History of the World

An interactive map of the history of our planet and its people, from the dust round the young Sun 4.6 billion years ago to today. Scroll through time and watch the continents drift, the ice come and go, the first humans spread out of Africa, and empires rise and fall, with thousands of events, people, inventions, works of art, voyages and battles where and when they happened. Plus Pinpoints, the daily history game.

Guided tours

The young Earth (4.74 billion years ago – 359 million years ago): From a disc of dust round the young Sun to a molten planet, its Moon and first oceans, the first life and land, oxygen, ice from pole to pole and the first animals, up to the coal forests.
Deep time (300 million years ago – 7 million years ago): From the supercontinent Pangaea through the rise and fall of the dinosaurs and the great extinctions to the first apes, as the continents drifted into their modern places.
Human origins (7 million years ago – 16,000 BCE): From the first upright-walking apes of Africa to Homo sapiens spreading across every continent but Antarctica by the end of the last Ice Age.
The dawn of farming (9,700 BCE – 3,000 BCE): As the Ice Age ended, people on several continents independently began to tend plants and animals, settle down and build the first villages and monuments.
Farming spreads (9,500 BCE – 3,600 BCE): Watch farming spread from the Fertile Crescent to the edge of the Atlantic over six thousand years.
The Americas before 1492 (7,000 BCE – 1491 CE): Thousands of years of farming, cities and empires in the Americas, from early maize and the Andes' first cities to Tenochtitlan and the Inca.
The first cities and empires (4,000 BCE – 539 BCE): From Sumer to the Nile and the Indus, river valleys gave rise to cities, writing, kings and the first empires.
Ancient Egypt (3,500 BCE – 30 BCE): Three thousand years of pharaohs on the Nile, from the first unified kingdom and the pyramids to the Ptolemies and Cleopatra.
The story of writing (3,200 BCE – 1450 CE): How people learned to record words, from clay accounts and hieroglyphs to the alphabets, characters and printing presses that carry most of the world's writing today.
Writing spreads (3,300 BCE – 1950 CE): Writing was invented a few times, in Mesopotamia, China and Mesoamerica, and borrowed and remade everywhere else.
Voyagers of the Pacific (3,000 BCE – 1769 CE): Over four thousand years, Austronesian and Polynesian seafarers settled the islands of the Pacific, the largest ocean on Earth, in outrigger and double-hulled canoes.
Empires of India (2,500 BCE – 1947 CE): From the planned cities of the Indus to the Maurya, Gupta, Chola and Mughal empires, British rule, and independence and partition in 1947.
Birth of the world religions (1,500 BCE – 1499 CE): Where and when the great faiths and philosophies of Asia and the Mediterranean took shape, from the Vedic hymns to the teachings of Guru Nanak.
Christianity spreads (30 CE – 1820 CE): From a small Jewish sect in Jerusalem to the Roman Empire, Europe and, with Europe's ships, the rest of the world.
Buddhism spreads (528 BCE – 1580 CE): From the Ganges plain across Asia: two thousand years of monks, merchants and kings.
Dynasties of China (1,250 BCE – 1949 CE): Three thousand years of Chinese states, from the Shang kings of the Yellow River to the last emperor and the People's Republic.
The rise and fall of Rome (753 BCE – 476 CE): From a small town on the Tiber to master of the Mediterranean, and the long break-up of its western half.
Great empires of Africa (700 BCE – 1896 CE): Three thousand years of African kingdoms, trading cities and empires, from Kush and Aksum to Mali, Great Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
Alexander's world (447 BCE – 285 BCE): How a Macedonian king overthrew the Persian Empire and left behind Greek-speaking kingdoms from Egypt to Afghanistan.
Plagues and pandemics (430 BCE – 2020 CE): Epidemics have toppled empires, emptied cities and reshaped societies, and the fight against them gave rise to modern medicine and public health.
The Black Death spreads (1346 CE – 1353 CE): How plague crossed Europe and the Middle East in seven years, 1346 to 1353.
