | f1 | 2,800,000 | Earliest human: Homo sp., the earliest human, emerges among homins in Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia: they have rounded chin like Australopithecus afarensis, but smaller and slimmer molars like the later Homo habilis | |
| 60 | e1 | 2,700,000 | Delete? Hominin genus Paranthropus ranges widely in East Africa, co-existing with humans | |
| 61 | d1 | 2,600,000 | Earliest eating of marrow: Hominins in Africa begin eating and xx ?? xx and marrow in addition to everything else | |
| 62 | c1 | 2,600,000 | Earliest chopping tool: Humans in Gona, Ethiopia use Oldowan tools for chopping through flesh, bone, and bark (earliest stone tools) (see above) | |
| 63 | b1 | 2,588,000 | Event: Current geological period of Quaternary glaciation begins, possibly initiated by a supernova blast 150-300 light-years away, luminous as the full Moon | |
| 64 | a1 | 2,400,000 | Earliest cleaving tools: Homo habilis in Africa uses stone tools for cleaving meat from bone [compare with Oldowan) | |
| 65 | a8 | 2,120,000 | Earliest hominins in China. Hominins in Shangchen, southern China, using tools; first evidence of human ancestors outside of Africa [but does that make sense? Humans already existed in Africa. Is the idea that other humans descended from THESE hominins?] | |
| 66 | b8 | 2,000,000 | Earliest homo erectus: direct ancestor of modern humans, emerges in coexistence with Australopithecus – soon extinct, and Paranthropus (South Africa): delayed maturity, enlarged brain and smaller teeth | |
| 67 | c8 | 1,800,000 | Earliest homo erectus in Eurasia (Georgia; to Lantian in northern China by 1.63 million years ago; to Java by 1.5 million years ago); ecological success underwritten by postmenopausal care of young? [query – did these give rise to homo sapiens, or did that start over in Africa?] | |
| 68 | d8 | 1,700,000 | Earliest stone handaxes: Humans in Tanzania use stone hand axes: Acheulean tools, standardized for butchering, cutting, stripping, hammering, drilling. Tools facilitate enhanced mobility | |
| 69 | e8 | 1,500,000 | Earliest fire: Homo erectus controls fire in Koobi Fora, Kenya: uniquely human capability → extending the day with firelight; improving nutrient uptake with cooked food by 780,000 years ago; widespread use of fire by 400,000 years ago | |
| 70 | f8 | 1,500,000 | Earliest alliances within social groups: Males within Homo erectus social groups form alliances with each other (Ileret, Kenya): cooperative networks, perhaps including unrelated individuals | |
| 71 | g8 | 1,400,000 | Earliest organic tools: a hand axe made from hippopotamus bone (Ethiopia) → conscious symbolism? | |
| 72 | h8 | 1,400,000 | Event: Homo erectus replaces Homo habilis in Africa | |
| 73 | h7 | 1,000,000 | Event: Paranthropus, our last remaining sibling genus, goes extinct in South Africa | |
| 74 | g7 | 900,000 | Event: Close relative of common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans appears in Atapuerca, Spain [but didn’t homo sapiens evolve in Africa?!), uses | |
| 75 | f7 | 900,000 | Earliest use of flint scrapers: Above antecessor used flint scrapers suitable for preparing animal hides – may have made and worn clothing. | |
| 76 | e7 | 800,000 | Earliest cannibalism (keep?!): Homo antecessor in Gran Dolina, Spain is first human to practice cannibailism. | |
| 77 | d7 | 700,000 | Event: Diminutive Homo floresiensis appears on the Indonesian island of Flores, probable descendent of Homo erectus | |
| 78 | c7 | 700,000 | Earliest Homo heidelbergensis: possible ancestor of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis, emerges in Africa and Europe, supplementing meat with starchy plants | |
| 79 | b7 | 500,000 | Earliest abstract markings: Homo erectus in Indonesia makes earliest abstract markings: a zigzag engraving on shell. First evidence of abstraction | |
| 80 | a7 | 500,000 | First stone-tipped spears: Homo heidelbergensis (South Africa) pioneer stone-tipped spears for hunting large game | |
| 81 | a6 | 450,000 | Earliest Neanderthals: Homo neanderthalensis spreads across Europe: (bigger brains but fewer neurons than homo sapiens) | |
| 82 | b6 | 430,000 | Event: Denisovans diverge from Neanderthals in southern Siberia; they reach the Tibetan Plateau and Laos by 160,000 years ago; subsequent interbreeding, possibly also with Homo erectus | |
| 83 | c6 | 400,000 | Event: multiple hominin dispersals across Arabia (Nefud Desert), during windows of desert greening at four-, three-, two- and one-hundred thousand years ago (delete?) | |
| 84 | d6 | 400,000 | Earliest food storage for later consumption: (At the latest) Hominins conceive of and prepare for the future by storing food, including bone marrow, for later consumption (Qesem Cave, Israel) | |
| 85 | e6 | 320,000 | Earliest long-distance trade(?): Hominins travel long distances for obsidian for fine blades and points, and ochre for pigments (Kenya), as transition to Middle Stone Age begins amidst intensifying climate swings | |
| 86 | f6 | 315,000 | Earliest homo sapiens: Homo sapiens emerge (Jebel Irhoud, Morocco), having facial and dental structure similar to modern humans, but retaining archaic elongation of the braincase | |
| 87 | g6 | 300,000 | Event? Homo heidelbergensis use wooden spears and lances used for hunting large herbivores (Schöningen, Germany) | |
| 88 | h6 | 250,000 | Event: Homo neanderthalensis replace Homo heidelbergensis in Europe; Homo sapiens replaces them in Africa over the next 100,000 years | |
| 89 3/31 | h5 | 210,000 | Earliest homo sapiens in Eurasia: Homo sapiens having globular braincase and descended larynx (facilitating speech) enter Eurasia (Greece), in the first of multiple dispersals out of Africa | |
| 90 4/1 | g5 | 200,000 | Earliest adhesive: birch tar used by Neanderthals for hafting stone tools (Campitello, Italy) → pyrotechnology (?) | |
| 91 | f5 | 176,000 | Earliest underground edifices: Neanderthals build underground edifices from broken stalagmites by Neanderthals (Bruniquel Cave, France) (earliest constructions) | |
| 92 | e5 | 171,000 | Earliest fire-making tool: Neanderthals using fire via boxwood digging sticks with shafts worked smooth by controlled burning (Poggetti Vecchi, Italy) | |
| 93 4/4 | d5 | 170,000 | Earliest use of clothing: Humans’ use of clothing is widespread, evidenced in the divergence of clothing lice from head lice (Africa) | |
| 94 4/5 | c5 | 160,000 | Earliest harvesting of coastal shellfish: Homo sapiens harvest coastal shellfish in southern Africa, and Neanderthals harvest them in the Mediterranean. Fatty acids may boost cognitive development | |
| 95 4/6 | b5 | 142,000 | Earliest worn symbolic ornaments: Humans in Morocco make marine-shell beads as symbolic ornaments and this spreads to the Levant. Neanderthals in spain are wearing painted beads 115,000 years ago | |
| 96 4/7 | a5 | 126,000 | Event? Homo with mix of archaic-human and Neanderthal traits (Nesher Ramla, Israel): stone-tool industry, cooking meat; cultural exchange with humans? | |
| 97 4/8 | a4 | 125,000 | Event: prelude to Earth’s Last Glacial Period: global average temperature never again as high until CE 2021, during intensifying anthropogenic warming | |
| 98 4/9 | b4 | 125,000 | Earliest living and working in large groups (Neanderthals): (Neumark-Nord, Germany), evidenced by butchered 13-tonne elephants, each provisioning 100 people for a month | |
| 99 | c4 | 120,000 | Earliest burial of the dead, by anatomically modern humans in Qafzeh Cave, Israel, and by Neanderthals in Tabun Cave, Israel: mortuary rituals, mourning the dead | |
| 100 | d4 | 110,000 | Event: last appearance of Homo erectus (Ngandong, Java), 1.89 million years after its first appearance → the longest enduring species of human | |
| 101 | e4 | 105,000 | Earliest hoarding of non-utilitarian objects by Homo sapiens: crystals and ostrich eggshell fragments (Kalahari, southern Africa) | |
| 102 | f4 | 100,000 | Event: interbreeding of Homo sapiens with Homo neanderthalensis (Siberia) → accumulation of modern traits through gene flow | |
| 103 | g4 | 100,000 | Earliest toolkit for mixing and storing pigments: ochre, charcoal, bone, hammerstones, grindstones and abalone-shell containers (Blombos Cave, South Africa) → complex human cognition | |
| 104 | h4 | 100,000 | Earliest human etchings on rock: cross-hash decorations or symbols (Blombos Cave, South Africa) → conceptual imagination | |
| 105 | h3 | 90,000 | Earliest manufacture of bone harpoons, for hunting catfish (Semliki river, DR Congo) | |
| 106 | g3 | 90,000 | ?? fisher-hunter-gatherer Neanderthals eating mussels, crab, eels, sea bream and shark, dolphins and seals, hoofed game and waterfowl; pine-nut economy (Figueira Brava, Portugal) | |
| 107 | f3 | 78,000 | Earliest symbolic human burial, a 3-year old Homo sapiens (Panga ya Saidi Cave, Kenya): funerary practices by our ancestors | |
| 108 | e3 | 77,000 | Earliest beds: construction of bedding from sedges, topped with aromatic leaves containing insecticidal and larvicidal chemicals (Sibudu rock shelter, South Africa) | |
| 109 | d3 | 75,000 | earliest jewellery fashions: shifts in styles of threaded shell beads (Blombos Cave, South Africa) | |
| 110 | c3 | 73,000 | earliest drawing by humans: criss-crossed lines on a grindstone drawn with red-ochre crayon (Blombos Cave, South Africa) | |
| 111 | b3 | 71,000 | earliest heat-treatment of bladelets, for atlatl darts or arrows (South Africa): communication of complex technology → emergence of the modern mind | |
| 112 | a3 | 70,000 | Earliest cooking of bitter and astringent tastes — cooking of crushed pulse seeds by Neanderthals (Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan): tolerance of bitter and astringent tastes → food culture | |
| 113 | a2 | 65,000 | Event: rapid colonisation of Australia by humans during 5,000 years (ancient Sahul): maritime exploration; transecting the continent along superhighways | |
| 114 | b2 | 64,800 | Earliest symbolic cave paintings by Neanderthals (La Pasiega Cave, Spain)? | |
| 115 | c2 | 61,700 | Earliest bow-and-arrow technology, with bone arrowhead (Sibudu Cave, South Africa); a sprung bow the earliest instrument to hold energy for controlled release | |
| 116 | d2 | 60,000 | Earliest notation, with notched-bone tally marks by Neanderthals (Les Pradelles, France) → uniquely human number culture, record keeping, seasonal calendars | |
| 117 | e2 | 60,000 | ??? delete because have above for sapiens? Xx symbolic burial of dead by Neanderthals (La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France): funerary practices | |
| 118 | f2 | 60,000 | Event: range expansion of modern humans out of Africa into Eurasia, beginning 60,000 years ago and enduring 10,000 years | |
| 119 | g2 | 54,000 | Earliest homo sapiens in western Europe — modern humans, Homo sapiens, settling briefly in western Europe (Grotte Mandrin, France)? – preceded by and preceding Neanderthal settlements | |
| 120 May 1 | h2 | 51,000 | Earliest deer-bone art: a giant deer’s phalanx bone becomes a Neanderthal artist’s canvas, prepared by scraping and boiling before etching (Harz Mountains, Germany) | |
| h1 | 50,000 | Earliest use of string: a cord of three-plied bark fibres (Abri du Maras, France) → clothing, mats, baskets, nets, rope, snares, fishing lines, watercraft | ||
| g1 | 50,000 | Earliest eyed needle, made from bone by Denisovans (Denisova Cave, Siberia), suitable for tailoring garments | ||
| f1 | 50,000 | Earliest advanced fire-lighting technology: Neanderthal fire-lighting technology (France): striking flint axes with mineral pyrite → wood the predominant fuel for cooking and heating until the CE 19ᵗʰ century | ||
| e1 | 50,000 | Event: Eurasian Homo sapiens co-existing with Homo floresiensis (soon extinct) and Homo luzonensis, interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans | ||
| d1 | 48,000 | Earliest drugs: self-medication by Neanderthals, with pain-killing salicylic acid in poplar leaves, and antibiotic-producing Penicillium mould (El Sidrón, Spain) | ||
| c1 | 46,000 | Event: anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens, established in Europe (Bacho Kiro, Bulgaria), mating with Neanderthals, spreading eastwards. | ||
| b1 | 46,000 | complex processing of food plants by anatomically modern humans (Niah Cave, Borneo): detoxifying yam, Dioscorea hispida | ||
| 128 | a1 | 45,500 | earliest representational art, a red-ochre composition of Sulawesi warty pigs (Leang Tedongnge, Sulawesi): narrative scenes | |
| a8 | 45,000 | extinction of giant flightless mihirung thunder birds, hastened by human exploitation of their eggs (Australia) | ||
| b8 | 44,000 | earliest figurative painting (Sulawesi Island, Indonesia), of therianthropes hunting anoa and pigs: mythological stories | ||
| c8 | 42,000 | earliest musical instruments: bone and ivory flutes (Swabian Jura, Germany), stirring the emotions with harmony, melody, rhythm, timbre → no human society without music | ||
| d8 | 42,000 | earliest record of fish-hooks, manufactured from broken shell (East Timor): deep-sea fishing for pelagic tuna and parrotfish, sharks and marine turtles | ||
| e8 | 41,500 | most recent reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles, lasting 500 years, degrading stratospheric ozone, driving global climate shifts and extinction events | ||
| f8 | 40,000 | anatomically modern humans replace Neanderthals, our last remaining sibling species | ||
| g8 | 40,000 | earliest habitual use of solid footwear (Sunghir, Russia), opening permafrost regions to occupancy → hay socks by 5,000 years ago | ||
| h8 | 40,000 | full development of language, facilitating efficient social bonding through gossip → now over 7,000 living languages, over 2,000 vanishing | ||
| h7 | 40,000 | earliest figurative sculpture: an ivory figurine of a therianthrope with lion’s head and human torso (Hohlenstein, Germany) | ||
| g7 | 40,000 | earliest image of human form: a hand stencil (Maros karsts, Sulawesi) | ||
| f7 | 37,000 | earliest artistic representation of human form: engravings of vulvas (Abri Castanet, France): fertility symbol? | ||
| e7 | 35,000 | earliest animation in cave art (Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, France): breaking down animal movement, prefiguring cinema; earliest proto-writing system | ||
| d7 | 35,000 | earliest fully human sculpture and female imagery: a mammoth-ivory ‘Venus’ figurine (Hohle Fels, Germany): fertility totem? | ||
| c7 | 35,000 | a giant virus freezes into Siberian permafrost, melting back to virulent activity 35,000 years later | ||
| b7 | 32,600 | processing of heat-dried wild oats with grindstones (Grotta Paglicci, Italy; soon appearing across Europe, Australia), to make flour for storage and cooking | ||
| a7 | 32,000 | fruits of the campion Silene stenophylla freeze in Siberian tundra, regenerating from cryobiosis 32,000 years later into fertile plants | ||
| a6 | 32,000 | possible first human incursions into the Americas (Mexico), certainly within the next 11,000 years (New Mexico), migrating along the coast from Siberia? | ||
| b6 | 31,000 | earliest surgical amputation, of a child’s lower leg (Borneo); the amputee surviving for 6 to 9 years, then burial | ||
| c6 | 30,000 | earliest woven fabrics, made from dyed fibres of wild flax (Georgia) → baskets, textile clothing | ||
| d6 | 29,500 | earliest stone statuette: ochre-tinted oolitic limestone Venus of Willendorf (Austria) | ||
| e6 | 29,000 | earliest fishing-net sinkers (South Korea) → modern industrial fishing currently in 55% of ocean area, covering 4× agricultural area | ||
| f6 | 25,000 | a coronavirus epidemic sweeps through East Asia, driving genetic adaptations still present in modern humans | ||
