c. 300,000 BCE: The oldest known Homo sapiens
c. 70,000–50,000 BCE: Out of Africa
by c. 50,000 BCE: People reach Australia
c. 35,000 BCE: Painting in the dark
by c. 14,500 BCE: Into the Americas
c. 9500 BCE: Göbekli Tepe
c. 9000 BCE: The first farmers
c. 7000 BCE: Rice on the Yangtze
c. 3300 BCE: Cities and writing
c. 3100 BCE: Egypt is united
c. 2500 BCE: The Indus cities
c. 1250 BCE: Oracle bones
c. 1200 BCE: The Olmec
c. 1050 BCE: The alphabet travels
550 BCE: The Persian Empire
508 BCE: Democracy in Athens
c. 5th century BCE: The Buddha
334–323 BCE: Alexander's march
221 BCE: China unified
c. 130 BCE: The Silk Road opens
c. 30 CE: The crucifixion of Jesus
c. 100 CE: Teotihuacan
c. 100 CE: The kingdom of Aksum
117 CE: Rome at its height
250–900 CE: The Classic Maya
476 CE: The end of the Western Empire
622 CE: The rise of Islam
762 CE: Baghdad is founded
793 CE: The Viking age
c. 1000–1300 CE: Polynesian voyagers
c. 1000 CE: Norse in North America
c. 1050 CE: Cahokia
c. 1150 CE: Angkor Wat
c. 1100–1450 CE: Great Zimbabwe
1206 CE: The Mongol Empire
1324 CE: Mansa Musa's pilgrimage
1347 CE: The Black Death
1405–1433 CE: Zheng He's treasure fleets
1438 CE: The Inca Empire
c. 1450 CE: The printing press
1453 CE: The fall of Constantinople
1492 CE: Columbus crosses the Atlantic
1519–1522 CE: Around the world
1526 CE: The Mughal Empire
1687 CE: The Scientific Revolution
1500s–1860s: The Atlantic slave trade
1760s onward: The Industrial Revolution
1776 CE: American independence
1789 CE: The French Revolution
1804 CE: Haitian independence
1868 CE: The Meiji Restoration
1869 CE: The Suez Canal
1884–1885 CE: The scramble for Africa
1914–1918: The First World War
1917: The Russian Revolution
1939–1945: The Second World War
1945: The United Nations
1947: Independence and partition
1949: The People's Republic of China
1957: Africa's independence
1957: The space age
1989: The Berlin Wall falls
1991: The World Wide Web
1994: The end of apartheid
2015: The Paris Agreement
Jebel Irhoud, Morocco
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Origins
First farmers
Cities and writing
The classical world
Connected worlds
Oceans and empires
Revolutions
The modern world
c. 300,000 BCE
300,000 BCE
10,000 BCE
1 CE
1500
2025