 Text search
 Related images
 HistoryWorld
 Link
 Map
Click the icons to visit linked content. Hover to see the search terms |
|  |
| | | | World History timeline |
| | | | | | |
| c. -13.7 billion years ago |
| | | Big Bang, an unimaginably large explosion from an unimaginably small particle - according to modern theory the first moment of the universe | |
| |
|
| c. -13.7 billion years ago |
| | | Hydrogen and helium nuclei form in the first three minutes, with perhaps another 300,000 years before they combine with electrons to form atoms | |
| |
|
| c. -13 billion years ago |
| | | As gravity exerts its pressure within parts of the expanding fireball, subnuclear particles merge into more complex elements | |
| |
|
| c. - 12 billion years ago |
| | | The first galaxies begin to form, as self-contained gravitational systems with gases gradually coalescing into stars | |
| |
|
| c. -4.6 billion years ago |
| | | A new galaxy, the Milky Way, forms - and one of its stars is our sun | |
| |
|
| c. -4.6 billion years ago |
| | | The new star settles down, while nuclear dust in the vicinity coalesces into planets and asteroids orbiting the sun | |
| |
|
| c. -4.5 billion years ago |
| | | The earth condenses into a solid sphere, with an inner core which is extremely dense and hot | |
| |
|
| c. -4 billion years ago |
| | | The earth's surface settles into a heaving turmoil of rock and water | |
| |
|
| c. -3.5 billion years ago |
| | | Fossilized bacteria have been found in rock 3.5 billion years old in Africa | |
| |
|
| c. -3 billion years ago |
| | | Single-celled water creatures, such as algae, begin the 2-billion-year process of evolving into slightly more complex forms of life | |
| |
|
| c. -1 billion years ago |
| | | Sponges and jellyfish drift in the sea, to be joined later by more purposeful shrimps and lobsters | |
| |
|
| c. -225 million years ago |
| | | The dinosaurs dominate the planet in a way that no previous creature has been able to | |
| |
|
| c. -125 million years ago |
| | | Primitive birds begin to feature in the fossil record | |
| |
|
| c. -65 million years ago |
| | | Mammals evolve in many forms on land and in the water, using opportunities made possible by the extinction of the dinosaurs | |
| |
|
| c. -65 million years ago |
| | | In a very short space of time the dinosaurs die out, for reasons as yet uncertain | |
| |
|
| c. -50 million years ago |
| | | The earliest known creature with a skeleton evolves as a form of fish | |
| |
|
| c. -45 million years ago |
| | | Primates evolve, from lemur-like animals to monkeys | |
| |
|
| c. -40 million years ago |
| | | Plants, previously living only in the seas and rivers, begin to establish themselves on land | |
| |
|
| c. -35 million years ago |
| | | Insects become the first creatures capable of living their full life span out of the water - and the first to master flight | |
| |
|
| c. -34 million years ago |
| | | Amphibians develop lungs, enabling them to live on land as well as in the water | |
| |
|
| c. -25 million years ago |
| | | The entire land surface of the earth merges into a single continent, known as Pangaea, which after about 50 million years splits in two | |
| |
|
| c. -20 million years ago |
| | | The process of continental drift, beginning 200 million years ago, results eventually in our present arrangement of six continents | |
| |
|
| c. -17 million years ago |
| | | Mammals begin to make their appearance | |
| |
|
| c. -15 million years ago |
| | | A primate of this period, at ease both in the trees and on the ground, is probably the common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans | |
| |
|
| c. -6 million years ago |
| | | Various species of ape develop the habit of walking upright on two feet | |
| |
|
| c. -5 million years ago |
| | | Australia becomes a separate land mass, isolating its living creatures. They evolve into many species unique to the area | |
| |
|
| c. -4.5 million years ago |
| | | Certain primates, in eastern and southern Africa, are by now sufficiently like humans to be classed as hominids | |
| |
|
| c. 3.2 million years ago |
| | | A female of the species Australopithecus Afarensis (nicknamed Lucy when her skeleton was found), lives in the Afar Depression in Ethiopia within 50 miles of where her predecessor Ardi was found | |
| |
|
| c. -2.2 million years ago |
| | | Creatures of the genus Homo, classified as early modern humans, are living in east Africa | |
| |
|
| c. -2.5 million years ago |
| | | Hominids discover that chipped stone makes a useful edge for cutting and scraping | |
| |
|
| c. -1.8 million years ago |
| | | A species of human in east Africa, Homo erectus, is probably the first identifiable ancestor of modern man | |
| |
|
| c. -1.7 million years ago |
| | | The ice ages set in, to continue throughout most of human history | |
| |
|
| c. -1.7 million years ago |
| | | Homo erectus, moves out of Africa and begins to spread through Europe and Asia | |
| |
|
| -1.6 million years ago |
| | | A Homo erectus boy, aged about ten, lives near Lake Turkana in Kenya and dies at Nariokotome | |
| |
|
| | | | |