| g6 | 24,000 | use of poison arrows, with wooden ricin applicator (Lebombo mountains, South Africa) | ||
| h6 | 24,000 | a bdelloid rotifer freezes into ice in the Alayeza river (Russian Arctic), reviving 24,000 years later to full vigour | ||
| h5 | 23,000 | fisher-hunter-gatherer brush huts (Sea of Galilee, Israel): sealed floor, hearth, berry and seed stockpiles, grindstones, sleeping area with grass bedding | ||
| g5 | 23,000 | first domestication: dogs from grey wolves Canis lupus (Siberia or Japan), for companionship, hunting technology, and pulling sledges → 700 million dogs by CE 21ˢᵗ century | ||
| f5 | 20,000 | earliest pottery vessels (Xianrendong Cave, China): cooking food in pots during the Last Glacial Maximum → Early-Holocene cultural transmission across Northern Eurasia | ||
| e5 | 20,000 | beginning of sea-level rise from deglaciation in a warming global climate; stabilising at today’s 120-m higher levels by c. 10,000 years ago | ||
| d5 | 19,000 | replacement of early modern humans across Eurasia by the ancestors of today’s populations | ||
| c5 | 15,000 | introgression of last remaining Denisovans into the modern human genome? Anatomically modern humans henceforth the only hominin | ||
| b5 | 15,000 | colonisation and occupation of North America by humans, from northeastern Siberia over the Bering land bridge, bringing their dogs | ||
| a5 | 15,000 | colonisation of South America (Huaca Prieta, Coastal Peru); humans henceforth occupying every continental landmass on Earth, except Antarctica | ||
| a4 | 15,000 | semi-permanent forager settlements of Natufians (Levant), evidenced by presence of house mice | ||
| b4 | 15,000 | earliest record of a string instrument: the musical bow (cave painting at Trois Frères, France) → music initiated outside the body | ||
| c4 | 15,000 | earliest thaumatrope (Laugerie-Basse, France): an optical toy, creating movement by juxtaposition of images | ||
| d4 | 14,400 | evidence of baking bread: unleavened flatbread from wild einkorn and club-rush tubers (Shubayqa, Jordan); caries from consumption of starchy foods | ||
| e4 | 14,000 | earliest lime plaster, used as an adhesive for hafting (Kebaran, Levant) → mortar by 3,000 years ago | ||
| f4 | 13,400 | earliest evidence of inter-communal violence on a large scale, with projectile impacts and blunt-force trauma (Jebel Sahaba, northern Sudan) → warfare and conflict driving human misery | ||
| g4 | 12,800 | climate shift contributing to megafaunal extinctions and human cultural changes (Younger Dryas): triggered by a comet airburst over North America and Europe? | ||
| h4 | 12,300 | earliest evidence of humans using tobacco (West Desert, North America) | ||
| h3 | 12,000 | domestication of Cannabis (East Asia) → breeding for hemp-type and drug-type varieties by c. 3000 BCE | ||
| g3 | 12,000 | extinction of megafauna including woolly mammoths from continental Eurasia and North America, caused by human hunting and climate change | ||
| f3 | 11,700 | start of the Holocene Epoch within the Quaternary Period, characterised by warm and stable climate until the late CE 20ᵗʰ century | ||
| e3 | 11,700 | in the North American Mojave desert, a seed germinates and grows into a deadly creosote bush, which segments to sprout new stems, sprouting and segmenting for 11,700 years | ||
| d3 | 11,600 | earliest monumental ritual art (Shigir, Siberia): 5-m tall larchwood plank carved with human forms and signs → complex ideas expressed by hunter-gatherers | ||
| c3 | 9500BC | 11,500 | cultivation of wild barley and oats around village settlements (Fertile Crescent) → dawn of farming on the Anatolian peninsula; storable grains sustaining population growth | |
| b3 | 9500 | 11,500 | earliest monumental temple (Göbekli Tepe, Anatolia): carved stone stelae up to 4-m tall serving ritualistic purposes; associated skull cult; ceremonial porridge and beer | |
| a3 | 9500 | 11,500 | earliest use of brick architecture: sun-dried mudbricks (Anatolia and the Levant, spreading to Mesopotamia) → fired bricks by 3000 BCE (China) | |
| a2 | 9000 | 11,000 | earliest continuous settlements (southern Levant), including Jericho: stone and mudbrick architecture developing into a walled city of up to 3,000 people → modern cities of 30 million people | |
| b2 | 9000 | 11,000 | earliest record of storytelling in an extended narrative scene (Sayburç, Turkey): the subject as the body of the work, the art as the spirit that animates it, sustaining its relevance through the ages | |
| c2 | 9000 | 11,000 | earliest artistic representation of human sexual intercourse: 10-cm phallic sculpture of sensual and tender intimacy (Ain Sakhri, Levant) | |
| d2 | 8400 | 10,400 | domestication of goats and sheep (Fertile Crescent and Turkey) → milk, meat, wool, hide and capital from 1.2 billion sheep and 1.1 billion goats by CE 2019, rising trend | |
| e2 | 8100 | 10,100 | global population of humans passes 5 million; annual energy use per person averages 1,700 kWh, 2.4× the resting metabolism | |
| f2 | 8000 | 10,000 | continental ice-sheets withdraw from Europe and North America | |
| g2 | 8000 | 10,000 | domestication of cattle, from aurochs (Near East and Indus Valley) → haulage, milk, meat, hide and capital from 1.5 billion head of cattle by CE 2019, rising trend | |
| h2 | 8000 | 10,000 | domestication of cats, from Near Eastern wildcats Felis silvestris lybica (Middle East) → 400 million domestic cats by CE 20ᵗʰ century, a substantial threat to wildlife | |
| h1 | 8000 | 10,000 | domestication of wheat (Mesopotamia): hybrid vigour efficiently converting solar energy into food energy → 772 million tonnes per year by CE 2017, using 218 million ha of land: peak production? | |
| g1 | 8000 | 10,000 | domestication of the bottle gourd Lagenaria siceraria, indigenous to Africa, in the Americas from Asian stock: global diffusion for containers, musical instruments, fishing floats | |
| f1 | 8000 | 10,000 | earliest record of artistic expression through dance, as rite of passage (engravings in Addaura II Cave, Sicily): rhythms that elevate the spirit → collective desire for cosmic order | |
| e1 | 7200 | 9,200 | earliest large-scale representations of complete human forms: lime plaster statues 1-m tall (Ain Ghazal, Jordan) | |
| d1 | 7000 | 9,000 | big-game hunting practised by females and males (Wilamaya Patjxa, Andean highlands) → strong male bias across recent hunter-gatherer societies | |
| c1 | 7000 | 9,000 | domestication of the potato (Andes, southern Peru) → 370 million tonnes per year by CE 2019, using 17 million ha of land; a food-security crop worldwide, not a globally traded commodity | |
| b1 | 7000 | 9,000 | domestication of pigs (Anatolia and China) → meat, hide, bristles, medical research and capital from 1.0 billion pigs by CE 2015: peak production? | |
| 192 | a1 | 7000 | 9,000 | rise of Transeurasian languages, with the spread of millet farming from the Liao River Valley (north-eastern China) → 80 languages now spoken from Istanbul to Tokyo |
| a8 | 6500 | 8,500 | earliest mining of metal: heating, hammering and grinding copper into projectile points (Great Lakes, North America) | |
| b8 | 6500 | 8,500 | earliest cattle dairying (north-western Anatolia), for milk and its products of cheese and ghee: protein and fat obtained without killing the capital asset | |
| c8 | 6500 | 8,500 | beginning of a wave of migrations from the Middle East northwest through Anatolia, spreading farming practices into Europe | |
| d8 | 6000 | 8,000 | domestication of rice (Asia) → 763 million tonnes per year by CE 2018, using 166 million ha of land, with potential to boost yield by more than a third through genetic modification | |
| e8 | 6000 | 8,000 | foraging for honey (Mesolithic painting in the Araña Caves, Spain) → 90 million beehives by CE 2019 | |
| f8 | 5900 | 7,900 | earliest grape wine and viniculture (South Caucasus) → wine as a social lubricant, medicine and commodity throughout western civilisation | |
| g8 | 5900 | 7,900 | start of the Copper Age (Fertile Crescent), spread of copper smelting for weapons and tools | |
| h8 | 5800 | 7,800 | cultivation of cotton Gossypium barbadense (north Peru); G. arboreum cultivated in Pakistan by 5500 BCE → clothing, fishing nets, sheets, towels, rugs, wadding | |
| h7 | 5600 | 7,600 | cultivation of poppies for opium (western Mediterranean), widespread by 4500 BCE, domestication by 3100 BCE → psychoactive, medicinal and alimentary uses | |
| g7 | 5500 | 7,500 | flooding of the Black Sea from the Mediterranean Sea: perhaps the great flood of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the biblical flood of Noah’s Ark | |
| f7 | 5500 | 7,500 | earliest salt production, by evaporation of brine (Provadia-Solnitsata, Bulgaria): preserving food, enhancing flavour → high consumption in Western diet, with no evolutionary precedent | |
| e7 | 5480 | 7,500 | extraordinarily large influx of cosmic rays from an abnormal Sun, possibly caused by solar proton events → potential for DNA damage on a global scale | |
| d7 | 5200 | 7,200 | earliest use of bitumen, for waterproofing reed-bundle boats (As-Sabiyah, Kuwait) → 65 billion tons of asphalt in roads and pavements by CE 2020 | |
| c7 | 5200 | 7,200 | earliest seaborne trading networks (Aegean for obsidian, Persian Gulf for Ubaid pottery), with mast and sail technology: the earliest harnessing of natural forces to replace human labour | |
| b7 | 5100 | 7,100 | ritual landscape of large-scale mustatil monuments (northern Saudi Arabia): entranceways to courtyards, chambers, orthostats; associated cattle cult | |
| a7 | 5050 | 7,100 | earliest burials by ritualistic mummification (Chinchorro, Atacama), some involving disassembly of the body | |
| a6 | 5000 | 7,000 | rise of languages with subject-verb-object syntax – as in English – from the root syntax of subject-object-verb (proto-Indo-European), and expansion westward; other combinations arise later | |
| b6 | 5000 | 7,000 | cultivation of sugarcane (Indo-China); spreading to Africa and the Americas, slave labour providing sugar to Europe and North America from the CE 16ᵗʰ century → most productive biofuel | |
| c6 | 5000 | 7,000 | domestication of bananas from Musa acuminata and subsequent hybridisations (Papua New Guinea) → 1 trillion bananas produced annually by 2020; rising trend, subject to disease risks | |
| d6 | 5000 | 7,000 | domestication of tobacco (Andean Highlands, South America), spreading to North America by 1520 BCE → smoking kills 100 million people worldwide in CE 20ᵗʰ century, the worst preventable killer | |
| e6 | 5000 | 7,000 | domestication of donkeys (East Africa), spreading rapidly throughout Eurasia → first land-based transport: pack animals for transporting materials and water, transforming society | |
| f6 | 4800 | 6,800 | earliest artistic representation of introspection: Thinker and Sitting Woman figurines (Hamangia culture, Cernavodă, Romania) → capacity for soul-searching and contemplation | |
| g6 | 4200 | 6,200 | earliest construction of wheels, by potters for crafting wheel-coiled bowls (southern Levant and northern Mesopotamia) | |
| h6 | 4200 | 6,200 | domestication of maize (Mexico) → 1.15 billion tonnes per year by CE 2019 using 197 million ha; with wheat and rice accounting for 43% of all human calorie supply, using 4% of global land area | |
| h5 | 4000 | 6,000 | domestication of chili pepper Capsicum (Tehuacán Valley, Mexico), spreading rapidly into South America; brought to Europe by Columbus CE 1492 → now used daily by a quarter of the global population | |
| g5 | 4000 | 6,000 | earliest use of indigo blue, from Indigofera species, for dyeing cotton fabric (Huaca Prieta, Peru); use in Egypt by 2400 BCE, China by 1000 BCE | |
| f5 | 4000 | 6,000 | earliest folk tale? A smith willingly trades his soul with the devil for skill to weld together any materials; his wish comes true, he welds the devil to a tree and keeps his soul (Indo-European) | |
| e5 | 4000 | 6,000 | earliest board games (Egypt), moving pieces on a track according to outcomes determined by a throw stick → computers outperform humans in all board games by CE 2016 and in strategy games by CE 2022 | |
| d5 | 3600 | 5,500 | earliest engineering of water delivery and storage, for people, animals and irrigation (Jawa, Jordan) → landscape engineering of dams, levees, ditches in China by 3100 BCE | |
| c5 | 3500 | 5,500 | earliest ploughs for tilling soil (Italy): harnessing domestic animals for work; landscape engineering for crops | |
| b5 | 3500 | 5,500 | rising human fertility, enabled by earlier weaning of babies fed with milk of domestic ruminants (southern Britain) | |
| a5 | 3500 | 5,500 | domestication of horses (Central Asian steppes), revolutionising mobility, economy, warfare → transport, haulage, cavalry, meat and capital; 59 million horses by CE 2019 | |
| a4 | 3400 | 5,400 | earliest wheeled wagons (Germany, Slovenia, Near East) → breakthrough in haulage and locomotion: mechanical advantage equalling ratio of wheel to axle radii, moderated by friction; nanoscale wheel and axle by CE 2007 | |
| b4 | 3300 | 5,300 | start of the Bronze Age (Near East), bronze replacing copper for weapons, tools, nails, utensils; mixing of Eurasian peoples → rapid westward spread of farming, conversion of forest to dairy pasture | |
| c4 | 3300 | 5,300 | cultivation of cacao trees for chocolate (upper Amazon) → domestication in Mesoamerica by 1600 BCE, sacrificing productivity for stimulant and disease-resistance genes | |
| d4 | 3300 | 5,300 | earliest numeral systems: pictograms of economic units (Uruk, Mesopotamia) → cuneiform sexagesimals in Mesopotamia by c. 3200 BCE, and hieroglyph decimals in Egypt by 3100 BCE | |
| e4 | 3200 | 5,200 | full writing (cuneiform in Mesopotamia, hieroglyphics in Egypt) using the rebus principle → bookkeeping, instruction, commemoration, scripture, prayer, historical records | |
| f4 | 3150 | 5,150 | organic medicinal remedies from herbal wines (Egypt) | |
| g4 | 3100 | 5,100 | earliest evidence of the plague (Latvia), possibly driving 3ʳᵈ millenium BCE migrations across Europe and Asia; infectious diseases dominate Holocene causes of death, shaping the course of history | |
| h4 | 3100 | 5,100 | association of love-making with war-mongering (Inanna, Sumerian goddess of love and war, Uruk): human capacity to unite passion with lust, loyalty with brutality, conquests with casualties | |
| h3 | 3100 | 5,100 | development of governance systems with the rise of Uruk, city of 30,000 residents (Sumer civilisation, Mesopotamia), and cities of the Indus Valley → class divisions; living off the labour of others | |
| g3 | 3050 | 5,050 | earliest standard weights for balance scales, and cubit length (Mesopotamia and Egypt): objective frames of reference for valuing commodities → integration of markets across Western Eurasia within 2 millennia | |
| f3 | 3000 | 5,000 | emergence of herpes HSV-1 virus causing cold sores (Europe), passed from parent to child; later spread more rapidly by romantic kissing, originating on the Indian subcontinent c. 1500 BCE | |
| e3 | 3000 | 5,000 | cultivation of oil palm (west and central Africa) → 411 million tonnes of oil-palm fruit per year by CE 2019 using 28 million ha, largely converted tropical forest | |
| d3 | 3000 | 5,000 | global agricultural land use per person peaks at 2.72 ha → 0.66 ha by CE 2016 with improvements in yield | |
| c3 | 3000 | 5,000 | synthesis of glass (Phoenicia) for beads → vessels by 1500 BCE; lenses by 700 BCE; CE 1ˢᵗ century mirrors and window glass; 7ᵗʰ century stained-glass windows; 13ᵗʰ century eyeglasses; late-20ᵗʰ century float-glass skyscrapers | |
| b3 | 3000 | 5,000 | earliest metal swords, for combat and prestige (Arslantepe, Turkey) → essential battle weapons through nearly 5 millennia to CE 1918 and the end of World War I | |
