Human history
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This article is about the history of humanity. For the entire history of Earth, see History
of Earth. For the field of historical study, see World history. For humanity's evolutionary
history, see Human evolution.
"History of the world" redirects here. For other uses, see History of the world
(disambiguation).

Part of a series on

Human history
Human Era

↑ Prehistory   (Pleistocene epoch)

Holocene

 Timelines
Neolithic – Contemporary

(10,000 BC – Present)

 Age of the human race

 Recorded history
 Earliest records
 Protohistory
 Proto-writing

Ancient

 Bronze age
 Iron age
 Axial antiquity
 Classical antiquity
 Late antiquity

 Africa
 North America
 South America
 Oceania
 East Asia
 South Asia
 Southeast Asia
 West Asia
 Europe

Postclassical

 Africa
 Americas
 Oceania
 East Asia
 South Asia
 Southeast Asia
 West Asia
 Europe

Modern

 Early modern
 Late modern

 Africa
 North America
 South America
 Oceania
 East Asia
 South Asia
 Southeast Asia
 West Asia
 Europe
 See also

 Modernity
 Futurology
 Political history

↓ Future   

 v
 t
 e

World population, 10,000 BCE – 2,000 CE (vertical population scale is logarithmic)[1]

Human history, or world history, is the narrative of humanity's past. It is understood

through archaeology, anthropology, genetics, and linguistics, and since the advent of
writing, from primary and secondary sources.
Humanity's written history was preceded by its prehistory, beginning with
the Palaeolithic Era ("Old Stone Age"), followed by the Neolithic Era ("New Stone Age").
The Neolithic saw the Agricultural Revolution begin, between 10,000 and 5000 BCE, in
the Near East's Fertile Crescent. During this period, humans began the
systematic husbandry of plants and animals.[2] As agriculture advanced, most humans
transitioned from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle as farmers in permanent settlements.
The relative security and increased productivity provided by farming allowed
communities to expand into increasingly larger units, fostered by advances
in transportation.
Whether in prehistoric or historic times, people always needed to be near reliable
sources of drinking water. Settlements developed as early as 4,000 BCE in Iran,[3][4][5][6]
[7]
 in Mesopotamia,[8] in the Indus River valley on the Indian subcontinent,[9] on the banks
of Egypt's Nile River,[10][11] and along China's rivers.[12][13] As farming developed, grain
agriculture became more sophisticated and prompted a division of labour to store food
between growing seasons. Labour divisions led to the rise of a leisured upper class and
the development of cities, which provided the foundation for civilization. The growing
complexity of human societies necessitated systems
of accounting and writing. Hinduism developed in the late Bronze Age on the Indian
subcontinent. The Axial Age witnessed the introduction of religions such
as Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Jainism.
With civilizations flourishing, ancient history ("Antiquity," including the Classical
Age and Golden Age of India,[14] up to about 500 CE[15]) saw the rise and fall of
empires. Post-classical history (the "Middle Ages," c. 500–1500 CE,[16]) witnessed the
rise of Christianity, the Islamic Golden Age (c. 750 CE – c. 1258 CE), and
the Timurid and Italian Renaissances (from around 1300 CE). The mid-15th-century
introduction of movable-type printing in Europe[17] revolutionized communication and
facilitated ever wider dissemination of information, hastening the end of the Middle Ages
and ushering in the Scientific Revolution.[18] The early modern period, sometimes
referred to as the "European Age and Age of the Islamic Gunpowders",[19] from about
1500 to 1800,[20] included the Age of Discovery and the Age of Enlightenment. By the
18th century, the accumulation of knowledge and technology had reached a critical
mass that brought about the Industrial Revolution[21] and began the late modern period,
which started around 1800 and has continued through the present.[16]
This scheme of historical periodization (dividing history into Antiquity, Post-Classical,
Early Modern, and Late Modern periods) was developed for, and applies best to, the
history of the Old World, particularly Europe and the Mediterranean. Outside this region,
including ancient China and ancient India, historical timelines unfolded differently.
However, by the 18th century, due to extensive world trade and colonization, the
histories of most civilizations had become substantially intertwined, a process known
as globalization. In the last quarter-millennium, the rates of growth of population,
knowledge, technology, communications, commerce, weapon destructiveness, and
environmental degradation have greatly accelerated, creating unprecedented
opportunities and perils that now confront the planet's human communities.[22]

Contents

 1Prehistory (c. 3.3 million years ago to c. 5000 years ago)

o 1.1Early humans
o 1.2Rise of civilization
 2Ancient history (3000 BCE to 500 CE)
o 2.1Cradles of civilization
o 2.2Axial Age
o 2.3Regional empires
o 2.4Declines, falls, and resurgence
 3Post-classical history (500 CE to 1500 CE)
o 3.1Greater Middle East
o 3.2Europe
o 3.3Sub-Saharan Africa
o 3.4South Asia
o 3.5Northeast Asia
o 3.6Southeast Asia
o 3.7Oceania
o 3.8Americas
 4Modern history (1500 to the present)
o 4.1Early modern period (1500 to 1800)
 o 4.2Regional developments
o 4.3Late modern period (1800 to the present)
 5See also
 6Explanatory notes
 7References
 8Bibliography
 9Further reading

Prehistory (c. 3.3 million years ago to c. 5000 years ago)

Main articles: Prehistory, Human evolution, and Timeline of prehistory
Early humans
Genetic measurements indicate that the ape lineage which would lead to Homo
sapiens diverged from the lineage that would lead to chimpanzees and bonobos, the
closest living relatives of modern humans, around 4.6 to 6.2 million years ago.
[23]
 Anatomically modern humans arose in Africa about 300,000 years ago,[24] and
achieved behavioral modernity about 50,000 years ago.[25]

Cave painting, Lascaux, France, c. 15,000 BCE

"Venus of Willendorf", Austria, c. 26,500 BCE

The Paleolithic period began with the advent of hominid tool use.[26] Hominids, such

as Homo erectus had used simple wood and stone tools for millennia, but as time
progressed, tools became far more refined and complex.[27] Perhaps as early as 1.8
million years ago, but certainly by 500,000 years ago, humans began to use fire for heat
and cooking.[28] The Paleolithic also saw humans develop language,[29] as well as a
conceptual repertoire that included both the systematic burial of the dead and
adornment of the living. Signs of early artistic expression can be found in the form
of cave paintings and sculptures made from ivory, stone, and bone, implying a form of
spirituality; generally interpreted as either animism or shamanism.[30] Paleolithic humans
lived as hunter-gatherers, and were generally nomadic.[31] Archaeological and genetic
data suggest that source populations of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers lived in sparsely
wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary production while avoiding
dense forest cover.[32]
Modern humans spread rapidly from Africa into the frost-free zones of Europe and Asia
around 60,000 years ago.[33] The rapid expansion of humankind to North America and
Oceania took place at the climax of the most recent ice age. At the time, temperate
regions of today were extremely inhospitable. Yet, by the end of the Ice Age, some
12,000 years ago, humans had colonized nearly all ice-free parts of the globe.[34]
Rise of civilization
Beginning around 10,000 BCE, the Neolithic Revolution marked the development
of agriculture, which fundamentally changed the human lifestyle. Cereal crop cultivation
and animal domestication had occurred in the Middle East by at least 8500 BCE in the
form of wheat, barley, sheep, and goats.[35] In the Indus Valley, crops were cultivated
and cattle were domesticated by 6000 BCE. The Yellow River valley in China
cultivated millet and other cereal crops by about 7000 BCE; the Yangtze valley
domesticated rice earlier, by at least 8000 BCE. In the Americas, sunflowers were
cultivated by about 4000 BCE, and maize and beans were domesticated in Central
America by 3500 BCE. Potatoes were first cultivated in the Andes Mountains of South
America, where the llama was also domesticated.[36] Metalworking, was first used in the
creation of copper tools and ornaments around 6000 BCE. Gold soon followed, primarily
for use in ornaments. The need for metal ores stimulated trade, as many areas of early
human settlement lacked the necessary ores. The first signs of bronze, an alloy of
copper and tin, date to around 2500 BCE, but the alloy did not become widely used until
much later.[37]
Agriculture created food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in
food production,[38] permitting far denser populations and the creation of the
first cities and states. Cities were centres of trade, manufacturing and political power.
[39]
 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. Early proto-cities appeared
at Jericho and Çatalhöyük around 6000 BCE.[40]
Monumental Cuneiform inscription, Sumer, Mesopotamia, 26th century BCE

The development of cities was synonymous with the rise of civilization.[a] Early

civilizations arose first in Lower Mesopotamia (3000 BCE),[42][43][44] followed by Egyptian
civilization along the Nile River (3000 BCE),[11][45] the Harappan civilization in the Indus
River Valley (in present-day India and Pakistan; 2500 BCE),[46][47] and Chinese
civilization along the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers (2200 BCE).[12][13]

