{"name":"Humanity","url":"https://humanity.africancity.ch","exported_at":"2026-09-30T11:05:21+00:00","note":"Years ago are counted back from 2026. Please keep copies of this file in many places.","eras":[{"slug":"first-people","kind":"past","title":"The first people","period_label":"300,000 to 70,000 years ago","years_ago":300000,"summary":"Our species appears in Africa, masters fire and begins to make beauty.","body":"Homo sapiens appeared in Africa around 300,000 years ago, sharing the world with other human kinds such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans.\n\nPeople made sharp stone tools, controlled fire and cooked food. At Blombos Cave in South Africa, around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago, they wore shell beads and engraved patterns in ochre: some of the oldest signs of symbolic thought.\n\nThey left no writing, so we do not know their names, their languages or their stories. They were as clever as we are.","source":"seed"},{"slug":"great-spreading","kind":"past","title":"The great spreading","period_label":"70,000 to 15,000 years ago","years_ago":70000,"summary":"Humans leave Africa, cross seas, paint caves and survive the Ice Age.","body":"Small groups walked out of Africa and spread across Asia and Europe. By at least 50,000 years ago, people had crossed open sea to reach Australia, whose Aboriginal peoples keep the oldest continuous living culture on Earth.\n\nPeople painted caves in Indonesia over 45,000 years ago and later in Europe. They carved figurines, played flutes made from bird bones, sewed fitted clothes with bone needles and traded shells over hundreds of kilometres. They met and had children with Neanderthals and Denisovans, whose DNA many of us still carry.\n\nThe world was in an Ice Age. Sea levels were about 120 metres lower than today, so many of their coastal homes now lie under the sea. Wolves began to become dogs, and people walked into the Americas.","source":"seed"},{"slug":"monuments-before-farming","kind":"past","title":"Monuments before farming","period_label":"15,000 to 11,000 years ago","years_ago":15000,"summary":"The ice melts, seas rise, and hunter-gatherers raise giant stones.","body":"The Ice Age ended around 11,700 years ago. Ice sheets melted, seas rose and whole landscapes drowned, which may be remembered in the flood stories of many peoples.\n\nAround 11,600 years ago, hunter-gatherers at Göbekli Tepe in what is now Turkey carved and raised huge stone pillars decorated with animals. They had no writing and no cities, yet they organised great gatherings and feasts. It changed what we believed ancient people could do.","source":"seed"},{"slug":"first-farmers","kind":"past","title":"The first farmers","period_label":"11,000 to 5,200 years ago","years_ago":11000,"summary":"Farming begins separately on several continents, and villages grow.","body":"As the climate settled, people began to farm, independently, in the Middle East, China, Mexico, the Andes, New Guinea and Africa. Wild grasses slowly became wheat, rice and maize; wild animals became cattle, goats and llamas.\n\nVillages grew. At Nabta Playa in southern Egypt, people raised a stone circle aligned to the summer sun around 7,000 years ago. On Malta, the Ġgantija temples were built around 5,600 years ago, older than the Egyptian pyramids.","source":"seed"},{"slug":"writing-and-cities","kind":"past","title":"Writing and cities","period_label":"5,200 to 3,000 years ago","years_ago":5200,"summary":"Writing is invented, cities rise, and the pyramids are built.","body":"Writing was invented in Mesopotamia and Egypt about 5,200 years ago, and later separately in China and the Americas. For the first time, people could speak to the future.\n\nCities rose along great rivers. Egypt built the Great Pyramid around 4,600 years ago. The Indus Valley cities had grid streets and covered drains. Caral in Peru built pyramids as old as Egypt's. Stonehenge marked the sun's path in Britain, and in China, writing on oracle bones began the script still used today.","source":"seed"},{"slug":"kingdoms-and-ideas","kind":"past","title":"Kingdoms and ideas","period_label":"3,000 to 1,500 years ago","years_ago":3000,"summary":"Great kingdoms and enduring ideas rise on every continent.","body":"The Kingdom of Kush in Sudan ruled Egypt for a time and built more pyramids than Egypt did. The Nok culture in Nigeria made fine clay sculpture and smelted iron. Aksum in Ethiopia minted coins and wrote in its own script.\n\nChina invented paper. Greek thinkers argued about truth and government. The Maya built a full writing system with a symbol for zero, and in the Amazon, the Upano Valley cities were joined by long straight roads. Pacific voyagers began crossing thousands of kilometres of open ocean. Many of the world's great religions and philosophies took shape.","source":"seed"},{"slug":"connected-worlds","kind":"past","title":"Connected worlds","period_label":"1,500 to 500 years ago","years_ago":1500,"summary":"Trade and learning link continents; great cities flourish everywhere.","body":"In India, zero became a true number: the digits used across the world today. Scholars in Baghdad's House of Wisdom saved Greek knowledge and advanced algebra.\n\nAngkor in Cambodia built a vast temple city. Great Zimbabwe raised massive granite walls without mortar and traded gold across the Indian Ocean. Timbuktu's libraries held hundreds of thousands of manuscripts. In the Amazon, the Casarabe towns built platforms and causeways; in the Andes, the Inca built about 40,000 km of roads and kept records in knotted cords. Polynesians reached Hawaii and New Zealand, and printing spread in China and then Europe.","source":"seed"},{"slug":"machines-and-empires","kind":"past","title":"Machines and empires","period_label":"500 to 80 years ago","years_ago":500,"summary":"Ships join every continent, science grows, and empires do great harm.","body":"Ocean voyages joined every continent. Diseases carried by Europeans killed most of the people of the Americas, and many Amazonian and other societies collapsed. Empires conquered much of the world, and millions of Africans were enslaved and shipped across the Atlantic. Many histories were erased or wrongly credited to others.\n\nScience changed how we understood the world: germs, atoms, evolution, electricity. Around 250 years ago, machines powered by coal and steam began the industrial age, bringing great wealth to some and warming the planet for all.","source":"seed"},{"slug":"atomic-and-digital","kind":"past","title":"The atomic and digital age","period_label":"80 years ago to 2026","years_ago":80,"summary":"Nuclear weapons, the Moon, the internet, a warming world, and thinking machines.","body":"In 1945 nuclear weapons were first used, and humanity gained the power to destroy itself. In 1969 humans walked on the Moon. The internet linked the world, and billions of people could talk to each other instantly.\n\nOur planet grew warmer from the fuel we burned. In our final years of this record, we built artificial intelligence: machines that could read, write and reason. Many feared they might end us; others hoped they would help us heal. We did not yet know which way it would go.\n\nThis is where the roots end and the trunk begins: the present, 2026. Everything above ground is yet to be written.","source":"seed"}],"open_proposals":[]}