From 500 to the Present

Fifteen centuries on one axis — and the transmission of knowledge given a lane of its own, because it is the thread that runs through all the others.

← The Master Timeline, to AD 180

Five Hundred to Now

476–1000 · 0.36 px/yr 1000–1500 · 0.72 px/yr 1500–2025 · 0.97 px/yr 500 600 700 800 900 1100 1200 1300 1400 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 500 THE LATIN WEST BRITAIN BYZANTIUM AND THE EAST THE ISLAMIC WORLD ASIA THE AMERICAS KNOWLEDGE AND ITS TRANSMISSION AD 476 — The western empire ends. Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus. No one at the time treated it as the end of Rome — the eastern empire continued and called itself Roman for another thousand years.1 800 — Charlemagne crowned. A Frankish king is made emperor at Rome. The Carolingian schools copy and standardise the Latin classics; the minuscule script they develop is the ancestor of the lower case you are reading.10 911 — Rollo takes the Seine. The grant that makes Normandy. Within two generations his descendants speak French and take the Frankish faith — the Norman conquest of Europe follows from it.12 c. 1030 — The Hautevilles go south. Norman knights take service in Italy and end holding Sicily and the south — and with Sicily, a Greek and Arabic library.14 1096 — The First Crusade. Bohemond of Hauteville among its leaders. Four Latin states in the Levant, and two centuries of traffic in both directions.19 1265 — The Stewarts in Scotland. Walter, sixth High Steward. The office becomes the surname and the surname becomes the crown — the Stewart line.24 1347–1351 — The Black Death. Perhaps a third of Europe dies. Labour scarcity that follows breaks the manorial system where plague and war together had not.25 1492 — Granada, and the Atlantic. Muslim rule in Spain ends and Columbus sails in the same year. Two consequences of one Castilian crown, in one twelvemonth.29 1789 — The French Revolution. The old order in Europe is broken in one country and reshaped in all of them.37 1869 — Suez opens. The Mediterranean joined to the Red Sea. Ptolemy II’s engineers had done it on a different line two thousand years earlier, and Napoleon’s surveyor had repeated the error that stopped Necho and Darius.42 1914–1918 — The First World War. Four empires end: Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman.43 547 — Bernicia. Ida takes Bamburgh. The Anglo-Saxon kingdom that becomes Northumbria — the setting of The Laidly Worm.5 13 Nov 1002 — St Brice’s Day. Æthelred orders the Danes in England killed. Two killings on the same saint’s day, ninety-one years apart.13 1066 — Hastings. An army of perhaps seven thousand replaces the entire ruling class of England. The Bayeux Tapestry is contemporary and is 68 metres long.16 1124 — David I imports the Normans. He grants Scottish land to Norman and Flemish knights. Their descendants lead the resistance against England 170 years later — Bruce, Stewart, Moray, Comyn.20 1396 — The North Inch. Sixty men, thirty a side, before the king at Perth. A judicial battle as public spectacle.26 6 Jul 1535 — Thomas More executed. The King’s good servant, but God’s first. A lawyer refuses an oath and the state kills him for it.31 1707 — The Union. Scotland and England unite under a Stewart-descended crown. The steward’s office had become a surname, then a dynasty, then a state.35 537 — Hagia Sophia. Built in five years. The largest interior space in the world for nearly a thousand years, and the dome fell twice and was rebuilt.3 1054 — The churches divide. Rome and Constantinople excommunicate each other. The split has not closed.15 1453 — CONSTANTINOPLE FALLS. Eleven centuries of the eastern empire end. Greek scholars carry manuscripts west to Italy, and the Renaissance gets its Greek texts from the fall of the city that kept them.27 622 — The Hijra. Muhammad moves from Mecca to Medina. The Islamic calendar counts from this year, and within a century the new polity runs from Spain to the Indus.6 638 — Jerusalem taken. The city passes from Byzantine to Muslim rule, and stays in it, with two interruptions, until 1917.7 711 — Al-Andalus. The Umayyads cross into Spain. Muslim rule in the peninsula lasts 781 years.8 1187 — Saladin takes Jerusalem. The Crusader kingdom is broken at Hattin and the city changes hands again.21 1258 — BAGHDAD SACKED. The Mongols destroy the city and its libraries. The House of Wisdom ends here, four centuries after it began.23 1917 — Jerusalem again. Allenby takes the city. Muslim rule since 638, with two interruptions, ends.44 1948 — The state of Israel. A Jewish state in the land for the first time since AD 70.47 1206 — Chinggis Khan. The Mongol empire becomes the largest contiguous land empire in history and, for a century, makes the road from China to Europe safe to travel.22 1869 — Edmund Morel in Japan. A dying English engineer lays out Japan’s first railway and the ministry that would build the rest. He is 30 when he dies.41 1974 — The terracotta army. Farmers digging