Pyramid text, Pyramid of Unas, Saqqara, Egypt, 24th century BCE

These societies developed a number of unifying characteristics, including a central

government, a complex economy and social structure, sophisticated language and
writing systems, and distinct cultures and religions. These cultures variously invented
the wheel,[48] mathematics,[49] bronze-working, sailing boats, the potter's wheel, woven
cloth, construction of monumental buildings,[50] and writing.[51] Writing facilitated the
administration of cities, the expression of ideas, and the preservation of information.
[52]
 Scholars now recognize that writing may have independently developed in at least
four ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia (between 3400 and 3100 BCE), Egypt (around
3250 BCE),[53][54] China (2000 BCE),[55] and lowland Mesoamerica (by 650 BCE).[56]
Typical of the Neolithic was a tendency to worship anthropomorphic deities. Entities
such as the Sun, Moon, Earth, sky, and sea were often deified.[57] Shrines developed,
which evolved into temple establishments, complete with a complex hierarchy of priests
and priestesses and other functionaries. Among the earliest surviving written religious
scriptures are the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, the oldest of which date to between 2400
and 2300 BCE.[58]

Ancient history (3000 BCE to 500 CE)

Main articles: Ancient history and Timeline of ancient history

Ancient history

Preceded by prehistory

Near East

Sumer · Kish · Egypt · Elam · Ebla · Akkad · Canaan · Assyria · Bab
ylonia · Qatna · Yamhad · Mitanni · Hittites · Sea
Peoples · Anatolia · Israel and
Judah · Arabia · Berbers · Phoenicia · Persia

Europe

Minoans · Greece · Illyrians · Argaric · Nuragic · Tartessos · Iberia · 
Celts · Germanics · Etruscans · Rome · Slavs · Daco-Thracians

Horn of Africa

Land of Punt · Opone · Macrobia · Kingdom of Dʿmt · Axumite

Empire · Mosylon · Sarapion

Eurasian Steppe

Proto-Indo-Europeans · Afanasievo · Indo-Iranians · Scythia · Tochar
ians · Huns · Xionites · Turks

East Asia

China · Japan · Korea · Mongolia

South Asia
 Indus Valley Civilisation · Vedic period · Mahajanapadas · Nanda
Empire · Maurya Empire · Satavahana dynasty · Sangam
period · Middle Kingdoms

Mississippi and Oasisamerica

Adena · Hopewell · Mississippian · Puebloans

Mesoamerica

Olmecs · Epi-Olmec · Zapotec · Mixtec · Maya · Teotihuacan · Tolte
c Empire

Andes

Norte
Chico · Sechin · Chavín · Paracas · Nazca · Moche · Lima · Tiwanak
u · Wari

West Africa

Dhar Tichitt · Oualata · Nok · Senegambia · Djenné-
Djenno · Bantu · Ghana Empire

Southeast Asia and Oceania

Vietnam · Austronesians · Australia · Polynesia · Funan · Tarumanag
ara

See also

Human history · Ancient maritime history

Protohistory · Axial Age · Iron Age
Historiography · Ancient literature
 Ancient warfare · Cradle of civilization

  Category

Followed by Post-classical history

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 e

Cradles of civilization
Main articles: Cradle of civilization, Bronze Age, and Iron Age

Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

The Bronze Age is part of the three-age system (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age), a

system which effectively describes the early history of civilization for some parts of the
world. The Bronze Age saw the development of city-states as well as the emergence
of first civilizations. These settlements were concentrated in fertile river valleys:
the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, the Nile in Egypt,[59] the Indus in the Indian
subcontinent,[46] and the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers in China.
Sumer, located in Mesopotamia, is the first known complex civilization, having
developed the first city-states in the 4th millennium BCE.[43] It was in these cities that the
earliest known form of writing, cuneiform script, appeared around 3000 BCE.[60]
[61]
 Cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs, whose pictorial representations
eventually became simplified and more abstract.[61] Cuneiform texts were written by
using a blunt reed as a stylus to draw symbols upon clay tablets.[60] 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.
Fresco, Knossos, Minoan Crete

These developments led to the rise of territorial states and empires. In Mesopotamia

there prevailed a pattern of independent warring city-states and of a loose hegemony
shifting from one city to another.[62] In Egypt, by contrast, first there was a dual division
into Upper and Lower Egypt which was shortly followed by unification of all the valley
around 3100 BCE, followed by permanent pacification.[63] In Crete the Minoan
civilization had entered the Bronze Age by 2700 BCE and is regarded as the first
civilization in Europe.[64] Over the next millennia, other river valleys saw monarchical
empires rise to power.[65] In the 25th – 21st centuries BCE, the empires
of Akkad and Sumer arose in Mesopotamia.[66]
Over the following millennia, civilizations developed across the
world. Trade increasingly became a source of power as states with access to important
resources or controlling important trade routes rose to dominance.[67] By 1600
BCE, Mycenaean Greece began to develop,[68] and ended with the Late Bronze Age
collapse that started to affect many Mediterranean civilizations between 1200 and 1150
BCE. In India, this era was the Vedic period (1750-600 BCE), which laid the foundations
of Hinduism and other cultural aspects of early Indian society, and ended in the 6th
century BCE.[69] From around 550 BCE, many independent kingdoms and republics
known as the Mahajanapadas were established across the subcontinent.[70]
As complex civilizations arose in the Eastern Hemisphere, the indigenous societies in
the Americas remained relatively simple and fragmented into diverse regional cultures.
During the formative stage in Mesoamerica (about 1500 BCE to 500 CE), more complex
and centralized civilizations began to develop, mostly in what is now Mexico, Central
America, and Peru. They included civilizations such as
the Olmecs, Maya, Zapotecs, Moche, and Nazca. They developed agriculture,
growing maize, chili peppers, cocoa, tomatoes, and potatoes, crops unique to the
Americas, and creating distinct cultures and religions. These ancient indigenous
societies would be greatly affected, for good and ill, by European contact during the
early modern period.
Axial Age
Main articles: Axial Age, History of philosophy, Timeline of religion, and History of
religion

The Buddha
Socrates

Beginning in the 8th century BCE, the "Axial Age" saw the development of a set of
transformative philosophical and religious ideas, mostly independently, in many different
places.[71] Chinese Confucianism, Indian Buddhism and Jainism,
and Jewish monotheism are all claimed by some scholars to have developed in the 6th
century BCE. (Karl Jaspers' Axial-Age theory also includes Persian Zoroastrianism, but
other scholars dispute his timeline for Zoroastrianism.) In the 5th century
BCE, Socrates and Plato made substantial advances in the development of ancient
Greek philosophy.
In the East, three schools of thought would dominate Chinese thinking well into the 20th
century. These were Taoism, Legalism, and Confucianism. The Confucian tradition,
which would become particularly dominant, looked for political morality not to the force
of law but to the power and example of tradition. Confucianism would later spread
to Korea and toward Japan.
In the West, the Greek philosophical tradition, represented by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
and other philosophers,[72] along with accumulated science, technology, and culture,
diffused throughout Europe, Egypt, the Middle East, and Northwest India, starting in the
4th century BCE after the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon.[73]
Regional empires
Main articles: Civilization and Empire
The 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 large domains whose
populations could attain numbers upwards of tens of millions of subjects. The
great empires depended on military annexation of territory and on the formation of
defended settlements to become agricultural centres. The relative peace that the
empires brought encouraged international trade, most notably the massive trade routes
in the Mediterranean, the maritime trade web in the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road. In
southern Europe, the Greeks (and later the Romans), in an era known as "classical
antiquity," established cultures whose practices, laws, and customs are considered the
foundation of contemporary Western culture.
Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 6th century BCE

