-
Period: 13,000 BCE to 1000 BCE
Ancient Era
From the first stirrings of life beneath water... to the great beasts of the Stone Age... to man taking his first upright steps, you have come far. Now begins your greatest quest: from this early cradle of civilization on towards the stars. -
12,000 BCE
Pottery
The earliest known ceramics are the Gravettian culture figurines (little, faceless representations of fat women) that date back to between 29 and 25 thousand BC. These were shaped by hand, and fired in a pit. Somewhere around 12000 years ago, clever folk figured out that clay – often mixed with sand, grit, crushed shells, or bone – could be used to make more useful items: pots, cups, plates, bowls, storage jars, and so forth. -
10,000 BCE
Animal Husbandry
The domestication of animals and the selective breeding of some to accentuate certain traits appears to have occurred around the same time as the development of agriculture. The dog is thought to be the earliest domesticated animal, probably to assist in hunting game and protect the camp. Evidence suggests that dogs were first tamed and bred in China – in fact, geneticists believe that about 95% of the breeds today are descended from just a few common Chinese ancestors. -
10,000 BCE
Archery
Archery is the method by which a person uses the spring power stored in a bent stick to shoot a slender pointed projectile a great distance at rapid speed. A very useful technology, whether employed against game animals or against other human beings. -
5500 BCE
Sailing
Since rowing a ship is a lot of work, men developed sails to let the wind push it along. Sailing gave humans a quicker, easier way to travel than over land, and has been used for trade, transport, fishing and warfare since the first mast was raised. The oldest representation of a ship under sail was found on a painted disc in Kuwait, dating to between 5500 and 5000 BC. Tomb paintings c. 3200 BC show reed boats under sail on the Nile. -
4500 BCE
Bronze Working
The earliest bronze artifacts – actually, arsenic bronze, alloys of metallic arsenic rather than tin – found by archaeologists in Iranian tombs date back to the fifth millennium BC. Tin-bronze was eventually found to be superior to arsenic-bronze ... and the fumes of the alloying process didn't kill the bronze worker, so that was a plus. -
4000 BCE
Mining
The Neolithics mined flint in England and France about 4000 BC; the ancient Egyptians mined malachite at Maadi between 2600 and 2500 BC, using the hard stone for ornamentation and pottery. These were generally open pit mines, or shallow shafts (less than 100 feet deep) such as the Athenian silver mines at Laurium, where over 20 thousand slaves labored. -
4000 BCE
Writing
Writing is a technology that – like a few others – quite literally changed the course of civilization. The ability to set things down so as to remember them – “external memory storage” – unaltered beyond a single lifetime meant that every aspect of the human condition, every social structural and cultural more, altered significantly. -
4000 BCE
Horseback Riding
There is archaeological evidence that around 4000 BC humans had used bits on their horses in the basins of the Dnieper and Don rivers; skeletons of horses found in the region shows signs that the horses chomped on bits. Thus, horseback riding. It is thought that the Scythians of the steppes may well have been the first to develop the stirrup and the saddle, although the historical argument is as yet unconvincing. -
4000 BCE
Construction
The ancient civilizations built in wood occasionally, but mostly in mud brick and in stone. Although remarkably durable, stone and brick are also quite heavy and inflexible. It's impossible to construct very tall structures out of these materials. Otherwise they tend to topple over when given a shake, as with the Pharos of Alexandria. The Greeks built the little things out of brick, but employed marble for the big things like the Parthenon. -
4000 BCE
Masonry
The ancient Egyptians mastered the art of masonry as early as the fourth millennium BC, constructing temples, palaces, pyramids and other edifices from limestone, sandstone, granite and basalt found in the hills of the Nile River. The Assyrians of the Fertile Crescent lacked easy access to stone but possessed rich deposits of clay, which they sun-dried into bricks. -
2630 BCE
Engineering
Engineering is the science (or perhaps “art,” if engineers themselves are involved in the discussion) of using science to design things: buildings, roads and bridges, machines, and other materially useful things. The term is somewhat vague – consider for example, software “engineering.” Originally the term referred only to creating “engines” of war; the Romans applied it to all sorts of public works, since their legions were building roads, bridges and walls all over the empire. -
2500 BCE
Ship building
