c2667-2648 BC: The first pyramid is built<\/h3>\n<\/div>
Constructed around 4,700 years ago, the Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara is not only the first of the Egyptian pyramids to be built, but world\u2019s oldest intact largescale stone monument. It was designed as a tomb for the Third Dynasty Pharaoh Djoser, and was completed in his lifetime. Previous large structures in Ancient Egypt consisted of mud bricks; the time and care taken to stack and sculpt the stone\u2019 suggests that Djoser had substantial finance and resources \u2013 as well as a huge workforce \u2013 to underpin the project. It became the prototype for the 80 or so pyramids subsequently built across the kingdom.
776 BC: The first Olympics are held<\/h3>\n<\/div>
Although bearing little resemblance to the scale and the circus that the Olympic Games<\/a> represent in the 21st century, the very first Olympics, held in the Greek sanctuary of Olympia, set the template for multisport competition for millennia to come. The contest quickly became a pageant of athletic endeavour, triumph and despair, with many events still recognisable today \u2013 in particular, running and boxing. There were also some disciplines that have fallen by the wayside: chariot-racing has rather gone out of vogue, while pankration \u2013 a strenuous, violent cross-breed of boxing and wrestling \u2013 is another now-extinct event.<\/p>\n The Olympics only became a global affair from 1896, after Pierre, Baron de Coubertin, set up the International Olympic Committee and resurrected the Games, which hadn\u2019t taken place since the fourth century AD. In the original incarnation, the events were only open to male athletes from Ancient Greece<\/a>\u2019s city-states and colonies, although this wasn\u2019t as restrictive as it might appear: at that point, the Greek Empire stretched westwards from modern-day Ukraine to Spain.<\/p>\n If Athens is the cradle of democracy<\/a>, then Kleisthenes<\/a> was its midwife. Despite being born into a less-than-democratic lineage (his maternal grandfather was the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon), Cleisthenes the lawgiver was the architect of a new system of government, one that valued equality over patronage. Having displaced a pro-Spartan oligarchy, Cleisthenes undertook a radical reshaping of the Athenian constitution.<\/p>\n He sought to break up entrenched alliances and to reduce the power of aristocratic families, attempting to replace the status quo with a pan-Athenian worldview that united all strata of society. Under this mindset, the three regions of Attica (the peninsula that projects into the Aegean Sea) worked together to run the city, cutting across previous notions of clan. But while all citizens enjoyed equal rights, there was a glass ceiling. Only men were deemed to be citizens. The Pax Romana describes a two-century period when the early Roman Empire<\/a> was largely defined by peace and stability. Off the back of the Final War of the Roman Republic (32\u201330 BC), Rome\u2019s new emperor, Caesar Augustus, successfully persuaded his subjects that peace was a more attractive option than costly back-to-back wars.<\/p>\n The success of Augustus\u2019s worldview \u2013 one inherited and upheld by the following 16 emperors \u2013 led to a buoyant empire. Incomes rose across the Mediterranean, while there was a substantial uplift in trade with the Far East. The period ended with the death of Marcus Aurelius<\/a>, the last of the so-called \u2018good emperors\u2019. The 3rd and 4th centuries AD descended into frequent warfare, transforming \u2013 in the words of the statesman Cassius Dio \u2013 \u201ca kingdom of gold into one of iron and rust\u201d. Even in the 2nd century AD, when much of the world was unexplored, the decision to compile and describe all geographical knowledge was a Herculean task. But Greek mathematician Ptolemy<\/a> shouldered the task admirably. His eight volume Geographia<\/em> includes a lengthy gazetteer of locations one country at a time; and a collection of maps, mainly regional in nature. Originally written in Greek, subsequent translations made centuries later into Arabic and Latin meant future explorers were indebted to this pioneering cartographer.<\/p>\n Without navigational aids like a map or compass, sailors were reliant on what they could actually see to determine their passage, whether that be earthly landmarks or celestial bodies. However, such techniques were useless on days or nights that were particularly foggy or cloudy. The compass \u2013 invented in China during the Han Dynasty and originally known as a \u2018south-governor\u2019 \u2013 would come to revolutionise navigation, but its original use was for something else entirely.<\/p>\n Originally made from lodestone, a stone of iron that is naturally magnetised, it was first deployed for the purposes of feng shui \u2013 for instance, in determining in which direction a new house should face. The compass wasn\u2019t used as an instrument of navigation until around the 10th century, during the time of the Song Dynasty. The exact date that paper was involved in transactions isn\u2019t known, but it occurred during the reign of China\u2019s Tang Dynasty.<\/p>\n With merchants finding copper coinage heavier the richer they became, an alternative system was devised whereby they would deposit coins with a dependable third party who would issue a note \u2013 a credit note, effectively \u2013 outlining how much they were holding for the merchant.