The
history of the world or
human history is the
history of humanity from the earliest times to the present, in all places on
Earth, beginning with the
Paleolithic Era. It excludes non-human
natural history and
geological history, except insofar as the natural world substantially affects human lives. World history encompasses the study of written records, from ancient times forward, plus additional knowledge gained from other sources, such as
archaeology. Ancient recorded history
[1] begins with the invention, independently at several sites on Earth, of writing, which created the infrastructure for lasting, accurately transmitted memories and thus for the diffusion and growth of knowledge.
[2][3]However, the roots of civilization reach back to the period before writing — humanity's
prehistory.
Human prehistory begins in the
Paleolithic Era, or "Early Stone Age". Later, during the Neolithic Era (New Stone Age), came the
Agricultural Revolution (between 8000 and 5000 BCE) in the
Fertile Crescent, where humans first began the systematic
husbandry of plants and animals.
[4][5][6]Agriculture spread to neighboring regions and developed independently elsewhere, until most humans lived as farmers in permanent settlements.
[7] The relative security and increased productivity provided by farming allowed these communities to expand. They grew into increasingly larger units in parallel with the evolution of ever more efficient means of transport.
Surplus food enabled the
division of labor, the rise of a leisured upper class, and the development of cities and with them civilization. The growing complexity of human societies necessitated systems of
accounting, which led to writing.
[8]In other parts of the world, such as the
ancient Near East,
[24][25][26] ancient China,
[27] and
ancient India, historical timelines unfolded differently. By the 18th century, however, due to extensive world trade and colonization, the histories of most world civilizations became tightly intertwined. In the last quarter-millennium, the growth of knowledge, technology, commerce, and of the potential destructiveness of war has accelerated, creating the opportunities and perils that currently confront the human communities that inhabit the planet.
[28][29][edit]Prehistory
Other hominids, such as
Homo erectus, had been using simple tools for many millennia, but as time progressed, tools became far more refined and complex. At some point, humans began using
fire for
heat and for
cooking. They also developed
language in the Palaeolithic period and a conceptual repertoire that included systematic burial of the dead and adornment of the living. During this period, all humans lived as
hunter-gatherers, and were generally
nomadic.
Modern humans spread rapidly from
Africa into the frost-free zones of
Europe and
Asia. The rapid expansion of humankind to
North Americaand
Oceania took place at the climax of the most recent
Ice Age, when temperate regions of today were extremely inhospitable. Yet, humans had colonised nearly all the ice-free parts of the globe by the end of the Ice Age, some 12,000 years ago.
The
Agricultural Revolution, beginning about 8,000 BCE, saw the development of agriculture. Farming permitted far denser populations, which in time organised into
states. Agriculture also created
food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in food production. The development of agriculture permitted the creation of the first
cities. These were centres of
trade,
manufacturing and
political power with nearly no agricultural production of their own. Cities established a
symbiosis with their surrounding
countrysides, absorbing agricultural products and providing, in return, manufactured goods and varying degrees of military control and protection.
[30][31][32]The development of cities was synonymous with the rise of
civilization.
[33] In about 40,000 BCE, before the age of cities, there is evidence of people living in man-made shelter huts in northern
Punjab and central Asia (
Bactria). By 7000 BCE, there is evidence of people growing barley in this area, and raising sheep and goats. Around this time, people began living in mud-brick dwellings in villages, some of which still exist. Early civilizations arose first in lower
Mesopotamia (3500 BCE),
[34][35] followed by
Egyptian civilization along the
Nile (3300 BCE)
[12] and
Harappan civilization in the
Indus Valley (3300 BCE).
[36][37] Elaborate cities grew up, with high levels of social and economic complexity. Each of these civilizations was so different from the others that they almost certainly originated independently.
Writing and extensive
trade developed to meet the needs of cities.
This period also saw the apparent origins of complex
religion.
[38][39][40] Religious belief in this period commonly consisted in the worship of a
Mother Goddess, a
Sky Father, and of the
Sun and
Moon as deities.
