History of the Entire World (Ancient, Medieval, Modern) | World History Documentary

This is Tokyo, Japan. It is the most populous city in the world, with over 37 million residents.

This is Red Rock, Ontario, Canada. Population under 900.

No matter where you live on this wondrous planet, the amount of history in every meter of forest, desert, or ocean is unfathomable. If these walls could talk, if these lands could utter but a single story of what they've seen, would have tales to tell for generations to come.

Join us as we embark upon a most ambitious project: the tale of world history. A past which we must truly understand before setting our gaze to the future. We will go back to World War I, the French Revolution, the African kingdoms, the Far East, ancient Greece and Rome, with lots of other stops along the way.

But for now, our story begins here: the Earth, 85 million years ago. We believe this is when primates diverged from the rest of their mammalian ancestors, forming the family Homin or Hominids. This is when we begin to see apes and orangutans. The subfamily Hominini includes all of these except orangutans.

About 8.5 million years ago, the Hominini would diverge from the Hominini, which went on to become gorillas. 7.5 million years ago, early humans and chimpanzees under the Hominini branch would diverge from each other.

Humans, as we know them today, evolved in different stages. The Orrorin tugenensis, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, and Ardipithecus were the first stages, up to 7 million years ago. Australopithecus would appear just 4 million years back. Some consider the Paranthropus appearing 2.7 million years ago. The same genus, 1.8 million years ago, would see the emergence of the genus Homo. One of the earliest species in this period was Homo habilis. Their brains were about as small as a chimpanzee's, but they would begin using crude stone tools. Homo ergaster and the famous Homo erectus emerged later and possessed larger brain sizes compared to Homo habilis. They would create better tools and learn how to tame fire. Homo heidelbergensis appeared around 800,000 years ago, and Homo sapiens, our very own species, about 150 to 200,000 years back. Homo neanderthalensis, or Neanderthals, diverged around 600 to 700,000 years ago from a common ancestor in Homo. Once Homo sapiens emerged, they would interbreed with Neanderthals. Though they had bigger brains and a more sturdy physique than Homo sapiens, they would eventually become extinct due to their lack of social cooperation.

Archaeology can help us discover the "what" and "when," but the "wise" and "how's" are often quite difficult when dealing with these far-gone time periods. One theory of a driver of early human evolution is the aridity hypothesis. This states that changes to a more arid climate and an expansion of the savannah caused early humans to have to adapt. The savannah hypothesis posits that this expansion of the savannah caused early humans to leave the treetops and become bipedal on the grasslands.

So, what did leaving the treetops do for our ancestors? Walking upright on the savannah helped in various ways: from being able to see further distances, traveling further while expending less energy, and most importantly, freed up their hands in order to use tools and weapons. There were physical consequences to this as well. Skeletal changes would occur in the legs and back. Changes in the pelvis caused childbirth to become more burdensome than in most other animals. Gestation periods would also shorten significantly to allow a baby to pass through the birth canal before its head grew too large. This is also partly the reason why human babies are more helpless and need more time to develop than other mammalian species.

From around 3.3 million years ago, when our ancestors first began using stone tools, until around 12,000 years ago, the Paleolithic era, or Old Stone Age, encompasses 99% of our technological prehistory. Early humans lived in small tribal societies, hunting and foraging for food, and beginning to use fire to cook and see in the dark. Members of the genus Homo would evolve during this period, leading to Homo sapiens.

Around the middle Paleolithic, from around 300,000 years ago, we start to see primitive works of art and spiritual practices involving the dead. As they were primarily nomadic, humans would travel from place to place looking for new food sources. This eventually, over thousands of years, brought us all over the world, according to the Out of Africa theory.

Around 12,000 years ago, though, there would be a shift in human society, a shift that changed everything. The Neolithic Revolution, also called the Agricultural Revolution, saw humans begin to domesticate plants and animals and would transition from their nomadic lifestyles into one more sedentary. There are numerous theories about how this occurred as well, such as the hill flanks hypothesis, which states that agriculture began in the hilly flanks of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains. Other theories claim that agriculture was developed to create surpluses of food in order to display power or dominance.

The Neolithic Revolution had deep effects on human society. The somewhat egalitarian groupings of the past were replaced by a social hierarchy. The surplus of food made possible by agriculture led to more population. Not everyone was needed to produce this food, so many became full-time soldiers, craftsmen, and administrators. Priests and other spiritual leaders were often near the top of the hierarchy. Physical health suffered as well. Less activity was bad on its own, but close proximity to animals caused pathogens to jump from species to species, leading to widespread diseases. Neolithic humans were also plagued by vitamin deficiencies and poorer dental growth. This Agricultural Revolution is the basis for sedentary society, population growth, division of labor, and social stratification, all of which are still visible in our current society.

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The ancient period. Images of stern Spartans or Caesar crossing the Rubicon might manifest in one's head. Perhaps the sandy sparkle of an Egyptian desert, where lie the dead homes of dead kings. This period covers not only centuries but millennia, from the advent of writing in ancient Sumer in around 3400 B.C. to around the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 5th Century C.E. The ancient period would bring forth the birth of all the great civilizations we are familiar with, and as with any recent birth, there must be a cradle which brings us here: the land between the Tigris and Euphrates, or Mesopotamia. The alluvial plain created by the twin rivers allowed early settlers to remain here for thousands of years. The earliest known settlements on the plain date back to around 6,500 B.C. during the Ubaid period.

Next came the Uruk period, beginning around 4100 B.C., still predating the Bronze Age. This period would see more urban centers begin to emerge, and with it, the Sumerian civilization. Urbanization led to a more centralized government, which needed a way to administer affairs. Cuneiform was thought to be the answer for this. Wedge-shaped impressions became the first writing system.

Mesopotamia truly developed during the Early Dynastic period, which began in 2900 B.C. Urban centers evolved into city-states, and trade was common.

But from out of the North, the Akkadians would come around 2340 B.C.E., led by their leader Sargon of Akkad. The Semitic Akkadians would conquer the southern Sumerian city-states, forging what was arguably the first empire the world had seen. Akkad and Sumer would integrate cultures, but the Sumerian spoken language was all but replaced. In the 22nd century B.C., Akkad fell to a tribal force of Gutians. They were known for hit-and-run tactics and were viewed as less civilized. With the empire's demise, the Gutians had no wherewithal to rule and vanished within less than a century.

And the old would rule once more. Around 2112 B.C., the Neo-Sumerian Empire was established under Ur-Nammu, extending into upper Mesopotamia. This period is associated with a Sumerian Renaissance. This ended when Elamites from the East sacked the influential city of Ur.

Out of Babylon, an Amorite city in the West, grew another empire in 1792 B.C. Hammurabi would rule this small expanse of land and conquer all of southern Mesopotamia, creating the first Babylonian Empire. The Code of Hammurabi becoming his most popular legacy. The empire would be short-lived, as after Hammurabi's death, the Hittites out of Anatolia would sack Babylon in 1595 B.C. This resulted in the Kassite people taking control of the Babylonian Empire. They would control the region for nearly 500 years, the longest of any dynasty.

Unlucky for them, their time was up. Along with numerous other civilizations, the Bronze Age collapse occurred in the 12th century B.C., along with attacks from the Assurians in the North and Elam in the East. This set up the Assyrians to take control of the entire Mesopotamian area in 911 B.C., along with Persia, Judah, and Egypt. This would be known as the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the furthest spanning empire the world had seen. They were hardened soldiers and experts at war, especially siege. Battering rams would be frequently used, along with sapping techniques. Their engineers would create makeshift pontoons and bridges to cross bodies of water and even used flotation devices for their soldiers.

Centuries later, in 626 B.C., Babylon would revolt and crown a new emperor, creating the Neo-Babylonian Empire, also known as the Chaldean Empire. Within a few years, after forging an alliance with the Iranian Medes, Babylon defeated the Assyrians and controlled much of their territory. Their most famous ruler, Nebuchadnezzar II, would be known for the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. and the ensuing Babylonian captivity. On a lighter note, his Hanging Gardens of Babylon apparently looked delightful.

