10,000 years BA (before Aang's birth): The Avatar cycle begins

Roughly 10,000 years before the start of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the world was a misty
wonderland of spirits, humans, and the Lion Turtles, the last of whom were tasked with
protecting humanity. It was on their mammoth shells that humans huddled together, venturing
into the spirit wilds beyond only when necessary. To protect them on those occasional
journeys, the Lion Turtles granted humans the power of bending for the duration of their time
in the wilds. The system was broken, however, when a human named Wan used firebending
for selfish ends and was banished to the wilds as punishment.

His exile became a journey in which he encountered Raava, the primordial spirit of light and
peace, and Vaatu, the spirit of darkness and chaos. Wan, tricked into freeing Vaatu, merged
with Raava to undo his mistake and keep Vaatu from flooding the world with malice. They
succeeded, and their bond was made permanent, making Wan the very first Avatar. Thus
empowered, Wan sealed off the polar portals that linked the spirit and the human worlds. In
so doing, Wan created the foundations for the world of Avatar as we know it, and set out to
safeguard its future.

1,000s of years BA: The four nations form

Thousands of years passed between the era of Wan and that of Avatar: The Last Airbender's
heroes, in which the four nations as fans would come to know them coalesced into their
familiar shapes. The Water Tribe, originally concentrated in the North Pole, split into two
nations, with a splintered third settled in the Foggy Swamp. Centuries of tribal warfare,
fortress-building, and subterranean exploration created the Earth Kingdom, united under a
single monarch. The Sun Warriors, who would go on to teach Aang and Zuko the Dancing
Dragon form, grew, declined, and finally settled into the obscure existence glimpsed in "The
Firebending Masters," while the archipelago that would become the Fire Nation was brought
together during the Unification Wars. In the midst of this upheaval, bending, once possible
only through the Lion Turtles, was rediscovered and refined. Firebenders learned through
observing dragons, waterbenders through studying the tidal pull of the moon, airbenders
through their bonds with the sky bison, and earthbenders through the tunneling of
badgermoles. Forms, disciplines, and styles were created, explored, and advanced, from
lightning generation to literal flight, in the case of the legendary Guru Laghima. Though
many years of this era are heavy with warfare and famine, so too are they bursting with
exploration, adventure, and spirituality.

300 years BA: The era of Avatar Kyoshi 300 years prior to the events of
Avatar: The Last Airbender

Avatar Kyoshi rose to power. Though she would become a formidable enforcer of justice, she
was born to an infamous pair of criminals who left her in the care of strangers who, upon
learning of her parents' eventual death, abandoned her on the streets to starve. Years of
deprivation, study, and conflict ensued, molding Kyoshi into an Avatar as celebrated as she
was feared. Her most well-known exploits happened later in her reign: the creation of Kyoshi
Island and the founding of the Dai Li, the cultural authority of Ba Sing Se who, by the time
Aang encountered them, acted as a brutal secret police force. The former event, in which she
bent the earth down to its magma to split off the tip of a peninsula and make it an island, was
to keep the village located there safe from Chin, a fearsome conqueror. The latter act was in
response to a peasant uprising and would go on to be seen as one of Kyoshi's greatest
mistakes. She was a complicated figure, her legacy up for debate from all corners, but there is
no disputing the massive effect she had upon our heroes, centuries after her death.