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EVOLUTION OF CULTURE

​Human culture is distinguished from other animals in  that we invent mythical structures that allow very large communities to work together cooperatively. These structures include; religions, tribes, royalty, democracy, ethnic groupings, corporations  etc. These structures require verbal and written communication to organize. Other animals seem to max out at extended family groups.  

These large communities inevitable require hierarchies to manage resources. Traditionally, men dominate the hierarchy because women are consumed trying to support large numbers of very dependent children with high mortality. The lowest unskilled layers of the hierarchy had no leverage and were exploited. Domestic agriculture produced unhealthy mono-diets compared to foraging, at risk for famines. The largest communities were empires that take over other communities, by conquest followed by control through religion and/or  terror. They spread dominating technology leading to their inevitable demise.  

The stories that are used to divide are all mythology.

Sapiens by Yuval Harari

Cultures leave their mark in structures, artifacts and documents that reflect their knowledge, religion and history. From 3000BC-1000BC, there were at least 6 independent "cradles of civilization" scattered around the world. Large scale food production from domestic agriculture, horses  and in the invention of metal weapons enabled dominant armies.  The subsequent evolution of culture is a story of cycles of invasion and repulsion. The invasions were either destructive with "sackings" or co-opting where the invaders simple take over the power structure. The geographic barriers of mountains, desert and oceans isolated  the cradles and constrained subsequent conflicts to mostly within  Europe & Middle East, China & Mongolia, India & Pakistan, Americas, Africa. The fight for dominance between the Abrahamic religions, enabled by technology  leadership, resulted conflicts centered on  Europe and the Middle East

Around 500BC, trade Routes of the Silk Road and Incense Road crossed the barriers isolating China and India from Europe.   In the 1500's AD, the global maritime conquests by the European sea powers (UK, France, Spain) crossed the barriers to Africa, Americas, introduced slavery and enabled the European invasion of India, and Far East, which destroyed many of the local populations and cultures. 

Florence in Italy and Alexandria in Egypt are the 2 cities that form the nexus of cultural development. Our scientific understanding of the world reached a first  peak around up to150 AD in the collection of of Greek  scholarship in the library of Alexandria managed by Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. The library  finally disappeared along with the Western Roman Empire in 250AD, a residual of knowledge was saved in Constantinople in the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire.  Religious dogma controlled scholarship in the West until  the 1400's.  In Florence,  the  Renaissance in Florence was supported  by less than religious popes. At the same time, Guttenberg invented the printing press and information chosen by the publishers became accessible to the masses. What was left of Greek scholarship in Constantinople moved to Florence when the Ottomans look over Turkey. The modern scientific revolution took off.

Absolute monarchies were the rule for centuries, along with a few self governing city states. The Greeks and Romans tried republican systems. The first constitutional monarchy appears in England in 1688, the first post Greece constitutional republic in USA in 1776, and the communists in Russia in 1916. 

After the World Wars, the USA was the only  industrial power  that had not been decimated by the conflicts. As a result, it became the planet wide dominant culture that we see today. The resulting homogenization of culture has inevitably  triggered an effort by many groups to try to protect their uniqueness, and created resistance. 

Now, the internet has taken information control away from the publishers and given it to the masses, creating the misinformation age, even fake scientific papers.  How this affects our ability to make fact based decisions is the question. 

Empires

The invaders of empires fall into 2 groups; the organized militias of residential civilizations armed with metal weapons, and bands of nomadic hunters. The nomadic groups left few cultural footprints. 

 

3800BC Sumerian culture in Persia. 

3000- 525BC Egyptian Empire was the first to leave a record of well preserved structures and artifacts. Numerous conflicts with neighbors.

Mayans and Caral Civilizations in America

Indus River Civilization in India

China Civilizations 

525-402BC & 343-332BC  Achaemenid (Persian) Empires stretched from Mediterranean to Afghanistan. Helped establish Silk Road trading from Europe to China, and the Incense Road from Europe to India. Trading posts such as Petra thrive

                    

235BC  Ptolomaeic (Greeks) Macedonia  kingdom, Alexander the Great  with help from the  Phoenician navy, displace the entire Persian Empire. Prior to the kingdom, the Greek republic was the home for scientific breakthroughs.

37BC-476AD  Roman Empire with well organized military ranged from UK to today's Iraq, with the Sasanian Empire in Persia. Around the world there was;

Gupta Empire in India

Yuan Empire in China

Maya/Aztec Mesoamerican Empire

Nasca/Inca Central Andean Empire

Bantu Culture dominates Africa

378-527 Nomadic hunters, the Goths  from Central Europe, and Huns (Atilla the Hun) from central Asia overwhelmed Western Roman empire. This evolved into the barbarian Frankish Empire controlling France and Germany. 

500-1453 Byzantine Empire, centered on Constantinople, was the remaining Eastern Roman Empire, and became the key to the early spread of Christianity. Finally ended by the Muslim Ottoman Empire. 

800-1299 Multiple Islamic caliphates covered Spain, through North Africa to Pakistan.

800-1808 The Holy Roman Empire controlled Germany, and Austro-Hungary. 

793-1066 Viking empire . The Vikings were the power in Northern Europe after the Romans departed. Their sail power took them to Iceland, Greenland, and Eastern Canada.  

1000's Normans and crusades  The Normans in northern France spread Christianity across France and UK  and led the Crusades into Galilee.  

1206-1405  Mongol Khanate Empire. Mongolians (Kubla Kahn) nomadic hunters moved west, south and east to take over from Ukraine, Persia, Tibet to China.   

1299–1922 Ottoman Empire became the dominant Islamic power in the Middle East, and finally finished off the Byzantine Empire in Turkey. 

1400-1600 The Renaissance stated in Florence Italy funded by the Medichi, and flourished in a period of marginally religious popes. The fall of the Byzantine empire led to the import of Greek scholarship. The invention of the printing press took information control away from the church, precipitating the scientific revolution. 

1492-1900 Spanish Empire, led the global expansion through sea power, spreading Catholic religion causing the collapse of the native South and Mid American cultures. 

1500's to 1950's British Empire, started with the Protestants split of Christianity under Henry VIII. The defeat of the Catholic Spanish armada in 1588, established naval power led to the take over East coast of North America, enabling the slave trade, and  spread control though India and Far east through a combination of invasion and trading monopoly. The British Empire finally underwent voluntary dissolution after WW2. 

1500's France colonial empire began to establish colonies in Canada and Mississippi Valley, the Caribbean and India in the 1600's  

1756–1763 Seven Years' War a global conflict between alliances led by UK and France, that resulted in control of North America by UK.

 

1776 American  war of Independence from UK. Caused the final collapse of Native American population and culture.

1804-1850 French Napoleonic Empire, and rebuilt colonies   concentrating chiefly in Senegal, Madagascar as well as Vietnam, Cambodia and Tahiti.  

 

1914-1918 WW1 UK, France, Russia, USA vs.  Germany, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman.

1939-1945 WW2 UK, France, Russia, USA vs. Germany, Japan, Italy

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Cultural history 

Cultural evolution can be  broken down into :

1) Prehistory  - up to10,000BC - The end of the last ice age 40K years ago had sea levels 120 m LOWER  than today, meaning that the entire continental shelf was dry land populated. 

2) Ancient times -  10,000BC Geographically separate cradles of civilization until the start of the global maritime empires in 1500AD. Europe & Mesopotamia add a further division with introduction of Christianity starting the  Middle ages around 0BC.

4) Modern ages of global empires  from 1500AD to today

Pre history hunter gatherers were not isolated family groups living on the edge of poverty.
These were sophisticated varied and complex communities, with seasonal habits…traveling when needed, collecting as extended groups during prey or harvest excess. Significant free time to play, craft and travel. Built large structures for seasonal celebrations. Elected leaders for ceremony and organized hunting. Personal freedom to do what you wanted outside of group obligations.

Graeber and Wenlow in "The dawn of everything"
 

Ancient times  - Cradles of civilization 

Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, the Erligang culture of the Yellow River valley, Caral-Supe in Peru, and Mesoamerica.   This has earned the region the nickname "The cradle of civilization".  Antelope from Algeria 9000 BC, Bison sculpture from France 12,000 BC

This region, also saw the emergence of early complex societies during the succeeding Bronze Age. There is also early evidence from the region for writing and the formation of hierarchical state level societies.

 

Many different collective hunter gatherer communities have been successful and created their own structures. A function of food cycles, metal technology, external events, community choice. Enviable levels of individual freedom And community support in some. Authoritarian power with slavery in other apparently linked to public art and symbols of power.

Domestication did allow stable centralized power to get established in the Fertile Crescent. The arid land favored irrigation and the storage of any surpluses, which required a central government to exploit which resulted in cities.  Religion enabled voluntary submission to authority. The western culture of individual freedom to acquire, speak, discriminate without regard for others freedoms became enshrined in Capitalism, and has led to the unsustainable levels of inequality seen today.

In the tropics, there was no need for irrigation, but surpluses could not be stored.  There was no support for cities and central governance. 

 

 

Mesopotamia 

The end of the last ice age around 10Ky ago, uncovered the Fertile Crescent which became one the first centers of settled farming.  Once people could grow more than they needed, cities and  a ruling class emerged in Babylon. The Fertile Crescent is most famous for its sites related to the origins of agriculture. The western zone around the Jordan and upper Euphrates rivers gave rise to the first known Neolithic farming settlements (referred to as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)), which date to around 9,000 BCE and includes very ancient sites such as Göbekli Tepe, Chogha Golan, and Jericho (Tell es-Sultan).  During the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an increasingly large population possible.  These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants, learning how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants into crops.

Cultivating wheat provided much more food per unit of territory, and thereby enabled Homo sapiens to multiply exponentially. Around 13,000 bc, when people fed themselves by gathering wild plants and hunting wild animals, the area around the oasis of Jericho, in Palestine, could support at most one roaming band of about a hundred relatively healthy and well-nourished people. Around 8500 bc, when wild plants gave way to wheat fields, the oasis supported a large but cramped village of 1,000 people,

Structures have been found;

       Göbekli Tepe in Turkey 9K years ago

       Nevali Cori in Turkey 8K years ago 

       Catalhoyuk in Turkey 7.5K years ago 

       Mehrgarth in Turkey 7K years ago 

       Jericho in Palestine 8K years ago

       Herxheim in Germany 5K years ago

       Knap of Hoawar and Skara Brae in Orkney Is Scotland

       Maiden Castle UK  3K years ago

       3000 settlements in Romania/Ukraine 5-3K years ago

Domestic horses first appear around 4000 BC.

Metallurgy as  practical chemistry was one of the first technological developments that changed humans circumstances. By 8,000 BC in Mesopotamia, the extraction of copper provided a source of conductive metal for cookware and other uses. By 3,800 BC in the Middle East, copper had been blended with tin  to produce bronze, a hard metal that could be used in swords. By 1800 BC, the Hittites were working Iron and Steel. At the same time gold appeared in Greek artifacts. These metallurgies have been used by archeologists to distinguish the earliest civilizations by their artifacts.  

Archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was constructed in several phases from around 3100 BC to 1600 BC, with the circle of large sarsen stones placed between 2600 BC and 2400 BC. Its is now accepted that it was an astronomical observatory that acted as a meeting place for the whole island. This shows the Neolithic life was coordinated hundreds of miles, rather than isolated tribes. 

In Persia, the Sumerian civilization centered on Ur built clipped pyramids - "Zigguratt" from 3800BC. Uruk and Jemdet Nasr,   c. 3350 – c. 250 BC, southern Mesopotamia (now  south-central Iraq),.  Gilgamesh (reigned 2652-2602 BC), the celebrated king-hero of Uruk in Mesopotamia, is depicted as the Master of Animals. In this representation, he holds a lion in his left arm and a snake in his right hand, flanked by two Assyrian winged bulls. This statue stands proudly near Qinghai Lake in the northeastern region of the Tibetan plateau in China.  The "Epic of Gilgamesh" has a flood story that predates the Old Testament. Ziggurat of Ur in Mesopotamia  2100BC. It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world c. 1770 – c. 1670 BC, and again c. 612 – c. 320 BC. It was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000. Estimates for the maximum extent of its area range from 890 to 900 ha (2,200 acres).  The earliest wood wagons circa 2000BC were found in todays Armenia. 

King Sennacherib, ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 705 to 681 BC. The Sennacherib Prism is a significant historical document because it corroborates and expands upon events mentioned in biblical accounts, specifically in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. 

Urbanization was linked to ruling classes emerge with wealth and resources, fights between rulers to increase their wealth and influence became the norm that has lasted to this day - unfortunately.

Egyptian cultural development

In Egypt, the Pharoes civilization with pyramids and temples galor lasted from 3500BC to 300BC. Memphis (Great Pyramid) 2950-331BC Pharoes Temples  3000-300BC in Egypt. Egyptians made extensive use of hieroglyphics to document their activities. 

 

Over 3000 years, the Egypt of the Pharoes was invaded by the Persians,  Greeks, and Romans without disturbing the religious establishment. 

1650BC Semitic speaking Hyksos invade

1479–1425 BC Egyptian empire invade Phoenicians 

925BC Libyan Pharoes as a result of mass immigration

700BC Nubian Pharoes  from Sudan 

670BC Neo-Assyrian  Pharoes from Persepolis

550BC Achaemenid Persian  Empire invades

330BC  GREEKS TAKE OVER Greek Empire (Alexander the Great)  invades and takes over. He left Egypt in 331 B.C. and left Cleomenes of Naukratis in charge of the territory. This position was later claimed by Ptolemy I through XIII producing the Ptolemaic era temples in Luxor, Karnak, Esna. They were allied to Rome through most of this time.

