The Historical Record on the Timeline

286 entries from the historical record, in the order they happened, each with its sources and how far it has been checked.

Every entry

13.787 ± 0.020 billion years…The universe beginsThe universe has an age: 13.787 billion years, measured from the light it left behind.
about 50,000 years after the…The unseen gathers firstAbout 50,000 years in, matter overtakes radiation and the dark matter begins to gather into wells, before any light travels free.
about 380,000 years after…The first free lightAbout 380,000 years after the beginning the universe turns clear and light travels for the first time: the glow still seen as the cosmic microwave…
about 100 – 300 million…The first starsStars light inside the dark-matter wells a hundred to two hundred million years in; telescopes now see galaxies already shining about 300 million…
about 4.6 billion years agoThe Sun formsThe Sun and its disk form about 4.6 billion years ago, nine billion years after the first light.
about 4.4 billion years agoWater on the young EarthZircon crystals from the Jack Hills of Western Australia, 4.4 billion years old, carry the oxygen signature of liquid water: an ocean under an early…
about 2.5 billion years agoLand rises above the seaThe oxygen isotopes of shales from every continent show land standing above the sea at near-modern height and extent by about 2.5 billion years ago…
538.8 million years agoThe seas fill with animalsAbout 539 million years ago, at the base of the Cambrian, animal life diversifies in the seas: most of the major body plans appear within some twenty…
about 475 million years agoPlants reach the landThe oldest accepted traces of land plants, spores in rocks of Oman, date to about 475 million years ago; whole plant fossils follow about 50 million…
about 395 – 375 million…Animals walk onto landFish with limbs such as Tiktaalik, about 375 million years ago, and tetrapod trackways in Poland about 395 million years old mark the first animals…
about 325 million years agoThe first flyersInsects were the first animals to fly. Science dates the oldest winged insects in the rocks to about 325 million years ago, and genetic clocks put…
about 150 million years agoThe first birdsBirds such as Archaeopteryx appear about 150 million years ago. They branched off from small feathered dinosaurs: birds are the dinosaurs that…
about 430,000 – 540,000…A mark before our kindA zigzag engraved on a freshwater mussel shell at Trinil on Java, about half a million years ago, by Homo erectus: the oldest known geometric…
315,000 ± 34,000 years agoThe first of our kindFossils at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, dated about 315,000 years ago, are the earliest known Homo sapiens: modern faces, older braincases.
about 164,000 years agoRed ochre on the coastAt Pinnacle Point in South Africa, about 164,000 years ago, people processed red ochre and gathered shellfish; whether the ochre made marks meant for…
at least 142,000 years agoThe oldest known beadsPierced sea-snail shells worn as beads at Bizmoune Cave in Morocco, at least 142,000 years ago: the oldest known personal ornaments, signs of who a…
about 100,000 – 135,000…Beads at SkhulPierced Nassarius shells worn as beads at Skhul, on Mount Carmel in Israel, about 100,000 to 135,000 years ago.
about 92,000 years agoOchre, shells and a burial at QafzehAt Qafzeh Cave near Nazareth, about 92,000 years ago, people carried ochre-stained seashells inland from the coast and buried their dead, one child…
about 82,000 years agoBeads at TaforaltPierced Nassarius shells, some coated with red ochre, at the Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt in Morocco, about 82,000 years ago.
79,500 years ago (c. 77,550…The board shaken: Los ChocoyosOne of the largest eruptions of the last two million years lays ash across two oceans onto a continent with no accepted human presence.
about 75,000 years agoBeads at BlombosPierced Nassarius shells, worn strung together, at Blombos Cave in South Africa, about 75,000 years ago; the oldest known drawing comes from the same…
about 75,000 years agoA populated worldAbout 75,000 years ago at least five kinds of human are alive at once, and modern humans live in the West Sumatran rainforest at Lida Ajer.
the admixture itself, beside…Archaic ancestry measured in living genomesLiving people carry DNA from four archaic sources, and one bone from Denisova Cave belonged to a first-generation child of two different kinds of…
73,880 years ago (c. 71,930…The board shaken again: TobaThe largest eruption of the age, 73,900 years ago; people in India and South Africa carry on through its ash.
about 73,000 years ago (c.…The first markThe oldest known drawing, a cross-hatch in ochre at Blombos Cave, about 73,000 years ago; pierced shell beads worn there a little earlier.
at least 50,000 years ago,…People reach AustraliaPeople cross open sea to Australia at least fifty thousand years ago, and perhaps sixty-five thousand.
about 60,000 years agoA shared pattern at DiepkloofAt Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa, about 60,000 years ago, people engraved the same few geometric patterns on ostrich-eggshell water…
~12,900 – 11,700 BP (c.…The Younger DryasAround 12,900 years ago a warming world plunged back into twelve centuries of cold: the Younger Dryas, measured in ice and sediment.
deep antiquity, transmitted…Flood traditions and stepped monumentsFlood stories are found on every inhabited continent, and stepped monuments rise on four with no known contact between the hemispheres; Caral in Peru…
11,700 years ago (c. 9,750 BC)The Holocene beginsThe cold snap ends about 11,700 years ago and the steadiest climate in the ice record begins: the one every harvest and every city since has grown in.
c. 9600 BCGöbekli Tepe raised, then buriedHuge carved stone circles are raised at Göbekli Tepe before anyone farms, and later buried; the excavators now debate whether the fill was placed on…
c. 9500 – 8000 BCFarming beginsOn the far side of the Younger Dryas the first farming villages appear in the Fertile Crescent; DNA traces domesticated einkorn wheat to the Karaca…
c. 6000 – 5800 BCThe first wineThe earliest known wine, in pottery near Tbilisi in the South Caucasus, about 6000 BC: the region of the mountains of Ararat.
c. 3500–3100 BCUruk: the first city and the first writingUruk, the first city, is ruled by a priest-king, and its first writing is temple accounts.
c. 3400 BCHieroglyphs: the god's wordsEgypt's first writing is called “the god's words.” The name is a claim made at the birth of script: this writing does not describe the god, it is the…
c. 3000 BCPapyrus and the scrollPapyrus and the scroll come into use: the first portable medium, and portability is what every later release of the word runs on.
