Английская Википедия:Human history

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Файл:Annual-World-Population-since-10-thousand-BCE-1-768x724.png

World population, 10,000 BCE to 2023 CE, with projection to 2100 CE

Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers. They migrated out of Africa during the Last Glacial Period (Ice Age) and had populated most of the Earth by the time the Ice Age ended 12,000 years ago.

Soon afterward, the Agricultural Revolution began in the fertile river valleys of West Asia: humans began the systematic husbandry of plants and animals, and many humans transitioned from a nomadic life to a sedentary existence as farmers in permanent settlements. The growing complexity of human societies necessitated systems of accounting and writing.

During the late Bronze Age, Hinduism developed in the Indian subcontinent, while the Axial Age witnessed the growth and institutionalization of religions such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Jainism, Judaism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism. As civilizations flourished, ancient history saw the rise and fall of empires. Subsequent post-classical history, the "Middle Ages" from about 500 to 1500 CE, witnessed the rise of Christianity and Islam.

The early modern period, from about 1500 to 1800 CE, saw 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 and began the late modern period, which started around 1800 CE and continues.

The foregoing historical periodization (prehistory followed by the ancient, post-classical, early modern, and late modern periods) applies best to the history of Europe. Elsewhere, including China and India, historical timelines unfolded differently up to the 18th century. By then, however, due to extensive international trade and colonization, the histories of most civilizations had become substantially intertwined. Over the last quarter-millennium, the rates of growth of human populations, agriculture, industry, commerce, scientific knowledge, technology, communications, weapons destructiveness, and environmental degradationШаблон:Efn have greatly accelerated.

Prehistory (Шаблон:Circa)

Human evolution

Skeleton

"Lucy", the first Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found. Lucy was only Шаблон:Height tall.

Humans evolved in Africa.Шаблон:Sfn 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, between 7 million and 5 million years ago.Шаблон:Sfn The term hominin denotes human ancestors that lived after the split with chimpanzees and bonobos,Шаблон:Sfn including many species and at least two distinct genera: Australopithecus and Homo. Other fossil specimens such as Paranthropus, Kenyanthropus, and Orrorin may represent additional genera, but paleontologists debate their taxonomic status. The early hominins such as Australopithecus had the same brain size as apes but were distinguished from apes by walking on two legs, an adaptation perhaps associated with a shift from forest to savanna habitats.Шаблон:Sfn Hominins began to use rudimentary stone tools Шаблон:Circa million years ago,Шаблон:Efn marking the advent of the Paleolithic era.

The genus Homo evolved from Australopithecus. The earliest record of Homo is the 2.8 million-year-old specimen LD 350-1 from Ethiopia, and the earliest named species is Homo habilis which evolved by 2.3 million years ago. The most important difference between Homo habilis and Australopithecus was an increase in brain size.Шаблон:Sfn H. erectus (the African variant is sometimes called H. ergaster) evolved by 2 million years agoШаблон:Efn and was the first hominin species to leave Africa and disperse across Eurasia.Шаблон:Sfn Perhaps as early as 1.5 million years ago, but certainly by 250,000 years ago, hominins began to use fire for heat and cooking.Шаблон:Sfn

Aurochs, horses and deer painted on a cave wall

Cave paintings, Lascaux, France, Шаблон:C. BCE

Beginning about 500,000 years ago, Homo diversified into many new species of archaic humans such as the Neanderthals in Europe, the Denisovans in Siberia, and the diminutive H. floresiensis in Indonesia.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Human evolution was not a simple linear or branched progression but involved interbreeding between related species. Genomic research has shown that hybridization between substantially diverged lineages was common in human evolution. DNA evidence suggests that several genes of Neanderthal origin are present among all non-sub-Saharan African populations, and Neanderthals and other hominins, such as Denisovans, may have contributed up to 6% of their genome to present-day non-sub-Saharan African humans.

Early humans

Carving of a female human torso with pronounced breasts

Venus figurine, Germany, Шаблон:C. BCE

Homo sapiens emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago from a species commonly designated as either H. heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis. Humans continued to develop over the succeeding millennia, and by 100,000 years ago, were already using jewellery and ocher to adorn the body.Шаблон:Sfn By 50,000 years ago, they exhibited many characteristic behaviors such as burial of the dead, use of projectile weapons, and seafaring.Шаблон:Sfn One of the most important changes (the date of which is unknown) was the development of syntactic language, which dramatically improved humans' ability to communicate.Шаблон:Sfn 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 animismШаблон:Sfn or shamanism.Шаблон:Sfn Paleolithic humans lived as hunter-gatherers and were generally nomadic.Шаблон:Sfn

World map with arrows showing human migrations

Map of peopling of the world (Southern Dispersal paradigm), in thousands of years ago.

The migration of anatomically modern humans out of Africa took place in multiple waves beginning 194,000–177,000 years ago.Шаблон:Efn The dominant view among scholars (Southern Dispersal) is that the early waves of migration died out and all modern non-Africans are descended from a single group that left Africa 70,000–50,000 years ago.Шаблон:Sfn H. sapiens proceeded to colonize all the continents and larger islands, arriving in Australia 65,000 years ago, Europe 45,000 years ago,Шаблон:Sfn and the Americas 21,000 years ago. These migrations occurred during the most recent Ice Age, when temperate regions of today were extremely inhospitable.Шаблон:Sfn Nevertheless, by the end of the Ice Age some 12,000 years ago, humans had colonized nearly all ice-free parts of the globe.Шаблон:Sfn Human expansion coincided with both the Quaternary extinction event and Neanderthal extinction.Шаблон:Sfn These extinctions were probably caused by climate change, human activity, or a combination of the two.Шаблон:Sfn

Rise of agriculture

Beginning around 10,000 BCE, the Neolithic Revolution marked the development of agriculture, which fundamentally changed the human lifestyle. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa, in at least 11 separate centers of origin. Cereal crop cultivation and animal domestication had occurred in Mesopotamia by at least 8500 BCE in the form of wheat, barley, sheep, and goats.Шаблон:Sfn The Yangtze River Valley in China domesticated rice around 8000 BCE; the Yellow River Valley may have cultivated millet by 7000 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn Pigs were the most important domesticated animal in early China.Шаблон:Sfn People in Africa's Sahara cultivated sorghum and several other crops between 8000 and 5000 BCE,Шаблон:Efn while other agricultural centers arose in the Ethiopian Highlands and the West African rainforests.Шаблон:Sfn In the Indus River Valley, crops were cultivated by 7000 BCE and cattle were domesticated by 6500 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn In the Americas, squash was cultivated by at least 8500 BCE in South America, and domesticated arrowroot appeared in Central America by 7800 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn Potatoes were first cultivated in the Andes of South America, where the llama was also domesticated.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn It is likely that women played a central role in plant domestication throughout these developments.Шаблон:Sfn

Stone pillar with animals carved on it

A pillar at Göbekli Tepe

There is no scholarly consensus on why the Neolithic Revolution occurred.Шаблон:Sfn For example, according to some theories, agriculture was the result of an increase in population which led people to seek out new food sources, while in others agriculture was the cause of population growth as the food supply improved.Шаблон:Sfn Other proposed factors include climate change, resource scarcity, and ideology.Шаблон:Sfn The effects of the transition to agriculture are better understood: it created food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in food production,Шаблон:Sfn permitting far denser populations and the creation of the first cities and states.