This lasted until an unstoppable force would take over the entire Near East as far as the Indus Valley, establishing an empire in 550 BCE. Exalted as a Messiah King, Cyrus of the Achaemenid Empire would free the Jews from captivity and was viewed as quite tolerant. This empire would be most famously known for their constant wars with the Greek city-states. Their Mausoleum at Halicarnassus would become one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

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Reaching 8 million square kilometers in area at its height under the leadership of Xerxes, the Achaemenid Empire would eventually crumble almost two centuries later to a young Macedonian general taking over from his murdered father, Philip of Macedon. Alexander brought his unified Greek and Macedonian army to the rocky Persian landscape and defeated Darius III, last emperor of the Achaemenids. After Alexander the Great's early death, the Persian region became the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty. Native Persians would eventually retake the region in 247 B.C. under the Parthians, which would be the third Iranian Empire after the Medes and Achaemenids, lasting until 224 C.E. They would constantly clash with the Romans. The last Persian Empire, the Sassanids, would rule from 224 until the Muslim conquests in the mid-600s. The Sassanids would be the longest and most successful Persian Empire, so successful in fact that the Romans viewed the Sassanids alone as equals. Their culture would also spread to Rome and beyond, touching Western Europe and eastwards towards China and India.

To the west of Persia and Mesopotamia is the Levant and two kingdoms which were inextricably linked: Israel and Judah. There had already been people who identified as Israelites in the region, but the kingdom itself came into being in the early to mid-9th century B.C. Judah followed not much later. Both would come under the curtain of the Neo-Assyrians, who would destroy the Israelite capital of Samaria in 722 B.C. In the early 500s B.C., after revolts in Judah, the Neo-Babylonians, who now controlled the Levant, marched into the region, leading to the destruction of Jerusalem, the Judaean capital. After the Babylonians fell to the Achaemenids, Jews were allowed to return to Israel. Once the Seleucids took over, the Hasmonean dynasty took control, leading to the Maccabean Revolt, a rebellion against the encroaching Hellenistic culture. Under Roman rule, the area was known as the Herodian Kingdom of Judah after Herod the Great.

Phoenicia was a civilization that began on the coast near present-day Lebanon and Syria but would eventually spread because of its maritime trade across the Mediterranean. Their greatest legacy would be Phoenicians from Tyre settling in Northern Africa, establishing the city of Carthage in 814 B.C. Carthage would become the heart of the Phoenician civilization after Tyre fell. Most of the Western Mediterranean was under Carthaginian control and would have a fierce rivalry with the Roman Republic, leading to the Punic Wars. After the third and final Punic War, in an act of domination, Rome obliterated Carthage. Their territory becoming Roman North Africa.

Was also home to one of the most famous ancient cultures: Egypt. And a second cradle of civilization, after Upper and Lower Egypt unified around 3,000 B.C. The Old Kingdom, which began in 2686 B.C., saw Egypt construct some of its most magnificent erections: the Great Sphinx and Giza Pyramids. Egypt's New Kingdom, in 1549 B.C., was their most prosperous and far-reaching. After the Bronze Age collapse, Egypt survived but was weakened greatly, a shell of its former glory. Egypt would live, but under the grinding chariot wheels of the Neo-Assyrians, Achaemenid Empire, the Hellenistic Ptolemies, and finally Rome.

In the first century B.C., to the South, we find what the Egyptians would call the land of the bow: Nubia, home to the Kushites, sharing much of the same culture and religion as the Egyptians. The Kushites coexisted with their Northern neighbors and would even become pharaohs themselves in the 8th century B.C., forming the 25th Dynasty. Women were held in high regard in Nubia; the Kandakes being their ruling queens.

The Land of Punt, possibly located near present-day Somalia or Eritrea, was a trading partner of Egypt, exporting African blackwood, ivory, perfumes, and slaves. To their South, the Kingdom of Aksum, located near modern-day Ethiopia, growing steadily from 100 C.E. to 940 C.E., Aksum was one of the first empires to convert to Christianity. It was known as the home of the Queen of Sheba and is said to be the location of the Ark of the Covenant from the biblical stories.

In the West of Africa, modern-day Nigeria, we find the Nok culture. These highly advanced peoples, thought to have existed from 1,000 B.C.E. to their disappearance in 200 C.E., are considered the oldest sub-Saharan to have created full-size terracotta figures. A certain figure contains Phoenician elements, which suggests the Nok linked or influenced by the Egyptians.

The land between the Sahara and the savannah, the Sahel, is Djenné, based near the Niger River Valley in Mali. The urban center, one of the oldest in Africa, was said to have existed from 250 B.C. to 900 C.E., then possibly abandoned or relocated after the spread of Islam.

There is evidence the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the cradles of civilization, inhabited this region from as early as 3300 B.C., firmly establishing their hold on the valley from 2600 B.C., but would disappear and be replaced by 1700 B.C.E. The Vedas were composed during the thousand-year Vedic period. Northern India would then become 16 smaller kingdoms in 500 B.C.E., known as the Mahajanapadas.

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The Nanda Empire would spring out of Magadha, one of these kingdoms, but would be dissolved by 322 B.C. after being overthrown by Chandragupta Maurya. This became the foundation for the Maurya Empire, existing until 184 B.C. His grandson, Ashoka the Great, was instrumental in the spread of Buddhism. During the Middle Kingdoms period of India was the Gupta Empire, which was responsible for a golden age for Indian culture and sciences. They would see their demise at the hands of the Hunas, a branch of the White Huns, who weakened the empire enough that they relinquished hegemony of North India.

The Yellow River Valley in China. This area can claim a fourth cradle of civilization and last of the old world in Chinese history. These people would be called the Xia, China's first dynasty, ruling from 2070 B.C. until 1600 B.C. Some scholars debate these dates and claim the Xia are the Erlitou culture, which was dated back to 1900 B.C. The Shang Dynasty would follow in 1600 B.C. until around 1046 B.C. They would be China's second dynasty, but the first historians agree upon. Afterwards, they were conquered by the Zhou Dynasty in the West, claiming legitimacy through the Mandate of Heaven, and who would expand into the Yangtze River region. While this dynasty ruled longer than any other, almost 800 years, power would slowly become decentralized, leading to the Spring and Autumn period, which would see the Zhou move their capital east to a safer location and become the Eastern Zhou. China would break apart into hundreds of smaller states, each with a warlord ruler. It didn't stay this way, and seven states would take center stage and battle during the Waring States period. One of these states, the Qin, would first defeat the powerless Zhou and then crush the other six states to consolidate their territory. This was the first time China had been unified, and Qin Shi Huang of the Qin Dynasty became the first emperor of China.

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This emperor ruled as an emperor would. Commanderies were created all over China, which took orders from none other than Qin Shi Huang. Legalism was also firmly established and promoted, while Confucianism suffered. Using forced labor, the Great Wall began to be built, and perhaps hypocritically, invasions were launched into Northern Vietnam concurrently. After the emperor's death, the Han Dynasty would eventually take power from 202 B.C. until 230 C.E., with a brief few years of the Xin, when the throne was usurped. The Han were one of the most prosperous dynasties and shared ideas with the West through the Silk Road. Because of the wealth accumulated in China at this time, divided unevenly, the peasantry would revolt in the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184 C.E. It would fail but bring about the end of the Han in 208 C.E.

In 220 C.E., China would enter the Three Kingdoms period, where the rival kingdoms of the Shu, Wei, and Wu would be in a state of war. The Three Kingdoms ended in the late 200s with the Jin Army defeating the final kingdom after usurping the Wei. China wouldn't be fully consolidated again until the Sui Dynasty in 581 C.E.

According to Chinese historian Sima Qian, a Chinese general named Wei Man, who was defeated by the Han, founded the Wiman Joseon Sun Dynasty in Gojoseon, the first Korean kingdom, after usurping the throne in 194 B.C. Around the turn of the century, the Han would conquer Korea, ending the Gojoseon period and establishing four commanderies. All were short-lived, except for Lelang, which endured until 313 C.E. With the fall of the kingdom, Korea would enter a Three Kingdoms era of their own, first running out the Chinese and then warring with each other. Though the Baekje and Goguryeo were the most powerful, with the latter defending off Chinese invasions by the Sui, the third kingdom, Silla, would win out thanks to a strategic alliance with the Tang Dynasty of China in 676 C.E. They would then expel the Tang Dynasty to be sole rulers of the region.