c. 2400 BC (Enmetena)Lagash: amargi, the earliest recorded releasesEnmetena, ruler of the Sumerian city of Lagash about 2400 BC, recorded that he 'instituted a remission (ama-gi) of the obligations of Lagash'…
c. 2334 BCSargon's empireSargon founds the first empire, in the same river valley where Genesis sets Babel: the same gathering, tried again after the scattering.
c. 2285 BCEnheduanna, the first named authorEnheduanna is the first author known by name, and she held her post from the throne: the first byline in history was issued by a crown.
c. 2100 BCThe Ziggurat of UrThe great ziggurat of Ur rises on the same plain where Genesis sets the tower of Babel. The tower shape recurs in the tower story's own landscape.
c. 1900–1050 BCThe alphabetSemitic-speaking soldiers and miners in Egypt and Sinai, not temple scribes, cut the first alphabet, where a sign stands for a sound instead of a…
c. 1792–1750 BCHammurabi's misharumHammurabi decrees a release: household debts cancelled, debt-slaves freed, at least three centuries before the Torah's version.
c. 1754 BCHammurabi's CodeHammurabi's law stone shows a god handing the law to the king, who hands it to everyone else, with his own image carved at the top.
Old Babylonian period — nine…Nine edicts in 116 yearsBabylonian kings issue nine such releases in 116 years, about one every thirteen years, but never on a schedule: always at the king's pleasure.
c. 1800–1600 BC onwardThe flood written into clayThe flood story is pressed into clay in Mesopotamia in three separate versions, about a thousand years before Genesis is compiled.
c. 1646 BCThe Edict of AmmisaduqaKing Ammisaduqa's edict spells out its release in numbered clauses, exempts business capital, and outlaws the tricks lenders used to dodge it.
c. 1350–850 BCThe Lapita voyagersSeafarers making stamped Lapita pottery sail east from New Guinea into the open Pacific and reach Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, islands no one had…
c. 1208 BCIsrael named by PharaohThe Merneptah Stele: "Israel is laid waste; his seed is not." The first mention of Israel outside the Bible, already a people in Canaan.
c. 1200–400 BCThe OlmecOn the Gulf coast of Mexico the Olmec build the first cities of Mesoamerica and carve colossal stone heads of their rulers; their ball game and…
c. 1200 BCIron replaces bronzeIron begins to replace bronze in the same years the old kingdoms fall: the material of war changes with the collapse.
c. 1200–1150 BCThe Late Bronze Age collapseWithin about fifty years every palace kingdom of the eastern Mediterranean falls, and Linear B, a script kept to count what the palace owned, is not…
c. 1200 BCTroy VIIa burnsTroy burns in the same fifty-year collapse. The story that survived that fire is one of the few narratives set in the same window as the Bible's…
c. 1200 BC, the eventsThe Iliad's godsIn the Iliad the gods take sides in a human war, deceive, trade favour for sacrifice and strike from behind, and no one in the poem finds it a…
9th century BC (found 1993–94)"The house of David"An Aramaean king's victory stele at Tel Dan names "the house of David" in the ninth century BC.
776 BCThe first Olympiad and the Greek alphabetGreece holds the first Olympic games, the city-state takes shape, and vowels are added to the alphabet; within decades Homer is fixed in writing for…
c. 744–656 BCKush rules EgyptThe kings of Kush, south of Egypt in today's Sudan, conquer Egypt and rule it as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
701 BC (written 691 BC)Sennacherib's own accountSennacherib's annals say he shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem "like a bird in a cage", and do not claim the city was taken.
668–627 BCAshurbanipal's libraryAshurbanipal's palace library gathers some thirty thousand tablets, the Gilgamesh flood story among them: the palace that collects every text, a…
612 BCNineveh falls; the first coinsNineveh falls, and Lydia strikes the first coins; then Croesus sets gold and silver side by side.
605–562 BCNebuchadnezzar II and the temple ledgersUnder Nebuchadnezzar II the same temple speaks for the god and audits the barley: a closed loop, the priest vouching for the ledger and the ledger…
c. 594 BC (Solon's archonship)Solon shakes off the burdensBefore Solon, Athens' poor farmed rich men's land for a sixth of the crop and all borrowing was secured on the debtor's own person, so defaulters and…
586–538 BCThe Temple destroyed; worship in exileBabylon destroys the Temple, and worship goes on in exile by reading the word aloud: the first proof that the building can be lost and the word…
6th c. BCZoroastrian dualismZoroastrian belief takes shape, with a savior, a resurrection and a judgment, in the empire where the exiles were living.
539 – 538 BCThe Cyrus CylinderCyrus's own cylinder records peoples and their sacred things returned to their places after he takes Babylon.
c. 520 BCDarius's Royal Road and the daricDarius lays the Royal Road and strikes the gold daric, and Herodotus counts its stations: a road finished and waiting before the payload it will one…
c. 520 BCThe Behistun inscriptionDarius carves his victory at Behistun and calls his rivals liars: power doing more than making law, certifying its own story and calling every other…
509 BC (Rome's traditional…Rome becomes a republicRome expels its last king, Tarquin the Proud, and is ruled instead by two consuls elected each year. By Rome's own reckoning the republic begins.
551–479 BCConfuciusConfucius teaches in the state of Lu that order begins with right relationships, sincerity and learning.
c. 500 BCHeraclitus and the logosHeraclitus takes logos, a merchant's word for an account or a reckoning, and uses it for the order of the world.
494 BC (Livy's chronology;…Rome: debtors in bonds; the first secessionLivy describes Roman debtors bound over to their creditors (nexi) and complaining that while they fought for Rome abroad they were enslaved by fellow…
490–480 BCPersia against Greece: Marathon to SalamisThe Persian kings send armies into Greece. Darius's is beaten at Marathon in 490 BC; ten years later Xerxes burns Athens but loses his fleet at…
c. 5th century BC (dates…The BuddhaIn northern India Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, teaches that suffering comes from craving and can end, and sends monks out to teach.
c. 445 BC (Nehemiah's…Nehemiah 5: the king's tribute and the restored fieldsNehemiah 5 records Judeans who had mortgaged fields, vineyards and houses to buy grain in a dearth, and had borrowed money for the king's tribute…
c. 440–425 BCHerodotusHerodotus grounds his history in evidence and testimony, and says plainly when he doubts a source: the moment the oracle's monopoly on truth cracks…
419, 410, 407 BCThe Elephantine papyriPapyrus letters from a Jewish garrison at Elephantine, in Egypt, show a working temple to YHW far from Jerusalem, and name people the Bible names: an…
387 BC; 335 BCPlato's Academy and Aristotle's LyceumPlato opens the Academy in Athens; his student Aristotle opens the Lyceum in 335 BC and tutors the young Alexander.