<\/p>\n When copper became harder to come by during the later Song Dynasty, paper transactions became more popular. Paper money wasn\u2019t introduced to Europe until the 17th century, when a Swedish bank began to issue banknotes. However, within three years, the bank had gone bankrupt, having devalued the currency by over-printing. If the accounts of Wu Zetian\u2019s life are to be believed, hers is a story of raw, naked political ambition that respected few moral boundaries. To what extent these chronicles are historically accurate, though, has to be measured through the prism of male observers considering the behaviour and impact of the only female emperor in Chinese history. To reach those lofty heights surely required a well defined ruthless streak on her part, but she was often portrayed as the devil incarnate.<\/p>\n What isn\u2019t disputed is the upward passage that Wu\u2019s life took, how she scaled social strata to become the most powerful individual across the empire. Well-born and educated, she joined the Imperial household as a low-ranking concubine with domestic chores, far removed from real power. One day she managed to catch Emperor Taizong\u2019s eye \u2013 apparently while changing his bedsheets. Upon his death in AD 649, she was sent to a Buddhist nunnery.<\/p>\n Wu was having none of that. She escaped and attempted to regain her position in the Imperial court. One particular unsavoury story suggests that she murdered her own baby and blamed it on the new Empress, the wife of Taizong\u2019s successor (his ninth son, Gaozong). When the Empress was exiled, Wu took her place, as Gaozong\u2019s wife. Another story has her ordering the limbs of her rivals to be cut off, before they were left to drown in vats of wine.<\/p>\n When Gaozong suffered a severe stroke in AD 660, Wu became the court\u2019s administrator \u2013 a highly powerful position. Gaozong died in AD 683, whereupon the couple\u2019s son Zhongzong became emperor, although he reigned for just two months before Wu demoted him and sent him into exile. Zhongzong was succeeded by his brother Ruizong \u2013 he lasted six years before suffering the same fate as his sibling.<\/p>\n Wu then assumed power for herself, ruling as Empress Regnant for the next 15 years until AD 705. For someone so apparently ruthless, Wu\u2019s impact on Chinese society was significant. China greatly expanded into Central Asia during her rule, while she also declared Buddhism to be the state religion, replacing Daoism.<\/p>\n A strong supporter of meritocratic success over hereditary privilege, Wu built up the Chinese education system to help facilitate this (the fact that she could read and write was one of the attributes that initially attracted Taizong to her), and oversaw a substantial growth in China\u2019s agricultural output. Despite these achievements, it\u2019s her supposedly cold-blooded ways that history remembers. We might regard it as a mechanical clock, but its inventor chose to name it a \u2018Water-Driven Spherical Birds-Eye-View Map Of The Heavens\u2019.<\/p>\n An eighth-century Chinese-Buddhist monk called I-Hsing was that inventor, a keen mathematician and astronomer who aimed to combine the two disciplines with his creation. As its name suggests, this water-powered clock was designed to trace celestial activity and proved to be a relatively accurate timepiece, accurate to within 15 minutes a day. However, over time, the water began to corrode its metal components and, on subzero days, would freeze.<\/p>\n More than 200 years later, another Chinese astronomer, Zhang Sixun, rebuilt the device using mercury instead. The first English-speaking university was the University of Oxford, which began accepting students in 1096. However, by this point the University of Bologna had already been in existence for eight years.<\/p>\n This particular seat of learning was born out of the system of mutual aid societies, or universitates scholarium, which operated around the Italian city at the time. Divided by nationality, these societies helped to protect foreign students from city laws which declared them to be culpable for the sins, debts and misdemeanours of their fellow countrymen. Each society engaged the services of scholars to teach its members such subjects as law, theology and the arts. When these mutual aid societies decided to group together through common purpose and interests, the larger association they formed was effectively a university.<\/p>\n This collective approach strengthened the position of foreign students in Bologna, who also determined the appointment and pay of their teachers, as well as electing a student committee, known as the Denouncers of Professors, to evaluate teaching methods and content \u2013 and, if necessary, recommend fines and other punishments. When it became a royal chartered university in 1158, the students became responsible for professors\u2019 salaries.<\/p>\n Still rated as one of the leading Italian academic institutions, the university\u2019s alumni over the centuries has included Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket<\/a>, Renaissance poet Petrarch, astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, and popes Alexander VI, Innocent IX, Gregory XIII and Gregory XV. During the early years of the13th century, King John<\/a> was facing more than a little local difficulty. Considered to be one of the most disastrous kings England had ever known, he had raised taxes on the country\u2019s barons in order to finance expensive overseas wars.<\/p>\n The barons revolted, and once they took control of London they forced John\u2019s hand. Their demands were articulated and then negotiated over, resulting in the document known the world over as Magna Carta<\/a> \u2013 Latin for \u2018Great Charter\u2019. In June 1215, at Runnymede on the banks of the River Thames, the two sides signed and sealed this charter in anattempt to author an uneasy peace.<\/p>\n Despite the apparent agreement, the mistrust between the King and the rebel barons continued to simmer, effectively rendering the accord redundant. However, the agreement had a more lasting legacy: while responding to specific demands from the barons, Magna Carta also set out a framework for political and societal reform.