a well at Xi'an find eight thousand figures. The first emperor's tomb mound itself has still not been opened.49 1620 — Plymouth. English dissenters land in New England. Mary Morrell’s line begins there and runs to Benjamin Franklin.33 1776 — The Declaration. Franklin among its signers. A colonial argument settled in print and then in arms.36 1830 — The Book of Mormon. Published at Palmyra. A claim of Israelite descent in the Americas, and a church built on it.39 1834 — John Murrell. The Mississippi outlaw and the pamphlet that made him. Murrell’s Treasure.40 529 — Justinian closes the Athenian schools. The Neoplatonic academy shuts after nine centuries. The scholars go east, to Persia, and the Greek learning goes with them.2 c. 540 — Cassiodorus at Vivarium. He makes copying a monastic duty. Monks copy pagan classical texts they disagree with, and most surviving Latin literature reaches us through that obligation.4 751 — Paper reaches the Islamic world. Chinese papermakers are said to have been captured at Talas. Paper reaches Baghdad within a generation and Europe four centuries later.9 c. 830 — THE HOUSE OF WISDOM. A state-funded translation programme at Baghdad turns Greek science into Arabic. Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen and Aristotle are preserved and extended there, and return to Europe through it. Almagest and algebra are Arabic words.11 1085 — TOLEDO FALLS, AND THE LIBRARIES SURVIVE. Castile takes the city and the Arabic libraries are not destroyed. The translation school that follows turns Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy and al-Khwarizmi into Latin. This is how Europe gets its own classical inheritance back.17 1088 — Bologna, then Paris and Oxford. The first universities appear within a generation of the Toledo translations arriving. The institutions follow the texts.18 c. 1455 — THE PRESS. Gutenberg's Bible. By 1500 there are printed books in more than 250 European towns, and the cost of a copy falls by orders of magnitude. The recopying problem that killed Alexandria is solved.28 1517 — The Reformation, printed. Luther's theses reach the German lands in weeks. The press makes a local dispute continental — set out in The Art of the PsyOP.30 1543 — Copernicus. De revolutionibus. Ptolemy's astronomy had stood for fourteen centuries, preserved by Baghdad and returned through Toledo, and it is overturned by a book printed the year its author died.32 1687 — Newton’s Principia. Mathematics applied to motion and gravity together. The method, not the results, is what changes.34 1799 — The Rosetta Stone found. At Rashid, by Napoleon's expedition. Champollion reads it in 1822 and three thousand years of Egyptian record reopen. See The Ptolemies.38 1922 — Tutankhamun found. The only near-intact royal burial from the New Kingdom. See Egypt before the Ptolemies.45 1947 — THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS. Manuscripts a thousand years older than the previously oldest Hebrew Bible. Some readings agree with the Septuagint against the Masoretic Text — evidence that the Greek translators were rendering a Hebrew text since lost.46 1969 — The Moon. Cleopatra stood closer in time to this than to the building of the Great Pyramid.48 1991 — The web. Documents addressable from anywhere. The copying problem is inverted: the constraint is no longer whether a text survives but whether anyone can tell which version is true.50
  1. 1AD 476The western empire ends
  2. 2529Justinian closes the Athenian schools
  3. 3537Hagia Sophia
  4. 4c. 540Cassiodorus at Vivarium
  5. 5547Bernicia
  6. 6622The Hijra
  7. 7638Jerusalem taken
  8. 8711Al-Andalus
  9. 9751Paper reaches the Islamic world
  10. 10800Charlemagne crowned
  11. 11c. 830THE HOUSE OF WISDOM
  12. 12911Rollo takes the Seine
  13. 1313 Nov 1002St Brice’s Day
  14. 14c. 1030The Hautevilles go south
  15. 151054The churches divide
  16. 161066Hastings
  17. 171085TOLEDO FALLS, AND THE LIBRARIES SURVIVE
  18. 181088Bologna, then Paris and Oxford
  19. 191096The First Crusade
  20. 201124David I imports the Normans
  21. 211187Saladin takes Jerusalem
  22. 221206Chinggis Khan
  23. 231258BAGHDAD SACKED
  24. 241265The Stewarts in Scotland
  25. 251347–1351The Black Death
  26. 261396The North Inch
  27. 271453CONSTANTINOPLE FALLS
  28. 28c. 1455THE PRESS
  29. 291492Granada, and the Atlantic
  30. 301517The Reformation, printed
  31. 316 Jul 1535Thomas More executed
  32. 321543Copernicus
  33. 331620Plymouth
  34. 341687Newton’s Principia
  35. 351707The Union
  36. 361776The Declaration
  37. 371789The French Revolution
  38. 381799The Rosetta Stone found
  39. 391830The Book of Mormon
  40. 401834John Murrell
  41. 411869Edmund Morel in Japan
  42. 421869Suez opens
  43. 431914–1918The First World War
  44. 441917Jerusalem again
  45. 451922Tutankhamun found
  46. 461947THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS
  47. 471948The state of Israel
  48. 481969The Moon
  49. 491974The terracotta army
  50. 501991The web