Shipbuilding is the building of ships. Shipwrights follow a profession that traces its roots back to an age before recorded history. Archaeological evidence indicates that humans sailed to Borneo from Asia 120 thousand years ago aboard constructed ships; and later to New Guinea and Australia some 50 thousand years ago. In the fourth millennium BC, the Egyptians were constructing boat hulls from planks of wood, using treenails to hold them together and pitch to make them watertight. -
2040 BCE
Education
Humans learn things, and civilization results. Obviously education has been around as long as mankind has. Through most of history, it was an informal affair, parents teaching their children the skills they needed to know to survive and be productive (household chores and hunting expeditions and dodging barbarians and so forth). As a tribe expanded and grew more prosperous, village elders and priests might educate the children while the healthy adults gathered food, built stuff and made war. -
2000 BCE
Irrigation
Irrigation has been a central feature of agriculture for over 5000 years, and forms the basis for the economy and culture of many civilizations throughout history. Perennial irrigation was first practiced in Mesopotamia with water flowing through small channels connecting to a river or a small lake. -
2000 BCE
Currency
Currency, where something relatively worthless in itself represents some amount of actual value, has been the bane of civilization since around 2000 BC, when a form of receipt was used to show ownership of stored grain in temples in Sumer. The Egyptians soon adopted the practice for their own grain warehouses, so that individuals could claim a portion they had “banked” therein. -
1200 BCE
Wheel
The invention of the wheel comes in the late Neolithic Age, and along with the advance of several other technologies kicks off the Bronze Age. Archaeological evidence for wheeled vehicles appears in the fourth millennia BC, more or less at the same time in Mesopotamia, the Caucasus and Central Europe. In China the wheel was certainly in existence by 1200 BC, when Chinese chariots appeared. -
1200 BCE
Iron Working
While the use of iron has been dated back to 4000 BC, the Hittites were the first to extract the ore, smelt it and fashion weapons – thus setting off the Iron Age around 1200 BC. In Asia, iron working developed at about the same time; iron Chinese artifacts have been unearthed dating back to around 600 BC. From those two places, using iron for weapons and tools spread quickly across the globe, except in the Americas where the natives continued to hit each other with rocks. -
1000 BCE
celestial navigation
Celestial navigation (or astronavigation, which sounds more scientific than artistic) is the practice of taking angular measurements between a celestial body (sun, moon, planet or star) and a point on the horizon to determine one's position on the globe. A very useful skill for early sailors venturing out of sight of land. -
Period: 1000 BCE to 500 BCE
Classical Era
From humble beginnings, you have shown remarkable growth. Leave your bronze for iron and rule with horse and sword. The sky above begins to reveal its secrets, a collection of heaven that uplifts our hearts and guides us to foreign shores. -
600 BCE
Mathematics
The term “mathematics” is derived from the Greek mathema, meaning “knowledge, study, or learning.” Appropriate, given that it is the science of science, focused on quantity, measurement, structure, logic and change. Mathematics, according to some, is also the art of art, focused on space, shape, relationship, perspective, and fractals. Not to mention mathematics relationship to music. -
Period: 500 BCE to 1350
Medieval era
You have built great cities of stone and seen early empires rise and fall. Soon you will stand under the towering pinnacles of castles alongside your gallant knights. That is where the story of your people will be written. Just as the young apprentice learns to carry a sword, so shall you grow to understand your place in this world. -
322 BCE
Stirrups
Along with writing, gunpowder and pre-sliced bread, the stirrup is considered one of the basic inventions needed to spread civilization ... at least by some historians. Like all great innovations, it seems such a simple idea. Humans had domesticated the horse around 4500 BC, but where to put one's feet and how to stay on when the horse began running? The saddle, invented around 800 BC, took care of the latter problem. -
50
Machinery
When humans began to develop tasks that they or their animals could not (or would not) do, they invented machines. From those first simple machines – the lever, pulley and screw – that Archimedes went on about, a machine civilization has evolved on Earth. Later Greek thinkers added the wedge and the wheel/axle to the list of the five simple machines (these form the basis for every other machine that aids physical work). -
900
castles
Great piles of stone – some still intact dominate the varied landscapes of Europe, castles dating back to the early 10th Century AD when feudal lords sought to insure their power and influence. But rather than the romantic visions of noble knights, damsels in distress, great feasts and throwing the barbarians back from the moat, castles served the ultimate utilitarian role in feudal society – imposing the lord's will on the land. -