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Vietnam was ruled by the semi-mythical Hồng Bàng Dynasty for 2,000 years, but the North was conquered by China in the late 200s B.C. It was turned into a vassal state called Nanyue, but was eventually annexed by the Han in 111 B.C. This would culminate in the rebellion of the Trưng Sisters. They were eventually defeated, however, and China would have control of Northern Vietnam for another thousand years, imposing Chinese traditions. The South, though, was ruled by the Champa and were more aligned with their Indian neighbors to the West, adopting more of their culture and religion.

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In the 4th century B.C., the Yayoi peoples immigrated from mainland China and Korea to Japan, overwhelming the Neolithic hunter-gatherer Jomon peoples. In the Kofun period, lasting from 300 to 538 C.E., the small state of Yamato would extend their power across Japan. They would be in close contact with the mainland and be heavily influenced by China.

The Americas had flourishing civilizations as well during this period. North America was known for its moundbuilder cultures, which would manipulate the ground and create what we call earthworks. One of the largest was the Poverty Point culture from around the mid-1700s B.C. The Woodland period would begin roughly in 1,000 B.C. and saw more cultures like the Hopewell develop. These would generally be hunter-gatherer societies.

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In Mesoamerica, the Olmec grew to be the first true civilization, dating back to around 2500 B.C. The Maya would soon follow around 2,000 B.C.E., eventually the Zapotec, Mixtec, and Teotihuacan would come to prominence in the region. Evidence leads us to believe that Mesoamerica was one of only four areas of the world to independently invent a writing system: first in Mesopotamia, then Egypt, China, and finally Mesoamerica.

In South America, the Norte Chico, the first of the Andean civilizations, would be regarded as the first in all the Americas as well, developing around 3500 B.C. built off of fishing communities. There isn't much known about this specific society or most of the Andean civilizations, especially in the ancient period.

One area we have extensive records of is Europe: Minoan and Mycenaean. This civilization is acknowledged by scholars to be the oldest civilization on the continent, going back to 3600 B.C. Their urban centers would begin to develop around 2,000 B.C., but would start to decline and would eventually be overrun by the Mycenaeans from mainland Greece. The Mycenaeans themselves would be victims to the infamous Bronze Age collapse around 1100 B.C., leading to the Greek Dark Ages, which saw the abandoned or destroyed palaces of the Mycenaeans scattered about within a depopulated Greece.

Greece's Archaic Age would begin around 750 B.C.E. until the invasion of Xerxes and the Persians in 480 B.C. This period would see the rise of Greek city-states, and less power was wielded by aristocrats and oligarchs. Solon, a statesman from Athens, laid the foundation for Athenian democracy, and Sparta would adopt the Spartan constitution. In the wake of the failed Persian invasion, Greece entered a Classical Age, where the Greek city-states formed an alliance called the Delian League. This is what allowed the city-state of Athens to thrive and rival Sparta, head of the Peloponnesian League, leading to the Peloponnesian Wars. Though only lasting from the 400s to 300s B.C., the Classical era would be the most familiar period of Greek tradition. It is regarded as the foundation of many Western cultures, with influences from literature, theater, architecture, philosophy, and science.

The end of the Classical period came when Philip of Macedon conquered Greece but was subsequently murdered. His son, Alexander of Macedon, would take the mantle of the Greek and Macedonian army and lead it against the Persians, putting an end to the far-reaching Achaemenid Empire. With his untimely death in 323 B.C., the Hellenistic Age began, which saw Greek culture flourish within the empire Alexander had forged, from Macedon to India. This Hellenistic period would last for around 300 years.

In 146 B.C., the Roman Republic defeated Greece at the Battle of Corinth, beginning what would be over 1,500 years of Roman rule over Greece. With the Parthians expelling the Seleucids in the East, only Egypt under the Ptolemies kept the Hellenistic period alive. That would end as well, however, after the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. and the taking of Alexandria. From kingdom to republic to empire, Rome, along with Greece, would make up the core of Classical Antiquity, and the Romans would adopt much of Greek culture.

The city of Rome would be founded in 753 B.C.E. by the mythical Romulus and Remus, the former going on to become the first king. This was an elective monarchy.

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In 509 B.C., Rome switched into a more representative Republic, based on democracy. There was a constitution and checks and balances within the governing bodies. Their conquest of the Mediterranean was slow, but after destroying Carthage in the final Punic War, they controlled the entire region. In 27 B.C., with Augustus declaring himself Emperor, the Republic perished, leaving way for autocratic rule. Rome would eventually turn into a military dictatorship. This led to more territory, as evidenced by the span of the empire during Trajan's rule, but it also led to more revolts. The Crisis of the Third Century saw the Palmyrene Empire break away in the East and the Gallic Empire break away in the West. Though both were reconsolidated, it would lead to the Tetrarchy and the Edict of Milan separating the Roman Empire in two, creating the Eastern Roman Empire. Eastern Emperor Constantine would found the capital at Constantinople and in 313 C.E. proclaimed Christianity as a legitimate religion.

Rome would be known for its advances in infrastructure, constructing public baths, gyms, and theaters. Their aqueducts would be second to none. The wealthy would live in large villas, often in the countryside. All this would soon crumble in the 400s. Migrations of barbarians occurred, and in the latter half of the century, an already crippled Rome would breathe its last, as Europe became a land of various Germanic kingdoms. This would lead into a Middle Ages, which saw Europe become a stunning amalgamation of Greek and Roman, Christian and Germanic culture.

Nomadic societies and so-called barbarians were powerful in their own right. The Huns were thought to have originated in Kazakhstan and would frequently invade Europe across the Danube. Attila was the most famous of these, reaching Rome's doorstep but turning back. The Celts were a loose group of tribes residing in Europe and would expand to occupy most of Europe, along with Ireland and Britain. They would slowly disappear on the continent because of the Germanic migrations that occurred in the 2nd to 5th centuries but stayed on the British Isles.

Near the end of the migration period, the British Isles would see an invasion of their own. The Germanic tribes of the Angles from Anglia, the Saxons from around where Saxony is today in Northern Germany, and Jutes from Jutland, or modern-day Denmark, would settle in Britain. They would take control of the south of the island and merge into the Anglo-Saxons, calling themselves the Engle. The word "English" was formed.

Yet, how do we know all this? You've no doubt seen documentaries of archaeologists out for many tireless days digging up areas to uncover the mysteries of the past. They have uncovered Knossos on Crete, the Minoan city regarded as the oldest in Europe. Pompeii in Italy was also discovered in a state of ghastly preservation, as if to still live an undead life. The pyramids of Egypt or the Terracotta Army of the Qin Emperor are also examples. We can also use texts from credible sources of the era. History wasn't a discipline in ancient times, so we are lucky to have Plutarch, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Herodotus, regarded as the father of history, from which to glean what we will. Much of their work has been lost.

Now that we've heard these civilizations' different stories, it's important to go through some of their similarities. The most ubiquitous one is the development of religion. All of our civilizations found answers and meaning by worshiping different gods. Most were polytheistic, and while many would be the same religion as their neighbors, they would often worship a different god within the pantheon. Temples would be built, and sacrifices, including human, were made. As time went on, certain religions became more prominent and still exist to this day: Hinduism around 2000 B.C., Zoroastrianism a bit later, Judaism in the 500s B.C. with origins over 1,000 years earlier, Jainism in the 500s B.C., and Buddhism in the 400s B.C. In China, Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism would be three competing ideologies. In the West, Alexander the Great's conquests would see the Hellenistic world adopt much of the Greek philosophical teachings of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates.