[41] (See also:
Sun worship.)
Shrines developed, which evolved into
templeestablishments, complete with a complex hierarchy of
priests and priestesses and other functionaries. Typical of the Neolithic was a tendency to worship
anthropomorphic deities. Some of the earliest surviving written religious scriptures are the
Pyramid Texts, produced by the Egyptians, the oldest of which date to between 2400 and 2300 BCE.
[42] Some archaeologists suggest, based on ongoing excavations of a temple complex at
Göbekli Tepe ("Potbelly Hill") in southern Turkey, dating from c. 11,500 years ago, that religion predated the
Agricultural Revolution rather than following in its wake, as had generally been assumed.
[43][edit]Antiquity
[edit]Cradles of civilizations
Main articles:
Bronze Age and
Iron AgeMesopotamia saw the rise of the
city-states in the 4th millennium BCE. It was in these cities that the earliest known form of writing,
cuneiform script, appeared c. 3000 BCE. Cuneiform writing began as a system of
pictographs. The pictorial representations eventually became simplified and more abstract. Cuneiform texts were written on
clay tablets, on which
symbols were drawn with a blunt
reed used as a
stylus. Writing made the administration of a large state far easier.
Transport was facilitated by waterways—by rivers and seas. The
Mediterranean Sea, at the juncture of three continents, fostered the projection of military power and the exchange of goods, ideas and inventions. This era also saw new land technologies, such as horse-based cavalry and chariots, that allowed armies to move faster.
These developments led to the rise of
empires. The first empire, controlling a large territory and many cities, developed in Egypt with the unification of
Lower and Upper Egypt c. 3100 BCE. Over the next millennia, other river valleys would see monarchical empires rise to power. In the 24th century BCE, the
Akkadian Empire arose in
Mesopotamia;
[44] and c. 2200 BCE the
Xia Dynasty arose in China.
Over the following millennia, civilizations would develop across the world.
Trade would increasingly become a source of power as states with access to important resources or controlling important trade routes would rise to dominance. In c. 2500 BCE the
Kingdom of Kermadeveloped in
Sudan, south of Egypt. In modern Turkey the
Hittites controlled a large empire and by 1600 BCE,
Mycenaean Greece began to develop.
[45][46] In India this era was the
Vedic period, which laid the foundations of
Hinduism and other cultural aspects of early Indian society, and ended in the 6th century BCE. From around 550 BCE, many independent kingdoms and republics known as the
Mahajanapadaswere established across the country. In the
Americas, civilizations such as the
Maya,
Zapotec,
Moche, and
Nazca emerged in
Mesoamericaand
Peru at the end of the 1st millennium BCE.
[edit]Timeline
- Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details
[edit]Axial Age
[edit]Regional empires
Main articles:
Civilization and
EmpireThe millennium from 500 BCE to 500 CE saw a series of empires of unprecedented size develop. Well-trained professional armies, unifying ideologies, and advanced bureaucracies created the possibility for emperors to rule over domains, whose population could attain numbers upwards of tens of millions of subjects.
This period in the history of the world was marked by slow but steady technological advances, with important developments such as the
stirrup and
moldboard plow arriving every few centuries. There were, however, in some regions, periods of rapid technological progress. Most important, perhaps, was the
Mediterranean area during the
Hellenistic period, when hundreds of technologies were invented.
[59][60][61] Such periods were followed by periods of technological decay, as during the
Roman Empire's decline and fall and the ensuing
early medieval period.
The empires faced common problems associated with maintaining huge armies and supporting a central bureaucracy. These costs fell most heavily on the
peasantry, while land-owning
magnatesincreasingly evaded centralised control and its costs.
Barbarian pressure on the frontiers hastened internal dissolution.
China's
Han Empire fell into
civil war in 220 CE, while its
Roman counterpart became increasingly decentralised and divided about the same time.