1300
Military engineering
Loosely defined as “the art and practice of designing and building military works and maintaining lines of military transport and communications,” military engineering dates back to the Roman legions, which each had a small, specialized corps devoted to overseeing the building of fortifications and roads. They were also the ones to build the catapults, battering rams and siege towers when needed to stamp out some unruly town. -
Period: 1350 to
Renaissance era
New powers call forth, from the barrel of muskets to flowers of fire in the sky. Even the quiet words on newly printed pages hold great changes within. The world, once so vast and mysterious, has grown smaller and more familiar. Yet, there are always questions to be answered, faiths to be tested, and national identities to be formed. -
1354
cartography
The oldest “map” to have been discovered is a depiction of what may be local terrain features about Catal Huyuk in Anatolia, dated to the 7th millennium BC. But the first ink splatters that are definitely a map is the “House of the Admiral” wall painting dating to the Minoan civilization c. 1600 BC. Around the 4th Century BC, the Greeks and the Romans were making somewhat more portable maps. And Ptolemy produced his famous treatise on cartography, 'Geographia,' in the 2nd Century AD. -
1360
Gunpowder
The invention of gunpowder is usually attributed to Chinese alchemists during the Tang dynasty, one of the “Four Great Inventions of China.” dating to the later Song dynasty – was supposed to be an elixir for immortality. But the Chinese did discover that it burned explosively and the resultant gases expanded rapidly when exposed to heat; so it was useful for making fireworks. The Chinese found a more practical use for gunpowder in crude bombs and rockets which they used against the Mongols -
1400
Printing
No technology since writing so impacted civilization as did movable-type printing. Woodblock printing had been used for decades in China, India and Europe. The pecia system developed in the early 13th Century at Italian universities gave booksellers a method for producing multiple copies of a book in a relatively short time. But books remained expensive, and possessions only for the educated elite. -
1400
Metal casting
Metal casting is the process by which a craftsman can make multiple, identical metal objects by pouring molten metal into a mold. The oldest such yet found is a copper frog cast in Mesopotamia around 3200 BC. The first production of cast iron was in China between 800 and 700 BC; using sand mold casting, the Chinese were making cast iron plowshares by 233 BC. Cast iron was also handy for making a lot of arrowheads, spearheads and cannonballs. -
1407
Banking
With the fall of Rome in the West and the fall of money lending, Banks did not reappear in Europe until the Middle Ages, rediscovered by rulers looking for ways to fund their bloody and expensive Crusades. Benches were used by Jewish Florentine money-lenders as temporary exchange tables, and hence the term “bank.” Until laws were passed against usury, such as that of Edward I of England in 1275 AD it was not unknown for such loans to carry 24% or even 48% interest. -
1550
Square Rigging
Perpendicular square sails had been used on sailing ships in Northern Europe before (on cogs and longships), and the design was adopted by the Crusaders for their transports, giving more speed and maneuverability so they could get to the Holy Land quicker. -
Mass production
Until the Industrial Revolution, the idea of “mass production” was limited to pottery (molds), Chinese crossbows with interchangeable parts, and assembly line production of books. But in the Renaissance, Venice began mass-producing ships to maintain their grip on the Mediterranean in their famed Arsenal, using prefabricated parts and assembly lines that would not be matched for output for three centuries. -
Astronomy
Significant advances in astronomy have usually come with the introduction of new technology; it helps to be able to see things larger, farther away or in other spectrums when studying infinity. Better and better telescopes allowed William Herschel to create a detailed catalogue of nebulae and clusters, and to “discover” the planet Uranus in 1781. The German Friedrich Bessel managed to measure the distance to a star (61 Cygni) in 1838 for the first time. -
Period: to
Industrial era
The steady hum of machinery, the acrid smell of smoke, vision clouded by ash and soot - these are the signs of changing times. The lure of scientific and cultural advancement is the engine driving your realm forward. Now your challenge is to maintain the delicate balance between earth and man, between peace and war. -
industrialization