| a3 | 3000 | 5,000 | earliest use of a Solar calendar year of 365 days, anchored by spring and autumn equinoxes (Egypt and old Sumer) | |
| a2 | 2800 | 4,800 | global population of humans passes 50 million; annual energy use per person averages 2,100 kWh, 3× the resting metabolism | |
| b2 | 2720 | 4,750 | in the North American White Mountains a seedling grows into a bristlecone pine tree, which sustains production of viable seeds over a lifespan extending beyond 4,700 years | |
| c2 | 2650 | 4,650 | earliest use of a lunar calendar year of 12 months, and each hour as one-twelfth part of the day or night (Shulgi, King of Ur, Mesopotamia) | |
| d2 | 2650 | 4,650 | magnetic compass, used to orient chariots (Emperor Hoang-Ti, China, recorded in the Zizhi Tongjian CE 1084, Thoung Kian Kang Mou edition) → navigation at sea by CE 300, Tsin dynasty, China | |
| e2 | 2650 | 4,650 | earliest management of wildlife exploitation: every fisher and hunter taxed one-tenth of their take (pharaoh Djoser, Egypt, recorded in the Famine Stela) | |
| f2 | 2650 | 4,650 | earliest massive stone monuments: step pyramid tomb of pharaoh Djoser in Saqqara, Egypt; contemporaneous pyramidal architecture in Caral-Supe, Peru; megalith at Stonehenge, Britain | |
| g2 | 2550 | 4,550 | earliest dictionary: cuneiform tablets translating between Sumerian and Eblaic (Ebla, Syria) | |
| h2 | 2550 | 4,550 | earliest writing on papyrus: Diary of Merer, documenting construction of the Great Pyramid (Wadi al-Jarf, Egypt) → parchment by 200 BCE, Greece; paper from pulp by 100 BCE, China | |
| h1 | 2550 | 4,550 | architectural precision: the Great Pyramid of Giza (Egypt), taller than any other building in the world for 3,800 years | |
| g1 | 2500 | 4,500 | earliest locks (Egypt): door bolts → emergence of private ownership and privacy; possessions under lock and key by 1500 BCE, for unguarded secrecy | |
| f1 | 2500 | 4,500 | earliest animal husbandry to produce a hybrid: the kunga, foal of a female domestic donkey and male wild ass (Umm el-Marra, Syria), used for diplomacy, ceremony, warfare | |
| e1 | 2350 | 4,350 | earliest government reforms, addressing taxes and corruption (Uru-KA-gina, King of Lagash and Girsu, Mesopotamia) → modern corruption suppressed by long exposure to democracy | |
| d1 | 2340 | 4,350 | first emperor of a state: Sargon the Great, Akkadian Empire (expanding across Mesopotamia, Levant, Anatolia) → beginnings of artistic emphasis on the person of the ruler as an individual | |
| c1 | 2300 | 4,300 | earliest mechanical pump: the shaduf, a counterpoise for lifting buckets of river water (Mesopotamia) → suction pump by CE 1206 | |
| b1 | 2300 | 4,300 | earliest records of marriage (Akkad): an economic pact for child rearing, men tending to conceive later in age than women → a loving relationship particularly in Western nations; now declining globally | |
| 256 | a1 | 2200 | 4,200 | decline of Bronze-Age civilisations in Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia, and terminal decline of Indus Valley civilisation, caused by centuries of drought beginning c. 2200 BCE |
| a8 | 2100 | 4,100 | earliest code of law, applying general principles to particular cases (Code of Ur-Nammu, Sumerian King of Ur, Mesopotamia) | |
| b8 | 2030 | 4,050 | earliest recorded poetry (Nippur, Iraq): a Sumerian love poem of passionate ardour, expressing an emotional truth about the human spirit | |
| c8 | 2000 | 4,000 | extinction of last remnant population of woolly mammoths, on Wrangle Island, Arctic Sea | |
| d8 | 2000 | 4,000 | earliest use of coal as fuel (Inner Mongolia and Shanxi, China), for smelting copper, cooking, heating → peak global coal production of 8.2 billion tonnes/year in CE 2013? | |
| e8 | 2000 | 4,000 | earliest abacus, replacing tables of multiplication, reciprocals, powers (Old Babylonians, Mesopotamia c. 2000-1600 BCE) → nanoscale abacus storing numerical information in individual molecules by CE 1996 | |
| f8 | 1900 | 3,900 | earliest map of a territory: 3-dimensional topography covering 30 km of the Odet river valley, sculpted to scale on a schist rock slab (Saint-Bélec, France) | |
| g8 | 1900 | 3,900 | establishment of a 7-day week (Assyria and Babylonia) | |
| h8 | 1850 | 3,850 | earliest alphabetic script (Proto-Sinaitic, Sinai and Egypt) → economy of signs | |
| h7 | 1850 | 3,850 | earliest architectural arch, a Canaanite gate (Ashkelon, Israel) → breakthrough in construction of gateways, vaults, doors, windows, bridges: converting tensile stress into compressive stress | |
| g7 | 1825 | 3,850 | earliest record of contraception: Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus, prescribing crocodile dung (Lehun, Egypt) → distinction of sexual intercourse from reproduction | |
| f7 | 1800 | 3,800 | beginnings of complex societies: Babylonian civilisation in Mesopotamia, 1800 BCE; Olmec civilisation in Mesoamerica, 1800 BCE; Shang dynasty in China, 1600 BCE; New Kingdom in Egypt, 1600 BCE | |
| e7 | 1800 | 3,800 | earliest extraction and working of iron (Anatolia) → alloying with carbon to make steel in Cyprus by 1100 BCE | |
| d7 | 1800 | 3,800 | earliest prose fiction: The Epic of Gilgamesh (in cuneiform on clay tablets, Ur, Mesopotamia), a heroic story of the tragicomedy of life, love won and lost, and inevitable death | |
| c7 | 1750 | 3,750 | earliest principles of property insurance, against faulty construction that results in loss or damage (Code of Hammurabi, Babylon): proportionate compensation | |
| b7 | 1750 | 3,750 | earliest cultivation of the tea plant Camellia sinensis (China, early 2ⁿᵈ millennium BCE) → now the most frequently consumed beverage worldwide, with many health benefits | |
| a7 | 1650 | 3,650 | domestication of chickens (Thailand) from red junglefowl → meat and eggs from 25.9 billion chickens by CE 2019 and rising, 5× the biomass of all wild birds | |
| a6 | 1650 | 3,650 | harvesting of latex from the Castilla elastica tree to make rubber for balls and figurines (Mexico): the first plastic polymer → unsurpassed sliding friction and durable elasticity | |
| b6 | 1650 | 3,650 | earliest team sport: rubber-ball game played in an architectural ballcourt (Paso de la Amada, Mexico) → social compacts; decapitation rituals by CE 500 | |
| c6 | 1650 | 3,650 | earliest porcelaneous high-fired ceramics (Piaoshan kiln, China): fragile when whole, indestructible as broken shards → true porcelain by early CE, China | |
| d6 | 1650 | 3,650 | earliest stencils of archetypes, for hyperbolae, ellipses and spirals, used in the Gathering of Crocus wall painting (Thera, Aegean Sea): knowledge of the foundations of geometry | |
| e6 | 1630 | 3,650 | earliest planetary observations, of the motions of Venus (reign of Ammisaduqa, king of Babylon) | |
| f6 | 1550 | 3,550 | reckoning with fractions and geometry (Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, Egypt) | |
| g6 | 1520 | 3,550 | first accurate timepiece: an outflow water-clock (Amenemhet, court of Amenhotep I, Egypt) measuring night-time; shadow clocks and sundials regulating daytime worker shifts | |
| h6 | 1500 | 3,500 | earliest depiction of joyful and uninhibited celebration by ordinary people (Minoan Harvester Vase, Agia Triada, Crete); happiness sought and found in meeting a need | |
| h5 | 1400 | 3,400 | earliest colonisation of Remote Oceania (Mariana archipelago) → migrations to all Pacific archipelagos over the next 3 millennia; women settling, men dispersing | |
| g5 | 1330 | 3,350 | early depictions of mutual affection: Nefertiti holding the hand of her husband pharaoh Akhenaten, and gentleness: Ankhesenamun anointing her husband pharaoh Tutankhamun (Egypt); meaning in life found in engagement with others | |
| f5 | 1300 | 3,300 | earliest notated music: Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal (in cuneiform, Ugarit, Syria); the singing voice carrying further than the spoken voice, conveying feeling | |
| e5 | 1200 | 3,200 | sea-going trade in silver and dyes by Phoenicians, connecting the Levant with western Europe across the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean | |
| d5 | 1180 | 3,200 | beginning of 300 years of drought extending from Spain to India, contributing to the demise of the Mycenaean civilisation (Greece) | |
| c5 | 1050 | 3,050 | start of the Iron Age (Aegean; Britain by 800 BCE), iron replacing bronze for tools and weapons | |
| b5 | 1000 | 3,000 | use of hydraulic plaster, mixing lime with silicates (Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel) → concrete in Ancient Rome by CE 70, the dominant building material of modern times | |
| a5 | 1000 | 3,000 | earliest depiction of the cosmos: a bronze disc inlaid with gold symbols of the Sun, Moon, and stars including the Pleiades cluster (Nebra, Germany) | |
| a4 | 950 | 2,950 | first Jewish temple (King Solomon, Jerusalem) → rise of Judaism for a chosen people | |
| b4 | 900 | 2,900 | earliest centre of higher learning (Taxila University, India) → Plato’s Academy in Greece by 387 BCE; Taixue University in China by CE 3; Al-Karaouine University in Morocco by CE 859; European medieval universities | |
| c4 | 900 | 2,900 | accurate prediction of lunar eclipses (Berlin Gold Hat, Germany) | |
| d4 | 900 | 2,900 | standardization of value: adoption of cowrie shells as money (Middle Western Zhou period, China) → cowrie monetary systems in Asia and West Africa during 3 millennia | |
| e4 | 820 | 2,840 | earliest professional army (Lacedaemonians of Sparta, Greece, described by Xenophon, 388 BCE), sustained by a social contract: duties rewarded with citizenship | |
| f4 | 776 | 2,800 | first Olympic games (Olympia, Peloponnesus, 776 BCE): a 4-yearly truce bringing together athletes to compete for the symbolic reward of an olive wreath → revival in CE 1896 | |
| g4 | 700 | 2,700 | fraudulent impersonation, parodying kingship: a letter supposedly written by mythological King Gilgamesh some 2,000 years earlier (Sultantepe, Turkey) | |
| h4 | 700 | 2,700 | first book of European literature: The Iliad (Homer, Greece), an epic poem on the pathos of loss and suffering caused by war | |
| h3 | 700 | 2,700 | Archimedes’ Screw, used to irrigate Sennacherib’s elevated garden (river Tigris, Mesopotamia), described by Archimedes 4 centuries later | |
| g3 | 650 | 2,650 | earliest collection of scholarly texts, on 32,000 cuneiform tablets: the Library of Ashurbanipal (Nineveh, Iraq) | |
| f3 | 630 | 2,650 | earliest use of coinage (Ionia or Lydia, Anatolia): many denominations of stamped electrum, a gold-silver alloy → government-controlled economy of transaction costs | |
| e3 | 600 | 2,600 | first circumnavigation of the African continent (Phoenicians from Arwād, reported by Herodotus in The Histories 430 BCE) | |
| d3 | 550 | 2,550 | earliest cartography: a map of the known world, by Anaximander (Greece, c. 550 BCE, reported in Strabo’s Geographica 7 BCE) | |
| c3 | 550 | 2,550 | first Persian Empire (Cyrus the Great, Persia), connecting the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley → code of just rule that respects others’ faiths | |
| b3 | 550 | 2,550 | training in surgery and anatomy, described in the Susruta Samhita (northern India, 6ᵗʰ century BCE) | |
| a3 | 550 | 2,550 | professional policing, investigating criminal cases, addressing injustices (the paqūdu of Babylonia c. 550 BCE) | |
| a2 | 500 | 2,500 | height of Greek civilisation (Greece, 6ᵗʰ to 4ᵗʰ centuries BCE) → foundations of Western philosophy, ethics, poetry, drama; first democracy 508 BCE | |
| b2 | 500 | 2,500 | construction of a navigable canal from the Nile to the Red Sea (Darius I of Persia) → Suez Canal by CE 1869, the shortest maritime route between Europe and Asia | |
| c2 | 500 | 2,500 | earliest evidence of cannabis used as a psychoactive substance (Jirzankal Cemetery, China) → modern narco-trafficking spread by counter-drug interdiction | |
| d2 | 450 | 2,450 | earliest cast iron artefacts (Jiangsu, China) → common era uses in manufacture of utensils, pipes, wheels, axle bearings, crankshafts, casings and liners, cannons, bridges, buildings | |
| e2 | 450 | 2,450 | invention of a 360° zodiac (Babylonia) → longitudes of planets | |
| f2 | 450 | 2,450 | collection of the sayings of Confucius (551-479 BCE, China) into the Analects, founding Confucianism, with a role for every person in society, and universal education | |
| g2 | 450 | 2,450 | collection of the Torah and other scriptures into the Hebrew Bible → Christian Old Testament 500 years later, including the divine authority of the Ten Commandments | |
| h2 | 400 | 2,400 | Siddhārtha Gautama (Buddha, c. 480-400 BCE, Ancient India) lays the foundations of Buddhism, with joy as a calling towards the path of nirvana; rebirth in hell for misconduct | |
| h1 | 400 | 2,400 | earliest in-patient hospitals (King Paṇḍukābhaya, Sri Lanka) → professional care for the sick | |
| g1 | 400 | 2,400 | Hippocratic Oath (ascribed to Hippocrates, c. 400 BCE), swearing to uphold medical standards → modern versions still a rite of passage and moral compass for clinicians | |
| f1 | 375 | 2,400 | idea that justice and virtue are inherent qualities of inner harmony (Plato’s Republic, Greece): limits to the liability of external forces for conduct → moral conscience of Christianity | |
| e1 | 375 | 2,400 | idea of enlightenment as the discomforting experience of layered reality (allegory of the cave, in Plato’s Republic, Greece): possibility of truth beyond intelligible reality | |
| d1 | 364 | 2,400 | first sighting of another moon: Jupiter’s Ganymede, discovered with the naked eye (Gan De, China) → rediscovery by Galileo Galilei in CE 1610, using a 20× telescope | |
| c1 | 350 | 2,350 | concept of time-velocity space (Babylonia): displacement of Jupiter calculated as the area under a graph of its velocity over time, foreshadowing integral calculus | |
| b1 | 350 | 2,350 | development of formal systems of reasoning, by logical deduction from axioms and postulates (Aristotle, Greece) → scientific disciplines | |
| 320 | a1 | 350 | 2,350 | understanding of the emotions as dimensions of feeling that affect judgement (Aristotle, Greece): anger, love, fear, shame, kindness, pity, envy, emulation |
| a8 | 350 | 2,350 | political theory of social welfare (Aristotle, Greece): a state tax on assets of affluent citizens for distribution amongst the poor | |
| b8 | 320 | 2,350 | compilation of the Tao Te Ching (China) on peace and war, founding Taoism in ritual cultivation of life’s inherent natural and spiritual forces, benefitting all | |
| c8 | 300 | 2,300 | mass persuasion, using silver coins stamped with the head of previous legendary ruler Alexander the Great (Lampsacus, Turkey): appropriating history to glorify the present | |
| d8 | 300 | 2,300 | earliest economic exploitation of chicken outside East Asia (Southern Levant); now the world’s most ubiquitous species of livestock, a principle source of protein | |
| e8 | 300 | 2,300 | postulation of Euclidean geometry of flat surfaces (Euclid of Alexandria, Greece) → first printed edition of Euclid’s Elements, CE 1482 | |
| f8 | 280 | 2,300 | first hypothesis that Earth revolves around the Sun (Aristarchus of Samos, Greece, reported in Archimedes’ The Sand Reckoner, c. 260 BCE) | |
| g8 | 250 | 2,250 | first estimation of π within known limits (Archimedes, Greece), describing circles, discs, spheres, cones, orbits, loops, spirals, waves, using methods that anticipate CE 17ᵗʰ century calculus | |
| h8 | 250 | 2,250 | earliest accurate estimates of the circumference, diameter and tilt of a spherical Earth (Eratosthenes, Greece, c. 250 BCE, reported by Pliny CE 77) | |