The Parthenon, Athens

Pillar erected by India's Maurya Emperor Ashoka

Trajan's Column, Rome

Terracotta Army, China, c. 210 BCE

Obelisk of Axum, Ethiopia

There were a number of regional empires during this period. The kingdom of
the Medes helped to destroy the Assyrian Empire in tandem with the
nomadic Scythians and the Babylonians. Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was sacked by
the Medes in 612 BCE.[74] The Median Empire gave way to successive Iranian empires,
including the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE), the Parthian Empire (247 BCE–224
CE), and the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE).
Several empires began in modern-day Greece. First was the Delian League (from 477
BCE)[75] and the succeeding Athenian Empire (454–404 BCE), centered in present-
day Greece. Later, Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE), of Macedon, founded an
empire of conquest, extending from present-day Greece to present-day India.[76][77] The
empire divided shortly after his death, but the influence of his Hellenistic successors
made for an extended Hellenistic period (323–31 BCE)[78] throughout the region.
In Asia, the Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE) existed in present-day India;[79] in the 3rd
century BCE, most of South Asia was united to 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. From the 4th to
6th centuries, northern India was ruled by the Gupta Empire. In southern India, three
prominent Dravidian kingdoms emerged: the Cheras,[80] Cholas,[81] and Pandyas. The
ensuing stability contributed to heralding in the golden age of Hindu culture in the 4th
and 5th centuries.
In Europe, the Roman Empire, centered in present-day Italy, began in the 7th century
BCE.[82] In the 3rd century BCE the Roman Republic began expanding its territory
through conquest and alliances.[83] By the time of Augustus (63 BCE – 14 CE), the first
Roman Emperor, Rome had already established dominion over most of the
Mediterranean. The empire would continue to grow, controlling much of the land
from England to Mesopotamia, reaching its greatest extent under the
emperor Trajan (died 117 CE). In the 3rd century CE, the empire split into western and
eastern regions, with (usually) separate emperors. The Western empire would fall, in
476 CE, to German influence under Odoacer. The eastern empire, now known as
the Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, would continue for another
thousand years, until Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
In China, the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), the first imperial dynasty of China, was
followed by the Han Empire (206 BCE – 220 CE). The Han dynasty was comparable in
power and influence to the Roman Empire that lay at the other end of the Silk Road.
Han China developed advanced cartography, shipbuilding, and navigation. The Chinese
invented blast furnaces, and created finely tuned copper instruments. As with other
empires during the Classical Period, Han China advanced significantly in the areas of
government, education, mathematics, astronomy, technology, and many others.[84]
Maya observatory, Chichen Itza, Mexico

In Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum, centred in present-day Ethiopia, established itself by

the 1st century CE as a major trading empire, dominating its neighbours in
South Arabia and Kush and controlling the Red Sea trade. It minted its own currency
and carved enormous monolithic steles such as the Obelisk of Axum to mark their
emperors' graves.
Successful regional empires were also established in the Americas, arising from
cultures established as early as 2500 BCE.[85] In Mesoamerica, vast pre-Columbian
societies were built, the most notable being the Zapotec Empire (700 BCE – 1521 CE),
[86]
 and the Maya civilization, which reached its highest state of development during the
Mesoamerican Classic period (c. 250–900 CE),[87] but continued throughout the Post-
Classic period until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century CE. Maya civilization
arose as the Olmec mother culture gradually declined. The great Mayan city-
states slowly rose in number and prominence, and Maya culture spread throughout
the Yucatán and surrounding areas. The later empire of the Aztecs was built on
neighbouring cultures and was influenced by conquered peoples such as the Toltecs.
Some areas experienced slow but steady technological advances, with important
developments such as the stirrup and moldboard plough arriving every few centuries.
There were, however, in some regions, periods of rapid technological progress. Most
important, perhaps, was the Hellenistic period in the region of the Mediterranean, during
which hundreds of technologies were invented.[88] Such periods were followed by periods
of technological decay, as during the Roman Empire's decline and fall and the
ensuing early medieval period.
Declines, falls, and resurgence
The ancient 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 magnates increasingly evaded centralized control and its
costs. Barbarian pressure on the frontiers hastened internal dissolution. China's Han
dynasty fell into civil war in 220 CE, beginning the Three Kingdoms period, while
its Roman counterpart became increasingly decentralized and divided about the same
time in what is known as the Crisis of the Third Century. The great empires of Eurasia
were all located on temperate and subtropical coastal plains. From the Central
Asian steppes, horse-based nomads, mainly Mongols and 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 Pantheon in Rome, Italy, originally a Roman temple, now a Catholic church

The gradual break-up of the Roman Empire, spanning several centuries after the 2nd
century CE, coincided with the spread of Christianity outward from the Middle East.
[89]
 The Western Roman Empire fell under the domination of Germanic tribes in the 5th
century,[90] and these polities gradually developed into a number of warring states, all
associated in one way or another with the Catholic Church.[91] The remaining part of the
Roman Empire, in the eastern Mediterranean, continued as what came to be called
the Byzantine Empire.[92] Centuries later, a limited unity would be restored to western
Europe through the establishment in 962 of a revived "Roman Empire",[93] later called
the Holy Roman Empire,[94] comprising a number of states in what is now Germany,
Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Italy, and parts of France.[95][96]
In China, dynasties would rise and fall, but, by sharp contrast to the Mediterranean-
European world, dynastic unity would be restored. After the fall of the Eastern Han
dynasty[97] and the demise of the Three Kingdoms, nomadic tribes from the north began
to invade in the 4th century, eventually conquering areas of northern China and setting
up many small kingdoms.[98] The Sui dynasty successfully reunified the whole of
China[99] in 581,[100] and laid the foundations for a Chinese golden age under the Tang
dynasty (618–907).

Post-classical history (500 CE to 1500 CE)

Main article: Post-classical history
University of Timbuktu, Mali

The term "post-classical era", though derived from the Eurocentric name of the era of
"classical antiquity", takes in a broader geographic sweep. The era is commonly dated
from the 5th-century fall of the Western Roman Empire, which fragmented into many
separate kingdoms, some of which would later be confederated under the Holy Roman
Empire. The Byzantine Empire survived until late in the post-classical or medieval
period.
The post-classical period also encompasses the Early Muslim conquests, the
subsequent Islamic Golden Age, and the commencement and expansion of the Arab
slave trade, followed by the Mongol invasions of the Middle East, Central Asia,
and Eastern Europe and the founding around 1280 of the Ottoman Empire.[101] South
Asia saw a series of middle kingdoms of India, followed by the establishment of Islamic
empires in India.
In western Africa, the Mali Empire and the Songhai Empire developed. On the
southeast coast of Africa, Arabic ports were established where gold, spices, and other
commodities were traded. This allowed Africa to join the Southeast Asia trading system,
bringing it contact with Asia; this, along with Muslim culture, resulted in the Swahili
culture.
China experienced the successive Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties.
Middle Eastern trade routes along the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road through the
Gobi Desert, provided limited economic and cultural contact between Asian and
European civilizations.
During the same period, civilizations in the Americas, such as the Mississippian
culture, Ancestral Puebloans, Inca, Maya, and Aztecs, reached their zenith. All would be
compromised by, then conquered after, contact with European colonists at the
beginning of the modern period.
Greater Middle East
Main articles: History of the Middle East, History of North Africa, History of Central
Asia, History of the Caucasus, and Islamic Golden Age
Prior to the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the Middle East was dominated by
the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanian Empire that frequently fought each other for
control of several disputed regions. This was also a cultural battle, with the Byzantine
Christian culture competing against Persian Zoroastrian traditions. The birth of
the Islam created a new contender that quickly surpassed both of these empires. The
new religion greatly affected the political, economic, and military history of the Old
World, especially the Middle East.

Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE

From their centre on the Arabian Peninsula, Muslims began their expansion during the
early Postclassical Era. By 750 CE, they came to conquer most of the Near East, North
Africa, and parts of Europe, ushering in an era of learning, science, and invention
known as the Islamic Golden Age. The knowledge and skills of the ancient Near East,
Greece, and Persia were preserved in the Postclassical Era by Muslims, who also
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 centre of trade in Arabia, and the
Islamic prophet Muhammad himself was a merchant. With the new Islamic tradition of
the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, the city became even more a centre 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 Europeans, Indians,
and Chinese, who based their societies on an agricultural landholding nobility.
Merchants brought goods and their Islamic faith to China, India, Southeast Asia, and the
kingdoms of western Africa, and returned with new discoveries and inventions.

