ERAS

Perhaps we are experiencing a reason to relate with the good intention of trying to understand all the stories and old causes that begin, perhaps showing us the life of a more constructive formation in which we cling to the old story and seek an answer in the old time that it stayed in the past that makes us react and contain us from certain suggestions that reminds us how the world originated and how long it may have taken man to conquer it better and that we don't see the world bloom because I believe the world was born in bloom and that all herbs have always conceived us the cure for various human distortions in which man may have been victimized by the aberrations of life causing him certain diseases as we can also prescribe its origins and destructions that reminds me of man's birth again in his life who always dueled with terrestrial beings and today we see the world locked in wars and that we can understand certain attributes and uncertain lessons that make me say why make wars if we were born with a feeling perhaps of improving ourselves in the knowledge of the world that can contain us and always show us its extensions in which the deconstruction machine can be released and show the man who appreciates knowledge a certain distortion in his way of to know and create the right things to always manipulate the life of the human being when nature reveals to us self-esteem, the great relativities of man with nature that we keep under a natural intimacy of knowing life better and its bases on maturing to humanity when the sacred power of man is to destroy the very existence that perhaps we have been distracted by the uncertainties that all graces could conceive us and war is not part of this world because in everything nature is limited and it is from the limit that the life in which we can make good fruits grow as we make great tragedies sprout that breaks in life with the purpose of destroying an human nature in how much there has been a truce on education with religion that is formalized between a great fraternity and understanding in the lives of human beings who try to mature and see the world better and clearer in how much survival becomes insufficient against the regime destructive on men who exchange their lives for perhaps an indefinite and destructive matter of living and we can see a different world in which we can be creating a devaluing aspect of the relationship with God and see sin as something superlative that always manipulates the constructive relationships of life with the man who becomes a war machine and the world is always innocent against the durability of living the imaginary existence of the human being would be to conquer life but he may be being absorbed by the power, anger, failure and pride that has always made him unable and uncertain to protect itself and that life would be the realistic target of its consequences and we can value the world of the best and greatest in how much we prosper with peace and our feelings have always given us security when there is human integrity over life and that we need to understand the notion of life and its existences because someday we will find firmer answers to our understandings and if it starts a life and life can always show us the way and the truth.

I simply want to speak of a notion that will envelop us with all atmospheres that in the law apply various issues that we suppose to say that the world may have come from a vibrational set of certain ideas that are extinguished in various ways and formations that put us and us dazzles under a great question of appreciating the time and its modalities that supposedly we can be living here today a great constitutional variety of certain habits and fundamental concepts that if formalized since the beginning of the world until the present day when we see the human being pass and behaves in different ways that we can here now understand where it all started and I want to talk here about various religions that in my view have taken on various issues for the maturation of human beings in life as to various distortions that prevent us from surviving and to conquer life better, but politics has always infected human beings in a triple aspect that is more positive and real. list to live and that there can also be great contradictions on your part that we can rarely observe this issue of the human being who is born to believe and do things due to faith in the holy spirit when there is more light among men who throw themselves into society more penalist and rationalist than maybe we can see where the waters of the earth come from that can always water and give us a good path among several conquests that we suppose we believe in God for a simple way or blind devotion of certain integrity that throws themselves in society as a anger always shows the human being that we are in the phase of moral recognition and that our dignities come from a great and deep recognition with mother nature that probably always sends us the social doors to reach a definitive task in which we can always define what we are and what we want in life because life would be something more relative to the realistic system of living and we put our evidence in a form of and accomplish something common to our wills that we can supposedly see and believe that we are made for each other and the world would not be so logical and disloyal to human behavior that supposedly it throws itself into pessimism as proof of struggle against the voracity of life and the life would no longer be so disloyal to the human being who was born today and being alive and dying tomorrow as a relativity of life that we can now see and understand all the moral and social issues that may inhibit the good ways of recognizing and knowing the world of a more coherent and formative way, well questioned to a great socialist understanding that we suppose we are living in a radical way to the labor regime that has always multiplied all the activities of the human being in life and the better structured man of today is formed and to turn around the world under a more creative rationalist construction of living and understanding all the issues that infiltrate the capable and civilized man of living and with fulfill his dilemmas between various aspects and desires to know the world between his dreams and fantasies that are always giving him more esteem for life and enabling him to certain modalities of living and seeing life and the world recognizes him and he only has to recognize himself better because we are familiar with a social existence that makes us progress or give up the resumption of life that surprises us and makes us understand our extinct that makes us grow, work and live and that human nature always helps us in the good wills of high esteem while we are all blessed with perfect and imperfect accesses that help life and give us existence under a great relationship of the human being with nature and life proposes us to recognize ourselves deeply in a more realistic relationship of relating to life and we can here see how the world started from the beginning to the present day in which society has been locked in various personalist ways of staying and living life that eludes us from certain certain pleasures of living and working and man has learned to conquer the world and all the sciences have kept him ahead of a fraternity of diagnosing life and its limits of living and today we can say that we understand life better and we know how to live its daily doses of commitments and its fatalities makes us go back to the time that would be more conducive to the exit of great ideas than the entry of great defects that we can see today and we have an idea of life and death that plagues us with the passing of time on various distortions of life where man would be a machine on his own challenge of building his existence on life and life would perhaps be consequently his purpose to relate to whatever things can divide him and increase him over a wide variety of certain setbacks that make you love, hate and live that we can say that the world would not be perfect, there would only be an idea of the human being left if to delve into a bigger and better world that we can unravel great mysteries and cures for humanity and life can be an alchemist relativity of a passive reaction that is always forming us and leading us on life and proposed to us several conditions that lead us to progress as much as possible. to lose something relatively common or uncommon with a state of time and reaction of struggle and work that makes us win or lose how much independence from life can cool us about various purposes of living and holding back because life is a reaction made up of artifacts that proliferates us under various disciplines that makes us react in life and life would be something relatively to maintain, build and know because we can now be delving into this history because the logic of maturing on great tests and constructions that we apprehend here is real. commonly value life and its memories that are realistic and tell us several questions that man always values the content of every word that are expressions that makes us recognize your high esteem and commitment to your value that conceives us to conquer the world and its virtues that are and can show us life better.

world history

World history describes the history of mankind as determined by archaeological studies and historical records. Ancient recorded history begins with the invention of writing.

origin of humanity

Main articles: Prehistory and Human Evolution

There are certain doubts about exactly who our most remote ancestors were. Modern humans only appeared about 200,000 years ago. Humans are primates and arose in Africa; two species that belonged to the beginnings of hominid evolution were Sahelanthropus tchadensis, with a mix of human and simian characteristics, and Orrorin tugenensis, already bipedal, but the brain size is not known, which in Sahelanthropus was 320–380 cm cubic. Both existed more than 6 million years ago. The hominids of the time inhabited sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia and Tanzania, that is, in East Africa. These first hominids were followed by Ardipithecus and later (4.3 million years ago to 2.4 million years ago) Australopithecus, descendants of Ardipithecus. They (australopithecines) had bigger brains, longer legs, smaller arms, and facial features more like ours.

2.5 million years ago, the genus Homo appeared, Homo habilis in eastern Africa, with it began to use stone tools entirely made by them (beginning the Paleolithic) and meat became more important in the diet of Homo habilis. They were hunters and had a larger brain (590–650 cubic cm), but they had long arms.

But H. habilis were not just hunters, they were also scavengers and herbivores.

There were other species like Homo rudolfensis that had a larger brain and was bipedal and existed during the same time period as Homo habilis. Two million years ago Homo erectus emerged: strong built, with a much larger brain (810–1 250 cubic cm), broad face and was the first hominid to leave Africa existing in Africa, Asia and Europe, existing until 500 thousand years. He is the first to use fire. 300,000 years ago it already had elaborate hunting strategies for burly mammals.

The ice age began 1.5 million years ago.

Human migrations across the globe (figures indicate millennia before our era)

Some 50 thousand years ago, human beings set out to conquer the planet in different directions from Africa. One course reached Australia. The other reached Central Asia, only to be split in two, one to Europe, and the other to cross the Bering Strait and reach North America. The last areas to be colonized were the Polynesian islands during the first millennium.

Neanderthals were robust, with a large brain, and lived in Europe and western Asia. They survived until 24,000 years ago and coexisted with modern Homo sapiens sapiens, despite DNA studies proving that they could not reproduce with each other.

The origin of present-day Homo sapiens is hotly debated, but most scientists support the Mitochondrial Eve theory, supported by genetic testing, rather than the multiregional evolution theory which holds that modern humans evolved around the world at the same time from of the Homo species existing there and that reproduced among themselves between the various migrations they supposedly made. The first fully human fossils were found in Ethiopia and date back approximately 160,000 years.

About 35,000 years ago Paleolithic art emerged in Europe. It consisted of paintings on the walls of caves, and small sculptures were made in wood or stone, representing fertility symbols several times.

emergence of civilization

agricultural revolution

Main article: Neolithic Revolution

10,000 years ago BC, there was practically no agriculture, but in 6,000 years the groups of humans capable of raising animals and cultivating plants would become producers. Agriculture was invented in various parts of the world, commonly at different times, independently of other areas.

First it was in the Middle East, more precisely in the Fertile Crescent, in 10,000 BC, where it spread to various areas of the world, such as North Africa (excluding Egypt) and the Balkans by 6,000 BC.

The main reason for the invention of agriculture was the decrease of hunting grounds such as forests, and their subsequent transformation into barren deserts, with the rise in sea level caused by the end of the ice age, 14 thousand years ago, which ended due to to changes in Earth's orbit. The temperature has risen by 7 degrees Celsius and sea level by 25 meters in just 500 years. 8,000 years ago the main thaw would have been practically completed. The traditional lifestyle of migration became too risky, and many people had to climb hills or approach rivers and lakes. First cities: Uruk, Eridu, Abydos, Hieracompolis. The first two were in Mesopotamia and the second in Upper Egypt. Related articles: urbanization, city.

Drawing of an ox-drawn plow found in Egypt.

• Nebra's Celestial Disc.

• An old boat used in ancient expeditions (Galé).

Social structure

It was thanks to the advent of agriculture and the domestication of animals that allowed many people to settle in villages and towns and stay there all year. time there was enough food to feed everyone, even those who were not directly dedicated to its provision. It also allowed many people to have a greater number of children. Those who did not specialize in agriculture could become artisans, merchants, and bureaucrats by creating artifacts such as jewelry, pottery, and clothing. They were able to dedicate themselves to creating new technologies such as the wheel and metallurgy.

metals

Main article: Age of Metals

An Iron Age ax made of iron

Copper smelting was invented about 8,000 years ago.

Metallurgy emerged in Anatolia and Mesopotamia (modern Turkey and Iraq) in approximately 5000 BC, and until 4000 BC it spread to the highlands of Iran, Caucasus and the Nile Delta, until 3000 BC it went south from Europe, Poland and Germany, France, the British Isles, and then until 2000 BC to Denmark, rest of Poland, part of the Baltic countries and Belarus.

culture and religion

The first religious manifestations appeared in times of Neanderthal man, 60 thousand years ago.

fertile crescent

Fertile crescent location map

Main article: Fertile Crescent

The Fertile Crescent, a region of the Middle East and North Africa, was where agriculture first appeared and also one of the first places where metallurgy was invented. It was the place where several of the first great civilizations and cities emerged. It was initially inhabited by the Natufienses, a people who suffered the catastrophic effects of the thaw, such as droughts, as they were great hunters and fed on wild berries. Experts believe that it was the Natufi women who, faced with the risk of hunger, stored the best seeds they had, and some say that this was what led to the spread of agriculture. The Natufienses also used agricultural tools such as scythes and pickaxes. As the wild plants they used to eat disappeared, they were forced to cultivate the easier-to-grow seeds, which they planted on slopes. The Natufienses were also the first to domesticate the wolf.

Formation of empires

The first civilizations arose in the Fertile Crescent region and in the Indus River valley, regions conducive to agriculture. Development led to the formation of large cities that would lead to the formation of states. Usually these cities were situated at the foot of large rivers.

Mesopotamia

Main article: Mesopotamia

cuneiform writing

Mesopotamia (the name "Mesopotamia" helps to understand the place. The word Mesopotamia, of Greek origin, means "between rivers") is situated between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, in southwest Asia, in an area that is now Iraq, southwestern Iran, eastern Syria and southeastern Turkey about 5,000 years ago.

Mesopotamian agriculture depended on the rich sediments that river waters brought with them. The swamps yielded fish, birds, and reeds that were used to make roofs. As they needed irrigation schemes and land use, they needed the organized command of many people. This is thought to have created the foundations of what is thought to be the first stratified society. Mesopotamian civilization centered on the cities of the south, in a region called Sumeria. In Mesopotamia there were several city-states, usually linked commercially and diplomatically, which sometimes cooperated with each other, while others competed. Among the big cities, we can mention Uruque, Kish, Ur and Acadia, which at times ascended to the control of the territory.

This decentralized society that existed in 3000 BC ceased to exist, being replaced by a centralized hierarchy, controlled by "all-powerful" rulers, who were not used to be considered divine. Sumptuous royal palaces also appeared. To support such a society required a class of bureaucrats, scribes and merchants. It was an urban society in which the inhabitants lived in houses made with local earth bricks, mud plaster and wooden doors. A lot of manpower was needed to manage the large irrigation and construction projects and cultivate the land.

Religion was intertwined with politics, and some cities were ruled by priests.

They were poor in natural resources, such as stone and metal, and thus had the need to establish commercial links with a region that stretched as far as the Indus Valley and the Persian Gulf. His numerical system was based on the number 60, and it still survives in the division of time and the 360º circle.

Sumerians

Main article: Sumer

Statue of Gudeia, governor of Lagash, one of the most beautiful pieces of Sumerian sculpture and all of Mesopotamian art (Louvre Museum, Paris)

Sumer (in the Bible, Shinar; from Akkadian Šumeru; Sumerian: ki-en-ĝir15, something like "land of civilized kings" or "native land") was an ancient civilization and the name given to the historical region inhabited by that civilization , in southern Mesopotamia, present-day southern Iraq and Kuwait, during the Copper (or Chalcolithic) Age and the Early Bronze Age. Although the earliest written records of the region date back no further than around 3500 BC, modern historians suggest that Sumer was permanently colonized between around 5500 and 4000 BC by a non-Semitic people who may or may not have spoken the language. Sumerian (using as evidence for this the names of cities, rivers and basic occupations). These prehistoric peoples about which conjectures have been conjectured are currently called "Proto-Euphrateans" or "Ubaids", and, according to some theories, they would have evolved from the Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia (Assyria). The Ubaids were the first civilizational force in Sumer, draining the swamps to practice agriculture, developing commerce and establishing industries, including weaving, leather and metalworking, masonry and pottery. Some scholars, however, such as Piotr Michalowski, professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Ancient Civilizations at the University of Michigan, and German academic Gerd Steiner, dispute the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or substrate language. Both they and others have suggested that the Sumerian language was the language originally spoken by the hunting and fishing peoples who lived in the swamps and coastal region of Eastern Arabia, and belonged to the Arab bifacial culture. Reliable historical records appear only much later; none of them have been dated before the Enmebaragesi period (c. 26th century BC). The American archaeologist of Latvian origin Juris Zariņš believes that the Sumerians would have been a people who inhabited the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Persian Gulf, before it was flooded, at the end of the Ice Age.

Akkadians

Main articles: Akkad (Mesopotamia) and Akkadian Empire

Babylonians

Main article: Babylon (region)

Babylon was a great city of ancient Asia, located in Mesopotamia, on the Euphrates where it approaches the Tigris River. Babylon had its first great empire in 2000 BC, and after several invasions and other empires it was dismantled by the Persians, after a revolt in 486 BC.

The Tower of Babel, by Pieter Brueghel.

• Representation of the hanging gardens of Babylon, as imagined by Martin Heemskerck.

• American soldiers in front of the reconstruction of the ruins of Babylon (2003).

Assyrians

Main article: Assyria

The Assyrians were a Semitic people who inhabited northern Mesopotamia. Their empire reached its height between 800 BC and 700 BC, this was the Neo-Assyrian era, built on the foundations of the Middle Assyrian Empire (1350–1000 BC). The middle empire possessed many resources and great wealth. It also improved irrigation and agriculture. It built imposing buildings and created important administrative centers.

These Neo-Assyrians were famous as fierce warriors, capable of innovative military prowess. Thanks to this they managed to expand their territory. They had an army that was a mixture of cars, cavalry and infantry and they already used iron weapons. His army included professional soldiers, including foreign mercenaries sent by the king, and were paid for from local tax revenues.

The Assyrians used horrible methods, such as mass execution, impalement, etc., against those who opposed them. They also sponsored large mass migrations offering land and assistance. So the center of the empire became very multicultural. They were a monarchy, being divided into provinces ruled by appointees by the king. Most of the population offered the local lord services and goods in exchange for protection. There was also a good system of roads, which included a road system that the future Achaemenid Empire would also have.

His empire included southeastern Anatolia, Phoenicia and Israel, Babylonia, and of course Assyria and some parts of Iran. The empire, after internal divisions, was defeated by the Babylonians and the Medes, who conquered the city of Assur in 614 BC.

The Assyrian Empire in 824 BC (dark green) and 671 BC (light green).

An Assyrian winged bull.

Chaldeans

Main article: Chaldeans

Ancient Egypt

Main article: Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was a civilization of eastern antiquity in North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It was part of a complex of civilizations, the "Civilizations of the Nile Valley", which also included the southern regions of Egypt, currently Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. It was bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Libyan Desert to the west, the East African Desert to the east, and the first Nile Cataract to the south. Ancient Egypt was one of the first great civilizations of antiquity and maintained during its existence a continuity in its political, artistic, literary and religious forms, partly explained by geographical constraints, although cultural influences and foreign contacts were also A reality.

Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3100 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh (Narmer), and developed over the next three millennia.

egyptian society

egyptian religion

The ancient Egyptians were polytheists, and the desire to please the gods greatly influenced their lives. They believed that the god Osiris judged life after death and made those who had led a "good life" pass with the gods. The cult of Osiris developed in the ancient empire. After the collapse of the ancient empire the cult of Osiris continued. Before him Ra was the main god.

Old Kingdom (r. 3200–2 300 BC)

The people's activity was agriculture, and the peasant communes who cultivated the land were headed by councils of elders, who organized the collection of taxes and the compulsory recruitment of workers for the "royal projects". Ancient Egyptian slaves used to work on the large estates belonging to the Pharaoh's temples and courtiers. The pharaohs were the kings of the whole country and their main adviser was called a vizier and he directed all the other bureaucrats who administered the country. Military campaigns against Sinai and Nubia brought the country good spoils of war such as slaves and gold, ivory, etc. In the ancient empire, the pharaohs used to build pyramids to be buried in it, the largest of which, that of Cheops, was 145 meters high.

When at the end of the Old Kingdom, centralized power began to weaken, the country was divided into nomos that occasionally warred with each other. Egypt was reunified at the beginning of the 20th century BC, with the Middle Kingdom.

Middle Kingdom (2040–1730 BC)

Main article: Middle Kingdom[42]

In the 22nd century BC, the rulers of Thebes asserted their power and founded the 11th dynasty, the Mentuhoep, giving rise to the Middle Kingdom, with its capital in Thebes. Irrigation and containment channels were enlarged and agricultural areas grew. Trade also developed, such as various types of handicrafts.

In the Middle Kingdom, several peasant communes became impoverished and ruined. In the middle of the 18th century BC. there was a generalized revolt of slaves, artisans and peasants, the revolt affected the entire country, the great landowners expelled from their palaces the pharaoh abdicated. There were looting of tombs and pyramids; temples and granaries conquered and the king's riches divided by the people. All tax documents were destroyed. Then there was an invasion of Hyksos, who controlled Egypt for a century and a half. The New Kingdom began when a liberation movement liberated Egypt.

New Kingdom (1580–525 BC)

Funerary mask of Tutankhamun. Cairo Egyptian Museum.

• Egyptian drawing of a pharaoh.

• Egyptian representation of the god Anubis.

• Sphinx of Giza.

• Egyptian drawing on papyrus.

• Map of Ancient Egypt at the time of the New Kingdom.

• Edfu Temple dedicated to the god Horus, a work built during the Ptolemaic era.

Hellenes

Main article: Aegean Civilization

hebrews

Main article: Hebrews

Reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.

achaemenid empire

Main article: Achaemenid Empire

• Achaemenid Empire ca. 500 BC

persian religion

• The Faravahar (or Ferohar), representation of the human soul before birth and after death, is one of the symbols of Zoroastrianism.

Phoenicians

Main article: Phoenicia

The Phoenicians were the Semitic peoples of the Syrian coast, their most famous cities were Arados, Simira, Berito, Acre, Tire and Sidon.

A small sculpture of Phoenician origin.

Phoenician alphabet and the current one.

ancient china

Main article: History of China

The first dynasty, Xia is somewhat mythical. Chinese tradition says that humans have their origin in the parasites of the creator's body, Pangu. After his death wise rulers introduced the fundamental inventions and institutions of human society. 1900 BC was the year of the first cities discovered in China.

The oldest record of China's past dates from the Shang Dynasty, possibly in the 13th century BC, in the form of divinatory inscriptions on animal bones or carapaces, according to Chinese tradition it began in 1766 and ended in 1122 BC

According to tradition the Zhou dynasty reigned between 1122 and 256 BC. This huge period is divided into Western Zhou, from 1122 to 771 BC, and Eastern Zhou, the latter being further subdivided into the Spring and Autumn periods, from 771 to 481 BC, and the Warring States, from 481 to 221 BC.

The capital of the Zhou was close to present-day Xi'an. At the height of Zhou power, China reached as far north as Mongolia.