| h7 | 250 | 2,250 | earliest watermills (Egypt; Anatolia by 50 BCE, reported in Strabo’s Geographica 7 BCE), milling grain, processing ore; the first machines to harness a natural force for mechanical work | |
| g7 | 220 | 2,250 | construction of the Great Wall, stretching 1,900 km (Emperor Qin Shi Huang, China) → 21,196 km in total length by the Ming dynasty to CE 1644 | |
| f7 | 200 | 2,200 | fusion of Indian cultures and traditions into Hinduism, with worship posthumously rewarded by favourable rebirth; torment in hell for sinners → currently the third most populous religion, after Christianity and Islam | |
| e7 | 200 | 2,200 | widespread adoption of seed drills (Han dynasty, northern China); reinvention by Jethro Tull in CE 1701, Britain → production efficiency heralding the dawn of modern agriculture | |
| d7 | 130 | 2,150 | earliest attempt to map the night sky (Hipparchus’ Star Catalogue c. 130 BCE, Rhodes), accurate to within 1° → astronomy as predictive science | |
| c7 | 100 | 2,100 | first analogue computer: Antikythera Mechanism of bronze gears, mechanising solar and lunar epicycles and eclipses, and motions of the planets in the known cosmos (Antikythera, Greece); unsurpassed for 1,400 years | |
| b7 | 100 | 2,100 | earliest positional system of decimal fractions, for algorithmic calculations with positive and negative numbers using counting rods (China) | |
| a7 | 100 | 2,100 | establishment of the Silk Roads, for overland trade between East Asia and southern Europe → China’s CE 2013 Belt and Road Initiative, opening routes to trade and investment in 70 economies | |
| a6 | 50BC | 2,050 | rise of the Roman Empire (Europe), enduring c. 600 years → infrastructure of roads, using designs that still prevail, and aqueducts; self-strengthening concrete, lead-pipe plumbing and sanitation; leap years | |
| b6 | 50AD | 1,950 | death of Jesus of Nazareth and transcribing of his life in the New Testament → rise of Christianity, with salvation for the righteous and heaven as reward; sinners fear hell | |
| c6 | 77 | 1,950 | earliest encyclopaedia (Pliny the Elder, Italy, Naturalis Historia books 1-5, 6-10, 11-17, 18-23, 24-31, 32-37 CE 77) | |
| d6 | 100 | 1,900 | maritime trade routes between Africa, India, China, for spices, medicines, fabrics; connecting to Ancient Rome through Alexandria | |
| e6 | 100 | 1,900 | use of paper for writing and painting begins to supplant bamboo and silk in China (Emperor He, Eastern Han dynasty, c. 100) | |
| f6 | 100 | 1,900 | in the North American Blue Mountains, a colony of the fungus Armillaria ostoyae extends its network of branching hyphae during 1,900 years to cover 9.6 km² with a c. 10,000-tonne subterranean mycelium | |
| g6 | 132 | 1,900 | invention of the seismoscope (Zhang Heng, China, 132), detecting earthquakes 600 km away; the first device to enhance the reach of sensory perception since the orb-weaving spider first outsourced hearing to its web | |
| h6 | 150 | 1,850 | development of the astrolabe from celestial globes, locating Sun and stars in relation to the equator (Ptolemy, Alexandria, c. 150) → determination of latitude | |
| h5 | 150 | 1,850 | earliest industrial complex: watermills of Barbegal (France, 2ⁿᵈ century), producing 25 tons/day of hardtack biscuits for local harbours | |
| g5 | 290 | 1,750 | firing of natural gas in southwest China, to boil brine for salt (Bowu zhi c. 290), and to pipe into homes for lighting (Huayang Guo Zhi c. 340) → 3.9 trillion m³/year of global gas extraction by 2018 and rising | |
| f5 | 290 | 1,750 | use of mineral oil in central China, to lubricate axles and to seal water tanks (Bowu zhi c. 290, reported in Shui Jing Zhu c. 500) → 5.0 billion tonnes/year of global oil extraction by 2018: peak production? | |
| e5 | 300 | 1,700 | beginning of central Europe’s 300-year Migration Period: cultural and socioeconomic turmoil coinciding with climatic variability; Mongolian Avar warriors overwhelming the eastern Roman Empire | |
| d5 | 357 | 1,650 | earliest explicit use of zero, in the Maya Classic Period (Uaxactun, Guatemala, 357) | |
| c5 | 400 | 1,600 | spread of urbanisation, with cities of over 100,000 people in Roman, Chinese and Mesoamerican empires (Teotihuacan, Mexico, covering 18 km² c. 400) → specialisation of trades and occupations | |
| b5 | 430 | 1,600 | human desire for personal relations with god, communicated to the masses as a king’s privilege (India): Hindu ruler Kumaragupta I depicted on coins feeding a sacred peacock | |
| a5 | 517 | 1,500 | observation that free-falling bodies accelerate independently of their weights (John Philoponus, Alexandria, On Aristotle’s Physics 517) → proved in 1687 for gravitational pull on bodies in a void; confirmed in space by 2022 | |
| a4 | 532 | 1,500 | invention of anno Domini, or AD (Dionysius Exiguus, Romania, 532); called anno aerae nostrae vulgaris by Johannes Kepler in 1615, now Common Era, or CE → no calendar year zero | |
| b4 | 536 | 1,500 | crop failures across the northern hemisphere caused by volcanic eruptions in Iceland; then bubonic plague (536-547) → century of economic stagnation | |
| c4 | 550 | 1,450 | earliest block printing on paper (China, c. 550) → widespread use of printed books in 11ᵗʰ century Song dynasty China | |
| d4 | 620 | 1,400 | discovery of Antarctica by Polynesian Māoris (Hui Te Rangiora on the vessel Te Ivi o Atea, from New Zealand, early 7ᵗʰ century) → numerous visits over subsequent centuries | |
| e4 | 628 | 1,400 | introduction of rules governing the use of zero in number systems (Brahmagupta, India, Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta 628) | |
| f4 | 650 | 1,350 | death of the prophet Muhammad (Mecca, Saudi Arabia, 632) and transcribing of his revelations in the Qur’an → rise of Islam, with prayer guiding righteous deeds and paradise as reward; hell for disbelievers | |
| g4 | 700 | 1,300 | over 700 European cities exceed 1,000 inhabitants in CE 700, of which only Constantinople exceeds 100,000 → 22 such cities by 1800, thereafter rising exponentially to 665 by 2000 | |
| h4 | 754 | 1,250 | establishment of the Papal States (Pope Stephen II, central Italy, 754) → global reach of the Catholic Church headed by a pope; 900 years of European art and architecture subjugated to Christianity | |
| h3 | 790 | 1,250 | Islamic Golden Age, from late-8ᵗʰ to mid-13ᵗʰ centuries: flourishing art, design, architecture, and scientific innovation | |
| g3 | 841 | 1,200 | earliest use of statistical inference (Abū Yūsuf Ya’qūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī, Iraq, Risalah fi Istikhraj al-Mu’amma 841), for cryptography → analysis of distributed variables | |
| f3 | 874 | 1,150 | Norse colonisation of Iceland, 874, from Norway in the Viking Age; deforestation and sheep grazing erode soils, driving down the island’s vegetation irretrievably to a half, and forests to 4%, of original extent | |
| e3 | 900 | 1,100 | earliest windmills (Khorasan, Iran-Afghanistan, c. 900, recorded by Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad Iṣṭakhrī) | |
| d3 | 985 | 1,050 | Norse colonisation of Greenland by Viking Erik Thorvaldsson, 985; Newfoundland by his son Leif, at least by 1021: human migrations henceforth encircling the globe → a century of harvesting North American stockfish and eiderdown | |
| c3 | 1000 | 1,020 | sexagesimal subdivision of the hour into 60 minutes, and the minute into 60 seconds (Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni, Iran, c. 1000) | |
| b3 | 1021 | 1,002 | invention of the camera obscura (Ibn al-Haytham, Iraq, Book of Optics1011-1021), projecting images through a pinhole to prove the independence of light from vision: birth of evidence-based science | |
| a3 | 1044 | 979 | formula for gunpowder, used for fire arrows, incendiary projectiles, smoke bombs (Northern Song dynasty, China, Wujing Zongyao 1044) → cannons by 1128, guns by c. 1270, rockets by 1272 | |
| a2 | 1055 | 968 | first hospice (Jerusalem, c. 1055) → professional palliative care for the dying | |
| b2 | 1060 | 963 | beginning of 300 years of warring Crusades in the name of the Latin Church, against Islamic rule in the biblical Land of Israel and Palestine | |
| c2 | 1120 | 900 | first government-issued paper money (Song dynasty, China) → a trusted IOU bundling Aristotle’s functions of money, as medium of exchange, mode of payment, unit of account, store of value | |
| d2 | 1150 | 870 | eastward migrating Asian Polynesians meet westward migrating South Americans (southern Pacific Marquesas Islands, c. 1150) → admixture on Easter Island by 1380, construction of monumental stone statues | |
| e2 | 1206 | 817 | rise of the Mongol Empire connecting the Pacific to the Mediterranean, founded by Genghis Khan; recounted by Marco Polo c. 1300 → 35 million male-line descendants of Genghis Khan across modern Asia | |
| f2 | 1215 | 808 | first declaration of human rights: Magna Carta (King John of England, 15/6/1215) → the first and now oldest national constitution; Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 | |
| g2 | 1283 | 740 | first mechanical clock with an escapement mechanism (Dunstable Priory, Britain, 1283), regulating clock speed | |
| h2 | 1286 | 737 | discovery of the art of making eyeglasses (anon., Italy, 1286), “one of the best and most necessary arts that the world has” – Friar Giordano da Rivalto, 23/2/1305 → 2.5 billion people needing yet not having glasses in 2016 | |
| h1 | 1300 | 720 | start of the northern hemisphere Little Ice Age (1300-1850) → crop failures, social upheaval; perhaps curbed and curtailed by greenhouse-gas emissions during 8,000 years of forest clearance for agriculture | |
| g1 | 1337 | 686 | accretion of personal wealth from gold by Mansa Musa I (c. 1280-1337), Emperor of Mali and richest person in history: peak of inequality amongst individuals → gold still a safe haven in money markets | |
| f1 | 1346 | 677 | bubonic plague caused by the Black Death bacillus Yersinia pestis kills a third of the human population across much of Europe, 1346-53; originating in Kyrgyzstan or the Himalayas, transmitted by rats and their fleas | |
| e1 | 1350 | 670 | earliest cultivation of Coffea arabica for coffee (Yemen, using Ethiopian seeds, 14ᵗʰ century) → 100 million coffee farmers supplying 2 billion cups per day; extinction threats to most wild coffee species | |
| d1 | 1397 | 626 | earliest banking (Medici Bank, Italy, 1397) → modern function as intermediary between savers and borrowers; inherently vulnerable to liquidity shocks, with bank runs driving economic downturns | |
| c1 | 1400 | 620 | birth of the European Renaissance (Italy), rise of individuality, imagination, innovation, capitalism | |
| b1 | 1418 | 605 | accurate geometrical perspective in painting (Filippo Brunelleschi, Italy, c. 1418; codified by Leon Battista Alberti, Italy, De Pictura 1436) | |
| 384 | a1 | 1438 | 585 | Inca expansion, becoming the world’s largest empire by 1500, ruling 12 million people over 5,000 km of Andes; altiplano labour economy powered by llamas for transport |
| 1440 | 583 | first mechanical printing press with movable type (Johannes Gutenberg, Germany, 1440) → mass production, dissemination and survival of journals, pamphlets and books, of theology, governance, history, criticism, science, fiction, forbidden texts | ||
| 1492 | 531 | European mariners reach the Americas (Christopher Columbus from Spain, 1492) → colonial settlements; 16ᵗʰ century Columbian Exchange of cultural infrastructure between New and Old Worlds, and Great Dying of 56 million indigenous peoples of the Americas | ||
| 1498 | 525 | European mariners reach India (Vasco da Gama from Portugal, 1498), connecting the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean → colonial empires in Africa and Asia; Indian Ocean trade; global multiculturalism | ||
| 1500 | 520 | foundations of Western art laid by Leonardo da Vinci (Italy, 1452-1519) and Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (Italy, 1475-1564), in humanist sculpture, drawing, portraiture and frescos | ||
| 1510 | 510 | technical drawing of anatomical features, mechanisms and engineering designs (Leonardo da Vinci, Italy, c. 1510) | ||
| 1516 | 507 | concept of utopia, imagined as an island society in the New World that implausibly meets all human desires (Thomas More, Britain, Utopia 1516) → political ideal theory | ||
| 1517 | 506 | Reformation, splitting the universal Christian world into sects (Martin Luther, Germany, 1517) | ||
| 1522 | 501 | first circumnavigation of the globe (Ferdinand Magellan from Spain to Philippines, Juan Sebastián Elcano return to Spain, 1519-22) → globalisation of sea trade | ||
| 1526 | 497 | beginning of the Atlantic slave trade by Europeans (1526) → 12 million slaves exported from Africa to the Americas up to 1900, for labour on plantations | ||
| 1542 | 481 | global population of humans passes 500 million; annual energy use per person averages 9,800 kWh, 14× the resting metabolism | ||
| 1543 | 480 | theory of Earth and the planets revolving around the Sun (Nicolaus Copernicus, Poland, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium 1543) → pursuit of supporting evidence | ||
| 1582 | 441 | introduction of the Gregorian calendar (Pope Gregory XIII, Italy, 1582) → de facto international standard for civil calendars | ||
| 1582 | 441 | first entrepreneurial newspaper publishers (Ming Dynasty Beijing, China, 1582) → independent reporting that witnesses torment, investigates oppression, safeguards freedom of expression | ||
| 1605 | 418 | first modern novel (Miguel de Cervantes, Spain, Don Quixote 1605 and 1615): an unreliable narrator describes the mercifully funny consequences of free will colliding with fate | ||
| 1608 | 415 | invention of the refracting telescope (Hans Lipperhey, Netherlands, 1608), enhancing the reach of visual perception by 3× | ||
| 1609 | 414 | inversion of the refracting telescope to create a compound microscope (Galileo Galilei, Italy, described in Il Saggiatore 1623) → cryo-electron microscopy imaging atoms in molecules by 2020 | ||
| 1610 | 413 | observations of the orbits of Jupiter’s moons (Galileo Galilei, Italy, Sidereus Nuncius 1610), falsifying church doctrine of Earth as the only centre of movement in the Universe → authority of evidence-based science | ||
| 1612 | 411 | concept of a universal clock, calibrated on orbital periods of Jupiter’s moons (Galileo Galilei, Italy, 1612) → accurate estimation of longitude for navigation, given a stable observation platform | ||
| 1619 | 404 | distances of planets from the Sun measured relative to Earth’s distance of 1 astronomical unit (Johannes Kepler, Germany, Harmonices Mundi 1619) | ||
| 1621 | 402 | first medical treatise on mental welfare (Robert Burton, Britain, The Anatomy of Melancholy 1621), the author confiding in his reader → association with nature, physical health and exercise, social stability and inclusion | ||
| 1628 | 395 | first graph of distributed observations (Michael Florent van Langren, Netherlands, 1628); line graphs and bar charts by 1786 → data visualisation that saves lives | ||
| 1632 | 391 | basic principle of relativity: the laws of nature apply equally to any frame of reference in constant linear motion, regardless of its speed (Galileo Galilei, Italy, Dialogo 1632) | ||
| 1637 | 386 | idea that truth is the product of autonomous reason (René Descartes, France, Discours de la Méthode 1637; Méditations 1641) → emancipation from revelational truth and religious doctrine; distinction of mind from matter | ||
| 1642 | 381 | earliest functioning mechanical calculator, for addition and subtraction: the Pascaline (Blaise Pascal, France, 1642) | ||
