History of Man

World History

Under Construction

History of Man

Note: There doesn't seem to be much agreement on dates and names for different eras. Modern history books have gotten away from these classifications. See below.

Dates	Area	Culture
	Prehistoric Era 2 MYA - 4000 BCE
Paleolithic	1.6-2.4 Mya Homo Genus ( MYA - Million yrs ago, Kya - 1,000 years ago) 800 Kya - Harnessing of fire	Stone Age
	80,000-300,000 BCE Archaic Homo Sapiens
	150,000 BCE Modern Homo Sapiens
	65,000 BCE Bone tools in Africa
	30,000 BCE First cave paintings in France and Italy
Mesolithic * 10,000- 6,000 BCE	End of Ice age Transition period from hunter-gathering to agriculture. 9,000 BCE Cultivation of grains in proto-city of Jerico 5,300 BCE Cities of Sumeria
Neolithic * 6,000- 2,200 BCE	4,000 BCE A change from a nomadic way of life to a sedentary lifestyle. he Neolithic farmers began to build permanent settlements and, by using fire and more advanced stone tools like polished stone axes, began the deforestation of large sections of land for the planting of crops. Invention of the wheel.
	Ancient Era (Primeval) Period 2-4000 BCE- 8 BCE †
	3,500 BCE - Written Language starting with Sumerian cuneiform
	5,000-220 BCE - Early China/Japan Yangshao, Longsham, Xia, Shang, Zhou
	3,500 BCE Domestication of the horse	Copper Age
3,200-400 BCE - Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians		Bronze Age * 2,200-750 BCE 2,500-
3,200 - 30 BCE - Egypt		Bronze Age * 2,200-750 BCE 2,500-
1193-1184 BCE - Trojan Wars		Iron Age
1028 BCE - Israel united under Saul and David
900 BCE - Hebrew Language developed 800 BCE - Latin Language developed
Classical Antiquity 597 BCE Babylonians (Nebuchadnezzar) capture Jerusalem 539 Cyrus II of Persia invades and conquers Babylon 530 Buddha, Confucius 585 - 250 Greece (Socrates [399], Hippocrates [370], Plato [347], Aristotle [322], Euclid [300]) 336 BC - Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia captures Persian empire 509 BC - 27 BC Roman Republic (mixture of democracy and oligarchy) 27 BC - 476 AD Roman Empire (ruled by a single Emperor) 30 AD - Death of Christ 312 - Constantine I, Roman Emperor, adopts Christianity
Middle Ages 400-1,500 AD
			Medieval
330-1453 Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) (St. Augustine 354-430 - Carthage)
350-550 Huns (Mongols) capture land from central Asia to modern Germany
632 Death of Mohammed
711-1085 Moorish (Muslim) rule of Toledo, Spain during a golden age of religious tolerance, science and culture.
1015-1295 Crusades
1066 Norman Invasion of England- William the Conqueror
1300's	Start of Renaissance in Tuscany	Renaissance
1400-1550	Age of exploration
1439	Gutenberg invented the Printing Press
Modern Era
1500-1550	Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519] and Michelangelo
1500-1598	The Reformation (Luther [1483-1546], Calvin [1509-1564])
1540-1688	The Scientific Revolution Copernicus (1473-1543) Galileo (1564-1642) Francis Bacon (1561-1626) William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
1560-1700	Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834)
1650-1700	Baroque Start of Enlightenment Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)	Enlightenment
1600-1747	René Descartes (1596-1650) Rembrandt (1606-1669) Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) John Locke (1632-1704) Isaac Newton (1643-1747)
1700-1850	Industrial Revolution
1750-1800	Classical Period in Music Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791, Haydn (1732 -1809) Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) [later works are Romantic]
1790-Present	Late Modern	High Modern
1800-1900	Romantic period in music (1800-) and literature (1750-)
1859	"The Origin of Species" - Charles Darwin
1865	"Experiments on Plant Hybridization" - Gregor Mendel
1870	Invention of the telephone - Alexander Graham Bell
1869-1948	Mahatma Gandhi
1900	Sigmund Freud's books on psychoanalysis
1907-1915	General relativity - Albert Einstein
PostModern
1950-	Postmodern art and architecture
1980-	Postmodern philosophy

Mya - Million years ago
Kya - Thousand years ago
* Dates for the Bronze and Iron age as well as the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods vary from society to society.
The Iron age begins in the 12th century BC in the ancient Near East, and ancient Greece, the 8th century BC in Central Europe and the 6th century BC in Northern Europe.
In some areas of the world the Bronze Age followed the Neolithic age. On the other hand, in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Neolithic age is directly followed by the Iron Age.
In some places there was a copper age between the Stone and Bronze ages.

† - There doesn't seem to be general agreement on Era's:
These eras of man are different from the geological eras. We have been in the Cenozoic gelogical era for the last 65 million years.
Modern history books have gotten away from using these classifications, possibly because dates vary from civilization to civilization.
Some include Medieval and Industrial periods as Eras and some don't.
Ancient 2000 BCE - 1000 AD
Medieval 1000 - 1600
Modern 1500-
Industrial Era 1750-1850

Classical period in the Arts:
In art, architecture, and literature, ancient Rome and Greece are considered to be the Classical period, and the late eighteenth century is often referred to as the neoclassical.
We have no "Classical" music from ancient Greece and Rome, because no written music from ancient times has ever been discovered.
In western music the classical period lasted from about 1750 to 1800.
Mozart and Beethoven who bridged the Classical and Romantic periods.
J. S. Bach (1685-1750) on the other hand is Baroque, not Classical, in style.
See: Music

English Eras

1585-1603	Elizabethen
1603-1625	Jacobean
1714-1830	Georgan
1837-1901	Victorian
1901-1910	Edwardian

Late Modern trends

Time	Science	Economy
19th Century	Chemistry and geology.	Agricultural
20th century	Physics	Industrial *
21st century	Biology	Information/Service

* Although the Industrial Revolution is generally agreed to be from 1750-1850 it wasn't until the first half of the 20th century that we saw the dominant form of economic production shift from agricultural to industrial.

Books:
History: The Definitive Visual Guide (From The Dawn of Civilization To The Present Day). 2007, Adam Hart-Davis
Timelines of World History (Paperback) by John B. Teeple, 2006

See:

Human Migration
Wars - Empires
Modernity in the Sequence of Historical Eras

Timeline from the Ice Age
Scythia
Ancient History at about.com
  Ancent Maps 
  Levant (Eastrn Mediterranean) Maps
Roman Empire
Timeline at SNUY Binghamton.
Historical Eras and Modernerity
Paul Halsall's Internet History Sourcebooks at Fordham
People
100 Greatest Discoveries
Most Important Inventions, NY Times

last updated 19 Mar 2009