Crusader Krak des Chevaliers, Syria

The Crusading movement initially developed religious motivations and European

expansionism to roll back Muslim territory and regain control of the Holy Land. It was
ultimately unsuccessful and served more to weaken the Byzantine Empire, especially
with the 1204 Sack of Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire began to lose increasing
amounts of territory to the Ottoman Turks. Arab domination of the region ended in the
mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuq Turks, migrating south from the Turkic
homelands in Central Asia. In the early 13th century, a new wave of invaders,
the Mongol Empire, swept through the region but were eventually eclipsed by the Turks
and the founding of the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey around 1280.[101]
North Africa saw the rise of polities formed by the Berbers, such as the Marinid
dynasty in Morocco, the Zayyanid dynasty in Algeria, and the Hafsid dynasty in Tunisia.
The coastal region was known as the Barbary Coast. Pirates based in North African
ports conducted operations that included capturing merchant ships and raiding coastal
settlements. Many European captives were sold in North African markets as part of
the Barbary slave trade.
Starting with the Sui dynasty (581–618), the Chinese began expanding into
eastern Central Asia, and confronted Turkic nomads, who were becoming the most
dominant ethnic group in Central Asia.[102][103] Originally the relationship was largely
cooperative, but in 630 the Tang dynasty began an offensive against the Turks,
[104]
 capturing areas of the Mongolian Ordos Desert. In the 8th century, Islam began to
penetrate the region and soon became the sole faith of most of the population, though
Buddhism remained strong in the east.[105] The desert nomads of Arabia could militarily
match the nomads of the steppe, and the early Arab Empire gained control over parts of
Central Asia.[102] The Hephthalites were the most powerful of the nomad groups in the 6th
and 7th centuries, and controlled much of the region. In the 9th through 13th centuries
the region was divided among several powerful states, including the Samanid Empire,
[106]
 the Seljuk Empire,[107] and the Khwarezmid Empire. The largest empire to rise out of
Central Asia developed when Genghis Khan united the tribes of Mongolia. The Mongol
Empire spread to comprise all of Central Asia and China as well as large parts of
Russia and the Middle East.[108]} After Genghis Khan died in 1227,[109] most of Central Asia
continued to be dominated by a successor state, Chagatai Khanate. In 1369, Timur, a
Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the region and founded
the Timurid Empire. Timur's large empire collapsed soon after his death, however. The
region then became divided into smaller khanates that were established by the Uzbeks,
including the Khanate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva.
In the aftermath of the Byzantine–Sasanian wars,
the Caucasus saw Armenia and Georgia flourish as independent realms free from
foreign suzerainty. As the Byzantines and Sasanians became exhausted of continuous
wars, the Rashidun Caliphate used the opportunity to expand to the Caucasus during
the early Muslim conquests. By the 13th century, the arrival of the Mongols saw the
region invaded once again.
Europe
Main articles: History of Europe, Middle Ages, and Timeline of the Middle Ages
Europe during the Early Middle Ages was characterized by depopulation,
deurbanization, and barbarian invasion, all of which had begun in late antiquity. The
barbarian invaders formed their own new kingdoms in the remains of the Western
Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East, once part of
the Eastern Roman Empire, became part of the Caliphate after conquest
by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and
political structures, most of the new kingdoms incorporated as many of the existing
Roman institutions as they could. Christianity expanded in western Europe, and
monasteries were founded. In the 7th and 8th centuries the Franks, under
the Carolingian dynasty, established an empire covering much of western Europe;[110] it
lasted until the 9th century, when it succumbed to pressure from new invaders—
the Vikings,[111] Magyars, and Saracens.

St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City

During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe
increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish
and crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organization of peasants into villages that
owed rents and labour service to nobles, and feudalism, a political structure
whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in
return for the right to rents from lands and manors, were two of the ways of organizing
medieval society that developed during the High Middle Ages. Kingdoms became more
centralized after the decentralizing effects of the break-up of the Carolingian Empire.
The Crusading movement attempted to gain Roman Catholic control of the Holy
Land from the Muslims and succeeded for long enough to establish some Christian
states in the Near East. Italian merchants imported slaves to work in households or
in sugar processing.[112] Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism and the founding of
universities, while the building of Gothic cathedrals and churches was one of the
outstanding artistic achievements of the age.
The Late Middle Ages were marked by difficulties and calamities. Famine, plague, and
war devastated the population of western Europe.[113] The Black Death alone killed
approximately 75 to 200 million people between 1347 and 1350.[114][115] It was one of the
deadliest pandemics in human history. Starting in Asia, the disease reached
Mediterranean and western Europe during the late 1340s,[116] and killed tens of millions of
Europeans in six years; between a third and a half of the population perished.
The Middle Ages witnessed the first sustained urbanization of northern and western
Europe and it lasted until the beginning of the early modern period in the 16th century,
[20]
 marked by the rise of nation states,[117] the division of Western Christianity in
the Reformation,[118] the rise of humanism in the Italian Renaissance,[119] and the
beginnings of European overseas expansion which allowed for the Columbian
exchange.
In Central and Eastern Europe, in 1386, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania (the latter including territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine), facing
depredations by the Teutonic Order and later also threats from Muscovy, the Crimean
Tatars, and the Ottoman Empire, formed a personal union through the marriage of
Poland's Queen Jadwiga to Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila, who became
King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland. For the next four centuries, until the 18th-
century partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Prussia, Russia,
and Austria, the two polities conducted a federated condominium, long Europe's largest
state, which welcomed diverse ethnicities and religions, including most of the
world's Jews, furthered scientific thought (e.g. Nicolaus Copernicus's heliocentric
theory), and—in a last-ditch effort to preserve their sovereignty—adopted
the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the world's second modern written constitution after
the Constitution of the United States that went into effect in 1789.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Main article: History of Africa

A brass "Benin Bronze" from Nigeria

Medieval sub-Saharan Africa was home to many different civilizations. The Kingdom of

Aksum declined in the 7th century as Islam cut it off from its Christian allies and its
people moved further into the Ethiopian Highlands for protection. They eventually gave
way to the Zagwe dynasty who are famed for their rock cut architecture at Lalibela. The
Zagwe would then fall to the Solomonic dynasty who claimed descent from the
Aksumite emperors[120] and would rule the country well into the 20th century. In the West
African Sahel region, many Islamic empires rose, such as the Ghana Empire, the Mali
Empire, the Songhai Empire, and the Kanem–Bornu Empire. They controlled the trans-
Saharan trade in gold, ivory, salt and slaves.
South of the Sahel, civilizations rose in the coastal forests. These include
the Yoruba city of Ifẹ, noted for its art,[121] and the Oyo Empire, the Kingdom of Benin of
the Edo people centred in Benin City, the Igbo Kingdom of Nri which produced
advanced bronze art at Igbo-Ukwu, and the Akan who are noted for their intricate
architecture.[122][123]
Central Africa saw the formation of several states, including the Kingdom of Kongo. In
what is now modern Southern Africa, native Africans created various kingdoms such as
the Kingdom of Mutapa. They flourished through trade with the Swahili people on the
East African coast. They built large defensive stone structures without mortar such
as Great Zimbabwe, capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, Khami, capital of Kingdom of
Butua, and Danangombe (Dhlo-Dhlo), capital of the Rozvi Empire. The Swahili people
themselves were the inhabitants of the East African coast from Kenya to Mozambique
who traded extensively with Asians and Arabs, who introduced them to Islam. They built
many port cities such as Mombasa, Zanzibar and Kilwa, which were known to Chinese
sailors under Zheng He and Islamic geographers.
South Asia
Main article: History of India

Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India

In northern India, after the fall (550 CE) of the Gupta Empire, the region was divided into
a complex and fluid network of smaller kingly states.[124]
Early Muslim incursions began in the west in 712 CE, when the Arab Umayyad
Caliphate annexed much of present-day Pakistan. Arab military advance was largely
halted at that point, but Islam still spread in India, largely due to the influence of Arab
merchants along the western coast.
The ninth century saw a Tripartite Struggle for control of northern India, among
the Pratihara Empire, the Pala Empire, and the Rashtrakuta Empire. Some of the
important states that emerged in India at this time included the Bahmani Sultanate and
the Vijayanagara Empire.
Post-classical dynasties in South India included those of the Chalukyas, the Hoysalas,
the Cholas, the Mughals, the Marathas, and the Mysores. Science, engineering, art,
literature, astronomy, and philosophy flourished under the patronage of these kings.[125]
Northeast Asia
Main articles: History of East Asia and History of Siberia
After a period of relative disunity, China was reunified by the Sui dynasty in 589[126] and
under the succeeding Tang dynasty (618–907) China entered a Golden Age.[127] The
Tang Empire competed with the Tibetan Empire (618–842) for control of areas in Inner
and Central Asia.[128] The Tang dynasty eventually splintered, however, and after half a
century of turmoil the Song dynasty reunified China,[citation needed] when it was, according
to William McNeill, the "richest, most skilled, and most populous country on earth".
[129]
 Pressure from nomadic empires to the north became increasingly urgent. By 1142,
North China had been lost to the Jurchens in the Jin–Song Wars, and the Mongol
Empire[130] conquered all of China in 1279, along with almost half of Eurasia's landmass.
After about a century of Mongol Yuan dynasty rule, the ethnic Chinese reasserted
control with the founding of the Ming dynasty (1368).