333–323 BC and afterKoine GreekKoine Greek smooths the dialects into one common tongue for government. It is the language the Hebrew scriptures will be translated into within…
January–July 332 BCAlexander's causeway at TyreAlexander throws the old mainland city of Tyre into the sea to build a road to the island: Ezekiel's stones and timber laid in the water, come to…
early 331 BCAlexander at SiwaAt the oracle of Siwa, Alexander is greeted as the son of the god: a template born, a living man joining throne to altar and calling himself divine.
1 October 331 BCGaugamelaAt Gaugamela, on a date fixed by an eclipse, Alexander takes Persia's crown by open battle: power moving by open force, before the later shift to…
331/330 BCA sabbatical year kept, 331/330 BCA sabbatical year falls in 331/330 BC on the modern chronologies, and Josephus records Alexander remitting the Jews' tribute in the seventh year: the…
326 BC (Livy) or 313 BC…The Lex Poetelia abolishes nexumThe Lex Poetelia abolished nexum, the Roman loan under which an insolvent debtor could be held in bondage by his creditor; Livy says the confined…
c. 300 BCEuclid's ElementsEuclid's Elements: grant the starting assumptions and every conclusion follows, and anyone who can follow the steps can catch a mistake without…
c. 300–200 BC1 Enoch, quoted in Jude1 Enoch tells the story of Genesis 6 at length, with the Watchers binding themselves by oath on Mount Hermon, and the New Testament letter of Jude…
c. 295–283 BCThe Museum and the Great LibraryAlexandria's Museum and Great Library set out to gather every book in the world under one roof, and the crown keeps the originals: Uruk again, with…
c. 280–250 BCThe Septuagint TorahThe Torah is translated into Greek at Alexandria: the scripture put into the gospel's language three centuries early, and the version the New…
c. 279 BC; after 272–271 BCPtolemy II deifiedPtolemy II declares his parents gods, then himself and his sister-wife: the seat in its literal form.
c. 262 BC (Kalinga conquered…Ashoka's edictsThe Mauryan emperor Ashoka had his edicts carved on rocks and pillars across India, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan, mostly in Prakrit in the Brahmi…
c. 250 BC onwardAphesis in the SeptuagintThe Greek translation renders both Hebrew words for release with one word, aphesis, the everyday word in business papers for cancelling a debt.
c. 240 BCEratosthenes and AristarchusEratosthenes measures the Earth from two shadows; Aristarchus puts the Sun at the centre, and the idea is not adopted for eighteen hundred years.
213 BCThe Qin burning of the booksIn 213 BC Li Si, chancellor to the First Emperor of Qin, forbade the teaching of history and ordered the burning of the books; by Sima Qian's account…
c. 197–159 BCThe papyrus embargo and parchmentPliny reports that Egypt cut off papyrus exports and that Pergamon perfected parchment in answer: a fight over the word that produced the tougher…
196 BCThe Rosetta decree remits the crown's debtsAt Memphis in 196 BC a council of priests honoured the young Ptolemy V, on the first anniversary of his coronation, in a decree recording that, after…
167 BCAntiochus IV makes the book a capital crimeAntiochus IV makes owning the book a crime punishable by death, yet copies older than his decree survive and are later found in the caves at Qumran…
163/162 BCBethsura and the sabbatical yearThe fortress of Bethsura surrenders for lack of food because it was a sabbatical year, with the fields left fallow, and 1 Maccabees gives the same…
146 BCCarthage and Corinth destroyedIn one year Rome razes Carthage, its old rival in Africa, and Corinth in Greece, and makes both provinces. The Mediterranean becomes Rome's sea.
141/140 BCSimon Maccabeus's bronze decreeSimon Maccabeus is made high priest, ruler and commander by one decree cut in bronze, valid until a faithful prophet should arise: the liberators…
138–126 BCThe Silk Road openedEmperor Wu of Han sends Zhang Qian west. His reports of the kingdoms of Central Asia open the overland routes later called the Silk Road, which link…
136/135 BCTwo more sabbatical yearsTwo more sabbatical years are recorded as kept, in 136/135 and 37/36 BC, by witnesses who mention them in passing, with no stake in proving it.
132 BCBen Sira's grandson and the Letter of AristeasBen Sira's grandson signs and dates his translation and admits it may fall short; the Letter of Aristeas invents a grand royal origin for the Greek…
c. 500 BC – AD 500The Nazca linesOn the desert plateau of southern Peru the Nazca scrape giant lines, shapes and animals into the ground, many visible whole only from the air.
c. 100 BC11QMelchizedekA scroll from Qumran, 11QMelchizedek, reads the laws of release together with Isaiah 61 and makes the cancelling of debts the way sin is forgiven, a…
63 BCPompey in the Holy of HoliesPompey enters the Holy of Holies and leaves the treasure untouched: force checked at the last inch. He took the room and left the gold.
53 BCCarrhae: Parthia stops RomeAt Carrhae, Parthian horse archers destroy the army of Crassus, the richest man in Rome, and kill him.
49–44 BCCaesar: the Rubicon and the Ides of MarchJulius Caesar crosses the Rubicon with his army in 49 BC, takes Rome and is named dictator for life; senators stab him to death on the Ides of March…
c. 44 BCCaesar's sabbatical-year exemptionJulius Caesar exempts the Jews from tribute in the sabbatical year, because they neither sow nor reap in it: the release seen from outside.