Cities were centers of trade, manufacturing, and political power.Шаблон:Sfn Cities established a symbiosis with their surrounding countrysides, absorbing agricultural products and providing, in return, manufactured goods and varying degrees of political control.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Early proto-cities appeared at Jericho and Çatalhöyük around 6000 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn Pastoral societies based on nomadic animal herding also developed, mostly in dry areas unsuited for plant cultivation such as the Eurasian Steppe or the African Sahel.Шаблон:Sfn Conflict between nomadic herders and sedentary agriculturalists occurred frequently and became a recurring theme in world history.Шаблон:Sfn

Metalworking was first used in the creation of copper tools and ornaments around 6400 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn Gold and silver soon followed, primarily for use in ornaments.Шаблон:Sfn The need for metal ores stimulated trade, as many areas of early human settlement lacked the necessary ores.Шаблон:Sfn The first signs of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, date to around 4500 BCE, but the alloy did not become widely used until the third millennium BCE.Шаблон:Sfn

Neolithic societies usually worshiped ancestors, sacred places, or anthropomorphic deities.Шаблон:Sfn The vast complex of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, dated 9500–8000 BCE, is a spectacular example of a Neolithic religious or civic site.Шаблон:Sfn It may have been built by hunter-gatherers rather than a sedentary population.Шаблон:Sfn Elaborate mortuary practices developed in the Levant during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, in which certain high-status individuals were buried under the floors of houses and the graves were later re-opened for the skulls to be removed.Шаблон:Sfn Some of the skulls were then covered in plaster, painted, and displayed in public.Шаблон:Sfn

Ancient history (Шаблон:Circa)

Three large pyramids in the desert, together with subsidiary pyramids and the remains of other structures

Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

Cradles of civilization

The Bronze Age saw the development of cities and civilizations.Шаблон:Sfn Early civilizations arose close to rivers, first in Mesopotamia (3000 BCE) with the Tigris and Euphrates,Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn followed by the Egyptian civilization along the Nile River (3000 BCE),Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn the Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan and northwestern India (2500 BCE),Шаблон:Sfn and the Chinese civilization along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers (2200 BCE).Шаблон:EfnШаблон:Sfn

These societies developed a number of unifying characteristics, including a central government, a complex economy and social structure, systems for keeping records, and distinct cultures and religions.Шаблон:Sfn These cultures variously invented the wheel,Шаблон:Sfn mathematics,Шаблон:Sfn bronze-working,Шаблон:Sfn sailing boats,Шаблон:Sfn the potter's wheel,Шаблон:Sfn woven cloth,Шаблон:Sfn construction of monumental buildings,Шаблон:Sfn and writing.Шаблон:Sfn Polytheistic religions developed, centered on temples where priests and priestesses performed sacrificial rites.

Writing facilitated the administration of cities, the expression of ideas, and the preservation of information.Шаблон:Sfn Writing may have independently developed in at least four ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia (3300 BCE),Шаблон:Sfn Egypt (around 3250 BCE), China (1200 BCE), and lowland Mesoamerica (by 650 BCE). Among the earliest surviving written religious scriptures are the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, the oldest of which date to between 2400 and 2300 BCE.

Symbols on a clay tablet

Cuneiform inscription, Sumer, Mesopotamia, 26th century BCE

Sumer, located in Mesopotamia, is the first known complex civilization, having developed the first city-states in the 4th millennium BCE.Шаблон:Sfn It was these cities that produced the earliest known form of writing, cuneiform script.Шаблон:Sfn Cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs, whose pictorial representations eventually became simplified and more abstract.Шаблон:Sfn Cuneiform texts were written by using a blunt reed as a stylus to draw symbols upon clay tablets.Шаблон:Sfn

Transport was facilitated by waterways—by rivers and seas.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn Trade became increasingly important as urban societies exchanged manufactured goods for raw materials from distant lands, creating vast commercial networks and the beginnings of archaic globalization.Шаблон:Sfn Bronze production, for example, required the import of tin to Southwest Asia from as far away as England,Шаблон:Sfn and Indus Valley seals and gems have been found in Mesopotamia.Шаблон:Sfn

The growth of cities was often followed by the establishment of states and empires.Шаблон:Sfn In Mesopotamia, there prevailed a pattern of independent warring city-states and of a loose hegemony shifting from one city to another.Шаблон:Sfn In Egypt, by contrast, the initial division into Upper and Lower Egypt was followed by the unification of all the valley around 3100 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn Around 2600 BCE, the Indus Valley civilization built major cities at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and developed a writing system of over 400 symbols, which remains undeciphered.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn China entered the Bronze Age by 2900 BCE. The Shang dynasty (1766–1045 BCE) was the first to use writing, inscribing the results of divination ceremonies on oracle bones – ox shoulder blades and turtle shells.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn In the 25th–21st centuries BCE, the empires of Akkad and the Neo-Sumerians arose in Mesopotamia.Шаблон:Sfn In Crete, the Minoan civilization emerged by 2000 BCE and is regarded as the first civilization in Europe.Шаблон:Sfn

Over the following millennia, civilizations developed across the world.Шаблон:Sfn By 1600 BCE, Mycenaean Greece began to develop. It flourished until the Late Bronze Age collapse that affected many Mediterranean civilizations between 1300 and 1000 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn The Vedas contain the earliest references to India's caste system, which divided society into four hereditary classes: priests, warriors, farmers and traders, and laborers.Шаблон:Sfn From around 550 BCE, many independent kingdoms and republics known as the Mahajanapadas were established across the subcontinent.

A stone head

Olmec colossal head, now at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa

Speakers of the Bantu languages began expanding across Central and Southern Africa as early as 3000 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn Their expansion and encounters with other groups resulted in the spread of mixed farming and ironworking throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and produced societies such as the Nok culture in modern Nigeria by 500 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn The Lapita culture emerged in the Bismarck Archipelago near New Guinea around 1500 BCE and colonized many uninhabited islands of Remote Oceania, reaching as far as Samoa by 700 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn

In the Americas, the Norte Chico culture emerged in coastal Peru around 3100 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn The Norte Chico built public monumental architecture at the city of Caral, dated 2627–1977 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn The later Chavín polity is sometimes described as the first Andean state.Шаблон:Sfn It centered on the religious site at Chavín de Huantar, a place of pilgrimage and consumption of psychoactive substances.Шаблон:Sfn Other important Andean cultures include the Moche, whose ceramics depict many aspects of daily life, and the Nazca, who created animal-shaped designs in the desert called Nazca lines.Шаблон:Sfn The Olmecs of Mesoamerica developed by about 1200 BCE and are known for the colossal stone heads that they carved from basalt.Шаблон:Sfn They also devised the Mesoamerican calendar that was used by later cultures such as the Maya and Teotihuacan.Шаблон:Sfn Societies in North America were primarily egalitarian hunter-gatherers, supplementing their diet with the plants of the Eastern Agricultural Complex.Шаблон:Sfn They came together, seemingly voluntarily, to build earthworks such as Watson Brake (4000 BCE) and Poverty Point (3600 BCE), both in Louisiana.Шаблон:Sfn

Axial Age

A statue of a standing man wearing a cloak

Standing Buddha from Gandhara, 2nd century CE

From 800 to 200 BCE,Шаблон:Sfn the "Axial Age" saw the development of a set of transformative philosophical and religious ideas, mostly independently, in many different places. Chinese Confucianism,Шаблон:Sfn Indian Buddhism and Jainism,Шаблон:Sfn and Jewish monotheism all developed during this period.Шаблон:Sfn Persian Zoroastrianism began earlier, perhaps around 1000 BCE, but was institutionalized by the Achaemenid Empire during the Axial Age.Шаблон:Sfn New philosophies took hold in Greece during the 5th century BCE, epitomized by thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle.Шаблон:Sfn The first Olympic Games were held in 776 BCE, ushering in a period known as "classical antiquity". In 508 BCE, the world's first democratic system of government was instituted in Athens.