The scale is segmented, and the bar above the chart says by how much. Three zones — 500 to 1000, 1000 to 1500, and 1500 to now — each at a different density, with the breaks drawn. A single linear scale would either bury the last five centuries or make the first ten unreadable.

Why knowledge has its own lane. Read down it and the pattern is a relay, not a decline. Athens closes in 529 and the scholars go to Persia. Baghdad translates from Syriac, which translated from Greek. Toledo falls in 1085 and its Arabic libraries survive — and Aristotle, Euclid and Ptolemy come back into Latin. The universities appear within a generation of the translations arriving. Constantinople falls in 1453 and its Greek manuscripts go to Italy. Then the press ends the problem that killed Alexandria, which was never fire but nobody left to recopy.

The Register

How the grading reads. one amber dot: a single channel carries it. two green: two independent sources cross. three green: a contemporary document or object. Fifty entries. This register is a first pass — it carries the events the site’s memos already reach, and it will be extended.

№DateLaneEventAtt.
1AD 476LATIN WEST The western empire ends. Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus. No one at the time treated it as the end of Rome — the eastern empire continued and called itself Roman for another thousand years.
2529KNOWLEDGE Justinian closes the Athenian schools. The Neoplatonic academy shuts after nine centuries. The scholars go east, to Persia, and the Greek learning goes with them.
3537BYZANTIUM Hagia Sophia. Built in five years. The largest interior space in the world for nearly a thousand years, and the dome fell twice and was rebuilt.
4c. 540KNOWLEDGE Cassiodorus at Vivarium. He makes copying a monastic duty. Monks copy pagan classical texts they disagree with, and most surviving Latin literature reaches us through that obligation.
5547BRITAIN Bernicia. Ida takes Bamburgh. The Anglo-Saxon kingdom that becomes Northumbria — the setting of The Laidly Worm.
6622ISLAM The Hijra. Muhammad moves from Mecca to Medina. The Islamic calendar counts from this year, and within a century the new polity runs from Spain to the Indus.
7638ISLAM Jerusalem taken. The city passes from Byzantine to Muslim rule, and stays in it, with two interruptions, until 1917.
8711ISLAM Al-Andalus. The Umayyads cross into Spain. Muslim rule in the peninsula lasts 781 years.
9751KNOWLEDGE Paper reaches the Islamic world. Chinese papermakers are said to have been captured at Talas. Paper reaches Baghdad within a generation and Europe four centuries later.
10800LATIN WEST Charlemagne crowned. A Frankish king is made emperor at Rome. The Carolingian schools copy and standardise the Latin classics; the minuscule script they develop is the ancestor of the lower case you are reading.
11c. 830KNOWLEDGE THE HOUSE OF WISDOM. A state-funded translation programme at Baghdad turns Greek science into Arabic. Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen and Aristotle are preserved and extended there, and return to Europe through it. Almagest and algebra are Arabic words.
12911LATIN WEST Rollo takes the Seine. The grant that makes Normandy. Within two generations his descendants speak French and take the Frankish faith — the Norman conquest of Europe follows from it.
1313 Nov 1002BRITAIN St Brice’s Day. Æthelred orders the Danes in England killed. Two killings on the same saint’s day, ninety-one years apart.
14c. 1030LATIN WEST The Hautevilles go south. Norman knights take service in Italy and end holding Sicily and the south — and with Sicily, a Greek and Arabic library.
151054BYZANTIUM The churches divide. Rome and Constantinople excommunicate each other. The split has not closed.
161066BRITAIN Hastings. An army of perhaps seven thousand replaces the entire ruling class of England. The Bayeux Tapestry is contemporary and is 68 metres long.
171085KNOWLEDGE TOLEDO FALLS, AND THE LIBRARIES SURVIVE. Castile takes the city and the Arabic libraries are not destroyed. The translation school that follows turns Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy and al-Khwarizmi into Latin. This is how Europe gets its own classical inheritance back.
181088KNOWLEDGE Bologna, then Paris and Oxford. The first universities appear within a generation of the Toledo translations arriving. The institutions follow the texts.
191096LATIN WEST The First Crusade. Bohemond of Hauteville among its leaders. Four Latin states in the Levant, and two centuries of traffic in both directions.
201124BRITAIN David I imports the Normans. He grants Scottish land to Norman and Flemish knights. Their descendants lead the resistance against England 170 years later — Bruce, Stewart, Moray, Comyn.