<\/p>\n Areas that it addressed includedthe rights of man, limitations ontaxation levels, and the protection of Church rights. As such, it has become something of a prototype for written constitutions across the world ever since, in particular influencing the founders of new republics from the United States in the 18th century to the newly independent India in the 20th. King John\u2019s successor, his son Henry III<\/a>, renewed the charter when he ascended the throne, as did subsequent monarchs \u2013 at least until the embryonic English Parliament truly established itself as the legitimate balance on the power of the Crown.<\/p>\n Magna Carta also continues to\u00a0 underpin existing notions of justice on these shores and beyond, most significantly the right to a fair trial. Its words still resonate: \u201cNo free man shall be \u2026 imprisoned \u2026 except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.\u201d More than half a millennium before Tim Berners-Lee unveiled the internet, another inventor had already revolutionised mass communication, rapidly accelerating the gathering and dissemination of knowledge and information.<\/p>\n Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz, Germany, apprenticed as a goldsmith, but turned his attention to publishing, with the intention of making copies of the Bible more widely available. \u201cThrough it,\u201d he declared, \u201cGod will spread His Word.\u201d To describe the Gutenberg printing press as profound is a chronic understatement. Until then, printing had been undertaken by hand, using wooden blocks. Gutenberg\u2019s press used mechanical movable type, which effectively introduced mass production to the publishing process. It had a huge effect on European society.<\/p>\n Mass production meant more books printed, and thus more people having the chance to read them. The resulting spread of ideas and knowledge empowered those previously denied such access. When, in October 1492, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, sailing under the flag of the Spanish crown, landed on an island in the Bahamas, the future of the Americas and the Caribbean would never be the same. The find was accidental: Columbus wasn\u2019t intending on discovering the New World, he was trying to find a western trade route to the East Indies. Indeed, believing he\u2019d reached his target destination, he named the indigenous population \u2018Indians\u2019. Columbus moved on to Cuba and Hispaniola, establishing a settlement on the latter (presentday Haiti), putting in process what would become the mass colonisation of the New World.<\/p>\n But while his arrival was a great leap in European exploration, it was to have a devastating impact on the indigenous populations he \u2013 and later settlers \u2013 encountered. Violence, slavery and disease are among the many sources of controversy associated with the 15th-century explorer. As art criticism goes, it\u2019s difficult to imagine more complimentary words than those of the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe when he evaluated Michelangelo<\/a>\u2019s extensive ceiling painting in the chapel of the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. \u201cWithout having seen the Sistine Chapel,\u201d Goethe wrote, \u201cone can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving.\u201d<\/p>\n Commissioned by Pope Julius II and having taken four years to complete, the ceiling is indeed an extraordinary achievement, arguably the high-water mark of Renaissance art. But Michelangelo \u2013 better renowned at that point as a sculptor and already engaged in creating sculptures for the tomb of Pope Julius II \u2013 initially declined the invitation.<\/p>\n Eventually he acquiesced and set about working on a fresco based on nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, one that would eventually feature no fewer than 343 figures. Working on a self-designed scaffold, Michelangelo didn\u2019t, as myth would have it, paint while lying on his back. He stood as he worked, but the conditions were still difficult and uncomfortable. He later wrote a poem that explained how his body was strained \u201clike a Syrian bow\u201d and that his loins \u201cinto my paunch like levers grind\u201d. The everlasting glory of the finished work justified his pain though: \u201cthe fruit of squinting brain and eye\u201d. By the 17th century, there was a general acceptancen that Earth wasn\u2019t flat, but a sphere. But the Aristotelian idea that our planet was the centre of the universe, around which all other planets revolved, still held sway. Then Italian Galileo Galilei came along, brandishing his homemade telescope. Through it, he observed that Jupiter is orbited by four moons, just as Earth is orbited by our solitary Moon. The conclusion he drew, which encountered great scepticism, was that the planets revolved around the Sun.<\/p>\n \u00a0 In 1628, in the pages of the snappily titled Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis<\/em> in Animalibus, English physician William Harvey<\/a> explained the purpose of the one-way valves found in the cardiovascular system: that they are evidence that the human heart propels blood around the body in a circulatory fashion. A handful of other medical scientists had made the observation before Harvey, but it was the depth and detail of his description of the process \u2013 gained from extensive dissections of animals \u2013 that ensured the kudos came his way, albeit with a delay of around 20 years.