The Pythagorean program: number as structure
Pythagoras' school at Croton linked musical harmony to simple ratios and proposed that mathematical relations underlie nature.
Humanity
115 events across three thousand years — chosen to be multi-regional and honest about uncertainty. Follow a thread to trace one capability through time, or filter by region and kind.
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Spatial timeline — scroll horizontally
Copernicus moves the Earth
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium proposed that the Earth orbits the Sun, published as its author lay dying.
Galileo turns the telescope skyward
With a Dutch toy rebuilt at higher power, Galileo saw Jupiter's moons, lunar mountains and the phases of Venus, published in Sidereus Nuncius.
Newton's Principia Mathematica
Newton showed that one mathematical law of gravitation governs falling apples and orbiting moons — with the calculus-like methods to prove it.
Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species
Darwin proposed that species change over generations through variation and selection — design without a designer, accumulated small steps.
Einstein rewrites space and time
In one miraculous year Einstein explained the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and special relativity; a decade later general relativity curved spacetime itself around mass.
The double helix
Watson and Crick proposed the double-helix structure of DNA, crucially informed by Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction images.
Chronology
The Pythagorean program: number as structure
Pythagoras' school at Croton linked musical harmony to simple ratios and proposed that mathematical relations underlie nature.
Copernicus moves the Earth
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium proposed that the Earth orbits the Sun, published as its author lay dying.
Galileo turns the telescope skyward
With a Dutch toy rebuilt at higher power, Galileo saw Jupiter's moons, lunar mountains and the phases of Venus, published in Sidereus Nuncius.
Newton's Principia Mathematica
Newton showed that one mathematical law of gravitation governs falling apples and orbiting moons — with the calculus-like methods to prove it.
Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species
Darwin proposed that species change over generations through variation and selection — design without a designer, accumulated small steps.
Einstein rewrites space and time
In one miraculous year Einstein explained the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and special relativity; a decade later general relativity curved spacetime itself around mass.
The double helix
Watson and Crick proposed the double-helix structure of DNA, crucially informed by Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction images.