Embryophytes: First True Plants
Around 470 million years ago, plants evolved a waxy cuticle to prevent water loss; only later did water-transporting vascular systems evolve.
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Master Timeline
First True Animals – Comb Jellyfish
The first true animals are the comb jellyfish which evolved about 555 million years ago.
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First Multicellular Animals
Organisms that consist of more than one cell took several billion years to evolve from unicellular organisms. All species of animals, land plants and most fungi are multicellular, as well as many algae. A few organisms are partially both such as slime molds and social amoebae. Domain: Eukaryota > Kingdom: Animalia > Phylum: Porifera (sponges)
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Oldest Known Fossil-Microorganisms
The earliest known life on Earth are fossilized microorganisms found in hydrothermal vent precipitates. Currently dated to about 3.42 billion BCE. These microorganisms were prokaryote cells. Single celled organisms with no nucleus and had early simple DNA. More complex DNA in a nucleus evolved about 1.5 billion years later in Eukaryotic cells, circa 2 billion
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Man Made Glass
The earliest known man made glass dates back to circa 3500 BCE and to Egypt and Eastern Mesopotamia. Discovery of glassblowing around 1st century BC was a major breakthrough in glass making.
Electron Microscope = Nanoworld Discovered!
Starting in 1931 with the invention of the electron microscope, the nanoworld became visible to us. The nanoworld contains items as small in diameter as 1 micrometer (1 micron) to a diameter 1,000 times smaller, a diameter of 1 nanometer. The nanoworld includes the smallest single celled organisms, the smallest bacteria as well as viruses,
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Microscope Invented = Microworld Discovered!
With the invention of the microscope, humanity became aware of the microworld which is defined as 1 to 1000 microns. A micron is equal to one thousands of a millimeter. A cell is about 10 microns wide. Paper is about 100 microns thick. The unaided human eye can see items as small as 50 microns,
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Earliest Known Magnification
The earliest known magnification dates back to the first century. These simple early magnification devices consisted of using natural crystals or a glass globe filled with water. It is reasonable to assume the use of natural crystals for magnification was around for many thousands of years. One possible specimen is the Nimrud lens dating back
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Early Sumer Civilization
From 6500 to 4000 BCE, the Sumer civilization increased in social polarization. For example, central houses in the settlements became bigger. This early Sumer culture is characterized by large unwalled villages with multi-roomed rectangular mud-brick houses. The village featured public buildings including temples and centralized government. They had fine quality greenish colored pottery decorated with
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Major Religion: Hinduism
Hinduism, one of the world’s oldest religions, emerged around 1100 BCE, several centuries after the Indus Valley Civilization collapsed. Hinduism has no known roots in the IVC, but it’s a topic to follow as we uncover clues. There was a several century gap from the collapse of the IVC to the rise of the early
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Oldest Known Monotheistic Religion: Atenism
In the ninth year of the reign of Akhenaten, he declared the traditional supreme God Aten to be the only God of Egypt with himself as the sole communicator to Aten, kind of like an early Pope. This early attempt at monotheism failed after about 20 years and Egypt returned to their traditional polytheistic religion.
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City of Catalhoyuk
The city of Çatalhöyük was a very large Neolithic city in the southern Anatolia peninsula in modern day Turkey. The population of 5,000 to 10,000 lived in mudbrick buildings. Some of the larger buildings have ornate murals. A painting of the village, with the twin mountain peaks in the background is frequently cited as the
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Oldest Known Bracelet
Denisovan: This bracelet dates from 70,000 to 40,000 BCE. It was discovered inside the Denisova Cave beside ancient human remains. The Denisova Cave is a cave located in Siberia, Russia. Other cave finds include woolly mammoth and woolly rhino bones. Scientists say there is evidence that the bracelet’s maker used a drill. This is the
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Code of Hammurabi
A set of about 300 legal laws written in stone from ancient Near East that withstood the test of time. Hammurabi, the sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylonian, wrote it in cuneiform in the Old Babylonion dialect of Akkadian. The text itself was copied and studied by Mesopotamian scribes for over a millennium.
Eve: Haplogroup L
7,000 Generations Ago All humans today share a single grandma, circa 175,000 BCE. We know this because all humans alive today share our ancestor’s haplogroup L genes — from our X chromosome. She was one of many thousands of women living in eastern Africa. Many maternal lines survived for many generations but ultimately over time
Adam: Haplogroup A
11,000 Generations Ago All humans today share a single grandpa, circa 275,000 BCE. We know this because all humans alive today share our ancestor’s haplogroup A genes — from our Y chromosome. He was one of many thousands of men living in eastern Africa. Many paternal lines survived for many generations but ultimately over time
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Many Early Out of Africa Migrations
The “out of Africa” migration took place in many waves of which two are widely recognized: 130,000 to 100,000 BCE, and the Southern Dispersal around 70,000 to 50,000 BCE. Through genetic DNA testing we know that none of the genetic differences prior to circa 70,000 BCE exist in today’s humans.
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Oldest Surviving Spear
14,000 Generations Ago Homo heidelbergensis: Long spears made hunting large animals more safe. The oldest wooden spears found so far were found in Germany and dates to circa 400,000 BCE. In fact, they are currently the oldest known wooden artifacts. The find included 3 wooden spears, stone tools, and the butchered remains of more than
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Oldest Modern Human-like Footprints
60,800 Generations Ago Species: Likely Homo erectus, our direct ancestor. The footprints found in Ileret, Kenya represent the oldest undisputed evidence of hominins walking upright in an efficient manner characteristic of modern humans. Our style of upright walking, which Homo erectus appears to have shared, is energy-efficient and adapted for long distances. It involves a
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Genus: Sahelanthropus (Walking Upright)
260,000 Generations Ago CHLCA candidate: Often considered one of the earliest potential hominins, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, best known from the “Toumai” skull found in Chad, exhibits features that suggest bipedalism but remains debated due to limited fossil evidence. With two human anatomical traits, small canine teeth, and a spinal cord hole in the cranium further forward
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