285BC The Library of Alexandria was created and became a center of learning in the ancient Greek world.

51BC Cleopatra VII takes over (The Cleopatra !), and Rome invades. She eventually strikes a deal with Caesar to maintain power. 

44BC ROME TAKES OVER Caesar was assassinated and Augustus (Octavian) takes over. Cleopatra allies with Mark Anthony.

41BC  After the defeat of Mark Anthony, Cleopatra was deposed by Augustus and Rome takes over. The library was partially destroyed but Alexandria continues as a center of intellectual development through 150AD with the Claudius Ptolemy map of the world. 

270AD Roman rule collapses.

The Hittites 1800-1200BC were an Anatolian Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of Bronze Age West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea,[2] they settled in modern day Turkey in the early 2nd millennium BC.  when it encompassed most of Anatolia and parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. For example, the Sphinx Gate entrance of the capital  city of HattusaBetween the 15th and 13th centuries BC, the Hittites were one of the dominant powers of the Near East, coming into conflict with the New Kingdom of Egypt, the Middle Assyrian Empire and the empire of Mitanni for control of the region. 

Minoan Civilization 1900-1350BC. Knossos on Crete  also Akrotiri. The Minoan civilization developed from the local Neolithic culture around c. 3100 BC, with complex urban settlements, art and writing beginning around 2000 BC.

Around 1600BC, the Thera volcano explodes burying the Minoan town of Akrotiri on Santorini, and leaving a massive caldera.

Genetic study of the Tarim mummies, found in the Tarim Basin, in the area of Loulan located along the Silk Road 200 kilometres (124 miles) east of Yingpan, dating to as early as 1600 BC, suggest very ancient contacts between East and West.  Some remnants of what was probably Chinese silk dating from 1070 BC have been found iAncient Egypt.

 

Mycenae in Greece 1450 BC to about 1100 BC. After c. 1450 BC, Minoans came under the cultural and perhaps political domination of the mainland Mycenaean Greeks, forming a hybrid culture which lasted until around 1100 BC. Lion gate, ancient city of Mycenae (BC 1650-1200), capital of King Agamemnon, Greece. Troy in western Turkey was first settled around 3600 BC and grew into a small fortified city around 3000 BC. During its four thousand years of existence, Troy was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. Kephalonia is an Greek island with the town of Poros thought to be "Ithica" the home of Odysseus who sacked Troy  in the Trojan War which was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the 1200's BC and described in the poem by Homer in 800 BC. 

 

Phoenicians  1100-200BC  in Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. all the way to Carthage, bypassing Egypt.  The Phoenicians came to prominence in the mid-12th century BC, They were skilled traders and mariners. The Phoenicians remained a core asset to the Achaemenid Empire, particularly for their prowess in maritime technology and navigation;[52] they furnished the bulk of the Persian fleet during the Greco-Persian Wars of the late 400'sBC. The Phoenicians developed an expansive maritime trade network that lasted over a millennium, helping facilitate the exchange of cultures, ideas, and knowledge between major cradles of civilization such as Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. The first alphabet appeared around 1000BC. After its zenith in  800's BC, the Phoenician civilization in the eastern Mediterranean slowly declined  until the destruction of Carthage in the 100's BC.

Persian cultural development

 

Dur-Sharrukin (present-day Khorsabad, Iraq), c. 722 to 705 BC.  Neo-Assyrian Empire.

The Scythians  were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people who had migrated in 800'sBC from Central Asia to the Pontic Steppe in modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia, where they remained established  until the 200's BC. In the 600's BC, the Scythians crossed the Caucasus Mountains and frequently raided West Asia.

525-402BC & 343-332BC  The Achaemenid Empires 550–330 BC  the First Persian Empire[  was the ancient Iranian empire Through far-reaching military conquests and benevolent rule, Cyrus the Great transformed a small group of semi-nomadic tribes into the mighty Persian Empire, the ancient world's first superpower, in less than 15 years. Based in Western Asia, it was the largest empire the world had ever seen at its time,  from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east. Persian II empire 226AD - covers Mesopotamia in West, Pakistan in east. Provided a path for the Silk Road trading route to China, and the Incense Road to India. Persepolis in Persian mountains (modern Iran) capital of the  Achaemenid Empire. Babylon in Iraq major city and regional capital of the Achaemenid Empire;  The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon (in the  area of present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq). It was constructed circa 575 BC by Nebuchadnezzar II. Reconstruction in the Berlin museum. The Achaemenid Empire has been recognized for its imposition of a successful model of centralized bureaucratic administration, its multicultural policy, building complex infrastructure such as road systems and an organized postal system, the use of official languages across its territories, and the development of civil services, including its possession of a large, professional army.

Trade with East

Silk Road 329 BC - 1220AD  Samarkand was  key city, part of a network of Caravansari (way points) that supported travelers. The Silk Road derives its name from the highly lucrative trade of silk textiles that were produced almost exclusively in China. The network began with the Han dynasty's expansion into Central Asia around 114 BCE through the missions and explorations of the Chinese imperial envoy Zhang Qian, which brought the region under unified control. The Parthian Empire provided a bridge to East Africa and the Mediterranean. By the early first century CE, Chinese silk was widely sought-after in Rome, Egypt, and Greece.[2] Other lucrative commodities from the East included tea, dyes, perfumes, and porcelain; among Western exports were horses, camels, honey, wine, and gold. Aside from generating substantial wealth for emerging mercantile classes, the proliferation of goods such as paper and gunpowder greatly altered the trajectory of various realms, if not world history. For example, the medieval Tangut fortress on the Silk Road, built in 1032 near Juyan Lake Basin, Gobi desert Mongolia. There are notes from traders.    Palmyra  grew wealthy from trade caravans; the Palmyrenes became renowned as merchants who established colonies along the Silk Road and operated throughout the Roman Empire. Yazd in Iran is another anchient Silk Road city.

Incense Road -  500 BC - 100 AD Petra a key post  on the Incense Road.  The Incense Trade Route  linking the Mediterranean world with eastern and southern sources of incense, spices and other luxury goods, stretching from Mediterranean ports across thee Levant and Egypt through Northeastern Africa and Arabia to India and beyond.   as Arabian frankincense and myrrh;[1] Indian spices, precious stones, pearls, ebony, silk and fine textiles;[2] and from the Horn of Africa, rare woods, feathers, animal skins, Somali frankincense, gold, and slaves.[2][3] The incense land trade from South Arabia to the Mediterranean flourished between roughly the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AD.

Petra grew as a Nabatean trading post on the Incense Road. Hegra in Saudi Arabia is another large settlement.

Greek cultural development 

800-400 BC Olympics 

550 BC Ephesus, Turkey peaks. 

598 BC Democracy in Greece

490 BC Defeat Persians in Marathon

480-479 BC Xerxes from Persia tries to invade - battles at Thermopylae, Salamis and finally looses at Plataea

460-320 BC  Full democratic instiutions in Athens introduced by Pericles

447 BC  Parthenon built

431-404 BC Pelloponesian war with Sparta, led to defeat of Athens and devastated both powers.

427-347  BC  Plato

420 BC  Atomic theory by Democritos

399 BC Trial and death of Socrates

336 -323 BC  Alexander the  Great of Macedonian was tutored by Aristotle and takes over Egypt.

Macedonian (North Greece & Balkans) empire started by Alexander the Great Capital Athens - started as the Greek Republic and its scientific revolution.  

Ptolomaeic (Greeks) Macedonia  kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece,[6] which later became the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece.[7] due to Alexander the Great . During Alexander's subsequent campaign of conquest, he overthrew the Achaemenid Empire and conquered territory that stretched as far as the Indus River. Serapeum of Alexandria, where the Library of Alexandria moved part of its collection.  Many important and influential scholars worked at the Library during the third and second centuries BC, including: Zenodotus of Ephesus, who worked towards standardizing the works of Homer; Callimachus, who wrote the Pinakes, sometimes considered the world's first library catalog; Apollonius of Rhodes, who composed the epic poem the Argonautica;   Hero of Alexandria, who invented the first recorded steam engine; Aristophanes of Byzantium, who invented the system of Greek diacritics and was the first to divide poetic texts into lines; and Aristarchus of Samothrace, who produced the definitive texts of the Homeric poems as well as extensive commentaries on them.   Lighthouse of Pharos was one of the seven wonders.

270 BC Heliocentric world by Aristarchus

250 BC approx. Erastosthenes, third librarian of  Alexandria, estimates the diameter of earth to within 2%.

Between 220 and 150 BC an early astrolabe for measuring latitude was invented by Apollonius of Perga. Latitude measurement based on the sun became a staple of navigation.

41BC Cleopatra was deposed by Augustus and Rome takes over Egypt. 

30BC Rome takes over Greece.

Roman cultural development 

The Roman Republic 509BC-27 BC was the era of classical Roman civilization. During this period, Rome's control expanded from the city's immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean world. Ephysus  part of Grecian empire 400BC. Rome  - 300 BC  capital at start of Punic wars that established power over the Mediterranean, as a Republic under Caesar etc.   Aqueduct in Segovia Spain,   and the Colosseum in Rome.  In 44BC Caesar is assassinated, and replaced by Octavian (Augustus) starting the Empire.

     

The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) was the second of three wars fought between Phoenician Carthage in Tunisia and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. Hannibal crossed the Alps and fought the Romans for 17 years. 

The Roman Empire 31BC-476AD was the post-Republican state of ancient Rome and is generally understood to mean the period and territory ruled by the Romans following Octavian's assumption of sole rule under the Principate in 31 BC. It included territory in Europe, Greece, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. Pompeii was covered by a volcanic eruption in 79AD, spectacular wall and floors have been found. In 100AD, Caligula built the Nemi Ships - floating mobile palaces, the remains were destroyed in WW2.  Timgad is a Roman city located in the Aurès Mountains of Algeria. founded by Emperor Trajan around 100 CE. The city represents one of the best extant examples of the grid plan as used in Roman town planning. In 150AD. In Alexandria, Claudius Ptolemy published the first world map in his book Geography that is scaled pretty well to reality because he used lunar eclipse as a time reference to measure longitude. We only have redrawn versions from the 1500's. He was an Alexandrian mathematicianastronomerastrologergeographer, and music theorist,.  Unlike most Greek mathematicians, Ptolemy's writings never ceased to be copied or commented upon, both in Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages

The Sasanian Empire ruled Persia 300-600AD. Ctesiphon, Iraq has one of the largest brick arches.  Roman emperor Philippus the Arab kneeling in front of Persian King Shapur I, begging for peace, and the standing emperor represents Valerian who was taken captive by the Persian army in 260 AD, The triumph of Shapur I, Naqshe Rostam, Iran.

The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 at the hands of the Goths, and the establishment of the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire  conventionally marks the end of classical antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages.

Americas

First Americans arrived around 20,000 years ago probably as coastal migrants from Asia. Evidence is found in the footprints at White Sands AZ. They made to the Amazon basin by 12,500 years ago. A second wave probably arrives via land bridge at the end of the last ice age 9,000 years ago.  DNA study of Kenniwith Man (9000 years old) , found on the Columbia River, is best match to todays Native Americans suggesting a long term community already isolated from their Asian roots. 

Caral-Supe in Peru, The civilization flourished between the 4000-2000 BC  with the formation of the first city generally dated to around 3500 BC, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area. It is from 3100 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction become clearly apparent,[2] which lasted until a period of decline around 1800 BC. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthwork platform mounds and sunken circular plazas. 

In 1000BC followed by the Chauvin civilization. 100BC to 800AD, the Nazca of lines fame, eventually leading to the Incas in Maccu Piccu and Saqsaywaman 1420-1532AD.

The Nazca Lines are the largest geoglyphs, but not the only. The Bythe Intaglio are a group on the CA-AZ border also dated 1000BC-1000AD. 

Machu Pichu in Peru is a 1400'sAD Inca citadel located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru on a 2,430-meter (7,970 ft) mountain ridge.[2][3] Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is the most familiar icon of the Inca Empire. The Inca Empire   was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America.[4] The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The Inca civilization rose from the Peruvian highlands sometime in the early 1200's. The Spanish began the conquest of the Inca Empire in 1532 and by 1572, the last Inca state was fully conquered.

The Maya civilization  c. 250 – c. 1697 AD was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The civilization is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system.

It developed in an area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador, notably Tikal.   Today, their descendants, known collectively as the Maya, number well over 6 million individuals, speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages, and reside in nearly the same area as their ancestors. There are folded paper documents from arpound 1100 AD. such as the "Dresden Codex"

By 500AD, a significant city of 200,000 had emerged at Teothuca Mexico, followed by the Aztecs. Aztec in Central America  was an alliance of three Nahua city-states: Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan. These three city-states ruled that area in and around the Valley of Mexico from 1428 until the combined forces of the Spanish conquistadores and their native allies who ruled under Hernán Cortés defeated them in 1521.  The sun sculpture is from Mexico area 1500's.

By 1000-1300, there were communities in Cahokia Mounds (near St Louis MI), and  Anazazi Cliff Dwellings in Mesa AZ and NM. Different domesticated crops such as corn became the staples.  