Axial Age ideas were tremendously important for subsequent intellectual and religious history. Confucianism was one of the three schools of thought that came to dominate Chinese thinking, along with Taoism and Legalism.Шаблон:Sfn The Confucian tradition, which would become particularly influential, looked for political morality not to the force of law but to the power and example of tradition.Шаблон:Sfn Confucianism would later spread to Korea and Japan.Шаблон:Sfn Buddhism reached China during the Han dynasty and spread widely, with 30,000 Buddhist temples in northern China alone by the 7th century CE.Шаблон:Sfn Buddhism became the main religion in much of South, Southeast, and East Asia.Шаблон:Sfn The Greek philosophical traditionШаблон:Sfn diffused throughout the Mediterranean world and as far as India, starting in the 4th century BCE after the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon.Шаблон:Sfn Both Christianity and Islam developed from the beliefs of Judaism.Шаблон:Sfn

Regional empires

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. International trade also expanded, most notably the massive trade routes in the Mediterranean Sea, the maritime trade web in the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road.Шаблон:Sfn

Stone relief depicting two groups of three men facing each other

Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 6th century BCE

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.Шаблон:Sfn Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was sacked by the Medes in 612 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn The Median Empire gave way to successive Iranian states, including the Achaemenid (550–330 BCE),Шаблон:Sfn Parthian (247 BCE–224 CE),Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn and Sasanian Empires (224–651 CE).Шаблон:Sfn

Several empires began in modern-day Greece. In the late 5th century BCE, several Greek city states checked the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars, considered a pivotal moment in world history, as the 50 years of peace that followed are known as Golden Age of Athens, the seminal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of Western civilization. The wars led to the creation of the Delian League, founded in 477 BCE, and eventually the Athenian Empire (454–404 BCE), which was defeated by a Spartan-led coalition during the Peloponesian War.Шаблон:Sfn Philip of Macedon unified the Greek city-states into the Hellenic League and his son Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) founded an empire extending from present-day Greece to India.Шаблон:Sfn The empire divided into several successor states shortly after his death, and resulted in the founding of many cities and the spread of Greek culture throughout conquered regions, a process referred to as Hellenization.Шаблон:Sfn The Hellenistic period lasted from the death of Alexander in 323 BCE to 31 BCE when Ptolemaic Egypt fell to Rome.

In South Asia, Chandragupta Maurya founded the Maurya Empire (320–185 BCE), which flourished under Ashoka the Great.Шаблон:Sfn From the 4th to 6th centuries CE, the Gupta Empire oversaw the period referred to as ancient India's golden age.Шаблон:Sfn The ensuing stability contributed to heralding in an efflorescence of Hindu and Buddhist culture in the 4th and 5th centuries, as well as major advances in science and mathematics.Шаблон:Sfn In South India, three prominent Dravidian kingdoms emerged: the Cheras, Cholas, and Pandyas.Шаблон:Sfn

Stone pillar in front of a river

Pillar erected by India's Maurya Emperor Ashoka

In Europe, the Roman Republic was founded in the 6th century BCEШаблон:Sfn and began expanding its territory in the 3rd century BCE. The Republic became an empire and by the time of Augustus (63 BCE–14 CE), it had established dominion over most of the Mediterranean Sea.Шаблон:Sfn The empire would continue to grow, controlling much of the land from England to Mesopotamia, reaching its greatest extent under Trajan (died 117 CE). The two centuries that followed are known as the Pax Romana, a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity and political stability in most of Europe. Christianity was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE and in 391–392 CE, the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions. In the 4th century CE, the empire split into western and eastern regions, with (usually) separate emperors.Шаблон:Sfn The Western Roman Empire would fall, in 476 CE, to German influence under Odoacer.Шаблон:Sfn

In China, the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), the first imperial dynasty of China, was followed by the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE).Шаблон:Sfn The Han dynasty was comparable in power and influence to the Roman Empire that lay at the other end of the Silk Road.Шаблон:Sfn As economic prosperity fueled their military expansion, the Han conquered parts of Mongolia, Central Asia, Manchuria, Korea, and northern Vietnam.Шаблон:Sfn As with other empires during the classical period, Han China advanced significantly in the areas of government, education, science, and technology.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn The Han invented cast iron, and created finely wrought bronze figurines.Шаблон:Sfn

Column with markings carved on its surface

Obelisk of Axum, Ethiopia

In Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum, centered in present-day Ethiopia, established itself by the 1st century CE as a major trading empire, dominating its neighbors in South Arabia and Kush and controlling the Red Sea trade.Шаблон:Sfn It minted its own currency and carved enormous monolithic stelae to mark its emperors' graves.Шаблон:Sfn

Successful regional empires were also established in the Americas, arising from cultures established as early as 2500 BCE.Шаблон:Sfn In Mesoamerica, vast pre-Columbian societies were built, the most notable being the Zapotec civilization (700 BCE–1521 CE), and the Maya civilization, which reached its highest state of development during the Mesoamerican classic period (c. 250–900 CE), but continued throughout the post-classic period.Шаблон:Sfn The great Maya city-states slowly rose in number and prominence, and Maya culture spread throughout the Yucatán and surrounding areas.Шаблон:Sfn The Maya developed a writing system and were the first to use the concept of zero in their mathematics.Шаблон:Sfn West of the Maya area, in central Mexico, the city of Teotihuacan prospered due to its control of the obsidian trade.Шаблон:Sfn Its power peaked around 450 CE, when its 125,000–150,000 inhabitants made it one of the world's largest cities.Шаблон:Sfn

Ruins of a domed building with steps leading to it

Maya observatory, Chichen Itza, Mexico

Technology developed sporadically in the ancient world.Шаблон:Sfn There were periods of rapid technological progress, such as the Greco-Roman era in the Mediterranean region.Шаблон:Sfn Greek science, technology, and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period, typified by devices such as the Antikythera mechanism. There were also periods of technological decay, as during the Roman Empire's decline and fall and the ensuing early medieval period.Шаблон:Sfn Two of the most important innovations were paper (China, 1st and 2nd centuries CE)Шаблон:Sfn and the stirrup (India, 2nd century BCE and Central Asia, 1st century CE),Шаблон:Sfn both of which diffused widely throughout the world. The Chinese also learned to make silk and built massive engineering projects such as the Great Wall of China and the Grand Canal.Шаблон:Sfn The Romans were also accomplished builders, inventing concrete and perfecting the use of arches in construction.Шаблон:Sfn

Most ancient societies had slaves.Шаблон:Sfn Slavery was particularly prevalent in Athens and Rome, where slaves made up a large proportion of the population and were foundational to the economy.Шаблон:Sfn Most societies were also patriarchal, with men controlling more political and economic power than women.

Declines, falls, and resurgence

The ancient empires faced common problems associated with maintaining huge armies and supporting a central bureaucracy.Шаблон:Sfn In Rome and Han China, the state began to decline, and barbarian pressure on the frontiers hastened internal dissolution.Шаблон:Sfn The 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.Шаблон:Sfn From the Eurasian Steppe, horse-based nomads dominated a large part of the continent.Шаблон:Sfn The development of the stirrup and the use of horse archers made the nomads a constant threat to sedentary civilizations.Шаблон:Sfn

Building with columns in front of it

The Pantheon, originally a Roman temple, now a Catholic church

The gradual breakup of the Roman Empire coincided with the spread of Christianity outward from West Asia.Шаблон:Sfn The Western Roman Empire fell under the domination of Germanic tribes in the 5th century,Шаблон:Sfn and these polities gradually developed into a number of warring states, all associated in one way or another with the Catholic Church.Шаблон:Sfn The fall of the Western Roman Empire is often considered to mark the end of classical antiquity. The Eastern Roman Empire, now known as the Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, would continue for another thousand years until the city was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.Шаблон:Sfn During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe, and Constantinople is generally considered to be the center of "Eastern Orthodox civilization".Шаблон:Sfn Centuries later, a limited unity would be restored to Western Europe through the establishment in 962 of a revived "Roman Empire",Шаблон:Sfn later called the Holy Roman Empire, comprising a number of states in what is now Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechia, Belgium, Italy, and parts of France.

