The timeline of historic inventions is a chronological list of particularly significant technological inventions and their inventors, where known.[a] This page lists nonincremental inventions that are widely recognized by reliable sources as having had a direct impact on the course of history that was profound, global, and enduring. The dates in this article make frequent use of the units mya and kya, which refer to millions and thousands of years ago, respectively.
The dates listed in this section refer to the earliest evidence of an invention found and dated by archaeologists (or in a few cases, suggested by indirect evidence). Dates are often approximate and change as more research is done, reported and seen. Older examples of any given technology are often found. The locations listed are for the site where the earliest solid evidence has been found, but especially for the earlier inventions, there is little certainty how close that may be to where the invention took place.
Lower Paleolithic
The Lower Paleolithic period lasted over 3 million years, during which there many human-like species evolved including toward the end of this period, Homo sapiens. The original divergence between humans and chimpanzees occurred 13 (Mya), however interbreeding continued until as recently as 4 Mya, with the first species clearly belonging to the human (and not chimpanzee) lineage being Australopithecus anamensis. Some species are controversial among paleoanthropologists, who disagree whether they are species on their own or not. Here Homo ergaster is included under Homo erectus, while Homo rhodesiensis is included under Homo heidelbergensis.
During this period the Quaternary glaciation began (about 2.58 million years ago), and continues to today. It has been an ice age, with cycles of 40–100,000 years alternating between long, cold, more glaciated periods, and shorter warmer periods – interglacial episodes.
320 kya: The trade and long-distance (up to 50 miles) transportation of resources (e.g. obsidian), use of pigments, and possible making of projectile points in Kenya[29][30][31]
Middle Paleolithic
The evolution of early modern humans around 300 kya coincides with the start of the Middle Paleolithic period. During this 250,000-year period, our related archaic humans such as Neanderthals and Denisovans began to spread out of Africa, joined later by Homo sapiens. Over the course of the period we see evidence of increasingly long-distance trade, religious rites, and other behavior associated with Behavioral modernity.
279 kya:Hafting and early stone-tipped projectile weapons in Ethiopia[32]
200 kya: Simple glue (adhesive) made of one kind of material, birch tar, in Central Italy by Neanderthals.[33]
170 kya – 90 kya:Clothing, among anatomically modern humans in Africa. Genetic evidence from body lice suggests a range of dates centering over 100 thousand years ago.[37] The first bone scrapers appropriate for scraping hides to make supple leather were found in Morocco dating to 90–120,000 years ago.[38][39]
164 kya – 47 kya: Heat treating of stone blades in South Africa.[40]
135 kya – 100 kya:Beads in Israel and Algeria[41] — implying string or thread
50 kya was long regarded as the beginning of behavioral modernity, which defined the Upper Paleolithic period. The Upper Paleolithic lasted nearly 40,000 years, while research continues to push the beginnings of behavioral modernity earlier into the Middle Paleolithic. Behavioral modernity is characterized by the widespread observation of religious rites, artistic expression and the appearance of tools made for purely intellectual or artistic pursuits.
49 kya – 30 kya:Ground stone tools – fragments of an axe in Australia date to 49–45 ka, more appear in Japan closer to 30 ka, and elsewhere closer to the Neolithic.[56][57]
47 kya: The oldest-known mines in the world are from Eswatini, and extracted hematite for the production of the red pigment ochre.[58][59]
45 kya – 9 kya: Earliest evidence of shoes, suggested by changes in foot bone morphology in China by Tianyuan man.[60] The earliest physical shoes found so far are bark sandals dated to 10 to 9 kya in Fort Rock Cave, United States.[61] The oldest known leather shoe dated to 5.5 kya was found in excellent condition in the Areni-1 cave located in the Vayots Dzor province of Armenia.[62]
32-28 kya:Rope and Cords for "hafting stone tools, weaving baskets, or sewing garments," according to Elis Kvavadze et al.[67][68]
31 kya:Amputation and surgery.[69]Medicine in a meaningful sense likely predates the human-chimpanzee split, as, for example, herbal medicine has been observed in other primates.[70]
28 kya:Ceramics (direct evidence) and weaving (impressions left in the ceramics) in Moravia[71][72] (Czech Republic) and Georgia. (The oldest piece of woven cloth found so far was in Çatalhöyük, Turkey and dated to about 9,000 years ago.[73])
The end of the Last Glacial Period ("ice age") and the beginning of the Holocene around 11.7 ka coincide with the Agricultural Revolution, marking the beginning of the agricultural era, which persisted there until the industrial revolution.[96]
During the Neolithic period, lasting 8400 years, stone began to be used for construction, and remained a predominant hard material for toolmaking. Copper and arsenic bronze were developed towards the end of this period, and of course the use of many softer materials such as wood, bone, and fibers continued. Domestication spread both in the sense of how many species were domesticated, and how widespread the practice became.