Battle during 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan

In Japan, the imperial lineage had been established by this time, and during the Asuka
period (538–710) the Yamato Province developed into a clearly centralized state.
[131]
 Buddhism was introduced, and there was an emphasis on the adoption of elements
of Chinese culture and Confucianism. The Nara period of the 8th century[132] marked the
emergence of a strong Japanese state and is often portrayed as a golden age.[citation
needed]
 During this period, the imperial government undertook great public works, including
government offices, temples, roads, and irrigation systems.[citation needed] The Heian
period (794 to 1185) saw the peak of imperial power, followed by the rise of militarized
clans, and the beginning of Japanese feudalism. The feudal period of Japanese history,
dominated by powerful regional lords (daimyos) and the military rule of warlords
(shoguns) such as the Ashikaga shogunate and Tokugawa shogunate, stretched from
1185 to 1868. The emperor remained, but mostly as a figurehead, and the power of
merchants was weak.
Postclassical Korea saw the end of the Three Kingdoms era, the three kingdoms
being Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. Silla conquered Baekje in 660, and Goguryeo in 668,
[133]
 marking the beginning of the Northern and Southern States period (남북국시대),
with Unified Silla in the south and Balhae, a successor state to Goguryeo, in the north.
[134]
 In 892 CE, this arrangement reverted to the Later Three Kingdoms, with Goguryeo
(then called Taebong and eventually named Goryeo) emerging as dominant, unifying
the entire peninsula by 936.[135] The founding Goryeo dynasty ruled until 1392,
succeeded by the Joseon dynasty, which ruled for approximately 500 years.
Southeast Asia

Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia, early 12th century

Main article: History of Southeast Asia

The beginning of the Middle Ages in Southeast Asia saw the fall (550 CE) of
the Kingdom of Funan to the Chenla Empire, which was then replaced by the Khmer
Empire (802 CE). The Khmer people's capital city, Angkor, was the largest city in the
world prior to the industrial age and contained over a thousand temples, the most
famous being Angkor Wat.
The Sukhothai (1238 CE) and Ayutthaya (1351 CE) kingdoms were major powers of
the Thai people, who were influenced by the Khmer.
Starting in the 9th century, the Pagan Kingdom rose to prominence in
modern Myanmar. Its collapse brought about political fragmention that ended with the
rise of the Toungoo Empire in the 16th century.
Other notable kingdoms of the period include the Srivijayan Empire and the Lavo
Kingdom (both coming into prominence in the 7th century), the Champa and
the Hariphunchai (both about 750), the Đại Việt (968), Lan Na (13th
century), Majapahit (1293), Lan Xang (1354), and the Kingdom of Ava (1364).
This period saw the spread of Islam to present-day Indonesia (beginning in the 13th
century) and the emergence of the Malay states, including the Malacca Sultanate and
the Bruneian Empire.
In the Philippines, several polities were formed such as the Rajahnate of Maynila,
the Rajahnate of Cebu, and the Rajahnate of Butuan.
Oceania

Moai, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Main article: History of Oceania

In Oceania, the Tuʻi Tonga Empire was founded in the 10th century CE and expanded
between 1200 and 1500. Tongan culture, language, and hegemony spread widely
throughout Eastern Melanesia, Micronesia, and Central Polynesia during this period,
[136]
 influencing East 'Uvea, Rotuma, Futuna, Samoa, and Niue, as well as specific
islands and parts of Micronesia (Kiribati, Pohnpei, and miscellaneous outliers), Vanuatu,
and New Caledonia (specifically, the Loyalty Islands, with the main island being
predominantly populated by the Melanesian Kanak people and their cultures).[137]
In northern Australia, there is evidence that some aboriginal
groups regularly traded with Makassarese fishermen from Indonesia before the arrival
of Europeans.[138][139]
At around the same time, a powerful thalassocracy appeared in Eastern Polynesia,
centered around the Society Islands, specifically on the sacred Taputapuatea marae,
which drew in Eastern Polynesian colonists from places as far away as Hawaii, New
Zealand (Aotearoa), and the Tuamotu Islands for political, spiritual and economic
reasons, until the unexplained collapse of regular long-distance voyaging in the Eastern
Pacific a few centuries before Europeans began exploring the area.
Indigenous written records from this period are virtually nonexistent, as it seems that all
Pacific Islanders, with the possible exception of the enigmatic Rapa Nui and their
currently undecipherable Rongorongo script, had no writing systems of any kind until
after their introduction by European colonists. However, some indigenous prehistories
can be estimated and academically reconstructed through careful, judicious analysis of
native oral traditions, colonial ethnography, archeology, physical anthropology, and
linguistics research.
Americas

Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru

Main articles: History of the Americas, History of North America, History of Central

America, History of the Caribbean, and History of South America
In North America, this period saw the rise of the Mississippian culture in the modern-
day United States c. 800 CE, marked by the extensive 12th-century urban complex
at Cahokia. The Ancestral Puebloans and their predecessors (9th – 13th centuries) built
extensive permanent settlements, including stone structures that would remain the
largest buildings in North America until the 19th century.[140]
In Mesoamerica, the Teotihuacan civilization fell and the Classic Maya
collapse occurred. The Aztec Empire came to dominate much of Mesoamerica in the
14th and 15th centuries.
In South America, the 14th and 15th centuries saw the rise of the Inca. The Inca
Empire of Tawantinsuyu, with its capital at Cusco, spanned the entire Andes, making it
the most extensive pre-Columbian civilization. The Inca were prosperous and
advanced, known for an excellent road system and unrivaled masonry.

Modern history (1500 to the present)

"Modern Age" redirects here. For the periodical, see Modern Age (periodical).
"Modern Era" redirects here. For the geological and paleontological sense,
see Holocene.
See also: Timelines of modern history

Gutenberg Bible, ca. 1450, produced using movable type

In the linear, global, historiographical approach, modern history (the "modern period,"

the "modern era," "modern times") is the history of the period following post-classical
history (in Europe known as the "Middle Ages"), spanning from about 1500 to the
present. "Contemporary history" includes events from around 1945 to the present. (The
definitions of both terms, "modern history" and "contemporary history", have changed
over time, as more history has occurred, and so have their start dates.)[141][142] Modern
history can be further broken down into periods:

 The early modern period began around 1500 and ended

around 1815. Notable historical milestones included the
continued European Renaissance (whose start is dated
variously between 1200 and 1401), the Age of Discovery,
the Islamic gunpowder empires, the Reformation,[143][144] and
the American Revolution. With the Scientific Revolution,
new information about the world was discovered
via empirical research[145] and the scientific method, by
contrast with the earlier emphasis on reason and "innate
 knowledge". The Scientific Revolution received impetus
from Johannes Gutenberg's introduction to Europe
of printing, using movable type, and from the invention of
the telescope and microscope. Globalization was fuelled by
international trade and colonization.
 The late modern period began sometime around 1750–
1815, as Europe experienced the Industrial Revolution and
the military-political turbulence of the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, which were followed
by the Pax Britannica. The late modern period continues
either to the end of World War II, in 1945, or to the present.
Other notable historical milestones included the Great
Divergence and the Russian Revolution.
 Contemporary history (a period also dubbed Pax
Americana in geopolitics) includes historic events from
approximately 1945 that are closely relevant to the present
time. Major developments include the Cold War,
continual hot wars and proxy wars, the Jet Age,
the DNA revolution, the Green Revolution,[b] artificial
satellites and the Global Positioning System (GPS),
development of the supranational European Union,
the Information Age, rapid economic development
in India and China, increasing terrorism, and a daunting
array of global ecological crises headed by the imminent
existential threat of runaway global warming.
The defining features of the modern era developed predominantly in Europe, and so
different periodizations are sometimes applied to other parts of the world. When the
European periods are used globally, this is often in the context of contact with European
culture in the Age of Discovery.[147]
In the humanities and social sciences, the norms, attitudes, and practices arising during
the modern period are known as modernity. The corresponding terms for post-World
War II culture are postmodernity or late modernity.
Early modern period (1500 to 1800)
Main article: Early modern period
The "early Modern period"[c] was the period between the Middle Ages and the Industrial
Revolution—roughly 1500 to 1800.[20] The early Modern period was characterized by the
rise 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
saw the rise and dominance of mercantilist economic theory, and the decline and
eventual disappearance, in much of the European sphere, of feudalism, serfdom, and
the power of the Catholic Church. The period included the Reformation, the
disastrous Thirty Years' War, the Age of Discovery, European colonial expansion, the
peak of European witch-hunting, the Scientific Revolution, and the Age of
Enlightenment.[d]
Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (c. 1490), Renaissance Italy