In China, dynasties would rise and fall, but, in sharp contrast to the Mediterranean-European world, dynastic unity would be restored.Шаблон:Sfn After the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty and the demise of the Three Kingdoms, nomadic tribes from the north began to invade, causing many Chinese people to flee southward.Шаблон:Sfn The Sui dynasty successfully reunified China in 589,Шаблон:Sfn and laid the foundations for a golden age under the Tang dynasty (618–907).Шаблон:Sfn

Post-classical history (Шаблон:Circa)

Шаблон:Main The term "post-classical era", though derived from the 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.Шаблон:Sfn

From the 10th to 13th centuries, the Medieval Warm Period in the northern hemisphere aided agriculture and led to population growth in parts of Europe and Asia.Шаблон:Sfn It was followed by the Little Ice Age, which, along with the plagues of the 14th century, put downward pressure on the population of Eurasia.Шаблон:Sfn Some of the major inventions of the period were gunpowder, printing, and the compass, all of which originated in China.Шаблон:Sfn

Large building with dome and four spires

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul – a symbol of Byzantine civilization

The post-classical period 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 and the founding of the Ottoman Empire. South Asia saw a series of middle kingdoms of India, followed by the establishment of Islamic empires in India.Шаблон:Sfn

In West Africa, the Mali and Songhai Empires rose.Шаблон:Sfn 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 resulted in the Swahili culture.Шаблон:Sfn

China experienced the successive Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn During the same period, civilizations in the Americas, such as the Mississippians,Шаблон:Sfn Aztecs,Шаблон:Sfn Maya,Шаблон:Sfn and Inca reached their zenith.Шаблон:Sfn

Greater Middle East

Castle

Ajloun Castle, Jordan

Prior to the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the Middle East was dominated by the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, which frequently fought each other for control of several disputed regions.Шаблон:Sfn This was also a cultural battle, with Byzantine Christian culture competing against Persian Zoroastrian traditions.Шаблон:Sfn The birth of Islam created a new contender that quickly surpassed both of these empires.Шаблон:Sfn The new religion greatly affected the history of the Old World, especially the Middle East.Шаблон:Sfn

From their center in the Arabian Peninsula, Muslims began their expansion during the 7th century.Шаблон:Sfn By 750 CE, they came to conquer most of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe,Шаблон:Sfn ushering in an era of learning, science, and invention known as the Islamic Golden Age.Шаблон:Sfn The knowledge and skills of ancient Greece and Persia were preserved in the post-classical era by Muslims,Шаблон:Sfn who also added new and important innovations from outside, such as the manufacture of paper from ChinaШаблон:Sfn and decimal positional numbering from India.Шаблон:Sfn Islamic civilization expanded both by conquest and on the basis of its merchant economy.Шаблон:Sfn Merchants brought goods and their Islamic faith to China, India, Southeast Asia, and Africa.Шаблон:Sfn

The crusading movement was a religiously motivated European effort to roll back Muslim territory and regain control of the Holy Land.Шаблон:Sfn It was ultimately unsuccessful and served more to weaken the Byzantine Empire, especially with the sack of Constantinople in 1204.Шаблон:Sfn Arab domination of the region ended in the mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuk Turks, migrating south from the Turkic homelands.Шаблон:Sfn In the early 13th century, a new wave of invaders, the Mongols, swept through the region but were eventually eclipsed by the Turks and the founding of the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey around 1280.

Stone building with tower and courtyard

Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE

North Africa saw the rise of polities established by the Berbers, such as Marinid Morocco, Zayyanid Algeria, and Hafsid Tunisia. Шаблон:Sfn The coastal region was known to Europeans as the Barbary Coast. Pirates based in North African ports conducted operations that included capturing merchant ships and raiding coastal settlements.Шаблон:Sfn Thousands of European captives were sold in North African markets that were part of the Barbary slave trade.Шаблон:Sfn

The Caucasus was fought over in a series of wars between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires. However, the two opposing powers became exhausted due to continuous conflict. Hence, the Rashidun Caliphate was able to freely expand into the region during the early Muslim conquests. The Seljuk Turks later subjugated Armenia and Georgia in the 11th century. The Mongols subsequently invaded the Caucasus in the 13th century.Шаблон:Sfn

Central Asia faced incursions from both the Arabs and the Chinese. China expanded into Central Asia during the Sui dynasty (581–618).Шаблон:Sfn They were confronted by Turkic nomads, who were becoming the most dominant ethnic group in Central Asia.Шаблон:Sfn Originally the relationship was largely cooperative but in 630, the Tang dynasty began an offensive against the Turks by capturing areas of the Ordos Desert.Шаблон:Sfn 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. The desert nomads of Arabia could militarily match the nomads of the steppe, and the Umayyad Caliphate gained control over parts of Central Asia. The Hephthalites were the most powerful of the nomad groups in the 5th and 6th centuries, and controlled much of the region.Шаблон:Sfn From the 9th to 13th centuries, the region was divided among several powerful states, including the Samanid, Seljuk, and Khwarazmian Empires. In 1370, Timur, a Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the region and founded the Timurid Empire.Шаблон:Sfn Timur's large empire collapsed soon after his death,Шаблон:Sfn but his descendants retained control of a core area in Central Asia and Iran.Шаблон:Sfn They oversaw the Timurid Renaissance of art and architecture.Шаблон:Sfn

Europe

Church with dome

St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City

Since at least the 4th century, Christianity, primarily Catholicism, and later Protestantism, has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization. Europe during the Early Middle Ages was characterized by depopulation, deurbanization, and barbarian invasions, all of which had begun in late antiquity.Шаблон:Sfn The barbarian invaders formed their own new kingdoms in the remains of the Western Roman Empire.Шаблон:Sfn Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, most of the new kingdoms incorporated existing Roman institutions.Шаблон:Sfn Christianity expanded in Western Europe, and monasteries were founded.Шаблон:Sfn In the 7th and 8th centuries, the Franks under the Carolingian dynasty established an empire covering much of Western Europe; it lasted until the 9th century, when it succumbed to pressure from new invaders—the Vikings, Magyars, and Arabs.Шаблон:Sfn Kievan Rus' expanded from its capital in Kiev to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century. In 988, Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as the state religion.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn

During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and crop yields to increase.Шаблон:Sfn Manorialism, the organization of peasants into villages that owed rents and labor service to nobles, and vassalage, 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 Middle Ages.Шаблон:Sfn Kingdoms became more centralized after the decentralizing effects of the breakup of the Carolingian Empire.Шаблон:Sfn In 1054, the Great Schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches led to the prominent cultural differences between Western and Eastern Europe. The Crusades were a series of religious wars waged by Christians to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Muslims and succeeded for long enough to establish some Crusader states in the Levant.Шаблон:Sfn Italian merchants imported slaves to work in households or in sugar processing. 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.Шаблон:Sfn