Before the European invasion, native tribes controlled North America

China & South Asia

The Tibet Plateau and the  Russian Steppes have isolated Chinas development from the rest of the world, with a single trade route - the Silk Road. There choice of wood structure buildings means that there are limited buildings to mark thier culture. 

Shang Dynasty 1600 - 1122BC Erligang culture 1600 to 1400 BC of the Yellow River valley,   urban civilization and archaeological culture in China  The primary site, Zhengzhou Shang City.  First bronze castings.

Zhou Dynasty 1122-221BC Bronzeware.  Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism started 

Confucius  c. 551 – c. 479 BCE), was a Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages, as well as the first teacher in China to advocate for mass education. 

Qin Dynasty 221-206BC built both the Terracotta Army and parts of the Great Wall of China.

Han Dynasty 206BC-581AD  the Han dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history. Papermaking, the nautical steering ship rudder, the use of negative numbers in mathematics, the raised-relief map, the hydraulic-powered armillary sphere for astronomy, and a seismometer employing an inverted pendulum that could be used to discern the cardinal direction of distant earthquakes. Art, clothes, bronzes have survived. Buddism arrives over the Silk Road. 

 

Longmen Grottoes is traced to reign of Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei dynasty; period from 493-1127 AD.


Sui Dynasty 581-641AD Reunified north and south, construction of the Grand Canal 1776km long parts are still visible in Beijing.

Tang Dynasty 618-907AD capital Xian. a golden age of Chinese arts and culture. In power from 618 to 906 A.D., Tang China attracted an international reputation that spilled out of its cities and, through the practice of Buddhism, spread its culture across much of Asia. Woodblock printing was developed in the early Tang era with examples of its development dating to around 650 A.D. More common use is found during the 800's, with calendars, children’s books, test guides, charm manuals, dictionaries and almanacs. Commercial books began to be printed around 762 A.D.  The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, Chang'an (modern-day Xi'an). At its height the Tang's controlled most of the area of modern China. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Emprorer Xuanzong's decline and preoccupation with a concubine threw the country into chaos. Between 755-763 CE, the country was torn apart by wars in which close to 36 million people died. There was an industrial scale export business in ceramics for the East Asia Islamic market, as shown in the Belitung wreck.

In 835 A.D., there was a ban on private printing brought on because of the distribution of unsanctioned calendars. The oldest surviving printed document from the Tang era is the Diamond Sutra from 868 A.D., a 16-foot scroll featuring calligraphy and illustrations. Woodblock printing is credited for helping make Buddhism a regular part of ordinary Chinese life by giving Buddhist monks the opportunity to mass-produce texts, and spread Buddism. This lead to resistance to Buddism.

 

Followed by the Five Dynasty Ten Kingdoms 907-960AD  with Infighting and upheaval.

Song Dynasty 960-1274AD  The Song dynasty was the first in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy.   Economically, the Song dynasty was unparalleled with a gross domestic product three times larger than that of Europe during the 12th century. The spread of literature and knowledge was enhanced by the rapid expansion of woodblock printing. In the 1000's AD invention of movable-type printing, which did not take off because there are 3-4000 Chinese characters compared to our 26. Philosophers such as Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi reinvigorated Confucianism with new commentary, infused with Buddhist ideals, and emphasized a new organization of classic texts that established the doctrine of Neo-Confucianism.  Su Song   was a Chinese polymathic scientist and statesman. Excelling in a variety of fields, he was accomplished in mathematics, astronomy, cartography, geography, horology, pharmacology, mineralogy, metallurgy, zoology, botany, mechanical engineering, hydraulic engineering, civil engineering, invention, art, poetry, philosophy, antiquities, and statesmanship during the Song dynasty (960–1279).

Yuan Dynasty 1279-1336AD  was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division.[note 2] It was established by Kublai (Emperor Shizu or Setsen Khan), the fifth khagan-emperor of the Mongol Empire.Although Genghis Khan's enthronement as Khagan in 1206 was described in Chinese  and the Mongol Empire had ruled territories including modern-day northern China for decades, it was not until 1271 that Kublai Khan officially proclaimed the dynasty, the conquest was not complete until 1279 when the Southern Song dynasty was defeated in the Battle of Yamen. His realm was, by this point, isolated from the other Mongol-led khanates and controlled most of modern-day China and its surrounding areas, including modern-day Mongolia. 

Ming Dynasty 1368-1677AD. The Ming dynasty was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. 

Emperor established Yan as a secondary capital and renamed it Beijing, constructed the Forbidden City, and restored the Grand Canal, converted the Great Wall to stone   He rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One eunuch, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa. Hongwu and Yongle emperors had also expanded the empire's rule into Inner Asia. Constructed the Forbidden City.  

Nanjing (close to Shanghai) was the major Ming capital with surviving wall.  Matteo Ricci was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions. He created the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, a 1602 map of the world written in Chinese characters. He introduced the rest of the world to the Chinese. 


Quing Dynasty 1644-1911AD Manchu-led (Mongolian) imperial dynasty of China and the last imperial dynasty in Chinese history. Expanded into one of h largest empires covering China, Tibet and Mongolia. The British sold Indian Opium to the Chinese for tea, drug damage came to a head in 1839 in the first Opium war.  The British took over Canton, Shanghai and Hong Kong.  The revolution against the Quing started as a uprising of poor agrarian Christians. In 1853 they took over Nanjing  and started the Taiping as a "collective" dynasty until 1864.  Backed by the British, the Quing retook with the loss of 20M.  The Europeans made more inroads into the coastal trade centers, but left the rural interior destitute. Eventual defeat came from the Boxer Rebellion between 1899 and 1901, an anti-imperialist movement which expelled foreigners from China and end the system of foreign concessions and treaty ports. Put down by joint forces from 8 different armies.  Revolutionary uprising continued to breakout. 

Republic of China 1912 led by Sunya tsen was still dominated by foreign forces.  Communist party formed 1921. Chiang Kai-sheck orders the massacre of communists (Shanghai Massacre). By 1928 Chiang becomes head of state, but by 1931 civil war with the communists had started with a base in Yanan after the long march from their first base in the rural south  Jiangxi. In 1937 war with Japan preceded WW2.  

After WW2 1949, after the civil, Imperial China fled to  Taiwan, and Mao zedung communists take over mainland China. 

India 

Indus Valley civilization lasted from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE By 2600 BC, the Early Harappan communities turned into large urban centres in Pakistan and NW India. 

Mohenjodaro and Harappa, in Indus Valley  2600-1900BC  

Indian structures starts with Buddist, followed by Hindu, and then Islamic influences. The forts in Rajistan near the border with todays Pakistan were an attempt to push the Muslims away. More recently Sikh have also emerged.

Maurya Empire controlled most of India 322-185BC.

Dravidian style or the South Indian temple style is an architectural idiom in Hindu temple architecture starting in 300 BC

The Gupta Empire was an ancient Indian empire which existed from the early 300's AD to early 500's AD. At its zenith, from approximately 319 to 467 AD, it covered much of the Indian subcontinent.[6] This period is considered as the Golden Age of India by historians.  The current structure of the Mahabodhi Temple dates to the Gupta era, 400's AD. Marking the location where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment.  Science and political administration reached new heights during the Gupta era.[15] The period,  gave rise to achievements in architecture, sculpture, and painting that "set standards of form and taste [that] determined the whole subsequent course of art, not only in India but far beyond her borders". Hinduism was followed by the rulers and the Brahmins flourished in the Gupta empire but the Guptas tolerated people of other faiths as well.[20]

In 500 AD, Aryabhata presented a mathematical system that took the earth to spin on its axis and considered the motions of the planets with respect to the sun (in other words it was heliocentric). His book, the Aryabhatya, presented astronomical and mathematical theories in which the Earth was taken to be spinning on its axis and the periods of the planets were given with respect to the sun.

The Kailasha temple  756-773 AD is the largest of the rock-cut Hindu temples at the Ellora Caves, Maharashtra, India. A megalith carved from a rock cliff face, it is considered as one of the most remarkable cave temples in the world because of its size, architecture and sculptural treatment,

Derawar fort, Pakistan. 800's AD

The best-preserved and most graphic example of erotic temple art can be found in the small town of Khajuraho in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.  Built by the Chandela dynasty between 950 and 1050.

 

Rani-ki-Vav (the Queen’s Stepwell) at Patan, Gujarat 1000,s

Buddism spreads to South East Asia. Brobudur is a 800AD Mahayana Buddhist temple in  Central JavaIndonesia. It is the world's largest Buddhist temple. Angkor Wat 1100AD  is a temple complex in Cambodia,  the largest religious structure in the world.[2] Originally constructed as a Hindu temple[1].  It was gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the century; as such, it is also described as a "Hindu-Buddhist" temple. Ayutthaya 1350 AD is Thailand‘s unsung archaeological miracle: a vision of Buddhist temples, monasteries and ancient statues of monumental dimensions

Rani ki Vav, an ornamental stepwell (inverted pyramid to celebrate water) in the state of Gujarat, India  1100AD

The Hill Forts of Rajasthan (Amer, Chittor, Gagron, Jaisalmer's Golden Fort 1156AD , Kumbhalgarh, Ranthambore), a group of six forts built by various Rajput kingdoms to repel Islamic invaders. Hindu temples such as Sas Bahu temple.

 

In 1192 the victory of Muhammed of Ghur over the Rajput (Hindu) King in northern India, led to an alien rule being established in the Indian subcontinent. The Dehli Sultanate started in 1300's and  lasted until most were absorbed into the Mughal Empire in the 1500's. Apart from the sultanates of the Deccan Plateau, Gujarat, Bengal, and Kashmir, the architecture of the Malwa and Jaunpur sultanates also left some significant buildings.Taj Mahal in Agra 1631 Mausoleum. Mughal (​Indo-Islamic-Persian) style during Mughal empire (1526–1857).

Vittala  Hindu Temple 1336–1565 is the most extravagant architectural showpiece of Hampi

Udaipur's City Palace 1553AD in Rajasthan

Junagarh Fort,Bikaneer, Rajasthan 1589AD

 

Guru Nanak (1469–1539), the founder of Sikhism, was born near Lahore. The Golden Temple 1557AD is a gurdwara (guru house) located in the city of Amritsar, Punjab, India. It is the preeminent spiritual site of Sikhism.

Mughal empire (1526–1857). The Mughal Empire is conventionally said to have been founded in 1526 by Babur, a chieftain from what is today Uzbekistan, who employed aid from the neighboring Safavid and Ottoman Empires,[13] to defeat the Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, in the First Battle of Panipat, and to sweep down the plains of North India.  At its peak, the empire stretched from the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan   day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the Deccan Plateau in South India. Although the Mughal Empire was created and sustained by military warfare,  it did not vigorously suppress the cultures and peoples it came to rule; rather it equalized and placated them through new administrative practices, Jaipur's Amber Fort 1600-1727AD. The Jantar Mantar (1734), in Jaipur is a huge  collection of 19 very large  astronomical instruments built by the Rajput king Sawai Jai Singh, the founder of Jaipur, Rajasthan. The monument was completed in 1734.

The empire was formally dissolved by the British Raj after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Today, there are indigenous groups in the Andaman Islands who have chosen to remain completely isolated, and are protected by India. 

Africa

Northern Africa is the story of the Mediterranean.

Linguistic evidence suggests the Bantu people (for example, Xhosa and Zulu) had emigrated southwestward from what is now Egypt into former Khoisan ranges and displaced them during the last 4000 years or so, by 200 AD had spread down to to  south to the middle of Botswana, west to Mozambique. east to Nigeria.  

The earliest ironworks in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal Province are believed to date from around 1050AD.

The Sao civilization flourished from about the 500 BC to as late as the 1500 AD in Central Africa. The Sao lived by the Chari River  part of present-day Cameroon and Chad.  Sao artifacts show that they were skilled workers in bronze, copper, and iron. Finds include bronze sculptures and terracotta statues of human and animal figures, coins, funerary urns, household utensils, jewelry, highly decorated pottery, and spears. Converted to Islam.

In the 800's, Zanzibar became the conduit for trade from Eastern Africa into the ROW. 

During the 1000 to 1400 AD, Great Zimbabwe was the heart of a thriving trading empire that was based on cattle husbandry, agriculture, and the gold trade on the Indian Ocean coast. The extensive stone ruins of this African Iron Age city are located in the southeastern portion of the modern-day country of Zimbabwe. It is thought that the central ruins and surrounding valley supported a Shona (Bantu) population.

Timbuktu in Mali had its humble origins in about 1100 BC, when it was  founded as a seasonal camp by Tuareg nomads, and became a center for the  trade route north. It is located on the southern edge of the Sahara, close to the Niger River as it loops north.  The Mali Empire was an empire in West Africa from c. 1226 to 1670. At its peak, Mali was the largest empire in West Africa, widely influencing the culture of the region through the spread of its language, laws, and customs. Substantial structures and Gold trade by 1400AD. Lake Chad is the other large south Sahara water source that flows into the Niger River.

Lalībela, located in north-central Ethiopia, is famous for its rock-hewn churches, which date back to the late 1200AD. The 11 churches, important in Ethiopian Christian tradition.  

By the 1200's there was a extensive Muslim slave trade within Africa from todays Ghana up to Morocco, From Greater Zimbabwe through Zanzibar up to the Middle East, and Ethiopia into Egypt. From the 1500's to 1800's the Christian slave trade from West Africa into the Americas thrived. 