COVID-19 spreads (2019 CE – 2022 CE): How a new coronavirus went from one city to every country in a few months, as seen in the first confirmed case in each.
The 1918 flu spreads (1918 CE – 1919 CE): The deadliest pandemic of the 20th century reached almost every place on Earth in about a year, carried by troops and ships at the end of the First World War.
The Silk Roads (138 BCE – 1405 CE): The overland and maritime networks that carried silk, paper, religions, inventions and disease between China, India, Persia and the Mediterranean.
The Islamic Golden Age (610 CE – 1258 CE): The spread of Islam and the flowering of science, philosophy and trade across the caliphates from Spain to Central Asia.
Islam spreads (610 CE – 1480 CE): From Mecca to Spain and the Indus in a hundred years, then along trade routes to Africa, India and the islands of Southeast Asia.
The Vikings (793 CE – 1066 CE): Scandinavian seafarers who raided, traded and settled from Ireland to the Volga, and sailed west to Iceland, Greenland and North America.
The Crusades (1071 CE – 1492 CE): Two centuries of holy wars for Jerusalem and the Levant, their spread to Constantinople, southern France and Iberia, and the fall of the last strongholds.
The Mongol conquests (1190 CE – 1370 CE): How the steppe tribes united under Genghis Khan built the largest contiguous land empire in history.
The Ottoman Empire (1299 CE – 1922 CE): How a small Anatolian principality took Constantinople, ruled from Hungary to Arabia for centuries, and came to an end after the First World War.
The Age of Discovery (1405 CE – 1565 CE): Ocean voyages that linked the world's continents for the first time, with enormous consequences for trade, empire and the peoples of the Americas and Africa.
The fall of the Mexica (1500 CE – 1521 CE): How a few hundred Spaniards under Hernán Cortés, with tens of thousands of Indigenous allies and the help of smallpox, brought down the Aztec Empire between 1519 and 1521.
The Scientific Revolution and beyond (1543 CE – 1953 CE): From a Sun-centred cosmos to the double helix: how observation, experiment and mathematics transformed our understanding of nature.
The printing press spreads (1450 CE – 1500 CE): From one workshop in Mainz to more than 250 towns in fifty years.
The world of Captain Alatriste (1566 CE – 1648 CE): Spain's Golden Age behind Arturo Pérez-Reverte's swordsman: American silver, war in Flanders and the art of Velázquez, from the Dutch revolt to the peace of 1648.
The Age of Revolutions (1776 CE – 1848 CE): From Philadelphia to Paris, Port-au-Prince and Caracas, ideas of popular sovereignty and rights overturned empires and kings between 1776 and 1848.
Railways spread (1825 CE – 1917 CE): In a century the railway went from a coal line in north-east England to every continent but Antarctica.
The end of empires (1804 CE – 1997 CE): How colonies in the Americas, Asia and Africa won their independence, from the Haitian Revolution to the handover of Hong Kong.
The history of Italy (753 BCE – 1957 CE): From a small town on the Tiber to the Renaissance and a united Italy: the moments that made the peninsula.
The history of France (15,000 BCE – 1944 CE): From the painted caves of Lascaux to kings, revolution and Napoleon: the moments that made France.
The history of Germany (9 CE – 1989 CE): From a forest ambush of Roman legions to printing, Luther, Bismarck and a Berlin divided and reunited.
The World Wars (1914 CE – 1945 CE): Two global wars between 1914 and 1945 that killed tens of millions and remade the map of the world.
The Cold War and the space race (1945 CE – 1991 CE): For more than four decades the United States and the Soviet Union competed for power, allies and prestige, from divided Berlin to the surface of the Moon.
Fire, ash and flood (66 million years ago – 1992 CE): An asteroid, the greatest eruptions and a burst ice-age lake, and how their ash and haze spread round the world.
What we wore (43,000 BCE – 2013 CE): The story of clothing, from the first bone needles of the ice age to woven linen, silk, togas and kimonos, the cotton that started the Industrial Revolution, blue jeans and nylon.

