147 pages

Moments that changed the world

147 turning points in human history, from the first farmers to the present: what happened, where, and why it mattered.

Farming begins c. 9500–8500 BCE
Çatalhöyük, an early proto-city c. 7500–5600 BCE
Copper smelting begins c. 5000–4500 BCE
The wheel and the plough c. 3500 BCE
Writing is invented c. 3400–3200 BCE
Uruk, the first great city c. 3500–3100 BCE
Egypt is unified c. 3150–3100 BCE
Bronze comes into wide use c. 3300–3000 BCE
Caral, first cities of the Americas c. 2600–2000 BCE
Indus Valley cities flourish c. 2600–1900 BCE
The Great Pyramid rises c. 2600–2560 BCE
Sargon builds the first empire c. 2334–2279 BCE
Horses and war chariots c. 2200–1800 BCE
Code of Hammurabi c. 1755–1750 BCE
The Vedas are composed c. 1500–1000 BCE
Shang bronzes and oracle bones c. 1250 BCE
Olmec civilisation flourishes c. 1200–900 BCE
Late Bronze Age collapse c. 1200–1150 BCE
Iron working spreads c. 1200–1000 BCE
The Phoenician alphabet c. 1050 BCE
Lapita voyagers reach Polynesia c. 1200–890 BCE
First Olympic Games 776 BCE (traditional)
Iron smelting in West Africa c. 750–550 BCE
First coins in Lydia late 7th century BCE
Cyrus founds the Persian Empire 550 BCE
Democracy in Athens 508/507 BCE
The Axial Age thinkers c. 6th–5th centuries BCE
The Persian Wars 490–479 BCE
Alexander's conquests 334–323 BCE
Euclid and the Library of Alexandria c. 300 BCE
Ashoka turns from war c. 261–260 BCE
Qin unifies China 221 BCE
The Han dynasty begins 202 BCE
Paper is invented in China c. 2nd century BCE
Rome destroys Carthage and Corinth 146 BCE
The Silk Road opens c. 138–114 BCE
From Caesar to Augustus 44–27 BCE
Birth of Jesus c. 6–4 BCE
Christianity spreads beyond Judea c. 33–65 CE
Buddhism reaches China 1st–2nd century CE
Teotihuacan, metropolis of Mesoamerica c. 100–550 CE
Cai Lun improves papermaking 105 CE
The Pax Romana and Rome at its height 27 BCE – 180 CE (peak extent 117 CE)
Kanishka and the Kushan crossroads c. 127–150 CE
Constantine, Christianity and a new Rome 312–330 CE
The Gupta age in India c. 320–550 CE
Aksum becomes a Christian kingdom c. 325–340 CE
The Western Roman Empire falls 476 CE
Justinian's law code and reconquests 527–565 CE
The Tang dynasty 618–907 CE
Muhammad's Hijra to Medina 622 CE
Zero becomes a number 628 CE
The Arab Muslim conquests 632–750 CE
Vikings raid Lindisfarne 793–1066 CE
Charlemagne crowned emperor 25 December 800 CE
The Classic Maya collapse c. 750–950 CE
Baghdad's House of Wisdom 9th century CE
The Diamond Sutra, oldest dated printed book 868 CE
Polynesians settle the remote Pacific c. 1025–1290 CE
Song China: gunpowder, compass and paper money c. 1024–1088 CE
Cahokia, city of the Mississippians c. 1050–1350 CE
The East–West Schism 1054 CE
The First Crusade takes Jerusalem 1095–1099 CE
Angkor Wat and the Khmer Empire c. 1113–1150 CE
Genghis Khan unites the Mongols 1206 CE
Magna Carta 15 June 1215 CE
Great Zimbabwe c. 1220–1450 CE
The Mongols sack Baghdad 1258 CE
The fall of Acre ends the crusader states 1291 CE
Mansa Musa's pilgrimage 1324–1325 CE
Tenochtitlan is founded c. 1325 CE
The Black Death 1346–1353 CE
Zheng He's treasure voyages 1405–1433 CE
Pachacuti builds the Inca Empire c. 1438 CE
Gutenberg's printing press c. 1440–1455 CE
The fall of Constantinople 1453 CE
Columbus crosses the Atlantic 1492 CE
Vasco da Gama reaches India by sea 1497–1499 CE
The Columbian Exchange 1492 onwards
Luther's Ninety-five Theses and the Reformation 1517
First circumnavigation of the Earth 1519–1522
Suleiman the Magnificent and the Ottoman zenith 1520–1566
Fall of Tenochtitlan 1519–1521
Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire 1532–1572
Copernicus puts the Sun at the centre 1543
Akbar and the Mughal high point 1556–1605
The Atlantic slave trade 16th–19th centuries
The Qing take Beijing 1644 (conquest completed 1683)
Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia 1618–1648
Newton's Principia 1687
Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights 1688–1689
The Enlightenment and the Encyclopédie c. 1687–1789 (Encyclopédie 1751–1772)
The Seven Years' War 1756–1763
Watt's steam engine and the Industrial Revolution c. 1760–1840
American Revolution and independence 1775–1783
The First Fleet reaches Australia 1788
The French Revolution 1789–1799
The Haitian Revolution 1791–1804
Jenner's smallpox vaccine: the first vaccination 1796
Napoleonic Wars and Waterloo 1803–1815
Latin American independence 1808–1826
The first inter-city railway 1830
The Opium Wars 1839–1842 (second war 1856–1860)
The electric telegraph: "What hath God wrought" 1844
Indian Rebellion of 1857 1857–1858
Darwin's On the Origin of Species 1859
American Civil War 1861–1865
Meiji Restoration 1868
Electricity for cities: Edison's Pearl Street station 1882
Berlin Conference and the Scramble for Africa 1884–1885
Battle of Adwa 1896
The Wright brothers' first powered flight 1903
World War I 1914–1918
Russian Revolution 1917–1922
The 1918 influenza pandemic 1918–1920
Penicillin and the age of antibiotics 1928–1945
Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression 1929–1939
World War II 1939–1945
The Holocaust 1941–1945
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1945
The United Nations is founded 1945
The first electronic computers 1943–1947
Indian independence and Partition 1947
The creation of Israel, the 1948 war and the Nakba 1947–1949
People's Republic of China proclaimed 1949
Korean War 1950–1953
The structure of DNA: the double helix 1953
Vietnam War 1955–1975
The Year of Africa 1960
Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
Apollo 11: humans on the Moon 1969
The Internet: ARPANET and TCP/IP 1969–1983
China's reform and opening-up 1978 onwards
Soviet–Afghan War 1979–1989
The Iranian Revolution 1978–1979
Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989
The World Wide Web 1989–1991
Dissolution of the Soviet Union 1991
End of apartheid 1990–1994
The genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda April–July 1994
9/11 and the war in Afghanistan 2001–2021
The smartphone: the iPhone puts the Internet in every pocket 2007
Global financial crisis 2007–2009
The Paris Agreement on climate change 2015
COVID-19 pandemic 2019–2023
Generative AI: ChatGPT 2022
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine 2022 onwards