Benin Kingdom in Nigeria in the 1500's. Benin metal workmanship occurred during the reigns of Esigie (fl. 1550) and of Eresoyen (1735–1750), when their workmanship achieved its highest quality.

Colonial powers controlled Africa from the 1600's to 1950's when colonial rule collapsed post WW2. Post colonial politics  was often tribal and unstable, and covered the spectrum from Communist to white minority rule which held on until the 1990's in South Africa. Botswana was an interesting exception with a transition of a responsible ruling family, that produced slow  progress and stability.

The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred between 7 April and 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi deaths. In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from their base in Uganda, initiating the Rwandan Civil War. The catalyst became Habyarimana's assassination on 6 April 1994, creating a power vacuum and ending peace accords. Genocidal killings began the following day when majority Hutu soldiers, police, and militia murdered key Tutsi and moderate Hutu military and political leaders.

Today there are groups of indigenous people  who live traditional lifestyle including  the Turkana people of NW Kenya who live in "ekaru" homes,, portable reed dome style homes supported 3-4 ft off the ground.  The Kalahari Desert is inhabited primarily by Bantu speakers and Khoisan-speaking (click talking)  San, immortalized by "the gods must be crazy".

Middle Ages in Europe & Mesopotamia

The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 at the hands of the Goths, and the establishment of the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire  conventionally marks the end of classical antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages.

The Goths 378-527  were Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe. In the late 300's, the lands of the Goths were invaded from the east by the Huns.  Goths migrated further west or sought refuge inside the Roman Empire. Goths who entered the Empire by crossing the Danube inflicted a devastating defeat upon the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. These Goths would form the Visigoths,   Visigothic Kingdom in Spain at Toledo.[3] 

In the 400's, "the Dark Ages", Angles & Saxons from Denmark occupied Eastern Britain. No evidence of conflict between the Britain's in the West and Saxons in the West. King Arthur the warrior described by Jeffrey of Monmouth appears to be legend. However a high status individual Brit did live at Tintagle with evidence of trade with Byzantium. Tintagel was a center for Tin mining and export as it is used in Bronze an essential metal. 

The Huns (led by Atilla) were  based in Central Asia established  control from China to Persia and Greece. The Goths under Hunnic rule gained their independence in the 400's, most importantly the Ostrogoths.  these Goths established an Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy at Ravenna. The Ostrogothic Kingdom was destroyed by the Eastern Roman Empire in the 500's, while the Visigothic Kingdom was conquered by the Islamic Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th century.  Angles and Saxons from Denmark took over England.

The Byzantine Empire 500-1453AD also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire  after the Goths, when its capital city was Constantinople. Christianity became established within the Byzantine Empire.  The borders of the empire fluctuated through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565), the empire reached its greatest extent, reconquering much of the historically Roman western Mediterranean coast, including Africa, Italy, and Rome. This expansion was halted by volcanic eruptions in Iceland in the 500's that reduced the sun to "the warming of the moon for 2 years" (Secrets of the Dead PBS).  In addition, a bubonic plague swept through the empire. Somewhere between 25% and 50% of the population of the empire died from the pandemic, totaling some 25-100 million people during its two centuries of recurrence.  Goreme cliff, and Deriniku underground dwellings  in Capadochio Turkey were started circa 1000 BC and completed in Byzantime times. Hagia Sophia 532AD started as a church It continued to exist until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, and converted to mosque in the 1500's.

The  Frankish Kingdom 481–870AD, was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western EuropeThe original core Frankish territories inside the former Western Roman Empire were close to the Rhine and Meuse rivers in the north,  expanded Frankish rule into what is now northern France.  Under the nearly continuous campaigns of Pepin of Herstal, Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, Charlemagne, and Louis the Pious—father, son, grandson, great-grandson and great-great-grandson—the greatest expansion of the Frankish empire was secured by the early 9th century. Charelemagne was responsible for a emprire legal system. The Frankish Church  became a substantial influence of the medieval Western Church. In the 7th century, the territory of the Frankish realm was (re-)Christianized with the help of Irish and Scottish missionaries.

According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad was born in Mecca in 570 AD, In the year 610 , troubled by the moral decline and idolatry prevalent in Mecca and seeking seclusion and spiritual contemplation, he is said to have received the first revelation of the Quran from the angel Gabriel. Abraham was a prophet and messenger of God according to Islam, and an ancestor to the Ishmaelite Arabs and Israelites. The Quran refers to a number stories of Abrahamic family members. In the 600's there was an Arab expansion from North Africa to Mesopotamia. Eventually around 680,  the Arab rulers appear to have become Muslim as a religious support for their empire centered on Jerusalem. Eventually the center moved to Mecca.  Structures all over the Middle East , the Great Mosque in Mecca has been rebuilt several times, By 814AD, a  series of Muslim Caliphates spread Islam from  Spain (Mezquita Mosque), the North African coast, Turkish border, Mesopotamia, Persia, to Pakistan.  They developed significant infrastructure such as 1000 year-old ancient Persian vertical-axis windmills, standing in the arid landscape of Nashtifan, Iran; are not just relics but are still operational. A really remote example, Minaret of Jam (1190 CE) western Afghanistan. 

Islamic science and technology built on  some of the ideas from ancient Greece. Medieval Islamic astronomy comprises the astronomical developments made in the Islamic world, particularly during the Islamic Golden Age (9th–13th centuries), and mostly written in the Arabic language. These developments mostly took place in the Middle East, Central Asia, Al-Andalus, and North Africa, and later in the Far East and India. In 964, after more and more observations took place, one of Iran’s most famous astronomers Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi published The Book of Fixed Stars, one of the most comprehensive texts on constellations in the sky.  He was also th first astronomer to observe the Andromeda galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud.  This work would later prove to be useful to famed Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. In 1420, the Timurid ruler Ulugh Beg of Samarkand established his court as a center of patronage for astronomy.

In 620's AD, the Sutton Hoo ship was used to bury an East Anglian  King along with rich artifacts. This suggests a high level of sophistication, rather than the "Dark Ages". It was a huge ship of the time with 40 oars.

 

Viking empire 793-1066AD controlled the Baltic Eastern England, Iceland, extended to the Americas. Jomsborg was a semi-legendary Viking stronghold at the southern coast of the Baltic Sea (medieval Wendland, modern Pomerania), that existed between the 960s and 1043. The Viking Age in Scandinavian history is taken to have been the period from the earliest recorded raids by Norsemen in 793 until the Norman conquest of England in 1066.[63] Vikings used the Norwegian Sea and Baltic Sea for sea routes to the south, and as far as N America. A spectacular new Viking Hall reconstruction has been completed at the archaeopark Sagnlandet Lejre / “Land of Legends” on Sjaelland, Denmark.  

Venice. The first doge of Venice was elected in 697AD. From 800-1100AD it 

developed into a powerful maritime empire  the city became a flourishing trade centre between Western Europe and the rest of the world, especially with the Byzantine Empire and Asia, Declined in the 1400's due to Ottomans and Black Death. 

Trade in the 1200's between Europe and the Middle East flowed through Venice. Marco Polo was a resident of Venice was a Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295, and provided the first detailed documentation of China and Chinese culture.  The onset of long distance sailing exploration sidelined Venice.

The Holy Roman Empire (800-1806AD) or the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation focused on todays Germany, Hungary and Austria.  At its height included, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Hungary, controlling central European Protestant Christianity. They built their empire in Europe rather than round the world. Their royal family built influence through marriage across Europe from Russia to England. The Habsburgs grew to European prominence as a result of the dynastic policy pursued by Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. Maximilian married Mary of Burgundy, thus bringing the Burgundian Netherlands into the Habsburg possessions. Their son, Philip the Handsome, married Joanna the Mad of Spain (daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile). Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, the son of Philip and Joanna, inherited the Habsburg Netherlands in 1506, Habsburg Spain and its territories in 1516, and Habsburg Austria in 1519.

Around 800AD, the "Book of Kels" was written, it is an illustrated manuscript and Celtic Gospel book in Latin,[1] containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables.  Found in the  Abbey of Kels it is one of the finest and most famous, and also one of the latest, of a group of manuscripts in what is known as the Insular style, produced from the late 6th through the early 9th centuries in monasteries in Britain and Ireland and in continental monasteries with Hiberno-Scottish or Anglo-Saxon foundations.

Normans mid 1000'sAD took over most of France, and UK. launched the first crusade with a patch work of conquests through the Mediterranean including, Barcelona, southern Italy, Coastal turkey, Cyprus, Galilei. The best known of these military expeditions are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were intended to reconquer Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Muslim rule. 

In 1066, William of Normandy invaded England killing Harold in the process. in 1086 AD, William the Conqueror commissioned  the "Domesday Book" a detailed  survey of English Medieval society, land ownership, population and wealth. 

In 1100AD, Old Sarum (North of Sailsbury) was a significant city in England.

European castles mostly built 1100-1400AD for defense and control. By 1400 they became more "palace-like".  Cathedrals designed to impress were also popular such as Note Dame in Paris, Winchester Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral and numerous others which  were built in a similar time frame. Elsewhere in Europe, the other Abrahamic religions also built to impress. Mesquita mosque  Spain was built in 1238 -1492AD paired with the Alhambra Islamic moor palace/fortress. Greek orthodox monasteries of Meteroa, Thessaloniki 1300-1400AD. St Basils in Moscow was started in 1550. 

Cinque Ports  1135AD, a confederation of trading posts Hastings, New Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich.  a network on professional guilds formed.

Mongol Empire 1206-1405 centered on  Mongolian nomadic warriors. grew to  cover China, Tibet, Pakistan, Persia, and the Black Sea. Temüjin, known by the more famous title of Genghis Khan . Grandson Kublai Kahn also known by his temple name as the Emperor Shizu   was the founder of the Yuan dynasty of China and the fifth khagan-emperor  of the Mongol Empire from 1260 to 1294. A stone turtle at the site of the Mongol capital, Karakorum. ​In 1370, the conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), the founder and ruler of the Timurid Empire, made Samarkand his capital.  Samarkand 1409–1449 under Ula-Beg became a center of Islamic scholarship, including the Ula Beg observatory in  set up 1420.

By the 1200's there was a significant slave trade from Ghana into N. Africa, Somalia  into Egypt, Greater Zimbabwe into Middle East. 

In 1208, Oxford and Cambridge Universities started. 

In 1215, Magna Carta was signed by King John, the first step in diluting the power of the monarchy in England. 

The Ottoman Empire c. 1299–1922 controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa  The empire also controlled southern Spain from the 1500-1600's. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II. Reached its height under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566). Sunni Islam religion.

Stockholm established in 1296AD with  construction of Gamla Stan. The city originally rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League. Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with LübeckHamburgGdańskVisbyReval, and Riga during this time.

In 1300, a world map known as as the Hereford mappamundi was drawn and shows that the world view of Ptolomy was lost.

Dubrovnik from 1300-1800AD  ruled itself as a free state. The prosperity of the city was historically based on maritime trade;  particularly during the 15th and 16th centuries, as it became notable for its wealth and skilled diplomacy. 

In 1346 to 1353, the Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa . It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the deaths of approximately 40% to 60% of Europe's population (an estimated 25–50 million people)[2] Food availability allowed populations to grow, while urbanization increased the mortality from disease.  

The Anglo-French Hundred Years' War  1337–1453 was a series of wars between England and France.  It originated from English claims to the French throne. The war grew into a broader power struggle involving factions from across Western Europe, fueled by emerging nationalism on both sides.

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s – 25 October 1400) first British poet.

 

In 1440, the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press, which started the Printing Revolution. Modelled on the design of existing screw presses, a single Renaissance movable-type printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday. The printing press made knowledge available to all and prevented the Church from re-establishing control over knowledge. The alphabet with individualized letters is ideal for letterpress, as compared to Arabic with interconnected letters,or Chinese with over 3000 symbols. It is estimated that by 1500 there were “fifteen to twenty million copies of 30,000 to 35,000 separate publications.”

From 1434 – 1464 Cosimo de' Medici was Lord of Florence and principal banker who launched  Italian Renaissance.  The intellectual revolution was led by  Leonardo Da Vinchi (1452–1519) , Michelangelo and many others. The Medichi family banks, also produced two popes of dubious religiosity of the Catholic Church—Pope Leo X (1513–1521), and Pope Clement VII (1523–1534).  in this time of some of the least religious popes there was an explosion of western science and art mostly funded by the Medichi's. Florence was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe and the world.

In 1453, the fall of the Byzantine Empire based in Constantinople to the Ottomans led to  refugee Byzantine scholars who  were principally responsible for carrying, in person and writing, ancient Greek grammatical, literary studies, mathematical, and astronomical knowledge to early Renaissance Italy.  Georgios Plethon  was a Greek scholar and one of the most renowned philosophers of the late Byzantine era. He was a chief pioneer of the revival of Greek scholarship in Western Europe.  In 1438–1439 he reintroduced Plato's ideas to Western Europe during the Council of Florence, in a failed attempt to reconcile the East–West schism. There, Plethon met and influenced Cosimo de' Medici in Florence to found a new Platonic Academy.  This led to a revival of many of the discoveries of ancient Greece in the Renaissance, printed and distributed by Gutenberg. The Medici's actively searched for ancient texts for their library.


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European Global Empires 

The competition between European powers changed to empire building through exploration.