40 BC (title)Herod named King of the JewsRome's Senate names Herod King of the Jews. His title rests on Rome's paper, so a claim by blood is a legal threat to him, which is why a delegation…
c. 30 BCHillel's prosbulHillel creates the prosbul, handing debts to the court so they survive the seventh year, because, the Mishnah says, people had stopped lending to one…
27 BCAugustus and the Pax RomanaAugustus brings the Roman peace, puts Caesar's face on the coins, and completes the roads and the imperial post.
c. 20/19 BC onwardHerod rebuilds the TempleHerod rebuilds the Temple on a grand scale: a house with two faces, real worship and a king's borrowed legitimacy in the same stones, and the stage…
9 BCThe Priene calendar inscriptionA calendar inscription at Priene calls Augustus's birthday good news for the world and hails him as saviour: the imperial cult holds the very words…
4 BC (by Josephus's eclipse)Herod diesHerod the Great dies at Jericho; Josephus places the death after an eclipse of the moon, usually dated to 4 BC.
6 ADRome annexes JudeaRome annexes Judea and takes the power of execution into its own hands; crucifixion is a Roman penalty.
AD 17Twelve cities of Asia fall in one nightAn earthquake by night throws down twelve cities of Asia. Sardis suffers most, and Philadelphia is among them; Tiberius remits their taxes and pays…
c. AD 28–29 (written c. AD 93)Josephus on John the BaptistJosephus records that Herod Antipas killed John, called the Baptist, at the fortress of Machaerus, fearing that his hold on the people might lead to…
c. AD 30 (found 1990)The high priest's bone boxIn 1990 a family tomb south of Jerusalem gave up an ornate bone box inscribed "Joseph son of Caiaphas", most likely the high priest who handed Jesus…
c. AD 30 (written c. AD 116;…Rome's record of the crossTacitus: "Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our…
c. 44 – 112 ADThey died without taking it backThey went to their deaths without taking it back. The point is narrow: people die sincerely for false stories all the time, but almost no one dies…
AD 51–52The Gallio inscriptionA letter of Emperor Claudius carved at Delphi names Gallio proconsul of Achaia. It fixes Paul's stay in Corinth, where Acts says he stood before…
55/56 ADA loan dated by the sabbatical yearA private loan from Wadi Murabba'at is dated by the sabbatical year, in Nero's second year.
AD 60Laodicea rebuilds on its ownAn earthquake lays Laodicea in ruins. Tacitus records that this famous city of Asia rebuilt itself from its own resources, without help from Rome.
c. 62 ADJames the brother of Jesus stonedJames, the brother of Jesus and leader of the church in Jerusalem, is stoned: the old attack on the line, in its form after the cross.
64 ADNero's persecution; 1 ClementNero executes Christians in Rome, and the letter known as 1 Clement speaks of the deaths of Peter and Paul as known facts.
c. AD 68The scrolls go into jars at QumranThe scrolls, copied from about 250 BC to AD 68, go into jars in the caves at Qumran: preservation outside anyone's control, laid down some nineteen…
70 ADThe Temple burnedTitus takes Jerusalem and the Second Temple burns; the sacrifices stop that year and never resume, and the Arch of Titus in Rome shows the menorah…
AD 95Domitian's charge of atheismDomitian has his cousin Flavius Clemens, a consul, put to death, and banishes Clemens's wife Domitilla to the island of Pandateria.
c. AD 105Cai Lun's paperAround AD 105 Cai Lun, chief eunuch at the Eastern Han court, reported to Emperor He a way of making paper from tree bark, hemp waste, old rags and…
c. AD 107–110Ignatius writes on the road to RomeIgnatius, bishop of Antioch, writes seven letters to the churches on his way to die in Rome.
c. 112 ADPliny's letter to TrajanPliny, a Roman governor, writes to the emperor Trajan describing his procedure: the accused must invoke the gods, offer to the emperor's image and…
AD 117Rome at its widestUnder Trajan the empire reaches its greatest extent, from Britain to the Persian Gulf: about five million square kilometres and some sixty million…
AD 118 (arrears of AD…Hadrian burns the arrearsOn reaching Rome as emperor, Hadrian cancelled arrears owed to the treasury for about fifteen years (AD 104–118), 900 million sesterces by the…
132/133 ADBar Kokhba's contractsRental contracts from Bar Kokhba's rebel government are dated by the sabbatical year: the sixth and last witness.
after AD 132/133Six attestations, no JubileeSix independent records show the seventh-year release kept; not one shows a Jubilee, not a contract, not a return of land, not even a complaint.
2nd century AD,…Marcion and the two testamentsMarcion splits the God of the conquest from the God of the cross; the church rejects him and binds both testaments together on purpose: a fork, the…
c. 144 AD, and through the…Marcion's canon; the Gnostic gospelsMarcion issues his own Bible, smaller, cleaner and easier to like, and other gospels appear under apostles' names.
c. AD 125–175, by its…The oldest scrap of a GospelA papyrus fragment the size of a credit card, bought in Egypt and kept in Manchester, carries lines of John 18, Jesus before Pilate.
c. AD 155Polycarp at SmyrnaPolycarp, an old bishop said to have known John, is told to curse Christ and go free.
c. AD 155Justin's apologyJustin, a philosopher turned Christian, writes to the emperor describing what Christians do on Sunday: they read the apostles and the prophets, pray…
c. AD 180Irenaeus names four GospelsIrenaeus of Lyon argues that there are four Gospels, no more and no fewer, as there are four winds: the earliest surviving statement that the Gospels…
c. 100 BC – AD 550TeotihuacanIn the Valley of Mexico, Teotihuacan builds the Pyramid of the Sun and grows to perhaps a hundred thousand people, one of the largest cities in the…
AD 203Perpetua's diaryIn Carthage a young mother, Vibia Perpetua, keeps a prison diary before she and the slave woman Felicity die in the arena.
3rd century AD (the crisis…The silver drains from Rome's coin; the price edictIn the 3rd-century crisis the Roman antoninianus, introduced by Caracalla at a nominal two denarii, was alloyed until little silver was left…
AD 250Decius orders sacrificeEmperor Decius orders everyone in the empire to sacrifice to the gods and carry a certificate proving it.
AD 224; 260Sasanian Persia takes an emperorA new Persian dynasty, the Sasanians, rises in 224 and makes Zoroastrianism the state's religion.
AD 303–311The Great PersecutionDiocletian orders the churches destroyed and the scriptures handed over and burned, until the edicts of toleration of 311 and 313.