Main article: Renaissance
Europe's Renaissance – the "rebirth" of classical culture, beginning in the 14th century
and extending into the 16th – comprised the rediscovery of the classical world's cultural,
scientific, and technological achievements, and the economic and social rise of Europe.
The Renaissance engendered a culture of inquisitiveness which ultimately led
to Humanism[148] and the Scientific Revolution.[149]
This period, which saw social and political upheavals, and revolutions in
many intellectual pursuits, is also celebrated for its artistic developments and the
attainments of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired
the term "Renaissance man."
European expansion
Further information: Age of Discovery, Colonialism, 16th century, and 17th century
During this period, European powers came to dominate most of the world. Although the
most developed regions of European classical civilization were more urbanized than
any other region of the world, European civilization had undergone a lengthy period of
gradual decline and collapse. During the early modern period, Europe was able to
regain its dominance; historians still debate the causes.
Europe's success in this period stands in contrast to other regions. For example, one of
the most advanced civilizations of the Middle Ages was China. It had developed an
advanced monetary economy by 1000 CE. China had a free peasantry who were no
longer subsistence farmers, and could sell their produce and actively participate in the
market. According to Adam Smith, writing in the 18th century, China had long been one
of the richest, most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, most urbanized, and most
prosperous countries in the world. It enjoyed a technological advantage and had a
monopoly in cast iron production, piston bellows, suspension
bridge construction, printing, and the compass. However, it seemed to have long since
stopped progressing. Marco Polo, who visited China in the 13th century, describes its
cultivation, industry, and populousness almost in the same terms as travellers would in
the 18th century.
One theory of Europe's rise 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
Eurasian continent and, as 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 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.[citation needed] In 1600
the Ottoman Empire controlled almost all the Middle East,[150] the Ming dynasty ruled
China,[151][152] 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.
Nearly all the agricultural civilizations have been heavily constrained by
their environments. Productivity remained low, and climatic changes easily
instigated boom-and-bust cycles that brought about civilizations' rise and fall. By about
1500, however, there was a qualitative change in world history. Technological advance
and the wealth generated by trade gradually brought about a widening of possibilities.[153]

1570 world map, showing Europeans' discoveries

Many have also argued that Europe's institutions allowed it to expand, that property
rights and 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. 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 sources of influence, and their union
resulted in the Iberian Union, 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.
Regional developments
Greater Middle East

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey

The Ottoman Empire, after conquering Constantinople in 1453, quickly became the

most powerful state in the Middle East. Persia came under the rule of the Safavid
Empire in 1501, succeeded by the Afsharid Empire in 1736, the Zand Empire in 1751,
and the Qajar Empire in 1794. In North Africa, the Wattasid Sultanate, Zayyanid
Sultanate, and Hafsid Sultanate remained as independent Berber states until the 16th
century. Areas to the north and east in Central Asia were held by
the Uzbeks and Pashtuns. By the start of the 19th century, the Russian Empire began
its conquest of the Caucasus.
Europe
In Russia, Ivan the Terrible was crowned in 1547 as the first Tsar of Russia, and by
annexing the Turkic khanates in the east, transformed Russia into a regional power.
The countries of western Europe, while expanding prodigiously through technological
advancement and colonial conquest, competed with each other economically and
militarily in a state of almost constant war. Often the wars had a religious dimension,
either Catholic versus Protestant, or (primarily in eastern Europe) Christian versus
Muslim. Wars of particular note include the Thirty Years' War, the War of the Spanish
Succession, the Seven Years' War, and the French Revolutionary
Wars. Napoleon came to power in France in 1799, an event foreshadowing the
Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.
Sub-Saharan Africa
In Africa, this period saw a decline in many civilizations and an advancement in others.
The Swahili coast declined after coming under the Portuguese Empire and later
the Omani Empire. In West Africa, the Songhai Empire fell to the Moroccans in 1591
when they invaded with guns. The Bono State which gave birth to
numerous Akan states in search of gold such as Akwamu, Akyem, Fante, Adansi etc.
[154]
 The South African Kingdom of Zimbabwe gave way to smaller kingdoms such
as Mutapa, Butua, and Rozvi. Ethiopia suffered from the 1531 invasion from
neighbouring Muslim Adal Sultanate, and in 1769 entered the Zemene Mesafint (Age of
Princes) during which the Emperor became a figurehead and the country was ruled by
warlords, though the royal line later would recover under Emperor Tewodros II.
The Ajuran Sultanate, in the Horn of Africa, began to decline in the 17th century,
succeeded by the Geledi Sultanate. Other civilizations in Africa advanced during this
period. The Oyo Empire experienced its golden age, as did the Kingdom of Benin.
The Ashanti Empire rose to power in what is modern day Ghana in 1670. The Kingdom
of Kongo also thrived during this period.
South Asia

Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India

On the Indian subcontinent, the Delhi Sultanate and the Deccan sultanates would give

way, beginning in the 16th century, to the Mughal Empire.[citation needed] Starting in the
northwest, the Mughal Empire would by the late 17th century come to rule the entire
subcontinent,[155] except for the southernmost Indian provinces, which would remain
independent. Against the Muslim Mughal Empire, the Hindu Maratha Empire was
founded on the west coast in 1674, gradually gaining territory—a majority of present-
day India—from the Mughals over several decades, particularly in the Mughal–Maratha
Wars (1681–1701). The Maratha Empire would in 1818 fall under the control of the
British East India Company, with all former Maratha and Mughal authority devolving in
1858 to the British Raj.
Northeast Asia
Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China

In China, the Ming gave way in 1644 to the Qing, the last Chinese imperial dynasty,
which would rule until 1912. Japan experienced its Azuchi–Momoyama period (1568–
1603), followed by the Edo period (1603–1868). The Korean Joseon dynasty (1392–
1910) ruled throughout this period, successfully repelling 16th and 17th century
invasions from Japan and China. Expanded maritime trade with Europe significantly
affected China and Japan during this period, particularly by the Portuguese who had a
presence in Macau and Nagasaki. However, China and Japan would later pursue
isolationist policies designed to eliminate foreign influences.
Southeast Asia
In 1511 the Portuguese overthrew the Malacca Sultanate in present-day Malaysia and
Indonesian Sumatra. The Portuguese held this important trading territory (and the
valuable associated navigational strait) until overthrown by the Dutch in 1641.
The Johor Sultanate, centred on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, became the
dominant trading power in the region. European colonization expanded with the Dutch
in Indonesia, the Portuguese in East Timor, and the Spanish in the Philippines. Into the
19th century, European expansion would affect the whole of Southeast Asia, with the
British in Myanmar and Malaysia, and the French in Indochina. Only Thailand would
successfully resist colonization.
Oceania
The Pacific islands of Oceania would also be affected by European contact, starting
with the circumnavigational voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, who landed on
the Marianas and other islands in 1521. Also notable were the voyages (1642–44)
of Abel Tasman to present-day Australia, New Zealand and nearby islands, and the
voyages (1768–1779) of Captain James Cook, who made the first recorded European
contact with Hawaii. Britain would found its first colony on Australia in 1788.
Americas
In the Americas, the western European powers vigorously colonized the newly
discovered continents, largely displacing the indigenous populations, and destroying the
advanced civilizations of the Aztecs and the Incas. Spain, Portugal, Britain, and France
all made extensive territorial claims, and undertook large-scale settlement, including the
importation of large numbers of African slaves. Portugal claimed Brazil. Spain claimed
the rest of South America, Mesoamerica, and southern North America. Britain colonized
the east coast of North America, and France colonized the central region of North
America. Russia made incursions onto the northwest coast of North America, with a first
colony in present-day Alaska in 1784, and the outpost of Fort Ross in present-
day California in 1812.[156] In 1762, in the midst of the Seven Years' War, France secretly
ceded most of its North American claims to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau.
Thirteen of the British colonies declared independence as the United States of
America in 1776, ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, ending the American
Revolutionary War. Napoleon Bonaparte won France's claims back from Spain in
the Napoleonic Wars in 1800, but sold them to the United States in 1803 as
the Louisiana Purchase.
Late modern period (1800 to the present)
19th century
Main article: Late modern period
Further information: 18th century, 19th century, Long nineteenth century, Age of
Imperialism, Age of Revolution, Diplomatic Revolution, and Industrial Revolution

Watt's steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution.

The Scientific Revolution changed humanity's understanding of the world and led to

the Industrial Revolution, a major transformation of the world's economies. The
Scientific Revolution in the 17th century had had little immediate effect on
industrial technology; only in the second half of the 18th century did scientific advances
begin to be applied substantially to practical invention. The Industrial Revolution began
in Great Britain and used new modes of production—the factory, mass production,
and mechanization—to manufacture a wide array of goods faster and using less labour
than previously required. The Age of Enlightenment also led to the beginnings of
modern democracy in the late-18th century American and French
Revolutions. Democracy and republicanism would grow to have a profound effect on
world events and on quality of life.