Cathedral

Notre-Dame de Paris

The Mongols reached Europe in 1236 and conquered Kievan Rus', along with briefly invading Poland and Hungary.Шаблон:Sfn Lithuania cooperated with the Mongols but remained independent and in the late 14th century formed a personal union with Poland.Шаблон:Sfn The Late Middle Ages were marked by difficulties and calamities.Шаблон:Sfn Famine, plague, and war devastated the population of Western Europe. The Black Death alone killed approximately 75 to 200 million people between 1347 and 1350. It was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. Starting in Asia, the disease reached the Mediterranean and Western Europe during the late 1340s,Шаблон:Sfn and killed tens of millions of Europeans in six years; between a quarter and a third of the population perished.Шаблон:Sfn

The Middle Ages witnessed the first sustained urbanization of Northern and Western Europe and lasted until the beginning of the early modern period in the 16th century, marked by the rise of nation states,Шаблон:Sfn the birth of humanism in the Renaissance,Шаблон:Sfn the division of Western Christianity in the Reformation,Шаблон:Sfn and the beginnings of European colonial expansion.Шаблон:Sfn

Sub-Saharan Africa

Bronze head

A Benin Bronze head from Nigeria

Medieval sub-Saharan Africa was home to many different civilizations. In the Horn of Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum declined in the 7th century.Шаблон:Sfn The Zagwe dynasty that later emerged was famed for its rock cut architecture at Lalibela.Шаблон:Sfn The Zagwe would then fall to the Solomonic dynasty who claimed descent from the Aksumite emperors and would rule the country well into the 20th century.Шаблон:Sfn

In the West African Sahel region, many Islamic empires rose, such as the Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and Kanem–Bornu Empires.Шаблон:Sfn They controlled the trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and slaves.Шаблон:Sfn West Africa became the world's largest gold exporter by the 14th century.Шаблон:Sfn

South of the Sahel, civilizations rose in the coastal forests. These include the Yoruba city of Ifẹ, noted for its art, and the Oyo Empire,Шаблон:Sfn the Edo Kingdom of Benin centered in Benin City,Шаблон:Sfn the Igbo Kingdom of Nri that produced advanced bronze art at Igbo-Ukwu, and the Akan who are noted for their intricate architecture.

Central Africa saw the formation of several states, including the Kingdom of Kongo.Шаблон:Sfn In what is now modern Southern Africa, native Africans created various kingdoms such as the Kingdom of Mutapa (Monomotapa).Шаблон:Sfn They flourished through trade with the Swahili on the East African coast.Шаблон:Sfn They built large defensive stone structures without mortar such as Great Zimbabwe, capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe,Шаблон:Sfn and Khami, capital of the Kingdom of Butua.Шаблон:Sfn The Swahili themselves were the inhabitants of the East African coast from Kenya to Mozambique who traded extensively with Arabs, who introduced them to Islam.Шаблон:Sfn They built many port cities such as Mombasa, Mogadishu, and Kilwa, which were known to Islamic geographers.Шаблон:Sfn

Seafarers from Southeast Asia colonized Madagascar sometime between the 4th and 9th centuries,Шаблон:Sfn creating what geographer Jared Diamond called "the single most astonishing fact of human geography".Шаблон:Sfn To reach Madagascar, the settlers crossed 6,000 miles of ocean in sailing canoes,Шаблон:Sfn probably without maps or compasses.Шаблон:Sfn A wave of Bantu-speaking migrants from southeastern Africa also arrived in Madagascar around 1000 CE.

South Asia

Statue

Chennakesava Temple, Belur, India

After the fall (550 CE) of the Gupta Empire, North India was divided into a complex and fluid network of smaller kingly states.Шаблон:Sfn Early Muslim incursions began in the northwest in 711 CE, when the Arab Umayyad Caliphate conquered much of present-day Pakistan.Шаблон:Sfn The 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.Шаблон:Sfn The 9th century saw a Tripartite Struggle for control of North India, among the Pratihara, Pala, and Rashtrakuta Empires.Шаблон:Sfn

Post-classical dynasties in South India included those of the Chalukyas, Hoysalas, and Cholas.Шаблон:Sfn Literature, architecture, sculpture, and painting flourished under the patronage of these kings.Шаблон:Sfn Some of the other important states that emerged in South India during this time included the Bahmani Sultanate and Vijayanagara Empire.Шаблон:Sfn

Northeast Asia

After a period of relative disunity, China was reunified by the Sui dynasty in 589Шаблон:Sfn and under the succeeding Tang dynasty (618–907) China entered a golden age.Шаблон:Sfn The Sui and Tang instituted the long-lasting imperial examination system, under which administrative positions were open only to those who passed an arduous test on Confucian thought and the Chinese classics.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn China competed with Tibet (618–842) for control of areas in Inner and Central Asia. However, the Tang dynasty eventually splintered. After half a century of turmoil, the Song dynasty reunified much of China. Pressure from nomadic empires to the north became increasingly urgent.Шаблон:Sfn By 1127, northern China had been lost to the Jurchens in the Jin–Song Wars, and the Mongols conquered all of China in 1279.Шаблон:Sfn After about a century of Mongol Yuan dynasty rule, the ethnic Chinese reasserted control with the founding of the Ming dynasty in 1368.Шаблон:Sfn

Painting of a battle

Battle during 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan

In Japan, the imperial lineage was established during the 3rd century CE, and a centralized state developed during the Yamato period (c. 300–710).Шаблон:Sfn Buddhism was introduced, and there was an emphasis on the adoption of elements of Chinese culture and Confucianism.Шаблон:Sfn The Nara period (710–794) was characterized by the appearance of a nascent literary culture, as well as the development of Buddhist-inspired artwork and architecture. The Heian period (794–1185) saw the peak of imperial power, followed by the rise of militarized clans and the samurai.Шаблон:Sfn It was during the Heian period that Murasaki Shikibu penned The Tale of Genji, sometimes considered the world's first novel. From 1185 to 1868, Japan was dominated by powerful regional lords (daimyos) and the military rule of warlords (shoguns) such as the Ashikaga and Tokugawa shogunates.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn The emperor remained, but mostly as a figurehead,Шаблон:Sfn and the power of merchants grew.Шаблон:Sfn

Postclassical Korea saw the end of the Three Kingdoms era, the three kingdoms being Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla.Шаблон:Sfn Silla conquered Baekje in 660, and Goguryeo in 668, marking the beginning of the Northern and Southern States period, with Unified Silla in the south and Balhae, a successor state to Goguryeo, in the north. 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. The founding Goryeo dynasty ruled until 1392, succeeded by the Joseon dynasty,Шаблон:Sfn which ruled for approximately 500 years.Шаблон:Sfn

In Mongolia, Genghis Khan united the various tribes under one banner in 1026.Шаблон:Sfn The Mongol Empire expanded to comprise all of China and Central Asia, as well as large parts of Russia and the Middle East, to become the largest contiguous empire in history.Шаблон:Sfn After Möngke Khan died in 1259,Шаблон:Sfn the Mongol Empire was divided into four successor states.Шаблон:Sfn

Southeast Asia

Large temple

Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia, early 12th century

The Southeast Asian polity of Funan, which originated in the 2nd century CE, went into decline in the 6th century as Chinese trade routes shifted away from its ports.Шаблон:Sfn It was replaced by the Khmer Empire in 802 CE.Шаблон:Sfn The Khmers' capital city, Angkor, was the most extensive city in the world prior to the industrial age and contained Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious monument.Шаблон:Sfn The Sukhothai (mid-13th century CE) and Ayutthaya Kingdoms (1351 CE) were major powers of the Thais, who were influenced by the Khmers.Шаблон:Sfn

Starting in the 9th century, the Pagan Kingdom rose to prominence in modern Myanmar.Шаблон:Sfn Its collapse brought about political fragmentation that ended with the rise of the Toungoo Empire in the 16th century.Шаблон:Sfn Other notable kingdoms of the period include SrivijayaШаблон:Sfn and Lavo (both coming into prominence in the 7th century), ChampaШаблон:Sfn and Hariphunchai (both about 750),Шаблон:Sfn Đại Việt (968), Lan Na (13th century),Шаблон:Sfn Majapahit (1293), Lan Xang (1353), and Ava (1365).Шаблон:Sfn This period saw the spread of Islam to present-day Indonesia (beginning in the 13th century) and the emergence of the Malay states, including Brunei and Malacca. In the Philippines, several polities were formed such as Tondo, Cebu, and Butuan.

