300,000 BC
Homo Sapiens Appear
Your ancestors walked the Earth for the first time.
The starting point of every human who ever lived.
PREHISTORY
300,000 BC
1 / 80 · 0%
WORLD HISTORY · TIMELINE
World History Timeline
From 300,000 BC to today. Scroll through the milestones of being human.
↓ SCROLL
NEW CHAPTER
Prehistory
70,000 BC
Toba Supervolcano Eruption
Humanity nearly went extinct. Survivors: about 10,000.
All 8 billion people today descended from those 10,000.
40,000 BC
Cave Paintings Begin
Humanity's first art. Altamira cave in Spain.
The artistic skill rivals that of today's children.
10,000 BC
Agricultural Revolution
First seeds planted. The biggest turning point in human history.
Before this, humans were nomads for 100,000 years.
8,000 BC
First Cities Emerge
People began living together in permanent settlements.
Jericho is considered the world's oldest city.
NEW CHAPTER
Ancient World
3,500 BC
Sumerian Civilization
Humanity's first writing, cities, and laws emerged.
Modern-day Iraq. The cradle of all civilization.
3,000 BC
Egyptian Pyramids Built
We still don't fully know how they were built.
A 4,500-year-old structure still standing today.
1,750 BC
Code of Hammurabi
'An eye for an eye.' The world's first written law.
282 laws carved into a stone pillar.
1,200 BC
Trojan War
Homer's Iliad. The Trojan Horse.
Once thought myth — it actually happened.
776 BC
First Olympic Games
Started in Olympia, Greece.
Originally just one event: a footrace.
563 BC
Buddha Born
The beginning of Buddhism. Now followed by 500 million.
He was a prince who gave up everything to seek enlightenment.
551 BC
Confucius Born
The philosophy that shaped East Asia for 2,500 years.
Benevolence, righteousness, propriety. Still relevant today.
509 BC
Roman Republic Founded
The Senate was formed. The origin of democracy.
The beginning of an empire that ruled the Mediterranean for 500 years.
490 BC
Battle of Marathon
Greece defeated Persia.
A messenger ran 42km to deliver the news, then collapsed. Origin of the marathon.
300 BC
Maurya Empire — India's First Unification
Chandragupta unified India for the first time.
Emperor Ashoka spread Buddhism across all of Asia.
221 BC
Qin Shi Huang Unifies China
Great Wall construction. China's first emperor.
8,000 terracotta warriors guard his tomb.
200 BC
Silk Road Opens
East and West connected for the first time.
Silk, spices, religions, and diseases all traveled this route.
44 BC
Caesar Assassinated
'Et tu, Brute?' The end of the Roman Republic.
Stabbed 23 times by 60 senators.
4 BC
Birth of Jesus (estimated)
The dividing point of our calendar.
The beginning of Christianity, now followed by 2.4 billion.
NEW CHAPTER
Medieval Era
105 AD
Paper Invented
Invented by Cai Lun in China.
Before this, people wrote on bamboo, silk, and papyrus.
313 AD
Christianity Legalized in Rome
A persecuted religion became the state religion.
The Church dominated Europe for the next 1,500 years.
570 AD
Muhammad Born
The beginning of Islam. Now followed by 1.8 billion.
Within 100 years, Islam spread across the Middle East and North Africa.
600 AD
Islamic Golden Age
A revolution in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.
The word 'algebra' comes from the Arabic al-jabr.
1066 AD
Norman Conquest
French began mixing into English.
30% of English words today have French origins.
1096 AD
Crusades Begin
200 years of religious warfare.
In the end, Jerusalem was never permanently reclaimed.
1206 AD
Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire
The largest contiguous land empire in history.
Estimated to have killed 10% of the world's population.
1215 AD
Magna Carta
For the first time, a king was subject to the law.
The ancestor of modern constitutions.
1347 AD
Black Death
1/3 of Europe's population died. About 25 million.
Doctors wore beak-shaped masks filled with herbs.
1400 AD
Inca & Aztec Civilizations Peak
While Europe struggled, vast civilizations thrived in the Americas.
The Inca built Machu Picchu without mortar or concrete.
1440 AD
Gutenberg's Printing Press
The beginning of the information revolution.
Knowledge began spreading to the masses for the first time.
NEW CHAPTER
Modern Era
1492 AD
Columbus Reaches the Americas
The world began to connect.
For indigenous peoples, it was catastrophe. 90% died.
1500 AD
Protestant Reformation
Martin Luther challenged the Church.
His 95 theses spread across Europe thanks to the printing press.
1543 AD
Copernican Heliocentrism
The Earth orbits the Sun.
Considered heresy. Galileo was imprisoned for supporting it.
1592 AD
Imjin War
Admiral Yi Sun-sin. The Turtle Ship. 7 years of war.
Yi Sun-sin won all 23 battles. Never lost once.
1600 AD
Ottoman Empire at Peak
Controlled Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
An empire that lasted 600 years, collapsing in 1922.
1687 AD
Newton's Law of Gravity
Watching an apple fall led to the discovery of gravity.
He was 23, hiding from the plague, when he figured it out.
1700 AD
The Enlightenment
Reason and science began replacing religion as the authority.
Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke. Seeds of democratic revolution.
1760 AD
Industrial Revolution
The steam engine changed everything.