Each civilization would also attain more tangible successes. The ancient Egyptians would be known for their durable ships, such as the Khufu ship, and lighthouses. Their engineering skills would also translate to more magnificent constructs, utilizing the ramp and lever. They would go on to create a true wonder of the world. In Persia, the qanats allowed water to be transported over long distances in their dry climate. In the East, the Indus Valley Civilization would perform plastic surgery, cataract surgery, and make advancements in math and astronomy. China would as well, producing the first confirmed comet sighting back in 613 B.C. They would also excel at herbal medicine and acupuncture. In Europe, Greece was home to numerous inventions like the gear, screw, and water organ. Many of these, like in the modern age, were created as a result of war, such as the torsion catapult. Rome would boast perhaps the greatest repertoire of technologies during their height. This could be due to their accumulated knowledge from the Etruscans, Celts, and Greeks. Their roads, aqueducts, and dams were the most sturdy of their time.

These civilizations would also mimic each other when it came to war. These were all sedentary societies, that means they were predominantly based on agriculture. Agriculture meant an increase in population, leading to a division of labor. Not everyone had to work the farms. This led to a professional class of fighters and military specialists. The days of a tribesman's early morning hunting and late evening skirmishing were no more. Division of labor also meant more people were able to pursue the arts. From Greece to Persia to China to the Americas, we find evidence of pottery, sculpture, and even music.

This music, however, would not last. The end of the ancient period had come. What we would see would be petty tribes with the power to collapse empires. The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 C.E., and China would fall to the Five Barbarians, or Wuhu, fracturing into the Sixteen Kingdoms period, and the Gupta Empire in India would have its golden age cut short by the Huna invasions. With a roar of despair under the hooves of galloping nomads and barbarians, the ancient world dies. Or perhaps it's just in need of a long, long rest. Or perhaps, if we knew where to look, it never went anywhere.

After grave calamity, the world slumbers. The old world's most powerful empires have fallen, or are perhaps unluckily in the process of a long and arduous death. The Far East sees China fragmented, and India's Gupta Empire, a golden age has come to an untimely end. The Persian Empire, the dominant force in the Middle East and Central Asia for centuries, is about to change forever. In Europe, barbarian tribes inherited the Earth from the fallen Roman Empire. Rome's successor to the East was strong, but internal conflicts and attacks from all sides saw the Byzantine Empire fail to make it out of the postclassical era.

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Ancient sub-Saharan Africa saw the Bantu migration change the demographics of the continent. Urban settlements were also built in West Africa but seemingly abandoned. And in the East, the kingdoms of Aksum and Nubia would grow to become substantial powers. North Africa was home to the Egyptians and Carthaginians. Medieval Africa would be a whole new game. North Africa changed first, as the Islamic expansion, birthed out of the Arabian Peninsula, expanded in record time. By the mid-600s, a caliphate was established over the Sahara, and Islamic influence would shift southwards. This would leave sub-Saharan Africa split between Christian, Islamic, and traditional animist belief systems. Though Christianity was on the continent centuries longer in Ethiopia, Islam became prominent in both the East and West, mainly due to trade.

In West Africa, Islamic traders would have an influence on those who lived in the Sudan and Niger River Valley. The Trans-Saharan trade route was one of the most extensive in medieval times and helped West Africa develop rich Islamic empires. The first major one was the Ghana Empire, lasting around 800 years, and saw the creation of numerous urban centers. The introduction of the camel into West Africa made trade easier and more regular. The Ghana Empire would become a vassal state and replaced with the Mali Empire in the early 1200s. The kings of this empire were called Mansa, the most famous being Mansa Musa, who is thought to be one of the richest men to have ever lived. This was all thanks to the Trans-Saharan trade. Timbuktu was an important city in this empire. The Mali Empire would eventually fall, and the Songhai would become the hegemonic power in the region. While not originally a Muslim empire, the Songhai would blend African animist beliefs with Islam. They surpassed the Mali Empire in terms of wealth, area, and power, but would fall to gunpowder technology from Morocco in the late 1500s.

In the East, the Swahili Coast was a group of port cities on the eastern coast of Africa. Originally Bantu, the Swahili, which translates to "people of the coast" in Arabic, would operate in the Indian Ocean trade and would exchange various luxury items like porcelain, silk, and slaves. In Africa's South, there were traditional African societies which would also participate in this trade, such as the city of Great Zimbabwe, known for its impressive walls. Apart from the emergence of Islam, Africa would remain relatively stable and autonomous during its medieval period, as Europeans fought futile wars amongst themselves and the Middle East.

The stories we hear about the European Middle Ages are often romanticized. Much written much later, tales of sword and sorcery often take place in medieval settings, even in real places such as England. But the Middle Ages in Europe, which is usually separated into three parts, was much more mundane. The Early Middle Ages occurs after the fall of Rome. In reality, the beginning of this new age saw the same trends we saw earlier. Rome hadn't been a factor for decades, and we see continued deurbanization and a decline of population in general. Trade decreased, and barbarian migrations continued, most notably the Viking expansion from the North and the Magyars from the East. Even though this period was later termed the Dark Ages, it was not devoid of culture or advancements. Culture was quite complex, as there would be a mix of Barbarian, Roman, and Christian traditions.

Eastern Europe would see the Byzantine Empire, successors to the Roman tradition, lose territory to the emerging Rashidun and Umayyad Islamic caliphates. The Code of Justinian, written during this period, would be used later on as an inspiration for legal codes of European states. The loose confederation of the Kievan Rus' would be chronized by the Eastern Orthodox Church and are regarded as the foundations of the Russian state. The Byzantine Empire would reach its peak during the Macedonian Renaissance of the 9th to 11th centuries, as they attempted to organize their knowledge, compiling books and manuals of military and governmental affairs and encyclopedias.

In the West, in the year 800, the Frankish King Charlemagne would found the Carolingian Empire, what was to be a Christian revival of the Roman Empire. It would soon become divided after his death, eventually developing into different states.

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The High Middle Ages, known as a fairly stable time in the medieval period, saw population starkly increase, a new advancement in agriculture and technology. This can be attributed to a slight warming in the North Atlantic, leading to the Medieval Warm Period. This increased crops, leading to a boom in society. Society at this time was structured in a feudal and manorial system. Feudalism is a complex subject on its own, but in simple terms, it's the political relationship between a king and his vassals. These vassals are generally nobles, and the king grants them land in exchange for military service offered by their knights. Manorialism deals with the relationship between the noble and those who tend to this land, called villains or serfs. They were allowed to live on the land but had to provide labor for the knights and nobles, often in the form of producing goods from the farms.

Two of the most prominent events of the High Middle Ages are the Norman Conquest of England, in which the Normans from continental Europe defeated and took over Anglo-Saxon England, and the Crusades, which saw armies of Christian soldiers march to the Middle East to liberate Jerusalem. This would lessen the idea of the nation-state for the time being, as Europeans felt connected due to religion. Literature was filled with stories of chivalry and courtly love. These are concepts we tend to associate with the Middle Ages. Scholasticism was a philosophy that would dominate the High Middle Ages and even later until the Renaissance. It was a way to learn using the methods of the ancient classical era philosophers mixed with Christian theology, originating from the monastic tradition. This method of learning would be more open to reason and learning. Both would eventually fall out of favor in the early modern era.

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Near the end of this period, architecture changed as well. Beautiful Gothic buildings would be constructed, a contrast to the classical Romanesque architecture that was prevalent in the Early Middle Ages.

The Late Middle Ages brought an end to the prosperous High Middle Ages. Up to half the population of Europe perished in what we now call the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages. Following the Medieval Warm Period, the same regions were plunged into a Little Ice Age, leading to agricultural crisis. The Great Famine was the first of a series of plagues that ravaged most of Europe, but the small continent would come into contact with death itself in the mid-1300s. Brought in from the East, the Black Death made starvation from famines look like an easy death, killing up to one-third of the population. The Black Death is regarded as the most fatal pandemic in human history.

The rise in famines, plagues, and instability also led to numerous revolts. There were peasant revolts in both England and France, but there was still no solace. The end of this period would see England battle France for the throne of both kingdoms in the Hundred Years' War. The effects of this grim period of depopulation caused people to question the church and their faith. These were major factors that would lead into Europe's next period.

