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
60 entriesEarliest stone tools
Sharp-edged flakes and cores knapped from river cobbles at Lomekwi, predating the genus Homo.
East Africa
Oldowan tool industry
A systematic tradition of choppers, scrapers and hammerstones associated with Homo habilis.
Africa
Percussion flaking at Lomekwi
Hominins struck large cobbles with hammerstones to produce heavy cutting flakes, a technique older than the Oldowan refinements.
East Africa
Acheulean handaxe
The symmetrical teardrop biface, made to a mental template rather than by opportunistic flaking.
Africa
Prepared-core Levallois technique
Knappers shaped a core in advance so a single blow released a predetermined flake.
Africa and Eurasia
Clothing and tailored hides
Genetic dating of body lice suggests regular clothing use by this period.
Africa
Ostrich eggshell water flasks
Engraved eggshell containers let foragers carry water across dry country.
Southern Africa
Ceramic firing
The Venus of Dolni Vestonice, fired clay figurines made before pottery vessels.
Central Europe
Spun fibre and textiles
Impressions of twisted cordage and woven netting in fired clay.
Central Europe
Eyed sewing needle
Fine bone needles allowed close-fitted, layered clothing.
Siberia
Pottery vessels
Cooking pots from Xianrendong Cave, made by foragers long before farming.
East Asia
Jomon pottery
Hunter-gatherers in the Japanese archipelago made cord-marked cooking vessels among the world's oldest.
Japan
Copper cold-working at Cayonu
Anatolian villagers hammered native copper into beads and awls without smelting.
Anatolia
Bricks and mudbrick architecture
Sun-dried moulded bricks at Jericho and Catalhoyuk.
Levant and Anatolia
Copper smelting
Ore reduced to metal in furnaces at Belovode and Catalhoyuk.
Balkans and Anatolia
Woven cloth loom
Warp-weighted looms turn spun thread into cloth at scale.
Southwest Asia
Silk in China
Traces of silk protein in Yangshao tombs show silkworms were already reeled and woven.
China
Salt production by brine boiling
Communities at Poiana Slatinei evaporated salt springs in coarse pots.
Eastern Europe
Copper smelting at Belovode
A Serbian Vinca site preserves the earliest secure evidence of extracting copper from ore.
Balkans
Lost-wax casting
Craftworkers modelled objects in wax, encased them in clay and cast metal in the void.
Indus and Levant
Cotton spinning in the Indus
Cotton threads at Mehrgarh show a fibre industry independent of Old World wool and flax.
South Asia
Bronze alloying
Copper deliberately alloyed with tin to make a harder, castable metal.
Southwest Asia
Glass making
Faience and then true glass produced from silica, soda and lime.
Mesopotamia and Egypt
The Great Pyramid engineering
Precise quarrying, levelling and logistics for 2.3 million limestone blocks.
Egypt
Hittite iron working
Smiths in Anatolia mastered carburised iron ahead of its wider spread.
Anatolia
Iron smelting
Bloomery furnaces produce workable iron from abundant ore.
Anatolia and Levant
Iron working at Nok and the Great Lakes
Sub-Saharan smiths built shaft furnaces producing steel-grade bloom iron.
West Africa
Qanat underground water channels of Persia
Gently sloping tunnels carried mountain groundwater to desert settlements without evaporation loss.
Iran
Tyrian purple dye industry
Workshops at Tyre crushed murex sea snails by the hundred thousand to extract a colourfast purple dye.
Levant
Hallstatt salt mines
Miners in the Austrian Alps drove galleries hundreds of metres into rock salt, using bronze picks, timber staircases and leather carrying sacks.
Alps
Aqueducts and qanats
Underground channels carry mountain groundwater to arid settlements.
Persia
Cast iron
Chinese furnaces reach temperatures that liquefy iron for casting into moulds.
China
Ironworking spreads through the Nok culture
Furnaces in West Africa smelted iron without a prior bronze stage.
West Africa
Cast iron and the blast furnace in China
Chinese foundries reached temperatures to pour iron, 1,500 years before Europe.
China
Roman concrete
Volcanic ash mixed with lime yields a cement that sets underwater.
Roman Republic
Roman hypocaust heating
Raised floors over hot-air flues warmed baths and villas.
Roman Empire
Glassblowing
Syrian workers inflate molten glass on a hollow rod.
Levant
Hero's steam device and automata
Hero of Alexandria described the aeolipile, coin-operated dispensers and self-opening temple doors.
Egypt
Iron pillar of Delhi
A seven-metre wrought iron column has resisted corrosion for sixteen centuries.
South Asia
Wootz crucible steel
South Indian smiths made high-carbon steel ingots later famed as Damascus blades.
South Asia
Banu Musa's Book of Ingenious Devices
Three Baghdad brothers described a hundred automatic and feedback-controlled machines.
Iraq
Great Zimbabwe stone architecture
Shona builders raised mortarless granite enclosures at the centre of a gold trading state.
Southern Africa
Mechanical escapement clock
Su Song's water-powered astronomical clock tower keeps regular time.
China
Angkor hydraulic city
Khmer engineers built barays and canals irrigating a metropolis of a million people.
Southeast Asia
Gothic rib vault and flying buttress
Skeletal stone frames carried loads outward, freeing walls for glass.
France
Wheelbarrow and spinning wheel reach Europe
Two Asian labour-saving devices entered European workshops and fields.
Europe
Al-Jazari's automata and crank-connecting rod
The Artuqid engineer described pumps, clocks and the crank-slider mechanism.
Anatolia
Mechanical clock in monasteries
Weight-driven verge and foliot clocks began ringing the canonical hours.
Europe
Blast furnace in Europe
Taller furnaces with water-powered bellows produce liquid iron.
Europe
Spinning wheel with treadle
Foot power freed both hands and multiplied yarn output.
Europe and Asia
Dome of Florence Cathedral
A double-shell brick dome was raised without centring.
Italy
Mechanical calculator
Pascal's Pascaline adds and subtracts with geared wheels.
France
Pendulum clock
Huygens applies the pendulum, cutting daily error from minutes to seconds.
Netherlands
Coke smelting of iron
Abraham Darby replaced charcoal with coke, freeing iron from forest limits.
England
Flying shuttle
John Kay's shuttle let one weaver work a broad loom alone.
England
Water frame and factory spinning
Arkwright mechanises cotton spinning under one roof.
England
Iron Bridge at Coalbrookdale
The first large structure cast entirely in iron spanned the Severn.
England
Puddling and rolling of wrought iron
Henry Cort's process turned pig iron into malleable bar iron at industrial scale.
England
Power loom
Edmund Cartwright mechanised weaving to match mechanised spinning.
England
Machine tools and interchangeable parts
Precision lathes and gauges made components fit without hand fitting.
Britain and United States