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4000 BCE
Expansion
14 billion years ago, this hypothetical starting point of everything was an infinite concentration of energy referred to as a singularity. -
3999 BCE
Autotrophs
The first autotrophic bacteria, very similar to the current cyanobacteria, appeared approximately 2 billion years ago; an organism that can produce its own food using light, water, carbon dioxide, or other chemicals. -
3998 BCE
Neanderthals
A group of archaic humans who emerged at least 200,000 years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch. They developed a successful culture, with a complex stone tool technology, that was based on hunting, with some scavenging and local plant collection. -
3997 BCE
Bipeds
Bipedalism (moving on two legs) is one of the key characteristics that defines hominins and humans. It is thought that bipedalism developed in hominins between 4 million and 8 million years ago. A popular theory is that it first evolved to free the hands to carry food. -
3996 BCE
Dinosaurs
About 230 million years ago, the first dinosaurs evolved from a population of archosaurs, that shared the earth with a host of other reptiles, including therapsids and pelycosaurs. -
3995 BCE
Pangaea
About 300 million years ago, Earth didn't have seven continents, but instead one massive supercontinent called Pangaea, which was surrounded by a single ocean called Panthalassa. -
3994 BCE
Australopithecus
The various species of Australopithecus lived 4.4 million to 1.4 million years ago; a group of extinct primates closely related to, if not actually ancestors of, modern human beings and known from a series of fossils found at numerous sites in eastern, north-central, and southern Africa. -
2670 BCE
Pyramids
The oldest ancient pyramid, the Pyramid of Djoser, dates back to around 2670 BCE. The rest of the pyramids were constructed anywhere between 2612 BCE to 664 BCE. To facilitate their immortality, Pharaohs invested heavily in mega structures in a scale not witnessed before. -
500 BCE
Astronomy
Astronomy was the first natural science to reach a high level of sophistication and predictive ability, which it achieved already in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE. -
Descarte
René Descartes, French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. Because he was one of the first to abandon Scholastic Aristotelianism, because he formulated the first modern version of mind-body dualism, from which stems the mind-body problem, and because he promoted the development of a new science grounded in observation and experiment, he has been called the father of modern philosophy. -
Einstein
Albert Einstein, German-born physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century.