The Middle East. Out of the ancient period, we see the continuation of a great rivalry: the Eastern Roman Empire, successors to Rome, and the Sasanian Empire, the latest and last iteration of the old Persian Empires. The Byzantine-Sasanian War, fought in the early 600s, would be devastating to both empires. Little did they know, a new power would emerge: the rolling sands of Arabia. This is the home of the Bedouins, Arab tribes who originally lived in the Arabian Peninsula. United under a single mantle by Muhammad in Medina, the nomadic Bedouins and those who succeeded their prophet would expand into the Middle East and North Africa, taking huge chunks of land from the Byzantine and Persian Empires. The initial expansion resulted in the Rashidun Caliphate and then the Umayyad Caliphate. The Arab-Byzantine Wars saw Islamic expansion into Eastern Roman land, but they couldn't take the capital, Constantinople, itself, in part due to the Roman use of Greek Fire. The Muslim army would succeed in conquering Persia, though, leading to the end of the centuries-old empire. With most of the region unified, the Islamic caliphates were positioned at the center of the old world and at the crossroads of trade. Islamic traders would be able to travel to different areas, introducing others to their faith. This also was a boon economically, as well. Traders and explorers would bring back knowledge and inventions to the Muslim world and mixed with the sources from places they had conquered, like Egypt, they would experience a golden age.

Arab dominance in the region lasted for almost 500 years, but in the 11th century, Turkic nomads from Central Asia called the Seljuk Turks would migrate south. In a series of invasions, they captured Persia, the Mesopotamian region, and parts of the Levant and Saudi Arabia. Their treatment of Christian pilgrims to the region they now controlled and of the Christian communities already living therein led to a series of invasions from Europe to secure the Holy Land. The First Crusade saw the Europeans retake Jerusalem and establish the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099. It would last for almost 100 years when it was retaken by Saladin.

In the 1200s, the Middle East would be beset by other invasions out of Central Asia. Another, even more ruthless, peoples would invade the Middle East, sacking Baghdad and reaching the Egyptian border. These Mongols retreated soon after, but the discord caused the Seljuk Turks to be deposed. The emerging Turko-Mongol peoples in the late 1300s saw two more invade the region soon after. By the end of the period, it was the Ottomans, another Turkic people, who would be in control of Western Asia.

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In South Asia, the medieval period is roughly defined as starting from the end of the Gupta Empire in the 500s. In the South, the Chola Dynasty, ruled by Tamils, would control a thalassocracy spanning Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and other islands. Buddhism had been important in India but would begin to disappear after invasions from the Turkic Islamic nomads that would begin in the 1100s. They succeeded and would found the Delhi Sultanate in 1206, the beginning of centuries of Muslim rule in India. This would last until the 1500s when a stronger Islamic power would dominate the region, continuing Muslim rule.

Southeast Asia would prosper during this period. Trade from South Asia and China would pass through the Strait of Malacca, a preeminent trading channel. Most of the region was under heavy influence from South Asia. Only North Vietnam had closer ties to the Chinese. In the 900s, a Chinese Tang commander in Vietnam declared independence, later becoming Đại Việt, or Great Viet, but this region would still be heavily under Chinese influence. South Vietnam was home to the Champa Kingdom and was governed by Hindus, associating more with their neighbors to the West. North Vietnam would eventually annex this area.

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Because of the trade in South Asia and East Asia, along with the spread of culture, Southeast benefited greatly. Empires would rise like the Khmer Empire in Cambodia. The Khmer capital, Angkor, was regarded as one of the largest cities in the world at the time. The city could lay claim to over 100 hospitals. In Burma, present-day Myanmar, the Empire of Pagan would emerge, using war elephants for their military might. Indonesia would be home to the Srivijaya, a Malay thalassocracy which became quite a powerful empire from their control of the Sunda Strait, a crucial trading route, and between the islands of Java and Sumatra and the Strait of Malacca. It was during this period we believe Indonesian sailors traveled across the Indian Ocean, settling in Madagascar off the coast of Africa.

Changes on the continent, mainly due to the Mongol invasions, had consequences for these Southeast Empires. The Cambodian Khmer Empire would be replaced with the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom, and Indonesia's Srivijaya was taken over by the Majapahit, a Hindu empire from Java, and later on by the Malacca Sultanate. Just to the North, the Chinese would benefit from increased trade and became the foremost power in the region, and arguably the whole continent.

Japan and Korea would voluntarily adopt Chinese culture. They brought in aspects of Confucianism, Buddhism, and centralized government and bureaucracy. The short-lived but important Sui Dynasty patched up and unified China again, and the subsequent Tang and Song dynasties took China to its greatest height seen until that time. They would become the world's top economy at that point, three times larger than all of Europe. During the 1100s, the first recorded chemical formula for gunpowder was also created here, along with gunpowder weapons like the fire lance.

During the Tang Dynasty, China became increasingly involved in foreign affairs. They wanted to secure more of the Silk Road, so expanded westwards, encroaching into Central Asia. They would come into conflict with the Abbasids, the third Islamic caliphate to succeed the Prophet Muhammad, who halted this expansion. Chinese prisoners from this battle are said to have brought papermaking technology to the Arab world. The An Lushan Rebellion also hit the Tang hard, bringing about the death of perhaps millions. The Tang would fall in 907, leading to a civil war known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. It wouldn't last long, and the Song Dynasty would form in 960 and consolidate China by 979. They differed from the Tang in that they would particularize in maritime trade. This caused China's population to gather more southward towards trading ports, with ships reaching Arabia, India, and the neighboring regions to the South. China's economy continued to expand. Deeply devoted to their economy, the Song began using machines to produce products with coal as a power source. These advances in the 11th and 12th centuries are regarded as an industrial revolution. Because of their focus on the economy, their military grew weaker, leaving them open to invasions to the North by the Jurchen, ancestors to the Manchu. By the 13th century, China was divided once again, with a North fragmented and the Song to the South. Civil war broke out between the rival states, leaving China a prime target for the Mongols, eventually being annexed by the nomadic hordes by 1279. The Yuan Dynasty, under the Mongols, had control of China and Korea.

Japan would be able to escape this fate, however. With the Mongols in control, they made China more open to the West. The famous Venetian explorer Marco Polo would visit, detailing his travels on the Silk Road. Soon after, less than 100 years since its founding, the Yuan Dynasty was deposed in a series of revolts known as the Red Turban Rebellion. In their place, the Ming Dynasty took power in 1368. They would be the last ethnically Han Chinese dynasty. Early on, the Yongle Emperor constructed a naval fleet and sent them on expeditions to the West under the guidance of Admiral Zheng He. After this brief period, though, the Ming would isolate themselves from the West for hundreds of years.

Korea and Japan continued to have links with China, although not as much as earlier in the period. The Korean Emperor Sejong the Great created Hangeul, or the Korean alphabet, in 1443, replacing Chinese characters and creating a unique and intuitive writing system. Japan had just gone through the Heian period during its classical era, where it tried to distance itself from Chinese culture. Medieval Japan took things to an all-new level. The Kamakura period followed the Heian and saw the establishment of the first Shogun, Minamoto no Yoritomo, in 1192. Japanese samurai would become common during this time of Japanese feudalism and decentralization. The Kamakura period would fall in 1333, as the shogunate was destroyed and imperial rule restored under Emperor Go-Daigo. Seemingly not yet the time for an imperial restoration, this period would only last 3 years before the establishment of the Muromachi, or Ashikaga, Shogunate. The Muromachi period was first marked by division by those who still supported the emperor. This led to the Sengoku period, also called the Waring States period, a near century of constant civil war and social unrest. In 1573, the Muromachi Shogunate would end when Ashikaga Yoshiaki, the last Shogun, was driven out of Kyoto by Oda Nobunaga, a powerful daimyō, feudal lord, and head of the Oda Clan.