 

  • Prince Henry the Navigator was a central figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and in the 15th-century European maritime discoveries. Henry was responsible for the early development of Portuguese exploration and maritime trade with other continents through the systematic exploration of Western Africa, the islands of the Atlantic Ocean. He  conquered Ceuta (1415), the Muslim port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian Peninsula.  

  • Christopher Columbus 1492 a Spanish funded expedition discovered Bahamas and Cuba. 

  • Vasco Da Gama 1498 Portuguese expedition to India discovered Zanzibar enroute 

  • Ferdinand Magellan 1519 Portuguese explorer led a Spanish funded round world exploration.

  • Hernan Cortes 1519 Spanish expedition leading to overthrow of the Aztecs.

  • Jacques Cartier 1534  French expedition to Canada.

  • Francis Drake 1577 British circumnavigation expedition that discovered California coast.

  • Pilgrims 1620 British colonizers of North America.

  • From 1732 to 1867, the Russian Empire laid claim to northern Pacific Coast territories in the Americas.

  • James Cook  1768 to 1771 British scientific expedition that discovered Australia.

 

Followed by invasions by Cortes, Cartier, the Pilgrims and others led to slavery and mass genocide of American native populations in the name of commerce and religious conversion. The voyages of discovery and empire building by the Europeans  naval powers in the 500-600y ago (1400-1500's), brought new contacts with the indigenous hunter gatherers and resulted in genocide of 90% of the indigenous people from diseases that they had no immunity for. The invaders point of view is well documented. Some insight as to the locals view is provided by the first contact in the 1950's between the natives of the interior of Papua New Guinea and the Australians. In PNG, there are numerous small isolated tribes with 832 different languages and no knowledge of oceans and other islands. The natives started viewing the invaders as Gods, and then became convinced of their humanity.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Contact_(1983_film)). There are also accounts of interactions with natives of the Andoman and Nicobar Islands who have chosen to remain isolated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese).

The voyages of empire building were public/private joint ventures. Most of the early communities were part of joint venture companies, such as Plymouth Company, British East India, Dutch VOC company, French Mississippi Company  etc. Eventually, the companies were absorbed into government empires for world wide defense.  

n 1450AD .   the fourteenth-century Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta, a native of Tangier, in Morocco, visited Timbuktu, Zanzibar, southern Russia, Central Asia, India, China and Indonesia. His travels illustrate the unity of Afro-Asia on the eve of the modern.

In 1459, Fra Mauro, based in Venice, drew his map of the wider world except the Americas, largely based on the journeys of Marco Polo who was also a Venetian. It is on exhibit at Museo Galileo in Florence. 

In 1507, a respected mapmaker named Martin Waldseemüller published an updated world map, the first to show the place where Europe’s westward-sailing fleets had landed as a separate continent. Having drawn it, Waldseemüller had to give it a name. Erroneously believing that Amerigo Vespucci had been the person who discovered it, Waldseemüller named the continent in his honour – America.

In 1514, Copernicus is known to have used Greek insight in his discovery of the sun centered universe, which was accepted by the Catholic pope Pope Clement VII in 1533.

In 1517, Martin Luther published his critique of the morally bankrupt Catholic Church, that was selling indulgencies and supporting the Renaissance. This started the Reformation and the Protestant Church. Ironically Luther opposed the idea of a sun centered universe !

 

In 1525, the Salviati World Map,  is mostly empty showing that he recognized that there were many unknowns.​
 

In 1542, the Roman Inquisition was created by  Pope Paul in a reaction to the Reformation and the liberal Renaissance Popes. Galileo was the most famous target of their efforts to re-establish church control. 

In 1526, Portuguese completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil, and other Europeans soon followed. By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste, with African slaves and their future offspring being legally the property of their owners, as children born to slave mothers were also slaves. The major Atlantic slave trading nations, in order of trade volume, were PortugalBritainSpainFrance, the Netherlands, the United States, and Denmark. Current estimates are that about 12 million to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400 years.

British Empire 1500's to 1950's, Elizabeth 1st to Edward 8th. Started with the the formation of Protestant Church. The defeat of the Catholic Spanish Armada  in 1588 established Naval power over Spain and Portugal.   At its height, under Victoria, covered Eastern US, Canada, Central and South Africa, India, Burma, Australia, New Zealand. Borneo was split with the Dutch. The British started the slave trade to provide workers for the American colonies. The empire shrank due to revolution in the US 1776, and retraction particularly in the 1950's after WW2.  

Portuguese Empire  1415-1999 It was one of the longest-lived colonial empires in European history, lasting almost six centuries from the conquest of Ceuta in North Africa, in 1415, to the transfer of sovereignty over Macau to China in 1999. By the 1500's it stretched across the globe, with control of  Congo & Mozambique,   Brazil, and various regions of Macau and Pacific Islands. Also a number of coastal bases  in Africa, India, China, Newfoundland. The Portuguese Inquisition was used to maintain Catholic control and block progress in science and art. 

 

Spanish Empire 1492-1900 was a colonial empire.  In conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, it was the first empire to usher the European Age of Discovery and achieve a global scale,[9] controlling vast portions of the South and Central America, Africa, various islands in Asia and Oceania, as well as territory in other parts of Europe. Following the Italian Wars against France, which concluded in 1559, Spain emerged with control over half of Italy , Southern Netherlands - todays Belgium and Luxembourg.  Started in 1478 by the Catholic monarchs, the Spanish Inquisition was used to block the progress  in science and art from the Renaissance from taking hold in Spain. This also supported the conversion justification for the cruel excesses of the empire in the Americas. 

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Bronze Age

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Dutch Empire 

In 1588, the Dutch republic was set up, overthrowing control by the Habsbergs in Spain. Driven by the identity of the Protestant reformation leading to a golden age of urban merchant wealth and artists such as Vermeer. By the 1600’s  it had  highest per capital income. A decentralized republic government and commercial  rather than agricultural. 

From 1590 to 1740, dominated sea based economy with the largest number of merchant ships protected by a major military force.

 

In 1595, the first Dutch expeditions to todays Indonesia were sent in support of spice trade eventually incorporated into Dutch East India company  centered on Jakarta on the island of Java. In the post colonial era the boundaries of the independent countries were largely based on the colonial empires. Ex-Dutch became Indonesia and Ex-British became Malesia.  The Dutch influence can be seen in Jakarta, and the British in Singapore. . From 1652-1795, the Dutch East India company controlled much of South Africa, spoke Afrikaans and became known as the Boers. They were incorporated into the British Empire in 1806 after the Boer War.

France colonial empire  began to establish colonies in North America Canada and Mississippi Valley, the Caribbean and India in the 1500's but lost most of its possessions following its defeat in the Seven Years' War.

Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603), daughter of Henry VIII who established the Protestant Church of England, ruled as the British Empire thrived. Famous for starting on the path to a global naval power by funding Drakes explorations and piracy.  Dr John Dee was a spy for Elizabeth who signed as "007". Without heirs, England fell into cycles of revolution and religious warfare. As part of the ongoing conflict, the Gunpowder plot (1605) was tried by Catholics against Protestant James I.  In 1620, the Puritan Pilgrims set off for the Americas to escape persecution.

As the European powers expanded their empires around the world, they also battled for supremacy within Europe. Sweden, Russia, England, Holy Roman Empire, France and Spain all fought  for control  using fluid coalitions based on religion and marriage. These struggles lasted through the 1600 and 1700's. The Dutch Revolt 1568–1648  (Eighty Years' War) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Reformationcentralization, excessive taxation, and the rights and privileges of the Dutch nobility and cities. Fort Bourtange in the Netherlands built in 1593.   The fight merged into the Germanic  Protestant - Catholic Thirty Years' War 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily within the Holy Roman Empire in Central and Western Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of battle, famine, and disease,  The war was  a continuation of the religious conflict initiated by the 1500's Lutheran Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire. The war between France and other European powers over the Spanish Succession was also part of the conflict.  Instability in Stuart England meant that they were sidelined. On the Lutheran side. the Swedish Empire was the period in Swedish history spanning much of the 1600-1700's  during which Sweden became a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region. Eventually Imperial Russia took control of Northern Europe. 

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote all those plays. In 1586, an actor and collaborator, Will Kempe, did plays at Elsinore Castle to the Danish Royal family.  Tyco Brahe, the astronomer royal, was at court, and had relatives "Guildenstern" & "Rosencrantz". Hamlet was written between 1599 and 1601.

In 1620, King James 1 travelled from Greenwich to the tower in a submarine 15 ft below surface powered by underwater rowers, designed by a Dutchman - Cornelis Drebbel.

Tyco Brahe made the first observation of a changing universe through a Supernova SN 1572. He also made detailed observations of planetary motions. Kepler, using  telescope, saw a supernova SN1604. He published the first public defense of Copernicus Sun centered universe. He then discovered the planets had  elliptical orbits based on Brahe's data in the 1620's.

Galileo made numerous scientific contributions to astronomy and mathematics. 

In 1632, Galileo was found guilty of heresy by the Roman Inquisition because of his support for Heliocentric astronomy. By 1718, the church accepted sun centered universe, and the Inquisition waned in power.

 

The World Map of W. Blaeu, Dutch cartographer,  was published in 1635 based on the geography known in the first edition in 1608. The obvious misses are the polar regions and Australia & New Zealand, that were only discovered in the late 1700's by Cook. New The north coast of New Guinea had been discovered.  Notable for the planets depicted as chariot warriors, elements (fire, water, land, air) , seasons, and 7 "ancient wonders of the world" as imagined by Maarten van Heemskerck ( Great Pyramid of Giza, the Colossus of Rhodes, Pharos the  Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Diana ( Artemis), the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.).

https://sanderusmaps.com/our-catalogue/antique-maps/world-and-polar-regions/old-antique-world-map-by-willem-blaeu-25942

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography

The short lived English Civil War and Roundhead Revolution 1649-1658 was led by Oliver Cromwell over throwing Charles I. Following the execution of Charles I and the exile of his son, military victories in Ireland and against the Scots from 1649 to 1651 firmly established the Commonwealth and Cromwell's dominance of the new republican regime. In December 1653, he was named Lord Protector of the Commonwealth,[a] a position he retained until his death in September 1658. The 1660 Catholic Stuart Restoration, when Charles II returned to the throne, followed by James II. They dug up Cromwell and the corpse was hung and beheaded to make a point, his head was eventually buried in the 1950's. The continued struggle avoid living heirs and Catholic royals, led to a "peaceful" invasion by  Protestant  William III of Orange who was established in 1688 in a deal that produced the revolution of the  "Bill of Rights" making the constitutional royals subservient to parliament. William who had been re-established as monarch of Netherlands, he also married  British  In December 1689, one of the most important constitutional documents in English history, the Bill of Rights, was passed.[98] The Act, which restated and confirmed many provisions of the earlier Declaration of Right, established restrictions on the royal prerogative. It provided, amongst other things, that the Sovereign could not suspend laws passed by Parliament, levy taxes without parliamentary consent, infringe the right to petition, raise a standing army during peacetime without parliamentary consent, deny the right to bear arms to Protestant subjects, unduly interfere with parliamentary elections, punish members of either House of Parliament for anything said during debates, require excessive bail or inflict cruel and unusual punishments. William's rule was settled in the Battle of the Boyne 1690 against the Jacobite's in Ireland, and the Glencoe massacre in Scotland. The law of succession led to the Hanover family from Germany to takeover the British throne. George I  was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 and ruler of the Electorate of Hanover within the Holy Roman Empire from 23 January 1698 until his death in 1727. He was the first British monarch of the House of Hanover.

By 1650, different empires laid claim to portions of costal Americas.  Over the next 100 years these groups extended into the mainland.  The Thirteen English Colonies led to the creation of the United States in 1776, during the Revolutionary War.

In the 1600's, the Russia  of Ivan the Terrible trapped in medieval culture was transformed by Peter the Great (1672-1725) into a European oriented power. This included taking over from the Swedes as the dominant Baltic power. He established a autocratic monarch governance with a servile underclass that lasted until the Marxist revolution. He created St Petersburg out of the Baltic marshes.  Catherine the Great  (1729 – 1796) was the other major Tsarist monarch. in 1768 she pioneered the smallpox inoculation.

In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton quantified  gravity and the orbits of planets, the biggest breakthrough since the sun centered universe; not to mention calculus, and the presence of multiple wavelengths of light.

Anglo/Prussia-France/Spanish Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict between alliances led by Great Britain and France, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Along with Spain, France fought Britain both in Europe and overseas with land-based armies and naval forces, while Britain's ally Prussia sought territorial expansion in Europe and consolidation of its power. Long-standing colonial rivalries pitted Britain against France and Spain in North America in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). They fought on a grand scale with consequential results , including British control of N America. Prussia sought greater influence in the German states, while Austria wanted to regain Silesia, captured by Prussia in the previous war, and to contain Prussian influence.

By the 1700's, the Askanazi Jew population in the Holy Roman Empire and southern Russia were over 90% of worlds population. They became a major intellectual  influence in the HRE and Germany, for example Einstein and Bohr. From 1791-1917, the Jewish community in the Pale of Settlement were in Russian state enforced poverty, and became a majority exile group in the USA.