313Edict of Milan; Cunctos populosThe Edict of Milan makes the faith legal in 313; by 380 an imperial decree makes it the empire's religion and calls everyone else a heretic.
AD 325The council at NicaeaConstantine calls the bishops to Nicaea, where they write a creed declaring the Son of one substance with the Father: for the first time an emperor…
AD 330ConstantinopleConstantine dedicates a new capital on the Bosporus, Constantinople, the New Rome. It is the empire's seat in the East for more than a thousand…
c. AD 340s (Ezana reigned c.…Ezana of Aksum takes the crossEzana, king of Aksum in the Ethiopian highlands, was baptised by his former tutor Frumentius, a Christian from Tyre whom Athanasius of Alexandria…
AD 367Athanasius lists the twenty-sevenIn his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius of Alexandria lists the twenty-seven books of the New Testament exactly as the canon stands today, the first…
c. 405 – 476The Vulgate; the West fallsJerome finishes the Vulgate, the whole Bible in Latin, as Rome's western empire empties out: enclosure beginning, the whole Bible in one language…
AD 476The last emperor in the WestThe Germanic general Odoacer deposes the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus and sends the imperial regalia to Constantinople.
529 – 553Justinian closes the AcademyJustinian closes the Academy of Athens and gathers school, law and altar under one throne.
c. 544–585Vivarium; Gregory the GreatCassiodorus stores the books at his monastery of Vivarium, and Gregory the Great takes over Rome's government in the West.
AD 605Office by examinationChina's Sui dynasty begins choosing officials by written examination on the classics.
AD 499; 628Zero becomes a numberIndian mathematicians write numbers by place value (Aryabhata, 499), and in 628 Brahmagupta gives the first rules for calculating with zero as a…
c. 650 (during Uthman's…Uthman's standard codexUnder the third caliph, Uthman (644–656), a single standard copy of the Qur'an was compiled from the manuscripts kept by Hafsa and copies were sent…
AD 636–651Persia falls to the caliphateArab armies defeat the Sasanians at Qadisiyyah and Nahavand, and the last shah, Yazdegerd III, is killed in 651.
691–692 (72 AH, by its…The Dome of the Rock and its inscriptionThe Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount; an inscription inside dates it to 72 AH (691–692), and it is the…
731 – 850The Donation of Constantine; the False DecretalsTwo forgeries shape the medieval church: the Donation of Constantine, a fake deed granting the popes power over the West, and the False Decretals…
c. 790–792 (the murals' own…Maya tribute at BonampakThe murals of Structure 1 at Bonampak in Chiapas, painted about 790–792 for the court of a lord subordinate to Yaxchilan, open in Room 1 with the…
800Charlemagne crowned; the papacy as family propertyOn Christmas Day 800 the pope crowns Charlemagne, joining throne and altar; then the papacy is held as family property for two generations: the seat…
813The Council of ToursThe Council of Tours orders sermons in the common Roman tongue and in German, because the people no longer understand Latin: the church's own filed…
868 (the date in its colophon)The Diamond Sutra, the oldest dated printed bookA woodblock-printed scroll of the Diamond Sutra, over five metres long, carries a colophon dated 868 saying that Wang Jie had it made for free…
909 (10.4.0.0.0)The last Long Count dateThe last known monument dated in the Maya Long Count was raised at Toniná in Chiapas for the period ending 10.4.0.0.0, in AD 909; the earliest known…
c. AD 500 (the Talmud's…The scribes count the lettersThe Babylonian Talmud, compiled about AD 500, says the first sages were called soferim, 'those who count', because they counted every letter of the…
11th–15th centuries (the city)Great Zimbabwe, and who was allowed to have built itGreat Zimbabwe, a stone city built by ancestors of the Shona between the 11th and 15th centuries, was the centre of a trading state based on cattle…
1023 (the Song state takes…The state prints money: SichuanFrom the late 10th century financial houses in Sichuan issued paper notes (jiaozi) against deposits of coin and silk; when many failed and could not…
1044The first gunpowder formula: the Wujing ZongyaoThe Wujing Zongyao, a military compendium compiled for the Song court by Zeng Gongliang, Ding Du and others and completed in 1044, records the first…
1068 (al-Bakri's Book of…Ghana's gold and salt, describedIn 1068 the Andalusian geographer al-Bakri, working from merchants' reports, described the king of Ghana taxing every donkey-load of salt (one gold…
1075Dictatus papae and CanossaDictatus papae claims the pope may depose emperors, that all princes shall kiss his feet, and that he may release subjects from their oaths; in 1077…
1075 – 1302The medieval prototypeThe medieval prototype: one authority above every throne, one law above every land, a man in God's seat, and a switch, excommunication and interdict…
1095 → the presentThe word martyr invertedThe word martyr is turned inside out, from one who suffers violence to one who inflicts it: the martyr pays and claims nothing; the counterfeit pays…
1095 → 1517Indulgences soldIndulgences, the church's remission of punishment for sin, go on sale: salvation priced, the one debt in the record that was already settled, sold…
1096 – 1204The Rhineland massacres and the crusadesCrusading mobs fall on the Jewish communities of Speyer, Worms, Mainz and Cologne in 1096, destroying most of them, before the army is anywhere near…
c. 1050–1350CahokiaNear today's St. Louis, Cahokia grows into the largest city north of Mexico, perhaps ten to twenty thousand people around Monks Mound, the largest…
1119The Templars' creditThe Knights Templar, a papal order, run an early international system of letters of credit; France's Philip IV destroys them in 1307 while in their…
1139The councils on usuryFrom 1139 to 1311 five church councils call lending at interest a sin, and one admits in its own text that the practice is so rooted that many treat…
c. 1140Canon law and Unam SanctamChurch law is organised and made binding across kingdoms, and Unam Sanctam declares that submitting to the pope is necessary for the salvation of…
c. 1150 – 1187The Toledo translatorsAt Toledo the Greek and Arabic learning comes back into Latin; Gerard of Cremona goes for Ptolemy's astronomy and stays to translate some seventy…
c. 1173 – 1184Valdes of Lyon condemnedValdes of Lyon gives away his property, has the gospels put into the common tongue, and preaches without a licence; in 1184 he is condemned.
c. 1190–1290 (the second…The last lands: East Polynesia and AotearoaRadiocarbon dating shows that the islands of East Polynesia, New Zealand, Hawai'i and Rapa Nui among them, were the last habitable places on earth to…
c. 1181–1221Lalibela's rock churchesIn the Ethiopian highlands eleven churches are cut down into the living rock under King Lalibela, by tradition a New Jerusalem.