Oceania

Stone statues of human heads and torsos

Moai, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

The Polynesians, descendants of the Lapita peoples, colonized vast reaches of Remote Oceania beginning around 1000 CE.Шаблон:Sfn They traveled the open ocean in double-hulled canoes up to Шаблон:Convert long, each canoe carrying as many as 50 people and their livestock.Шаблон:Sfn Their voyages resulted in the colonization of hundreds of islands including the Marquesas, Hawaii, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and New Zealand.Шаблон:Sfn

The [[TuШаблон:Fakau'ai Tonga Empire]] was founded in the 10th century CE and expanded between 1250 and 1500. Tongan culture, language, and hegemony spread widely throughout eastern Melanesia, Micronesia, and central Polynesia during this period, 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 Kanaks and their cultures). In Northern Australia, there is evidence that Aboriginal Australians regularly traded with Makassan trepangers from Indonesia before the arrival of Europeans.

The question of pre-Columbian contact between Polynesians and Indigenous Americans has long been controversial. In 2020, a genome-wide DNA analysis of Polynesians and Indigenous South Americans shed new light on the debate by reporting evidence of intermingling between Polynesians and pre-Columbian Zenú around 1200 CE. Whether this happened due to Indigenous Americans reaching eastern Polynesia or because the northern coast of South America was visited by Polynesians is not clear.

On Rapa Nui, the islanders carved hundreds of moai, huge stone monuments that could weigh up to 80 tons.Шаблон:Sfn The moai are thought to represent high-ranking ancestors.Шаблон:Sfn All were pulled down during the chaotic period following European contact.Шаблон:Sfn Rapa Nui is also the only Polynesian island to have a writing system, the rongorongo script, although the script remains undeciphered and it may be proto-writing rather than true writing.Шаблон:Sfn

Americas

Stone ruins in the mountains

Machu Picchu, Inca Empire, Peru

In North America, this period saw the rise of the Mississippian culture in the modern-day United States Шаблон:C. CE,Шаблон:Sfn marked by the extensive 11th-century urban complex at Cahokia.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn

In Mesoamerica, the Teotihuacan civilization fell and the classic Maya collapse occurred.Шаблон:Sfn The Aztec Empire came to dominate much of Mesoamerica in the 14th and 15th centuries.Шаблон:Sfn

In South America, the 15th century saw the rise of the Inca.Шаблон:Sfn The Inca Empire or Tawantinsuyu, with its capital at Cusco, spanned the entire Andes, making it the most extensive pre-Columbian civilization.Шаблон:Sfn The Inca were prosperous and advanced, known for an excellent road system and elegant stonework.Шаблон:Sfn

Early modern period (Шаблон:Circa)

The early modern period was the period between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution—roughly 1500 to 1800. The period was characterized by proto-globalization and the rise of centralized bureaucratic states.Шаблон:Sfn European powers came to dominate much of the world by founding maritime empires: first the Portuguese and Spanish Empires, then the French, English, and Dutch Empires.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Historians still debate the causes of Europe's rise, which is known as the Great Divergence.Шаблон:Sfn

Painting of a ship

Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack. European maritime innovations led to proto-globalization.

Capitalist economies began their rise, initially in the northern Italian republics and some Asian port cities.Шаблон:Sfn 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 serfdom and the power of the Catholic Church.Шаблон:Sfn Shortly before the turn of the 16th century, the Portuguese started establishing factories ranging from Africa to Asia and Brazil, for trade in local commodities such as slaves, gold, spices, and sugar.Шаблон:Sfn In the 17th century, private chartered companies were established, such as the English East India Company (founded 1600) – often described as the first multinational corporation – and the Dutch East India Company (founded 1602).Шаблон:Sfn

The Age of Discovery was the first period in which Eurasia and Africa engaged in substantial cultural, material, and biologic exchange with the New World. It began in the late 15th century, when the two kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula – Portugal and Castile – sent the first exploratory voyages around the Cape of Good Hope and to the Americas, the latter reached in 1492 by Christopher Columbus.Шаблон:Sfn Global integration continued as European colonization of the Americas initiated the Columbian exchange: the exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and culture between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.Шаблон:Sfn It was one of history's most important global events, involving ecology and agriculture.Шаблон:Sfn New crops brought from the Americas by 16th-century European seafarers substantially contributed to world population growth.Шаблон:Sfn

Greater Middle East

After conquering Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire quickly came to dominate the Middle East.Шаблон:Sfn Persia came under the rule of the Safavids in 1501,Шаблон:Sfn succeeded by the Afshars in 1736, the Zands in 1751, and the Qajars in 1794.Шаблон:Sfn The Safavids established Shia Islam as Persia's official religion, thus giving Persia a separate identity from its Sunni neighbors.Шаблон:Sfn Along with the Mughals in India, the Ottomans and Safavids are known as the gunpowder empires because of their early adoption of firearms.Шаблон:Sfn In North Africa, the Berbers remained in control of independent states until the 16th century.Шаблон:Sfn At the end of the 18th century, the Russian Empire began its conquest of the Caucasus.Шаблон:Sfn The Uzbeks replaced the Timurids as the preeminent power in Central Asia.Шаблон:Sfn

Europe

A city with red roofs and a larger domed building in the center.

Florence, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance

Europe's Renaissance – the "rebirth" of classical culture, beginning in Italy in the 14th century and extending into the 16thШаблон:Efn – comprised the rediscovery of the classical world's cultural, scientific, and technological achievements, and the economic and social rise of Europe.Шаблон:Sfn The Renaissance engendered a culture of inquisitiveness which ultimately led to humanismШаблон:Sfn and the Scientific Revolution.Шаблон:Sfn This period is also celebrated for its artistic and literary attainments.Шаблон:Sfn Petrarch's poetry, Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, and the paintings and sculptures of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo are some of the great works of the era.Шаблон:Sfn Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type printing in 1453,Шаблон:Efn which helped spread the ideas of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Reformation.Шаблон:Sfn The Reformation was an anti-clerical theological and social movement that resulted in the creation of Protestant Christianity.Шаблон:Sfn In the aftermath of the Reformation, Protestantism became the majority faith throughout Northwestern Europe and in England and English-speaking America.