The 1700's saw the widespread acceptance of the  first inoculation for smallpox . The first clear reference to smallpox inoculation using scabs from infected individuals was made by the Chinese author Wan Quan (1499–1582).   Inoculation for smallpox does not appear to have been widespread in China until the reign era of the Longqing Emperor (r. 1567–1572) during the Ming Dynasty. Two reports on the Chinese practice of inoculation were received by the Royal Society  This encouraged the British Royal Family to take an interest and a trial of variolation was carried out on prisoners in Newgate Prison. This was successful and in 1722 Caroline of Ansbach, the Princess of Wales, allowed Maitland to vaccinate her children. The success of these variolations assured the British people that the procedure was safe. In 1768 Catherine the Great of Russia helped popularize the process. 

In 1742, Anders Celsius a Swedish astronomer proposed the Centigrade temperature scale.

In 1744, two Presbyterian clergymen in Scotland, Alexander Webster and Robert Wallace, decided to set up a life-insurance fund that would provide pensions for the widows and orphans of dead clergymen. They proposed that each of their church’s ministers would pay a small portion of his income into the fund, which would invest the money.


In 1747,  a British physician, James Lind, conducted a controlled experiment on sailors who suffered from scurvy. The Royal Navy was not convinced by Lind’s experiments, but James Cook was. He resolved to prove the doctor right. He loaded his ship with a large quantity of sauerkraut and ordered his sailors to eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables whenever the expedition made landfall. Cook did not lose a single sailor to scurvy.


Astronomers predicted that the next Venus transits would occur in 1761 and 1769, and used to estimate the distance to the sun. So expeditions were sent from Europe to the four corners of the world in order to observe the transits from as many distant points as possible. Equipped with the most advanced scientific instruments that Banks and the Royal Society could buy, the expedition was placed under the command of Captain James Cook, an experienced seaman as well as an accomplished geographer and ethnographer. The expedition left England in 1768, observed the Venus transit from Tahiti in 1769, reconnoitred several Pacific islands, visited Australia and New Zealand, and returned to England in 1771. 


In 1776 Adam Smith in "Wealth of Nations" says is, in fact, that greed is good, and that by becoming richer I benefit everybody, not just myself. Egoism is altruism.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was the most prolific classical composer

The early modern era was a golden age for the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean, the Safavid Empire in Persia, the Mughal Empire in India, and the Chinese Ming and Qing dynasties. They expanded their territories significantly and enjoyed unprecedented demographic and economic growth. In 1775 Asia accounted for 80 per cent of the world economy. The combined economies of India and China alone represented two-thirds of global production. In comparison, Europe was an economic dwarf. The global centre of power shifted to Europe only between 1750 and 1850, when Europeans humiliated the Asian powers in a series of wars and conquered large parts of Asia. By 1900 Europeans firmly controlled the world’s economy and most of its territory.
 

The Industrial Revolution 1760-1840 was a period of global transition of human economy towards more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution, starting from Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States.  Mass manufacture of  textile, iron, steel, and chemicals were supported through canals and roads. This led to a migration from the country to the industrial cities.  The opposition from craftsmen, the first attacks of the Luddite movement began in 1811.  Those rioters who were caught were tried and hanged, or transported for life.

In 1765, John Harrison completed testing of his all metal H4 marine chronometer which allowed longitude to be measured at sea to within 1 degree. As early as 150AD, Claudius Ptolemy had measured  longitude by using lunar eclipses as a time reference at different locations, which is why his maps were so good. A more immediate time reference came from the orbits of planetary moons  or the position of the moon relative to stars.  

In 1774, John Priestley isolated oxygen has a component of air, and introduced the idea of a molecule. 

American War of Independence in 1776, was the first major defeat for the British Empire, and started  drive for individual freedom, and the process of locals reclaiming power from non-representative monarchies and colonial empires. 

In 1776, Adam Smith wrote "On wealth of nations" the first description of the principles of capitalism. James Watt invented that steam engine to power industrial drives such as trains and pumps for mines. By 1890,s a stem engine could match 1,300 horses.

The French Revolution[a] was a period of political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789, and ended with the coup of 18 Brumaire on November 1799 and the formation of the French Consulate. Napoleon Bonaparte was the leader of the French Republic as First Consul from 1799 to 1804, and the Emperor of France 1804-1814AD. He  established French hegemony over much of continental Europe; Spain, France, HRE (Germany, Austria, Poland), Italy, Croatia, Western Russia up to Moscow.  French campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) briefly held Egypt until  they lost sea control at the Battle of the Nile to Nelson. French Louisiana was then sold to the United States in 1803. Defeat at Trafalgar in 1805 stopped the invasion of England. Napoleons Invasion of Russia in 1812 failed to take St Petersburg, and took over Moscow. As they withdrew from Moscow they were caught by winter and Tsar Alexanders forces who eventually made it to Paris and  exiled Napoleon to Elba.

 

Upon Napoleon's return to power in 1814, a coalition led by UK ended Napoleons rule at Waterloo in 1815. The Bourbon Restoration established a constitutional monarchy that lasted until 1870. France rebuilt a new empire mostly after 1850, concentrating chiefly in Senegal, Madagascar as well as Vietnam, Cambodia and Tahiti.  The French Third Republic  was the system of government adopted in France from 4 September 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War, until 10 July 1940, after the Fall of France during World War II led to the formation of the Vichy government.

in 1799, the Rosetta stone was discovered leading to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The 1800's were golden years of English literature.

Jane Austen  (1775 – 1817) No comment.

Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) serial novelist. 

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930)  author of Sherlock Holmes. 

Through the 1800's, USA was assembled from a collection of territories, some owned by foreign powers. Milestones included, 1803 purchased Louisiana (Mississippi drainage west of river)  from Napoleon,1845 Texas joins the Union, 1850 California joins. In 1912 the contiguous US was completely assembled when Arizona joined. 

From 1804-1806, Lewis and Clark expedition made the first journey across the USA to the Mouth of the Columbia.

In 1804, the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built in the United Kingdom by Richard Trevithick, a British engineer born in Cornwall. The first public railway which used only steam locomotives, all the time, was Liverpool and Manchester Railway, built in 1830.

In the 1830s, a British officer named Henry Rawlinson was sent to Persia to help the shah train his army in the European style. In his spare time Rawlinson travelled around Persia and one day he was led by local guides to a cliff in the Zagros Mountains and shown the huge Behistun Inscription. About fifty feet high and eighty feet wide, it had been etched high up on the cliff face on the command of King Darius I sometime around 500 bc. It was written in cuneiform script in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. The inscription was well known to the local population, but nobody could read it. Rawlinson became convinced that if he could decipher the writing it would enable him and other scholars to read the numerous inscriptions and texts.

From 1832-1919, the British Empire made 3 attempts to take control of Afghanistan, and were repelled each time. The locals reputation for repelling outsiders continues to this day - "Graveyard of Empires". 

In 1833, the UK ended support for slavery from  West Africa to the Americas, but slavery continued  from East Africa through the late 1800's through Zanzibar to the Middle East. Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln. The American Civil War (1861 –1865)  was a civil war in the United States between the Union[e] ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which had been formed by states that had seceded from the Union. The cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. The Civil War was the first technology war were machine guns and artillery caused massive slaughter. After the South lost, the slaves were freed, and the white establishment in the South moved to introduce local Jim Crow laws. The case of Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896 enforcing segregated rail cars was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". This allowed racial discrimination and segregation to become the law of the land, until 1964. 

 

The last era of expeditions into the unknown;  Franklin expedition 1845 searched for the North west passage, found by Amundsen in 1906. Peary 1909  claimed the North Pole.  Amundsen 1911 reaches the South Pole.  Shackleton 1917 survives greatest small boat journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia.

By the mid 1800's, the British Navy was the dominant naval power bigger than all the rest combined. 

The latter half of the 1800's saw a revolution in our scientific understanding.  In 1842, the term dinosaur was first coined for bones of giant lizard-like animals based on fossils from England's Jurassic Coast. In 1850 Semmelweis’s discovered hand washing as an essential barrier to spreading infection.  In 1859, Darwin published "On the Origin of Species", a popular science book describing how evolution led to the variety of species on the planet inspired by his observations in the Galapagos Islands. Five years earlier, Alfred Wallace got close  based on his trip to the Indonesian Islands, and co-published with Darwin.  In 1866 Mendel's Principles of Heredity was published. In 1870, Dmitri Mendeleev explained the properties of elements through his "Periodic Table". In 1872, Louis Pasteur creates the first laboratory-produced vaccine: the vaccine for fowl cholera in chickens.  In 1900, Max Planck proposed that energy is radiated and absorbed in discrete "quanta" (or energy packets), yielding a calculation that precisely matched the observed patterns of black-body radiation. In 1905, Einstein proposed special (velocity) relativity that redefined time based on the limiting speed of light. In 1915, Einstein proposed the General Theory (acceleration) of Relativity that showed that gravity was the result of mass distorting space-time which was proven by the bending of light by the sun observed during a total eclipse. He also showed that light comes in packets or particles for which he won the Nobel Prize.  As soon as General Relativity was published, Karl Schwarzschild, while fighting on the Russian Front, provided the first exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity, for the limited case of a single spherical non-rotating mass, which he accomplished in 1915, the same year that Einstein first introduced general relativity.  He showed that there was a edge (event horizon)  of a very large mass where matter disappears  due to gravity - the mathematical  idea of a singularity or black hole. Schwarzschild accomplished this while serving in the German army during World War I. He died the following year from the autoimmune disease pemphigus, which he developed while at the Russian frontClassical physics was replaced a new understanding of the very large and very small and ushered in the Nuclear age.   

In the mid 1800's the American West was opened up from the East. In 1832, the third Fremont expedition, guided by Kit Carson, explored the Oregon Trail all the way to Monterey and Central Valley. In 1833, Yosemite was  "discovered" by Joseph Walker in 1833, and protected in 1864 by Abraham Lincoln. In 1848, Gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in the Sierra Mountains leading to the Gold Rush. The National Park system was started with the  Yellowstone National Park  in 1872. In 1906 Congress transferred the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley to the Yosemite park. 

From 1837-1901 , Queen Victoria of house of Hanover ruled teh British Empire. She  proposed to her first cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1839 and they married in 1840.  They produced nine children between 1840 and 1857, most of whom married into other European royal families. At the outbreak of World War One in 1914, the three greatest powers in Europe were Britain, Russia, and Germany. Their sovereigns were all first cousins. George V of England, Nicholas II of Russia (who bear a striking resemblance to one another), and Wilhelm II of Germany all shared a grandmother in Queen Victoria.  Victoria's youngest son, Leopold, was affected by the blood-clotting disease haemophilia B and at least two of her five daughters, Alice and Beatrice, were carriers. Royal haemophiliacs descended from Victoria included her great-grandsons, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia; Alfonso, Prince of Asturias; and Infante Gonzalo of Spain.[229]  It is most likely that the mutation arose spontaneously because Victoria's father was over 50 at the time of her conception and haemophilia arises more frequently in the children of older fathers.[232] Spontaneous mutations account for about a third of cases.

In 1853, the Crimean War erupts between the Tsar Nicolas I  Russians against the Ottomans who were  joined by France and England over control of the Ottoman Empire.  In 1881, Alexander II Tsar of Russia was assassinated by revolutionaries. Starts events in Russia that led to the revolution. Alexander III became Tsar and his son was Nicolas who was the last Tsar from 1894-1917.

In 1869, the first US transcontinental railroad is completed. The Suez canal is also opened transforming shipping access to oil and the British Empire.

Finally, in 1880, the British government took the unprecedented step of legislating that all timetables in Britain must follow Greenwich. For the first time in history, a country adopted a national time and obliged its population to live according to an artificial clock rather than local ones or sunrise-to-sunset 

in 1883, Krakatoa erupts, the energy released from the explosion has been estimated at  200 megatonnes of TNT,] roughly four times as powerful as the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever detonated. Volcanic winter causes five-year average world temperature drop of 1.2 °C (2.2 °F). Smaller explosion than the KT meteor by 1E-6. 

in 1886, the first modern car—a practical, marketable automobile for everyday use—and the first car in series production appeared, when Carl Benz developed a gasoline-powered automobile and made several identical copies.​

In 1887, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone and flat disk record player, starting the era the recorded music business. 

In 1889, Eiffel Tower is opened.

in 1896, the first modern Olympics was held. In the same year ​the Klondike Gold Rush led to a was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of Yukon via Skagway on the British Columbia coast.  

In 1901, Sven Arrhenius publishes a paper showing that carbon dioxide is a global warming gas, and warns of the impact of fossil fuel use. 

In 1903, the Wright brothers invented powered flight, revolutionizing warfare and travel. 

In 1906, San Francisco hit with a 7.9 Magnitude earthquake and subsequent fire, the last major slip of the San Andreus fault. 

Monarchies that resisted any form of power sharing with the peoples representatives, continued to fall to peoples revolutions. Social conditions for the workers during the Industrial Revolution were dire. Karl Marx identified how capitalism trapped the majority of the population in covert servitude. In Russia, the 1905 revolution forced limited representation and set the stage for the 1917 Russian Revolution, and Lenin taking power,  Appalling losses to the Germans in WW1, precipitated the popular revolution which saw the monarchy abolished and the Tsar executed.  The Chinese Revolution ran from 1912 and finally ended post WW2 in 1949 with Mao Tse Dung Communists in power in Continental China and the Imperial Chiang Kai-shek  in the island of Taiwan.