| 1650 | 373 | relatedness of married couples averages about fourth cousin in 1650 for Europe and North America → decreasing only from 1870 onwards with cousin marriage prohibitions | ||
| 1656 | 367 | first pendulum clock (Christiaan Huygens, Netherlands, 25/12/1656), developing on ideas by Galileo Galilei → unsurpassed accuracy on land for 275 years | ||
| 1661 | 362 | first experiments with desalination by freezing (Thomas Bartholin, Denmark, 1661) → potential for passive freezing of seawater to provide 21ˢᵗ century water security | ||
| 1665 | 358 | identification of organismal cells (Robert Hooke, Britain, Micrographia 1665), the smallest unit of structure and function for all life forms | ||
| 1665 | 358 | notion of gravitation as a universal force, occasioned to Isaac Newton by the fall of an apple (Britain, as recounted to William Stukeley in 1726) → four fundamental interactions: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces | ||
| 1665 | 358 | concept and measure of Gross Domestic Product: GDP (William Petty, Britain, 1665) → a globally favoured index of national prosperity from 1953, conflating growth in productivity with drawdown of capital; sustainability benefits of degrowth | ||
| 1669 | 354 | artistic rendering of unconditional forgiveness, in Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son (Netherlands, 1669) → limits to the conditionality of transactions | ||
| 1676 | 347 | discovery of single-celled organisms (Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Netherlands, 1676) → science of microbiology | ||
| 1676 | 347 | first determination of the speed of light (Ole Rømer, Denmark, 1676): 299,792 km per second; 9.46 trillion km per year → light-year measure of distance | ||
| 1687 | 336 | formulation of laws of motion and universal gravitation, applicable to all the phenomena of the cosmos (Isaac Newton, Britain, Principia 1687): foundation of classical mechanics → European Age of Enlightenment | ||
| 1690 | 333 | extinction of the dodo (Mauritius, c. 1690) → symbol of stupidity: the pigeon that couldn’t fly; later symbolic of human wreckage across three-quarters of Earth’s land and two-thirds of oceans | ||
| 1700 | 320 | rapid colonisation of Americas, India and Australia by Europeans from the early 1700s → dominion of India by the British East India Company from 1760s; British rule 1858-1947 | ||
| 1700 | 320 | modest improvements in global GDP per capita since CE 1 henceforth begin accelerating in western Europe and North America → acceleration in Latin America and Asia from 1950, Africa from 2000 | ||
| 1735 | 288 | cataloguing of organisms by genera and species (Carl Linnaeus, Sweden, Systema Naturae 1735-1768) → modern classification of 2 million from an estimated 8 million eukaryote species, possibly 1 trillion microbes | ||
| 1759 | 264 | first accurate sea clock: H4 (John Harrison, Britain, 1759), a pocket watch with high-frequency balance wheel, solving the problem of longitude for marine navigation | ||
| 1761 | 262 | first observed transit of Venus across the Sun (6/6/1761) → 1 astronomical unit of distance from Earth to Sun equal to 149,597,870.691 km | ||
| 1769 | 254 | invention of the first cost-effective steam engine (James Watt, Britain, 1769) → powered machinery, Industrial Revolution | ||
| 1770 | 253 | invention of the spinning jenny (James Hargreaves, Britain, 1770), mechanising the spinning of cotton → cloth weaving factories by 1771 | ||
| 1773 | 250 | establishment of the law of conservation of mass (Antoine Lavoisier, France, 1773): the amount of matter cannot change | ||
| 1774 | 249 | vaccination with an attenuated pathogen: cowpox to treat smallpox (Benjamin Jesty, Britain, 1774; Edward Jenner, Britain, 1798) → artificial attenuation by 1881; vaccination programmes save more lives than any other medical intervention in history | ||
| 1776 | 247 | declaration of independence of the United States of America from colonial rule, and of the unalienable rights of all humanity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (4/7/1776) → economic superstate of the USA | ||
| 1776 | 247 | idea that pursuit of self-interest leads to the common good (Adam Smith, Britain, The Wealth of Nations 1776) → free markets, producing unequal opportunity unless government regulates trade | ||
| 1778 | 245 | first national nature reserve (Bogd Khan Uul, Mongolia, 1778) → global protected areas cover 15% of land and 11% of ocean by 2018 | ||
| 1780 | 243 | mass production of spun textiles, mechanised by water power; coal-fired and steam-powered production of iron and steel (beginning Britain, c. 1780) → economies of scale, rising polarisation of rich and poor nations, dominance of fossil fuels | ||
| 1781 | 242 | inherent limits to the powers of reason (Immanuel Kant, Germany, Critique of Pure Reason 1781): knowledge springs from understanding the objects of experience; pure reason is properly directed only to moral imperatives | ||
| 1783 | 240 | invention of aviation: first piloted free flight by humans, in a hot-air balloon constructed by Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier (France, 21/11/1783) | ||
| 1784 | 239 | first postulation of black holes (John Michell, Britain, 1784), later predicted by general relativity as singularities in spacetime, their gravitational fields pulling in all matter, and all electromagnetic radiation including light | ||
| 1789 | 234 | spread of Republicanism (French Revolution, 1789-1799) → radical socio-political transformation in western Europe; building of nation states; metric system of weights and measures by 1792 | ||
| 1792 | 231 | indictment of double standards in the treatment of women by men (Mary Wollstonecraft, Britain, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 1792) → slow progress towards gender equality | ||
| 1798 | 225 | calculation of Earth’s density, using a torsion balance (Henry Cavendish, Britain, 1798) → Newton’s gravitational constant G determining the gravitational force between two masses | ||
| 1798 | 225 | observation that population growth capacity always outpaces improvements in resources (Thomas Malthus, Britain, 1798) → the struggle for existence facing all organisms; the challenge to human wellbeing, until the advent of oil-based economies | ||
| 1799 | 224 | first electrochemical battery (Alessandro Volta, Italy, 1799), sandwiching electrolyte-soaked pasteboard between two dissimilar metals to create a steady voltage → mobile energy storage | ||
| 1807 | 216 | concept of the mutual dependence of physical, climatological and organic phenomena (Alexander von Humboldt, Prussia, 1807) → science of biogeography | ||
| 1808 | 215 | discovery of atoms, uniquely defining each chemical element of ordinary matter (John Dalton, UK, 1808) → atomic masses of Earth’s 94 elements; hydrogen accounting for nine tenths of all atoms in the Universe | ||
| 1817 | 206 | invention of the bicycle (Karl von Drais, Germany, 1817); pedals by 1853, chain by 1886, derailleur by 1895 → the most efficient human-powered land vehicle | ||
| 1821 | 202 | first demonstration of an electromagnetic rotary device (Michael Faraday, UK, 1821) → dynamos to generate electricity; electric motors to convert electricity into mechanical energy | ||
| 1822 | 201 | first prediction of Earth’s greenhouse effect (Joseph Fourier, France, 1822; tested empirically by Eunice Foote, USA, 1856, John Tyndall, Ireland, 1859) → CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels cause global climate warming | ||
| 1825 | 198 | first public railway for steam locomotives (George Stephenson, UK, 1825), outpacing carriage horses, previously the fastest land transport during 5,300 years of human history | ||
| 1826 | 197 | publication of String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor Op. 131 by Ludwig van Beethoven (Germany, 1826): “hear only the direct revelation from another world” – Richard Wagner, 1870 | ||
| 1827 | 197 | first permanent photograph taken by a camera (Nicéphore Niépce, France, 1827) → first image of a person, 1838: Louis Daguerre seizing the light, arresting its flight on silvered plate, preserving a moment in history | ||
| 1834 | 189 | invention of the Analytical Engine (Charles Babbage, UK, 1834), an unbuilt functional computer → first computer programs by Babbage and Ada Lovelace; programmable computers by 1940s | ||
| 1838 | 185 | first scheduled trans-Atlantic steamer: coal-fired Great Western (Isambard Kingdom Brunel, UK, 1838) → globalisation of economies | ||
| 1846 | 177 | first use of quinine, from Andean cinchona trees, as a malaria prophylaxis (Thomas Thomson, UK, 1846), enabling European colonisation of tropical Africa and Asia; malaria vaccine by 2021 | ||
| 1848 | 175 | scale of absolute temperature (Lord Kelvin, UK, 1848) → fundamental limit to degree of coldness at 0 Kelvin = −273.15°C; quantum gases forced lower get hotter | ||
| 1850 | 173 | principles of conservation of energy and gain of entropy (Rudolf Clausius, Germany, and Lord Kelvin, UK, 1850) → laws of thermodynamics: heat flows from a warmer to a colder body – unless reversed by inertia | ||
| 1850 | 173 | industrial processing of flour and sugar; fattening of cattle in feedlots (Europe and USA, beginning c. 1850) → biggest dietary shift since the beginning of agriculture | ||
| 1856 | 167 | first practical compression refrigerator (James Harrison, Australia, 1856), for storing perishable foods → globalisation of trade in fresh and frozen meat, seafood, fruit and vegetables | ||
| 1859 | 164 | invention of the lead-acid cell (Gaston Planté, France, 1859), the first rechargeable battery → practical electric vehicles by the 1880s | ||
| 1859 | 164 | theory of evolution by natural selection (Charles Darwin, UK, On the Origin of Species 1859), a law unique to biological systems → heritable adaptations of individuals to their environment, speciation of populations through time, the diversity of life | ||
| 1859 | 164 | first training manual for care of the sick regardless of their means (Florence Nightingale, UK, Notes on Nursing 1859) → professional nursing, health benefits of fresh air and personal cleanliness | ||
| 1860 | 163 | factory production of internal-combustion engines (Jean Lenoir, Belgium, 1860; user manual 1864) → electricity generators, motorised transport | ||
| 1860 | 163 | development of Western modern art, during 100 years from c. 1860, depicting impressions of light and movement, expressive colours and forms, solitary and collective struggles, decisive moments and formative experience | ||
| 1865 | 158 | theory that electricity, magnetism and light are all manifestations of electromagnetic radiation (James Maxwell, UK, 1865) → foundations of quantum physics | ||
| 1866 | 157 | discovery of the unitary character of heritable traits, and the independent assortment of their alternative forms (Gregor Mendel, Austria, 1866) → the gene as unit of heredity, contained in chromosomes – but not for Borgs | ||
| 1867 | 156 | theory that capitalism exploits labour, with the objectionable consequence of empowering the rich by disadvantaging the poor (Carl Marx, Germany, Das Kapital 1867, 1885, 1894) → Marxism, socialism, Stalinism | ||
| 1874 | 149 | discovery of unequal infinities: the infinite continuum of all real numbers exceeds in size any infinite set of natural numbers (Georg Cantor, Germany, 1874) → three sizes of infinity? | ||
| 1876 | 147 | invention of the telephone (Alexander Bell, USA, 1876), permitting conversation between distant voices → telecommunications | ||
| 1877 | 146 | invention of the phonograph (Thomas Edison, USA, 1877): first practical sound recording → gramophone, mass production of records by 1890s, popularisation of individual artists | ||
| 1879 | 144 | invention of the electric light bulb (Thomas Edison, USA, 1879), providing cheap and safe illumination → organic light-emitting diodes by the 21ˢᵗ century | ||
| 1880 | 143 | invention of the photophone (Alexander Bell and Sumner Tainter, USA, 1880), transmitting sound on a beam of light → fibre-optic data transmission by 1966 | ||
| 1880 | 143 | adult literacy reaches 20% of the global population by 1880 → 85% by 2010 | ||
| 1882 | 141 | first commercially viable power stations, coal-fired (London and New York, 1882) → electrical grid; fossil fuels providing 63% of global electricity generation by 2019 | ||
| 1882 | 141 | first hydroelectric power station (Jacob Schoellkopf, USA, 1882) → megadams replumbing the world’s major rivers from the 1950s; 16% of global (and 98% of Norway’s) electricity generation by 2019 | ||
| 1884 | 139 | first rooftop photovoltaic solar array (Charles Fritts, USA, 1884) → rising to 3% of global electricity generation by 2019 | ||
| 1884 | 139 | beginning of the Scramble for Africa by European powers (1884), occupying nine tenths by 1914 → ethnic partitioning through official colonial rule through to c. 1960 | ||
| 1886 | 137 | first car with gasoline-powered internal combustion engine (Karl Benz, Germany, 1886) → 97 million motor vehicles produced globally per year by 2017: peak production? | ||
| 1887 | 136 | speed of light is invariant to source and observer motion (Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, USA, 1887) → upper limit to speed of matter and information, except for celestial objects separated by expanding space | ||
| 1887 | 136 | first wind-powered turbine for production of electricity (James Blyth, UK, 1887) → rising to 5% of global electricity generation by 2019 | ||
| 1890 | 133 | centralised sewerage treatment plants (UK, USA, Australia, 1890s), preventing spread of diseases → urine diversion and recycling as fertiliser by 2022 | ||
| 1893 | 130 | first self-governing democracy to grant women the vote (New Zealand, 1893) → rising women’s employment, diminishing yet ever-present gender inequality and bias | ||
| 1895 | 128 | first wireless transmission of telegraph signals by radio waves (Guglielmo Marconi, Italy, 1895), global radio communication by 1901 → radio broadcasts by 1920s; radar by 1930s | ||
| 1895 | 128 | first commercial screening of motion-picture films (Auguste and Louis Lumière, France, 1895) → birth of cinema, entrancing audiences with captured events and experience | ||
| 1895 | 128 | discovery of X-rays and production of X-ray images (Wilhelm Röntgen, Germany, 1895) → radiography | ||
| 1896 | 127 | discovery of natural radioactivity (Henri Becquerel, France, 1896) → radioisotopic labelling and dating, medical treatment of tumours | ||
| 1897 | 126 | first detection of a fundamental, subatomic and indivisible particle: the electron (Joseph Thomson, UK, 1897) → one of 17 kinds of elementary particle constituting matter and radiation | ||
| 1899 | 124 | Planck units: natural units for length, time, mass and temperature (Max Planck, Germany, 1899) → fundamental limit to the degree of heat = 1.42 × 10³² K | ||
| 1900 | 123 | theory of the unconscious mind and emotions motivating and guiding human behaviour (Sigmund Freud, Austria, The Interpretation of Dreams 1900) → limits to the rationality of behaviour; foundation of psychoanalysis | ||
| 1900 | 123 | Planck’s law: every physical body emits electromagnetic radiation (Max Planck, Germany, 1900) → quantum mechanics, explaining the subatomic workings of the Universe | ||
| 1900 | 123 | theory of energy quanta (Max Planck, Germany, 1900, Albert Einstein, Switzerland, 1905), including the photon, a massless elementary particle and quantum of electromagnetic radiation | ||
| 1900 | 123 | two-thirds of the global population living in extreme poverty by 1900, declining amid rising geopolitical inequality until 1950 → one-third by 1995, down to one-tenth by 2017 | ||
| 1900 | 123 | global average life expectancy equals 32 years by 1900 → doubling over the next 75 years, exposing diseases of ageing | ||
