Everything in the universe has a beginning. Here are some of those things that are still with us and when they began (mostly according to Western scientists and historians), listed by year:
- -13,700,000,000 the universe, time, space, matter, energy
- -13,300,000,000 stars
- -12,600,000,000 Milky Way Galaxy
- -4,570,000,000 Sun (but 30% dimmer than it is now)
- -4,540,000,000 Earth
- -4,500,000,000 Moon
- -4,400,000,000 clouds, rain, the oceans begin to fill
- -4,031,000,000 rocks (oldest known)
- -4,000,000,000 life, DNA
- -2,500,000,000 breathing oxygen
- -1,200,000,000 sex
- -900,000,000 swimming
- -580,000,000 eyes, animals with bilateral symmetry
- -550,000,000 brains
- -540,000,000 hearts
- -480,000,000 fish
- -450,000,000 Appalachian Mountains
- -425,000,000 land plants
- -385,000,000 trees
- -365,000,000 legs, lungs
- -220,000,000 lizards
- -164,000,000 hair
- -160,000,000 birds, feathers
- -150,000,000 North America as a continent
- -125,000,000 flowers
- -100,000,000 South America and Africa as continents
- -92,000,000 ants
- -80,000,000 Rocky Mountains
- -66,000,000 grass
- -55,000,000 Australia as a continent
- -25,000,000 seeing in colour (among our ancestors)
- -3,500,000 hands, technology, walking on two feet, eating meat (among our ancestors)
- -1,200,000 black skin in humans
- -400,000 houses, clothing, language, spear
- -60,000 behavioural modernity (religion, music, stories, art, jewellery, graves, knives, fishing, etc), human universals (jokes, gossip, names, pretending, marriage, rich and poor, out-groups, etc)
- -60,000 people in Asia
- -50,000 people in Australia, boats
- -40,000 people in Europe
- -25,000 sewing
- -20,000 bow and arrow
- -13,000 Native Americans
- -10,000 bread, pots, Jericho
- -8700 metal
- -7500 bricks
- -6000 wine, irrigation
- -5500 plough
- -5000 beer, toothpaste
- -4000 cheese, glue
- -3600 silk
- -3500 cities, wheels, carts, sails
- -3400 bronze, mummies, opium
- -3100 writing
- -3000 paper, candle
- -2900 Egypt, taxes
- -2800 chairs, books, soap, 365-day calendar
- -2700 tea, buttons, wires
- -2560 Great Pyramid of Giza
- -2500 iron, glass, ink, carpets, flush toilet, sewers
- -2000 alphabet, ships, hours, minutes
- -1550 Book of the Dead
- -1500 boots, scissors, Hinduism, Olmec heads, Greek
- -1323 King Tut’s tomb
- -1200 Chinese, Judaism, Hebrew
- -900 Aramaic, Book of Genesis
- -776 Olympics
- -600 Roman alphabet, coins, world map
- -550 scientific model of the universe
- -500 Delhi, Buddhists, Tao-te-Ching
- -331 Alexandria
- -221 China
- -120 latitude and longitude
- -36 zero
- +31 Christians
- 79 encyclopedias, claw hammer
- 100 horseshoe, dome
- 140 New Testaments
- 150 Mumbai
- 170 north as “up”
- 231 wheelbarrow
- 400 Arabic, sugar
- 500 English, Japan, Arabic numerals
- 525 this way of dating years
- 580 quill pen
- 589 toilet paper
- 611 Muslims
- 632 Koran
- 638 mosques
- 725 mechanical clock
- 762 Baghdad
- 800 gunpowder
- 806 paper money
- 842 French
- 868 printing
- 900 Swahili, Spanish
- 933 Hindi
- 950 forks
- 984 lens
- 1000 Yiddish, second (unit of time)
- 1041 movable type
- 1095 Islamophobia
- 1096 Oxford University
- 1154 Common Law
- 1166 grand juries
- 1200 dominoes
- 1250 Easter Island statues
- 1221 bombs
- 1277 land mine
- 1290 Portuguese
- 1325 Mexico City
- 1400 libraries of Timbuktu
- 1405 whisky
- 1450 printing press, guns
- 1517 dollar
- 1524 The letter J
- 1554 Sao Paulo
- 1569 Mercator projection
- 1605 newspapers
- 1611 King James Bible
- 1613 New York City
- 1620 Western science
- 1653 Taj Mahal
- 1663 magazines
- 1676 White American racism
- 1750 blackface
- 1768 Encyclopaedia Britannica
- 1776 USA
- 1791 metric system
- 1792 Washington, DC
- 1804 trains
- 1810 tin can
- 1822 photograph
- 1826 bus
- 1829 poker
- 1843 The Economist
- 1848 Communist Manifesto
- 1851 New York Times
- 1854 Republican Party
- 1876 telephone
- 1880 Black Brute stereotype
- 1884 Oxford dictionary
- 1886 Coca-Cola, Statue of Liberty
- 1888 film, National Geographic
- 1892 Vogue magazine
- 1895 Corn Flakes
- 1898 heroin (sold by Bayer)
- 1907 Dixie cups
- 1926 television, Hollywood
- 1928 sliced bread
- 1930 Mount Rushmore, Chrysler Building, World Cup
- 1936 Muzak
- 1937 chocolate chip cookies, rice cooker
- 1938 television game shows, LSD
- 1945 United Nations, atom bomb, microwave oven
- 1946 computer
- 1951 T-shirt as a shirt, Scientology
- 1953 Playboy, James Bond
- 1954 Lord of the Rings
- 1955 Disneyland
- 1959 Barbie dolls, AIDS
- 1966 Model Minority stereotype, email, Mao’s Little Red Book
- 1969 Internet, smoke detector
- 1971 The War on Drugs
- 1973 plastic Coke bottles, General Tso’s chicken
- 1976 Welfare Queen stereotype, Ebola
- 1979 hip hop
- 1984 crack
- 1986 Prozac
- 1989 the Web
- 1991 American school resegregation
- 1992 Nollywood, texting
- 1996 Fox News, MSNBC, Al Jazeera
- 1997 Harry Potter
- 1998 Google, Viagra
- 1999 blogs
- 2001 Wikipedia, Google Earth
- 2006 Twitter
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
- This post draws in part from:
- demographically weighted world history – I made the periods of history since -4000 roughly equal to how many people were alive then, so later times get more lines.
