3.3 million years · one continuous record
All of Human History
Every invention, discovery and turning point, laid out on a single coiling spiral — the centre is three million years ago, the rim is today. Drag to pan, scroll to zoom, or jump straight to a year.
In view · 3.3 million BCE – 2026
20 entriesOchre processing for symbolic use
Hominins ground red ochre into powder, likely for body decoration and hide treatment.
Africa
Pigment workshops
Ochre-processing kits with abalone shell containers at Blombos Cave.
Southern Africa
Shell bead ornaments
Perforated Nassarius shells from Blombos Cave were strung and worn as personal decoration.
Southern Africa
Engraved abstract designs
Cross-hatched ochre blocks from Blombos, made with intent and repetition.
Southern Africa
Bone flutes
Vulture-bone and mammoth-ivory flutes from the Swabian Jura, tuned to a scale.
Central Europe
Sulawesi cave art
Ochre paintings of warty pigs and hunting scenes rank among the oldest figurative art known.
Southeast Asia
Figurative cave painting
Ochre animal figures at Sulawesi, Chauvet and El Castillo.
Eurasia and Southeast Asia
Fired ceramic figurines
The Venus of Dolni Vestonice was baked from loess clay long before pots were made.
Central Europe
Enheduanna, the first named author
The Akkadian high priestess signed hymns to Inanna in her own name.
Mesopotamia
Olmec colossal heads
Gulf Coast sculptors moved basalt boulders many kilometres to carve monumental portraits.
Mesoamerica
Tuned bronze bell chimes (bianzhong)
Chinese foundries cast sets of two-tone bells whose pitch was controlled by wall thickness and profile, allowing precise musical scales.
China
Homeric epics take fixed form
The Iliad and Odyssey, long carried by singers, were shaped into fixed poems and soon after written in the new Greek alphabet.
Greece
Linear perspective in painting
Brunelleschi's demonstration gave painters a geometry of depth.
Italy
Benin bronze casting at its height
Guild workshops produced commemorative plaques in lost-wax brass.
West Africa
Lithography
Alois Senefelder invented printing from a flat greasy stone.
Bavaria
Photography
Niepce fixes a permanent camera image on a bitumen-coated plate.
France
Colour photography demonstrated
Maxwell projected three filtered images to produce a colour photograph.
Britain
Sound recording
Edison's phonograph captures and replays vibrations from tinfoil.
United States
Roll film and the snapshot camera
George Eastman's Kodak put photography in ordinary hands.
United States
Cinema
The Lumiere brothers project moving pictures to a paying audience.
France