Historians usually call the period between the beginning of the Qin Dynasty (3rd century BC) and the end of the Qing Dynasty (early 20th century) Imperial China. In 230 BC, the Qin State initiated the various campaigns that led to the unification of China. The other states formed alliances to try to stop their advance, and in 227 BC there was an assassination attempt on King Zheng (Qin Shi Huangdi). Resistance efforts faltered and in 221 BC King Zheng of the Qin state assumed the title of Qin Shi Huangdi, first emperor of the Qin Dynasty.

Han dynasty

Main article: Han Dynasty

The Han dynasty lasted from 206 BC to 220 AD, founded by Liu Bang (later Gaozu) and with a powerful centralized state and good civil servants, the first Han emperors applied the death penalty less frequently, taxes went up to a thirtieth part individual income and Confucianism became a state religion. In 8 AD Wang Mang would strip the child emperor from power and made several reforms such as declaring that all land was state property, and limiting the size of these, with the too large being confiscated, slaves also became state possession and Wang Mang also tried to regulate the price and monopolize raw materials. The rich opposed the reforms made. In AD 18 there was a peasant revolt led by Fang Chung, "red shadows revolt" that would defeat Wang Mang's army in AD 25. Later the Han dynasty would be restored by the aristocracy. In 184 AD there would be a new peasant revolt ("yellow ribbon revolt" led thanks to Juang Chao and brothers, who wanted equality for all, who had a few hundred thousand men. It was a strong fight that lasted 2 years, which although crushed it would disintegrate China again.

In the 1st century there was great technological progress, during which paper was invented by Cai Lun.

ancient india

Main article: History of India

The Great Living Temples of Chola, built by the Chola Empire during the 11th and 12th centuries.

The Stone Age paintings on the Bhimbetka Rock shelters in Madia Pradesh are the oldest known footprints of human life in India. The first permanent human settlements appeared more than 9,000 years ago and gradually developed into what is now known as the Indus Valley civilization, which flourished around 3300 BC in western India. . After its fall, the Vedic civilization begins, which welcomed the foundations of Hinduism and other aspects of Indian society, a period that ended in 500 BC, where many independent kingdoms and other states known as "Mahajanapadas" were established throughout the country.

In the 3rd century BC, most of South Asia was conquered by Chandragupta Maurya, to unite them with the Mauryan Empire, in which he flourished under Asoka. From the 3rd century onwards, the Gupta Empire led the empire into a period of prosperity known as "The Golden Age in India".

ancient japan

Main article: History of Japan

Horyu-ji, one of the oldest wooden buildings in the world, is one of the national treasures and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Human occupation of Japan dates back to the Paleolithic, and the most consensual date for the first human presence in this archipelago is 35,000 BC, when hunter-gatherer peoples arrived on the islands from the mainland through isthmuses. The first Japanese chipped stone tools date from this time, and the polished stone ones date back to 30,000 BC, being the oldest in the world. It is not yet known why these tools appeared so early in Japan. In 1985 divers made discoveries of submerged structures in Yonaguni, Okinawa, which attracted many historians, archaeologists and scientists to the archaeological site, where they carried out studies to date them. They came to the conclusion that the monuments are over 11,000 years old, the oldest in the world. Scientists confirm that these monuments found underwater off the coast of Japan are evidence that an unknown civilization may have existed, predating the Stone Age. The first ceramic culture and civilization to develop in Japan was the nomadic Jomon people who did not develop agriculture or animal husbandry. Between 250 BC. and 250 AD, the nomadic Yayoi culture, coming from Kyushu, replaced the previous one and brought the cultivation of rice, metal tools and the making of clothes.

Japan was first unified in the 4th century by the Yamato People and soon undertook the conquest of the Korean Peninsula at the end of the century. In the following centuries, competition for government positions gradually weakened Japanese rule over Korea until the 6th century. In 552, Buddhism was introduced into the country, brought from Korea and serving as a political weapon against the growing power of the priests. After the death of Emperor Shotoku in 622 and a period of civil wars, Emperor Kōtoku initiated the Taika reform that would create a state with powers concentrated in the hands of an emperor surrounded by a bureaucracy, similar to the Tang Dynasty in China. In 710 the Japanese capital was transferred from Asuka to Nara, replica of the Chinese capital at the time, starting a new period of Japanese history in which Chinese culture and technology had greater influence and Buddhism spread with the creation of temples by part of the emperor in the main regions.

ancient africa

Main article: History of Africa

Map of African civilizations before European colonization.

Ancient Greece

Main article: Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is the term generally used to describe the Greek world and nearby areas (such as Cyprus, Anatolia, southern Italy, France and the Aegean coast, as well as Greek settlements on the coasts of other countries such as Egypt). Traditionally, Ancient Greece spans from 1100 BC (period after the Doric invasion) to Roman domination in 146 BC, however it must be remembered that the history of Greece begins in the Paleolithic period, passing through the Bronze Age with the Cycladic (3000-2000 BC), Minoan (3000-1400 BC) and Mycenaean (1600-1200 BC) civilizations; some authors use another period, the pre-Homeric period (2000-1 200 BC), to incorporate yet another historical passage to Ancient Greece.

Minoan world

Main article: Minoan civilization

Ruins of Knossos Palace in Crete

Fresco of the Palace of Knossos.

greek culture

Main article: Ancient Greece#Culture

Ancient Rome

Main article: Ancient Rome

Monarchy and Roman Republic

According to the legend of Romulus and Remus, Rome was founded in 753 BC. At the same time, a group of villages on the top of the hill of the River Tiber became the city of Rome. Then between 616 and 510 BC it was a monarchy, where the Etruscans held power over the northern city-states. Tarquinius Priscus was the first king of the city. In 510 BC they expel the last king, Tarquinius. Afterwards Rome becomes a republic that lasts until 31 BC. In 451 BC the first Roman law code was created. In 340-338 BC it came to dominate the region of Lazio. In 264-241 BC in the first Punic war, fought against the Carthaginians, definitively conquers Sicily. In the Second Punic War, Scipio defeats Hannibal, who invaded Italy.

In 149-146 BC the third Punic war took place, in which Carthage was totally destroyed, and Rome became the most powerful country in the Mediterranean. In 73-71 BC, Spartacus leads a failed revolt against Rome. In 60 BC Julius Caesar, Pompey and Licinius Crassus hold a triumvirate. In 55 BC Julius makes the first expeditions to Britannia. Julius Caesar becomes dictator in 49 BC, until he is assassinated in 44 BC.

Roman Empire

Main article: Roman Empire

The Roman Empire began in 27 BC with Octavian, receiving the title of Augustus (emperor), the empire would end in 476, with the conquest of Rome by Odoacer.

Roman culture

Main article: Culture of Ancient Rome

Christianity

Main article: Christianity

See also: Impact of Christianity on Civilization

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus, who would die in 30, as found in the Gospels, an integral part of the New Testament. Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah and as such refer to him as Jesus Christ.

With around 2.13 billion adherents, Christianity is now the world's largest religion. It is the predominant religion in Europe, America, Oceania and much of Africa and parts of Asia.

Christianity began in the 1st century and would be authorized in the Roman Empire by Constantine in the Edict of Milan in 313 as a sect of Judaism, sharing sacred texts with this religion, specifically the Tanak, which Christians call the Old Testament. Like Judaism and Islam, Christianity is regarded as an Abrahamic religion.

Christianity (Roman Catholicism, more specifically) would become the official religion of the Roman Empire after all pagan cults were banned by Theodosius in 391-392.

According to the New Testament, the followers of Jesus were first called "Christians" in Antioch (Acts 11:26).

Fall of the Roman Empire

Main article: Fall of the Roman Empire

The fall of the Western Roman Empire occurred due to the barbarian invasions that began with a displacement of the Huns, a nomadic tribe from the Central Asian steppes who, in search of pastures and new lands, moved to the shores of the Black Sea and began to exert pressure. about several of the peoples who lived there, such as the Visigoths, who asked the Roman Empire for help and authorization to settle there. There were wars between the Goths and the Romans, and for a fifth century there were almost uninterrupted looting of the empire. In 476 Rome would be conquered by Odoacer, and the last emperor Romulus Augustus deposed. The Eastern Roman Empire would last until 1453 when it was conquered by the Ottomans.

Islam

Main article: Islam

Islam or Islam (from Arabic الإسلام , transl. al-Islām) is a monotheistic religion that emerged in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, based on the religious teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (Muhammad) and a sacred scripture, the Quran. The religion is also known as Islam.

China's Tang Dynasty

Main article: Tang Dynasty

The Tang Dynasty lasted from 618 to 907, during this dynasty China expanded and Chinese arts flourished, encouraged by Emperor Xuanzong. Chang'an was the largest city in the world with over a million inhabitants. At this time printing was invented and Buddhism ascended, until it was suppressed in the late Tang period.

Byzantine Empire

Main article: Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire (or Byzantium) was the Eastern Roman Empire during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centered on its capital, Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire (Greek: Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων, Basel Rhōmaiōn) or Romania (Ῥωμανία, Rhōmanía) by its inhabitants and neighbors, the empire was the direct continuation of the ancient Roman state. It is today distinguished from Ancient Rome in that the empire was oriented by Greek culture, characterized by a Christian State Church, and predominance of the Greek language in contrast to the Latin language.

As the distinction between the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire is largely a modern convention, it is not possible to assign a date of separation, although an important point is the transfer, in 324, by Emperor Constantine I of the capital of Nicomedia (in Anatolia). ) to Byzantium on the Bosporus, which became Constantinople, "City of Constantine" (alternatively "New Rome"). The Roman Empire was finally divided in 395, after the death of Emperor Theodosius I (r. 379–395), which was a very important date for the Byzantine Empire (or Eastern Roman Empire), as it became completely separate from the Roman Empire. Western.

The Byzantine Empire ended when on May 29, 1453 the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and the city became their capital.

Song Dynasty of China

Main article: Song Dynasty

The Song dynasty began in 960 founded by Zhao Kuangyin. He would make Kaifeng capital. In 1067-1100 there would be influence struggles between the reformers (Wang Anshi) and the conservatives (Sima Guang). In northern China, the Jin dynasty would appear, who would later make a peace treaty with the Song. The Jin dynasty would be conquered by the Mongols entirely in 1234, as the Chinese allied with them. The Song dynasty would be conquered in 1279, and its last emperor.

Mongol Empire

After 1260 it disintegrated into the kingdoms:

Khanate of the Golden Horde

Chagatai Khanate

ilkanate

Yuan dynasty

Main article: Mongol Empire

The Mongol State was founded in 1206, when Temujim adopted the name of Genghis Khan. In 1215 they conquered the capital of the Jim Empire, Beijing, and progressively conquered Northern China. In 1219-1223 they invade the Muslim world and the Russian steppes. In 1227, Genghis Khan dies.

Medieval Europe

Main article: Middle Ages

The Middle Ages began in Europe with the Germanic invasions in the 5th century, on the Western Roman Empire. This period lasted until the 10th century. The Middle Ages are characterized by the rural economy, commercial weakening, supremacy of the Catholic Church, feudal production system and hierarchical society. In the Middle Ages anyone accused of witchcraft would be burned, usually if they had any cats, especially black ones, they would also be burned for superstition. Another thing that marked the Middle Ages was the Black Death, a pandemic that killed more than millions of people and occurred between 1346-53. The disease was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted through fleas (Xenopsylla cheopis) on black rats (Rattus rattus) or other rodents.

Way of life in feudalism.

Ming dynasty

Main article: Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty began in China in 1368, the dynasty was proclaimed by Zhu Yuanzhang, a former peasant who had become leader of the revolt against the Mongols. In 1370-1387 the entire territory would be liberated from the Mongols. In 1380 there would be purges, where Zhu Yuanzguang's companion in arms, Hu Weiyang, would be executed. In 1395, great works were carried out. In the years 1405-1433 there were great maritime expeditions that would pass through the China Sea, Southeast Asia and the east coast of Africa, the leader of this expedition would be the Muslim eunuch Zheng He. In 1521 Beijing would become the capital. In 1449 there was an incursion by the Mongols and they would take the Emperor prisoner. In the 16th century there would also be attacks by pirates. In the 16th and 17th centuries there would be struggles between eunuchs and literati. In 1644 the Ming dynasty would end, after peasant uprisings in 1627-1630. It was Li Zicheng's rebellion that would end the dynasty.

ottoman empire

Main article: Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire was founded by a group of Turkish warriors led by Ertugrul and his son Osman I, in the 13th century, who arrived in Anatolia from the steppes of Central Asia. Ertugrul came to Anatolia to help the Seljuk Sultan Caicosroes III, was rewarded with land, which he added until they created the Osman-li, or Ottoman Empire. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople was finally taken by the Ottoman Empire, controlled by Mohammed I the Gentleman, who since 1451 had directed his army to this great city. The Ottomans conquered Serbia in 1458-59, Bosnia in 1463-64, they would make a war against Venice in 1463 until 1479, they would conquer Syria and Egypt in 1516-17, in 1529 they would make a first siege of Vienna. The Ottoman Empire began to decline from 1750, and officially ended in 1918.

Rebirth

Main article: Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian man synthesizes Renaissance ideas: humanist and classical.

Renaissance, Renaissance or Renaissance are the terms used to identify the period of European History approximately between the end of the 13th century and the middle of the 17th century. Scholars, however, have not reached a consensus on this chronology, with considerable variations in dates according to the author. Be that as it may, the period was marked by transformations in many areas of human life, which mark the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age. Although these transformations are quite evident in culture, society, economy, politics and religion, characterizing the transition from feudalism to capitalism and signifying a break with medieval structures, the term is most commonly used to describe their effects on the arts, philosophy and in the sciences.

It was called "Renaissance" because of the rediscovery and revaluation of cultural references from classical antiquity, which guided the changes of this period towards a humanist and naturalist ideal. The term was first registered by Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century, but the notion of Renaissance as we understand it today emerged from the publication of Jacob Burckhardt's book The Culture of Renaissance in Italy (1867), where he defined the period as a time of "discovery of the world and of man".

The cultural Renaissance first manifested itself in the Italian region of Tuscany, having as main centers the cities of Florence and Siena, from where it spread to the rest of the Italian peninsula and then to practically all the countries of Western Europe, driven by the development of the press. by Johannes Gutenberg. Italy has always remained the place where the movement had the greatest expression, but Renaissance manifestations of great importance also took place in England, Germany, the Netherlands and, to a lesser extent, in Portugal and Spain, and in their American colonies. Some critics, however, consider, for various reasons, that the term "Renaissance" should be confined to the Italian culture of that period, and that the European diffusion of Italian classical ideals belongs more properly to the sphere of Mannerism. In addition, studies carried out in recent decades have reviewed a number of historically established opinions regarding this period, considering them to be insubstantial or stereotyped, and seeing the Renaissance as a much more complex, contradictory and unpredictable phase than assumed over generations. .

Scientific Renaissance

Main article: Scientific revolution

During the 14th century, Universities in Europe grew from 20 to 70. Thanks to these new universities, more scholars were able to discuss new ideas, theories, old or recent. These universities received students from other universities, so knowledge and ideas spread and were created more easily. With the emergence of printing in Europe by Gutenberg, books became more common. In 1453, a group of scholars fled Constantinople with several manuscripts, some of which were Greek texts of great importance. In 1543 Copernicus published a book in which he explained his heliocentric theory. Already in the 17th century, Galileo proved Copernicus' theory and did some more astronomical studies. However, the Inquisition sentenced him to house arrest.

In order to have a Scientific Renaissance, 6 things are needed, citing and summarizing the world history book that serves as a source in this section:

1. A society rich enough to support a sizable group who spend their time reading, talking, and doing experiments that may lead to nothing;

2. Opportunities for networking (such as universities or learned societies);

3. Access to accumulated knowledge, both ancient and recent, present in libraries and printed books;

4. Appropriate technology such as microscopes and telescopes;

5. Freedom of investigation, without censorship;

6. A culture in which research is a habit and challenging accepted ideas is the norm.

Protestant Reformation

Main article: Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation was a Christian reform movement started in the 16th century by Martin Luther, who, through the publication of his 95 Theses.

discoveries

Main article: Age of Discovery

Painting of the Santa Maria caravel.

The Age of Discoveries or the Great Navigations are designations given to the period of history that took place between the 15th century and the beginning of the 17th century, during which Europeans intensively explored the globe in search of new trade routes. Historians generally refer to the "age of discovery" as the pioneering maritime explorations carried out by Portuguese and Spanish between the 15th and 16th centuries, which were later followed by other European countries such as France, England, Holland.

When the Discoveries began, European knowledge of the world was little based on old maps made by Ptolemy, which did not include the New World and large parts of the world were simply poorly made. When new navigation instruments began to appear, the Portuguese began to sail along the African coast with their caravels. The boats returned full of slaves and gold, which motivated further exploration of this coastline. Infante D. Henrique was a promoter of the Portuguese discoveries and died in 1460, when the Portuguese had already sailed in the Gulf of Guinea. In 1486, Diogo Cão, Portuguese navigator, arrived in present-day Namibia, and in 1488, Bartolomeu Dias, navigator of Portugal, rounded the Cape of Good Hope. In 1492, Christopher Columbus, a Genoese navigator, arrived in the Americas. In 1494 Portugal and Spain jointly signed a treaty negotiated by Pope Alexander VI in which Spain would retain the western part of a line that crosses the Atlantic and Brazil, and Portugal the eastern part. In 1498, Vasco da Gama, also a Portuguese navigator, would arrive in Calicut, in present-day India, and in 1519 Fernão de Magalhães would start a trip around the world that would end in 1521.

Pre-Columbian America

aztecs

Main article: Aztecs

The Aztecs (13th century to 1521; the Aztec form is also used) were a Mesoamerican, pre-Columbian civilization, which flourished mainly between the 14th and 16th centuries, in the territory corresponding to present-day Mexico. Its capital was Tenochtitlán, the current city of Mexico founded in 1325 by the Nahua people on Lake Texcoco.

Aztec society was divided into classes, with the nobility at the top and the peasants at the bottom. Supposedly, education was universal and for both sexes. The boys also had military training. Their empire stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific in 1520. They were polytheistic, related to the Sun, the creation of the Cosmos, death, fertility and war; among others.

The Aztec language was Nahuatl.

The Aztecs were defeated and their civilization destroyed by the Spanish conquerors, commanded by Fernando Cortez, surrendering in August 1521.

Incas

Main article: Inca Empire

Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu in Quechua) was a state created by the Inca civilization, the result of a succession of Andean civilizations and which became the largest empire in pre-Columbian America and the most centralized, having been founded in 1438 by Pachacuti, the first Sapa Inca , with the capital in Cuzco, in present-day Peru.

Mayans

Main article: Mayans

The Mayan civilization flourished around 250 AD to 900 AD in the Yucatan Peninsula having a government organized in city-states that maintained their contact with all of Mesoamerica.

After the fall of the city of Teotihuacán, the Toltecs had dominated the mountainous regions of Mexico. Then they moved to the Yucatan Peninsula around 930.

The late Mayan empire consisted of city-states ruled by the Toltecs. Among them there were several conflicts, first for the supremacy of Chichén Itzá and later for Mayapán with its clerical nobility. In the 15th century, revolts against the Toltecs began and brought about political disintegration. The Mayans managed to resist Spanish control for a few years.

Brazilian people

Main article: Indigenous Peoples of Brazil

Rise of Capitalism

With the discoveries and the increase of long trips to the entire planet, the world economy was stimulated. There began to be an increase in investments, as precious products were sold at high prices in the East, which gave great profits to Europeans. Sometimes there were great risks. In the Middle Ages, the economy could not develop much, as the Catholic Church prohibited interest-bearing loans, a prohibition that was only lifted in the 15th century.

enlightenment

Main article: Enlightenment

The Enlightenment had its origins in the Renaissance and Humanism. The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in and around Europe in the 18th century that advocated the use of reason rather than superstition. He also advocated the replacement of tyranny and injustice with tolerance and equality. One of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment was Adam Smith, who in his book The Wealth of Nations created the science of economics. Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert were the editorial coordinators of the Encyclopédie, an encyclopedia that aimed to explain knowledge in a clear and accessible way. However, the Enlightenment had a bad side, being an incentive to the atrocities of the French Revolution.

Population Evolution and Food Revolution

In 1500 there were about 470 million men and women in the world. Most were concentrated in Europe (78 million), East Asia (in China, East Turkestan and Mongolia and Japan 94 million), and the Indian subcontinent (95 million). On the shores of the Nile River there was also a high density of humans, such as in northern Nigeria and a little to the east. In the rest of sub-Saharan Asia the population is spread out, with little in southern Africa. In Peru and Mexico 15 million each. In the next two hundred years the population would increase greatly in Europe and Asia, remaining similar in Africa and decreasing in America.

In the mid-eighteenth century, the creation of new agricultural methods, introduction of new plant species in various regions of the world, better methods of food preservation, innovative agricultural machinery, created a food revolution that rapidly decreased the number of agricultural workers, the that freed up labor for cities and factories, ideal for starting the Industrial Revolution. The food revolution thus managed to feed a growing population.

Industrial Revolution

A Watt steam engine, the steam engine, powered primarily by coal, powered the Industrial Revolution in the UK and around the world.

Main article: Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution began thanks to a series of technological and social transformations that transformed the western world from rural to urban, thus paving the way for the current capitalist world. The Revolution began in England because it had an abundance of natural resources, capital available at low interest rates and a middle class getting rich with the desire to invest more and more money, finally it had a vast market to sell its products, its empire and the its navy capable of moving around the world. The steam engine was also a big plus.