In the west, the
Greeks established a civilization that is the foundational culture of modern
western civilization. Some centuries later, in the 3rd century BCE, the
Romans began expanding their territory through conquest and colonization. By the reign of Emperor
Augustus (late 1st century BCE), Rome controlled all the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. By the reign of Emperor
Trajan (early 2nd century CE), Rome controlled much of the land from
England to
Mesopotamia.
In the 3rd century BCE, most of
South Asia was united into the
Maurya Empire by
Chandragupta Maurya and flourished under
Ashoka the Great. From the 3rd century CE, the
Gupta dynasty oversaw the period referred to as ancient India's Golden Age. Empires in Southern India included those of the
Chalukyas,the
Rashtrakutas, the
Hoysalas, the
Cholas and the
Vijayanagara Empire.
Science,
engineering,
art,
literature,
astronomy, and
philosophy flourished under the patronage of these kings.
Meanwhile, the
Han Dynasty was the classical empire of the East. Across the silk road from the Roman Empire, the Han Dynasty is often considered to be the Rome of China. While the Romans were almost unstoppable in military means, Han China was developing advanced cartography, shipbuilding, and navigation. The East developed blast furnaces, and were capable of creating finely tuned copper instruments. As with other areas during the Classical Period, Han China advanced in strides in areas of government, education, mathematics, astronomy, and technology, among others.
[edit]Declines and falls
The great empires of Eurasia were all located on temperate coastal plains. From the
Central Asian steppes, horse-based nomads (Mongols, Turks) dominated a large part of the continent. The development of the
stirrup, and the breeding of horses strong enough to carry a fully armed archer, made the nomads a constant threat to the more settled civilizations.
The gradual break-up of the
Roman Empire,
[63][64] spanning several centuries after the 2nd century CE, coincided with the spread of
Christianity westward from the Middle East. The Western Roman Empire fell
[65] under the domination of
Germanic tribes in the 5th century, and these
polities gradually developed into a number of warring states, all associated in one way or another with the
Roman Catholic Church. The remaining part of the Roman Empire, in the eastern Mediterranean, would henceforth be the
Byzantine Empire.
[66] Centuries later, a limited unity would be restored to
western Europe through the establishment of the
Holy Roman Empire[67] in 962, comprising a number of states in what is now
Germany,
Austria,
Switzerland,
Belgium,
Italy, and parts of
France.
In China,
dynasties would similarly rise and fall.
[68][69] After the fall of the
Eastern Han Dynasty[70] and the demise of the
Three Kingdoms,
nomadic tribes from the north began to invade in the 4th century CE, eventually conquering areas of Northern China and setting up many small kingdoms. The
Sui Dynasty reunified China in 581, and under the succeeding
Tang Dynasty (618-907) China entered a second
golden age. The Tang Dynasty also splintered, however, and after
half a century of turmoil the
Northern Song Dynasty reunified China in 982. Yet pressure from nomadic empires to the north became increasingly urgent.
North China was lost to the
Jurchens in 1141, and the
Mongol Empire[71][72] conquered all of China in 1279, as well as almost all of
Eurasia's landmass, missing only
central and
western Europe, and most of
Southeast Asia and
Japan.
In these times, northern
India was ruled by the
Guptas. In southern India, three prominent
Dravidian kingdoms emerged:
Cheras,
Cholas and
Pandyas. The ensuing stability contributed to heralding in the golden age of
Hindu culture in the 4th and 5th centuries CE.
[edit]Middle Ages
Main article:
Middle AgesThe knowledge and skills of the ancient Middle East, of Greece and of Persia were learned by Muslims in the Middle Ages. Muslims added new and important innovations from outside, such as the manufacture of paper from China and decimal positional numbering from India. Much of this learning and development can be linked to geography. Even prior to Islam's presence the city of Mecca had served as a center of trade in Arabia, and Muhammad was a merchant. With the new tradition of the
Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, the city became even more a center for exchanging goods and ideas. The influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was tremendous. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant economy, in contrast to the Christians, Indians and Chinese who based their societies on an agricultural landholding nobility. Merchants brought goods and their faith to China (resulting in a present-day population of some 37 million Chinese Muslims, mainly ethnic Turkic
Uyghurs, whose territory was annexed to China), India, southeast Asia, and the kingdoms of western Africa and returned with new discoveries and inventions.