<\/p>\n In 1687, a prolific British mathematician and astronomer called Isaac Newton<\/a> published a book that would shape thinking about the cosmos for the next 200-plus years. His Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica<\/em> (aka Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) set out his thoughts about gravity, tides and the movement of planets, all but confirming the heliocentric school of thought \u2013 that the Solar System\u2019s planets revolve around the Sun.<\/p>\n Newton\u2019s findings would become the dominant worldview for more than 200 years, until Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity came along, although the Englishman remained modest about how he had recalibrated people\u2019s thinking. \u201cIf I have seen further than others,\u201d he once confessed, \u201cit is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.\u201d In 1761, a young girl from West Africa \u2013 who had been sold into slavery \u2013 was bought by the Wheatley family of Boston. She was named Phillis by her new owners and, unusually for the time, taught to read and write.<\/p>\n Noticing Phillis\u2019s appreciation of and aptitude for poetry, the family actively encouraged her vocation. When, in 1773, Phillis\u2019s anthology Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral<\/em> was published in London (Boston publishers having declined to do so), the response was affirmative. \u201cWhen we consider them as the productions of a young, untutored African, who wrote them after six months careful study of the English language,\u201d trumpeted The London Magazine<\/em>, \u201cwe cannot but suppress our admiration for talents so vigorous and lively.\u201d \u201cWe hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n As the 13 soon-to-be-former British colonies drew up the Declaration of Independence<\/a> that gave birth to what would become one of the most powerful nations on Earth, they ensured that the preservation of rights would be a key tenet of the new country\u2019s constitution.<\/p>\n Indeed, US historian Joseph Ellis has suggested the declaration\u2019s most famous sentence to be \u201cthe most potent and consequential words in American history\u201d. While its application was far from watertight (slavery in the US wasn\u2019t abolished for another 89 years, and US women wouldn\u2019t get the vote until 1920), this commitment did offer the blueprint for an advancement of human rights.<\/p>\n Thirteen years later, after its own revolution, France adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a document which greatly influenced the opening up of democracy across Europe. In 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 217, otherwise known as the Universal Declaration of Human\u00a0 Rights, a code confirming an individual\u2019s rights, which 50 of its 58 member states had voted to uphold (the eight abstained). The spirit of 1776 lived on. In 1980, smallpox became the first major disease to be eradicated. And it was all down to one 18th-century doctor from rural Gloucestershire. In 1796, using a local boy as his guinea pig, he tested an old piece of folklore: that if you\u2019d caught cowpox, you couldn\u2019t then be infected with smallpox. Rubbing cowpox pocks on the boy\u2019s arm, Edward Jenner witnessed that, while he did come down with the lesser disease, his patient became immune to the much more dangerous smallpox. Taking its name from vacca<\/em>, the Latin word for \u2018cow\u2019, vaccination<\/a> transformed global death rates. It\u2019s believed that the work of no other single person in the world has saved as many lives as that of Jenner. \u201cWould men but generously snap our chains,and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers \u2013 in a word, better citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/12\/GettyImages566421941-743cf24.png?quality=90&resize=620%2C412"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>507 BC: Democracy is conceived in Athens<\/h3>\n<\/div>
27 BC \u2013 AD 180 Pax Romana: Peace reigns over the Roman Empire<\/h3>\n<\/div>
AD 150: Ptolemy maps out the future<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/12\/GettyImages-464441689-copy-8c78333.png?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>cAD 206-220: The invention of the compass<\/h3>\n<\/div>
AD 618-907: Paper money is first used<\/h3>\n<\/div>
AD 690: China\u2019s only female emperor takes control<\/h3>\n<\/div>
AD 723: A Buddhist monk harnesses time<\/h3>\n<\/div>
1088: Europe\u2019s first university opens its doors<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/12\/GettyImages587494938-cdf206e.png?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>1215: Magna Carta is sealed<\/h3>\n<\/div>
1439: Gutenberg\u2019s printing press rolls into action<\/h3>\n<\/div>
1492: Columbus arrives in the New World<\/h3>\n<\/div>
1512: Michelangelo redecorates the Sistine Chapel ceiling<\/h3>\n<\/div>
1610: Galileo spots Jupiter\u2019s moons<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/12\/GettyImages56458986-b9ff2cf.png?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>1628: William Harvey makes a bloody revelation<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/12\/GettyImages802465214-828ca34.png?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>1687: Isaac Newton announces his findings about gravity<\/h3>\n<\/div>
1773: The first published African American poet<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/12\/GettyImages144095021-d472ba7.png?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>1776: The United States commits to human rights<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/12\/GettyImages517455151-2eeb1cd.png?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>1796: Edward Jenner administers the first vaccine<\/h3>\n<\/div>
1792: Mary Wollstonecraft publishes seminal book on women\u2019s rights<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2019\/12\/GettyImages159826910-e5f1a3f.png?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>