The Industrial Revolution, beginning in Europe during the 18th century, With increasingly complex machinery and tools available, trades that were once left to talented craftsmen became obsolete with the advent of assembly lines operated by masses of unskilled factory laborers. The process involved the reorganization of the world's economy from self-sufficiency to one of manufacturing and consumerism. -
Economics
Economics is the understanding of “the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services.” This understanding was a lot easier in olden times when things were distributed via barter (“I have a daughter and you have some goats; let’s trade."), but even in the early stages of coinage and mercantile trade notions of production and profits was pretty straightforward. -
Chemistry
chemistry evolved from another pseudoscience: alchemy. Alchemy spans four millennia and three continents; never underestimate mankind's ability to believe in the irrational. The roots of Western alchemy can be traced to Hellenic Egypt, where Zosimos of Panopolis claimed that the ancient priests had discovered a way to transmute metals from one to another (such as lead to gold, the “Holy Grail” for alchemists). -
Steam power
When heated to boiling, water produces steam. Even barbarians knew this. But harnessing that steam wasn't thought of until Taqi al-Din Muhammed ibn Ma’ruf described a hypothetical steam turbine for turning a spit in 1551 AD. The move towards a workable steam engine gets started a century later when Edward Somerset published a collection on his “inventions,” including a steam pump, a working model of which he built in Raglan Castle. -
Electricity
In 1600 the British dilettante William Gilbert made a comparative study of magnetism and this little-understood force, for which he coined the term electricus (from the Greek electron meaning “amber,” from which he was generating the static sort), hence “electricity.” The work of others led history's ultimate dilettante Benjamin Franklin to “discover” electricity while flying a kite with a key attached in a thunderstorm. -
Ballistics
The mechanics of throwing things have been known for quite awhile; primitive cultures are quite adept at throwing things. The first ballistic weapons were sticks, stones and spears, bows, then gunpowder and the study of the mechanics of launching things gets rather complicated. The motion, behavior and effects of bullets, shells, bombs, rockets and the like became of great interest to military and law enforcement forces throughout civilization. -
Sanitation
A clean water supply and sanitation has been rather important for the rise of civilization, since without such folk tend to fall prey to disease and death. Especially when crowded together in urban centers. The earliest signs of city sanitation have been found in the ruins of the Harappan settlements Mohenjo-daro and Rakhigarhi in the Indus Valley c. 2500 BC. -
Flight
Since the Renaissance, mankind has learned how to fly. Leonardo da Vinci's visions of flight are well-known, of course, but he certainly wasn't the first. In the Middle Ages, for instance, Armen Firman strapped wings with vulture feathers to himself and jumped off a tower in Cordoba during 852 AD. it wasn't until 1783 when the Montgolfier brothers launched a manned hot-air balloon that man finally took off – and landed safely. Ballooning became all the rage across Europe. -
Steel
Modern steelmaking got its start in 1855 AD, when Henry Bessemer perfected his process using pig iron as the basis to make “mild” steel in quantity fairly cheaply, a century after Benjamin Huntsman had established the first steelworks in Sheffield, England. Within a few decades, however, steel mills were springing up all over the world using Bessemer's method; the steel industry had been born, producing it for the new bridges, skyscrapers, trains and automobiles, and weapons of the modern era. -
Rifling
Rifling is merely the cutting of helical grooves into the inner part of a gun barrel so as to induce spin in a ball or bullet which serves to gyroscopically stabilized the projectile, giving it greater accuracy and range. Although rifling dates from the 16th Century, it didn't become common until the wars of the Industrial Age. -
Petroleum Refining
Petroleum refining developed in parallel with the chemical revolution of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, starting with the drilling of the first oil wells in the United States around 1860. The increased volume in crude oil's availability led to experiments in improving its qualities, starting with simple distillation rigs, and increasing in complexity and sophistication. -
Combustion
Although there were internal combustion engines described by engineers before the 19th Century – for instance, a piston-and-cylinder gas-fired engine by Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir in 1860 AD – until industrial-level drilling for petroleum and methods for refining it into gasoline, they really weren't much more than a curiosity. -
Period: to
Modern Era
In the beginning, legends of flying men soared. And today, you are on the brink of transforming those legends into a reality. With flight and new forms of communication you can create a small and intimate world. But at what cost? Our competing ideas of how to govern and how to live threaten to bring conflict on a global scale. -