The
Black Death was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. Starting in
Asia, the disease reached Mediterranean and western
Europe during the late 1340s,
[80] and killed tens of millions of Europeans in six years; between a third and a half of the population.
[81][edit]European Renaissance
Main article:
Renaissance[edit]Modern history
Modern history (the "modern period," the "modern era," "modern times") is history of the period following the Middle Ages. "
Contemporary history" encompasses historic events that are immediately relevant to the present. Its intentionally loose scope includes major events such as World War II, but not those whose immediate effects have dissipated.
[edit]Early modern period
"
Early modern period"
[92] is a term used by historians to refer to the period in
Western Europe and its first
colonies that spans the centuries between the
Middle Ages and the
Industrial Revolution -- roughly 1500 to 1800. The early modern period is characterized by the rise to importance of
science and by increasingly rapid
technological progress,
secularized civic
politics, and the
nation-state.
Capitalist economies began their rise, initially in northern
Italian republics such as
Genoa. The early modern period also saw the rise and dominance of the
mercantilist economic theory. As such, the early modern period represents the decline and eventual disappearance, in much of the European sphere, of
feudalism, serfdom and the power of the
Catholic Church. The period includes the late decades of the
Protestant Reformation, the disastrous
Thirty Years' War, the
Age of Discovery, the
European colonization of the Americas, and the peak of European
witch-hunting.
[edit]Rise of Europe
During this period, European powers came to dominate most of the world. One theory of why that happened holds that Europe's
geography played an important role in its success. The
Middle East,
India and
China are all ringed by
mountains and
oceans but, once past these outer barriers, are nearly flat. By contrast, the
Pyrenees,
Alps,
Apennines,
Carpathians and other mountain ranges run through Europe, and the continent is also divided by several
seas. This gave Europe some degree of protection from the peril of
Central Asian invaders. Before the era of firearms, these nomads were militarily superior to the agricultural states on the periphery of the
Eurasiancontinent and, if they broke out into the plains of northern India or the valleys of China, were all but unstoppable. These invasions were often devastating. The
Golden Age of Islam[93] was ended by the
Mongol sack of
Baghdad in 1258. India and China were subject to periodic
invasions, and
Russia spent a couple of centuries under the
Mongol-Tatar yoke.
Central and
western Europe,
logistically more distant from the
Central Asian heartland, proved less vulnerable to these threats.
Geography contributed to important
geopolitical differences. For most of their histories, China, India and the Middle East were each unified under a single dominant power that expanded until it reached the surrounding mountains and deserts. In 1600 the
Ottoman Empire[94] controlled almost all the Middle East, the
Ming Dynasty ruled China,
[95][96] and the
Mughal Empire held sway over India. By contrast, Europe was almost always divided into a number of warring states. Pan-European empires, with the notable exception of the
Roman Empire, tended to collapse soon after they arose. Another doubtless important geographic factor in the rise of Europe was the
Mediterranean Sea, which, for millennia, had functioned as a maritime superhighway fostering the exchange of goods, people, ideas and inventions.
Many have also argued that Europe's institutions allowed it to expand,
[108][109] that
property rightsand
free-market economics were stronger than elsewhere due to an ideal of
freedom peculiar to Europe. In recent years, however, scholars such as
Kenneth Pomeranz have challenged this view, although the revisionist approach to
world history has been met with criticism for systematically "downplaying" European achievements.