Empires of the world in 1898

The Wright brothers built and flew the first airplane, the Wright Flyer, in 1903

After Europeans had achieved influence and control over the

Americas, imperial activities turned to the lands of Asia and Oceania. In the 19th
century the European states had social and technological advantage over Eastern
lands.[citation needed] Britain gained control of the Indian subcontinent, Egypt and the Malay
Peninsula; the French took Indochina; while the Dutch cemented their control over
the Dutch East Indies. The British also colonized Australia, New Zealand and South
Africa with large numbers of British colonists emigrating to these colonies. Russia
colonized large pre-agricultural areas of Siberia. In the late 19th century, the European
powers divided the remaining areas of Africa. Within Europe, economic and military
challenges created a system of nation states, and ethno-linguistic groupings began to
identify themselves as distinctive nations with aspirations for cultural and political
autonomy. This nationalism would become important to peoples across the world in the
20th century.
During the Second 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. Meanwhile, industrial pollution and environmental damage, present
since the discovery of fire and the beginning of civilization, accelerated drastically.
The advantages that Europe had developed by the mid-18th century were two:
an entrepreneurial culture,[157] and the wealth generated by the Atlantic trade (including
the African slave trade). By the late 16th century, silver from the Americas accounted for
the Spanish empire's wealth.[citation needed] The profits of the slave trade and of West
Indian plantations amounted to 5% of the British economy at the time of the Industrial
Revolution.[158] While some historians conclude that, in 1750, labour productivity in the
most developed regions of China was still on a par with that of Europe's Atlantic
economy,[159] other historians such as Angus Maddison hold that the per-capita
productivity of western Europe had by the late Middle Ages surpassed that of all other
regions.[160]
20th century
Main article: 20th century
Further information: Interwar period, Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, Cold
War, Green Revolution, Space exploration, and Digital Revolution
World War I trench warfare

The 20th century 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. Much of the rest of
the world was influenced by heavily Europeanized nations: the United States and
Japan.
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.
This transformation was catalyzed by wars of unparalleled scope and
devastation. World War I led to the collapse of four empires – Austria-Hungary,
the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire – and weakened
the United Kingdom and France.
In the war's aftermath, powerful ideologies rose to prominence. The Russian
Revolution of 1917 created the first communist state, while the 1920s and 1930s
saw militaristic fascist dictatorships gain control in Italy, Germany, Spain, and
elsewhere.

Atomic bombings: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, 1945

Ongoing national rivalries, exacerbated by the economic turmoil of the Great

Depression, helped precipitate World War II. The militaristic dictatorships of Europe and
Japan pursued an ultimately doomed course of imperialist expansionism, in the course
of which Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, orchestrated the genocide of six
million Jews in the Holocaust, while Imperial Japan murdered millions of Chinese.
The World War II defeat of the Axis powers by the Allied powers opened the way for the
advance of communism into East
Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, 
China, North Korea, and North Vietnam.

Civilians (here, Mỹ Lai, Vietnam, 1968) suffered greatly in 20th-century wars.

When World War II ended in 1945, the United Nations was founded in the hope of

preventing future wars,[161] as the League of Nations had been formed following World
War I.[162] The war had left two countries, the United States and the Soviet Union, with
principal power to influence international affairs.[163] Each was suspicious of the other and
feared a global spread of the other's, respectively capitalist and communist, political-
economic model. This led to the Cold War, a forty-five-year stand-off and arms
race between the United States and its allies, on one hand, and the Soviet Union and its
allies on the other.[164]
With the development of nuclear weapons during World War II, and with their
subsequent proliferation, all of humanity were put at risk of nuclear war between the two
superpowers, as demonstrated by many incidents, most prominently the October
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Such war being viewed as impractical, the superpowers
instead waged proxy wars in non-nuclear-armed Third World countries[165][166]
In China, Mao Zedong implemented industrialization and collectivization reforms as part
of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), leading to the starvation deaths (1959–1961)
of tens of millions of people.
Between 1969 and 1972, as part of the Cold War Space Race,
twelve astronauts landed on the Moon and safely returned to Earth.[e]
The Cold War ended peacefully in 1991 after the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent
fall of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and
the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union collapsed, partly due to its inability to compete
economically with the United States and Western Europe. However, the United States
likewise began to show signs of slippage in its geopolitical influence,[168][f] even as
its private sector, now less inhibited by the claims of the public sector, increasingly
sought private advantage to the prejudice of the public weal.[g][h][i]
In the early postwar decades, the colonies in Asia and Africa of the Belgian, British,
Dutch, French, and other west European empires won their formal independence.
[173]
 However, these newly independent countries often faced challenges in the form
of neocolonialism, sociopolitical disarray, poverty, illiteracy, and endemic tropical
diseases.[174][j][k]
Most Western European and Central European countries gradually formed a political
and economic community, the European Union, which expanded eastward to include
former Soviet satellite states.[177][178][179] The European Union's effectiveness was
handicapped by the immaturity of its common economic and political institutions,
[l]
 somewhat comparable to the inadequacy of United States institutions under
the Articles of Confederation prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United
States that came into force in 1789. Asian, African, and South American countries
followed suit and began taking tentative steps toward forming their own
respective continental associations.

Last Moon landing: Apollo 17 (1972)

Cold War preparations to deter or to fight a third world war accelerated advances
in technologies that, though conceptualized before World War II, had been implemented
for that war's exigencies, such as jet aircraft, rocketry, and computers. In the decades
after World War II, these advances led to jet travel, artificial satellites with innumerable
applications including the Global Positioning System (GPS), and the Internet. These
inventions have revolutionized the movement of people, ideas, and information.
However, not all scientific and technological advances in the second half of the 20th
century required an initial military impetus. That period also saw ground-breaking
developments such as the discovery of the structure of DNA[181] and DNA sequencing,
the consequent sequencing of the human genome (The Human Genome Project), the
worldwide eradication of smallpox, the discovery of stem cells, the introduction of the
portable cellular phone, the discovery of plate tectonics, crewed and
uncrewed exploration of space and of previously inaccessible parts of Earth, and
foundational discoveries in physics phenomena ranging from the smallest entities
(particle physics) to the greatest entity (physical cosmology).
21st century
Main article: 21st century
The 21st century has been marked by growing economic globalization and integration,
with consequent increased risk to interlinked economies, as exemplified by the Great
Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s.[182] This period has also seen the
expansion of communications with mobile phones and the Internet, which have caused
fundamental societal changes in business, politics, and individuals' personal lives.

China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century (Shanghai pictured).

Worldwide competition for natural resources has risen due to growing populations and

industrialization, especially in India, China, and Brazil. The increased demands are
contributing to increased environmental degradation and to climate change.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic became the first pandemic in the 21st century to
substantially disrupt global trading and cause recessions in the global economy.[183]

See also
 Andrew Marr's History of the World (2012 BBC series)
 Cultural history
 Economic history of the world
 Globalization
 Historic recurrence
 Historiography
 History of science
 History of technology
 List of archaeological periods
 List of decades, centuries, and millennia
 List of time periods
 Political history of the world
  Timeline of geopolitical changes (1900−present)
 Western culture

