A short history of the West:
300s: The Roman Empire becomes Christian and stops worshipping the old gods. Their armies begin to lose against the Goths from the north. In 395 the empire divides into east and west: the West is born.
400s: Rome falls. The Goths and others divide the empire in the west into small kingdoms. Gaul, now ruled by Franks, becomes France. New: Ireland.
500s: New: Scotland.
600s: The prophet Muhammad of Arabia founds the Muslim religion. It conquers the Holy Land, Persia, Egypt and north Africa. New: England.
700s: Spain falls to the Muslims. Charles Martel saves France and the rest of the West from the same fate.
800s: Most of the West united under Charlemagne. Sicily lost to Muslims. New: Germany.
900s: The Norse from the north become the new threat to the West. In time they will become Christian and peaceful. New: Poland, Denmark.
1000s: The Crusades: Christians begin to reconquer Muslim lands. They are able to take back Spain and Sicily, but
the Holy Land only for a time. New: Hungary, Finland, Iceland.
1100s: From the Arabs comes paper made from wood, the works of Aristotle and the number zero, which makes arithmetic far easier. From China comes the compass, whose needle always points north. New: Sweden.
1200s: Aquinas explains Christian theology through the philosophy of Aristotle. Marco Polo journeys beyond Persia and India to China. Gunpowder comes from China. New: Latvia.
1300s: Dante writes. The Black Death kills one in four. New: Lithuania.
1400s: The Renaissance: a great age of learning and high art. Leonardo and Michelangelo paint. The printing press can copy books cheaply enough for common people to own. Columbus discovers new lands west across the sea, to be called North America and South America. Together they are four times larger than Europe.
1500s: An age of wicked popes. Protestants in the north leave the Catholic Church. Copernicus says the earth and the planets orbit the sun. The West begins to settle North and South America: blacks from Africa are brought to work the land as slaves. Shakespeare and Cervantes write. New: North and South America, Philippines.
1600s: Australia discovered. The rise of Western science: Galileo, Bacon, Newton. New: South Africa.
1700s: The invention of the steam engine, which turns fire into work. A great age of invention follows that lasts till the present. The West starts to move from rule by kings to rule by the people.
1800s: Rise of industry. People begin to move from the country to the city. The slaves are all freed. The West rules most of Africa and parts of Asia. It brings the Christian faith to Africa. Darwin says that man was not created by God but comes from the animals. New: Australia, New Zealand, Japan.
1900s: Inventions that let men fly (aeroplanes), do arithmetic blindingly fast (computers), destroy whole cities (atom bombs), go to the moon (rockets), and send pictures through the air (television). Life explained in terms of matter alone (DNA). New: Israel.
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