The large investment in railway lines has brought down the price of freight transport.

This transformation was possible due to a combination of factors, such as economic liberalism, capital accumulation and a series of inventions, such as the steam engine. Capitalism has become the prevailing economic system.

French Revolution

Main article: French Revolution

French Revolution is the name given to the set of events that, between July 9, 1789 and November 9, 1795, as France was bankrupt, the king had no authority, there were heavy taxes and an increase in the price of bread, and still a rising bourgeoisie, this discontent led to a revolt that began with the formation of the national constituent assembly and the dismissal of the finance minister. The resignation of the finance minister causes three days of turmoil that lasted from 11 to 14 July and led to the storming of the Bastille Prison. Then the revolt spread to the province and the peasants began to attack their lords. In 1789 and 1791 there were a series of political reforms, among them was the Declaration of Human Rights.

XIX century

Napoleonic Wars

Main articles: Napoleonic Wars and Napoleon

Bonaparte

Napoleonic Wars (European Portuguese) or Napoleonic Wars (Brazilian Portuguese) is the designation of the armed conflict that lasted from 1803 to 1815, opposing almost all the nations of Europe to Napoleon Bonaparte, heir of the French Revolution and military dictator.

Unification of Germany and Italy and the Second Reich

Main article: German unification

German Unification was a process that began in the mid-19th century and ended in 1871, for the integration and subsequent unification of several Germanic states into just one: Germany. The process was led by Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck, known as the Iron Chancellor, and culminated in the formation of the German Second Reich (Empire).

On January 18, 1871, German princes and senior military commanders proclaimed Wilhelm I of Germany German Emperor at the Palace of Versailles.

Germany also managed to form a vast empire, owning Togo, Cameroon, present-day Namibia, present-day Tanzania, northeastern New Guinea, and several other islands.

Italy would become independent and unified in 1871, with Rome as its capital, after the Italian army controlled by Garibaldi conquered Rome and the adjacent territories on September 20, 1870.

The United States in the 19th Century

In 1790, when the United States is newly independent, its population was 3.9 million. In 1800 it would be 5.3, in 1810, 7.2, in 1820, 9.6, in 1830, 12.9, in 1840, 17.1, in 1850, 23.2, in 1860, 31.4 million , in 1870, in 1880, 50.2 million, in 1890, 66.9, in 1900, 76, in 1910, 92, in 1920 105.7 in 1930 122.8 million, mainly thanks to emigration from foreign countries. The United States in the 19th century expanded immensely westward, much at the expense of the Native Americans, and in 1861-1865 the industrial North of the United States was at war with the agricultural South (the Confederacy), because of the latter's secession and the your slavery. The North won the war.

In 1873, there was a crisis due to speculation on the railways. In 1876, the telephone is invented. In 1898 a war against Spain begins in Cuba and the Philippines. In the same year the United States annexed Hawaii.

Urbanization in the 19th century

In 1800, when the 19th century began, 35% of the world's population lived in cities, in 1900, 15%. In 1800 the 5 most populous cities were, in ascending order, Istanbul, Edo (now Tokyo), Guangzhou, London and Beijing, the only one with more than one million inhabitants. In 1900 the largest cities were Chicago with almost 2 million inhabitants, Berlin with almost 3 million, Paris with just over 3, New York with just over 4 and London with six and a half million inhabitants. This large increase in urban population along with automobiles put the average traffic speed at 25 km/h in London in 1900.

Technological innovation in the 19th century

In the 19th century, in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, multiple inventions of all kinds were invented, some of these inventions such as the camera and later film cameras, typewriters, gramophones, predecessors of record players, read ribbed records, very cheap , the telegraph and later the telephone allowed the human being to record information and disseminate it very easily. What many of these inventions have in common is that they use electricity. Of these inventions the electric telegraph was invented in 1837, the telephone in 1876, the typewriter in 1868.

The airplane was invented at the end of the 19th century, by Clément Ader, and later perfected by the Wright Brothers and by Santos Dumont, the machine gun in 1860, the light bulb already existed in 1870, the can opener in 1860. In 1906 Guglielmo Marconi made the first radio broadcasts. The cash register appeared in 1879 to stop employee theft.

20th century

beginning of the century

In 1900, the various European countries, many having lost their colonies in America, began en masse to colonize Africa, Asia, Oceania. There were religious and ideological reasons for conquering these lands, but mainly it was due to the need for exotic resources and cheap labor. As Europe became more and more populous, many Europeans emigrated to the new colonies or the Americas. Thus, at the beginning of the 20th century, much of the world was dominated by Europeans or descendants of Europeans. World map of colonialism in 1800.

World map from 1914, showing control by the great European powers of vast areas of the world.

First World War

Main article: World War I

World War I (also known as the Great War before 1939) was a world conflict that took place between July 28, 1914 and November 11, 1918.

The war took place between the Triple Entente - led by the British Empire, France, the Russian Empire (until 1917) and the United States (from 1917 onwards) - which defeated the Triple Alliance (led by the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Turkish Empire- Ottoman), and caused the collapse of four empires and radically changed the geo-political map of Europe and the Middle East.

In 1917, Russia abandoned the war due to the beginning of the Revolution. In the same year, the United States, which until then only participated in the war as suppliers, seeing its investments in danger, entered the conflict militarily, completely changing the destiny of the war and guaranteeing the victory of the Triple Entente.

Of the 65 million military personnel involved, 8.5 million died; it is also estimated that 6.6 million civilians died. The war ended on November 11, 1918.

Russian revolution

Main article: Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a series of political events in Russia, which, after the elimination of Russian autocracy, and after the Provisional Government (Duma), resulted in the establishment of Soviet power under the control of the Bolshevik Party. The result of this process was the creation of the Soviet Union, which lasted until 1991.

1929 crisis

Main article: Great Depression

Crisis of 1929 affects the economy

The Great Depression began with the crisis of October 1929 and continued through the 1930s, ending only with World War II. It is considered to be the worst and longest period of economic depression of the 20th century. During this period, there were high unemployment rates and drastic drops in the gross domestic product of several countries. Industrial production plummeted, as did stock prices.

The crisis began with "Black Tuesday" (October 29, 1929) on Wall Street. In the deepest phase of the depression that followed, the unemployment rate of the working population in the United States would reach 32%, in Germany 18% and in the United Kingdom 12%, in the years 1931-1932. In 1931 US industrial production was only 60% of what it was in 1928. At first there would be deflation, then inflation.

Fascism

Main article: Fascism

Fascism is a radical nationalist political ideology, advocating state authoritarianism, and the value of race. In Europe it emerged in the post-war period, in several countries such as Germany, plagued by unemployment and instabilities, and the shame of defeat in the Great War, allowed the rise of Hitler. In Italy, the costs of the First World War left the government weak and allowed Benito Mussolini to become the leader.

Second World War

Main article: World War II

Atomic bomb explosion over Nagasaki.

World War II or World War II was a global military conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations – including all major powers – organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most comprehensive war in history, with over 100 million troops deployed. In a state of "total war", the main parties dedicated all their economic, industrial and scientific capacity to the service of the war effort, leaving aside the distinction between civil and military resources. Marked by a significant number of attacks on civilians, including the Holocaust and the only time nuclear weapons were used in combat, it was the deadliest conflict in human history, with more than seventy million dead.

The starting point of the war is generally considered to be the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939 and subsequent declarations of war against Germany by France and most countries of the British Empire and the Commonwealth. Some countries were already at war at this time, such as Ethiopia and the Kingdom of Italy in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and China and Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Many of those not initially involved ended up joining the conflict in response to events such as the German invasion of the Soviet Union and Japanese attacks on US forces in the Pacific at Pearl Harbor and British overseas colonies, which resulted in declarations of war. against Japan by the USA, the Netherlands and the British Commonwealth.

On July 11, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. There they confirm previous agreements on Germany and reiterate the demand for unconditional surrender of all Japanese forces, specifically stating that "the alternative for Japan is rapid and total destruction." During this conference, the United Kingdom held its general election, and Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister. As Japan continued to ignore the Potsdam terms, the United States drops atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Between the two bombs, the Soviets, in accordance with the Yalta agreement, invade Japanese-held Manchuria and quickly defeat the Guangdong Army, which was the main Japanese fighting force. The Red Army also captures Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. On August 15, 1945, Japan surrenders, with surrender documents finally signed aboard the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, ending the war.

Cold War

"Buzz" Aldrin on the Moon

Main article: Cold War

Following World War II, the world is polarized around the two victorious powers of the war with the United States and capitalism on the one hand and the Soviet Union with socialism on the other. This period becomes known as the Cold War in which the superpowers vie for influence in the world without triggering an open war against each other.

Although there was never a direct armed conflict between the two powers, they faced each other indirectly through the arms race, the space race and in ideological discussions. The arms race following the idea of mutual assured destruction led the powers to arm themselves to the point of the "balance of terror" in which both powers could destroy each other and the whole world several times over.

The powers also disputed throughout the planet regions of influence of their ideologies. An example of this was the Europe destroyed after the war, which became the target of investments from both sides that sought to guarantee their influence, such as the United States' Marshall Plan. Most of Eastern Europe aligned itself with the Soviet Union and adopted socialism while Western Europe aligned itself with the United States and capitalism and the expression Iron Curtain appears to denote the division of Europe in these two areas of influence. Japan and the governments of South America aligned themselves with the United States.

Fall of the Berlin Wall.

In several armed conflicts that took place during this period, one of the contenders ended up receiving sponsorship from a power in accordance with the ideology he defended. Some of the conflicts even had the involvement of the powers, such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War. The missile crisis in Cuba generates the biggest impasse between the powers during the Cold War.

But the Soviet Union was going through social and economic problems and the wear became evident after the defeat in the space race when the United States put man on the moon and the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Two plans to reform the Soviet Union are launched by Mikhail Gorbachev: Glasnost and Perestroika. The military budget decreases.

As a result of these reforms, which allowed greater openness and transparency, the Soviet bloc began to collapse with the fall of the socialist regimes in the area of influence of the Soviet Union in Europe. This situation leads to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Years later at the end of 1991 the Soviet Union would finally collapse, signaling the definitive end of the Cold War.

XXI century

September 11, 2001 attacks.

Digital Revolution

Main article: Digital revolution

During the Cold War, there was a great expansion in the development of new technologies such as the creation of the first electronic computers and the mass media. In 1989, the World Wide Web was created by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, which represented a new change in the forms of communication, industry and commerce; the most radical since the Industrial Revolution. The World Wide Web has become massive in the 21st century, with the expansion and cheapening of infrastructure and the development of mobile computing.

Economic Globalization and Environmental Issues

Main article: Global warming

The 21st century has been marked by increasing economic globalization and integration, with the consequent increase in risk to interconnected economies, and by the expansion of mobile phone and Internet communications. Worldwide demand and competition for natural resources has increased due to population growth and industrialization, especially in India, China and Brazil. This increased demand is causing increasing levels of environmental degradation and a growing threat from global warming. Which, in turn, has stimulated the development of renewable energy sources (namely solar and wind energy), proposals for cleaner fossil fuels and expansion of the use of nuclear energy (somewhat mitigated by nuclear accidents), and, conversely, calls to avoid large-scale indiscriminate use of the fission- (nuclear) and fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) "fissile-fossil complex" for power generation.

Earth's history

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Note: This article is about relative scientific evidence about Earth's history. For the history of mankind, see History of the world.

Earth history through eons time to scale.

The History of the Earth concerns the records of the development of the planet Earth until the present day. Almost every branch of natural science has contributed to the understanding of major events in Earth's past, characterized by the geological constant of change and biological evolution.

The geological time scale, as defined by the international conversion, depicts the large periods of time from the Earth's beginnings to the present, and its divisions record some definitive events in Earth's history. (On the chart: Ga means "billions of years"; Ma, "millions of years.") The Earth was formed around 4.54 billion years ago, roughly one-third the age of the universe, by accretion of the solar nebula. Volcanic outgassing probably created the primordial atmosphere, and then the ocean, but the early atmosphere contained almost no oxygen. Much of the Earth was melted due to frequent collisions with other bodies, which led to extreme volcanism. While Earth was in its early (Proto-Earth) stage, a gigantic impact collision with a planet-sized body called Theia is believed to have formed the Moon. Over time, the Earth cooled, causing a solid crust to form and allowing liquid water to surface.

The Hadean Aeon represents the time before a reliable (fossil) record of life; started with the formation of the planet and ended 4.0 billion years ago. The following Archean and Proterozoic Eons quickly produced, within a few hundred million years, the beginning of life on Earth and its earliest evolution. The next Eon is the Phanerozoic, divided into three eras: the Paleozoic, an era of arthropods, fish and the first life on land; the Mesozoic, which measured the rise, reign, and climatic extinction of non-avian dinosaurs; and the Cenozoic, which saw the rise of mammals.

Hominini, our first human-like ancestors, emerged sometime during the latter part of the Miocene epoch; the emergence of the first hominids from ACEHC is currently debated over a wide range of 13 to 4 million years ago. The Quaternary period that follows is the time when humans were recognizable, the genus Homo, but that two-million-year-old term is too small on the graphic scale of the ETG.

The first indisputable evidence of life on Earth dates to at least 3500 million years ago, during the Eoarchaea Era, after a geological crust began to solidify after the Hadean Aeon, if previously molten. There are microbial mat fossils like the stromatolites found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Other early physical evidence of a biogenic substance is from graphite in 3.7-billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in southwest Greenland, as well as "remains of biotic life" found in 4.1-billion-year-old rocks in western Australia. According to one of the researchers, "if life appeared relatively quickly on Earth... then it could be common in the universe."

Photosynthetic organisms emerged between 3.2 and 2.4 billion years ago and began to enrich the atmosphere with oxygen. Life remained small and microscopic until about 580 million years ago, when complex multicellular life emerged, evolved over time, and culminated in the Cambrian Explosion about 541 million years ago. This event brought about the rapid diversity of life forms on Earth that produced most of the major phyla known today and marked the end of the Proterozoic Eon and the beginning of the Paleozoic Period of the Cambrian Era. More than 99 percent of all species, totaling more than five million species, that have ever lived on Earth are estimated to have become extinct. Estimates of the current number of terrestrial species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million are documented, but more than 86 percent are not described. Scientists recently reported that an estimated 1 trillion species are on Earth right now, with only 1,110 percent explained.

The earth's crust has been constantly changing since its formation. Likewise, life is constantly changing from the first appearance. Species continue to evolve, take on new forms, split off from daughter species or become extinct in the process of adaptation or die in response to the ever-changing physical environment. Plate tectonic processes continue to shape Earth's continents, oceans, and the life they inhabit. Human activity is now the dominant force influencing global change, affecting the biosphere, Earth's surface, hydrosphere and atmosphere, with loss of wild lands, exploitation in the oceans, greenhouse gas emissions, ozone and general deterioration of soil, air and water quality.

It 's ons

In geochronology, time is usually measured in Ma (mega-annum or millions of years ago), each unit representing a period of about 1,000,000 years ago. Earth's history is divided into four major eons, starting 4.54 billion with the formation of the planet. Each eon sees the most significant changes in Earth's composition, climate and life. Each eon is then divided into eras, which are in turn divided into periods, which are further divided into epochs.

It 's on Time (Ma) Event

hadean

4,540–4,000 Earth is formed by debris around the disk of the solar protoplanet. Without life. Temperatures are very high, with frequent volcanic activity and a hellish environment (hence the name of the son, which comes from Hades). The atmosphere is hazy. Perhaps a primeval ocean or a corpse of liquid water. The moon formed around this time, probably due to a protoplanet colliding with Earth.

Archean

4,000–2,500 Life of prokaryotes, the first forms of life, emerged early in this era, in a process known as abiogenesis. The continents of Ur, Vaalbara and Kenorland may have formed at this time. The atmosphere is made up of volcanic gases and greenhouses.

Proterozoic

2,500–541 Eukaryotes, more complex forms of life, emerged, including various forms of multicellular organisms. Bacteria begin to produce oxygen, forming a third and current Earth's atmosphere. Plants, livestock and possibly earlier forms of fungi at this time. The early and late stages of this eon may have gone through a "snowball Earth" period, during which all planets experience sub-zero temperatures. The first continents Columbia, Rodinia and Panotia may have formed at this time.

Phanerozoic

541–present Complex life, including vertebrates, began to dominate Earth's oceans in a process known as the Cambrian explosion. It forms Pangea and then dissolves into Laurasia and Gondwana. Gradually, life expanded to the land and all forms of plants, animals and fungi began to appear, including ants, insects and reptiles. Several mass extinctions have occurred, including birds, descendants of dinosaurs, and recently emerged tombs. Modern animals–including humans–develop in this last phase.

geological time scale

Main articles: Geological time scale and Historical geology

Earth's history is ordered chronologically on a geological time scale table, which is divided into intervals according to stratigraphic analysis. The full timescale can be found in the main article. The former shows all the time from Earth's formation to the present, but this leaves little room for the more recent eon. So the second timeline shows a broader view of the most recent eon. Likewise, the most recent era is expanded in the third timeline, and the most recent period is expanded in the fourth timeline.

Formation of the Solar System

Artist's representation of a protoplanetary disk around a solar protostar.

Main article: Formation and evolution of the Solar System

See also: Modernity and the Future

Change continued at a rapid pace from the mid-1940s to today. Technological developments include nuclear weapons, computers, genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Economic globalization, driven by advances in communication and transportation technology, has influenced everyday life in many parts of the world. Cultural and institutional forms such as democracy, capitalism and ecologism have greater influence. Major concerns and problems such as disease, war, poverty, violent radicalism, and recently, man-made climate change have increased with the increase in world population.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into orbit and soon after, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. Neil Armstrong, an American, was the first to set foot on another astronomical object, the Moon. Unmanned probes have been sent to every known planet in the Solar System, with some (such as the two Voyager spacecraft) having left the Solar System. Five space agencies, representing more than fifteen countries, worked together to build the International Space Station. Aboard it, there has been a continuous human presence in space since 2000. The World Wide Web became part of everyday life in the 1990s and since then, it has become an indispensable source of information in the developed world.

Universe Chronology

This Universe chronology or Big Bang chronology describes the history of the Universe and its future according to Big Bang cosmology. The early stages of the universe's existence are estimated to be 13.8 billion years ago, with an uncertainty of about 21 million years at the 68% confidence level.

Five-stage chronology

For the purposes of this summary, it is convenient to divide the chronology of the universe since its origins into five parts. It is generally considered meaningless or uncertain whether time existed before this chronology:

The very primitive universe

The first picosecond (10-12) of cosmic time. It includes the Age of Planck, during which the laws of physics currently understood may not apply; the emergence in stages of the four known fundamental interactions or forces - first gravitation and later, electromagnetic interactions, weak and strong; and the expansion of space itself and the supercooling of the still immensely hot universe due to cosmic inflation, which is believed to have been triggered by the separation of the strong and electroweak interactions.

Small ripples in the universe at this stage are believed to be the basis of large-scale structures that formed much later. Different stages of the early universe are understood to different extents. The previous parts are beyond the scope of practical experiments in particle physics, but can be explored by other means.

the primitive universe

Lasting for about 370,000 years. Initially, various types of subatomic particles are formed in stages. These particles include nearly equal amounts of matter and antimatter; therefore, most annihilate quickly, leaving a small excess of matter in the universe.

In about a second, the neutrinos dissociate; these neutrinos from the cosmic neutrino background (CνB). If primordial black holes exist, they too are formed approximately one second of cosmic time. Composition as subatomic particles emerge—including protons and neutrons—form over 2 minutes, conditions are just right for nucleosynthesis: about 25% of the protons and all the neutrons fuse into heavier elements, initially deuterium, which quickly quickly melts into helium-4.

In 20 minutes, the universe is no longer hot enough for nuclear fusion, but it is too hot for neutral atoms to exist or photons to travel far. Therefore, it is an opaque plasma. In about 47,000 years, as the universe cools, its behavior begins to be dominated by matter rather than radiation. In about 100,000 years, helium hydride is the first molecule. (Much later, hydrogen and helium hydride react to form molecular hydrogen, the fuel needed for the first stars.)

In about 370,000 years, the universe finally becomes cold enough to form neutral atoms ("recombination") and as a result, it also becomes transparent for the first time. Newly formed atoms—mostly hydrogen and helium with traces of lithium—rapidly reach their lowest energy state (ground state) by releasing photons ("photon decoupling"), and these photons can still be detected today as the cosmic background of microwave (CMB). It is currently the oldest observation we have of the Universe.

Dark Ages and emergence of large-scale structure

From 370,000 years to about 1 billion years. After recombination and dissociation, the universe was transparent, but the hydrogen clouds just collapsed very slowly to form stars and galaxies, so there were no new sources of light. The only photons (electromagnetic radiation, or "light") in the universe were those released during dissociation (today visible as the cosmic microwave background) and radio emission 21 cm occasionally emitted by hydrogen atoms. The dissociated photons would have filled the universe with a bright pale orange glow at first, gradually changing to non-visible red after about 3 million years, leaving it with no visible light. This period is known as the Cosmic Dark Ages.

Between 10 and 17 million years ago, the average temperature of the universe was suitable for liquid water of 273 K (−0.150 °C)–373 K (99.9 °C), and it is speculated that rocky planets or even life could have appeared briefly, since statistically a small part of the universe could have different conditions from the rest as a result of a very unlikely statistical fluctuation and have received heat from the universe as a whole.

