Mythology

Human origins Humans evolved in Africa from great apes through the lineage of hominins, which arose 7–5 million years ago. The ability to walk on two legs emerged in early hominins after the split from chimpanzees, as an adaptation possibly associated with a shift from forest to savanna habitats. Hominins began to use rudimentary stone tools c. 3.3 million years ago, marking the advent of the Paleolithic era. The genus Homo evolved from Australopithecus. The earliest record of Homo is the 2.8 million-year-old specimen LD 350-1 from Ethiopia, and the earliest named species is Homo habilis which evolved by 2.3 million years ago. The most important difference between Homo habilis and Australopithecus was a 50% increase in brain size. H. erectus evolved about 2 million years ago and was the first hominin species to leave Africa and disperse across Eurasia. Perhaps as early as 1.5 million years ago, but certainly by 250,000 years ago, hominins began to use fire for heat and cooking. Beginni...

Human history or world history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers. They migrated out of Africa during the Last Ice Age and had spread across Earth's continental land except Antarctica by the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago. Soon afterward, the Neolithic Revolution in West Asia brought the first systematic husbandry of plants and animals, and saw many humans transition from a nomadic life to a sedentary existence as farmers in permanent settlements. The growing complexity of human societies necessitated systems of accounting and writing. These developments paved the way for the emergence of early civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, and China, marking the beginning of the ancient period in 3500 BCE. These civilizations supported the establishment of regional empires and acted as a fertile ground for the advent of transformative philosophical ...

Axial age The Axial Age was a period between 750 and 350 BCE during which major intellectual development happened around the world. This included the development of Chinese philosophy by Confucius, Mozi, and others; the Upanishads and Gautama Buddha in Indian philosophy; Zoroaster in Ancient Persia; the Jewish prophets Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Deutero-Isaiah in Palestine; Ancient Greek philosophy and literature, all independently of each other. Ancient Chinese thought The Hundred Schools of Thought were philosophers and schools of thought that flourished in Ancient China from the 6th century to 221 BCE, an era of great cultural and intellectual expansion in China. Even though this period – known in its earlier part as the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period – in its latter part was fraught with chaos and bloody battles, it is also known as the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy because a broad range of thoughts and ideas were developed and discussed freely. The th...

Prehistory covers human intellectual history before the invention of writing. The first identified cultures are from the Upper Paleolithic era, evidenced by regional patterns in artefacts such as cave art, Venus figurines, and stone tools. The Aterian culture was engaged in symbolically constituted material culture, creating what are amongst the earliest African examples of personal ornamentation. Origins of religion The Natufian culture of ancient Middle East produced zoomorphic art. The Khiamian culture which followed moved into depicting human beings, which was called by Jacques Cauvin a "revolution in symbols", becoming increasingly realistic. According to him, this led to the development of religion, with the Woman and the Bull as the first sacred figures. He claims that this led to a revolution in human thinking, with humans for the first time moving from animal or spirit worship to the worship of a supreme being, with humans clearly in hierarchical relation to it. Anot...

The theory of relativity, proposed by Albert Einstein in the early 20th century, stands as one of the most groundbreaking achievements in the history of science. It completely transformed our understanding of space, time, and the universe. Before Einstein, physics was largely dominated by Newton’s laws, which explained motion and gravity in a way that seemed universal. However, as science advanced, experiments began to show that Newton’s framework was not sufficient to explain certain phenomena, particularly those involving light and very high speeds. Einstein’s relativity addressed these problems, offering a new vision of reality. Special Relativity In 1905, Einstein published his theory of special relativity. Its central idea was simple yet radical: the laws of physics are the same for all observers moving at constant speeds relative to each other, and the speed of light is always constant, no matter the motion of the source or the observer. From these principles, Einstein derived su...

Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, and the development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture." The "Cradle of Civilisation" is a common term for the area comprising modern Iraq as it was home to the earliest known civilisation, the Sumerian civilisation, which arose in the fertile Tigris-Euphrates river valley of southern Iraq in the Chalcolithic (Ubaid period). It was there, in the late 4th millennium BC, that the world's first known writing system emerged. The Sumerians were also the first known to harness the wheel and create city-states; their writings record the first known evidence of mathematics, astronomy, astrology, written law, medicine, and organised religion. The Sumerian language is a l...

Between 65,000 BC and 35,000 BC, northern Iraq was home to a Neanderthal culture, archaeological remains of which have been discovered at Shanidar Cave. During 1957–1961, Shanidar Cave was excavated by Ralph Solecki and his team from Columbia University, uncovering nine skeletons of Neanderthal man of varying ages and states of preservation (labelled Shanidar I–IX). A tenth individual was later discovered by M. Zeder during examination of a faunal assemblage from the site at the Smithsonian Institution. The remains seemed to suggest that Neanderthals had funeral ceremonies, burying their dead with flowers (although the flowers are now thought to be a modern contaminant), and that they took care of injured and elderly individuals. This region is also the location of a number of pre-Neolithic burials, dating from approximately 11,000 BC. Since approximately 10,000 BC, Iraq, together with a large part of the Fertile Crescent, was a center of a Neolithic culture known as Pre-Pottery Neolit...