Five thousand years of breakthroughs.
Drag the timeline. Click for the moment behind each one.
- 3200 BCE · Humanity
Cuneiform writing
Sumer invents writing — and with it, history.
Mesopotamia - 1700 BCE · Humanity
Code of Hammurabi
An eye for an eye — codified for the first time.
Babylon - 500 BCE · Philosophy
Buddha's Four Noble Truths
A diagnosis of why beings suffer, and a path out.
Northern India - 399 BCE · Philosophy
Death of Socrates
Drinks the hemlock rather than recant. Western philosophy begins in earnest.
Athens - 300 BCE · Science
Euclid's Elements
Geometry as deduction. The first textbook still in use.
Alexandria - 105 · Humanity
Paper invented by Cai Lun
Knowledge becomes portable. Civilizations diverge.
Han China - 632 · Philosophy
Quranic revelation completes
A new monotheistic civilization takes root.
Arabia - 868 · Humanity
Earliest dated printed book
The Diamond Sutra — printed by woodblock 587 years before Gutenberg.
Tang China - 1088 · Humanity
First university — Bologna
Knowledge gets a permanent address.
Italy - 1455 · Humanity
Gutenberg Bible
Movable type meets Europe. Within a generation, everything changes.
Germany - 1503 · Art
Mona Lisa
Leonardo's smile — five hundred years and still doing the work.
Florence - 1543 · Science
Copernican revolution
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres — Earth is no longer the center.
Poland - 1633 · Science
Galileo's recantation
Forced to deny heliocentrism. 'And yet it moves.'
Rome - 1687 · Science
Newton's Principia
Universal laws of motion. Modern physics begins.
England - 1776 · Humanity
U.S. Declaration of Independence
Self-evident truths get written down.
Philadelphia - 1789 · Humanity
Declaration of the Rights of Man
France codifies the rights of all citizens.
France - 1859 · Science
Origin of Species
Darwin links humans to all of life by descent.
England - 1865 · Humanity
13th Amendment — abolition of slavery
A long-overdue legal recognition.
United States - 1903 · Science
Powered flight — Wright brothers
12 seconds. 120 feet. The sky becomes ours.
United States - 1905 · Science
Einstein's miracle year
Four papers in twelve months. Reality is rewritten.
Switzerland - 1928 · Science
Penicillin — Alexander Fleming
An accidental mold that became the antibiotic age.
England - 1948 · Humanity
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
A bruised humanity writes itself a covenant.
United Nations - 1953 · Science
Discovery of DNA structure
Watson, Crick, and the largely uncredited Franklin.
Cambridge - 1955 · Humanity
Rosa Parks refuses to move
One quiet sentence ignites a movement.
Montgomery, AL - 1969 · Science
Moon landing
One small step. The species leaves home.
Tranquility Base - 1989 · Humanity
Fall of the Berlin Wall
An iron divide gives way to a quiet hammer.
Berlin - 1990 · Science
Hubble Space Telescope launched
Humanity's eye is moved above the atmosphere.
Earth orbit - 1991 · Humanity
World Wide Web public
Tim Berners-Lee gives it away free.
CERN - 2003 · Science
Human Genome sequenced
Three billion letters. The first complete read of ourselves.
International - 2015 · Science
Gravitational waves detected
A century after Einstein predicted them.
LIGO