At some point, around 200 to 500 million years ago, the first generations of stars and galaxies form (exact timings are still being researched) and large structures gradually emerge, drawn to the foam filament of dark matter, filaments that have already began to unite across the universe. The first generations of stars have not yet been observed astronomically. They may have been huge (100-300 solar masses) and non-metallic, with very short lifespans compared to most stars we see today; end up burning their hydrogen fuel and highly energetic explosion of supernovas and pair instability after mere millions of years. Other theories suggest they may have included tiny stars, some perhaps still warming up today. In either case, these first generations of supernovae created most of the everyday elements, which we see around us to this day and seed the universe with them.

Clusters of galaxies and superclusters emerge over time. At some point, high-energy photons from the oldest stars, dwarf galaxies, and perhaps quasars lead to a period of reionization that begins gradually between 250 to 500 million years, ends in about 700-900 million years, and decreases by about 1 billion years (exact times still being researched). The universe gradually transitioned into the universe we see around us today, and the Dark Ages only came to an end in about 1 billion years.

The Universe as it appears today

Since 1 billion years and for about 12.8 billion years, the universe has looked the same as it does today. It will continue to look very similar for many billions of years into the future. The thin disk of our galaxy began to form at about 5 billion years ago (8.8 Gya), and the Solar System formed at about 9.2 billion years ago (4.6 Gya), with the first traces of life on Earth. Earth emerging in about 10.3 billion years (3.5 Gya).

From about 9.8 billion years of cosmic time, the slow expansion of space gradually begins to accelerate under the influence of dark energy, which can be a scalar field throughout the universe. The current universe is well understood, but beyond about 100 billion years of cosmic time (about 86 billion years into the future), uncertainties in current knowledge mean we are less sure which path our universe will take.

The distant future and the final destination

At some point the Stellar Age will end when stars are no longer being born, and the expansion of the universe will mean that the observable universe becomes limited to local galaxies. There are several scenarios for the distant future and the Ultimate Fate of the universe. A more accurate knowledge of our current universe will allow them to be better understood.

play content

Hubble Space Telescope Galaxies—Ultra Deep Field out of the Legacy Field zoom (video 00:50; May 2, 2019)

table index

More information: Chronology of Universe Formation, Chronology of Earth History, Geological Time Scale, Chronology of Evolution, and Far Future Timeline

Note: The radiation temperature in the table below refers to the cosmic microwave background and is given by 2.725•(1+z), where z is the redshift.

big Bang

Main articles: Big Bang, Cosmogony and Why is there something?

cosmic history

The standard model of cosmology is based on a space-time model called the Friedmann – Lemaître – Robertson – Walker (FLRW) metric. A metric provides a measure of distance between objects, and the FLRW metric is the exact solution of the Einstein Field Equations (EFE) if some key properties of space, such as homogeneity and isotropy, are held to be true. The FLRW metric closely matches other evidence showing that the universe has expanded since the Big Bang.

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The very primitive universe

All understanding of the beginning of the Universe (Cosmogony) is speculative. No particle accelerator currently in existence has enough energy to prove with certainty what may have happened in this period. The scenarios are completely different. Some of the existing theories are Hartle-Hawking, string theory, particle expansion, gas string cosmology, and the Wielkiej Kraksy (Ekpyrotic Universe) theory. Some of these theories are associated, some are not.

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The Age of Planck

Up to 10-43 seconds after the Big Bang

Main article: Age of Planck

If supersymmetry is correct, then at this time the four fundamental forces – electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and gravity – would all have the same intensity, so they were possibly unified into a single fundamental force. Little is our knowledge of this era, although different theories make different predictions. Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts a gravitational singularity before this time, but under these conditions the theory is expected to suffer a drop in its laws due to quantum effects. Physicists hope that proposed theories of quantum gravity, such as string theory and loop quantum gravity, will eventually lead to a better understanding of this era.

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The Age of Grand Unification

Between 10-43 seconds and 10-36 seconds after the Big Bang.

Main article: Age of Grand Unification

With the expansion of the universe and the cooling of the Planck epoch, gravity began to separate the fundamental gauge interactions: electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Physics at this scale can be described by a grand unification theory in which the gauge theory of the standard model is embedded in a larger group, which is split to produce the forces observed in nature. Eventually, the grand unification was broken, separating the strong nuclear force from the electroweak force. This, then, must have produced the magnetic monopoles.

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The Electroweak Age

Between 10-36 seconds and 10-32 seconds after the Big Bang.

Main article: Electroweak Era

The temperature of the universe is high enough to merge electromagnetism and the weak interaction into a single electroweak interaction. Particle interactions are energetic enough to create a large number of exotic particles, including W and Z bosons and the Higgss boson.

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The Inflationary Era and the rapid expansion of space

Between 10-32 seconds and (?) seconds after the Big Bang.

Main article: Age of Inflation

The temperature, and therefore the time, at which cosmic inflation occurs is not known with certainty. During inflation, the universe is flattened and the universe enters a phase of rapid homogeneous and isotropic expansion in which the seeds of structure formation are fixed in the form of a primordial spectrum of scale-invariant quasi-fluctuations. Some photon energy becomes virtual quarks and hyperons, but these particles rapidly decay. One scenario suggests that, prior to cosmic inflation, the universe was cold and empty, and the immense heat and energy associated with the early stages of the Big Bang was created through the phase shift associated with the end of inflation. This rapidly expanding expansion of the early linear dimensions of the universe by a factor of at least 1026 (and possibly a much larger factor), and thus its volume increased by a factor of at least 1078.

The expansion is thought to have been triggered by the phase transition that marked the end of the preceding grand unification era at approximately 10−36 seconds after the Big Bang. One of the theoretical products of this phase transition was a scalar field called the inflaton field. As this field settled into its lowest energy state in the entire universe, a repulsive force was generated that led to a rapid expansion of space. This expansion explains several properties of the current universe that are difficult to explain without such an inflationary epoch.

Exactly when the inflationary epoch ended is not known, but it is believed to have been between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds after the Big Bang. The rapid expansion of space meant that the elementary particles left over from the grandiose unification epoch were now very finely distributed throughout the universe. However, the enormous potential energy of the inflation field was released towards the end of the inflationary epoch, repopulating the universe with a dense, hot mixture of quarks, anti-quarks and gluons as it entered the electroweak era.

On March 17, 2014, astrophysicists in the BICEP2 collaboration announced the detection of B-mode inflationary gravitational waves in the power spectrum, providing the first clear experimental evidence for cosmological inflation and the Big Bang. However, on June 19, 2014, reduced confidence in confirming the cosmic inflation findings was reported.

Electroweak symmetry breaking

Main article: Higgs Mechanism

During reheating, the exponential expansion that occurred during inflation ceases and the potential energy of the inflaton field decays to a hot, relativistic particle plasma. If grand unification is a feature of our universe, then cosmic inflation must occur during or after grand unification's symmetry is broken, otherwise magnetic monopoles would be seen in the visible universe. At this point, the universe is dominated by radiation; quarks, electrons and form neutrinos.

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Speculated supersymmetry break

Main article: Supersymmetry break

If supersymmetry is a property of our universe, then it must be broken down to an energy as low as 1 TeV, the electroweak symmetry scale. The masses of the particles and their S-particles will then no longer be equal, which could explain why there are no known particle superpartners that have ever been observed.

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the primitive universe

After cosmic inflation ends, the universe is filled with a quark-gluon plasma. From this point forward the physics of the early Universe is better understood, and less speculated.

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The Age of Quark

Between 10-12 seconds and 10-6 seconds after the Big Bang

Main article: Quark Era

In electroweak force symmetry, at the end of the electroweak era, all particles are believed to acquire a mass through the Higgs mechanism, in which the Higgs acquires an expected value in a vacuum. The fundamental interactions of gravitation, electromagnetism, strong interaction and weak interaction have already taken their current forms, but the temperature of the universe is still too high to allow quarks to bind into hadrons.

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bariogenesis

Main article: Bariogenesis

There is no knowledge in physics that can explain the fact that there are so many more baryons in the universe than there are antibaryons. For this to be explained, the Sakharov conditions must be met sometime after inflation. There are indications that this is possible in known physics and from studying the grand unified theories, but the full picture is not known.

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The Hadron Age

Between 10-6 seconds and 1 second after the Big Bang

Main article: Hadron Era

The quark-gluon plasma that makes up the universe cools until hadrons, including baryons such as protons and neutrons, can form. At about 1 second after the Big Bang, the neutrinos begin to decouple from traveling freely through space. This cosmic neutrino background, while unlikely to ever be observed in detail, is analogous to the cosmic microwave background that was emitted much later.

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Neutrino decoupling and cosmic neutrino background (CνB)

About 1 second after the Big Bang

Main articles: Neutrino Decoupling and Cosmic Neutrino Background

Approximately 1 second after the Big Bang, the neutrinos decouple and begin to travel freely through space. Because neutrinos rarely interact with matter, these neutrinos still exist today, analogous to the much later cosmic microwave background emitted during recombination, about 370,000 years after the Big Bang. The neutrinos from this event have a very low energy, about 10 to 10 times lower than what is possible with current direct detection. Even high-energy neutrinos are notoriously difficult to detect, so this cosmic neutrino background (CvB) may not be directly observed in detail for many years to come.

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Possible formation of primordial black holes

It may have occurred about 1 second after the Big Bang

Main article: Primal black hole

Primordial black holes are a hypothetical type of black hole proposed in 1966, which may have formed during the so-called era of radiation domination, due to high densities and inhomogeneous conditions within the first second of cosmic time. Random fluctuations can cause some regions to become dense enough to undergo gravitational collapse, forming black holes. Current theories and understandings place strict limits on the abundance and mass of these objects.

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The Age of Lepton

Between 1 second and 10 seconds after the Big Bang

Main article: Lepton era

Most hadrons and anti-hadrons annihilate each other at the end of the hadron era, leaving leptons and anti-leptons dominating the mass of the universe.

Approximately 3 seconds after the Big Bang, the temperature of the universe drops to the point where new leptons/anti-leptons are not created and most leptons and anti-leptons are eliminated in annihilation reactions, leaving a small residue. of leptons.

The Photon Age

Between 10 seconds and 370,000 years after the Big Bang

Main article: Photon Era

After most leptons and anti-leptons are annihilated at the end of the lepton era, the energy of the universe is dominated by photons. These photons are still interacting frequently with protons, electrons and (eventually) nuclei, and will continue to do so for the next 300,000 years.

Nucleosynthesis of luminous elements

Between 2 minutes and 20 minutes after the Big Bang

Main article: Primordial nucleosynthesis

During the photon age, the temperature of the universe drops to the point where atomic nuclei can begin to form. Protons (hydrogen ions) and neutrons begin to combine into atomic nuclei in the process of nuclear fusion. However, nucleosynthesis only lasts for about three minutes, after which the temperature and density of the universe has dropped to the point where nuclear fusion cannot continue. Right now, there are about three times more hydrogen ions than helium-4 nuclei and only trace amounts of other nuclei.

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Mastery of matter

47,000 years after the Big Bang

Main articles: Scale Factors and Structural Formation

At this time, the densities of non-relativistic matter (atomic nuclei) and relativistic radiation (photons) are equal. The Jeans length, which determines the smallest structures that can form (due to competition between gravitational attraction and pressure effects), begins to fall and perturbations, rather than being decimated by free-transmission radiation, which can begin to grow in amplitude.

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first molecules

100,000 years after the Big Bang

Around 100,000 years ago, the universe cooled down enough for helium hydride, the first molecule, to form. In April 2019, this molecule was first announced as a discovery in interstellar space. (Much later, atomic hydrogen reacts with helium hydride to create molecular hydrogen, the fuel needed for star formation.)

Recombination, photon decoupling and the cosmic microwave background (CMB)

300,000 years after the Big Bang

Main articles: Cosmic Recombination and Cosmic Shift

WMAP data shows background microwave radiation variations across the Universe from our perspective, although the actual variations are much smoother than the diagram suggests.

The bottom of this box approximates the original 4000 K color of the photons released during decoupling, before becoming redshifted to form cosmic microwave radiation. The entire universe would have appeared as a glowing haze of a similar color and a temperature of 4000 K, at the time.

Hydrogen and Helium atoms begin to form and the density of the universe drops. During recombination, dissociation occurs, causing photons to evolve independently from matter. This means that the photons that make up the cosmic microwave background are a portrait of the universe during this time.

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Dark Ages and emergence of large-scale structure

Between 370,000 and about 1 billion years after the Big Bang

Main articles: Large-scale structure of the universe and List of most distant astronomical objects

Hubble Ultra Deep Fields often show galaxies from an ancient epoch that tell us the beginning of the Stellar era as it was formed.

Another Hubble image shows an infant galaxy forming nearby, which means it happened very recently on the cosmological timescale. This is evidence that the Universe is not finished yet with the formation of galaxies

Structure formation in the Big Bang model proceeds in a hierarchical fashion, with smaller structures forming before larger ones. The first structures to form are quasars, which are thought to be bright, starting as active galaxies and population stars III. Before that time, the evolution of the universe could be understood through cosmological theory of linear perturbations, that is, all structures could be understood as small deviations from a perfect homogeneous universe. This is computationally relatively easy to study. At this point, nonlinear structures start to form, and the computational problem becomes much more difficult, involving, for example, N-body simulation with particles.

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Age of darkness

Main article: Hydrogen line

In this era, very few atoms are ionized, so the only radiation emitted is the 21 centimeter spin-line of neutral hydrogen. There is currently an observational effort underway to detect this deep radiation, as it is, in principle, an even more powerful tool than the cosmic microwave background for studying the early universe.

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Speculated habitable era

Between 10 and 17 million years after the Big Bang

Main article: Abiogenesis

The chemistry of life may have started shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during a habitable era when the Universe was just 10-17,000,000 years old.

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First structures and stars emerge

Between 150 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang

Main articles: Star formation, Dwarf galaxy, Baryonic acoustic oscillations, Large-scale structure of the universe, Structural formation, and Big Freeze

The first stars, most likely Population III stars, form and begin the process of transforming the light elements that were formed in the Big Bang (hydrogen, helium and lithium) into heavier elements. However, as no population of III stars has yet been observed, our understanding of them is based on computer models of their formation and evolution. Fortunately observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation can be used to date when star formation began in earnest. Analysis of such observations made by the European Space Agency's Planck telescope, as reported by BBC News in early February 2015, concludes that the first generation of stars lit up 560,000,000 years after the Big Bang.

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reionization

Main articles: Reionization, Dwarf Galaxy, and Quasar

The first quasars form from gravitational collapse. The intense radiation they emit reionization to the surrounding universe. From this point forward, most of the universe is made up of plasma.

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Galaxies, clusters and galactic superclusters

Main article: Formation and evolution of galaxies

Computer-simulated view of the large-scale structure of a part of the universe about 50 million light-years across.

Collapse of large volumes of matter to form a galaxy. Population II stars are formed early in this process, with population I stars formed later.

Gravitational attraction pulls galaxies towards each other to form groups, clusters and superclusters.

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Formation of the Solar System

8 billion years after the Big Bang

Main article: Formation and evolution of the Solar System

Finally, objects of our scale, form the Solar System. Our Sun is a young generation star, incorporating the remains of many generations of previous stars, and formed approximately 5 billion years, or about 8-9,000,000,000 years after the Big Bang.

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The Universe as it appears today

The universe appeared as it does now, for many billions of years. It will continue to look like this for many billions of years into the future.

Based on the emerging science of nucleocosmochronology, the Milky Way's galactic thin disk is estimated to have formed 8.8 ± 1.7 billion years ago.

Era of dark energy domination

From 9.8 billion years after the Big Bang

Main articles: Dark Energy and Scaling Factors

From about 9.8 billion years of cosmic time, the large-scale behavior of the universe is believed to have gradually changed for the third time in its history. Its behavior was originally dominated by radiation (relativistic constituents such as photons and neutrinos) during the first 47,000 years, and since about 370,000 years of cosmic time, its behavior has been dominated by matter. During its matter-dominated era, the expansion of the universe began to slow down as gravity held back the initial outward expansion. But starting at about 9.8 billion years of cosmic time, observations show that the expansion of the universe slowly stops slowing and instead starts accelerating again.

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The distant future and the final destination

Main article: Far future timeline

With the interpretations of what happened in the universe previously, advances in fundamental physics are needed before it is possible to know the ultimate fate of the universe with any certainty. Below are some of the main possibilities.

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Thermal death, 1-100 trillion years

Main article: Thermal death of the universe

This scenario is generally considered to be the most likely if the universe continues to expand as it currently does. On a time scale on the order of a trillion years, existing stars will burn out, and the universe will go dark. The universe will approach a highly entropic state. Over a much longer timescale in the eons following this one, galaxies will collapse into black holes which will eventually evaporate through Hawking radiation. In some grand unification theories, the decomposition of protons will convert the remaining interstellar gas into positrons and electrons, which will then recombine into photons. In this case, the universe will indefinitely be composed only of a bath of uniform radiation, which will slowly redshift into lower and lower energy states, freezing.

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Big Crunch, 100 billion years

Main article: Big Crunch

If the energy density of dark energy were negative or the universe is a closed system, then it would be possible for the expansion of the universe to reverse and the universe to contract forming a hot body in a dense state. This would be analogous to a big bang reversal. This is often proposed as part of an oscillating universe, like a cyclic model. Current observations suggest that this model of the universe is probably not correct and expansion will continue.

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big rip

Main article: Big Rip

This scenario is only possible if the energy density of dark energy really increases without limit over time. This dark energy is called phantom energy and is unlike any known type of energy (except virtual particle energy). In this case, the expansion rate of the universe will increase without limit. Gravitationally bound systems such as galaxy clusters, galaxies and, ultimately, the solar system will be torn apart. Eventually, the expansion will be so rapid that it will overcome the electromagnetic forces that hold molecules and atoms together. Eventually, even atomic nuclei will be torn apart and the universe as we know it will end up in an unusual type of gravitational singularity. In other words, the universe will expand so much that the electromagnetic force holding things together will fall as the universe expands, causing all things to fall apart.

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Vacuum metastability event

Main article: False Vacuum

If our universe is in a false vacuum, it is possible for the universe to go into a lower energy state. If this happens, all structures will be destroyed instantly, without warning.

Evolutionary history of life

Note: For a more concise outline of the evolution of life, see Chronology of Evolution.

Note: Not to be confused with evolutionary history. For other meanings, see History of evolutionary thought.

The evolutionary history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and fossil organisms evolved. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life arose before 3.7 Ga. (Although there is some evidence of life as early as 4.1 to 4.28 Ga, it remains controversial due to the possible non-biological formation of the alleged fossils.) The similarities between all known present-day species indicate that they diverged throughout the process of evolution from a common ancestor. Approximately 1 trillion species currently live on Earth, of which only 1.75-1.8 million have been named and 1.8 million documented in a central database. These living species currently represent less than one percent of all species that have ever lived on Earth.

Axis scale in millions of years.

Evidence for the existence of older life comes from biogenic carbon samples and stromatolite fossils discovered 3.7 billion years ago, metasedimentary rocks discovered in western Greenland. In 2015, possible "biotic life remains" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. In March 2017, putative evidence of possibly the oldest forms of life on Earth was reported in the form of fossilized microorganisms discovered in precipitates from hydrothermal vents in the Nuvvuagittuq Belt of Quebec, Canada, which may have lived 4.28 billion years ago. years, not long after the formation of the oceans, 4.4 billion years ago, and not long after the formation of the Earth, 4.54 billion years ago.

Biofilms of coexisting bacteria and archaea were the dominant life form in the early Archean and many of the key steps in early evolution are thought to have taken place within them. The evolution of photosynthesis with oxygen about 3.5 billion years ago eventually led to oxygenation of the atmosphere, starting around 2400 million years ago. While eukaryotic cells may have been present earlier, their evolution was accelerated when they began to use oxygen in their metabolism. The oldest evidence of complex eukaryotes with organelles dates back to 1.85 billion years. Later, around 1,700 million years ago, multicellular organisms began to appear, with differentiated cells performing specialized functions.

The first land plants date to about 450 million years ago, although evidence suggests that algae formed on land as early as 1.2 billion years ago. Land plants were so successful that they are thought to have contributed to the Devonian extinction. Invertebrate animals appeared during the Ediacaran, while vertebrates appeared around 525 million years ago, during the Cambrian explosion.

During the Permian, synapsids, including the ancestors of mammals, dominated the land, but with the Permian-Triassic extinction 251 million years ago, this fact came close to decimating all complex life. During recovery from this catastrophe, Archosauria became the most abundant terrestrial vertebrates, replacing therapsids in the mid-Triassic. A group of archosauria lived when dinosaurs dominated the Jurassic and Cretaceous, while the ancestors of mammals survived as small insectivores. After the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction 65 million years ago killed off non-avian dinosaurs, mammals rapidly increased in size and diversity. Such a mass extinction may have accelerated evolution by providing opportunities for new groups of organisms to diversify.

Fossil evidence indicates that flowering plants appeared and rapidly diversified in the early Cretaceous, between 130 million and 90 million years ago, probably by coevolution with pollinating insects. Flowering plants and marine phytoplankton are still the dominant producers of organic matter. Social insects appeared around the same time as flowering plants. Despite occupying only a small part of the insects' "tree of life", they now form about half of the total insect mass. Humans evolved from a lineage with different hominid species whose oldest fossils date back more than 6 million years. Although the oldest members of this lineage have brains about the size of a chimpanzee, there are signs of a steady increase in brain size after 3 million years.

Earth's early history

Earth history and life

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older plants

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Scale: Ma (millions of years)

Main article: Earth History

The oldest meteorite fragments found on Earth are about 4.54 billion years old; this, together mainly with the dating of ancient lead deposits, put the estimated age of the Earth around this time. The Moon has the same composition as the Earth's crust but does not contain an iron-rich planetary core like Earth's. Many scientists think that only about 40 million years later a planetoid hit Earth, hurling material from the crust that eventually formed the Moon into space. Another hypothesis is that the Earth and the Moon started to coalesce at the same time, but the Earth, having a much stronger gravity, attracted almost all the iron particles in the area.