For the first time, humans used machine power instead of muscle.
1776 AD
American Declaration of Independence
'All men are created equal.'
Written by a man who owned slaves.
1789 AD
French Revolution
Liberty, equality, fraternity. The age of kings began to end.
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed by guillotine.
1796 AD
Smallpox Vaccine Invented
The invention that saved more lives than any other in history.
Smallpox killed 300 million throughout history. Now eradicated.
1850 AD
Opium Wars
Britain went to war with China to sell drugs.
The beginning of China's 'Century of Humiliation.'
1859 AD
Darwin's Theory of Evolution
Humans share a common ancestor with apes.
Some countries still debate this today.
1865 AD
Abolition of Slavery (USA)
Lincoln assassinated. Civil War ends.
4 million freed, but true equality took 100 more years.
1876 AD
Telephone Invented
For the first time, a voice traveled through a wire.
Bell filed the patent just 2 hours ahead of his competitor.
1879 AD
Light Bulb Invented
Night began to become day.
Failed 1,000 times. 'I found 1,000 ways that won't work.'
1884 AD
Scramble for Africa
European powers drew lines on a map and divided Africa.
Not a single African was present at the conference.
1895 AD
Cinema Invented
The first audience ran away when a train appeared on screen.
Today, the film industry is worth over $100 billion annually.
1903 AD
Wright Brothers' First Flight
12 seconds. 36 meters.
66 years later, we went to the Moon.
1905 AD
Einstein's Theory of Relativity
E=mc². Time and space are not absolute.
He was 26. He published four groundbreaking papers that year.
NEW CHAPTER
Contemporary
1910 AD
Japanese Colonial Period Begins
36 years of colonial rule.
March 1st Independence Movement, 1919.
1914 AD
World War I
17 million died over 4 years.
Triggered by a single bullet — the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
1917 AD
Russian Revolution
Lenin. A communist state was born.
The 300-year Romanov dynasty collapsed overnight.
1918 AD
Spanish Flu
50 million people died worldwide.
More than WWI deaths combined. It didn't originate in Spain.
1929 AD
The Great Depression
Stock market crash. Global economic paralysis.
US unemployment reached 25%.
1939 AD
World War II Begins
More than 70 million died over 6 years.
Holocaust: 6 million. The deadliest war in human history.
1945 AD
WWII Ends + Korean Liberation
Atomic bomb dropped. Japan surrenders. August 15.
A single atomic bomb killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima.
1945 AD (UN)
United Nations Founded
Never again.
193 countries are now members.
1947 AD
Indian Independence
Nonviolence defeated the British Empire.
Gandhi was assassinated the year after independence.
1948 AD
Israel Founded
The beginning of a conflict that continues today.
A return after 2,000 years. The Palestinian question remains unresolved.
1950 AD
Korean War
3 years of war. A nation divided against itself.
The war technically never ended. Still an armistice.
1953 AD
DNA Double Helix Discovered
The secret of life revealed.
Rosalind Franklin's work was crucial but she never received the Nobel Prize.
1955 AD
Vietnam War Begins
20 years of war. 3 million dead.
The first war America lost.
1957 AD
Sputnik Launched
Humanity's first satellite. The space age begins.
The Soviets got there first. America was shocked.
1960 AD
Year of African Independence
17 African nations gained independence in a single year.
100 years of colonialism ended, but the scars remain.
1963 AD
Kennedy Assassinated
Shot in Dallas. America was devastated.
Whether it was a lone gunman is still debated today.
1968 AD
MLK Assassinated
'I have a dream.'
His dream has not yet been fully realized.
1969 AD
Moon Landing
Armstrong's first step.
Only 12 humans have walked on the Moon. The last was in 1972.
1975 AD
Vietnam War Ends
Saigon falls. US forces withdraw.
Helicopters evacuating from the embassy roof became the symbol of the war's end.
1986 AD
Chernobyl Disaster
An event that accelerated the Soviet Union's collapse.
A 30km exclusion zone remains uninhabitable today.
1989 AD
Berlin Wall Falls + Internet Born
Cold War ends. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.
This very page exists because of that invention.
1991 AD
Soviet Union Collapses
Split into 15 countries.
A 70-year communist experiment came to an end.
1994 AD
End of Apartheid
After 27 years in prison, Mandela became president.
Mandela chose reconciliation over revenge.
1997 AD
Asian Financial Crisis
Korea's economic turning point. Citizens donated gold.
3.51 million Koreans lost their jobs.
2001 AD
September 11 Attacks
The world changed.
2,977 died. It triggered 20 years of the War on Terror.
2007 AD
iPhone Released
Steve Jobs. The world began to change.
Today, half the world carries a smartphone.
2008 AD
Global Financial Crisis
Lehman Brothers collapsed. Global economic shock.
Global stock markets lost 50% of their value.
2020 AD
COVID-19 Pandemic
The world came to a halt.
7 million officially dead. The real number is believed much higher.
2022 AD
AI Revolution
ChatGPT launched. Another turning point.
1 million users in 5 days. The fastest-growing product in history.
Right Now
You Are Here
At the end of 300,000 years of history, there's you.
The next chapter is yours to write.
You made it to the present.
300,000 years of history end where you stand. The next line gets written by you.