- Posts from my library – another timeline post that leads to other posts
577
Abagond 
Reblogged this on In Through A Coloured Lens.
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Well, that puts some things in perspective lol
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@ Abagond
Not one of you better posts!
This is a total erroneous statement to make! How can this be the case when we know from experience and evidence that the Universe, or even Multi-verse is, infinite?
Beginnings and endings are simply arbitrary points defined in an infinite space…
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And you say you are Catholic…
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@ BobbyMartnen
Nothing Abagond wrote in this post contradicts Roman Catholic doctrine.
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That would be a kind gesture if any commenter can point out to anything in this post that contradicts Roman Catholic doctrine. (I also see no contradiction.) Maybe that could form the basis for a follow-up post.
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That unfortunately is the point! This post simply reinforces a force fed religious influenced doctrine…
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I added to the post the caveat:
In fact, the sort of thinking the list is based on itself has a beginning:
which does not pretend to absolute truth, just a working set of best guesses and ideas. But which, given the history of the West, probably does have unconscious religious assumptions built into it.
And, if you read the list through the lens of Western progress, that too has a beginning, some time after the discovery of Uranus in 1781, when the West began to see itself as clearly “better” than the Greeks and Romans. Before then a golden age model of history was more common.
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@ BobbyMartnen
Right, where did I contradict Catholic doctrine?
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Wow, this is the most extensive, “historic” timeline I’ve yet to read, Abagond!
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Putting (questionable) personal opinions about the theological and scientific validity of the post aside, that’s a fascinating perspective. I’m so used to seeing this kind of timeline done in graphical form that it actually has more impact when rendered as a text list.
Looks like a lot of work – not just collating the info, but also deciding which event(s) to apply to the various specific or approximate years.
Good job. Thanks for the post.
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This is an etensive and exhaustive post but it’s also interesting.
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This is an awesome list!
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A very comprehensive historical events list.
I agree with Kwamla
“This is a total erroneous statement to make! How can this be the case when we know from experience and evidence that the Universe, or even Multi-verse is, infinite?
Beginnings and endings are simply arbitrary points defined in an infinite space…”
it seems more logical that there is an infinite cycle just as there are many sub cycles and cyclic processes.
as to the Catholic doctrine ,where in this process does a old white male create said universe?
how does he do it?
why is he a he?
why is he white?
where did he come from?
oh and where are we going and why?
not a surprise or mystery why many humans still cling to outmoded interpretations of reality.
just as christian sect doctrine ,muslum sect doctrine and all other religious doctrines are to keep believing until rendered obsolete.
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due aversralism ,cognitive pathology and cognitive deficits
blogs are limited in their ability as tools for sharing information and dialog
these are the primary reasons why on this and numerous other posts I’ve asked questions and made
statements only to be ignored.
Now I will comment far less as it is ineffective and futile.
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Mbeti, I am interested in your take on the discussion taking place on this post
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/africa-in-the-1400s/
what is your view on the white washing of African history?
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@ Mbeti
I find myself (for the most part) being frozen out too, (perhaps I am imagining this and am projecting too much), even as a multi-racial Black African. I have not been commenting long on this blog though. I stupidly outed myself as an agnostic atheist on this blog. I thought even that as an African non-Christian that could bring an interesting dimension and challenge the American stereotypical view of Africa. In my real life I am vegan and anti-vivisectionist and pacifist who believes in justice but am viewed as worse than a paedophile, simply because I do not practice Christianity. Since I have been stripped of my ancestral beliefs and culture, I will not fill that void with Christianity. It seems to me (on this blog) even white Christian racists are higher on the totem pole than Black atheists. This is my reading of it.
What would your opinion on this be?
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[…] When things began […]
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@Taotesan
I have always respected your commentary and don’t recall anything you have written I disagreed with.
I think your perpective is indeed appreciated and your background gives you insights that might not otherwise be considered.
I’m an atheist too and raised my family that way. But I also taught my children to respect other people’s religious beliefs. I attempt here to be respectful about religion but often times my comments on this blog can come off as sacastic.
If people don’t repond to something you have written that doesn’t mean people don’t think it’s valid but rather that your insight stands on its own.
As far as Black athiests goes I think thier are far more then you realize.
I’ve found that when I talk about my atheism to people in person that most become uncomfortable. It has the same affect as talking about racsim. Some ideas threaten the social constructs people rely on to support how they view themselves and the world around them and that makes them uneasy. So they will want to change the subject to something else, something safe.
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