Until recently, the oldest rocks found on Earth were estimated to be around 3.8 billion years old, leading scientists to believe for decades that the Earth's surface was molten by that time. Accordingly, they named this part of Earth's history the Hadean eon, meaning "hellish". after the formation of the planet and that the planet quickly acquired oceans and an atmosphere, which may have been capable of supporting life.

Evidence gleaned from the moon indicates that from 4.0 to 3.8 billion years ago it suffered an intense late bombardment by debris left over from the formation of the Solar System, and the Earth should have suffered an even more intense bombardment due to its greater gravity. . Although there is no direct evidence of conditions on Earth 4.0 - 3.8 billion years ago, there is no reason to think that Earth was unaffected by this late intense bombardment. The event may have removed any previous atmosphere and oceans; in this case gases and water resulting from comet impacts may have contributed to their replacement, although volcanic outgassing on Earth would have contributed at least half. However, if underground microbial life had evolved at this point, it would have survived the bombardment.

Oldest evidence of life on Earth

Main article: Earliest known life forms

The oldest organisms that have been identified were tiny and with relatively few features, and their fossils look like small rods, which are difficult to differentiate from structures that arise through abiotic physical processes . The oldest indisputable evidence of life on Earth, interpreted as fossilized bacteria, dates to 3 billion years ago. Other discoveries in rocks dated to around 2.5 billion years ago have also been interpreted as bacteria, with geochemical evidence apparently showing the presence of life 3.8 billion years ago. However these analyzes were scrutinized carefully, and non-biological processes were found that could produce all these "signs of life" that have been reported. Although this does not prove that the structures found have a non-biological origin, they cannot be taken as clear evidence for the presence of life. Geochemical signatures of rocks deposited 3.4 billion years ago have been interpreted as evidence of life, although these claims have not been scrutinized in detail by critics.

Evidence of fossilized microorganisms thought to be between 3.77 billion to 4.28 billion years old has been found in the Nuvvuagittuq Greenrock Belt in Quebec, Canada, although the evidence is disputed as inconclusive.

Origin of life on Earth

Main articles: Abiogenesis, Common Origin, Evidence for Evolution, and Homology (biology)

Interactive evolutionary tree showing the divergence of modern species from common ancestor in the center. The three domains are colored with bacteria blue, archaea green and eukaryotes red.

All living organisms on Earth must have a single universal ancestor, because it would be virtually impossible for two or more separate lineages to be able to independently develop the many complex biochemical mechanisms common to all living organisms.

Life "sown" from elsewhere

Main article: Panspermia

The idea that life on Earth was "seeded" from elsewhere in the universe dates back to at least the 5th century. In the 20th century it was proposed by physical chemist Svante Arrhenius, astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, and molecular biologist Francis Crick and by chemist Leslie Orgel. There are three main versions of the "seed elsewhere" hypothesis: coming from elsewhere in our Solar System via fragments thrown into space by a large meteor impact, the only credible source being Mars; by extraterrestrial visitors, possibly through accidental contamination with microorganisms they brought with them; and from outside the Solar System but by natural means. Experiments in low Earth orbits such as EXOSTACK have shown that some microorganism spores can survive the shock of being catapulted into space and some can survive exposure to radiation from outer space for at least 5.7 years (experiment duration). Scientists are divided on the likelihood that life independently originated on Mars, or on other planets in our galaxy.

Independent appearance on Earth

Main article: Abiogenesis

Life on Earth is based on carbon and water. Carbon provides stable structures for complex chemicals and can be easily extracted from the environment, especially carbon dioxide. There is no other chemical element whose properties are similar enough to those of carbon to be called an analogue; Silicon, the element directly below carbon in the periodic table, does not form many complex stable molecules, and because most of its compounds are insoluble in water and because silicon dioxide is a hard, abrasive solid in contrast to carbon dioxide in temperatures associated with living things, it would be more difficult for organisms to extract. The elements boron and phosphorus have more complex chemistry, but they have other limitations in relation to carbon. Water is an excellent solvent and has two other useful properties: the fact that ice floats allows aquatic organisms to survive under it in winter; and its molecules have electrically negative and positive ends, which allows it to form a wider range of compounds than other solvents. Other good solvents, such as ammonia, are liquids only at such low temperatures that chemical reactions can be too slow to sustain life and do not have the other advantages of water. Organisms based on alternative biochemistry may, however, be possible on other planets.

Research into how life might have arisen from non-living chemicals focuses on three possible starting points: self-replication, an organism's ability to produce offspring very similar to itself; metabolism, its ability to feed and repair itself; and outer cell membranes, which allow food in and waste out, but exclude unwanted substances. Research on abiogenesis still has a long way to go, as theoretical and empirical approaches are just beginning to make contact with each other.

First replication: RNA world

Main articles: Last common ancestor and RNA world hypothesis

Even the simplest members of the three modern domains of life use DNA to record their "recipes" and a complex set of RNA and protein molecules to "read" these instructions and use them for growth, maintenance, and self-replication. The discovery that some RNA molecules can catalyze their own replication and the construction of proteins led to the hypothesis of earlier life forms based entirely on RNA. These ribozymes could have formed an RNA world in which there were individuals but no species, as mutations and horizontal gene transfers would mean that the offspring in each generation would likely have different genomes than their parents started with. Later, RNA would have been replaced by DNA, which is more stable, and therefore can build longer genomes, expanding the range of capabilities that a single organism can have. Ribozymes remain the main components of ribosomes, the "protein factories" of modern cells. Evidence suggests the first RNA molecules formed on Earth before 4.17 Ga.

Although short, self-replicating RNA molecules have been artificially produced in laboratories, questions have been raised about whether natural, non-biological RNA synthesis is possible. The first "ribozymes" may have been formed by simpler nucleic acids such as PNA, TNA or GNA, which would later have been replaced by RNA.

In 2003, it was proposed that porous metal sulfide precipitates would aid RNA synthesis at about 100 °C (212 °F) and ocean floor pressures near hydrothermal vents. In this hypothesis, the lipid membranes would be the last major cellular components to appear and until then, the proto-cells would be confined to the pores.

First metabolism: iron-sulfur world

Main article: Iron–sulfur world hypothesis

A series of experiments started in 1997 showed that the early stages in the formation of proteins from inorganic materials, including carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide, could be achieved using iron sulfide and nickel sulfide as catalysts. Most stages required temperatures of around 100 °C (212 °F) and moderate pressures, although one stage required 250 °C (482 °F) and a pressure equivalent to that found below 7 km (4.3 mi) of rock. Therefore, it was suggested that self-sustaining protein synthesis could have occurred near hydrothermal vents.

First membranes: lipid world

= heads of lipid molecules that attract water.

= water repellent tails.

Cross-section through a liposome.

It has been suggested that double-walled "bubbles" of lipids, such as those that form the outer membranes of cells, may have been an essential first step. Experiments that simulated conditions on early Earth have reported the formation of lipids, and these can spontaneously form liposomes, double-walled "bubbles", and then reproduce. Although they are not intrinsically information carriers like nucleic acids, they would be subject to natural selection for longevity and reproduction. Nucleic acids such as RNA may then have formed more easily inside liposomes than outside them.

clay hypothesis

Main articles: Graham Cairns-Smith#Clay Hypothesis and RNA World Hypothesis

RNA is complex and there are doubts as to whether it can be produced non-biologically in nature. Some clays, notably montmorillonite, have properties that make them plausible accelerators for the emergence of an RNA world: they grow by self-replicating their crystalline pattern; they are subject to an analogue of natural selection, as the fastest-growing "species" of clay in a particular environment quickly become dominant, and can catalyze the formation of RNA molecules. While this idea hasn't become the scientific consensus, it still has active advocates.

Research in 2003 reported that montmorillonite can also accelerate the conversion of fatty acids into "bubbles" and that "bubbles" can encapsulate RNA attached to clay. These "bubbles" can then grow to absorb additional lipids and then divide. The formation of the first cells may have been aided by similar processes.

A similar hypothesis presents self-replicating iron-rich clays as the progenitors of nucleotides, lipids and amino acids.

Environmental and evolutionary impact of microbial mats

Main articles: Microbial Carpet and Large Oxygenation Event

Modern stromatolites in Shark Bay, Western Australia.

Microbial mats are multilayered, multispecies colonies of bacteria and other organisms that are usually only a few millimeters thick but still contain a wide variety of chemical environments, each favoring a different set of microorganisms. To some extent, each mat forms its own food chain, as the by-products of each group of microorganisms often serve as "food" for adjacent groups.

Stromatolites are stubby pillars built like microorganisms on mats that slowly migrate upwards to avoid being suffocated by sediment deposited on them by water. There has been vigorous debate over the validity of alleged pre-3 Ga fossils, with critics arguing that the so-called stromatolites could have been formed by non-biological processes. In 2006, another stromatolite finding was reported in the same part of Australia as the previous ones, in rocks dated to 3.5 Ga.

In modern underwater mats, the top layer usually consists of photosynthetic cyanobacteria that create an oxygen-rich environment, while the bottom layer is oxygen-free and often dominated by hydrogen sulfide emitted by organisms living there. It is estimated that the appearance of bacterially oxygenated photosynthesis in mats increased biological productivity by a factor of between 100 and 1,000. The reducing agent used by oxygenated photosynthesis is water, which is much more abundant than the geologically produced reducing agents required by earlier non-oxygenated photosynthesis. From that point forward, life itself produced significantly more of the resources it needed than geochemical processes. Oxygen is toxic to organisms that are not adapted to it, but it greatly increases the metabolic efficiency of oxygen-adapted organisms. Oxygen became a significant component of Earth's atmosphere at about 2.4 Ga. Although eukaryotes may have existed much earlier, oxygenation of the atmosphere was a prerequisite for the evolution of most complex eukaryotic cells, from which all multicellular organisms are built. The boundary between the oxygen-rich and oxygen-free layers in the microbial mats would have moved upwards when photosynthesis ended overnight, and then downwards when it resumed the next day. This would have created selection pressure for organisms in this intermediate zone to acquire the ability to tolerate and use oxygen, possibly via endosymbiosis, where one organism lives inside another and both benefit from their association.

Cyanobacteria have the most complete biochemical "toolkits" of all mat-forming organisms. Consequently, they are the most self-sufficient of the wake organisms and were well adapted to attack on their own both as floating wakes and as early phytoplankton, providing the basis of most marine food webs.

diversification of eukaryotes

eukarya

diaphoretickes

Archaeplastida (land plants, green algae, red algae, and glaucophytes)

Hacrobia

SAR (stramenophyll, alveolata, and rhizaria)

excavata

amorphea

amoebozoa

sulcozoa

Opisthokonta

Metazoa (animals)

fungi

A possible family tree of eukaryotes

Main article: Eukaryota

Chromatin, nucleus, endomembrane system and mitochondria

Eukaryotes may have been present long before the oxygenation of the atmosphere, but most modern eukaryotes require oxygen, which their mitochondria use to fuel the production of ATP, the internal energy supply of all known cells. In the 1970s, it was proposed and after much debate, widely accepted that eukaryotes arose as a result of a sequence of endosymbiosis between prokaryotes. For example: a predatory microorganism invaded a large prokaryote, probably an Archean, but the attack was neutralized, and the attacker took up residence and evolved into the first of the mitochondria; one of these chimeras later tried to swallow a photosynthetic cyanobacterium, but the victim survived inside the attacker and the new combination became the ancestor of plants; and so on. After each endosymbiosis began, the partners would have eliminated the unproductive duplication of genetic functions by rearranging their genomes, a process that sometimes involved transferring genes between them. Another hypothesis proposes that mitochondria were originally endosymbionts that metabolize sulfur or hydrogen and later became oxygen consumers.[102] On the other hand, mitochondria may have been part of the original equipment of eukaryotes.

There is debate about when eukaryotes first appeared: the presence of steranes in Australian shales may indicate that eukaryotes were present 2.7 Ga; however, a 2008 analysis concluded that these chemicals have infiltrated rocks under 2.2 Ga and do not prove anything about the origins of eukaryotes. Fossils of the algae Grypania have been reported in 1.85 billion-year-old rocks (originally dated to 2.1 Ga, but later revised), and indicate that eukaryotes with organelles had already evolved. A diverse collection of algal fossils has been found in rocks dated to between 1.5 and 1.4 Ga. The earliest known fungal fossils date to 1.43 Ga.

plastids

Plastids, the superclass of organelles of which chloroplasts are the best-known examples, are thought to have originated from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria. Symbiosis evolved around 1.5 Ga and allowed eukaryotes to carry out oxygenated photosynthesis.[96] Three evolutionary lineages of photosynthetic plastids have since emerged, in which plastids are named differently: chloroplasts in green algae and plants, rhodoplasts in red algae, and cyanellas in glaucophytes.

Sexual reproduction and multicellular organisms

Evolution of sexual reproduction

Main articles: Origin and evolution of eukaryotic sex and Sexual reproduction

The defining features of sexual reproduction in eukaryotes are meiosis and fertilization. In this type of reproduction there is a lot of genetic recombination, in which the offspring receive 50% of the genes from each parent, as opposed to asexual reproduction, in which there is no recombination. Bacteria also exchange DNA by bacterial conjugation, with which they can acquire, for example, genes for resistance to antibiotics and other toxins and the ability to use new metabolites. However, conjugation is not a means of reproduction and is not limited to members of the same species. There are cases where bacteria transfer DNA to plants and animals.

On the other hand, bacterial transformation is clearly an adaptation for DNA transfer between bacteria of the same species. Bacterial transformation is a complex process involving the products of several bacterial genes and can be considered a form of sex in bacteria. This process occurs naturally in at least 67 prokaryotic species (from seven different phyla). Sexual reproduction in eukaryotes may have evolved from bacterial transformation.

The disadvantages of sexual reproduction are well known: the genetic redistribution of recombination can result in favorable gene combinations; and since males do not directly increase the number of offspring in the next generation, an asexual population can outnumber the offspring and displace in just 50 generations an otherwise equal sexual population. However, the vast majority of animals, plants, fungi and protists reproduce sexually. There is strong evidence that sexual reproduction originated very early in eukaryote history and that the genes that control it have changed very little since then. Explaining how sexual reproduction evolved and survived is an unsolved puzzle.

Horodyskia may have been an early metazoan, or a colonial foraminifera. It appears to be organized into a few major major masses as the thickness of the sediment layers around its base increased.

The Red Queen Hypothesis indicates that sexual reproduction provides protection against parasites, because it is easier for parasites to evolve ways to overcome the defenses of genetically identical clones than of sexual species with mobile targets, and there is some experimental evidence for this. However, there are still doubts as to whether this would explain the survival of the sexual species if several similar clone species were present, as one of the clones can survive attacks by parasites long enough to outrun the sexual species. Furthermore, contrary to what is expected by the Red Queen hypothesis, Kathryn A. Hanley et al. they found that the prevalence, abundance and mean intensity of mite parasites were significantly higher in sexual controls than in asexuals living in the same habitat. Furthermore, biologist Matthew Parker, after reviewing many genetic studies on plant disease resistance, could not find a single example consistent with the concept that pathogens are the main selective agent responsible for sexual reproduction in the host.

Alexey Kondrashov's deterministic mutation hypothesis holds that each organism has more than one harmful mutation, and the combined effects of these mutations are more harmful than the sum of the damage done by each mutation separately. In this case, sexual recombination of genes will reduce the damage that bad mutations do to offspring, and at the same time, remove some bad mutations from the genetic background, isolating them in individuals who die quickly because they have an above-average number of bad mutations. . However, evidence suggests that the postulates of the deterministic mutation hypothesis are weak, because many species average less than one harmful mutation per individual and no species that has been investigated shows evidence of synergy between harmful mutations.

The random nature of recombination causes the relative abundance of alternative traits to vary from generation to generation. This genetic drift alone is insufficient to make sexual reproduction advantageous, but a combination of genetic drift and natural selection may suffice. When chance produces combinations of good traits, natural selection offers a great advantage to lineages in which those traits are genetically linked. On the other hand, the benefits of good traits are neutralized if they appear together with bad ones. Sexual recombination gives good traits the opportunity to be linked to other good traits, and mathematical models suggest that this may be more than enough to offset the disadvantages of sexual reproduction. Other combinations of hypotheses that are inappropriate separately were also examined.

The adaptive function of sex remains an important unresolved issue today. Competing models for explaining the adaptive function of sex were reviewed by John A. Birdsell and Christopher Wills. All of the hypotheses discussed above depend on the possible beneficial effects of random genetic variation produced by genetic recombination. An alternative view is that sex originated, and has been maintained, as a process of repairing damaged DNA, and that the genetic variation produced is an occasionally beneficial by-product.

multicellularity

Main article: Multicellular organism

Simpler definitions of "multicellular" or "multicellular", for example "having multiple cells", may include colonial cyanobacteria such as Nostoc. Even a technical definition like "having the same genome but different cell types" would still include some genera of Volvox green algae, which have cells that specialize in reproduction. Multicellularity evolved independently in organisms as diverse as sponges and other animals, fungi, plants, brown algae, cyanobacteria, mucilaginous fungi, and myxobacteria. Not to make this article too lengthy, this article focuses on organisms that exhibit the greatest cell specialization and variety of cell types, although this approach to the evolution of biological complexity can be considered "rather anthropocentric".

A mucilaginous fungus solves a maze. The mucilaginous fungus (yellow) explored and solved the labyrinth (left). When the researchers placed sugar (red) in two separate spots, most mucilaginous molds concentrated most of their mass there and left only the most efficient connection between the two spots (right).

The initial advantage of multicellularity may be due to: more efficient sharing of nutrients that are digested outside the cell, increasing resistance to predators, many of which are attacked by phagocytization; the ability to withstand currents when adhering to a firm surface; the ability to reach higher to filter feed or obtain light for photosynthesis; the ability to create an internal environment that provides protection from the external environment; and even the opportunity to form a group of cells. "intelligently", sharing information. These features would also provide opportunities for other organisms to diversify, creating more diverse environments than microbial mats could generate.

Multicellularity with differentiated cells is beneficial for the organism as a whole, but disadvantageous from the point of view of individual cells, many of which have lost the opportunity to reproduce on their own. In an asexual multicellular organism, undisciplined cells that retain the ability to reproduce can take over and reduce the organism to an undifferentiated cell mass. Sexual reproduction eliminates these unruly cells from the next generation and thus appears to be a requirement for complex multicellularity.

Available evidence indicates that eukaryotes evolved much earlier but remained unnoticed until rapid diversification around 1 billion years ago. The only thing eukaryotes clearly outnumber bacteria and archaea in is their ability to take on various forms, and sexual reproduction has allowed eukaryotes to take advantage of this to produce multi-celled organisms that differ in form and function.

By comparing the composition of transcription factor families and regulatory network motifs between unicellular and multicellular organisms, the scientists found that there are many new transcription factor families and three new types of regulatory network motifs in multicellular organisms, and the new Families of transcription factors are preferentially connected in these new network motifs, which are essential for multicellular development. These results propose a plausible mechanism for the contribution of new families of transcription factors and new network motifs to the origin of multicellular organisms at the regulatory level of transcription.

fossil evidence

The fossils of the francevilian biota, dated to 2,100 Ma, are the oldest known fossil organisms that are clearly multicellular. They may have differentiated cells. Another very ancient multicellular fossil is Qingshania, dated to 1,700 Ma, which appears to consist of virtually identical cells. The red alga called Bangiomorpha, dated to 1,200 Ma, is the first organism known to have definitively specialized differentiated cells, and it is also the oldest organism known to reproduce sexually. Fossils from 1430 Ma interpreted as fungi appear to have been multicellular with differentiated cells. The "chain of two" organism Horodyskia, found in rocks dating from 1,500 Ma to 900 Ma, may have been an early metazoan, however it has also been interpreted as a colonial foraminifera.

animal emergency

Further information: Animalia, Ediacaran Biota, Cambrian Explosion, Burgess Shale Type Fauna and Crown Group § Stem groups

Bilateria

Deuterostomy (chordates, hemichordates, echinoderms)

protostomy

Ecdysozoa (arthropods, nematodes, tardigrades, etc.)

Lophotrochozoa (molluscs, annelids, brachiopods, etc.)

Acoelomorph

Cnidaria (jellyfish, sea anemones, corals)

Ctenophora (sea combs)

Placozoa

Porifera (sponges): Calcarea

Porifera: Hexactinellida & Demospongiae

Choanoflagellate

Mesomycetozoea

A family tree of animals.

Animals are multicellular eukaryotes, and are distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by not having cell walls. All animals are mobile, if only at certain stages of life. All animals except sponges have bodies differentiated into separate tissues, including muscles, which move parts of the animal when it contracts, and nervous tissue, which transmits and processes signals. In November 2019, researchers reported the discovery of Caveasphaera, a multicellular organism found in 609-million-year-old rocks, which is not easily defined as an animal or non-animal, which may be related to one of the earliest instances of animal evolution. Studies of Caveasphaera fossils have suggested that animal-like embryonic development arose long before the earliest clearly defined animal fossils. and may be consistent with studies that suggest animal evolution may have started around 750 million years ago.

However, the earliest widely accepted animal fossils are the fairly modern-looking cnidarians (the group that includes jellyfish, sea anemones, and Hydra), possibly from around 580 Ma, although fossils from the Doushantuo Formation can only be dated. about. Their presence implies that the Cnidarian and Bilaterian lineages had already diverged.