211187ISLAM Saladin takes Jerusalem. The Crusader kingdom is broken at Hattin and the city changes hands again.
221206ASIA Chinggis Khan. The Mongol empire becomes the largest contiguous land empire in history and, for a century, makes the road from China to Europe safe to travel.
231258ISLAM BAGHDAD SACKED. The Mongols destroy the city and its libraries. The House of Wisdom ends here, four centuries after it began.
241265LATIN WEST The Stewarts in Scotland. Walter, sixth High Steward. The office becomes the surname and the surname becomes the crown — the Stewart line.
251347–1351LATIN WEST The Black Death. Perhaps a third of Europe dies. Labour scarcity that follows breaks the manorial system where plague and war together had not.
261396BRITAIN The North Inch. Sixty men, thirty a side, before the king at Perth. A judicial battle as public spectacle.
271453BYZANTIUM CONSTANTINOPLE FALLS. Eleven centuries of the eastern empire end. Greek scholars carry manuscripts west to Italy, and the Renaissance gets its Greek texts from the fall of the city that kept them.
28c. 1455KNOWLEDGE THE PRESS. Gutenberg's Bible. By 1500 there are printed books in more than 250 European towns, and the cost of a copy falls by orders of magnitude. The recopying problem that killed Alexandria is solved.
291492LATIN WEST Granada, and the Atlantic. Muslim rule in Spain ends and Columbus sails in the same year. Two consequences of one Castilian crown, in one twelvemonth.
301517KNOWLEDGE The Reformation, printed. Luther's theses reach the German lands in weeks. The press makes a local dispute continental — set out in The Art of the PsyOP.
316 Jul 1535BRITAIN Thomas More executed. The King’s good servant, but God’s first. A lawyer refuses an oath and the state kills him for it.
321543KNOWLEDGE Copernicus. De revolutionibus. Ptolemy's astronomy had stood for fourteen centuries, preserved by Baghdad and returned through Toledo, and it is overturned by a book printed the year its author died.
331620AMERICAS Plymouth. English dissenters land in New England. Mary Morrell’s line begins there and runs to Benjamin Franklin.
341687KNOWLEDGE Newton’s Principia. Mathematics applied to motion and gravity together. The method, not the results, is what changes.
351707BRITAIN The Union. Scotland and England unite under a Stewart-descended crown. The steward’s office had become a surname, then a dynasty, then a state.
361776AMERICAS The Declaration. Franklin among its signers. A colonial argument settled in print and then in arms.
371789LATIN WEST The French Revolution. The old order in Europe is broken in one country and reshaped in all of them.
381799KNOWLEDGE The Rosetta Stone found. At Rashid, by Napoleon's expedition. Champollion reads it in 1822 and three thousand years of Egyptian record reopen. See The Ptolemies.
391830AMERICAS The Book of Mormon. Published at Palmyra. A claim of Israelite descent in the Americas, and a church built on it.
401834AMERICAS John Murrell. The Mississippi outlaw and the pamphlet that made him. Murrell’s Treasure.
411869ASIA Edmund Morel in Japan. A dying English engineer lays out Japan’s first railway and the ministry that would build the rest. He is 30 when he dies.
421869LATIN WEST Suez opens. The Mediterranean joined to the Red Sea. Ptolemy II’s engineers had done it on a different line two thousand years earlier, and Napoleon’s surveyor had repeated the error that stopped Necho and Darius.
431914–1918LATIN WEST The First World War. Four empires end: Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman.
441917ISLAM Jerusalem again. Allenby takes the city. Muslim rule since 638, with two interruptions, ends.
451922KNOWLEDGE Tutankhamun found. The only near-intact royal burial from the New Kingdom. See Egypt before the Ptolemies.
461947KNOWLEDGE THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS. Manuscripts a thousand years older than the previously oldest Hebrew Bible. Some readings agree with the Septuagint against the Masoretic Text — evidence that the Greek translators were rendering a Hebrew text since lost.
471948ISLAM The state of Israel. A Jewish state in the land for the first time since AD 70.
481969KNOWLEDGE The Moon. Cleopatra stood closer in time to this than to the building of the Great Pyramid.
491974ASIA The terracotta army. Farmers digging a well at Xi'an find eight thousand figures. The first emperor's tomb mound itself has still not been opened.
501991KNOWLEDGE The web. Documents addressable from anywhere. The copying problem is inverted: the constraint is no longer whether a text survives but whether anyone can tell which version is true.