Creative Steps Leading To Present

Creative Steps Leading To Present

1. 13.7bn years ago, Universe begins
2. 10.1-6.5bn years ago, the Milky Way formed.
3. 4.5bn years ago, the Solar System and Earth formed.
4. 4bn years ago, some sort of unicellular life was existing which lived off controlled catalytic reaction of energetic chemicals. This began to establish a planetary ecosystem.
5. 3.5bn years ago, prokaryotes (simple unicellular life) invent photosynthesis, the capture & storage of sunlight into chemical transports. This started the conversion of carbon dioxide, a plentiful chemical in our solar system, into the highly chemically reactive oxygen (though note that initially hydrogen was probably the larger foodstuff). The oxygen starts reacting with lots of things and tended to cause things to sink and become soil-bound.
6. 2.5-2bn years ago, oxygen starts to appear in the atmosphere having reacted with pretty much everything freely available that it can. Oxygen breathing eukaryotes (unicellular life but with a membrane containing smaller, simpler unicellular lifeforms with their own independent genetics as symbiotes with mitochondria and chloroplasts being the most important) appear. This is fascinating, because eukaryotes invent the internalisation of cooperative prokaryotes which had been cooperating much like bees & flowers for millions of years beforehand. We know that mitochondria were internalised first as some of their autonomy has become lost over time. Chloroplasts came much later and can still function entirely independently from their host eukaryote cell.
7. 1.2bn years ago, sexual reproduction appears. This vastly improves the encoding of experience into the ecosystem because now the choices which an organism makes has a much greater effect on it and all its offspring's futures. In other words, it greatly increases the ability to specialise at the cost of the ability to generalise.
8. 800m years ago, predation appears i.e. organisms which eat other organisms. Once again, this allows even further specialisation as many organisms become utterly dependent upon others.
9. 580-500m years ago, after the end of a very long ice age (>200m years), the Cambrian Explosion (Wikipedia:Cambrian_explosion) introduces the first real plants & animals with brains and muscles across the second last supercontinent that we know of, Wikipedia:Pannotia, which uniquely had most of the land at the poles. We have found fossilised animal footprints on land at 530m years ago so we know they were walking outside of water. From 416m years onward (the Devonian), the diversity and coverage of plant and animal life explodes. By 363m years ago, Earth has most of the elements of the current Earth like insects, fish, seed bearing plants and forests.
10. 251.4m years ago, the biggest mass extinction ever nearly wipes out all life. However, thereafter we get dinosaurs as we commonly think of them as well as the first mammals which invent the neocortex, the higher thinking part of a brain.
11. 130m years ago, flowering plants appear whose pollen is transported by flying insects.
12. 65.5m years ago, another mass extinction wipes out most of the dinosaurs, those who survive become our birds of today. Mammals proliferate to fill the gap.
13. 35m years ago, grass evolves. Most people don’t realise that grass is far more evolved than trees – it uses an improved form of photosynthesis (called C4) better adapted to the presence of oxygen and heat. Trees use an identical mechanism (C3) to pre-oxygen days and thus are very inefficient especially in warm climates, though the water that they 'waste' is very useful for habitat maintenance. See Wikipedia:C4_photosynthesis
14. 30-25m years ago, the first simian appears.
15. 15m years ago, the first great ape (hominidae) appears.
16. 6.3m years ago, the most recent common ancestor between us and chimpanzees lived. This is from genetic analysis, so it’s much more sure than archaeological evidence.
17. 3.9m years ago, Australopithecus afarensis (Wikipedia:Australopithecus_afarensis) appears leaving footprints on volcanic ash 3.7m years ago which shows they were walking upright like us.

We pause for a moment because now is as good a breathing space as any, and what comes next is primarily cognitive inventions rather than material inventions – though such a distinction does not really exist.

There are already some fairly obvious patterns to the above timeline. Firstly, the timeline is decreasing exponentially, so new creative steps are coming faster & faster – or at least the ones of which we know. Secondly, there is a very obvious repeating pattern that the creative steps involve binding various existing things together in new kinds of way, so eukaryotes bind together one or two simpler organisms with their own DNA, sexual reproduction encodes much more of life history into genetic selection by making an organism far more dependent on the histories of others, predation means a whole species cannot exist without another, flowers rely on insects to transport their pollen without which they cannot reproduce and so on.