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While the early postclassical period was dominated by the rapid expansion and conquests of the Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula, the latter half of the period was

Dominated by nomadic invasions from Central Asia, the most famous and powerful of these were the Mongols. The beginnings of the empire were humble. In the steppes of Mongolia, tribes were united to form a more powerful entity. Genghis Khan was declared ruler of this confederation in 1206, creating an empire that extended from Central Europe to the Sea of Japan, southwards into South Asia, and eastwards into the Levant and Arabia. The Mongol Empire would have control of almost 18% of the planet's total land area, only second to the infamous British Empire that would form centuries later.

The Mongol hegemony in Eurasia would bring about what historians called Pax Mongolica, a period of stability where trade was regulated along with exchanges of ideas and technology from the West and East. After Genghis Khan's death, there was some dispute over who his successor would be. Kublai Khan, one of Genghis Khan's grandchildren, would end up being next in line, although he was not recognized by the whole tribe. By Kublai's death in 1294, the empire was fragmented into four separate khanates: the Golden Horde in the Northwest, which would become Turkic; the Chagatai Khanate in the West, which also became Turkic; the Ilkhanate in the Southwest; and the Yuan Dynasty, which ruled over China, founded by Kublai Khan prior to his death.

While the Mongol Empire demonstrated the interconnectedness of the Old World by their running of the Silk Road, the trading route had always served to keep major powers within distance. This wasn't always a blessing. Just as trading goods passed along the route from city to city, so too did diseases, often deadly. It's thought the Plague of Justinian entered Europe via the Silk Road. A major outbreak of the disease killed off a quarter of the Mediterranean population. A theory also states that the Mongols were behind the Bubonic plague entering Europe. They would catapult diseased corpses into enemy towns in Crimea during sieges. Those who fled the town, specifically traders, would head to Constantinople or Italy, bringing the disease with them.

Old World science often has a bad reputation when it comes to the postclassical period, thought of as being 1,000 years of Dark Ages between the scientific advancements of classical antiquity and the Renaissance. But most of, if not all of, these regions advanced significantly. Africa gave rise to the kingdoms of the West and Swahili Coast, each benefiting from two separate trading routes. The Islamic World experienced a golden age during this time, with knowledge from the East and from Western sources in the areas they conquered. Europeans also brought back much of this knowledge during the Crusades, which gave them access to more classical sources. Europe also experienced various periods of different Renaissance during the Middle Ages. The East would highly modernize under the Chinese as well, making the postclassical period one of great progress despite the seemingly constant setbacks.

The ancient period saw just the beginning of mingling between these different empires, but the postclassical period saw the beginnings of globalization for both its enrichment and detriment. There was one part of the Earth, though, that remained untouched by the Old World. The land is cold and barren. Vikings settled on this snowy expanse of land in the North by around 980. The presence of walruses made this settlement lucrative for the ivory trade. In the 1200s, other expanding peoples would come in from the West. We aren't certain how these people, who the Norwegian Vikings called Skraelings, interacted with them. But by the 1400s, because of the Little Ice Age, the Vikings abandoned their settlements, heading back East. These settlements were on Greenland, and those people, initially called Skraelings, were the Thule people, the ancestors to the Inuit. This is L'Anse aux Meadows, another Viking settlement, this time in Newfoundland, Canada. They would call this Vinland because of the presence of grapevines used to make wine. This colony, set up around year 1000, would only last for around 20 years due to constant conflict with the Beothuk native tribe. But with a slight touch of fingertips, the Old World and New World would remain divided for another 500 years.

But what transpired on this continent, North America? The Hopewell culture from the ancient period was slowly replaced with the Mississippian culture in the Midwest and Eastern United States around year 800 until European contact. They used rivers as the main mode of trade and would be known for their mound structures. Monks Mound is the largest pyramid north of Mesoamerica. Its base is larger than the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico and about the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza. It is located in Cahokia, Illinois, the most significant city for the Mississippi culture. Population boomed there after the 11th century, but the city would be mysteriously abandoned by 1350. To the West were the Anasazi. They would construct buildings in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. It's thought that each house could house up to 600 residents. In Colorado, Anasazi would build dwellings into cliffsides. They are still well-preserved today.

Further South, Mesoamerica was still experiencing a classical age. Teotihuacan would start out the period at its peak with 125,000 residents. It was considered the sixth largest city in the world at that point. The Pyramid of the Sun was the third largest pyramid on Earth and was oriented to astronomical events. Extreme weather events in 535 and 536, which caused sporadic extreme cooling, could have caused the decline of this civilization, perhaps leading to widespread rebellion. The Maya civilization, one of the most advanced in the region, occupied the Yucatan and Guatemala in various city-states. Originally influenced by the Teotihuacan of Mexico, they would build their own complex network of trade systems. Two city-states, Tikal and Calakmul, would have a rivalry spanning centuries. Chichen Itza was one of the most significant cities, often the economic center. Mayans were complex in other areas as well, having developed a writing system independently, along with the concept of zero, second only to the Mesopotamians. The Mayans might have also created the 365-day calendar before any of Afro-Eurasia. During the 9th century, many of these city-states were abandoned, most likely due to drought, marking the end of Mesoamerica's classical age. Their postclassical period, from the year 900, saw the Mayans still in existence, but not the power they had once been.

Not much is known about the Toltec, but they supposedly formed an empire in Mesoamerica based on wise and kind-hearted rulers. Civil war was said to have broken out in 947 after the death of a controversial priest-king who suggested an entum sacrifice. Centuries later, in the 1300s, bands of religious radicals would raid areas of lower Mexico, claiming to be the rightful successors to the Toltec Empire. Their numbers swelled, as did their territory, known as the Aztecs. These bands of militaristic raiders and priests would use human sacrifice as a means of coercion and terror. They employed more advanced agriculture techniques such as chinampas, irrigation, and terrace agriculture to support their growing population. In the 1400s, the Aztec center of Tenochtitlan allied with Texcoco and Tlacopan to form a powerful Triple Alliance, also known as the Aztec Empire. This empire would take over the majority of Mesoamerica, making most city-states tributaries by the mid-1400s. The empire would fight the Flower Wars, intermittent ritual wars fought with other city-states, the most famous being Xochiya. This would occur until the 1500s, when the Aztec empire would be forever changed.

In South America, the Andean region, which produced the most advanced American civilizations from the ancient period, continued to thrive in the postclassical era. Most of the regions east of the Andes were primarily inhabited by semi-nomadic tribes, although the Amazon River Basin shows evidence of complex culture. The Andean civilizations were generally advanced and developed independently from Mesoamerican cultures. While they didn't have a writing system, they could rely on knotted strings called quipu to send messages or communicate over long distances. These long distances would be dominated by llamas, who were the main transporters of goods in the Americas, as they didn't have access to the horse or wheel. During the first part of this postclassical period, two Andean empires dominated the region. In Northern Peru was the Wari or Huari Empire, and to the South, also occupying parts of Bolivia, was the Tiwanaku Empire. Having roughly the same military power, they would engage in a type of Cold War, coexisting but ready for action with minor skirmishes in proxy areas. Both empires would begin to decline around the 7th and 8th centuries because of changes to the environment.

The 1400s saw the rise of the largest empire in all the Americas. These Quechua-speaking peoples out of the Cusco region would conquer and build upon the previous Andean culture in the area. Under the guidance of Sapa Inca, these warriors expanded into present-day Ecuador and Chile. It was soon known as the Inca Empire. These Incas were known for their use of abacuses in mathematics and their pyramid-like structures like Machu Picchu. Their road system was also regarded as one of the best in the world.

At this point, an ocean away from the Inca lies Oceania. It is divided into these four sub-regions. The first people to migrate to Australasia and Melanesia had migrated over from Africa as far back as 50,000 years ago. Migrations from Southeast Asia are typically responsible for the populations of Polynesia and Micronesia and took place thousands of years later. They would build cities like Nan Madol and Mo'orea, which would become the capital of the Tongan Empire, gaining power in 950. The Tongan Empire would reach its peak beginning in the 1200s and led expeditions to spread their influence all throughout the South Pacific Islands. They were adept sailors and used stick charts to help them with navigation. Polynesians were the first to discover New Zealand, Easter Island, and Hawaii. These were areas previously untouched by humans. Once settled on these different islands, the Polynesians would begin to adopt different cultures from one another. In New Zealand, this would give rise to the Māori peoples, originating from East Polynesia. Because of the island environments, new species entering the ecology was rare, and once the Polynesians arrived, it led to mass extinctions, including the moa, which was often hunted. On Easter Island, the presence of Polynesians destroyed the native ecology by hunting and the construction of their large stone statues. This resulted in their own population disappearing over time.

