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
Acheulean handaxe
The symmetrical teardrop biface, made to a mental template rather than by opportunistic flaking.
Africa
Clothing and tailored hides
Genetic dating of body lice suggests regular clothing use by this period.
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
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
Copper smelting at Belovode
A Serbian Vinca site preserves the earliest secure evidence of extracting copper from ore.
Balkans
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Jacquard punched-card loom
Punched cards controlled the weave pattern automatically.
France
Portland cement and thermodynamics
Joseph Aspdin patented Portland cement as Carnot analysed the limits of heat engines.
England
Vulcanised rubber
Charles Goodyear stabilised rubber with sulphur and heat.
United States
Sewing machine
Elias Howe's lockstitch machine, refined by Singer, mechanised stitching.
United States
Safety pin
Walter Hunt patented a coiled-spring pin with a guarded point in a single afternoon.
United States
The Crystal Palace and prefabrication
A vast iron and glass hall was assembled from mass-produced standard parts.
Britain
Safety elevator brake
Elisha Otis demonstrated a lift that would not fall if the rope was cut.
United States
Modern refrigeration
James Harrison built the first practical vapour-compression ice machine.
Australia
Bessemer process
Air blown through molten pig iron burns off carbon to make cheap steel.
England
Dynamite
Alfred Nobel stabilised nitroglycerine in absorbent earth.
Sweden
Aluminium smelting
Hall and Heroult independently found a cheap electrolytic route to aluminium.
Global
Punched-card tabulating machine
Herman Hollerith's machines counted the US census in a fraction of the time.
United States
Zipper
Whitcomb Judson's clasp locker was refined by Gideon Sundback into the modern zip.
United States
Air conditioning
Willis Carrier built a machine to control humidity in a printing plant.
United States
Synthetic plastic
Baekeland produces Bakelite, a fully synthetic thermoset resin.
United States
Moving assembly line
Ford cuts Model T assembly from twelve hours to ninety minutes.
United States
Stainless steel
Harry Brearley found a chromium steel that resisted rust.
Britain