The Ediacaran biota, which flourished in the last 40 million years before the beginning of the Cambrian, were the first animals to be more than a few centimeters long. Many were flat and had a "quilted" appearance and looked so strange that there was a proposal to classify them as a separate kingdom, Vendozoa. Others, however, have been interpreted as primitive molluscs (Kimberella), echinoderms (Arkarua) and arthropods (Spriggina, Parvancorina). There is still debate over the classification of these specimens, mainly because the diagnostic features that allow taxonomists to classify more recent organisms, such as similarities to living organisms, are often absent in Ediacarans. However, there seems to be little doubt that Kimberella' was at least a triploblastic bilaterian animal, in other words, an animal significantly more complex than cnidarians.

The small shell fauna is a very mixed collection of fossils found between the Late Ediacarian and Middle Cambrian periods. The oldest, Cloudina, shows signs of successful defense against predation and could indicate the start of an evolutionary arms race. Some tiny early Cambrian shells almost certainly belonged to molluscs, while the owners of some "armor plates", Halkieria and Microdictyon, were eventually identified when more complete specimens were found in Cambrian lagerstätte that preserved soft-bodied animals.

Opabinia made the single greatest contribution to modern interest in the Cambrian explosion.

In the 1970s, there was already a debate about whether the emergence of modern phyla was "explosive" or gradual, but hidden by the scarcity of fossils of Precambrian animals. A reanalysis of fossils from the Burgess Shale lagerstätte raised interest in the subject by revealing animals, such as Opabinia, that did not fit into any known phylum. At the time, this was interpreted as evidence that modern phyla evolved very rapidly in the Cambrian explosion, and that the "strange wonders" of Burgess shale showed that the Lower Cambrian was a uniquely experimental period of animal evolution. Later discoveries of similar animals and the development of new theoretical approaches led to the conclusion that many of the "strange wonders" were evolutionary "aunts" or "cousins" of modern groups—for example, that Opabinia was a member of the lobopods, a group that includes the ancestors of arthropods, and which may have been closely related to modern tardigrades. However, there is still much debate as to whether the Cambrian explosion was really explosive, and if so, how and why it happened and why it seems unique in animal history.

Deuterostomes and the first vertebrates

Acanthodians were among the first jawed vertebrates.

Main articles: Chordates and Fish Evolution

Further information: Chordate genomics

Most of the animals at the center of the Cambrian explosion debate are [Protostomia|protostomes], one of two main groups of complex animals. The other main group, the deuterostomes, contains invertebrates such as starfish and sea urchins (echinoderms), as well as chordates (see below). Many echinoderms have hard calcite "shells", which are quite common in the small shell fauna from the early Cambrian onwards. Other groups of deuterostomes are soft-bodied, and most significant Cambrian deuterostomes fossils come from the fauna of Chengjiang, a lagerstätte in China. Chordates are another important group of deuterostomes: animals with a distinct dorsal nerve cord. Chordates include soft-bodied invertebrates such as tunicates as well as vertebrates—animals with a backbone. While the tunicate fossils predate the Cambrian explosion, the Chengjiang Haikouichthys and Myllokunmingia fossils appear to be true vertebrates, and Haikouichthys had distinct vertebrae, which may have been slightly mineralized. Vertebrates with jaws, such as the Acanthodians, first appeared in the Late Ordovician.

land colonization

See also: Earliest known life forms

Adaptation to life on land is a major challenge: all terrestrial organisms must avoid drying out and all those above microscopic size must create special structures to withstand gravity; breathing and gas exchange systems need to change; reproductive systems cannot rely on water to transport eggs and sperm to each other. Although the first evidence of terrestrial plants and animals dates from the Ordovician period (488 to 444 Ma), and a number of lineages of microorganisms arrived on earth much earlier, modern terrestrial ecosystems did not appear until the late Devonian, around 385 BC. at 359 Ma. As of May 2017, evidence of the oldest known life on earth may have been found in 3.48 billion-year-old geyserite and other related mineral deposits (often found around hot springs and geysers) discovered in the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia. In July 2018, scientists reported that the oldest life on earth may have been bacteria that lived on earth 3.22 billion years ago. In May 2019, scientists reported the discovery of a fossilized fungus, called Ourasphaira giraldae, in the Canadian Arctic, which may have grown on land a billion years ago, well before plants lived on land.

Evolution of terrestrial antioxidants

Oxygen is a potent oxidant whose accumulation in the Earth's atmosphere resulted from the development of photosynthesis along 3 Ga in cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), which were the most primitive oxygenated photosynthetic organisms. Brown algae accumulate inorganic mineral antioxidants such as rubidium, vanadium, zinc, iron, copper, molybdenum, selenium and iodine, which is concentrated more than 30,000 times the concentration of this element in seawater. Protective endogenous antioxidant enzymes and exogenous dietary antioxidants helped to prevent oxidative damage. Most marine mineral antioxidants act in cells as essential trace elements in the oxidation-reduction of metalloenzymes and antioxidants.

When plants and animals began to enter rivers and land around 500 Ma, the environmental deficiency of these marine mineral antioxidants was a challenge for the evolution of terrestrial life. Land plants have slowly optimized the production of “new” endogenous antioxidants such as ascorbic acid, polyphenol, flavonoid, tocopherol, etc. Some of these appeared more recently, in the last 200–50 Ma, in fruits and flowers of angiosperm plants.

In fact, angiosperms (the dominant type of plant today) and most of their antioxidant pigments evolved during the Late Jurassic period. Plants employ antioxidants to defend their structures against reactive oxygen species produced during photosynthesis. Animals are exposed to the same oxidants and have developed endogenous enzymatic antioxidant systems. Iodine in the form of iodide ion I is the most primitive and abundant electron-rich essential element in the diet of marine and terrestrial organisms, and iodide acts as an electron donor and possesses this ancestral antioxidant function in all iodide-concentrating cells, from primitive marine algae to more recent terrestrial vertebrates.

soil evolution

Before the colonization of the earth, soil, a combination of mineral particles and decomposed organic matter, did not exist. Earth surfaces would be bare rock or unstable sand produced by weathering. The water and any nutrients in it would have drained away very quickly. In the sub-Cambrian peneplain in Sweden, for example, the maximum depth of Neoproterozoic weathering kaolinitization is about 5 m, in contrast, nearby kaolin deposits developed in the Mesozoic are much thicker. It has been argued that in the late Neoproterozoic, sheet washing was a dominant process of erosion of surface material due to the lack of plants on the land.

Lichens growing on concrete.

Biofilms of cyanobacteria, which are not plants but use the same photosynthesis mechanisms, have been found in modern deserts and only in areas unsuitable for vascular plants. This suggests that microbial mats may have been the first organisms to colonize dry land, possibly in the Precambrian. Mat-forming cyanobacteria may have gradually developed resistance to desiccation as they spread from the seas to coastal areas and then on to land. Lichens, which are symbiotic combinations of a fungus (almost always an ascomycete) and one or more photosynthesizers (green algae or cyanobacteria), are also important colonizers of lifeless environments, and their ability to break rocks contributes to soil formation in where plants cannot survive. The earliest known ascomycete fossils date from 423 to 419 Ma in the Silurian.

Soil formation would have been very slow until the appearance of burrowing animals, which mix the mineral and organic components of the soil and whose faeces are the main source of the organic components. Burrows have been found in Ordovician sediments and are attributed to annelids ("worms") or arthropods.

Plants and the Wood Crisis in the Middle Devonian

Main article: Evolutionary history of plants

Reconstruction of Cooksonia, a vascular plant in the Silurian.

Fossilized trees in the Late Devonian in Gilboa Fossil Forest.

In aquatic algae, almost all cells are capable of photosynthesis and are almost independent. Life on land required plants to become internally more complex and specialized: photosynthesis was most efficient at the top; roots were needed to extract water from the soil; the intermediate parts became supports and transport systems for water and nutrients.

Spores of land plants, possibly such as liverworts, have been found in Middle Ordovician rocks dated to about 476 million years ago. In the Middle Silurian rocks of 430 Ma, there are fossils of real plants, including mosses such as Baragwanathia; most were less than 10 cm (3.9 in) and some appear to be closely related to vascular plants, the group that includes trees.

By the end of the Devonian 370 Ma, trees like Archaeopteris were so abundant that they changed the river systems from almost all intertwined to almost always meandering, because their roots held the soil tightly. In fact, they caused the "Late Devonian Timber Crisis" because:

They removed more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reducing the greenhouse effect and causing an ice age in the Carboniferous period. In later ecosystems, carbon dioxide "trapped" in the wood is returned to the atmosphere by the decomposition of dead wood. However, the oldest fossil evidence of fungi that can decompose wood also comes from the Late Devonian.

The increased depth of plant roots led to greater washout of nutrients into rivers and seas by rain. This caused algal blooms whose high oxygen consumption caused anoxic events in deeper waters, increasing the rate of extinction among deep-sea animals.

terrestrial invertebrates

Animals had to change their feeding and excretory systems, and most land animals developed internal fertilization of their eggs. The difference in refractive index between water and air required changes in his eyes. On the other hand, in a way, movement and breathing became easier, and the better transmission of high-frequency sounds in the air stimulated the development of hearing.

The relative number of species contributed to the total for each animal phylum. Nematoda is the phylum with the most individual organisms, while arthropods have the most species.

The oldest air-breathing animal is Pneumodesmus, a millipede archipodane from the Middle Silurian, about 428 million years old. Its terrestrial air-breathing nature is evidenced by the presence of spiracles, the openings of the tracheal systems. However, some earlier fossil remains from the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary around 490 Ma are interpreted as tracks of large amphibian arthropods in coastal sand dunes and may have been made by euticarcinoids, which are considered evolutionary "aunts" of myriapods. Other Late Ordovician fossil remains at just over 445 Ma likely represent terrestrial invertebrates, and there is clear evidence of numerous arthropods on coasts and floodplains just before the Silurian-Devonian boundary, around 415 Ma, including signs that some arthropods ate. plants. Arthropods were well pre-adapted to colonize land because their existing jointed exoskeletons provided protection from desiccation, support against gravity, and a means of locomotion that did not rely on water.

The fossil record of other important invertebrate groups on land is poor: none for non-parasitic flatworms, nematodes or nemertines; some parasitic nematodes were fossilized in amber; fossils of annelid worms are known from the Carboniferous, but they may still have been aquatic animals; the oldest fossils of gastropods on land date from the Upper Carboniferous, and this group may have had to wait until the leaf layer became abundant enough to provide the moist conditions they need.

The first confirmed fossils of flying insects date from the Upper Carboniferous, but insects are thought to have evolved the ability to fly in the Lower Carboniferous or even the Upper Devonian. This gave them a wide range of ecological niches for feeding and reproduction, and a means of escaping predators and unfavorable changes in the environment. About 99% of modern insect species fly or are descended from flying species.

First terrestrial vertebrates

Main articles: Tetrapod and Evolutionary history of tetrapods

Acanthostega changed the view on early tetrapod evolution.

"Fish"

osteolepiform

Panderichthyidae

Obrusherichthidae

acanthostega

ichthyostega

tulerpeton

ancient labyrinthodonts

anthracosauria

amniotes

A family tree of tetrapods

Tetrapods, four-limbed vertebrates, evolved from other Rhipidistian fish in a relatively short period of time during the Late Devonian (370 to 360 Ma). The first groups are grouped as labyrinthodonts. They kept fry-like aquatic tadpoles, a system still seen in modern amphibians.

Iodine and T4/T3 stimulate amphibious metamorphosis and the evolution of the nervous system, transforming the aquatic vegetarian tadpole into a "more evolved" terrestrial carnivorous frog with better neurological, visual-spatial, olfactory and cognitive abilities for hunting . The new hormonal action of T3 was made possible by the formation of T3 receptors in vertebrate cells. First, around 600-500 million years ago, in primitive Chordata, T3 alpha receptors appeared with metamorphosing action, and then, around 250-150 million years ago, in birds and Mammalia, T3 beta receptors with metabolic and thermogenetic actions appeared. . From the 1950s to the early 1980s, tetrapods were thought to have evolved from fish that had already acquired the ability to crawl on land, possibly to go from a drying lake to a deeper one. However, in 1987, near-complete fossils of Acanthostega from around 363 Ma showed that this transitional Late Devonian animal had legs and lungs and gills, but could never have survived on land: its limbs and its wrist and ankle joints were too weak to support its weight; his ribs were too short to keep his lungs from being squeezed by his weight; its fish-like tail fin would have been damaged by being dragged along the ground. The current hypothesis is that Acanthostega, which was about 1 meter (3.3 ft) long, was a fully aquatic predator that hunted in shallow water. Its skeleton was different from that of most fish in ways that allowed it to lift its head to breathe air while its body remained submerged, including: its jaws show modifications that would have allowed it to swallow air; the bones at the back of the skull are locked together, providing strong attachment points for the muscles that raised your head; the head is not attached to the shoulder girdle and has a distinct neck.

The Devonian proliferation of land plants may help explain why breathing air would have been an advantage: leaves falling into streams and rivers would have encouraged the growth of aquatic vegetation; this would have attracted grazing invertebrates and small fish that attacked them; they would have been attractive prey, but the environment was not suitable for large predatory marine fish; respiration of the air would have been necessary because these waters would have lacked oxygen, since warm water retains less dissolved oxygen than cooler seawater and since the decay of vegetation would have used up some of the oxygen.

Later discoveries revealed earlier transitional forms between Acanthostega and fully fish-like animals. Unfortunately, there is a gap (Romer gap) of about 30 Ma between ancestral tetrapottetrapod fossils and Middle Carboniferous vertebrate fossils that appear to be well adapted for life on land. Some of them resemble early relatives of modern amphibians, most of which need to keep their skins moist and lay their eggs in water, while others are accepted as early relatives of amniotes, whose waterproof skin and egg membranes allow them to live and breed away from water.

Dinosaurs, birds and mammals

Further information: Dinosaurs § Evolutionary history, Origin of birds, and Evolutionary history of mammals

amniotes

synapsid

Ancient synapsids (extinct)

pelycosauria

extinct pelycosaurs

Therapsid

extinct therapsids

mammaliaiformes

extinct mammaliaforms

mammals

Sauropsida

Anapsid; whether turtles belong here is debated

Captorhinidae and Protorothyrididae (extinct)

diapsid

Araeoscelidia (extinct)

Squamata (lizards and snakes)

archosauria

extinct archosaurs

crocodylia

Pterosaurs (extinct)

dinosaurs

theropod

extinct

theropods

birds

Sauropod

(extinct)

Ornithischia (extinct)

Possible family tree of dinosaurs, birds and mammals.

Amniotes, whose eggs can survive in dry environments, probably evolved in the Late Carboniferous period (330 to 298.9 Ma). The first fossils of the two surviving groups of amniotes, synapsids and sauropsids, date to about 313 million years ago. Synapsid pelycosaurs and their descendants, therapsids, are the most common terrestrial vertebrates in the best-known Permian fossil beds (298.9 to 251.902 Ma). However, at the time, they were all in temperate zones at mid-latitudes, and there is evidence that warmer, drier environments near the equator were dominated by sauropsids and amphibians.

The Permian-Triassic extinction event wiped out nearly all terrestrial vertebrates, as well as the vast majority of other life forms. During the slow recovery from this catastrophe, estimated at 30 million years ago, a previously obscure sauropsid group became the most abundant and diverse of terrestrial vertebrates: some fossils of archosauriformes ("ruling lizard forms") have been found in Late Permian rocks. , but in the Middle Triassic, archosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates. Dinosaurs distinguished themselves from other archosaurs in the late Triassic and became the dominant terrestrial vertebrates of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods (201.3 to 66 Ma).

During the Late Jurassic, birds evolved from small predatory theropod dinosaurs. Early birds inherited teeth and long bony tails from their dinosaur ancestors, but some developed horned, toothless beaks in the Late Jurassic and short pygostyle tails in the Early Cretaceous.

While archosaurs and dinosaurs were becoming more dominant in the Triassic, the therapsids' mammal-shaped successors evolved into small, mostly nocturnal insectivores. This ecological role may have promoted the evolution of mammals, for example, nocturnal life may have accelerated the development of endothermy ("warm blooded") and hair or skin. Around 195 Ma in the Lower Jurassic, there were animals that were very similar to today's mammals in many ways. Unfortunately, there is a gap in the fossil record throughout the Middle Jurassic. However, fossil teeth discovered in Madagascar indicate that the split between the lineage leading to monotremes and that leading to other living mammals occurred around 167 million years ago. After dominating terrestrial vertebrate niches for about 150 Ma, non-avian dinosaurs perished in the Cretaceous-Paleogene (66 Ma) extinction event along with many other groups of organisms. Mammals throughout the time of dinosaurs were restricted to a narrow range of taxa, sizes, and shapes, but rapidly increased in size and diversity after the extinction, with bats taking to the air in 13 million years, and cetaceans taking to the sea in 15 million years. millions of years.

flowering plants

Main article: Angiosperm

gymnosperms

Gnetales

(gymnosperm)

Welwitschia

(gymnosperm)

ephedra

(gymnosperm)

Bennettitales

angiosperm

(flowering plants)

A possible family tree of flowering plants

gymnosperms

angiosperm

(flowering plants)

cycadales

(gymnosperm)

Bennettitales

ginkgo

Gnetales

(gymnosperm)

coniferophyta

(gymnosperm)

Another possible family tree

The first flowering plants appeared around 130 Ma. The 250,000 to 400,000 species of flowering plants outnumber all other terrestrial plants combined and are the dominant vegetation in most terrestrial ecosystems. There is fossil evidence that flowering plants diversified rapidly in the Early Cretaceous, from 130 to 90 Ma, and that their rise was associated with that of pollinating insects. Among modern flowering plants, Magnolia is believed to be close to the group's common ancestor. However, paleontologists have been unable to identify the earliest stages in the evolution of flowering plants.

social insects

Main article: Eusociality

These termite mounds survived a bush fire.

Social insects are notable because the vast majority of individuals in each colony are sterile. This seems contrary to basic concepts of evolution such as natural selection and the selfish gene. In fact, there are very few species of eusocial insects: only 15 of the approximately 2,600 living families of insects contain eusocial species, and it appears that eusociality has evolved independently only 12 times among arthropods, although some eusocial lineages have diversified into several families. However, social insects were spectacularly successful; for example, although ants and termites represent only about 2% of known insect species, they form more than 50% of the total insect mass. His ability to control a territory seems to be the basis of his success.

The sacrifice of breeding opportunities by most individuals has long been explained as a consequence of the unusual haplodiploid method of sex determination in these species, which has the paradoxical consequence that two sterile worker daughters of the same queen share more genes with each other than with each other. their offspring if they could procreate. However, EO Wilson and Bert Hölldobler argue that this explanation is flawed: for example, it is based on kin selection, but there is no evidence of nepotism in colonies that have multiple queens. Instead, they write, eusociality evolves only in species that are under strong pressure from predators and competitors, but in environments where it is possible to build "fortresses"; once colonies have established this security, they gain other advantages through cooperative foraging. In support of this explanation, they cite the appearance of eusociality in bathyergid mole rats, which are not haplodiploid.

The first insect fossils were found in Lower Devonian rocks around 400 Ma, which preserve only a few flightless insect varieties. The Lagerstätten of Mazon Creek of the Upper Carboniferous, about 300 Ma, include about 200 species, some gigantic by modern standards, and indicate that insects occupied their main modern ecological niches as herbivores, detritivores, and insectivores. Termites and social ants first appear in the Early Cretaceous, and advanced social bees were found in Late Cretaceous rocks, but did not become abundant until the Middle Cenozoic.

Humans

Main article: Human evolution

The idea that, along with other life forms, modern humans evolved from an ancient common ancestor was proposed by Robert Chambers in 1844 and adopted by Charles Darwin in 1871. Modern humans evolved from a lineage of upright walking apes that were traced back to along 6 Ma to Sahelanthropus. The first known stone tools were made around 2.5 Ma, apparently by Australopithecus garhi, and were found near animal bones that show scratches made by these tools. Early hominids had chimpanzee-sized brains, but there has been a fourfold increase in the last 3 million years; a statistical analysis suggests that hominid brain size depends almost completely on the date of the fossils, while the species to which they are assigned has only a small influence. There is a long debate as to whether modern humans evolved worldwide simultaneously from existing advanced hominins or are descended from a single small population in Africa, which then migrated worldwide less than 200,000 years ago and replaced earlier hominin species. . There is also debate as to whether anatomically modern humans had an intellectual, cultural, and technological "Great Leap Forward" less than 100,000 years ago, and if so, whether this was due to neurological changes that are not visible in fossils.

mass extinctions

Main article: Mass extinction

Intensity of marine extinction during the Phanerozoic

millions of years ago

(H)

K-Pg

Tr-J

P-Tr

cap

Superior D

YOU

The blue graph shows the apparent percentage (not the absolute number) of marine animal genera becoming extinct during a given time interval. It does not represent all marine species, only those that are readily fossilized. The labels of the "Big Five" traditional extinctions and the more recently recognized Capitonian extinction are clickable links; see mass extinction for more details. (image source and information)

Life on Earth has experienced occasional mass extinctions since at least 542 million years ago. Although they were disasters at the time, mass extinctions have sometimes accelerated the evolution of life on Earth. When dominance of specific ecological niches shifts from one group of organisms to another, it is rarely because the new dominant group is "superior" to the old one and usually because an extinction event eliminates the old dominant group and makes way for the new one.