On the 29th of May, 1453, the Ottoman Empire laid siege to the city of Constantinople. The Eastern Roman Empire's defenses had always been state-of-the-art, alas, state-of-the-art for a period long dead. Using gunpowder technologies, after a 53-day siege, the Ottomans, under 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II, would capture Constantinople, putting an end to 1,150 years of the Roman Empire. While nomadic tribes dominated the postclassical period, that era would end, giving way to a new age of gunpowder. The Byzantines, Delhi Sultanate, and Songhai had already felt its lethal touch, but these were just the first of many. The modern era was here. Afro-Eurasia had become as connected as it ever was during this time, but as Europe became further cut off from the East due to the decline of the Silk Road, they would try to find alternative ways to reach it for trade, and this would set into motion what could never be undone, and nothing would ever be the same.

After centuries of nomadic domination, the world is about to bend to a new master. The three Islamic gunpowder empires – the Ottoman Turks, the Safavids in Iran, and the Mughals in the Indian subcontinent – control Western, Central, and South Asia because of their new technologies. In Europe, a deeply tired continent emerges from the Middle Ages with new realizations and new ambitions. During the postclassical period, Africa and the Americas produced some of the most advanced and successful societies on the planet, but not even they could prepare for what was to come.

East Asia would begin to pursue isolationism from the West near the end of the last period. In China, the Ming inherited the Song's advanced technical knowledge, but while the Chinese went through a period of industrialization, they would not go through a scientific revolution, meaning there was nothing to counter or challenge traditional belief systems. This could be responsible for what caused them to falter as arguably the world's leading civilization. While having invented gunpowder, it wasn't the Chinese, but the Europeans who invented the matchlock, creating the classic firearms that were so useful in warfare. Early on, the Ming would see large-scale urbanization. Cities like Nanjing and Beijing would swell in population and see the rise of private industries. More silk products were produced, along with cotton and paper. Smaller markets would focus more on food production. Before the Ming's isolation, they would actually have a very profitable trade system with the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch. This gave them access to silver, which they needed to back their paper money, which crashed by the mid-1400s, suffering from hyperinflation. Once the Ming became isolationist, silver would still find its way onto the mainland. This abundance of silver from the Spanish helped the Chinese economy survive.

In the late 1500s, Japan would invade Joseon Korea in what would be known as the Imjin War. China sent an army to protect Korea and themselves and were ultimately the victors, but this left them stretched thin. To make matters worse, the Little Ice Age that affected the North Atlantic also affected Ming China, specifically their food sources. Trading partners cut off exchanges, and Chinese crops began to fail, along with other natural disasters and widespread disease outbreaks. The Ming would be deemed to have lost the Mandate of Heaven, and rebels would begin to stir. In a peasant uprising, Li Zicheng would succeed in overthrowing the Ming at Beijing, with the Chongzhen Emperor committing suicide. Prince Dorgon, who would form the next dynasty, though allied with a former Ming general, Wang Xifu, took Beijing themselves, forcing rebel Li Zicheng to flee the city and establish the Qing Dynasty. This dynasty wouldn't be ethnically Han like the Ming, but Manchu. These Manchus were descended from the Jurchen who invaded from the North during the Song Dynasty last period, establishing the dynasty in 1644. They would go on to be the most popular state in the world and the fourth largest empire in history. They would administer Chinese affairs with a traditional Confucian style and left most of the ethnic minorities to their own devices. This dynasty would survive this period but fall in 1912.

In Japan, the Sengoku period of civil war continued. The powerful Oda Nobunaga had just opposed the last of the Ashikaga Shogunate and went on a warpath to unify the country. In 1582, his dreams would almost escape him, but he lost something arguably just as valuable. Betrayed by one of his generals, Nobunaga was forced to commit suicide or seppuku at Honnō-ji Temple. His successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, took over the mission and succeeded, ending the strife-filled Sengoku period. He was the one who set into motion the Japanese invasion of Korea, which ultimately failed. After his death in 1598, and with Toyotomi's credibility now in question after the failed invasion, Tokugawa Ieyasu would challenge his son, Toyotomi Hideyori. This came to a head in 1600 at the Battle of Sekigahara, where Tokugawa was victorious and was proclaimed Shogun of the new Tokugawa Shogunate in 1603. This marked the beginning of the Edo period, which saw the Shogun rule from Edo Castle in the capital of Edo, former name of Tokyo. It was a feudal system like the other Shoguns, with a strict hierarchy previously established by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The feudal lords of the Tokugawa clan ruled with their warrior class of samurai underneath. A similar system to Europe, farmers and artisans were ranked below them. The Tokugawa would close off the island country from foreigners with its Sakoku policy, which also kept commoners from leaving. Literacy rates rose during this time, although this could be attributed to other factors. In the smaller areas of Japan, the Daimyo feudal lords would often also train in the fighting arts and be samurai. By the same token, samurai could also be the proper lords of their region. Daimyo would forge alliances by exchanging relatives, and Daimyo families would stay near Edo Castle to ensure loyalty. Because of the strict hierarchical system, there would often be dissatisfaction and conflict, but interestingly enough, not in the way one would expect. Instead of peasant uprisings, it was the samurai and daimyo who were cut short with fixed tax rates and rising inflation. Taxes collected by landowners would be worth less and less, leading to angry nobles and angry samurai. The system would still be maintained, though, and the Edo period would last for over 200 years.

In 1392, the middle of the postclassical period in Korea, Yi Seong-gye established the Joseon Dynasty, and the capital was eventually moved to Seoul. King Sejong the Great, the fourth king of this dynasty, was responsible for replacing Chinese characters to create the Korean alphabet. The Japanese invasions of Korea would occur in the late 1500s, but how exactly did they fail? The answer was this man: Admiral Yi Sun-sin. He headed a fearsome Korean Navy consisting of oddly shaped ships. They would be completely enclosed in metallic armor with spikes on top to prevent boarding, with a dragon's head poking out the front. These ships would resemble a type of turtle. These Turtle Ships, called Geobukseon in Korean, were also fearsome offensive weapons, capable of firing at least five different types of cannon. Combined with the panic and warships, they would win a stunning 16 out of 16 battles, utterly destroying the entire Japanese Navy in 1597. At the Battle of Chilcheollyang, after a bit of trickery, the entire Korean fleet was destroyed by the Japanese. Korea would have the last laugh, as the few remaining Turtle Ships were revived and altered. A combined force of Ming Chinese and Korean warships put an end to the Japanese advance at Noryang, ending the war in the 1600s. Korea was once again invaded, this time from the Jurchen, who would soon change their identity to Manchu, the same peoples who would form the Qing Dynasty in China. Korean King Injo surrendered in 1637 and was forced to send concubines and noble women to the Qing Prince Dorgon.

After the constant invasions, Joseon Korea experienced almost 200 years of peace. Internal problems are what caused the dynasty to decline in the late 1800s, but the Joseon would remain stable during most of the early modern period.

The Delhi Sultanate, early 16th century. This sultanate would have control of the Indian subcontinent for over 300 years. Ibrahim Lodi of the Afghan Lodi Dynasty would be the last of these rulers. An invading army under Babur, a descendant of both Timur and Genghis Khan, would kill the last Lodi Sultan at the Battle of Panipat and establish the Mughal Empire, one of the Islamic gunpowder empires. The Mughals adopted much of the Persian culture and would become one of the richest and most productive regions in the world. Their GDP surpassed the entirety of Europe during the early modern period, and it was valued at around a quarter of the GDP of the entire planet during the Mughal classic period. The empire was highly centralized with advances in the arts and architecture. With the death of Emperor Aurangzeb, the Empire stagnated but still survived for another 150 years after losing hegemony to a mobile group of warriors. These Hindu Marathas were located to the Southwest and would expand under their Peshwas, or prime ministers. This ended when the Afghan Empire, backed by the Mughals, halted their expansion, but they succeeded in taking over most of the Indian subcontinent. They would later be divided into a confederacy of Maratha states.