[110]Europe's maritime expansion unsurprisingly — given the continent's geography — was largely the work of its Atlantic states:
Portugal,
Spain,
England,
France, and the
Netherlands. Initially the
Portuguese and
Spanish Empires were the predominant conquerors and source of influence, and their union resulted in the
Iberian Union,
[111] the first
global empire, on which the "
sun never set". Soon the more northern
English,
French and
Dutch began to dominate the
Atlantic. In a series of wars fought in the 17th and 18th centuries, culminating with the
Napoleonic Wars, Britain emerged as the new world power.
[edit]Modern period
Main article:
Modern historyDuring the Industrial Revolution, the world economy became reliant on
coal as a fuel, as new methods of
transport, such as
railways and
steamships, effectively shrank the world.
[114] Meanwhile, industrial
pollution and
environmental damage, present since the discovery of fire and the beginning of civilization, accelerated drastically.
Further information: 18th and 19th centuries
[edit]Contemporary history
[edit]1900 to 1945
Main article:
20th centuryThe 20th century
[126][127][128] opened with
Europe at an apex of wealth and power, and with much of the world under its direct
colonial control or its indirect domination.
[129] Much of the rest of the world was influenced by heavily Europeanized nations: the
United States and
Japan.
[130] As the century unfolded, however, the global system dominated by rival powers was subjected to severe strains, and ultimately yielded to a more fluid structure of independent nations organized on Western models.
[edit]1945 to 2000
Main article:
20th centuryAfter
World War II ended in
1945, the
United Nations was founded in the hope of allaying conflicts among nations and preventing future wars.
[139][140] The war had, however, left two nations, the
United States[141] and the
Soviet Union, with principal power to guide international affairs.
[142]Each was suspicious of the other and feared a global spread of the other's political-economic model. This led to the
Cold War, a forty-year stand-off between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. With the development of
nuclear weapons[143] and the subsequent
arms race, all of humanity were put at risk of
nuclear war between the two superpowers.
[144] Such war
being viewed as impractical,
proxy wars were instead waged, at the expense of non-nuclear-armed
Third World countries.
The technologies of sound recordings, motion pictures, and radio and television broadcasting produced a focus on popular culture and entertainment. Television spots sold both commercial products and political candidates. Then, in the last decade of this century, a rapid increase took place in the use of personal computers. A global communication network emerged in the Internet. Mass entertainment gave way to individual communication in what has been called a shift from the fourth to a fifth civilization.
[171][edit]21st century
Main article:
21st century[edit]See also
[edit]History topics
[edit]History by period
[edit]History by region
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- ^ "Early Modern," historically speaking, refers to Western European history from 1501 (after the widely accepted end of the Late Middle Ages; the transition period was the 15th century) to either 1750 or circa 1790–1800, by which ever epoch is favored by a school of scholars defining the period—which, in many cases of periodization, differs as well within a discipline such as art, philosophy or history.
- ^ Joel L. Kraemer (1992), Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, p. 1 & 148, Brill Publishers, ISBN 90-04-07259-4.
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- ^ The Age of Enlightenment has also been referred to as the Age of Reason. Historians also include the late 17th century, which is typically known as the Age of Reason or Age of Rationalism, as part of the Enlightenment; however, contemporary historians have considered the Age of Reason distinct to the ideas developed in the Enlightenment. The use of the term here includes both Ages under a single all-inclusive time-frame.
- ^ a b Sedgwick, W. T., & Tyler, H. W. (1917). A short history of science. New York: The Macmillan company.
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- ^ Digital History, Steven Mintz. "Was slavery the engine of economic growth?". Digitalhistory.uh.edu. Retrieved 2009-04-18.
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- ^ "Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century". Econ161.berkeley.edu. 2000-03-01. Retrieved 2009-04-18.
- ^ TIME Archives The greatest writers of the 20th Century
- ^ Etemad, B. (2007). Possessing the world: taking the measurements of colonisation from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. European expansion and global interaction, v. 6. New York: Berghahn Books.