In 1912, the meteorologist Alfred Wegener described what he called continental drift, an idea that culminated fifty years later in the modern theory of plate tectonics.

In 1914, the Panama Canal opens transforming trade between the US and Far East.

Before 1914, the tripartite allies of UK, France, Russia against Germany, Austro-Hungary, Italy were building for the first industrial war driven primarily by Germany, with millions under arms creating a "tinder box".

1914-1918 WW1 UK, France, Russia, USA vs.  Germany, Austro-Hungarian, Italy, Ottoman. The war was triggered by the assassination of the Archduke by a Serbian nationalist. Austro Hungary invaded Serbia, and Russia announced general mobilization triggering tripartite alliances. Germany tries a pre-emptive move against France. The web of mutual support treaties, designed to deter, triggered declarations of war for all the European Powers.  A stalemate slaughter was established in Northern France, that was finally broken with manpower and materiel from USA.  The German - Russian front was stuck along the Polish border. The Russian losses finally destabilized the Tsar, and the Communists made peace.  

Key dates:

1914 Assassination, trenches stretch across N France to Switzerland. Russia joins in.

1915 Ypres slaughter, Gallipoli.

1916 Verdun & Somme slaughter. 

1917 US joins Western front, Russian revolution and withdrawal.

1918 Allies finally break out. 

In 1917, the war forced change on the British "Saxe-Coburg" royal family who spoke German at home! They changed their name to "Windsor". King George V led  the British against his first cousin the Kaiser, while his other first cousin Tsar Nicolas was being deposed. After the war most European monarchies were deposed. George V modernized the monarchy and ensured its survival in Britain. 


In 1918, the loosing powers were divided up between the winners, as a last demonstration of colonial power. The demands for end of monarchy included;  democratic republic, reparations and de-militarization in the German surrender setting up the rise of Hitler.

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population - colonial hubris of the first order. The declaration called for safeguarding the civil and religious rights for the Palestinian Arabs, who composed the vast majority of the local population, and also the rights and political status of the Jewish communities in other countries outside of Palestine. The British government acknowledged in 1939 that the local population's wishes and interests should have been taken into account, and recognized in 2017 that the declaration should have called for the protection of the Palestinian Arabs' political rights.  Combined with ignoring commitments to their Arab Allies in  WW1 against the Ottoman's, this has helped ensure antipathy to the West in the Islamic Middle East. 

in 1920 US women got the vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Oxford University accepts women for full degrees, Cambridge waited to 1948.  In 1928 the Conservative government in the UK passed the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 equalizing the franchise to all persons, male and female, over the age of 21. 

In 1924, Lenin dies and Stalin takes over the USSR. Stalin introduces collectivization taking away property from small successful farmers. The result was a the Great famine that killed 6-9M.  He then instituted a series of purges to eliminate all possible opposition. 

In 1925, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's PhD thesis proposed that the Sun was primarily composed of hydrogen. She was subsequently responsible for establishing Harvard as the home for the first female astronomers. 

​In 1927 Georges Lemaitre proposed a big bang theory of the universe. In 1929, Edwin Hubble provided data showing that there were galaxies outside of the Milky Way, and that they were moving away (red shift) in proportion to or distance away, confirming Lemaitre theory. There was a "big bang" at the start of the known universe.  Our place in the universe was transformed. 

In 1928, Scottish physician Alexander Fleming was the first to experimentally determine that a Penicillium mold secretes an antibacterial substance, which he named "penicillin". The first antibiotic, it became widely available during WW2.

In 1929, the Great Crash of the US stock market triggered the Great Depression. Matters were made worse by import duties that peaked under Smoot–Hawley in 1933 at 19.8%, and the subsequent retaliation by trading partners. Fixed exchange rates based on the gold standard also made things worse.  This highlighted the limitations of un-managed capitalism and led to the "New Deal" under Franklin Roosevelt to stimulate demand and get the economy going. In the end exchange rates were allowed to float away from gold.   It became clear that government management was essential to a stable economy. Socialism and/or communism was viewed  by many as a realistic alternative. The growing unrest in many colonies was put on hold by the outbreak of WW2.

in 1930, the first Soccer world Cup was held, leading the way to becoming the worlds favorite sport.

In 1933, Hitler looses the presidential election, but was the leader of the largest party in parliament. After a year of political instability, President Hindenberg invites Hitler to form a ruling coalition. The Riechstag fire provided the pretense to get the parliament to vote for  government by decree for 4 years, and Hitler was established as dictator.  

In 1936, the programmable computer was invented by Alan Turing, who called it an "a-machine" (automatic machine), the "Turing machine". During WW2, The breaking of the Enigma codes at Bletchley led by Alan Turing was crucial to the Allies success. The code breaking was the first use of  custom computing devices and is the template for the modern computer. After the war, he was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts. He accepted hormone treatment  "chemical castration", as an alternative to prison. Turing died by suicide in 1954, at age 41. Turing's contribution and the whole Enigma Story remained an Official Secret until the 1974. He finally  received a pardon and apology in Parliament in 2013, that was extended to all mistreated gays in 2016. 

In 1936, Edward VIII abdicates, transferring the British throne to  Albert and then to Elizabeth II. The nominal reason was opposition to Wallace, a divorcee, as Queen. In reality, the Baldwin government believed that he was a security risk and Nazi sympathies. This has been confirmed by the Marburg Files. Wallace provided a convenient reason to force abdication without the scandal. Churchill was out of office and opposed the abdication, probably without knowing about the Nazi connection. There is video of visits to Hitler. When France fell, Churchill arranged for Edward to be  smuggled out and sent to be Governor of the Bahamas where he could do not more damage. 

In 1939, Robert Oppenheimer published a paper showing that when a large star runs out of fuel and  dies it forms a black hole.  Schwarzschild's mathematical  singularity might be physically real. 

In 1939, Otto HahnFritz Strassmann  and Lise Meitner identified  nuclear fission in the February issue of Nature. This prompted ​the Einstein–Szilard letter written by Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein on August 2, 1939, was sent to President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt. Written by Szilard in consultation with fellow Hungarian physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, the letter warned that Germany might develop atomic bombs and suggested that the United States should start its own nuclear program. It prompted action by Roosevelt, which eventually resulted in the Manhattan Project led by Robert Oppenheimer. There was a much smaller bomb effort in the UK called "Tube Alloys" that was merged into the Manhattan Project in 1943. After the war it became clear that the Germans abandoned their effort in 1942 and never made a serious effort to create a bomb.  

1939-1945 WW2 UK, France, Russia, USA vs. Germany, Japan, Italy. As Germany rearmed under Hitler it took over  Sudetanland (German extraction Austrians), and Czechoslovakia. Europe desperately tried to  avoid another blood bath including the Munich Agreement negotiated by Neville Chamberlain.  Hitler signed a treaty with the USSR and used the  timidity  of the West to invade Poland, resulting in Churchill taking over as Prime Minister. The invasion of France resulted in an emergency evacuation of the British Forces at Dunkirk. Eventually the allies responded, but only the British Islands avoided being overrun in the Blitzkrieg thanks to radar and the RAF. In 1941, Germany broke their treaty and invaded Russia, only to stall just outside Moscow by the onset of Winter. As Germany started to struggle, the Nazis slaughtered over 6M European based Jews in the Final Solution. Japan took over the Far east displacing the colonial powers through  to Burma. In late 1941, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor Hawaii, forced the USA into the war and again manpower and material led to D Day and the opening of the Western Front in France.  The Germans led by Werner Von Braun launched the V2, the first guided missiles. The Jet powered Messerschmitt came to late to impact. Russia pushed all the way to  Berlin and Germany was defeated. The war in the Pacific continued with the US establishing Naval domination. Right before the invasion of Japan, 2 fission nuclear bombs triggered Japanese surrender and the era of nuclear deterrence was born.  There was an attempted coup in Japan the day of the surrender, suggesting that there was no chance of surrender without the use of atomic bombs.

 

Key dates 

1939 Poland Invasion & West declares war

1940 Battle of Britain 

1941 Pearl harbor, Germany gets to edge of Moscow, Japan takes Singapore,

1942 Russia blocks at Stalingrad, USA win at Midway and  Guadacanal, UK win at El Alamain

1943 Allies invades Sicily and Italy, Bombing of Germany.

1944 D-Day 

1945 Berlin, Hiroshima & Nagasaki

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Cold War era  1945 - 1989 

In the aftermath, the Allies co-opted  Germany and Japan with residential armies that remain 80 years later. The Marshall plan was an effort to fund reconstruction, block rearmament, establish healthy economies and democracies to avoid the mistakes of WW1.    The Communist powers in Russia and China had fought imperial forces bankrolled by the capitalist West, and had been invaded by countries that they had peace treaties with, so they moved quickly to a defensive  position against their previous allies. The Russians took over control of all East European countries that they had taken back from the Germans. The "Iron Curtain" had fallen and a Cold War developed between Capitalist and Communist blocs. In the US, a panic search for communists (McCarthy era) destroyed an number of careers, including Oppenheimer. A number of British  traitors were exposed who gave secrets to the Russians, including Klaus Fuchs, McClain, Burgess, and  Philby added to the paranoia.  After the development of the H bomb in the US, led by Edward Teller, and Russia in 1951-1952. Direct conflict was deterred by Mutually Assured Destruction between nuclear powers. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization formalized the collective defense of Western Europe and USA against the Soviet Block. The European economic union (EU) added economic co-dependence to European stability with free markets, free movement of capital and free movement of people. 

 

After 2 world wars, the United Nations was created as a body to resolve national conflicts peacefully, with limited success. Reviewing the first 50 years of the UN's history, the author Stanley Meisler writes that "the United Nations never fulfilled the hopes of its founders, but it accomplished a great deal nevertheless", citing its role in decolonization and its many successful peacekeeping efforts.

In 1944, the first successful open heart surgery operation to treat blue baby syndrome occurred at Johns Hopkins University. Through a collaboration between pediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig, surgeon Alfred Blalock, and surgical technician Vivien Thomas, the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt was created.

In 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in level flight.

After the horror of the Final Solution,  there was a immigration push for the remaining Jews into British controlled Palestine.  A guerrilla war ensued to obtain independence from UK.  On 14 May 1948, on the day the last British forces left from Haifa, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. The fate of the Palestinians was ignored, and Palestine became the symbol of Islamic resistance to the Wests latest colonialism.  The reality is that there is now  a large stateless group of Palestinians trapped in a open air prison within Israel boundaries, that has become a lasting source of instability. Israel settlers continued to displace Palestinians. The instability re-emerged again in 2023, with a terrorist attack by Hamas from the Gaza Strip followed by  Israel retaliation.

After the World Wars, the USA was the only  industrial power  that had not been decimated by the conflicts.  The Marshall Plan was designed to help Europe recover and avoid a repeat of the post WW1 return to fascism. The old European powers had been decimated by the war, and their colonies moved quickly to gain self rule. The British Empire was effectively dismantled in 10 years, with a few countries such as South Africa and Rhodesia clinging to white minority rule. Many colonies looked to the Communists for support for self rule, which reinforced opposition from the Capitalist powers.

Conflicts were limited to proxies, "He might be a SOB, but he is our SOB", was FDR describing the dictator of Nicaragua, shows the importance of allies no matter what they did.  There was also a  new form of soft colonial control, even as the pre-war colonies were gaining independence. The soft colonization included   economic access viewed by many proxies with weak capitalist control as just a new form of exploitation. This usually comes with language and cultural replacement. This economic colonization was even worse for technology "have not" countries.  

 

The Korean War 1950-1953 morphed into a US vs China confrontation, and ended with a permanent US military presence.

In 1952 the De Haviland Comet jet powered passenger airplane was put into service with BOAC. 

In 1953, Crick and Watson discovered molecular basis for inheritance in DNA using crucial crystallographic data that they stole from Rosalind Franklin.

In 1954, the first kidney transplant started the era of organ replacement.

In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,  was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. This was the first big legal victory for civil rights since the Civil War.

 

The Vietnam War 1955-1975 started as war for independence from France, which the US decided was a world vs. Communism conflict. The conflict ended with US withdrawal, replaced by a Communist proxy, The easing of Communist control in 1976 with the death  of Mao Zehdung in China has led to successful socialist market economy 40 years later.   

In 1956, Nassar President of Egypt took control of the Suez canal from the British commercial controllers. UK, Israel, and France developed a secret treaty to invade Egypt and retake control of the Suez Canal. The US and UN refused to support and it collapsed. It was the final futile exercise of colonial force. 

In 1957, Russians launch Sputnik and start the space race.

In 1960, the first fully integrated circuit was built by Fairchild Semiconductor based on the invention of Robert Noyce. By 1971, Intel introduced the first commercially available microprocessor  the Intel 4004, built in MOS technology. The semiconductor revolution was up and running.  

In 1960, the Beatles started the Rock and Role era. 

In 1961, the US launches a hopeless invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. This demonstration of incompetence opened the door in 1962, to the Cuban Missile crisis which pushed the world to the edge on nuclear war after USSR placed nuclear weapons on Cuba. The US under President Kennedy called Khrushchev's bluff and he backed down, after a secret quid pro quo of removing US nuclear weapons from Turkey.

In 1963, August, Martin Luther King made his iconic "I have a dream speech" as the civil rights movement gained nation wide momentum.  In November, President Kennedy was assassinated. Guided by the promoted Vice President Johnson, in 1964 the Civil Rights Act passed prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, signaling the end of Jim crow and separate but equal in the US South. A new black middle class started to emerge. At the last minute the ban on sex discrimination was added a huge impact on women in the workplace. 