Файл:10 2599 Wittenberg - Marktplatz.jpg

Wittenberg, birthplace of Protestantism

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, eventually replacing the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a major power in Eastern Europe.Шаблон:Sfn The countries of Western Europe, while expanding prodigiously through technological advances and colonial conquest, competed with each other economically and militarily in a state of almost constant war.Шаблон:Sfn Often the wars had a religious dimension, either Catholic versus Protestant (primarily in Western Europe)Шаблон:Sfn or Christian versus Muslim (primarily in Eastern Europe), though religious tolerance was encouraged in countries like the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which legally guaranteed it with the Warsaw Confederation (1573). Wars of particular note included the Thirty Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years' War, and the French Revolutionary Wars.Шаблон:Sfn Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul of France in 1799, concluding the French Revolution. Bonaparte's rise to power foreshadowed the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.Шаблон:Sfn

Sub-Saharan Africa

In Africa, this period saw a decline in many civilizations and an advancement in others. Between 1515 and 1800, Africa lost eight million people to the Atlantic slave trade, and two million to the Arab slave trade.Шаблон:Sfn The Atlantic trade was the transport of enslaved Africans to the Americas, while the Arab trade consisted of the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades.Шаблон:Sfn The Swahili Coast was influenced by trade with the Portuguese and later the Omanis.Шаблон:Sfn In West Africa, the Songhai Empire fell after an invasion by the Moroccans.Шаблон:Sfn Bonoman gave birth to numerous Akan states such as Akwamu, Akyem, Fante, and Adansi, among others. The Kingdom of Zimbabwe gave way to smaller kingdoms such as Mutapa,Шаблон:Sfn Butua,Шаблон:Sfn and Rozvi.Шаблон:Sfn

In the Horn of Africa, the Ajuran Sultanate declined in the 18th century, and was succeeded by the Geledi Sultanate. The Ethiopian Empire suffered from the 1531 invasion by the neighboring 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.Шаблон:Sfn Other civilizations in Africa advanced during this period. The Oyo Empire experienced its golden age, as did the Kingdom of Benin.Шаблон:Sfn The Ashanti Empire rose to power in modern-day Ghana in the late 17th century.Шаблон:Sfn The Kingdom of Kongo also thrived during this period.Шаблон:Sfn

South Asia

A white stone building with three domes flanked by a wall and four towers

Taj Mahal, Mughal Empire, India

In the Indian subcontinent, the Mughal Empire began under Babur in 1526 and lasted for two centuries. Starting in the northwest, the Mughal Empire would come to rule the entire subcontinent by the late 17th century, except for the southernmost Indian provinces, which would remain independent.Шаблон:Sfn

Against the Muslim Mughal Empire, the Hindu Maratha Empire was founded by Shivaji on the western coast in 1674.Шаблон:Sfn The Marathas gradually gained territory from the Mughals over several decades, particularly in the Mughal–Maratha Wars (1680–1707). The Maratha Empire would fall under the control of the British East India Company in 1818, with all former Maratha and Mughal authority devolving to the British Raj in 1858.Шаблон:Sfn

During the same period, Sikhism developed from the spiritual teachings of ten gurus. In 1799, Ranjit Singh established the Sikh Empire in the Punjab.Шаблон:Sfn The British East India Company annexed the Sikh Empire after the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849.Шаблон:Sfn

Northeast Asia

A stone wall going uphill with towers spaced along it

Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China

In 1644, the Ming was supplanted by the Qing,Шаблон:Sfn the last Chinese imperial dynasty, which would rule until 1912.Шаблон:Sfn Japan experienced its Azuchi–Momoyama period (1568–1600), followed by the Edo period (1600–1868).Шаблон:Sfn The Korean Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) ruled throughout this period, repelling invasions from Japan and China in the 16th and 17th centuries.Шаблон:Sfn Expanded maritime trade with Europe significantly affected China and Japan during this period, particularly through the Portuguese in Macau and the Dutch in Nagasaki.Шаблон:Sfn However, China and Japan would later pursue isolationist policies designed to eliminate foreign influences, known as haijin in China and sakoku in Japan.Шаблон:Sfn

Southeast Asia

In 1511, the Portuguese overthrew the Malacca Sultanate in present-day Malaysia and Indonesian Sumatra.Шаблон:Sfn The Portuguese held this important trading territory (and the valuable associated navigational strait) until overthrown by the Dutch in 1641.Шаблон:Sfn The Johor Sultanate, centered on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, became the dominant trading power in the region.Шаблон:Sfn

European colonization expanded with the Dutch in Indonesia, the Portuguese in Timor, and the Spanish in the Philippines.Шаблон:Sfn Into the 19th century, European expansion would affect the whole of Southeast Asia, with the British in Burma, Malaya, and North Borneo, and the French in Indochina.Шаблон:Sfn Only Thailand would successfully resist colonization.Шаблон:Sfn

Oceania

The Pacific islands of Oceania would also be affected by European contact, starting with the circumnavigational voyage of Ferdinand Magellan (1519–1522),Шаблон:Efn who landed in the Marianas and other islands. Abel Tasman (1642–1644) sailed to present-day Australia, New Zealand, and nearby islands. James Cook (1768–1779) made the first recorded European contact with Hawaii. In 1788, Britain founded its first Australian colony.

Americas

Several European powers colonized the Americas, largely displacing the native populations and conquering the advanced civilizations of the Aztecs and Inca.Шаблон:Sfn Diseases introduced by Europeans devastated American societies, killing 60–90 million people by 1600 and reducing the population by 90–95%.Шаблон:Sfn Spain, Portugal, Britain, and France all made extensive territorial claims, and undertook large-scale settlement, including the importation of large numbers of African slaves.Шаблон:Sfn Portugal claimed Brazil.Шаблон:Sfn Spain claimed the rest of South America, Mesoamerica, and southern North America.Шаблон:Sfn The Spanish mined and exported prodigious amounts of silver from the Americas.Шаблон:Sfn This American silver boom, along with an increase in Japanese silver mining, caused a surge in inflation known as the Price Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries.Шаблон:Sfn

In North America, Britain colonized the east coast while France settled the central region. Russia made incursions into the northwest coast of North America, with its first colony in present-day Alaska in 1784, and the outpost of Fort Ross in present-day California in 1812. France lost its North American territory to England and Spain after the Seven Years' War (1756–1763).Шаблон:Sfn Britain's Thirteen Colonies declared independence as the United States in 1776, ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, ending the American Revolutionary War.Шаблон:Sfn In 1791, African slaves launched a successful rebellion in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. France won back its continental claims from Spain in 1800, but sold them to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.Шаблон:Sfn

Late modern period (Шаблон:Circa)

A steam engine

James Watt's steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution.

The 19th century saw the global spread of the Industrial Revolution, the greatest transformation of the world economy since the Neolithic Revolution.Шаблон:Sfn The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain around 1770 and used new modes of production—the factory, mass production, and mechanization—to manufacture a wide array of goods faster while using less labor than previously required.Шаблон:Sfn Industrialization raised the global standard of living but caused upheaval as factory owners and workers clashed over wages and working conditions.Шаблон:Sfn Along with industrialization came modern globalization, the increasing interconnection of world regions in the economic, political, and cultural spheres.Шаблон:Sfn Globalization began in the early 19th century and was enabled by improved transportation technologies such as railroads and steamships.

A world map colored to show imperial control

Empires of the world in 1898Шаблон:Efn

European empires lost territory in Latin America, which won independence by the 1820s through military campaigns,Шаблон:Sfn but expanded elsewhere as their industrial economies gave them an advantage over the rest of the world.Шаблон:Sfn Britain gained control of the Indian subcontinent, Burma, Malaya, North Borneo, Hong Kong, and Aden; the French took Indochina; and the Dutch cemented their rule over Indonesia.Шаблон:Sfn The British also colonized Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa with large numbers of British colonists emigrating to these colonies.Шаблон:Sfn Russia colonized large pre-agricultural areas of Siberia.Шаблон:Sfn In the late 19th century, the European powers divided the remaining areas of Africa.Шаблон:Sfn Only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent.Шаблон:Sfn

Within Europe, economic and military challenges created a system of nation states, and ethno-cultural groupings began to identify themselves as distinctive nations with aspirations for cultural and political autonomy.Шаблон:Sfn This nationalism would become important to peoples across the world in the 20th century.Шаблон:Sfn The first wave of democratization also took place between 1828 and 1926 and saw democratic institutions take root in 33 countries around the world. In a remarkable instance of moral progress, most of the world abolished slavery in the 19th century.Шаблон:Sfn

An airplane flying on a beach

First airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew on 17 December 1903.