Radio
The idea of “wireless” communication begins with experiments in wireless telegraphy – sending impulses through the ground, water and even steel railroad tracks – in the 1830s. In 1888 AD, Heinrich Hertz proved conclusively that electromagnetic waves could be transmitted through the air; his publications set off a mad scramble among inventors and crackpots to produce these Hertzian waves. Even the likes of Nikola Tesla, Amos Dolbear, and Sir Oliver Lodge got involved. -
Rocketry
In 1792, iron-cased rockets were used by Tipu Sultan defending Mysore against the avaricious British East India Company. The British, sensing a good thing, developed the solid-fuel Congreve Rocket for use against the French, Americans and other unpleasant sorts. In 1914, Robert Goddard – inspired by the fanciful tales of H.G. Wells – patented several concepts that proved pivotal in the history of rocketry: a combustion chamber, multiple stages, and a nozzle to increase exhaust speed. -
Plastics
Following the First World War, radical advances in chemistry (all that production of poison gases and new explosives) led to an explosion of new forms of plastic. Polyvinyl chloride (or PVC), a rigid and durable plastic, began being manufactured commercially in the 1920s by various companies. The transparent polystyrene was commercialized in 1931 by I.G. Farben, and in 1941 – spurred by another war – Dow Chemical invented Styrofoam. -
Computers
It was the arrival of electricity that spawned the “Computer Age.” The principles of pioneer “computer scientist” (actually, he was a mathematician) Alan Turing were first set out in his 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers.” During the Second World War, various battling nations set about turning his insights into reality, for everything from breaking enemy codes to shooting down enemy aircraft. -
Advanced flight
The first flight of a jet aircraft was made by the Italian Caproni Campini N.1 prototype in August 1940. The Germans had kept their own work, the Messerschmitt Me-262, under wraps. Although successfully test flown as early as 1941, mass production didn't start until mid-1944 when several Luftwaffe jet squadrons took to the skies against the Allied bombers. -
Synthetic materials
the Frenchman Hilaire de Chardonnet invented artificial silk, which was displayed to great acclaim at the 1889 Paris Exhibition. Five years later, a trio of British chemists created a synthetic material they called “viscose," and in 1924 it was renamed “rayon.” Then came nylon from Wallace Carothers, who was working for the chemical company DuPont. The first polyester fiber – Dacron – was invented in England in 1941 as part of the war effort. -
Nuclear fission
in 1942 AD to create a sustainable nuclear reaction using uranium or plutonium. The result was the first atomic bomb successfully tested in the New Mexico desert in July 1945. The next month, America dropped two more on Japanese cities, leaving between 129 thousand and 246 thousand dead. Once Soviet spies stole the plans, the nuclear arms race was on. -
Period: to
Atomic Era
New frontiers of discovery expand our understanding, from the tiny atom to the majesty of outer space. Mysteries long tolerated are closer than ever to revealing their deepest secrets, beyond what we can easily see. You will choose how to use this knowledge, and push back the greatest darkness we have yet faced. -
Replaceable Parts
Evidence for the use of interchangeable parts can be traced back to the warships of Carthage during the First Punic War, when standardized parts made repairs to their galleys relatively quick. During the Warring States period, the Qin dynasty employed mass-produced crossbows with interchangeable parts to pummel its rivals. -
Nuclear Fusion
Ivy Mike, the first thermonuclear bomb tested in 1952 at Enewetak atoll. Two years later Castle Bravo was exploded at Bikini Atoll, with a yield of 15 megatons. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was building and testing its own thermonuclear arsenal. -
Telecommuications
Satellite telecommunications – or at least the idea for them – can be traced to a piece written by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke published in the magazine Wireless World in October 1945. Sputnik, with an onboard radio transmitter, was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957; NASA soon followed with the balloon named Echo 1 which was capable of relaying signals between distant stations on the surface. Thus the Information Age floated into history. -
Nanotechnology
The theoretical foundations of nanotech date back to December 29, 1959 AD, when the American physicist Richard Feynman introduced it in a Physical Science conference at CalTech. Norio Taniguchi first used the term “nanotechnology” in 1974 to describe the “process of separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or one molecule.” In 1985, fullerenes were discovered by a trio of chemists, who were able to form semiconductor clusters using pulsed molecular beams. -