In 1968, at the Mexico Olympics there was a Black Power Protest by  Tommie Smith and John Carlos after the 200m. 

In 1969, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated just as the resistance to the Vietnam war was starting to build. The US was in turmoil. 

in 1969, the Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon using rockets designed by Werner Von Braun, ending the space race with the USSR. There were a total of 6 landings before the program was shelved.  Since then there have been numerous robotic missions to all regions of the solar system, including the Voyager mission that left the gravitational pull of the sun. In 1975, the first observation of an astronomical black hole was confirmed.  There has also been long term human presence in earth orbit.

By the 1970's, the Arab  oil states in the Middle East had effective control over the worlds economies, cultivated by the West while overlooking very repressive  politics and support for Islamic extremists.

In 1971, Louise Webster and Paul Murdin at the Greenwich Royal Observatory found that Cygnus X1 was a binary star system, with one of the pair having no light just X ray emissions had a mass of 6 solar masses, so its a black hole. We now know its 15 solar masses. An accretion disk produces the Xray's. 

In 1972, the Munich massacre was a terrorist attack carried out during the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, by eight members of the Palestinian militant organization Black September, who infiltrated the Olympic Village, killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team, and took nine others hostage.

In 1974, Nixon resigns as US president after attempting to illegally disrupt the Democratic party in Watergate. 

In 1974, the first universal network protocol using packet-switching among the nodes was described by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn.  This has formed the basis for the telephone, internet and TV service in the 2000's. Line switching for directing calls was over.

In 1974, Stephen Hawking proposes that Hawking radiation is emitted from the event horizon of a black hole. 

Some colonies viewed independence as an opportunity to establish a theocracy to prevent a "godless" liberal democracy.  The Iranian Revolution  1979 replaced the Shah who was a west oriented proxy leader, with an Islamic Theocracy. Other Middle East Monarchies used Islamic control of the population but maintained stability using huge oil revenues.


China since 1976 has evolved into a dynamic "socialist market economy" under tight political control. It has pursued a strategy of soft economic colonization to spread its influence.

Soviet - Afghan war 1978-1989. The locals (Mujahadeen) eventually rejected the Soviet installed puppet government with extensive help from the USA. However they had no plan for a replacement government. In the chaos, the Taliban emerged as a Islamic Emirate. 

In 1979 to 1990, Margaret Thatcher was the controversial  Prime Minister of the UK who took on and crushed the power of the Unions. This set the scene for the modernization of the UK economy.

In 1980, a team of researchers led by Nobel prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez, his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, and chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Vaughn Michel discovered that sedimentary layers found all over the world at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary,  (or K–T boundary) contain a concentration of iridium hundreds of times greater than normal which could only come from a huge meteor. At the boundary, the dinosaur fossils  disappear and mammals thrive. 

In 1980, Apple introduced the Macintosh low cost personal computer and  started universal access to computing power with 3 key inventions;  graphical user interface, Ethernet network connectivity, and object oriented computing. All these were invented at Xerox PARC, stolen and commercialized by Apple.

The 1980's were a time of distrust between USA and old decrepit leadership in USSR. There were a series of close calls based on incorrect warning data that were not believed by relatively low level officers. Mistakes included shooting down the Korean airliner.  Eventually Gorbachev took power in 1985. This re-energizes communication between the powers. 

In 1983, Motorola introduced the first "portable" cell phone known as the "Brick". Over the next 20 years the advances in semiconductors shrunk the phone in size and cost. Along with the build out of nationwide cell coverage, the cell phone became universal. 

In 1983, The FDA approved Cyclosporine for commercial use. Jean Borel discovered Cyclosporine in the mid-1970s as a block to organ rejection. Organ transplant became relatively routine and widely available.

In 1986, The Chernobyl disaster began  with the explosion of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR, close to the border with the Byelorussian SSR, in the Soviet Union. It is one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at seven—the maximum severity—on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.  The accident led Gorbachev to start  "Glasnost" , and inadvertently the eventual collapse of the USSR. 

In 1988, the Olympics allowed professionals to compete ending the "shamateurism" era in sports that for example allowed military employed amateurs, and under the table appearance money.  

In 1988, the reality of global warming caused by fossil fuel use, was brought to the worlds attention by Jim Hansen. It took another 30 years before the impact on the earth became impossible to ignore and energy generation started to change. 

The Globalization era  1989 - 2020

​The collapse of Soviet power starts in 1989 as the Berlin wall falls, was complete in 1991 as the  the old satellite countries become independent democracies when Yeltsin replaced Gorbachev. The Russian transition to democracy under Yeltsin was disastrous for the man on the street with oligarchs enriched by exploiting national resources. The West forgot the lessons for WW1 and WW2 that showed that it was critical to enable the recovery of the losers.  In 1994, the Ukrainians give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for a security "assurance" from the USA, much good it did them.   Russia  eventually returns to authoritarian control under Putin in 1999. Putin re-established authoritarian control through staged bombings, and assassinations by poisoning including a candidate for president of Ukraine. 

 

The repeated lesson is that when you  defeat a country, you must help them rebuild to a healthy state or risk collapse to another authoritarian. We saw the collapse after WW1, avoided it after WW2 with the Marshall Plan, and then let it happen again in Russia. 

 

Classic capitalism, Fascism and Communism had all been exposed as  menaces.  As a result, democratic managed capitalism became the planet wide dominant culture that we see today. The resulting homogenization of culture has inevitably  triggered an effort by many groups to try to protect their uniqueness, and created resistance. 

Starting in the 1990's, the US control of advanced technology started to move to the Far East. Packaging of chips had aways been done in low cost centers such as Malesia. First Japan and then Korea became very successful chip manufacturers.  Just as the US was dominating the world, globalization was empowering the poorer economies. The invention of packet switched networks enabled world wide  internet and cell phone service, and for good and bad - social networks. 

 

Starting with Hubble space telescope in 1990, we have discovered billions of galaxies looking back over 10 billion light years, and thousands of planets orbiting stars in the Milky Way.

US Iraq war 1991 "Desert Shield" attempted to impose stability in oil supplies in  response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.  Kuwait was  liberated, and the US attempted to disable the Iraq military but deliberately did not take over Iraq. 

In 1994, Nelson Mandela was democratically elected as President of South Africa ending Apartheid in the last state with constitutional discrimination. 

In 1999,  World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is established, leading to comprehensive year around random testing. Since 1972, performance enhancing drugs had become larger factor in all sports. It took till 2012 for  Lance Armstrong to be exposed as a fraud and loose his TDF wins 1999-2005.

in 1999, the Blackberry was introduced as the first cell phone that could also exchange emails, and it became the fancy tech tool of choice until the smart phone in 2007. 

In 2000, the speculative boom in Internet stocks bursts. 

On 9/11/2001, Osama bin Laden, funded by the Saudi Royal family but based with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, orchestrated the attack on the US using planes as human guided bombs. The attack seems to have been designed trigger an overreaction from the US that would re-ignite anti- USA sentiment in the Arab world - the US obliged. 

US - Afghan war 2001-2021. The resistance of the Islamic theocracies, funded by the Arab oil states,  to external control led to the 9/11 terrorist attack on the US. In response to 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaeda which it did, and establish a functioning liberal democracy which failed. Eventually accepting Taliban control. 

The Iraq War 2003 to 2011. It began with the invasion of Iraq by the United States-led coalition that overthrew the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein based on supposed nuclear weapons, that proved wrong. The conflict continued for much of the next decade as an insurgency emerged to oppose the coalition forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government. US troops were officially withdrawn in 2011.  

In 2003, The Human Genome Project (HGP)  mapped and sequenced all of the genes of the human genome from both a physical and a functional standpoint in a project lasting 13 years. This has spawned numerous rapid sequencing technology that has enabled the detection of a number of critical disease  mutations. We now have cancer treatments that  are selected based on genes. Mass access has led to countless family secrets being uncovered. 

In 2004, Facebook started as a Harvard U meet up site, which rapidly mushroomed and "social media" was born. 

In 2005, forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu, along with colleagues in the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh, published a paper, "Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in a National Football League Player". This has changed attitudes to head injuries in American Football, rugby, soccer, ice hockey etc. 

In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, the worlds first "smart phone" that was both a phone and a internet browsing terminal that could also send and receive email. By 2020, these are used throughout the world. Land lines have almost disappeared, developing countries have moved straight to cell networks. 

In 2008, the sub prime mortgage market collapsed, the second financial collapse of the 2000's. 

 

China has bolstered its military to try and become the global challenger to the US, and threaten US allies Taiwan.  At the same time as challenging the US, it is also a key supplier of many key technologies, and is threatening Taiwan the home of TSMC the only supplier of many of the worlds key chips. This gives it unique leverage in a future possible conflict.

Globalization has resulted in wealth and growth being concentrated  in the thriving democracies which has led to increased pressure from migrants and resistance from the locals to job and multicultural pressures. Globalization has also led internally to the evolution of a new low tech underclass, and the inevitable rise of fascist theocratic politicians trying to use the "have nots" to take political power. 

 

In 2016, Trump rode this discontent to the US presidency which ended with the US getting close to an insurrection after the next election.  Brexit in the UK and far right success in Italy, France and the Netherlands all show the resistance to migration.

In 2019 (5 year data delay), in the US the gun death rate continues to rise, over 50% of all gun deaths are suicides. Of the homicide victims 48.9% are unknown because of patchy reporting , 28.3 percent of homicide victims were killed by someone they knew other than family members (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc.), 13.0 percent were slain by family members, and 9.9 percent were killed by strangers. 

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-10.xls

Misinformation era 2020-????

Social media on internet capable mobile devices has become a new unmanaged source of global information, the days are over where journalists acted as the gatekeepers for information that is widely disseminated. Misinformation is rife as opinion, deliberate propaganda, malicious troublemaking, religious zealotry, or just sales and marketing. 

 

in 2020, the UK leaves the European Union in "Brexit", generally viewed as a triumph of misinformation. The first crack in the post WW2 shared markets, the break up has been identified with the groups who are unhappy having lost out on the wealth associated with globalization. 

In 2020 Covid started, probably in a animal market Wuhan China. For 2 years, until a combination of vaccination and herd immunity, the world essentially self - isolated as the only way to control the spread of an infectious disease. The rapid development of tests and vaccine, were enabled by CRISPR RnA editing technology. CRISPR  uses RnA tools to identify specific DNA segments, and cut the DNA at the end of the segment. A significant fraction of US society choose to challenge the safety and utility of vaccines without any evidence resulting in significant loss of life.  In 2021, Doudna and Charpentier won the Nobel Prize for CRISPR. 

In Jan 2021, Trump attempted an insurrection to disrupt the results of the 2020 election based on false accusations of voter fraud. These falsehoods have infected US politics and threaten to derail the Republican Party into a series of positions based on lies. Trump has made a career of misinformation, particularly over election fraud and anyone who opposes him. 

 

Ukraine War 2022-? Russia under Putin, invades Ukraine in an attempt to prevent the West and Nato getting closer to its borders. Ukraine had established a successful liberal democracy and technology industry. Russia post communism  has become a energy and raw materials supplier to the industrial west making a number of oligarchs, who took over state businesses, very rich. The west encouraged business connections for economic gain, and in the belief that economic codependence was good for stability, ironically it also gave Soviets unexpected leverage of the west in key areas such as gas to Germany. Russia  is now mired in another extended conflict. It tried used its global businesses as leverage against the Wests support for Ukraine- a telling lesson that China has played close attention to. 

Climate change is the critical issue of our time that will overwhelm all the petty conflicts, misinformation from the fossil fuel industry and political opportunists is rife. 

 

Where we are ...

The days of capitalism vs. state run communism and fascism are long gone. Todays global culture is  dominated by Western  countries with  democratic managed capitalism; challenged internally and externally by cultural retention and technology have nots, by economic partners competing for power, and by planetary challenges caused by industrialization.  Attempts at military takeover meet swift local resistance. The only military solutions that stick involve permanent placement of the winning military because the locals will eventually fight back, a lesson that has been true from the first military conquests. 

The only way to break long running feuds is to give the next generation a reason to abandon the feud. The current generation will never abandon until they are about to become irrelevant. The EU undercut the N Ireland feud. The Israelis have to give nationhood to the next generation of Palestinians. 

The need for planet wide cooperation has never been clearer, the only rational solutions with long term stability are those where everyone feels like they are making progress. The risk of irrational psychopaths coming to power and use economic interdependence as a weapon has been highlighted by Hitler, Trump and Putin. The jury is out on Xi in China. 

The thesis that people vote for a change at regular intervals as the world changes is obviously correct. In 2024, the Democrats lost this election because they failed to notice the mood of the country, probably because they did not have a primary season. This was as much an anti- consequences of  globalization vote as anything. 

 

The real question is 50 years from now (2060) as grandchildren abandon Houston and Florida due to rising sea levels, how will Trump be viewed. As yet another example of a blame the immigrant leader following the tradition of blame the Jews, Chinese, Irish, Italiens, Germans, Japanese, Germans again etc. Of course German leadership in the 1930's is the classic example. 

 

Or will he be viewed as a leader who united the country to overcome the challenges of the day in the tradition  of Roosevelt and Churchill.

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