We do not inherit the past. We harvest it.

c. 400,000 BCE

Humans learn to keep a flame, and the dark loses its power.

c. 40,000 BCE

Hands paint animals and signs deep in caves: the first images.

c. 12,000 BCE

Graves made with care show humans thinking beyond a single life.

c. 10,000 BCE

Humans stop chasing food and begin growing it.

c. 8,000 BCE

People settle in one place, and the village is born.

c. 3500 BCE

A simple circle remakes how humans move and build.

c. 3200 BCE

Writing captures words that can outlive their speakers.

c. 3100 BCE

The first great cities gather thousands under one order.

c. 1750 BCE

Hammurabi carves justice into stone for all to see.

c. 1200 BCE

A handful of signs replace thousands, and writing opens to everyone.

c. 508 BCE

Athens hands power, however narrowly, to its citizens.

c. 300 BCE

Greek thinkers turn geometry and logic into systems of proof.

c. 221 BCE

China is bound into one state, one script, one road.

c. 105 CE

In Han China, a cheap surface for writing speeds the spread of knowledge.

c. 476 CE

The classical world's great empire collapses, and an age ends.

c. 632 CE

Islam rises and carries learning across three continents.

c. 800 CE

Monks and scholars copy the ancient texts, line by line.

c. 1088 CE

Learning gathers into lasting institutions.

c. 1206 CE

The Mongol empire links East and West along a single route.

c. 1347 CE

The Black Death empties Europe and unsettles every certainty.

c. 1450

Gutenberg's machine makes books cheap, and ideas travel fast.

c. 1492

Ships reach the Americas, joining hemispheres long apart.

c. 1498

Da Gama sails to India, and the oceans become highways.

c. 1522

One expedition proves the world is a single connected whole.

c. 1600

Goods, silver, and people move along the first global networks.

1543

Copernicus places the sun, not us, at the middle.

1609

Galileo turns a telescope upward and sees new worlds.

1620

Bacon argues that truth must be tested, not assumed.

1687

Newton shows the same rules govern an apple and a planet.

c. 1700

The method of question, test, and revise takes hold.

1776

The United States announces that power belongs to the people.

1789

France topples its monarchy in the name of liberty.

1791

Haiti turns the rights of man into action.

1804

New legal codes spread the ideals of the age across nations.

1848

Across Europe, people rise demanding voice and dignity.

1769

Watt's engine replaces muscle with machine.

1804

The locomotive shrinks distance and remakes trade.

1844

The telegraph sends messages faster than any horse.

1879

Electric light frees work and life from the sun.

c. 1900

Millions leave the land for factories and crowded streets.

1914

An old order of empires marches into catastrophe.

1918

The first great war redraws the map and ends dynasties.

1929

A global depression shows how connected, and fragile, the world had become.

1939

The second great war engulfs the planet.

1945

A single weapon ends the war and redefines power.

1947

Two superpowers divide the globe into rival camps.

1957

Sputnik lifts the contest beyond the Earth.

1969

The farthest journey yet shows what rivalry and cooperation can achieve.

1989

Berlin's barrier falls, and a divided world begins to rejoin.

1991

The Cold War ends, and a single connected world emerges.

1991

A network of documents becomes the public internet.

1998

Information turns instant, vast, and within reach.

2007

The smartphone puts the whole network in every hand.

c. 2010

What we know is stored beyond ourselves, everywhere at once.

2023

Machines become a new way to hold and use what we know.