Lasers
The first functional laser was demonstrated in May 1960 when the Hughes Research Laboratories introduced laser technology capable of storing data on optical devices. Later that same year, the Iranian Ali Javan headed an international team that produced the first gas laser, utilizing helium and neon, capable of continuous operation in the infrared spectrum. -
Satellites
Following pressure from the American Rocket Society, National Science Foundation and the White House, the American military announced its own program to put a satellite into orbit. Three months after poor Laika's orbit, the United States sent Explorer 1 around the Earth. In 1961, the U.S. Air Force used the newly created Space Surveillance Network to catalogue 115 Earth-orbiting satellites. -
Composites
In 1961, carbon fiber was spun and within a few years the first carbon fiber composites were commercially available. The 1970s and 1980s saw a series of breakthroughs in producing ultra-high molecular weight composites, exceedingly sturdy and resistant to corrosion, soon used in the production of aircraft, boats, automobiles and a lot of household gadgets. By the mid-1990s, the production of composite materials dominated materials manufacturing. -
Stealth Technology
The United States Air Force initiated its own research project in 1960, developing special screens for the air intakes, radar-absorbent materials and paint. In 1964, Lockheed's Skunk Works produced the SR-71 “Blackbird.” A high-altitude stealth aircraft with – along with the above – canted vertical stabilizers and composite materials, lowering its radar signature significantly. -
Robotics
In 1973, Wabot-1 was built, able to walk, communicate in Japanese, and measure distance to objects with artificial eyes and ears. (Almost as entertaining as the Digesting Duck, apparently.) Soon enough, just about every year a new robot was delighting the world. -
Advanced AI
In the ensuing decades since the Turing Test was proposed, artificial intelligence has become more widespread and more robust in terms of its capabilities, particularly in the analysis of large data sets. An AI in these cases often “studies” a problem through developing and testing hypotheses about underlying patterns in the data, matching them against the data, and creating iteratively refined models with considerable explanatory power. -
Period: to
Information Era
A world of information rests in the palm of your hand, and networks for instantaneous communication span the globe. Yet a unified vision of our future has never been built. We compete in technology, culture, and politics. We have deadly weapons that could destroy our planet. Lead us carefully, but boldly, and build a global community that can stand for years to come. -
Advanced power cells
The first true solid-state device for generating electricity was created by the Italian inventor Alessandro Volta in 1800. There have been countless refinements to Volta's electrochemical cell design since then, and with the digital revolution the development of battery technology has undergone ever-greater investment and interest. -
Period: to
Future Era
The world contains marvels beyond the dreams of ancient prophets, and terrors more fearsome than any apocalypse. Machines search for meaning and new matter weaves dream-like forms. Choices made long ago bear grave consequences in this age and demand resolute answers. Go now, and achieve your vision for the future of civilization. -
Offworld missions
If human beings are to settle away from planet Earth, it will be necessary to develop competencies for life isolated from the main planet—simple matters like “growing food” and “finding enough water” and “not having to run home for spare parts.” Approaches for sustained life away from Earth are still in the theoretical stages in the early Twenty-First Century. -
Cybernetics
The term "cybernetics" is taken from the ancient Greek term to describe the skill of a ship's helmsman, and was re-invigorated in 1948 by American mathematician Nobert Weiner, who used it as a term for the study and practice of controlling complex systems, particularly with regard to human sensory input and locomotor function. -
Predictive systems
Artificial Intelligence systems can create sophisticated models of behavior, with good predictive power for future behavior. This is becoming widely exploited in commercial domains (as anyone who carefully observes the Internet advertisements served up them can tell you) but it is also being used in other areas as well. Medical and health professionals are interested in increased efficacy of targeted preventative programs. -
Smart materials
Materials are usually selected for use on the basis of a single quality. A brick, for instance, should not be flexible if it is to be a good basis for construction. Smart materials are materials which can assume different properties on command, in response to different situations.