The Battle of Isandhlwana, 1879
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The Battle of Isandhlwana, 1879 Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com |
It's impossible to provide a complete outline of world history here, but here are some major periods and some important people:
The roots of modern democracy. Great achievements in art, literature, theater, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, logic, and rhetoric.
Pericles (495 BC to 429 BC): One of the great rulers of Athens. Architecture (the Parthenon was built during his reign), the arts, and philosophy thrived under his rule.
Socrates (469 BC to 399 BC): Perhaps one of the greatest moral philosophers. He taught that all human endeavor should lead us to truth and goodness. His quest for truth exposed a lot of sham artists and hypocrisy in Athens, and he was sentenced to death for trying to teach his students to seek the truth. He believed that all ideas and beliefs should be subjected to rigorous critical scrutiny.
Plato (427 BC to 347 BC): A student of Socrates. The Republic, his work on how a nation should be governed, is one of his best known works, but he wrote on an astonishing variety of topics. His works are in the form of dialogs, usually guided by a very wise, crafty Socrates.
Aristotle (384 BC to 322 BC): His form of logical thinking has influenced thought in the humanities and sciences until today.
Euclid (325 BC to 265 BC): Geometer whose work and method of reasoning influenced Galileo, Newton, and many others.
Alexander the Great (of Macedonia) (356 BC to 323 BC): Alexander expanded his empire by conquest until it encompassed Macedonia, Greece, Egypt, Persia, and parts of what is now India.
Gauthama Buddha (approx. 563 BC to 483 BC): Founder of Buddhism.
The reign of Ashoka (273 BC to 232 BC) and the rise and spread of Buddhism. Ashoka was one of the greatest rulers of India. At first, his reign was marked by military conquest and expansion, but at the height of his strength he renounced violence and embraced Buddhism. He used his power to try to spread the beliefs and practices of Buddhism far beyond the borders of India.
Confucius (551BC to 479 BC): Great Chinese moral philospher.
Han dynasty (202 BC to 189 AD): End of feudalism in China. Formation of a unified Chinese empire. Enforced standardization of writing system. Construction of the Great Wall of China.
Mohammed (570 AD to 632 AD): founder of Islam.
Charlemagne (742 to 814): Holy Roman Emperor. Unified Western Europe.
Mongol invasions of Asia and Europe (1206 to 1294). Beginning with the reign of Genghis Khan (1155 to 1227), the Mongols began a decisive period of conquest, extending their empire to include China, Persia, Russia, and parts of Hungary and Poland. Freeing of land routes between Europe and Asia.
Marco Polo (approx. 1254 to 1324) traveled to China and India.
Incredible flowering of the arts and sciences, European "discovery" of the New World. Rise of new areas of religious thought which ran counter to the established church. Rediscovery of Greek thought and culture. The rise of humanism.
Leonardo daVinci (1452 to 1519): Inventor, scientist, artist.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 AD to 1543 AD): Hypothesized that the earth revolves around the sun.
Galileo Galilei (1564 AD to 1642 AD): Made discoveries of the acceleration of falling bodies and inertia, used a telescope to find moons of Jupiter and reaffirmed the Copernican view that the earth revolves around a stationary sun. The Inquisition labeled him a heretic for his heliocentric beliefs, and he was persuaded to renounce his discoveries.
Isaac Newton (1642 to 1727 AD): Law of universal gravitation.
Martin Luther (1483 to 1546): Protested against the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church.
Johannes Gutenberg (1394 to 1468): Perfected movable, interchangable type. His work had tremendous implications for the control and spread of information, and was instrumental for Luther and others of the Reformation.
Ferdinand Magellan (1480? to 1521). First to circumnavigate the globe.
The rise of reason, and the new republics of America and France.
Voltaire (1694 to 1778): Thinker, writer, historian. Wrote in favor of reason and against the hypocrisies of organized religion. Best known for Candide and The Philosophical Dictionary. His ideas are still very influential in modern political and social thought.
Peter the Great (1682 to 1725): Westernization and modernization of Russia. Construction of Petrograd (Saint Petersburg).
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 to 1778): Social theorist, considered an early proponent of Romanticism. Like Voltaire, he wrote against hypocrisies of organized religion and monarchical rule.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 to 1826): Early father of the American republic. Author of the United States Declaration of Independence. Influential in the westward expansion of the United States.
Napoleon (1769 to 1821): Ambitious soldier who started his career trying to "liberate" Europe, and ended up as an emperor trying to conquer it.
Developments in technology, agriculture, distribution of wealth and labor which had profound social and economic effects.
Karl Marx (1818 to 1883): intellectual father of socialism. Author of Das Kapital.
World War I, World War II, the Cold War, development of nuclear weapons, the Russian Revolution, flight, the founding of Israel, space flight, radical developments in information science (computers, world wide web), and communications. Independence of former European colonies in Asia and Africa.
Adolph Hitler (1889 to 1945): Austrian-born leader of Germany who caused World War II and ordered the slaughter of millions of innocent Jews (the Holocaust).
Albert Einstein (1879 to 1955): His theories of relativity have drastically altered the way scientists think about the physical world.
Woodrow Wilson (1856 to 1924): U. S. President during World War I, whose ideas helped establish the League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations).
Mohandas Gandhi (1869 to 1948): Applied principles of nonviolence to social struggles in South Africa and India. Leader in the movement to liberate India from British rule.