1204–1206Genghis Khan, and his law written downTemüjin unites the Mongol tribes and is proclaimed Genghis Khan in 1206. He has the Mongol language written down for the first time, in the Uyghur…
1258Baghdad sacked; the House of Wisdom lostIn 1258 the Mongol prince Hülegü, grandson of Genghis Khan, took Baghdad, executed al-Musta'sim, the last Abbasid caliph, massacred a great part of…
1274 and 1281Gunpowder bombs off Japan: the Mongol invasionsKublai Khan's fleets attacked Japan in 1274 and 1281; the Yuan troops threw exploding gunpowder shells, and a hollow ceramic bomb from the 1281 fleet…
c. 1270–1309The largest land empireWhen Kublai Khan completes the conquest of Song China in 1279, the Mongol empires reach from the Pacific to Eastern Europe: about a sixth of the…
1324Mansa Musa's gold in CairoMansa Musa of Mali made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 with a caravan chroniclers put at 60,000 people; his spending and gifts in Cairo were…
1347–1351 (the plague)The Black Death as a resetPlague spread along the trade routes from Asia to the Mediterranean and Europe, killing about 25 million people in Europe between 1347 and 1351 by…
1377Jikji: metal movable typeJikji, an anthology of Zen Buddhist teachings printed in Korea in 1377, is the oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type, 78 years before…
1382Wycliffe's Bible and the Council of ConstanceWycliffe puts the whole Bible into English and dies in his bed; the Council of Constance condemns him, and in 1428 his bones are dug up, burned and…
1428 (the Triple Alliance)…The Aztec tribute rollsFrom 1428, when Itzcóatl joined Tenochtitlan with Texcoco and Tlacopan, the alliance came to rule 400 to 500 small states, by one standard estimate…
1436The Ming sea-ban; Constantinople; ColumbusChina's Ming emperors ban sea voyages after Zheng He's treasure fleets; Constantinople falls and its Greek books reach the West just as a press in…
c. 1438–1532 (the…The Inca labour tax and the khipu ledgersThe Inca state had no coinage and ran on labour owed to it by households in turn (mit'a): farming state and temple land, building roads and terraces…
c. 1440Movable typeGutenberg's movable type, built to make money copying text, not to free anyone, breaks the old control of the word as a side effect; its first major…
1446 (published; presented…Hangul: an alphabet for the peopleKing Sejong of Joseon devised an alphabet for Korean, presented to his court at the turn of 1443–44 and published in 1446 as Hunminjeongeum, 'the…
1492–c. 1600The Great Dying in the AmericasA 2019 review of 119 regional estimates puts the population of the Americas before 1492 at about 60.5 million (interquartile range 44.8–78.2 million)…
1493Inter caetera; Pacioli; the RequerimientoA papal bull divides the New World; Pacioli prints double-entry bookkeeping; Spain reads the Requerimiento aloud, in a language the people it…
c. 1501–1866 (SlaveVoyages'…The Atlantic slave trade, measuredBetween the early 1500s and the 1860s about 12.5 million Africans were forced aboard ships for the Americas and about 10.7 million survived the…
1511The Portuguese take MalaccaIn 1511 the Portuguese commander Afonso de Albuquerque seized Melaka (Malacca) on the Malay Peninsula, the main distribution point for the spices of…
1517LutherLuther sets out ninety-five theses against indulgences; told to recant at Worms, he refuses, then translates the New Testament into German: grace…
1521Tenochtitlan fallsTenochtitlan, the Aztec capital founded about 1325 on islands in Lake Texcoco and home to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 people in 1519 (the figure…
1526Tyndale and the King James VersionTyndale prints an English New Testament in exile and smuggles it into England in bales of cloth; copies are bought up to be burned, and in 1536 he is…
1526Afonso of Kongo writes to the king of PortugalIn 1526 Afonso I (Nzinga Mbemba), the Christian king of Kongo, began a series of letters to João III of Portugal complaining that Portuguese…
20 or 21 April 1526Guns at PanipatAt Panipat, north of Delhi, in April 1526, Babur defeated the much larger army of Ibrahim Lodi, sultan of Delhi, placing artillery and matchlock men…
November 1532 (capture)Cajamarca and Atahualpa's ransomIn November 1532 Francisco Pizarro, with some 168 men, 62 of them mounted, set up his artillery at Cajamarca, sent a priest to call on the Inca…
1543Tanegashima: the gun reaches JapanIn 1543 Portuguese sailors landed on Tanegashima, south of Kyushu, in the first recorded trade between Europe and Japan; the island's lord bought…
1545 (silver found)Potosí silver and the mitaSilver was found at Potosí in 1545, and within three decades the city passed 150,000 people, the largest in the New World, and the site was regarded…
15 August 1549Francis Xavier lands at KagoshimaOn 15 August 1549 the Jesuit Francis Xavier and Anjirō, a Japanese convert he had met at Malacca, landed at Kagoshima from a Chinese junk, the only…
July 1562Landa burns the Maya booksIn July 1562 the Franciscan Diego de Landa held an auto-da-fé at Maní in Yucatán that destroyed about 5,000 Maya images and precious Maya books…
1565–1815The Manila galleon and the silver road to ChinaFrom 1565 to 1815 one Spanish galleon a year sailed each way between Acapulco and Manila, carrying Chinese silk and other Asian goods east and great…
1587 (Tenshō 15, sixth…Hideyoshi expels the missionariesIn the sixth month of 1587 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a day after an edict limiting the spread of Christianity, ordered the missionaries (padres) out of…
1591Tondibi: guns end the Songhai EmpireIn 1591 a Moroccan army with firearms, sent by Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur after an earlier raid on the Taghaza salt deposits, routed the Songhai at…
5 February 1597The twenty-six martyrs of NagasakiOn 5 February 1597, on Hideyoshi's orders, 26 Catholics, twenty of them Japanese, Franciscans, Jesuits, laymen and young boys among them, were…
25 August 1600Gracia, who would not be takenAkechi Tama was a traitor's daughter: in 1582 her father killed his lord, Oda Nobunaga.