| 1903 | 120 | first powered, controlled flight by a heavier-than-air aircraft (Orville and Wilbur Wright, USA, 17/12/1903) → 4.6 billion airline passengers per year by 2019: peak volume? | ||
| 1904 | 119 | first quantification of dark matter (Lord Kelvin, UK, 1904), with gravitational influence yet no electromagnetic or strong interactions: 85% of matter in the Universe, concentrated amongst clustered galaxies | ||
| 1905 | 118 | theory of special relativity (Albert Einstein, Switzerland, 1905): energy-mass equivalence; length-contraction of moving objects and time-dilation of moving clocks relative to an observer → nuclear physics | ||
| 1905 | 118 | earliest chainsaw for cutting wood (Samuel Bens, USA, 1905), portable by 1918 → 2 billion m³ of wood processed globally by 2018, for construction, packaging, paper, pulp, fuel | ||
| 1907 | 116 | earliest organoids (Henry Wilson, USA, 1907): organ-like structures growing in a Petri dish → integration of human brain organoids with mouse brains by 2018; in vitro human neurons master Pong by 2022 | ||
| 1907 | 116 | first organic polymer made from synthetic components: Bakelite plastic (Leo Baekeland, USA, 1907) → large-scale production of plastics from 1950, dominated by polythene | ||
| 1908 | 115 | industrial-scale synthesis of ammonia from ambient nitrogen (BASF, Germany, 1908) using the Haber-Bosch process → chemical fertilisers release crops from nitrogen limitation, fuelling the human population explosion | ||
| 1908 | 115 | unification of 3D space and 1D unidirectional time into absolute spacetime (Hermann Minkowski, Germany, 1908): deceleration through time accompanies acceleration through space, and vice versa | ||
| 1909 | 114 | first people to set foot on Earth’s poles (North Pole: Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, USA, 1909; South Pole: Roald Amundsen, Norway, 1911) | ||
| 1911 | 112 | discovery of the nuclear centre of atoms (Ernest Rutherford, UK, 1911); fission of the nitrogen nucleus to isolate subatomic protons by 1919 | ||
| 1912 | 111 | idea of inwardness of feeling, in other ages directed at divinities, belonging to suffering, pain, love, joy (Rainer Maria Rilke, Germany, Duino Elegies 1912): inner commitment as life’s purpose | ||
| 1913 | 110 | introduction of factory assembly lines for mass production of cars (Ford Model T, USA, 1913), dedicating one worker to each step → dehumanising labour; affordable cars for labourers | ||
| 1914 | 109 | World War I (1914-18): 32 nations participate, 20 million killed; declared “the war to end war” | ||
| 1914 | 109 | opening of the Panama Canal (15/8/1914), shortening the route for shipping cargo between Atlantic and Pacific oceans | ||
| 1915 | 108 | mass deployment of X-ray units (Marie Curie, France, 1915) for treatment of over 1 million wounded soldiers | ||
| 1915 | 108 | theory of general relativity (Albert Einstein, Germany, 1915): equivalent effects of gravity and acceleration; gravity as a distortion of spacetime by massive objects → unresolved incompatibility with quantum mechanics | ||
| 1917 | 106 | Russian Revolution (Russia, 1917) → first communist state: USSR, 1922-1991 | ||
| 1917 | 106 | a urinal made by a plumber becomes a sculpture made by the force of an imagination (Marcel Duchamp, France, Fountain 1917): reorientation of art away from craft, onto interpretation | ||
| 1918 | 105 | Spanish flu pandemic (1918-20): H1N1 influenza virus infects a third of the global population and kills 50-100 million, mostly in the 2ⁿᵈ wave; early interventions reduce mortality; long-range effects for survivors | ||
| 1918 | 105 | first modern refugee crisis (1918-1922): collapsing Russian and Ottoman Empires displacing 1-2 million Russians and hundreds of thousands of Armenians → Nansen Passports for stateless citizens | ||
| 1919 | 104 | demonstration of nervous mechanisms in plants, paralleling those in animals (Jagadish Chandra Bose, Bengal, 1919) | ||
| 1919 | 104 | observations of starlight deflection during a Solar eclipse, confirming the gravitational lensing prediction of general relativity (Arthur Eddington, UK, 1919) | ||
| 1919 | 104 | first commercial radio broadcasts (PCGG, Netherlands, 1919); global uptake during 1920s → dissemination of time signals, news, propaganda, education, entertainment; storytelling for the complicit listener | ||
| 1921 | 102 | discovery of insulin (Frederick Banting and Charles Best, Canada, 1921) → treatment of diabetes, now afflicting 1 in 10 of the global population, particularly in high-income and urban areas | ||
| 1922 | 101 | invention of leaded petrol (General Motors, USA, 1922), improving engine performance, causing epidemics of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and developmental delays in children → global elimination by 2021 | ||
| 1922 | 101 | prediction of an expanding Universe (Alexander Friedmann, Russia, 1922) → dark energy accelerating the expansion of a flat or possibly closed, cyclic or hologram Universe, perhaps one in a multiverse | ||
| 1923 | 100 | concept of every quantum entity having dual nature, as both wave and particle (Louis de Broglie, France, 1923, Niels Bohr, Denmark, 1928) → no independent physical reality of atomic phenomena | ||
| 1924 | 99 | first aerial circumnavigation of the world (US Army Air Service, 1924) → globalisation of human mobility | ||
| 1926 | 97 | first working television system (John Logie Baird, UK, 1926) → nationwide television broadcasting by 1929, bringing rulers to their subjects, entertainers to viewers, inspiring awe | ||
| 1926 | 97 | Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery (League of Nations, 1926) → commitment by 99 of 195 countries since 2008; still 168 million child labourers and 21 million forced labourers | ||
| 1927 | 96 | a car outpaces a racehorse (La Chapelle, France, 1927) → dominion of the automobile for land transport and haulage | ||
| 1927 | 96 | uncertainty principle, that every particle has a constant product of its variances in position and momentum (Werner Heisenberg, Germany, 1927) → no precisely determinable Universe | ||
| 1928 | 95 | prediction of positron particles, the antimatter counterpart of electrons (Paul Dirac, UK, 1928) → abundant antimatter at the birth of the Universe; cosmic rays, positron emission tomography | ||
| 1928 | 95 | identification of plasma, the fourth fundamental state of matter after solids, liquids and gases (Irving Langmuir, USA, 1928) | ||
| 1928 | 95 | first experimental isolation of an antibiotic: penicillin (Alexander Fleming, UK, 1928) → healthcare revolution; overuse of antibiotics driving resistance in bacteria, causing 1.2 million deaths in 2019 | ||
| 1929 | 94 | Great Depression, symbolised by the Wall Street Crash of 29/10/1929 and the North American Dust Bowl of the 1930s → 22% drop in worldwide GDP | ||
| 1930 | 93 | postulation of neutrinos (Wolfgang Pauli, Austria, 1930), the smallest elementary particle and one of the most abundant in the Universe, rarely interacting with other matter | ||
| 1930 | 93 | idea that all roads to the mind start from the soul, yet none leads back again (The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil, Austria, 1930): the human soul as mediator of experience, spirit firing the imagination | ||
| 1931 | 92 | proof that no set of consistent axioms can suffice to derive all mathematical truths, to leave none undecidable (Kurt Gödel, Germany, 1931) → incomplete reality | ||
| 1932 | 91 | discovery of neutrons (James Chadwick, UK, 1932), with protons constituting the nuclei of atoms → nuclear fission of uranium by 1938; nuclear chain reactions; atomic bombs and nuclear energy | ||
| 1933 | 90 | theory that government spending can stabilise the market economy (John Maynard Keynes, UK, 1933, 1936) → borrowing to boost consumption, at the expense of investment to sustain capital assets | ||
| 1934 | 89 | first radio detection and ranging: radar (Navel Research Laboratory, USA, 1934), concurrently developed in UK, Germany and other countries, targeting aircraft, ships, submarines and weather | ||
| 1935 | 88 | concept of the ecosystem (Arthur Tansley, UK, 1935), a complex association of organisms with their environment → value of nature to humans from provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting ecosystem services | ||
| 1938 | 85 | invention of nylon (Wallace Carothers, DuPont, USA, 1938), the first synthetic textile fibre → filaments, films, bristles, cords, washers, sacking, fabrics, hosiery and clothing, spacesuits, parachutes, fishing nets and longlines | ||
| 1939 | 84 | first turbojet powered aircraft (Heinkel He 178, Germany, 1939) → jet planes | ||
| 1939 | 84 | World War II (1939-45): 184 nations participate, 60 million killed, including genocide of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust 1941-45 – the greatest crime of the 20ᵗʰ century | ||
| 1941 | 82 | development of frequency-hopping radio communication (Hedy Markey [Hedy Lamarr] and George Antheil, USA, 1941) → Bluetooth and Wi-Fi by 1990s | ||
| 1941 | 82 | first binary-logic digital programmable computer: Z3 (Konrad Zuse, Germany, 1941) | ||
| 1942 | 82 | discovery of insecticidal action of DDT (Paul Müller, Switzerland, 1942), the most successful chemical ever synthesised to control malaria → toxicity in food chains exposed in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring 1962; worldwide ban 2004 | ||
| 1944 | 79 | first electronic digital programmable computer: Colossus (Tommy Flowers, UK, 1944) → code-breaking that hastened the end of World War II | ||
| 1945 | 78 | atomic bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Japan, 6, 9/8/1945), the blasts and subsequent cancers killing over 250,000 people, mostly civilians; to date the only nuclear weapons used in combat | ||
| 1945 | 78 | establishment of the United Nations (UN, 1945), with a mission to maintain international peace, security and cooperation, amongst societies with customs and tolerances adapted to distal ecological and historical contexts | ||
| 1945 | 78 | first proposed electronic calculator (Alan Turing, UK, 1945) → modern stored-program computers | ||
| 1947 | 76 | first supersonic flight, in a rocket-powered aircraft (Chuck Yeager in Bell X-1, USA, 14/10/1947) → space exploration | ||
| 1948 | 75 | invention of the transistor (Bell Labs, USA, 1948) → transistor radios by 1950s; integrated circuits by 1959; microprocessors by 1970; consumer electronics | ||
| 1948 | 75 | Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 10/12/1948): all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights; everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person | ||
| 1949 | 74 | invention of the barcode (Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver, USA, 1949) → automation of product tracking | ||
| 1950 | 73 | proof that smoking causes lung cancer (Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill, UK, 1950): tipping point to ultimate elimination of smoking sometime over 70 years later, delayed by lobbying | ||
| 1950 | 73 | start of the Anthropocene Epoch, humans using 22×10²¹ joules of energy over the next 70 years, 1.5× more than all energy use during the previous 11,700 years: accelerating combustion of fossil fuels, their greenhouse gases trapping a further 10× more solar energy in the oceans | ||
| 1950 | 73 | global GDP per capita having tripled over 130 years to 1950, tripling again over the next 50 years; North Americans and western Europeans earning over 3× the global average wage: the Great Acceleration in technology, interdependence, and dominance over planetary cycles | ||
| 1950 | 73 | beginning of a rapid acceleration in global crop yields through innovations in seed varieties, agrochemicals, irrigation, mechanisation → Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, global cereal yield tripling over 60 years from 1960, provisioning feedlots of up to 100,000 cattle | ||
| 1951 | 72 | genocide becomes a crime under international law (UN, 1951); genocide events over the next 50 years kill more than 12 million civilians | ||
| 1951 | 72 | over 500 above-ground tests of nuclear weapons through to 1980 release 6 tonnes of plutonium and other radionuclides, detectable globally in sediments, soils and organismal tissues for 100,000 years into the future | ||
| 1952 | 71 | half the world adult population has at least basic education by 1952 → three-quarters by 1990 | ||
| 1953 | 70 | molecular structure of DNA (Rosalind Franklin, James Watson and Francis Crick, UK, 1953) → access to the genetic code of relatedness, form and function for all living organisms, in the environment and through evolutionary time as far back as 2 million years | ||
| 1953 | 70 | ascent to the highest point on Earth: Mount Everest at 8,848 m (Tenzing Norgay, Nepal, and Edmund Hillary, New Zealand, 29/5/1953) | ||
| 1954 | 69 | first nuclear power plant (Obninsk, USSR, 1954) → advent of clean energy: 10% of global electricity generation in 2019; radioactive waste; nuclear catastrophes, including Chernobyl, Ukraine, 26/4/1986 | ||
| 1955 | 68 | first accurate atomic clock (Louis Essen and Jack Parry, UK, 1955), the first quantum technology: time as atomic oscillations → atomic standard of time interval; Coordinated Universal Time: UTC, starting 1/1/1960 | ||
| 1956 | 67 | first shipment of freight in standardized intermodal containers (Malcom McLean, USA, 1956) → globalisation of commerce | ||
| 1956 | 67 | emergence of pop art (Richard Hamilton, UK, 1956; Andy Warhol, USA, 1962), its impersonal style anticipating a commodified and media-saturated world of illusory promise, desire and consumerism | ||
| 1957 | 66 | first orbiting space satellite (Sputnik 1, USSR, 4/10/1957) → intelligence gathering by 1960; Global Positioning System: GPS, and Earth observation, by 1973; global telecommunications and infrastructure interdependency | ||
| 1957 | 66 | first living being to depart Earth for outer space: stray mongrel dog Laika in Sputnik II (USSR, 3/11/1957), deceased in passage | ||
| 1959 | 64 | the Great Chinese Famine 1959-1961, the worst famine in history: Chairman Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ policy colliding with drought to cause 15-45 million deaths | ||
| 1959 | 64 | Antarctic Treaty (1/12/1959), designating use of the continent of Antarctica solely for peaceful purposes and scientific investigation, and prohibiting nuclear activity → need for Māori insight | ||
| 1960 | 63 | descent to the deepest point in the oceans: Mariana Trench at 10,911 m (Jacques Piccard, Switzerland, and Don Walsh, USA, in the bathyscaphe Trieste, 23/1/1960), the last frontier of Earth exploration | ||
| 1960 | 63 | first female head of a democratic government: Sirimavo Bandaranaike, serving three terms as prime minister of Ceylon then Sri Lanka between 1960 and 2000 | ||
| 1960 | 63 | first laser beam (Theodore Maiman, USA, 1960) → LiDAR mapping; cutting, welding, printing, precision surgery; reading/writing data; trapping atoms; 21ˢᵗ century interferometry | ||
| 1960 | 63 | first government-approval of oral contraceptives for use by the public (US FDA, 1960) → women taking control over their fertility, liberating them to develop professional careers | ||
| 1960 | 63 | formation of The Beatles rock band (UK, 1960) → globalisation of musical influence in the 1960s | ||
| 1961 | 62 | first astronaut in outer space (Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1, USSR, 12/4/1961), completing one Earth orbit during a 108-minute flight → the Space Age | ||
| 1961 | 62 | earliest industrial use of a flexibly programmable robot (‘Unimate’, George Devol, USA, 1961) → automation substituting for labour on codifiable tasks, complementing problem-solving skills | ||