8040–7510 BC: The Pesse canoe is the oldest boat we have found,[108] while early human habitation of Crete and Australia make clear human seafaring goes back tens or hundreds of thousands of years. (see above)
3500 BC:Ploughing, on a site in Bubeneč, Czech Republic.[153] Evidence, c. 2800 BC, has also been found at Kalibangan, Indus Valley (modern-day India).[154]
The beginning of bronze-smelting coincides with the emergence of the first cities and of writing in the Ancient Near East and the Indus Valley. The Bronze Age starting in Eurasia in the 4th millennia BC and ended, in Eurasia, c.1200 BC.
3250 BC: One of the earliest documented hats was worn by a man (nicknamed Ötzi) whose body and hat found frozen in a mountain between Austria and Italy. He was found wearing a bearskin cap with a chin strap, made of several hides stitched together, resembling a Russian fur hat without the flaps.[164][165][166]
3200 BC: Dry Latrines in the city of Uruk, Iraq, with later dry squat Toilets, that added raised fired brick foot platforms, and pedestal toilets, all over clay pipe constructed drains.[167][168][169]
3000 BC: Devices functionally equivalent to dice, in the form of flat two-sided throwsticks, are seen in the Egyptian game of Senet.[170] Perhaps the oldest known dice, resembling modern ones, were excavated as part of a backgammon-like game set at the Burnt City, an archeological site in south-eastern Iran, estimated to be from between 2800 and 2500 BC.[171][172] Later, terracotta dice were used at the Indus Valley site of Mohenjo-daro (modern-day Pakistan).[173]
3000 BC – 2800 BC:Prosthesis first documented in the Ancient Near East, in ancient Egypt and Iran, specifically for an eye prosthetics, the eye found in Iran was likely made of bitumen paste that was covered with a thin layer of gold.[181]
2200 BC:Protractor, Phase IV, Lothal, Indus Valley (modern-day India), a Xancus shell cylinder with sawn grooves, at right angles, in its top and bottom surfaces, has been proposed as an angle marking tool.[204][205]
2000 BC:Water clock by at least the old Babylonian period (c. 2000 – c. 1600 BC),[206] but possibly earlier from Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley.[207]
The Late Bronze Age collapse occurs around 1200 BC,[221] extinguishing most Bronze-Age Near Eastern cultures, and significantly weakening the rest. This is coincident with the complete collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation. This event is followed by the beginning of the Iron Age. We define the Iron Age as ending in 510 BC for the purposes of this article, even though the typical definition is region-dependent (e.g. 510 BC in Greece, 322 BC in India, 200 BC in China), thus being an 800-year period.[e]
7th century BC: The royal Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh had 30,000 clay tablets, in several languages, organized according to shape and separated by content. The first recorded example of a library catalog.[226]
688 BC: Waterproof concrete in use, by the Assyrians.[227] Later, the Romans developed concretes that could set underwater,[228] and used concrete extensively for construction from 300 BC to 476 AD.[229]
With the Greco-Roman trispastos ("three-pulley-crane"), the simplest ancient crane, a single man tripled the weight he could lift than with his muscular strength alone.[234]
6th century – 2nd century BC: Systematization of medicine and surgery in the Sushruta Samhita in Vedic Northern India.[238][239][240] Documented procedures to:
Perform cataract surgery (couching). Babylonian and Egyptian texts, a millennium before, depict and mention oculists, but not the procedure itself.[241]
500 – 200 BC:Toe stirrup, depicted in 2nd century Buddhist art, of the Sanchi and Bhaja Caves, of the Deccan Satavahana empire (modern-day India)[249][250] although may have originated as early as 500 BC.[251]
5th century BC:Cast iron in Ancient China: Confirmed by archaeological evidence, the earliest cast iron is developed in China by the early 5th century BC during the Zhou dynasty (1122–256 BC), the oldest specimens found in a tomb of Luhe County in Jiangsu province.[254][255][256]
By 407 BC: Early descriptions of what may be a Wheelbarrow in Greece.[259] First actual depiction of one (tomb mural) shows up in China in 118 AD.[260]