1614The Tokugawa ban on ChristianityThe Tokugawa shogunate, which saw the faith spread since Xavier's visit as a threat to its rule, banned Christianity in 1614.
1620Bacon, Descartes, the Royal SocietyBacon writes against Aristotle, Descartes finds certainty in the reasoning mind, and the Royal Society takes the motto “on no one's word.” Both books…
1637–1638The Shimabara RebellionPeasants of the Shimabara Peninsula and the Amakusa islands, most of them Catholic converts, rose against heavy taxation and abusive officials in…
1633–1639 (the seclusion…Japan closes; the trampling imagesEdicts of 1633 and 1635 barred Japanese from going abroad or returning, and in 1639 Portuguese ships were forbidden to trade with or visit Japan…
c. 1700 – 1793The Enlightenment and the Festival of ReasonThe Enlightenment makes reason the judge, and revolutionary France seats a Goddess of Reason on the altar of Notre-Dame: the garden's pride grown up.
17th–19th centuries (the Old…Pawns for credit on the Atlantic coastFrom the 17th to the 19th century people in much of Atlantic Africa were held as pawns, collateral for debts usually incurred by relatives, to raise…
1712 (Newcomen)Newcomen's engine and Watt's condenserThe first recorded Newcomen steam engine was set up near Dudley Castle in Staffordshire in 1712 to pump water out of mines.
1713 – 1835The law of large numbers and the average manBernoulli proves the law of large numbers, and Quetelet turns it on people: the average man, who exists nowhere and describes everyone, and the…
1757Plassey, the Regulating Act, limited liabilityA trading company wins at Plassey and walks away holding Bengal; Parliament regulates its rule instead of taking it back, and limited liability later…
1769 (the patent)Arkwright's water frame and the factoryRichard Arkwright patented his water-powered spinning machine, the water frame, in 1769; it made a cotton yarn strong enough for warp, and with…
1792 and 1799 (Seringapatam)Mysore's rockets go westMysore's army fired rockets at the British at Seringapatam in 1792 and 1799 (Britannica attributes them to Hyder Ali, though his son Tipu Sultan…
1793The cotton ginEli Whitney's cotton gin (1793) pulled cotton fibre through wire teeth and left the seed behind; it met the demand of England's mechanised spinning…
2 December 1804Napoleon crowns himselfNapoleon takes the crown from the altar at Notre-Dame, with the pope present, and crowns himself, as agreed beforehand: the seat authorising itself…
1821 (the syllabary)The Cherokee syllabary and the Trail of TearsBy 1821 Sequoyah had made a syllabary of 86 symbols for the Cherokee language, some shaped like letters of other alphabets but given new sound…
1822–1825 (the loans)Latin America's first debt crisisBetween 1822 and 1825 Colombia, Chile, Peru, Buenos Aires, Brazil, Mexico, Central America and Guadalajara, and 'Poyais', a country that did not…
1804 (independence)Haiti pays for its freedomHaiti, whose population is almost entirely descended from enslaved Africans, won independence from France in 1804.
1830The Liverpool and Manchester RailwayThe Liverpool and Manchester Railway, designed by George Stephenson and opened in 1830, was the first railway to link two major cities and the first…
1830–1870Java's Cultivation SystemFrom 1830 the Dutch governor-general Johannes van den Bosch required Javanese villagers to set aside a fifth of their rice land for export crops such…
10 July 1832The Bank vetoPresident Jackson vetoes the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States; its federal charter runs out in 1836.
28 August 1833The Slavery Abolition ActBritain abolishes slavery and pays twenty million pounds, about forty per cent of that year's government spending, to the slave-owners for their lost…
1839–1842 (war)The Opium War and the Treaty of NanjingBritish merchants had shipped opium, mostly from India, into China illegally since the 1700s, and in 1839 Chinese officials seized and destroyed more…
6 February 1840The Treaty of Waitangi: two textsOn 6 February 1840 William Hobson and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, the basis of Britain's annexation of the North Island that May (the…
24 May 1844Morse's telegraphMorse's telegraph runs from the Capitol to Baltimore, and the first message is from Numbers 23:23: “What hath God wrought.” The word leaves the body…
1850–1864The Taiping Heavenly KingdomHong Xiuquan, influenced by Christian teaching, came to believe he was the son of God and younger brother of Jesus and in 1851 proclaimed the Taiping…
24 November 1859 → 1864On the Origin of SpeciesDarwin publishes On the Origin of Species; within a year Huxley argues it against Wilberforce at Oxford, and his circle goes on to run the Royal…
1862 – 1863Greenbacks and the national banksTo pay for the Civil War, Congress makes paper United States notes legal tender in February 1862 and creates nationally chartered banks in February…
1863 (the Settlements Act)Māori land confiscated; the Waitangi TribunalUnder the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, passed during the wars with Māori, the government confiscated more than 1.2 million hectares of Māori…
17 March 1865The hidden Christians come forward at ŌuraOn 17 March 1865 hidden Christians from the village of Urakami risked their lives to visit the new Ōura church in Nagasaki, built in 1864 in memory…
3 January 1868The Meiji RestorationOn 3 January 1868 a coup in Kyoto ended the Tokugawa shogunate and proclaimed the rule of the young Meiji emperor; its leaders, having watched…
1870The Papal States takenThe Papal States are absorbed into a united Italy, and the papacy spends fifty-nine years as a sovereign without a country.
1863–1876 (the debt)Egypt's debt and the occupationUnder Khedive Ismail, who opened the Suez Canal in 1869 with great display, Egypt's national debt rose from £7 million in 1863 to almost £100 million…
1879–1884The War of the Pacific: a war for nitrateWhen Bolivia tried to raise taxes on a Chilean nitrate company in the Atacama Desert, Chile occupied the port of Antofagasta on 14 February 1879, and…
1883Eugenics; Buck v. BellGalton coins the word eugenics, and in Buck v. Bell the U.S. Supreme Court upholds forced sterilisation: the old war on bloodlines, now wearing a lab…
13 May 1888Brazil's Golden LawOn 13 May 1888 Princess Isabel, regent for her father Pedro II, signed the Golden Law (Law No.
