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
32 entriesHomo erectus disperses out of Africa
Long-limbed, endurance-walking hominids spread across Eurasia.
Africa and Eurasia
Long-distance obsidian exchange
Middle Stone Age groups in the Olorgesailie basin carried volcanic glass tens of kilometres from its source.
East Africa
Gobekli Tepe
Monumental carved stone enclosures raised by people who had not yet farmed.
Anatolia
Catalhoyuk and dense town life
Thousands lived in a honeycomb of mudbrick houses entered through the roof.
Anatolia
Norte Chico monumental building
Coastal Peruvian communities raised platform mounds and sunken plazas without pottery or writing.
Andes
Standardised weights of the Indus
Harappan cities used precisely graded chert cubes in a binary-decimal system.
South Asia
Urukagina's reforms
The ruler of Lagash issued measures against corrupt officials and debt seizure.
Mesopotamia
Code of Hammurabi
A public stele of 282 laws with fixed penalties and prices.
Babylonia
Nubian pyramid kingdoms of Kush
Napata and later Meroe built temples, pyramids and an iron industry on the Upper Nile.
Nubia
Coinage precursors and standard weights
Fixed silver weights circulate as money across the Near East.
Near East
Chavin de Huantar
A highland Andean temple complex drew pilgrims through stone galleries and water channels.
Andes
Minted coinage
Lydia strikes standardised electrum coins stamped with state authority.
Lydia
Buddhist philosophy
Siddhartha Gautama taught a systematic analysis of suffering, mind and ethics in the Ganges plain.
South Asia
Confucian ethics
Confucius framed governance as the moral cultivation of rulers and reciprocity between people.
China
Athenian democracy
Cleisthenes reorganised Athens into demes with an assembly and lottery-chosen councils.
Greece
Library and Museum of Alexandria
The Ptolemies funded salaried scholars and a collection that aimed at every book in the world.
Egypt
Ashoka's edicts and public welfare
The Mauryan emperor inscribed pillars promising medical care, wells and shade trees for people and animals.
South Asia
Aksum coinage and Red Sea trade
The Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum minted its own gold currency and traded from India to Rome.
Horn of Africa
Justinian's codification of Roman law
Jurists distilled centuries of statute and opinion into the Corpus Juris Civilis.
Byzantium
Chinese imperial examinations
The Sui and Tang states began recruiting officials by written examination.
China
University of al-Qarawiyyin founded
Fatima al-Fihri endowed a mosque and teaching college in Fez, Morocco.
North Africa
University of Bologna
Students hired their own professors to teach law, forming a self-governing corporation.
Italy
Magna Carta
English barons forced the king to accept written limits on arbitrary power.
England
Mansa Musa's pilgrimage and Timbuktu
The Malian emperor's gold-laden hajj was followed by mosques and libraries at Timbuktu.
West Africa
Double-entry bookkeeping
Luca Pacioli publishes the Venetian method of balanced accounts.
Italy
Gregorian calendar reform
A revised leap-year rule corrected the drift of the Julian year.
Italy
Joint-stock company and stock exchange
The Dutch East India Company issued tradable shares on the Amsterdam exchange.
Netherlands
The metric system
Revolutionary France defined the metre and kilogram from nature, not from kings.
France
Public education and the normal school
Horace Mann campaigned for tax-funded common schools and trained teachers.
United States
Public library movement
Free rate-supported libraries opened across Britain and the United States.
Britain
Online commerce and secure transactions
SSL encryption and the first web storefronts made buying online safe enough to try.
United States
Blockchain and Bitcoin
A pseudonymous paper describes a decentralised ledger without a trusted party.
International