Battle View: battles played out on the ground

Empires and states

Macedonian Empire (675–292 BCE)
Achaemenid Empire (550–327 BCE)
Ptolemaic Kingdom (331–28 BCE)
Maurya Empire (318–171 BCE)
Seleucid Empire (318–64 BCE)
Parthian Empire (239 BCE – 237 CE)
Xiongnu (208 BCE – 153 CE)
Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 237 CE)
Roman Empire (31 BCE – 394 CE)
Xin Dynasty (6–29 CE)
Xianbei (60–237 CE)
Sasanian Empire (215–643 CE)
Western Jin (265–425 CE)
Rouran Khaganate (402–554 CE)
White Huns (410–560 CE)
Göktürk Khaganate (555–586 CE)
Western Göktürks (587–660 CE)
Sui Dynasty (587–627 CE)
Tang Dynasty (623–910 CE)
Tibetan Empire (623–849 CE)
Rashidun Caliphate (633–665 CE)
Umayyad Caliphate (656–756 CE)
Türgesh (692–749 CE)
Abbasid Caliphate (750–1259 CE)
Uyghur Khaganate (750–849 CE)
Kimek-Kipchak confederation (750–1235 CE)
Samanid Empire (886–999 CE)
Ghaznavid Empire (962–1209 CE)
Great Seljuk Empire (1040–1201 CE)
Khwarezmid Empire (1202–1235 CE)
Mongol Empire (1206–1293 CE)
Yuan Dynasty (1294–1374 CE)
Golden Horde (1294–1695 CE)
Ilkhanate (1294–1343 CE)
Ottoman Empire (1305–1923 CE)
Ming Dynasty (1375–1644 CE)
Timurid Empire (1375–1528 CE)
Northern Yuan (1375–1439 CE)
Four Oirats (1402–1474 CE)
Khanate of Sibir (1429–1587 CE)
Mongol Khanate (1468–1635 CE)
Portuguese Empire (1502–1823 CE)
Spanish Empire (1516–1879 CE)
Mughal Empire (1529–1858 CE)
Tsardom of Russia (1547–1720 CE)
Dzungar Khanate (1609–1756 CE)
Qing Dynasty (1645–1911 CE)
British Colonial Empire (1706–1999 CE)
Russian Empire (1721–1916 CE)
Afsharid Iran (1734–1756 CE)
British Empire (1757–1858 CE)
United States of America (1776–2026 CE)
Empire of Brazil (1822–1889 CE)
Gran Colombia (1822–1833 CE)
First Mexican Empire (1822–1823 CE)
Federated Republic of Mexico (1824–1865 CE)
Peru-Bolivian Confederation (1836–1839 CE)
French Africa (1846–1957 CE)
British Raj (1859–1947 CE)
Khedivate of Egypt (1866–1884 CE)
Empire of Japan (1868–1945 CE)
British Africa (1885–1960 CE)
Brazilian Republic (1890–1966 CE)
Italian Africa (1890–1943 CE)
Commonwealth of Australia (1905–2026 CE)
Republic of China (1912–2026 CE)
Empire of China (1916 CE)
Russian Republic (1917–1919 CE)
Kuomintang (1917–1929 CE)
Republics of the Soviet Union (1920–1921 CE)
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991 CE)
Canada (1932–2026 CE)
Unitary State of Brazil (1932–1945 CE)
Nazi Germany (1936–1944 CE)
Republic of India (1947–2026 CE)
People's Republic of China (1950–2026 CE)
French Fifth Republic (1958–2026 CE)
Federated Republic of Brazil (1967–1986 CE)
Republic of Brazil (1987–2026 CE)
Russian Federation (1992–2026 CE)

Pinpoints: five moments from history a day; place each on the map and in time.