  Modern history portal

   World portal

Explanatory notes
1. ^ The very word "civilization" comes from the Latin civilis, meaning
"civil," related to civis ("citizen") and civitas ("city" or "city-state").[41]
2. ^ However, the Green Revolution has brought unintended
consequences: "India originally possessed some
110,000 landraces of rice with diverse and valuable properties. These
include enrichment in vital nutrients and the ability to withstand flood,
drought, salinity or pest infestations. The Green Revolution covered
fields with a few high-yielding varieties, so that roughly 90 percent of
the landraces vanished from farmers' collections. High-yielding
varieties require expensive inputs. They perform abysmally on
marginal farms or in adverse environmental conditions, forcing poor
farmers into debt."[146]
3. ^ "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 c.
1790–1800, by whichever epoch is favoured 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.
4. ^ 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.
5. ^ James Gleick writes in The New York Review of Books: "'If we can
put a man on the moon, why can's we...?' became a cliché even
before Apollo succeeded.... Now... the missing predicate is the urgent
one: why can't we stop destroying the climate of our own planet?... I
say leave it [the moon] alone for a while."[167]
6. ^ "In the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union..."
writes Graham Allison, "Americans were... caught up in a surge of
triumphalism." Francis Fukuyama, in a 1992 best-selling book,
proclaimed The End of History, the victory of free-market economics,
and the permanent ascendancy of Western liberal democracy. But it
soon became evident, writes Allison, that "the end of the Cold
War [had] produced a unipolar moment, not a unipolar era. [T]he U.S.
economy, which [had] accounted for half of the world's GDP after
World War II, had fallen to less than a quarter of global GDP by the
end of the Cold War and stands at just one-seventh today. For a
nation whose core strategy has been to overwhelm challenges with
resources, this decline calls into question the terms of U.S. leadership.
[169]
7. ^ "In the advanced economies of the West, from 1945 to around
1975," writes Robin Varghese in Foreign Affairs, "voters showed
how politics could tame markets, putting officials in power who
pursued a range of social democratic policies without damaging the
economy. This period... saw a historically unique combination of high
growth, increasing productivity, rising real wages, technological
innovation, and expanding systems of social insurance in Western
Europe, North America, and Japan.... Since the 1970s, businesses
across the developed world have been cutting their wage bills not only
through labor-saving technological innovations but also by pushing for
regulatory changes and developing new forms of employment. These
include just-in-time contracts, which shift risks to workers; noncompete
clauses, which reduce bargaining power; and freelance arrangements,
which exempt businesses from providing employees with benefits
such as health insurance. The result has been that since the beginning
of the twenty-first century, labor's share of GDP has fallen steadily in
many developed economies.... The challenge today is to identify...
a mixed economy that can successfully deliver what the [1945–75]
golden age did, this time with greater gender and racial equality to
boot."[170]
8. ^ Historian Christopher R. Browning writes: "In the first three postwar
decades, workers and management effectively shared the increased
wealth produced by the growth in productivity. Since the 1970s
that social contract has collapsed, union membership and influence
have declined, wage growth has stagnated, and inequality in wealth
has grown sharply."[171]
9. ^ Economics Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz writes in Scientific
American, in part: "[T]he U.S. has the highest level of economic
inequality among developed countries.... Since the mid-1970s the
rules of the economic game have been rewritten... globally and
nationally [to] advantage the rich... in a political system that is itself
rigged through gerrymandering, voter suppression and the influence of
money.... [Enforcement of] antitrust laws, first enacted [in 1890] in the
U.S. to prevent the agglomeration of market power, has
weakened... Technological changes have concentrated market power
in the hands of a few global players... part[ly] because of "network
effects"... [E]stablished firms with deep war chests have enormous
power to crush competitors and ultimately raise prices.... A concerted
attack on unions has almost halved the fraction of unionized workers
in the [U.S.], to about 11 percent.... U.S. investment treaties such
as NAFTA protect investors against a tightening of environmental and
health regulations abroad. [Such] provisions... enhance the credibility
of a company's threat to move abroad if workers do not temper their
demands.... [I]t is hard to imagine meaningful change without a
concerted effort to take money out of politics..."[172]
10. ^ The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, urges the
governments of both developed and developing
countries to invest more in human capital, "which is the sum total of a
population's health, skills, knowledge, experience, and habits."
Increased levels of quality education increase a person's income.
"Socioemotional skills, such as grit and conscientiousness, often have
equally large economic returns.... Health also matters. [I]n Kenya,
[administration of inexpensive] deworming drugs in childhood [has]
reduced school absences and raised wages in adulthood by... 20
percent... Proper nutrition and stimulation in utero and during early
childhood improve physical and mental well-being later in life.
[F]ocusing on human capital during the first 1,000 days of a child's life
is one of the most cost-effective investments governments can
 make.... Human capital doesn't materialize on its own; it must be
nurtured by the state."[175]
11. ^ William Hardy McNeill, in his 1963 book The Rise of the West,
appears to have interpreted the decline of the European empires as
paradoxically being due to Westernization itself, writing that "Although
European empires have decayed since 1945, and the separate nation-
states of Europe have been eclipsed as centers of political power by
the melding of peoples and nations occurring under the aegis of both
the American and Russian governments, it remains true that, since the
end of World War II, the scramble to imitate and appropriate science,
technology, and other aspects of Western culture has accelerated
enormously all round the world. Thus the dethronement of western
Europe from its brief mastery of the globe coincided with (and was
caused by) an unprecedented, rapid Westernization of all the peoples
of the earth."[176]: 566  McNeill further writes that "The rise of the West, as
intended by the title and meaning of this book, is only accelerated
when one or another Asian or African people throws off European
administration by making Western techniques, attitudes, and ideas
sufficiently their own to permit them to do so".[176]: 807 
12. ^ James McAuley writes in The New York Review of Books, 15 August
2019, pp. 47–48: "There was never a single moment that marked the
definitive establishment of the European Union, which... has continued
to define itself since World War II. [T]he major turning points have all
been quiet steps on the way to further economic integration while
preserving national sovereignty. Today there is only an
incomplete monetary union without a real political contract to manage
it... [Nevertheless, the Union's] various peoples have grown
remarkably closer... The European Union now has open borders, a
single market from Portugal to the Baltics, and more or less monthly
meetings of member state leaders [the European Council]. What's
more, those member states are now closer to each other than they are
to the United States... [T]his transformation has occurred informally
and organically... [R]obust supranational politics are taking root in
Europe... Luuk van Middelaar writes: '[W]hat unites us as Europeans
on this continent is bigger and stronger than anything that divides
us.'"[180]

References
1. ^ "International Programs - Historical Estimates of World Population -
U.S. Census Bureau". United States Census Bureau. August 2016.
Archived from  the original on 9 July 2012. Retrieved 15
November 2016.
2. ^ Tudge 1998, pp. 30–31.
3. ^ Muscarella, Oscar White (1 January 2013). "Jiroft and 'Jiroft-Aratta':
A Review Article of Yousef Madjidzadeh, Jiroft: The Earliest Oriental
Civilization".  Archaeology, Artifacts and Antiquities of the Ancient Near
East. BRILL. pp.  485–
522.  doi:10.1163/9789004236691_016. ISBN 978-90-04-23669-1.
4. ^ Muscarella, Oscar White. (2013).  Archaeology, artifacts and
antiquities of the ancient Near East : sites, cultures, and
proveniences. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-23669-1.  OCLC 848917597.
5. ^ Maǧīdzāda, Y. (2003). Jiroft: The earliest oriental civilization.
Tehran: Organization of the Ministry of Culture ans Islamic Guidance.
6. ^ People, "New evidence: modern civilization began in Iran", 10 Aug
2007 Archived 24 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 1
October 2007
7. ^ Xinhua, "New evidence: modern civilization began in
Iran" Archived 23 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine,
xinhuanet.com, 10 August 2007
8. ^ McNeill 1999, pp. 13–15.
9. ^ Chakrabarti 2004, p. 11.
10. ^ Baines & Malek 2000, p. 8.
11. ^ Jump up to:a b Bard 2000, pp. 64–65.
12. ^ Jump up to:a b Lee 2002, pp. 15–42.
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 Baten, Joerg, ed. (2016). A History of the Global Economy:

1500 to present. ISBN 978-1-107-50718-0.
 Ben-Ami, Shlomo (16–23 July 2018). "Gobalization's
Discontents". The Nation. Vol. 307 no. 2. p. 27.
 Busby, Joshua (July–August 2018). "Warming World: Why
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Else". Foreign Affairs. Vol. 97 no. 4. pp. 49–55.
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Vol. 337 no. 2019. pp. 51–58.
 Diamond, Jared (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel. New
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 Flournoy, Michèle; Sulmeyer, Michael (September–
October 2018). "Battlefield Internet: A Plan for Securing
Cyberspace". Foreign Affairs. Vol. 97 no. 5. pp. 40–46.
 Fournet, Louis-Henri (1986). Diagrammatic Chart of World
History. Editions Sides. ISBN 978-2-86861-096-6.
 Frankopan, Peter (2015). The Silk Roads: A New History
of the World. Knopf. ISBN 978-1-101-94632-9.
 Friedman, Thomas L. (2007). The World is Flat: A Brief
History of the Twenty-First Century (Further Updated and
Expanded ed.). New York: Picador. ISBN 978-0-312-
42507-4.
 Gribbin, John (September 2018). "Alone in the Milky Way:
Why we are probably the only intelligent life in the
galaxy". Scientific American. Vol. 319 no. 3. pp. 94–99.
 Kornbluh, Karen (September–October 2018). "The
Internet's Lost Promise and How America Can Restore
It". Foreign Affairs. Vol. 97 no. 5. pp. 33–38.
 Landes, David (1999). The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.
New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-
31888-3.
 Landes, David (Spring 2006). "Why Europe and the West?
Why Not China?". Journal of Economic
Perspectives. 20 (2): 3–22. doi:10.1257/jep.20.2.3.
 Malley, Robert; Finer, Jon (July–August 2018). "The Long
Shadow of 9/11: How Counterterrorism Warps U.S.
Foreign Policy". Foreign Affairs. Vol. 97 no. 4. pp. 58–69.
 McKibben, Bill (16–23 July 2018). "Catastrophic Climate
Change". The Nation. Vol. 307 no. 2. pp. 18–20.
 McKibben, Bill, "A Very Grim Forecast" (partly a review
of Global Warming of 1.5 [degree] C: an IPCC Special
Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. Available at www.ipcc.ch), The New York Review
of Books, vol. LXV, no. 18 (22 November 2018), pp. 4, 6, 8.
 McKibben, Bill (26 November 2018). "Life on a Shrinking
Planet: With wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels,
large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming
uninhabitable". The New Yorker. pp. 46–55.
 McNeill, William H. (1963). The Rise of the West: A History
of the Human Community. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226561424.
 Nilekani, Nandan (September–October 2018). "Data to the
People: India's Inclusive Internet". Foreign Affairs. Vol. 97
no. 5. pp. 19–26.
 Pomeranz, Kenneth (2000). The Great Divergence: China,
Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy.
Princeton.
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