In response to the encroachment of European powers, several countries undertook programs of industrialization and political reform along Western lines.Шаблон:Sfn The Meiji Restoration in Japan was successful and led to the establishment of a colonial empire, while the tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire did little to slow Ottoman decline.Шаблон:Sfn China achieved some success with its Self-Strengthening Movement, but was devastated by the Taiping Rebellion, history's bloodiest civil war, which killed 20–30 million people between 1850 and 1864.Шаблон:Sfn

The United States developed to become the world's largest economy by the end of the century.Шаблон:Sfn During the Second Industrial Revolution, a new set of technological advances including electric power, the internal combustion engine, and assembly line manufacturing increased productivity once again. Meanwhile, industrial pollution and environmental damage, present since the discovery of fire and the beginning of civilization, accelerated drastically.Шаблон:Sfn

The 20th century opened with Europe at an apex of wealth and power,Шаблон:Sfn and with much of the world under its direct colonial control or its indirect domination.Шаблон:Sfn Much of the rest of the world was influenced by heavily Europeanized nations: the United States and Japan.Шаблон:Sfn 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 nation states.Шаблон:Sfn

Soldiers in a trench

Infantry of the Royal Irish Rifles during the Battle of the Somme in World War I

This transformation was catalyzed by wars of unparalleled scope and devastation. World War I led to the collapse of four empires – the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian EmpiresШаблон:Sfn – and showed that industrial technology had made traditional military tactics obsolete.Шаблон:Sfn The Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides saw the systematic destruction, mass murder, and expulsion of those populations in the Ottoman Empire. From 1918 to 1920, the Spanish flu caused the deaths of at least 25 million people.Шаблон:Sfn

In the war's aftermath, powerful ideologies rose to prominence. The Russian Revolution of 1917 created the first communist state,Шаблон:Sfn while the 1920s and 1930s saw fascist political parties gain control in Italy and Germany.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Efn The women's suffrage movement won women the right to vote in numerous countries during the late modern period, ranging from New Zealand (1893) to Portugal (1976).Шаблон:Sfn Women fought to expand their civil rights,Шаблон:Sfn and began to enjoy greater access to education and the workforce.Шаблон:Sfn

A mushroom cloud

Atomic bombing of Nagasaki, 1945

Ongoing national rivalries, exacerbated by the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, helped precipitate World War II.Шаблон:Sfn In that war, the vast majority of the world's countries, including all the great powers, fought as part of two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The leading Axis powers were Germany, Japan, and Italy;Шаблон:Sfn while the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China were the "Big Four" Allied powers.

The militaristic governments of Germany and Japan pursued an ultimately doomed course of imperialist expansionism. In the course of doing so, Germany orchestrated the genocide of six million Jews and millions of non-Jews across German-occupied Europe in the Holocaust,Шаблон:Sfn while Japan murdered millions of Chinese.Шаблон:Sfn Estimates of the war's total casualties range from 55 to 80 million dead.Шаблон:Sfn When World War II ended in 1945, the United Nations was founded in the hope of preventing future wars, as the League of Nations had been formed following World War I.Шаблон:Sfn Likewise, several European countries began to form a political and economic community, the European Union, which eventually grew to include 27 member states. World War II opened the way for the advance of communism into Eastern and Central Europe, China, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Cuba.Шаблон:Sfn

Contemporary history (Шаблон:Circa)

World War II had left two countries, the United States and the Soviet Union, with principal power to influence international affairs. Each was suspicious of the other and feared a global spread of the other's, respectively capitalist and communist, political-economic model.Шаблон:Sfn This led to the Cold War, a 45-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.Шаблон:Sfn

People standing on a wall

Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989

With the development of nuclear weapons during World War II and their subsequent proliferation, all of humanity was put at risk of nuclear war between the two superpowers, as demonstrated by many incidents, most prominently the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.Шаблон:Sfn Such war being viewed as impractical, the superpowers instead waged proxy wars in non-nuclear-armed Third World countries.Шаблон:Sfn The Cold War ended peacefully in 1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed,Шаблон:Sfn partly due to its inability to compete economically with the United States and Western Europe.Шаблон:Sfn

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.Шаблон:Sfn In the decades after World War II, these advances led to jet travel; artificial satellites with innumerable applications,Шаблон:Sfn including GPS; and the Internet,Шаблон:Sfn which in the 1990s began to gain traction as a form of communication.Шаблон:Sfn These inventions have revolutionized the movement of people, ideas, and information.Шаблон:Sfn

A man standing on the moon with an American flag in the background

Last Moon landing: Apollo 17 (1972)

The second half of the 20th century also saw groundbreaking scientific and technological developments such as the discovery of the structure of DNA and DNA sequencing, the worldwide eradication of smallpox,Шаблон:Sfn the Green Revolution in agriculture,Шаблон:Sfn the discovery of plate tectonics,Шаблон:Sfn the moon landings, crewed and uncrewed exploration of space,Шаблон:Sfn solar-power and wind-power technologies, and foundational discoveries in physics phenomena ranging from the smallest entities (particle physics) to the greatest entity (physical cosmology).Шаблон:Sfn

These technical innovations had far-reaching effects.Шаблон:Sfn The world's population quadrupled to six billion during the 20th century, while world economic output increased by a factor of 20.Шаблон:Sfn In 1820, 75% of humanity lived on less than one dollar a day, while in 2001 only about 20% did. At the same time, economic inequality increased both within individual countries and between rich and poor countries.Шаблон:Sfn

In China, the Maoist government implemented industrialization and collectivization policies as part of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), leading to the starvation deaths (1959–1961) of 30–40 million people.Шаблон:Sfn After these policies were rescinded, China entered a period of economic liberalization and rapid growth, with the economy expanding by 6.6% per year from 1978 to 2003.Шаблон:Sfn In the postwar decades, the African, Asian, and Oceanian colonies of the Belgian, British, Dutch, French, and other European empires won their formal independence, a process known as decolonization. Postcolonial states in Africa struggled to grow their economies, facing structural barriers such as reliance on the export of commodities rather than manufactured goods.Шаблон:Sfn Sub-Saharan Africa was the world region hit hardest by the HIV/AIDS pandemic of the late 20th century.Шаблон:Sfn Moreover, Africa experienced high levels of violence, exemplified by the Second Congo War (1998–2003), the deadliest conflict since World War II.Шаблон:Sfn Latin America also faced economic problems and an over-reliance on commodity exports.Шаблон:Sfn Development efforts in Latin America were hindered by political instability, some of which was caused by the United States as it repeatedly intervened in the region.Шаблон:Sfn

A city skyline with tall buildings

Shanghai. China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century.

The early 21st century was marked by growing economic globalization and integration, which brought benefits but also risk to interlinked economies, as exemplified by the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s.Шаблон:Sfn Communications expanded, with smartphones and social media becoming ubiquitous worldwide by the mid-2010s. By the early 2020s, artificial intelligence systems improved to the point of outperforming humans at many circumscribed tasks. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic substantially disrupted global trading, caused recessions in the global economy, and spurred cultural paradigm shifts. Concerns grew as existential threats from environmental degradation and global warming became increasingly evident, while mitigation efforts, including a shift to sustainable energy, made gradual progress.

References

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