| 1964 | 59 | origin of mass explained by interactions with Higgs quantum field (Peter Higgs, UK, and others, 1964) → Standard Model of particle physics | ||
| 1965 | 58 | International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (UN, 1965) → commitments from 182 countries since 2019; race still defining exposure to violence | ||
| 1967 | 56 | postulation of imperfect symmetry between matter and antimatter (Andrei Sakharov, USSR, 1967) → surplus of matter over antimatter since the early Universe | ||
| 1967 | 56 | Outer Space Treaty (UN, 1967), the basis of international space law → freedom for all to explore space, and prohibition of weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit | ||
| 1968 | 55 | peak growth rate of 2.07% in the world human population (1968), averaging 3.7 offspring per female → growth rate halved by 2020, with populations ageing globally and crashing in the richest countries | ||
| 1969 | 54 | first astronaut on the Moon (Neil Armstrong, USA, 20/7/1969), delivered by a 160-million horsepower Saturn V rocket; the Apollo 11 Command Module returning to Earth 4 days later | ||
| 1969 | 54 | first host-to-host computer connection (ARPANET, USA, 29/10/1969): “lo” sent across 500 km → flourishing Internet by the 1980s; first quantum network by 2017 | ||
| 1970 | 53 | proof of the birth of the Universe in a spacetime singularity (Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, UK, 1970) | ||
| 1970 | 53 | first optical disc encoding binary data (James Russell, USA, 1970) → digitisation of data storage, sound recording and playback | ||
| 1970 | 53 | Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (UN, 1970) → commitment by 191 states, not the nuclear states of India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea; a nuclear detonation affects everyone | ||
| 1970 | 53 | first probe to land on another planet and transmit data: surface temperature of Venus (Venera 7, USSR, 15/12/1970); images by 1975 → images from the surface of Mars by 1976 | ||
| 1972 | 51 | recognition by governments worldwide that fossil-fuel combustion threatens Earth’s atmosphere (UN Conference on the Human Environment 1972), understood by the growing environmental movement as a crisis rooted in Western worldviews of nature as commodity | ||
| 1972 | 51 | atomic clocks flown east around the world lose time to clocks flown west, confirming the time-dilation predicted by special relativity (Joseph Hafele and Richard Keating, USA, 1972) | ||
| 1972 | 51 | creation of first recombinant DNA, from a polyomavirus and a bacteriophage (Paul Berg, USA, 1972) → first transgenic mammal by 1974: a mouse; cloned synthetic genes for human insulin by 1979 | ||
| 1973 | 50 | concept of natural capital: the stock of natural resources (Ernst Schumacher, UK, Small is Beautiful 1973) → an asset that underpins human, social, manufactured and financial capitals, its qualities of mobility, silence and invisibility defying economic measurement, exposing it to unregulated human activities | ||
| 1973 | 50 | global average life expectancy exceeds 60 years by 1973 → 70 years by 2008 and rising for all countries; strengthening link to affluence, which drives down natural capital | ||
| 1975 | 48 | fraction of world adult population overweight or obese (BMI > 25 kg/m²) rises above 20% by 1975 → 39% by 2016, rising fastest in the young | ||
| 1975 | 48 | first personal computer: Altair 8800 (John Blankenbaker, USA, 1975), word processing software by 1976, spreadsheets by 1979 → digital media beginning to replace paper and celluloid by the end of the 20ᵗʰ century | ||
| 1975 | 48 | first global commitment to cross-border environmental protection: Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES, 1975) → illegal trade still threatening wildlife and human health | ||
| 1977 | 46 | indigenous Green Belt Movement (Wangari Maathai, Kenya, 1977), combatting poverty with environmental conservation → Great Green Wall movement by 2007, set to become the largest living structure on the planet | ||
| 1978 | 45 | first human born on the Antarctic mainland (Esperanza Base, Argentina, 7/1/1978) → continuous human settlement of every continent on Earth | ||
| 1978 | 45 | first human born from in vitro fertilisation (IVF, UK, 1978) → ethical issues of selecting amongst genome-sequenced embryos | ||
| 1979 | 44 | completion of the Standard Model (1979), combining quantum mechanics with special relativity to explain how elementary particles determine the composition of all matter and all its governing forces except gravitation | ||
| 1980 | 43 | global eradication of smallpox (WHO, 1980), after it kills 300 million people and one-third of those infected during the 20ᵗʰ century, the only infectious disease of humans to have been eradicated by vaccination | ||
| 1981 | 42 | first diagnosis of AIDS (USA, 1981) → identification of causal HIV by Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, France, 1983; global epidemic killing 36 million by 2021; continuing health risk | ||
| 1982 | 41 | international moratorium on commercial whaling (IWC, agreed 1982, enforced 1986): power of people, unified by non-governmental organisations, to drive worldwide change | ||
| 1982 | 41 | adoption of the World Charter for Nature (UN, 1982, only USA voting against) recognising nature’s intrinsic value, establishing the imperative of keeping human activities within Earth’s limits | ||
| 1983 | 40 | activation of standardized Internet Protocol (USA, 1983) → proliferation of email, file transfer, Internet forums, information sharing | ||
| 1983 | 40 | genetic engineering enters mainstream agriculture, then medicine, with patents for genetically modified crop plants (International Plant Research Institute, 1983), and transgenic animals (Harvard College, USA, OncoMouse 1988) | ||
| 1984 | 39 | first untethered spacewalk (Bruce McCandless, Challenger Space Shuttle 41-B, USA, 7/2/1984) | ||
| 1985 | 38 | discovery of a human-induced hole in the stratospheric ozone layer (1985) → increase in UV-B radiation at Earth’s surface, changing climate, causing DNA damage to phytoplankton and plants; potential forest sterility and skin cancers | ||
| 1985 | 38 | first aircraft to fly on another planet: VeGa balloons in the cloud system of Venus (USSR + 8 European countries, 1985) → Earth’s evil twin, yet potential for life in the clouds? | ||
| 1985 | 38 | discovery of the enzyme telomerase controlling cellular ageing (Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider, USA, 1985) → eternal lifespan of cancer cells | ||
| 1986 | 37 | beginnings of continuous colonisation of space, in low Earth orbit (Mir Space Station, USSR, 20/2/1986) → International Space Station from 2/11/2000 | ||
| 1986 | 37 | global population of humans passes 5 billion; annual energy use per person averages 18,300 kWh, 26× the resting metabolism | ||
| 1987 | 36 | global agreement to ban hydrochlorofluorocarbons and other ozone depleting substances (Montreal Protocol, 1987), the only UN protocol to be ratified by every country on Earth → punctuated recovery of stratospheric ozone, slowing Earth’s warming | ||
| 1987 | 36 | sustainable development enters economics, as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland Report 1987) → ecosystems as capital assets, economies as systems embedded within nature | ||
| 1988 | 35 | first assessment that global climate warming has begun (James Hansen, Senate testimony to US Congress, 23/6/1988) → creation of the IPCC: “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate” by 1995 | ||
| 1989 | 34 | invention of the World Wide Web information system (Tim Berners-Lee, UK, 1989) → birth of the Information Age | ||
| 1990 | 33 | spacecraft Voyager 1 photographs the sunlit Earth from a distance of 6 billion km (NASA, 14/2/1990): this Pale Blue Dot, our place in the cosmos | ||
| 1990 | 33 | launch of the Hubble Space Telescope (NASA with ESA, 1990) → observing the birth of stars, growth of galaxies, prevalence of black holes, atmospheres of exoplanets | ||
| 1992 | 31 | first detection of exoplanets, orbiting a neutron star 2,300 light-years from Earth (Arecibo Observatory and NRAO, USA, 1992) → possibility of extra-terrestrial life on temperate and moist planets, perhaps feeding off radiolytic H₂; beings for whom we are aliens | ||
| 1992 | 31 | the Rio Earth Summit, Brazil, hosts the largest gathering of world leaders as of 1992, for intergovernmental collaboration on the environment, climate change, desertification | ||
| 1992 | 31 | global commitment by nation states to conservation of biodiversity, and sustainable use and equitable sharing of its benefits (UN Convention on Biological Diversity: CBD, 1992) → ratified by every country except the USA | ||
| 1992 | 31 | first Internet server for streaming media (StarWorks, 1992) → rise of live and on-demand video and audio streaming during the 2000s; personalisation of entertainment and nostalgia | ||
| 1993 | 30 | tuning of enzyme functions by directed evolution (Frances Arnold, USA, 1993) → environmentally friendly production of pharmaceuticals and renewable fuels | ||
| 1994 | 29 | launch of online marketplace Amazon.com (Jeff Bezos, USA, 1994) → world’s largest cloud-computing platform | ||
| 1995 | 28 | observation of Bose-Einstein condensate (NIST, USA, 1995), a fifth state of matter with properties unlike solids, liquids, gases, plasmas → quantum mechanical description of gravity? | ||
| 1995 | 28 | peak of global marine fishery catch, at 130 million tonnes during 1995 → thereafter diminishing returns for a still expanding global fishery; need for an equitable ocean commons | ||
| 1996 | 27 | first cloned mammal (Dolly the sheep, Roslin Institute, UK, 1996) → cloning of human stem cells from embryos by 2013 in pursuit of novel therapies; moral, ethical, and social dilemmas | ||
| 1996 | 27 | first practical solar-powered aircraft (Icaré 2, Germany, 1996) → race for clean-energy applications; gradually emerging political vision for weaning off fossil fuels | ||
| 1997 | 26 | first robotic rover lands on Mars and measures surface composition (NASA’s Sojourner, 4/7/1997) → Mars Express spacecraft finds liquid water in 2018, conducive to life and to human colonisation | ||
| 1997 | 26 | first experimental demonstration of quantum teleportation (Institut für Experimentalphysik, Austria, 1997), over any distance → holographic wormhole by 2022 | ||
| 1997 | 26 | adoption of the Kyoto Protocol by 192 countries (UNFCC, 1997), binding 37 industrialised and industrialising countries plus the EU to targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions → still rising by 2021 | ||
| 1998 | 25 | creation of Google search technology, as a student project (Larry Page and Sergey Brin, USA, 1998) → free to use, efficient knowledge-search engine; profit from mining personal data; pay-per-click business model | ||
| 2000 | 23 | ongoing and accelerating rise in global mean sea level exceeds 3 mm/year by 2000, regulated by thermal expansion, ice-mass loss and large-scale dams → no scenario that stops sea-level rise this century | ||
| 2000 | 23 | first legal recognition of same-sex marriage (The Netherlands, 2000) → legal in 32 countries by 2022 | ||
| 2001 | 22 | calory deficit afflicts 13% of the global population in the year 2001 → 9% by 2019; climate change exacerbating undernourishment and obesity | ||
| 2001 | 22 | launch of Wikipedia (Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, USA, 15/1/2001), collating knowledge as a common good → world’s largest work of general reference, open to editing by registered users | ||
| 2001 | 22 | first draft sequence of the human genome: c. 25,000 genes in 3 billion base pairs (Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, USA, + 23 institutes, 2001), completed 2003 → Human Cell Atlas; gene therapy | ||
| 2001 | 22 | first space tourist (Dennis Tito, USA, with the Russian space programme to the International Space Station, 2001) → race to commercialise space travel by 2021 | ||
| 2001 | 22 | terrorist attacks on World Trade Center and Pentagon (USA, 11/9/2001) → accelerating globalisation of jihadi networks instigated in the 1980s, and counter-terrorism strategies | ||
| 2003 | 20 | a heatwave across Europe causes 70,000 additional deaths in summer 2003, then with a return time of thousands of years → 100 years by 2015; rising frequency of record-shattering climate extremes, including marine heatwaves | ||
| 2003 | 20 | globally agreed enforcement of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CBD, 2003), governing translocation of living genetically modified organisms that threaten biodiversity | ||
| 2004 | 19 | launch of online social networking service Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg, USA, 2004) → 2 billion users by 2017; rise in conspiracy theories with reorientation of online exchanges from information to values | ||
| 2006 | 17 | launch of microblogging service Twitter (Jack Dorsey, USA, 2006) → 500 million tweets per day by 2013; one-to-many echo chambers; rise of free-to-use platforms monetising personal data through advertising | ||
| 2007 | 16 | human urban population exceeds half the global population for the first time in history → urban wealth sustained by international trade that drives rural impoverishment; strengthening relation of fertility to poverty | ||
| 2007 | 16 | worldwide adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN, 2007) to be free and equal to all other peoples, supported by 182 nation states | ||
| 2007 | 16 | Great Recession (2007-9), free-fall of developed economies synchronised by global integration of markets | ||
| 2008 | 15 | first smartphone apps (iPhone App Store, 10/7/2008) → establishment of social media; 100 billion app downloads by 2015, 100 billion per year by 2020; no stewardship of global collective behaviour | ||
| 2008 | 15 | first national constitution to recognise rights of nature (Ecuador, 2008); first statutory law granting rights to nature, Bolivia 2010 → departure from nature as property | ||
| 2008 | 15 | first country to adopt circular-economy legislation (China, 2008): reduce, reuse, recycle → national roadmaps by 2016; need for global initiatives | ||
| 2009 | 14 | launch of first cryptocurrency: Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer medium of exchange by blockchain (Satoshi Nakamoto, 2009) → expanding carbon footprint from computationally intensive mining of digital coins | ||
| 2009 | 14 | humanity is overstepping three planetary boundaries to a safe operating space: climate change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen cycle → risk of abrupt ecological disruption, biosphere tipping points, and hothouse Earth; need for planetary stewardship | ||
| 2009 | 14 | nations that grew rich on fossil fuels commit climate finance to poorer nations (UN FCCC, 2009), worth one-tenth of annual oil and gas industry royalties by 2020 → inadequate and unmet; repurposed for loss and damage in 2022 | ||
| 2010 | 13 | creation of first self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell (J. Craig Venter Institute, USA, 2010) → xenobots for intravenous drug delivery by 2020, self-replicating by 2021 | ||
| 2010 | 13 | global agreement to implement 20 biodiversity targets by 2020 (CBD, 2010), to address causes of biodiversity loss, reduce pressures on biodiversity, safeguard ecosystems and their services → failure completely on 14, partially on 6 | ||
| 2011 | 12 | international resolution against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (UN, 2011) → homosexuality legal in 133 of 195 countries by 2019, rising trend; recognition of a sex spectrum | ||