18. 2.5-1m years ago, Wikipedia:Homo_habilis and Wikipedia:Homo_erectus appear who invent the use of fire, stone tools and almost certainly spoke some sort of primitive language consisting of song, grunts and squeals – though probably accompanied by percussion music. We know that they nursed their ill and took care of loved ones after severe injury, sometimes for decades. The oldest knife currently known was 1.4m years ago.
19. 900k-780k years ago, the last time Earth’s magnetic pole is reversed from present. This is the longest stable period in 5m years, and the frequency of change has been speeding up during the last 125m years.
20. 790k years ago, probably the earliest reasonable evidence of hearths used to cook food in South Africa. Fire probably had been used by hominids since 1.5m years onwards for clearing land and ritualistic purposes, but the inclusion of fire into everyday life such as for cooking took much longer (most animals have an innate fear of fire).
21. 400k years ago, ochre pigment used in Zambia and spears used in Germany. This is the earliest hard evidence of spear use.
22. 200k years ago, our species, Homo sapiens, appears with Wikipedia:Mitochondrial_Eve (the maternal ancestor of all living humans) living 140k years ago. Burial became commonplace, and composite stone tools came into use (the ‘prepared core’ technique). World population according to genetic analysis was as few as 2,000 (though this is the count of our ancestors).
23. 110k years ago, the most recent ice age begins, and lithic reduction (blades are in use in Ethiopia.
24. 70-50k years ago, ‘The Great Leap Forward’ occurs when Homo sapiens suddenly begin to behave like modern humans by building cities & monuments and, more importantly, establishing wide trading networks (the technical name for this is ‘behavioural modernity’ and while it didn’t just suddenly happen, it did suddenly begin: see Wikipedia:Behavioral_modernity). Simultaneously, a particular mutant of the FOXP2 gene became prevalent in Homo populations which ‘switched on’ a large part of hitherto unused genetic coding which turns out to be responsible for modern language & abstract comprehension (without which building monuments would have been difficult). Neanderthals, with whom we had coexisted for 100k years, began to die out becoming extinct 30k years ago – despite that they also had this particular FOXP2 mutant appear in them. 60k years ago Y-chromosomal Adam lives, the paternal ancestor of all living humans. We know from genetic analysis that the human population was in the low thousands. Ships are in use in New Guinea 60k years ago.
25. 50k years ago, bow is in use in Tunisia.
26. 43k years ago, mining in Swaziland and Hungary.
27. 26k years ago, ceramics are used in Moravia.
28. 17k years ago, rope used in France. Bear in mind that rope decays much quicker than ceramic - equally, it's much easier to make than ceramic and would have been far more widely used.
29. 13k years ago, the most recent ice age ends and the Holocene mass extinction begins. Humans colonise the new space extremely rapidly, but had been expanding in bursts since 40k years ago.
30. 12k years ago, first known harvesting of wild grasses, pottery, domestication of the dog. Göbekli Tepe (Wikipedia:Gobekli_Tepe), in south-east Turkey, was begun – this unique monumental temple complex had no burials nor residential rooms, and it is still completely unknown why Neolithic peoples thought it so important to build in such a remote area where no one lived. Furthermore, they maintained it for several hundred years, eventually burying it.
31. 11k years ago, first known domestication of sheep, pigs, goats, first use of accounting & inventory systems, invention of the brick. World population perhaps around 1m.
32. 10k years ago, first deliberate planting for harvesting, grinding tools, first known use of plaster & money tokens. World population maybe around 3m.
33. 9k years ago, domestication of the honey bee & cow, first known use of gold & copper, maps & woven cloth. World population at 5m.
34. 8k years ago, invention of plough & wine, many regions including possibly the Bosporus flooded wiping out many civilisations (probably the origin of the flood myth), irrigated farming becomes widely established. World population at 5m.
35. 7k years ago, invention of bread, the wheel & first known inscription of history. Complex societies with distinct religious, monarchical & civil servant casts became prevalent. Metalworking of gold & copper became widespread. World population still at 5m.
36. 6k years ago, invention of bronze, first known use of the road (the Wikipedia:Sweet_Track in England), the field (the Céide Fields in Ireland - Wikipedia:Ceide_Fields), paved streets (Iraq), canals, plywood, sails, cement & sewerage. While proto-scripting had been used for millennia, the first proper general purpose writing system was put into use by the Sumerians, with which they recorded treatises on science & medicine, business letters, legal contracts and so on. Numerals, the denotation of numbers by a mathematical notation, became particularly widespread. World population reaches 7m.
37. 5k years ago, invention of buttons, soap, paper, stitching, flush toilets & widespread multi-storey buildings. Sargon of Akkad establishes the first large, centrally ruled empire. Egypt builds their pyramids, the world population booms and organised mass warfare leads to the first known peace treaty. World population reaches 14m.
38. 4k years ago, invention of the alphabet, caste system, iron, perfume, glass, rubber, spoked wheels, clocks, bells, umbrellas and monotheism among many others. World population reaches 30m.
39. 3k years ago, invention of geometry, Greek philosophy, Christianity and most of the underpinnings of our modern world. After this point, the rate of new inventions on Wikipedia becomes several pages long and too laborious to document! World population reaches 50m.
40. 2k years ago, world population reaches 170m and the following two millennia sees the blossoming of European, Middle Eastern, Eastern, Meso-American civilisations with more inventions than you could shake a stick at. However, in our opinion, the most important in terms of sheer transformational effect on all of human life were algebra, the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, modern medicine and computerisation.