The fossil record appears to show that the gaps between mass extinctions are getting longer and the mean and background rates of extinction are decreasing. Both phenomena can be explained in one or more ways:

Oceans may have become more hospitable to life in the last 500 million years and less vulnerable to mass extinctions: dissolved oxygen spread and penetrated to greater depths; the development of life on land reduced nutrient runoff, and therefore, the risk of eutrophication and anoxic events; and marine ecosystems became more diverse, so food chains were less likely to be disrupted.

all genres

"well defined" genres

Tendency line

The "Big Five" Mass Extinctions

Other mass extinctions

millions of years ago

thousands of genres

Biodiversity in the Phanerozoic, as shown by the fossil record.

Fairly complete fossils are very rare, most extinct organisms are represented only by partial fossils, and complete fossils are rarer in older rocks. Therefore, paleontologists have erroneously assigned parts of the same organism to different genera, which were often defined just to accommodate these findings—the story of Anomalocaris is an example of this. The risk of this error is greater for older fossils because they are often different parts of any living organism and poorly preserved. Many of the "superfluous" genera are represented by fragments that are not found again, and the "superfluous" genera seem to become extinct very quickly. Biodiversity in the fossil record, which is "...the number of distinct genera alive at a given time; that is, those whose first occurrence is earlier and whose last occurrence is later than that time" shows a different trend: a fairly rapid trend up from 542 to 400 Ma; a slight decline from 400 to 200 Ma, in which the devastating Permian-Triassic extinction event is a major factor; and a rapid increase of 200 Ma to the present.

Earth's future

Illustration of the sun, when it becomes a red giant, which will happen in billions of years. Earth will be uninhabited then.

The future of planet Earth will be determined by several factors, including the increase in the Sun's luminosity, the loss of thermal energy by the planet's core, disturbances caused by other bodies in the Solar System and biochemical changes on the Earth's surface. The theory of cycles of orbital variation, by Milutin Milankovitch, states that the planet is conditioned to cycles of glaciations due to the eccentricity of its orbit, axial inclination and precession.

Prehistory

Prehistory corresponds to the period of history that precedes the invention of writing, from the beginning of recorded historical times until approximately 3500 BC. It is studied by anthropology, archeology and paleontology.

It can also be contextualized for a particular people or nation as the period of its history about which there are no written documents. Thus, in Egypt, prehistory ended at approximately 3500 BC, although some Stone Age cultures coexisted with civilizations after that date and some unwritten tribes still exist in remote locations.

The transition to "history proper" takes place through a period called proto-history, which is described in slightly later documents or in external documents. The term prehistory thus shows the importance of writing for Western civilization.

Since there are no documents of this moment of human evolution, its study depends on the work of archaeologists, anthropologists, paleontology and genetics; or from other scientific areas, which analyze human remains, signs of their presence and preserved utensils to try to trace, at least partially, their culture, customs and beliefs.

History of research on Prehistory

Charles Darwin caught the attention of scientists of his time when he claimed that species evolved and that man and primates have a common ancestor.

In 1823, the first fossil of a modern human was discovered; in 1829, of a Neanderthal man; and in 1848 and 1856, more Neanderthal fossils. In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species. In 1863, Neanderthals are classified. In 1865, Gregor Mendel publishes the results of his genetic and non-genetic experiments.

beginnings

There are certain doubts about exactly who our most remote ancestors were. Modern humans only appeared c. 150 thousand years. Humans are primates and belong to the group of great apes, originally from Africa.

After the last common ancestors with the orangutan 15 or 14 million years ago (time of the ancestors of all current great apes); with the gorilla there are 10-8 million; and with the chimpanzee, there are 7-5 million, the African continent undergoes a series of changes . At that time, the entire equatorial zone was covered by a tropical jungle; and Africa 8 million years ago was wetter than today. But then there were several climate changes, until 7 million years ago the rainforest began to thin.

Between 7 and 6 million years ago, two species that belonged to the beginnings of hominid evolution appeared in Africa: Sahelanthropus tchadensis, with a mix of human and simian characteristics; and Orrorin tugenensis, already bipedal, but whose brain size is not known, which in Sahelanthropus was 320–380 cm3. The hominids of the time were found in Ethiopia and Tanzania, that is, in East Africa. These first hominids followed, Ardipithecus, with Ardipithecus ramidus having existed 5.5-4 million years ago; and later (4.1-1.3 million years ago) lived Australopithecus, descendants of Ardipithecus.

Australopithecus

Australopithecus had bigger brains, longer legs, smaller arms, and facial features more like our own. These lived in groups consisting of several dozen individuals, who lived in constant displacement. The groups dispersed when the drought came and food was scarce. Australopithecus probably had the concept of couples, but not of families.

The Homo genus

Skull of a Homo habilis.

There are c. 2.5 million years ago, the genus Homo appeared, Homo habilis in East Africa, who began to use stone tools entirely made by them (a characteristic of the Paleolithic) and meat became more important in their diet. They were hunters, but they were also scavengers and herbivores. And they had a larger brain (590–650 cm3) and long arms.

There were other species, such as Homo rudolfensis, which had a larger brain and was bipedal; and it existed during the same time period as Homo habilis. There are c. 2 million years ago, strong-built Homo erectus emerged, with a much larger brain (810–1250 cm3) and broad face; and was the first hominid to move out of Africa, going north and east c. 1.8 million years, also existing in Asia and Europe, until 500 thousand years ago. He is the first to use fire. 300,000 years ago, there were already elaborate hunting strategies for burly mammals.

The ice age began 1.5 million years ago and the sea level dropped 90 meters.

departure from Africa

Human migrations across the globe

The numbers indicate the millennia before our era.

Some 50 thousand years ago, human beings set out to conquer the planet in different directions from Africa. One course reached Australia. The other arrived in Asia, only to be split in two: one in Europe; and the other walked until it crossed the Bering Strait and reached America. The last areas to be populated were the Polynesian islands during the first millennium AD.

Neanderthals

Main article: Neanderthal Man

Neanderthals were robust, with a large brain; and lived in Europe and western Asia. Survived until c. 24 thousand years and coexisted with modern Homo sapiens sapiens; and they could even mate with them, although their offspring ended up having fertility problems.

Origin of modern men

Cro-Magnon Man

The origin of present-day Homo sapiens is hotly debated, but most scientists support the mitochondrial Eve theory, backed by genetic testing, rather than the multiregional evolution theory which holds that modern humans evolved all over the world at the same time. from the Homo species existing there; and that they reproduced among themselves during the various migrations they supposedly made. The first fully human fossils were found in Ethiopia; and it is estimated that they lived c. 160 thousand years.

The mitochondrial Eve theory considers that there was a second wave of Homo specimens, this time modern humans, around 200,000 years ago; and that all human beings descend from a very small group of women at this time.

75,000 years ago, the human population stopped growing, most likely due to the Toba catastrophe, a volcanic explosion that, according to some scientists, dropped the population to 10,000.

Communication capacity

The origin of human speech has been very controversial. But while Homo habilis and Homo erectus already had some, there was an evolution possibly 250,000 years ago, but the big leap forward didn't occur until c. 40,000 years ago, when modern humans developed a language similar to ours.

prehistoric art

Venus of Laussel: represents a naked woman, who in her right hand holds a bison horn.

Figurine carved from a block of hard limestone. Aquitaine Museum in Bordeaux

Around 35,000 years ago, Paleolithic art emerged in Europe. There are c. 25 thousand years BC, the Venus figurines appeared. 21 thousand years ago, the cave paintings in Altamira and Lascaux, plus small sculptures. The Venus of Willendorf is considered a symbol of fertility, it is 11 cm tall and is from 24 thousand - 22 thousand years BC.

Although the consolidation of religion in the Neolithic period is conventional, archeology records that in the Paleolithic there was a primitive religion based on the cult of a mother Goddess, the feminine and the association of this with the power to give life. Cowry shells were discovered in the Cro-Magnon rock shelter at Les Eyzies, described as "the portal through which a child comes into the world" and covered in a red ocher pigment, which symbolized blood, and which were closely linked. to the ritual of worshiping the female statuettes; excavations have shown that these figurines, the so-called Neolithic Venuses, were often found in a central position, as opposed to male symbols located in peripheral positions or flanking the female figurines. Like painting, Paleolithic sculpture had a utilitarian and ritualistic character.

Small objects and even musical instruments such as flutes and drums made of bones were found. The oldest sculptures had a ritualistic function, feminine forms and it is believed that they were an evocation of fertility. They became known as Steatopygic Venus and are small sculptures that have common characteristics in shapes and volumes: rounded shapes; voluminous breasts; faceless head and covered with a kind of vast hair.

Mesolithic

Mesolithic (13000 BC to 9000 BC) is the term used to describe the period of prehistory that served as a transition between the Paleolithic and Neolithic; and present (or at least of reasonable duration) only in some regions of the world where there was no direct transition between these two periods. It means Middle Stone Age (from the Greek μεσος, mesos = middle; and λίθος, líthos = stone) in contrast to the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) and Neolithic (New Stone Age), identifying itself with the last hunter societies. - collectors.

invention of agriculture

Approximately in 10000 BC, there was practically no agriculture, but in 6 thousand years the groups of humans capable of raising animals and cultivating plants would become producers. Agriculture was invented in various parts of the world, commonly at different times, independently of other areas. First it was in the Middle East, more precisely in the Fertile Crescent, in c. 10000 BC where it spread to various areas of the world such as North Africa (excluding Egypt) and the Balkans in c. 6000 BC.

discovery of metals

Around 6000 BC, copper smelting was invented. Metallurgy emerged in Anatolia and Mesopotamia (modern Turkey and Iraq) around 5000 BC; and until 4000 BC it spread to the highlands of Iran, the Caucasus and the Nile delta; until 3 000 BC it went as far as southern Europe, Poland and Germany, France and the British Isles; and then, until 2000 BC, to Denmark, the rest of Poland, part of the Baltic States and Belarus.

Old age

Ancient Age or Antiquity, in the periodization of the historical epochs of humanity, is the period that extends from the invention of writing (from 4000 BC to 3500 BC) until the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 AD). Although the criterion of the invention of writing as a marker between the end of Prehistory and the beginning of History itself is the most common, scholars who place more emphasis on the importance of the material culture of societies have sought to rethink this division more recently. There is also no real consensus among historians about when the real end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages took place, as they consider that social and economic processes cannot be dated with the same precision as political facts.

It should also be taken into account that this periodization is related to the History of Europe and also of the Near East as a precursor of the civilizations that developed in the Mediterranean, culminating in Rome. This vision was consolidated with the positivist historiography that emerged in the 19th century, which made the writing of history a science and an academic discipline. If we rethink the criteria that define Antiquity in the rest of the world, it is possible to think of other criteria and benchmarks.

In the case of Europe and the Near East, several peoples developed in the Ancient Age. The Sumerians, in Mesopotamia, were the civilization that gave rise to writing and urbanization, at about the same time as the Egyptian civilization. After that, already in the 1st millennium BC, the Persians were the first to constitute a great empire, which was later conquered by Alexander the Great. The classical civilizations of Greece and Rome are considered to be the greatest shapers of present-day Western civilization. Also noteworthy are the Hebrews (first monotheistic civilization), the Phoenicians (lords of the sea and commerce and inventors of the alphabet), in addition to the Celts, Etruscans and others. The study of history itself began in this period, with Herodotus and Thucydides, Greeks who began to question the myth, legend and fiction of historical fact, narrating the Medical Wars and the Peloponnesian War respectively.

In America, the pre-Columbian period can be considered as Ancient Age, where the advanced civilizations of the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas emerged. However, some scholars consider that in other regions, such as in what today constitutes most of the territory of Brazil, a good part of the Amerindian peoples had not yet constituted a similar level of social complexity and the classification of Prehistory for these societies would be more correct. . In China, the Ancient Age ends around 200 BC, with the emergence of the Chin dynasty, while in Japan it is only from the end of the Heian period, in 1185 AD, that we can speak of the beginning of the Japanese "Middle Ages". Some religions that still exist in the modern world originated at this time, including Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Judaism.

oriental antiquity

egyptian civilization

Main article: Ancient Egypt

ancient egypt map

Ancient Egypt (currently Arab Republic of Egypt), crossed by the Nile River, with 6,500 km and 6 cataracts, limited by two deserts (Libyan Desert and Arabian Desert), was located in northeast Africa. To the north, the Mediterranean Sea facilitated sea travel and trade with other civilizations. To the east, the Red Sea was the second channel of communication after the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile River was the origin of life for the ancient Egyptians, who were mainly dedicated to agriculture. Between June and September, at the time of the floods, heavy rains overflowed the river; it flooded and coated the vast and extensive lands located on its banks. The soil was fertilized by the waters, because they carried silt and organic matter, the latter transformed into an excellent fertilizer. As well as fertilizers, the river had provided many fish and provided the navigation of thousands of boats.

In the hypothesis of the Egyptians, the Nile River was actually blessed by the gods. I mean, the same river was known as a saint. However, Egypt was not uniquely this gift of the Nile. Experienced, hardworking, diligent and organized men were needed. During the dry season, while cooperating to join forces, the Egyptians used the waters of the river to irrigate even distant lands or to build dikes to control the floods.

After the floods, the waters diminished, breaking up the boundaries of the farms. In this way, with each passing year, the working man's need for measurement and calculation developed geometry and mathematics. This frequent work and geographic unity favored a centralized and single government.

Historical periods of Egypt

The Nile River valley was populated from the Paleolithic period. Over time, free and structured communities called nomos were born. The nome were organized into both kingdoms (Northern and Southern) and in the year 3200 BC, Pharaoh Menes unified the totality of kingdoms into a single kingdom. With him began the great dynasties (royal families ruling Egypt for about three thousand years).

The History of Egypt is usually divided into the periodization of four major stages:

• Old Kingdom (between 3200 BC and 2200 BC)

• Middle Kingdom (between 2200 BC and 1750 BC)

• New Kingdom (between 1580 BC and 1085 BC)

• Low Epoch (between 653 BC and 332 BC)

At the end of the Middle Kingdom, many Hebrews, who lost their freedom and finally gained it again to return to the homeland from which they originated, peacefully immigrated to Egypt. After the Hebrews, Egypt was invaded by the Hyksos, who settled there for 200 years. The war chariots, which the Egyptians did not know existed, were introduced by the Hyksos, expelled in 1580 BC, the beginning of the New Kingdom.

At the end of the New Kingdom, Egypt gradually weakened and decayed, and this favored the invasion and dominance of the oldest country in the world by a wide variety of civilizations, such as Persians, Greeks, Romans and Muslims. At the beginning of the 20th century, the United Kingdom politically conquered Egypt, which declared its independence as a constitutional monarchy in 1922, before the proclamation of the republic in 1953, as a contemporary self-governing nation.

egyptian society

Egyptian society was divided into certain levels, each with its very specific functions. In that society, women were very prestigious and authoritarian.

Pharaoh meant the very life he spent in Egypt. He was a monarch and a living god. Fruit of adoration, reverence. His right was to have a wide variety of wives, most of whom were family members, so that royal blood in the family would be guaranteed. But, only one used the title of queen and from her the birth of the heir took place.

At the highest point of the pyramid was the pharaoh, without limits of powers, because the pharaoh was seen as a holiness, deity and accepted as a person who descended from god or as the true god. It is the system of government called theocracy, that is, the government in which God is regent.

Pharaoh was an all-powerful king and the whole country was his property. The fields, the deserts, the mines, the rivers, the canals, the men, women, cattle and animals in their entirety—all belonged to Pharaoh. He was, at the same time, king, judge, priest, treasurer, general. He was the one who determined and commanded everything, however, not being possible for him to be present in all places, he entrusted tasks to more than a hundred officials who helped him to administer Egypt. In the view of the Egyptians, Pharaoh himself would survive and hope to be happy.

The priests were enormously prestigious and powerful, both spiritually and materially, because they controlled the riches and goods of the vast and enriched temples. It was also the Egyptians who knew a lot, kept the scientific and religious mysteries that were related to their large number of gods.

The nobility consisted of people from the Pharaoh's family, high-ranking officials and wealthy farmers.

The scribes, who came from wealthy and wealthy families, studied reading and writing and were dedicated to recording, documenting, and accounting for documents and activities in the life of Egypt.

Craftsmen and merchants. The work of artisans was done only for kings, nobility and temples. They made beautiful pieces of adornment, utensils, statuettes, funerary masks. The craftsman's work with wood, copper, bronze, iron, gold and ivory was excellent. Traders, on the other hand, were dedicated to trade under the responsibility of kings or for their own benefit, acquiring, trading or exchanging products with other civilizations, such as Cretans, Phoenicians, peoples of Somalia, Nubia, etc. Trade forced the construction of immense cargo ships.

Peasants constituted the majority of the population. The pharaoh organized and controlled agricultural work, because the land, in its entirety, belonged to the government. The floods of the Nile, the work of irrigating, sowing, harvesting and storing the grain forced the peasants to work hard and receive little money. In general, peasants were paid with a small part of the products they harvested and just enough to survive. They lived in precarious huts and wore very simplistic clothes. Peasant services were also provided on the lands of the nobility and in temples. The main economic activity in Egypt was agriculture, because of the lack of land and the scarcity of vegetation for raising more herds. As the peasants were poor, they planted barley, wheat, lentils, fruit trees and vines. They made bread, beer and wine. Many fish were offered by the Nile.

Slaves were, for the most part, persecuted among those defeated in wars. They were severely forced to work as builders of the great pyramids, for example. The importance of some pharaohs

There were numerous pharaohs ruling Egypt throughout its history. Certain ones have achieved some prominence.

Menes (or Narmer), in 3000 BC, unified the northern and southern kingdoms into a single kingdom.

Djoser (Zozer), kingdom in which the first monumental stone building in the world appeared, the pyramid of Djoser, measured in steps. Cheops, Chephren and Menkaure became known worldwide as the pharaohs who built the three largest pyramids in Egypt, on the plain of Giza. Khafra's father, was succeeded to his throne and also erected his pyramid at a certain distance in meters from his father's. After Khafra, Menkaure reigned, ordering that his pyramid be built close to the others, however, with a small difference in size. Amenhotep IV, also called "priest of the sun god", became known around the world as the pharaoh who united the Egyptian religion, forcing them to worship a single deity, the Sun, called Aton. His name was changed from Amunhotep (meaning "Amon hath satisfaction") to Akhenaten (meaning "he who serves Aten"). He was disliked by the priests and by the fanaticism of the people and the people, after the pharaoh died, returned to the old cults. Tutankhamun, who belonged to the family of Akhenaten, took possession of the new kingdom in his youth at the age of five. His reign was short-lived, due to his death at the age of eighteen. It became very famous in the 20th century, because in 1924, the British archaeologist Howard Carter found his very rich sarcophagus in the Valley of the Kings . The tomb, untouched, had not yet been violated by criminals and contained valuable riches, because the raw materials of these objects were gold, silver and precious stones. There were extraordinarily rich objects such as death masks, sarcophagi, statues, furniture, jewelry, vases, hearses, among others. Through this discovery of archeology, it is possible to have an idea of how grandiose, luxurious and rich the life of the pharaohs was, while most of the population, made up of peasants, lived very hard and ate less.

Egyptian religion and mythology

Main article: Egyptian mythology

The Egyptians were deeply religious. This was important because the faith formed a civilized and organized society. They were polytheists (they believed in a wide variety of gods). From the earliest times, the Egyptians worshiped a large number of strange gods. The oldest gods were animals and every person was protected by animal gods. They worshiped cats, oxen, snakes, crocodiles, bulls, jackals, gazelles, beetles, etc.

Among the animals venerated, the best known was the Apis ox which, during its death, caused sadness throughout Egypt and the priests searched in the fields for a substitute that had the same physical resemblance. They believe in the possible reincarnation of a god into an animal with a life of its own. The Nile River, with its daily flooding, and the hot desert wind that snuffed out crops, were revered as natural forces.

The Egyptians believed in reincarnation, for this reason they worshiped people who died. Each locality was protected by its gods, with different characteristics, certain of them being half man and half animal (in general, human body and animal head - anthropomorphism).

gods of egypt

Ra, the sun god.

Ra: the Sun god, who in union with the god Amon (Amon-Ra) was the most important Egyptian god.

Nut: is the firmament, symbolized by a female individual with the lower limbs in the Eastern Hemisphere and the hands in the Western Hemisphere. The celestial bodies roamed along his body. Her son, Ra (the Sun), is swallowed by her during the night period and is reborn each day period.

Divine baboon: the one who proved that the solar barge voyage was true.

Solar boat of Ra, which in a permanent voyage, daily returns him to Earth and in the night period leads him again to eternal life.

Isis : her husband is Osiris and her son was Horus. It protected plant life, waters (the floods of the Nile) and seeds. The rains would mean the tears of Isis looking for her husband, Osiris, who also represents the Nile River.

Nephthys: sister of Osiris, was married to Set.

Maat: protected justice, truth, and universal balance.

Horus: the falconid deity, whose parents were Osiris and Isis, also revered as the Sunrise.

Osiris: in his mummy-shaped habit, he protected the dead, plant life, fertility. Also revered as the sunset. It was he who came to seek the souls of the dead to be sentenced in his court (Court of Osiris).

Sacmis: deity with a female body and a leonine head. He protected the military conflicts and, as he was strong, he took charge of killing Ra's enemies.

Ptah: protected Memphis, considered himself the Great Architect of the Universe, as members of Freemasonry would have said, and protected craft professionals.

Quenubis: Shepherd god, protected the springs and floods of the Nile. Anubis: jackal god, guarded tombs, protected the afterlife, mediated between the firmament and our planet. Tote: Protected knowledge, magical powers and elaborated writing. He considered himself the divine scribe and protected scribes. Hathor: female deity presented in both forms: as a female ox with the horns and the sun between them and as a woman with the sun between her horns. He protected the vain, the musicians, the happy, the pleasurable and the passionate.