| 2011 | 12 | number of liberal and elected democracies in the world peaks at 101 in 2011, encompassing 55% of the global population | ||
| 2011 | 12 | two-thirds of the global population in 2011 have access to safe drinking water, a necessary condition for wellbeing; rising to almost three-quarters by 2020 | ||
| 2012 | 11 | observation of Higgs boson: a fundamental force-carrier particle (CERN Large Hadron Collider, 4/7/2012) → validation of the Standard Model of particle physics | ||
| 2012 | 11 | more than half the world’s population tunes in to television coverage of the London Summer Olympics (2012) | ||
| 2012 | 11 | invention of CRISPR-Cas9 technology (Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, USA, 2012) → accurate, fast and cheap editing of genes and gene mutations in any organism, including – unethically – viable human embryos | ||
| 2012 | 11 | first human-made object escapes our Solar System and enters interstellar space, 18 billion km from the Sun (Voyager 1, 25/8/2012) | ||
| 2013 | 10 | atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ exceed 400 ppm for the first time in at least 3 million years, an accelerating rise (NOAA, Hawaii, 5/2013) → race for technologies to capture and use CO₂ | ||
| 2014 | 9 | globally agreed enforcement of the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (CBD, 2014), a legal framework for informed consent and benefit-sharing | ||
| 2015 | 8 | invention of the optical lattice clock (Hidetoshi Katori, Japan, 2015) → accuracy of 1 second in 15 billion years; ticking detectably faster with each centimetre of altitude, as predicted by general relativity | ||
| 2015 | 8 | a fishing boat sinks off the Mediterranean coast of Libya with the loss of 1,050 lives (18/4/2015), amongst 65 million people forcibly displaced worldwide in 2015 | ||
| 2015 | 8 | tipping point in industry-wide momentum towards electric vehicles during mid-2010s, when still comprising 2% of market share, spread by investor confidence under strengthening regulation of fossil fuels | ||
| 2015 | 8 | three trillion trees on Earth (2015, cf. 6.6 trillion at the start of human civilisation), 15 billion culled annually → forest covering a quarter of global land area, declining in extent and diversity, driven down by commodity production, wildfires, urbanisation | ||
| 2015 | 8 | UN General Assembly of 194 countries adopts 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, to end poverty and other deprivations by improving health and education, reducing inequalities, addressing climate change and halting biodiversity loss (25/9/2015) | ||
| 2015 | 8 | UN Paris Agreement on Climate Change adopted by 196 nation states, resolving to keep global average temperature to well below 2°C in excess of pre-industrial levels, and striving to limit the increase to 1.5°C (12/12/2015) → benefits outweigh costs; by 2022, no credible pathway to 1.5°C | ||
| 2015 | 8 | human land use, rising exponentially up to 1960, still rising in 2015 for livestock grazing (27% of global land area), crops (7%), buildings, towns and cities (1%); industrial fishing in 55% of ocean area by 2015 | ||
| 2016 | 7 | detection of gravitational waves (LIGO and Virgo interferometers, 11/2/2016): ripples in spacetime generated by accelerating bodies, predicted by the theory of general relativity | ||
| 2016 | 7 | coldest ground surface temperature on Earth: −110.9°C (central-eastern Antarctica, 2016); once temperate rainforests, now dry and salty antarctic soils uninhabitable even to microbes | ||
| 2016 | 7 | destruction of more than 6 million ha (60,000 km²) of tropical primary forest during 2016, an unprecedented peak in a rising trend → quick profit from drawing down natural capital, a down payment on future economic failure | ||
| 2016 | 7 | global land and ocean surface temperature for 2016 reaches 0.99°C above the 1951-1980 mean, Earth’s warmest year on record to date → roadmap for decarbonisation, implicating lifestyle choices | ||
| 2017 | 6 | first national legislation for a mid-century target of net-zero emissions (Sweden, 2017) → Suriname and Bhutan CO₂-negative by 2019; net-zero pledges by governments and companies cover 90% of the global economy by 2021, with big emitters yet to peak | ||
| 2017 | 6 | accumulation since 1957 of 23,000 space objects bigger than an apple, travelling at up to 28,000 km/hr in Earth orbit → debris risk to satellites and space stations, a problem for government space agencies of their own making | ||
| 2017 | 6 | accumulation of plastic waste since 1950 exceeds 5 billion tonnes in landfills and the natural environment by 2017, more than 12× global human biomass → pervasive microplastics across the globe; paucity of options for mitigating harm | ||
| 2018 | 5 | sixfold increase in annual ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland over 25 years to 2018 → sea-levels to rise 40-80 cm by 2100 under scenarios of low-high greenhouse-gas emissions, displacing 190-630 million people | ||
| 2018 | 5 | slowing Atlantic circulation over the last 60 years, consistent with rising CO₂, enhancing global surface warming | ||
| 2018 | 5 | hottest ground surface temperature on Earth: 80.8°C (Lut Desert, Iran, 2018; Sonoran Desert, Mexico, 2019), too hostile for plant life | ||
| 2018 | 5 | human activities have modified three-quarters of ice-free land and almost nine-tenths of the ocean by 2018; Earth’s remaining wildernesses become increasingly vital buffers against climate change | ||
| 2018 | 5 | first commercial taxi service of fully self-driving cars (Google-Waymo, USA, 5/12/2018) → reducing traffic accidents, raising social dilemmas | ||
| 2018 | 5 | half the global population using the Internet by 2018 → escape from state-controlled media; expansion of denial, fake news, falsehoods, lies and misinformation | ||
| 2019 | 4 | first image of a black hole (Event Horizon Telescope, 10/4/2019), 55 million light-years from Earth, 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun, with spiralling magnetic fields, expelling jets of matter | ||
| 2019 | 4 | first global assessment of biodiversity finds 1 million of Earth’s 8 million species threatened by accelerating extinction rates (IPBES, 2019): Earth’s sixth mass extinction imperils humanity’s life support systems, calling for transformative change in human activities | ||
| 2019 | 4 | Britain generates more electricity from zero-carbon sources than from fossil fuels for the first time since the Industrial Revolution (UK National Grid, 6/2019); fossil fuels still provide 84% of global primary energy | ||
| 2019 | 4 | energy use per person during 2019 exceeds the resting metabolism by 30× globally, and by 114× for citizens of the USA (cf. 15× for an elite athlete running a marathon) | ||
| 2019 | 4 | acidification of almost all open-ocean surface by absorption of anthropogenic CO₂, losing 0.02 pH units per decade since 1990, harming shell-forming species; ocean liming a potential geoengineering solution | ||
| 2019 | 4 | first global climate strike (20/9/2019), led by school children and joined by millions of people with justified concerns → world scientists warn of a climate emergency | ||
| 2019 | 4 | first demonstration of quantum supremacy over conventional computers (Google AI Quantum, USA, 2019) → double-exponential growth rate in computing power | ||
| 2019 | 4 | first case of COVID-19 (Wuhan wildlife market, China, 1/12/2019), caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 → pandemic triggering unprecedented lockdown of nations and societies worldwide, shrinking the global economy, deepening inequalities; largest vaccination programme in history begins 8/12/2020 after 5.7 million excess deaths | ||
| 2019 | 4 | inauguration of US Space Force (20/12/2019), formalising competition for military dominance in space; UK follows in 2021 → surveillance extending to stewardship and warfare capabilities | ||
| 2019 | 4 | rising frequency of weather-related disasters multiplies global economic losses 7.8× from the 1970s to the 2010s, disproportionately impoverishing the poor; early-warning systems reduce deaths by two-thirds | ||
| 2020 | 3 | One Trillion Trees Initiative (World Economic Forum, 2020), planting trees in support of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2020-2030 → nature-based climate solutions | ||
| 2020 | 3 | first combat deployment of lethal drones with fully autonomous decision-making (Libyan Government, 2020) → need for a ban on all slaughterbots: robots that select and kill without human supervision | ||
| 2020 | 3 | launch of first commercial space taxi (SpaceX, 30/5/2020), taking NASA astronauts to the International Space Station | ||
| 2020 | 3 | highest recorded air temperature on Earth: 54.4°C in Death Valley (California, USA, 16/8/2020); emergence of intolerable heat, particularly for urban populations, exacerbated by air conditioning, mitigated by greenery | ||
| 2020 | 3 | leaders of 93 countries and the EU pledge to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 (Leaders Pledge for Nature, 2020): commitment to nature positive government, business and civil society | ||
| 2020 | 3 | protein structures accurately predicted by an artificial intelligence network: AlphaFold (DeepMind, USA, 2020) → accelerated understanding of protein functions; rapid advances in drug design | ||
| 2020 | 3 | human-made materials surpass Earth’s total living biomass, predominantly as concrete infrastructure, doubling in mass every 20 years since 1900 → our material contribution to the Anthropocene Epoch | ||
| 2020 | 3 | global land and ocean surface temperature for 2020 exceeds 1°C above the 1951-1980 mean for the first time, 1.2°C above the pre-industrial 1850-1900 baseline, with 2011-2020 the 4ᵗʰ decade in succession to claim warmest average temperature | ||
| 2020 | 3 | ambient temperature in the Arctic exceeds the 1981-2010 average by 2.1°C in 2020, warming 4× faster than the rest of the world; permafrost thawing self-amplifies to the point of no return; Arctic zombie fires release 4× the CO₂ emissions of global volcanic activity | ||
| 2021 | 2 | first powered, controlled flight on another planet: Ingenuity Helicopter drone on Mars (NASA, 19/4/2021), hovering 3 m above the Jezero Crater | ||
| 2021 | 2 | spacecraft Parker Solar Probe touches the Sun’s corona (NASA, 28/4/2021): sampling its outer atmosphere | ||
| 2021 | 2 | worldwide acceleration of glacier melt, now at twice the speed of 20 years ago → explaining one-fifth of the rate and acceleration in sea-level rise during the 21ˢᵗ century | ||
| 2021 | 2 | tropical forests in south-eastern Amazonia switch from CO₂ sink to source by 2021, linked to intensifying dry seasons, deforestation and rising frequency of fires | ||
| 2021 | 2 | Earth’s hottest month on record (NOAA, July 2021): rising frequency of climate anomalies → need for actions to trigger positive tipping towards global sustainability through self-reinforcing shifts in behaviour | ||
| 2021 | 2 | human activities have unequivocally warmed atmosphere, ocean and land, intensifying heatwaves, droughts and floods; global warming will exceed 2°C without immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions (IPCC, 2021): a reality check for policy makers | ||
| 2021 | 2 | pledge to end deforestation by 2030, signed by 141 countries, covering 90% of Earth’s forests (UN COP 26 Climate Conference, 2/11/2021) → uneven progress; need for enforcement mechanisms | ||
| 2021 | 2 | commitment by 103 countries to curb emissions of methane (Global Methane Pledge, 2/11/2021): a potent greenhouse gas approaching triple preindustrial levels; emissions catalysed by global warming? | ||
| 2021 | 2 | global agreement to nearly halve CO₂ emissions by 2030 relative to 2010, and to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century (UN COP 26 Glasgow Climate Pact, 13/11/2021) → need for policies to match the science | ||
| 2021 | 2 | the world ocean reaches its hottest ever recorded in 2021, for the third year and seventh decade in a row, contributing to coral bleaching and sea-level rise; fuelling marine heatwaves, cyclones and hurricanes | ||
| 2021 | 2 | clean power accounts for more than one-third of global electricity supply in 2021, with wind and solar sources alone contributing one-tenth | ||
| 2021 | 2 | launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (NASA, ESA, CSA, 2021) → exploring the early Universe, star births and deaths and galactic evolution, analysing exoplanet atmospheres for signs of life | ||
| 2022 | 1 | global cost-of-living crisis initiated by demand exceeding supply for resources, intensified by Russia invading Ukraine (24/2/2022), threatening worldwide food and energy security | ||
| 2022 | 1 | human and natural populations are reaching limits to climate adaptation, from poles to equator (IPCC, 2022): diminishing opportunities to secure a liveable future for all by strengthening nature | ||
| 2022 | 1 | time has almost run out for averting global climate catastrophe (IPCC, 2022): mitigation still cheaper than adaptation, by switching immediately and comprehensively to carbon-free energy and extracting atmospheric carbon | ||
| 2022 | 1 | the number of people forcibly displaced reaches 100 million worldwide (UNHCR, 2022), of which c. 40 million refugees, asylum-seekers and stateless persons are displaced by conflict and violence | ||
| 2022 | 1 | one-fifth of the global population depends directly on one or more of fifty thousand wild species for food or livelihood (IPBES, 2022): sustainable use must confront the globally accelerating loss of biodiversity | ||
| 2022 | 1 | fifty ways to value nature, in diverse opportunities for living from, with, in, and as nature (IPBES, 2022); a narrow focus of policy-makers on value to economic growth drives down biodiversity | ||
| 2022 | 1 | unprecedented successive years with declining global value of Human Development Index (UN-DP, 2022): climate change and Covid-19 impacting education, income, life expectancy | ||
| 2022 | 1 | record-breaking heatwaves, heralding extreme droughts in China and western Europe, and flooding in Pakistan that displaces 33 million people | ||
| 2022 | 1 | tumbling costs of green energy reach parity with fossil fuels by 2022 → economic motivation for shifting faster to renewable energy, with net-zero CO₂ emissions feasible within 10-20 years | ||
| 2022 | 1 | a spacecraft alters the course of an asteroid (NASA, 2022), demonstrating potential to save Earth from an asteroid hit | ||
| 2022 | 1 | first publicly accessible dialogue bot: ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2022): an AI language model, not an oracle; problem of distinguishing its articulation of trawled content from reasoned argument, with implications for scholarship and creativity | ||
| 2022 | 1 | achievement of fusion ignition (National Ignition Facility, USA, 2022): proof of concept for limitless fusion energy | ||
| 2022 | 1 | global agreement to protect biodiversity for 30% of Earth’s land and sea by 2030, and to reduce extinction rate and risk tenfold for all species by 2050 (CBD, 2022) → need for adequate funding | ||
| 2023 | 0 | humans and our livestock achieve respectively 20× and 30× the biomass of all terrestrial wild mammals by 2023 → imperative of shifting towards plant-based diets, co-benefitting forests, climate change and health | ||
| 2023 | 0 | global agreement on the High Seas Treaty (UN, 2023), enforcing protection of 30% of the world’s seas by 2030 with restrictions on fishing, deep-sea mining and shipping lanes | ||
| 2023 | 0 | publication of a survival guide for climate-resilient development (IPCC, 2023) in the face of temperature and flood extremes, jeopardising biodiversity and food-, water- and energy-security |