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- ^ Race for the Superbomb, PBS website on the history of the H-bomb
- ^ As irrefutably demonstrated by a number of incidents, most prominently the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
- ^ Brown, Archie, et al., eds.: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
- ^ Gilbert, Martin: The Routledge Atlas of Russian History (London: Routledge, 2002).
- ^ Goldman, Minton: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Connecticut: Global Studies, Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., 1986).
- ^ Richard H. Schultz, Wayne A. Downing, Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, W. Bradley Stock, "Special Operations Forces: Roles And Missions In The Aftermath Of The Cold War". 1996. Page 59
- ^ Caraley, D. (2004). American hegemony: preventive war, Iraq, and imposing democracy. New York: Academy of Political Science. Page viii
- ^ After 1970s, the United States superpower status has came into question as that country's economic supremacy began to show signs of slippage. For more see, McCormick, T. J. (1995). America's half-century: United States foreign policy in the Cold War and after. The American moment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Page 155
- ^ Chamberlain, Muriel Evelyn. Decolonization: The Fall of the European Empires. Historical Association studies. Oxford, UK: Malden, MA, 1999.
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- ^ Understanding the European Union 3rd ed by John McCormick (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) ISBN 978-1-4039-4451-1
- ^ The Institutions of the European Union edited by John Peterson, Michael Shackleton, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2006) ISBN 0-19-870052-0
- ^ The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream by Jeremy Rifkin (Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2004)ISBN 978-1-58542-345-3
- ^ Lallana, Emmanuel C., and Margaret N. Uy, "The Information Age".
- ^ von Braun, Joachim; Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla (2007). Globalization of Food and Agriculture and the Poor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.ISBN 9780195695281.
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[edit]References
This audio file was created from a revision of the "
History of the world" article dated 2005-04-19, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (
Audio help)
- Williams, H. S. (1904). The historians' history of the world; a comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of all ages. New York: The Outlook Company; [etc.].
- Blainey, Geoffery (2000). A Short History Of The World. Penguin Books, Victoria. ISBN 0-670-88036-1
- Gombrich, Ernst H. A Little History of the World. Yale. UK and USA, 2005.
- H.G. Wells (1920), The Outline of History Volume One, New York, MacMillan.
- H. Spodek (2001), The World's History: combined volume, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall.
- G. Parker (1997), The Times Atlas of World History, London, Times Books.
- The Biosphere (A Scientific American Book), San Francisco, W.H. Freeman and Co., 1970, ISBN 0-7167-0945-7. This seminal book, originally a 1970 Scientific American magazine issue, covered virtually every major concern and concept that has since been debated regarding materials and energy resources, population trends and environmental degradation.
- Energy and Power (A Scientific American Book), San Francisco, W.H. Freeman and Co., 1971, ISBN 0-7167-0938-4.
- Jared Diamond (1996). Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies.. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-03891-2.
- Fernand Braudel (1996). The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20308-9.
- Fernand Braudel (1973). Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-010454-6.
- Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press, 1992, ISBN 0-02-910975-2.
- Marshall Hodgson, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History, Cambridge, 1993.
- Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton, 2000.
- Clive Ponting, World History: a New Perspective, London, 2000.
- Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress, Toronto, Anansi, 2004, ISBN 0-88784-706-4.
- Guy Ankerl, Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western, Geneva, INUPRESS, 2000, ISBN 2-88155-004-5.
[edit]Further reading
- David Landes, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor", New York, W. W. Norton & Company (1999) ISBN 978-0-393-31888-3
- David Landes, "Why Europe and the West? Why Not China?", Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20:2, 3, 2006.
- Ricardo Duchesne, "Asia First?", The Journal of the Historical Society, Vol. 6, Issue 1 (March 2006), pp. 69–91 (PDF)
- William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1963.
- Larry Gonick, The Cartoon History of the Universe, Volume One, Main Street Books, 1997, ISBN 978-0-385-26520-1, Volume Two, Main Street Books, 1994, ISBN 978-0-385-42093-8, Volume Three, W. W. Norton & Company, 2002, ISBN 978-0-393-32403-7.
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