Seti: great enemy of Osiris (the Nile), considered the hot wind of the desert. Personification of evil, caused lightning and thunder and protected firearms.

Amon (from Thebes): divinity of the deities of Egyptian mythology, then venerated together with Ra, with the denomination of Amon-Ra.

Bes: monstrous and evil spirit (or demon), dwelt in hell.

Tuéris: female deity in the shape of a hippopotamus, who protected mothers with a baby in their belly.

Bastet: cat goddess, who passed the desirable influences of the solar deity to people.

egyptian temples

Luxor Temple.

Egyptian temples were not the same as churches today. They were luxurious, of immense size, with a sumptuous gate and vast amplified courtyards. The gigantic columns supported the temples. The statue of the divinity of the place was situated at the back, and the other few gods at the sides. In front, the colossus of the statues of the pharaohs who built the temples. Inside the temples lived the various priests, with shaved hair and dressed in a single robe. From Ancient Egypt, the ruins of two great temples remain, the temple of Luxor and the temple of Karnak.

funeral ceremonies

Mummy inside the sarcophagus

As for the mummies, the Egyptians believed that the human being was constituted by Ká (the body) and by Ra (the soul). In their opinion, when he died, the body (Ká) was left by the soul (Ra), but the continuation of the soul's life (Ra) was possible in the realm of Osiris or Amun-Ra. This could happen if the body that needed to support it was preserved. Hence the need for embalming or mummification of the body so that its decomposition was prevented. To ensure that the soul survived, in the event of the mummy's destruction, statuettes of the person who died were placed in the tomb.

The tomb was where the dead lived, just as the house is where the living live, with furniture and food provided. The paintings that appear on the walls signify the scenes of the life of a dead person at the table, in the pursuit of animals and in the fishing activity. They believed in the magic of the powers of these paintings, because in their opinion, it represented the feeling of happiness and serenity of the soul during its contemplation before the images. The soul of the person who died was presented to the Court of Osiris, where he was sentenced for his works, to see if his admission into the kingdom of Osiris was possible.

The tombs were dwellings of eternity. In order for the bodies to be better protected, the mummies were placed in hermetically sealed sarcophagi. Pharaohs, nobles, the wealthy and certain priests erected the immense stone tombs to ensure that the bodies were protected from thieves and defilers. Sarcophagi were made to ensure that the dead would wait a long time for their soul to return.

Thus, mastabas, pyramids and hypogeums were built with rich adornment.

egyptian culture

During antiquity, Egyptian culture was the set of cultural manifestations developed in Ancient Egypt. Not to mention the pyramids, mastabas, hypogeums and vast temples, the art of Ancient Egypt was also manifested in palaces, luxurious columns and obelisks, sphinxes, statuary and decorative bas-relief art. Listed below:

• Mastabas: Mastabas were tombs lined with rock slabs or made of special brick. They had a chapel, the burial chamber and other compartments. Hypogea: Excavation of tombs in rocks near the thalweg of the Nile. The best-known hypogeum was that of Tutankhamun, which is located in the Valley of the Kings.

• Sphinx: Sphinxes guarded temples and pyramids. The sphinx in front of Khafra's pyramid has a human head and a leonine body. His famous phrase is "Decipher me or I will devour you".

• Obelisk: Monument whose raw material is a single stone in the shape of a needle to mark a certain fact or accomplishment. It also means a ray from the sun god.

pyramids

In the royal pyramids, there were secret corridors, galleries, chambers, false doors and passages to deceive thieves, crypt, ventilation corridors and the king's chamber

In ancient Egypt more than 100 pyramids were built. The three big ones are included among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Even today the pyramids hold certain secrets for the human mind. Thus, modern engineering has not yet been able to clarify how, at that time, it was possible to transport rock blocks from 2 to 10 tons or more that came from far away to the desert where the pyramids are found. Even more complicated is clarifying how they managed to carry stones on top of stones to a height of 146 meters (the height of the great pyramid of Cheops). Another secret is to clarify the reason for the construction of the pyramids with their sides strictly facing the four cardinal points. Currently, many people around the world believe in a mysterious power of energetic concentration and preservation inside the pyramids. That way they would not have spoiled the perishable things that were placed inside, in the position that the king's chamber occupies.

For this, with the help of a compass, it is necessary to orient the pyramidal bases in the direction of the four cardinal points. It is also believed in healing or improving health through the use of a copper pyramid in good condition so that a human being could be housed inside it.

the egyptian sciences

It is not by chance that the seven wonders of the ancient world are in Egypt, which bequeathed great knowledge to humanity. The Egyptians had developed architecture, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and engineering, in addition to the year divided into 365 days, 12 months with 30 days. They used solar, stellar and water-based clocks to measure time.

In mathematics, the Egyptians had developed geometry, because it was necessary to measure rural lands and survey the vast buildings. In medicine, they had doctors who were knowledgeable about a wide variety of diseases, in addition to working as surgeons, even using anesthetics. But, Egyptian medicine was more esoteric than scientific, for being accompanied by magic and for supplicating the gods.

They specialized in mummification of bodies through embalming resources which have preserved numerous bodies until the present day. According to Herodotus, a famous Greek historian, the process of mummifying the body was carried out as follows:

" "First they take out the brain, with curved iron, which they insert into the nostrils, and with the help of drugs, which they inject into the head. Then they make an incision in the belly, with a sharp stone from Ethiopia. They take out the intestines through this opening, which are washed, passed through palm wine and scented, then fill the belly with myrrh (resin from a tree used as incense or perfume), cinnamon and other perfumes, then carefully sew it together. they cover it with natron (natural sodium carbonate) for seventy days. At the end of this period, they wash the body and wrap it entirely in linen cloths." ”

Then the body was placed in the sarcophagus. The poor had easier mummification processes.

Egyptian language and literatures

Hieroglyphics on a funerary stele.

The Egyptians were one of the first peoples who used writing in the world. They had developed three alphabets:

• The hieroglyphic alphabet that is considered religious; The easier hieratic alphabet used by nobles and priesthood members; The demotic alphabet was a type of writing used by the majority of the population. At the time of Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt, French archaeologist Jean François Champollion took to France in 1799 a stone from the city of Rosetta, which comprises writing in three types of alphabet: hieroglyphics, Greek and demotic. In 1822, Champollion, relating the text in classical Greek with the same theme in hieroglyphics, managed to decode the Egyptian alphabet, contributing to the studies of Egyptian civilization.

The Egyptians wrote especially on a plant called papyrus, often found on the banks of the Nile. The papyrus core was cut, the parts were linked and pressed together, composing rolls that were even imported by neighboring peoples. Several written books were left by the Egyptians, most of them on matters related to religion, such as the well-known Book of the Dead.[5]

egyptian music

From the documents found, such as fragmented music and instruments, musical art would begin in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. In fact, in 1950 archaeologists had found a song of Assyrian origin dating back to 4000 BC, inscribed on a tablet made of clay.

The Egyptians used music a lot in any of the religious or society occasions, such as weddings, parties, war songs, victory songs, or to express sad and funereal feelings. Among the musical instruments include the lyre, zither, oboe, cymbal, harp and others with a sounding board. It was common for wealthy women to sing very well. Along with the music, dance and choreography were developed. The Mesopotamians and Egyptians got music to be written through signs.

Influence of Egyptian civilization on other civilizations

The Egyptians influenced the progress of a wide variety of neighboring and distant peoples. Several scholars from other peoples of antiquity sought their knowledge in Egypt, where they were interns. They created geometry, which later the Greeks and other peoples will begin to follow.

The Egyptians influenced almost all medicine. In fact, they surpassed all ancient peoples in medical knowledge.

As far as religion is concerned, its gods and beliefs have spread far and wide. The world was impressed by the pyramids and the Egyptians believed that the soul was immortal, considering this a spiritual advancement.

With regard to writing, they were pioneers in the art of writing, and their characters went to Phoenicia, where they were simplified, resulting in the alphabet we have today. A great contribution to ancient civilizations was the papyrus provided by Egypt to the entire ancient world so that their books could be written, their libraries formed and material provided for their sages to study.

Mesopotamian Civilization

Main article: Mesopotamia

General map of Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia, an enriched region of Asia Minor, is located in the fertile plains drained by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which discharge their waters into the Persian Gulf. Mesopotamia is largely equivalent to the territory of Iraq today.

The term Mesopotamia is etymologically derived from the classical Greek: mesos = middle and potamos = river and has the meaning "land that lies between rivers", that is, in this case, a region that comprises the hydrographic basin of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. But, as seen on the map, Mesopotamia was very extensive beyond these rivers.

Mesopotamian venerator from 2750-2600 BC

There were several peoples who, through struggles, successively took possession of this fertile region of the Middle East (Asia Minor). Among them, the Sumerians, the Elamites, the Hittites, the Akkadians, the Amorites, the Kassites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, among others, can be mentioned.

is unknown, but it is known that around 3000 BC they were established in the southern part of Mesopotamia, close to the Middle East.[6]

Mesopotamian politics

Several communities which, little by little, became city-states, were created by the Sumerians. Thus appeared the cities of Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Nippur. Chief among them was Ur.

The Sumerian region of occupation did not have a central power by which it was given political unity. The whole city was like a country, with its own government. A civilian (patesi) and a priest ruled a city-state. These cities constantly fought and it was King Sargon I who managed to unify all this, creating the kingdom of Sumer, stretching between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean Sea.

After Sargon I died, the kingdom declined and was invaded by other peoples.

Babylonians

An inscription from the Code of Hammurabi.

Led by Hammurabi, they took possession of Sumer and created the great Babylonian Empire, around 1700 BC. The first known code of laws was drafted by Hammurabi. The content of the laws establishes the rights and duties of the people and authorities. But depending on social class, people were not similar under the law in the Babylonian Empire. For example, slaves were not considered as people, but as an object, a mere property. In other words, slavery was permitted by ancient civilizations and prisoners of war, who did not want to die, were used as slaves for forced labor. The law of talion comes from Hammurabi: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. Another law stated that if a man entered an orchard and stole, he must have paid the owner of the orchard a certain amount of silver.

The Babylonian Empire fell and was dominated by the Assyrians, a very militarily organized warrior people and the first to use chariots of war. The Assyrians, characterized by cruelty and violence, dominated several peoples and conquered the region for 500 years.

Then, in 612 BC, the Babylonian Empire was restructured and reached its apogee with Nebuchadnezzar II, who improved the city, erected the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and ordered an immense ziggurat to be erected, called the Tower of Babel by the Bible. In fact, in 1899, when it was excavated, a very large ziggurat was discovered which was thought to be the Tower of Babel. It had a base of 90 meters and a height of 90 meters, with the top covered in gold and tiles painted blue.

cuneiform writing

Cuneiform writing engraved on a sculpture made during the 22nd century BC (Louvre Museum, Paris). Written language results from the fact that man needs the guarantee of communicating and developing the technique.

The texts were written by the Sumerians and Babylonians on clay tablets. They were the inventors of a type of wedge-shaped writing, which for this reason, received the name of cuneiform writing. These tablets made of clay were very heavy and not easy to handle, but they had the advantage of lasting centuries or millennia with intelligible writing. Today's researchers have found many of them and thus have been able to discover a great deal of things from the first civilization in human history. In the city of Nineveh, King Ashurbanipal founded a library, with 22,000 clay tablets (clay) with writings on a wide variety of subjects. Among other subjects, we are shown by the tablets what commerce and business were like at that time. For example, a list of drugs prescribed to patients is made by the doctor. 3000 years ago, a boy's duties at school are reported by one of the most interesting tablets: the boy needed to go faster to avoid being late for school, otherwise the child would be beaten by the teacher. The teacher also used a stick or paddle to punish students who talked, who left school without authorization or who studied without doing the right thing.

Mesopotamian religion

Both the Sumerians and Babylonians were polytheistic, meaning they believed in a wide variety of gods. Every city had its protector god. Babylon, for example, was being protected by Marduk. They also believed in the forces of the stars and nature and worshiped the sky (Anu), the Earth (Enlil), the Moon (Sin), lightning and storm (Hadad), fire (Gibil), etc.

The religion was worshiped in the temples, called ziggurats, buildings with steps in the shape of a pyramid. The Mesopotamians believed that the stars influenced the life of man, thus originating astrology. The soothsayers and priests who studied the stars were very prestigious. The peoples of Mesopotamia contributed a lot to the knowledge of the stars, and through this knowledge they were even able to predict the floods of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Contributions of the Sumerians and Babylonians

Goddess Ishtar, representative figurine from the 4th century BC

The legacy left by the Sumerians and Babylonians to future peoples was very important. Among other collaborations, the following can be mentioned:

• They had politically and socially organized the city-states;

• They had created a code of rights and duties;

• They had organized food production: already at that time, they used the plow and irrigation machines, for example;

• They had built beautiful temples and grandiose palaces;

• The Sumerians had invented writing, which made it possible to establish the knowledge of the time;

• They had invented the wheel and horse-drawn carts;

• They had created astronomy (research of the stars);

• Astrology, that is, the science that researches the stars that influence people's future.

Ancient people did not believe that the soul was immortal, they were religiously pessimistic and lived without concern for death or what people saw with their own after they died. They sought their protection against the evil forces using amulets and doing all sorts of magic.

One of the most worshiped deities was the goddess Ishtar, personification of the planet Venus. It protected love and war.

hebrew civilization

Main article: History of Israel and Ancient Hebrew Civilization

Abraham and the Three Angels at the Gates of Purgatory as described by Dante Alighieri in 1250. Engraving by Gustave Doré (1832-1883).

The earliest origins of the Hebrews (or Israelites) are not yet known. The Bible is always the most important source for studying these people. The origins began with Abraham, leader of a tribe of semi-nomadic shepherds who, receiving the advice of God, left the city of Ur in Mesopotamia, near the banks of the Euphrates River, went to Haran and then settled in the land of Canaan, in the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea (now Israel). The character of this migration was religious and lasted a long time until Abraham arrived in the land that God had promised.

Abraham, in contrast to other men of the time, believed in a single God, who created the world, who could not be seen and who ordered him to leave for Canaan. Rewarded for obeying this and for believing, a promise from God was received by him: his family would originate a people who were destined to have the land of Canaan, in which, according to the Bible, milk and honey flowed. This promise was renewed to Isaac, of whom Abraham was the father, and later to Jacob (of whom Abraham was the grandfather), the latter receiving from an angel the denomination of Israel, whose meaning is “the strong one of God”. However, Canaan was definitively conquered, in the 13th century BC, during the departure of Moses from Egypt and the leading of all the Hebrews to the Promised Land, in 1250 BC.

the patriarchs

The first three leaders of the Israelites are called patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The former spent his life in Ur, Mesopotamia. Abraham is commanded by God to leave for Canaan and is promised by him that his family will have an excellent future. Abraham travels and settles in the land of Canaan with his family. After he died, he is succeeded by Isaac, of whom Abraham is the father. Then he is followed by Jacob, of whom Isaac is the father. Jacob is the father of twelve sons, who will give rise to the twelve tribes of Israel. José, the youngest of them, is his parents' favorite. He is envied by the brothers to such an extent that he is sold into slavery to Egyptian traders, whether they are born in the country or immigrants. In Egypt, Joseph will work in Pharaoh's court. After a lot of adventures he is appointed prime minister. At that time, many Israelites are left with nothing to eat and Joseph was able to establish his family in Egypt.

moisés

Moses with the Tablets of the Law, by Rembrandt.

The life of the Hebrews in Egypt was peaceful for many generations. However, a pharaoh became restless because the population grew and his country became powerful. He decides to turn them into slaves and orders the killing of all children born recently. Now, at that time, the boy Moses appears in a family of Hebrews. To be saved, he is accommodated by his mother in a small papyrus basket and is hidden among the reeds of the Nile River. Pharaoh's daughter collects the baby and educates him at court. Coming into adulthood, Moses revolts because his people are miserable and take refuge in the Sinai desert. There God is revealed to him and promises him two things: he will set the Israelites free from slavery and he will be given the land of Canaan. Since then, the extraordinary mission of Moses is that the Israelite people will be guided to the Promised Land and the message of God included in the ten commandments will be transmitted to men by them.

So Moses returned to Egypt with Pharaoh and asked him to allow the Hebrews to leave their land, as God had commanded. Knowing that Pharaoh refused, Egypt is punished by God with ten terrible plagues, told in the Bible. Finally, Pharaoh resigns and the Israelites are freed: it is the Exodus, that is, the historical moment in which the Hebrews left Egypt.

The Hebrews were led by Moses through the Sinai desert. Again, God is revealed to him, he will be given the Tablets of the Law, with the ten commandments and a covenant, a covenant is made by Moses with the Israelites. These are protected by him until they enter the land of Canaan, however, it will be demanded in return that his people absolutely obey his laws. Undoubtedly, the laws governing the life of the people of Israel are told by God to Moses. The first 10 are of particular importance: they are the Ten Commandments of the Law of God.

conquest of Canaan

After the departure of the people of Israel from Egypt, the Red Sea was crossed by the Israelites who wandered 40 years through the desert, finally reaching the borders of the Promised Land (currently the State of Israel). Moses dies, Joshua succeeds him, declares a holy war against the Canaanites and wins. The country of the Canaanites is then transformed into the country of Israel. God fulfilled what he promised.

Judges

Once they had settled in the land of Canaan, an authority was needed to lead the Hebrews in battle against their enemies and to direct the activities of the people. They were the judges, and among them Joshua, Samson, Gideon, and Samuel stood out. After the judges, the kingdom of Israel was founded, and the king came to command the country.

Monarchs

David represented by Michelangelo.

David and Solomon were the most victorious kings in the history of Israel. David finished conquering the land of Canaan and created the kingdom of Israel. He sent the Philistines away and made Jerusalem his capital. David was a poetic king and his many biblical psalms were written.

At the time of Solomon's reign, Israel developed greatly. He ordered the construction of palaces, fortifications and the Temple of Jerusalem. Inside the temple, the Ark of the Covenant was located, containing the Tablets of the Law, on which were written the Ten Commandments, which God dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai, during the coming of the Hebrew people from Egypt to Canaan.

Most of the material used in the constructions of Tyre, in Phoenicia, was imported. Imports of wood (especially cedar-of-Lebanon), gold, silver and bronze were so exaggerated that the country became impoverished. The money received was too little for the debts to be paid. So that the expenses and luxury of the court could be sustained, taxes were raised by Solomon who made public works compulsory for the impoverished population. Furthermore, every three months 30,000 Hebrews were rotated working in Phenicia's mines and forests to extract timber as a way of paying Israel's foreign debt to Phenicia.

Solomon's administration was a cause of discontent among the people, however, he was historically regarded as a king who built much and, especially, as a king of much knowledge.

foreign invasions

The rest of the peoples took over Israel a variety of times. After the division of Israel into two opposing states—Israel in the northern part and Judah in the southern part, the Assyrians and Babylonians imprisoned the Hebrews. Then, among the other dominating peoples, the Persians and Romans took possession of Israel. Around the year 70 BC, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Emperor Titus. The Jews, since then, were scattered throughout the world (the so-called Diaspora) and the reunion was only achieved in the territory of today, in 1948, when the State of Israel was founded.

Jewish religion

Other peoples conquered the Israelites, who were weakened from a military point of view, and even took them as slaves to Babylon (the Babylonian captivity). But the Hebrews overcame numerous difficulties through the centuries, and since they united around their religious teachings, they are still always one people today.

A very essential role in the religious and moralistic part was played by the Jews, who greatly influenced the entire West, from Europe to the Americas.

They were practitioners of monotheism and believed in Yahweh, God who created everything, universal, which cannot be seen, an all-powerful spirit, which could not be represented through statues or images. The Hebrews were to worship him "in spirit and in truth." The priests also called themselves Levites, because they belonged to the tribe of Levi, one of the twelve Israelite tribes.

In the 1000 years before Jesus Christ was born, the Hebrew people wrote down their history, their laws and their beliefs. These accounts, as a whole, are found in the initial part of the Bible, called the Old Testament, which is the part that the Hebrew people follow. The Bible is a religious book of Judaism as well as Christianity.

The people who destroyed the monumental Temple of Jerusalem were the Romans, in the year 70. Currently, the remaining part was just a wall that served as the surroundings of the temple. On this wall, the Hebrews still today will mourn the destroyed temple and its people that were scattered throughout the world. This wall is called the Wailing Wall.

As for feasts and holy days, the Jews consecrate the Sabbath to the practice of religion. Any work that can only be done in six working days is prohibited. The Jews set aside the Sabbath, properly speaking, to meet with family members, so that they could pray and study the Old Testament (religious services were also held in the synagogue).

Among other things I want to speak simply of a notion in life that maybe we can understand its particularities that will involve us with all the atmospheres that in the law applies various questions that we suppose to say that the world may have come from a vibrational set of certain ideas that extinguishes on various ways and formations that puts us and dazzles us under a great question of appreciating the time and its modalities that supposedly we can be living here today a great constitutional variety of certain habits and fundamental concepts that were formalized from the beginning of the world until the nowadays when we see the human being pass and behave in different ways that we can here now understand where it all may have started and I want to talk here about various religions that in my opinion have taken on various issues for the maturation of the human being in the life as to various distortions that prevent us from surviving and better conquering the life of the human being and I want to thank you for this formidable work I did for everyone to have an idea of time and make life simply better.

I want to thank you all for this great introduction that I show here for everyone to see the whole story of life and the world that completes us with a great variety well narrated and explained about life and thank you all very much and I want to say that this work I did to the Edu Academy for great researchers of history in which we can show all the relativity of man with history and how it all started and here I leave my thanks as a writer and historian and thank you all very much!

By: Roberto Barros