2 May 1889 (the treaty)Wichale's two texts and AdwaArticle XVII of the Treaty of Wichale (1889) said in its Amharic text that Menelik II 'could' use Italy's good offices in foreign affairs and in its…
17 April 1895 (Shimonoseki)The indemnity clock on China: 1895 and 1901The Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895) made China cede Taiwan and pay Japan 200 million taels, plus 30 million more when Japan returned the Liaodong…
28 February 1913The money trust reportThe House's Pujo committee reports on the "money trust". It declines to find a trust in the sense of a definite agreement, and finds a vast and…
1919 (Versailles)Reparations: the bill, the loans, the endThe Treaty of Versailles made Germany liable for Allied war damage, and in 1921 the Reparation Commission set the bill at 132 billion gold marks…
1934 – 1936The munitions inquiryThe Senate committee on the munitions industry (the Nye Committee) reports that American arms makers won foreign business by methods amounting to…
November 1936The Social Security card legendThe Social Security number is created only to track earnings, and from 1946 the card says it is not for identification.
1945Trinity and HiroshimaThe first atomic bomb is tested at Trinity and then dropped on Hiroshima. From here a human act could end the species, and it is Babel a second time…
1947The Dead Sea Scrolls foundFrom 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls come out of the caves at Qumran: the Great Isaiah Scroll first, and in later finds the older reading of Deuteronomy…
1947 (scroll copied c. 125 BC)The Isaiah scroll collatedSet beside the medieval Hebrew text, the Isaiah scroll is about 95 per cent identical word for word; the rest is spelling and slips of the pen.
8 July 1947The Roswell statement and its retractionThe Roswell airfield announces a flying disc, then retracts it within hours as a weather balloon; in 1994 the Air Force names a secret balloon…
July 1947The descent planted: a reading of the sky recordA reading, labelled speculation, planted and not paid: if the sons of God of Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 82 act in the physical world, the sky record…
14 May 1948Israel declaredA Jewish state is declared, nineteen centuries after Rome burned the Temple; the Vatican withholds recognition until 1993.
2 November 1949 (concluded)Indonesia's independence debtBy the Hague (Round Table) Agreement, concluded on 2 November 1949 and ratified by both sides in December, the Netherlands transferred sovereignty…
February 1953The London Debt AgreementThe London Agreement on German External Debts, signed in February 1953, cut West Germany's pre-war and post-war external debts from 29.7 to 14.5…
7 June 1967The Old City takenIsraeli paratroopers take the Old City; since 1948 it had been under Jordan, and Jews had been barred from the Western Wall despite the armistice's…
24 December 1968Apollo 8 and the lunar communionApollo 8 rounds the Moon, photographs the Earth rising, and its crew reads Genesis 1:1–10 to the largest audience that had ever listened to anything.
11 September 2001The towers and the Patriot ActForty-five days after the towers fall, the Patriot Act is signed: business records opened to collection on orders the subject never sees, and banks…
2001–2002Magnetometry at Uruk; the Book of GiantsIn 2001 and 2002 a magnetic survey at Uruk finds brick structures in the old bed of the Euphrates, where the epic says Gilgamesh was buried, and it…
2003 — a hypothesis, askedUruk and the 2003 invasion: a hypothesisA hypothesis, labelled speculation and asked rather than dismissed: that the unopened structure at Uruk, read as Gilgamesh's burial, was among the…
2009Aadhaar and biometric paymentIndia's Aadhaar begins enrolling people by their fingerprints and eyes, and a phone payment system launches that a fingerprint authorises; the face…
2012CRISPR-Cas9Doudna and Charpentier show that Cas9 can be aimed at any DNA sequence you name. The line of descent, which could always be struck from outside…
21 November 2012 → 25…Autonomy in weapons directivesNo government has acknowledged letting a machine decide to kill a particular person.
June 2014 → blacklists 2018–20The social credit outline and the blacklistChina's State Council publishes a social-credit outline; there is no single national score on every citizen, but by 2018 the courts' blacklist of…
June 2017 → 30 November 2022The transformer, then public releaseEight researchers publish “Attention Is All You Need” to improve machine translation; scaled up, the architecture opens to the public on 30 November…
February 2022Accounts frozen without a court orderA G7 government orders banks to freeze the property of listed people with no warrant or court order; a public inquiry finds it lawful, and eleven…
2022 → 2026Beneath the Holy SepulchreExcavation beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre finds an old quarry filled in and planted with olive and vine, beside rock-cut tombs: the kind of…
February 2025Encryption withdrawn from a national marketA company withdraws its strongest encryption from a whole country rather than build the access a secret notice under that country's surveillance law…
documented, present tense…Model collapseTrain a made mind on its own output, generation after generation, and it does not fail at random: the rare cases go first.
now — checkable todayFive subsystemsA forecast, not an event: the letter names five systems the endgame would need. A network reaching everyone at once; comfort so total no one reaches…
now — the honest failures,…The honest failuresThe checks that failed, printed first: no audience has ever been the whole world (the largest simultaneous live audience on record is fifty-nine…
speculationWhy anyone would say yesSpeculation, labelled: why anyone would say yes. Today no single desk sets your income, so no desk can unset it; let enough people stop earning that…
speculationThe welcomed saviorSpeculation, labelled: the welcomed saviour. Let suffering grow unbearable, and at its peak one arrives who ends it, invited to power by a grateful…
speculationOneness by consentSpeculation, labelled: oneness by consent. Babel gathered back together, one system, one tongue, one interface, under one who wants to be known as…
now — the only dated claim…Somewhere else to standAn argument, not an event: somewhere else to stand. Ownership shared at the source, a way to buy and sell outside the one system, and power spread…
nowThe thing he could not modelSpeculation, labelled: the thing he could not model. Everything the counterfeit does turns something real; he can make an image that speaks but…
measured nowDark energySpeculation, labelled: dark energy. Gravity gathers, and its last form is a black hole, where nothing is released, not even light; dark energy holds…
the instrument the reader…Six testsAn instrument, not an event: six tests anyone can run on anything, without naming anyone. Can a person who says no still eat?