Near the end of the early modern period, Colonial Powers practiced New Imperialism, a phase which saw Europeans, after their earlier colonial pursuits in the Western Hemisphere, attempt to colonize and exploit Africa and the East. India was no exception. In 1757, at the Battle of Plassey, the Nawab of Bengal, part of the Mughal Empire, surrendered his territory to the British East India Company. The British would soon be given the Diwani, or ability to collect revenue, and established a capital at Kolkata. Next on their list was a more formidable force: the Marathas. The Anglo-Maratha Wars were a series of three wars fought between the Hindu Empire and the British. While the Marathas succeeded in the first, the British dominated the last two, ending up with both Mughal and Maratha territory. As the Dutch East India Company was also a fierce competitor for territory in Southeast Asia, the British had to negotiate treaties in order to assign possessions. After rebellion and turmoil, the British dissolved their East India Company, preferring to administer to the region themselves. This was known as the British Raj. Colonial rule would continue to spread in Southeast Asia, with only Thailand, or Siam, avoiding the same fate as its mainland neighbors.

Off the coast in Indonesia, the powerful Hindu Empire of the Majapahit lay at a crucial point in the spice route, which connected Indian and Chinese ports. Though their influence spread to surrounding islands, the Majapahit would fall before the mid-1500s after the emergence of numerous Malay sultanates. The Portuguese would conquer the Malacca Sultanate by 1511, taking control over the strategic Strait of Malacca.

In the Middle East, the crossroads of the Old World, tensions remained. West Asia had a new king: the Ottomans. After their conquest of Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire entered its classical age, a period of expansion and pursuit of power. They expanded into North Africa, capturing Egypt in 1517 and establishing the Regency of Algiers. Ottoman Tunis and the Ayyubid of Tripolitana, Morocco, remained an independent Berber state. In the latter part of this period, Ottoman land in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans would experience what historians call Pax Ottomana, a period of economic prosperity and stability, not unlike the Pax Mongolica of the previous era. There would be conflict, though, with a new enemy to the East: Safavid Persia. Founded around 1501, this empire was the first native Persian Empire since the fall of the Sasanian in the 600s. Being Shia, they would be under constant threat from the Sunni Ottomans. Nonetheless, the Safavids would spread their version of Islam into various parts of the Middle East. The Safavids grew to be a major power because of trade. Europeans, especially England and the Netherlands, were quite fond of Persian rugs, along with their silks and other textiles. They would grow weaker and fall in 1736, but their legacy lived on in the strengthening and spread of 12th-Imam Shia Islam.

Central Asia, where some nomads still rule, Turkic confederacies occupied this area. United by Muhammad Shaybani Khan from the steppes, he came at the helm of various tribes like the Kipchaks, Naimans, and other Turkic tribes. Closer to India, the Pashtuns, or Afghans, came to prominence under the Hotaki Dynasty in the mid-1600s. They launched invasions both to the East in India and the West in Iran. The Pashtun Ghilzais, or Warriors of the Faith, would form the aforementioned Lodi Dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate, the final dynasty before its collapse to the Mughals. In the West, they would also invade the Safavid Empire, handing it a devastating blow at the Battle of Gulnabad, a blow the empire wouldn't recover from. The Afghans would later form the Afghan Empire, or Durrani Empire, in the 1700s, which halted the Hindu Maratha expansion.

"Man is the measure of all things." This idea, attributed to Protagoras, one of the ancient Greek Sophists, would be at the center of the humanist movement in Europe, birthed out of Italy. Still during the late Middle Ages, humanism manifested itself in the Renaissance, which would later spread all across the continent, bringing Europe into the Modern Age. Using man, or human, as the basis of what we can know and learn, they began to use inductive reasoning and physical observation in the sciences. Arts and literature blossomed as well. Linear perspective began appearing in paintings, and images were more lifelike and natural, often depicting ordinary people in majestic light. Literature began to use more common language, and with the emergence of the printing press, became more available to more people.

Warfare also changed dramatically. Though gunpowder was invented in the East, once they possessed the technology, it was the Europeans who created the most effective firearms, able to pierce even the finest of armor. The classic, burdensome knightwear fell out of fashion. With cannon also utilizing this gunpowder, castles would be rendered nearly useless, as the walls had difficulty withstanding the potent weapon. Renaissance ideals eventually opened the door for more scientific advancements, influenced by the works of Al-Battani, a Syrian astronomer from the Islamic Golden Age. Nicolaus Copernicus would help to replace the faulty geocentric model of the solar system, which claimed the Sun and all planets moved around the Earth, with the heliocentric model, in which the Earth and all other planets move around the Sun. This is widely regarded as the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution. This continued for the majority of the early modern period, with the creation or advancement of numerous scientific fields like biology, geology, and physics. They would surpass or replace much of the classical era sciences, Aristotelian physics being a prime example.

Many of these ideas directly challenged the Church. Catholicism wasn't only threatened by science but by other variants of Christianity. In the late Middle Ages, Jan Hus, a Christian reformer in Bohemia, was executed for heresy. His followers, known as Hussites, began spreading this version of Christianity. Feeling threatened, the Catholic Church would engage in a series of Crusades against the Hussites. While the wars would simply end in compromise, they were significant as they were the first European war fought where gunpowder was a factor. Hussite soldiers were able to dispatch far larger numbers of the Holy Roman Emperor's Crusaders. Christianity in Europe would also be greatly challenged by foreign empires. After their victory at Constantinople, the Ottomans expanded into Eastern Europe, where they laid siege to Belgrade. John Hunyadi of the Kingdom of Hungary, who had been fighting the Turks for decades, masterminded a counterattack on the Ottoman camp. Though outnumbered, the Eastern Europeans would drive back the Turkish army, wounding Mehmed II in the process. Seen as a pivotal moment in Christian history, Hunyadi's victory kept the Ottomans from expanding throughout Europe.

In the late 1400s, the Spanish Crown established the Tribunal of the Holy Cross of the Inquisition. This saw the Church prosecute Catholics for heresy and other acts deemed against the faith. This included sorcery and witchcraft, as well as Judaizing and blasphemy. This Spanish Inquisition would last all the way until the 19th century.

The Electorate of Saxony, nestled within the Holy Roman Empire, in 1508, the University at Wittenberg would accept an Augustinian monk as professor of philosophy. He then became a preacher at the local church. In 1517, on the 31st of October, this monk, Martin Luther, posted a critique of the Pope and Church on the church's bulletin board. These would become known as the 95 Theses and were mainly critical of the practice of selling indulgences and the Catholic view of purgatory. Debates soon became commonplace, leading to those protesting the Church and the Protestant Reformation. Different Protestant denominations emerged from this, including the Lutheran (after Martin Luther), Calvinists, and Presbyterians. In England, it yielded the English Reformation, which saw the rise of Anglicanism. In 1521, at the Diet of Worms, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V declared Luther a heretic but, occupied with affairs in Eastern Europe, left it up to the German nobles to deal with Luther if they saw fit. In 1530, Charles ordered all Protestants to revert to Catholicism, leading to the Protestants banding together in the Schmalkaldic League, a military alliance of Lutheran princes. In 1555, the Treaty of Augsburg was signed by Charles and the league, which gave local rulers the choice between either Lutheranism or Catholicism for their state.

The Catholic Church wasn't about to take challenges to its power lightly. The Council of Trent was called in reaction to this Protestant Reformation, sparking a Counter-Reformation and Catholic revival. Seminaries were founded for the training of new priests, and new religious orders like the Jesuits and Capuchins helped to fight the corruption in the Church and strengthen its reputation. New spiritual movements would begin in the major Catholic bastions, like the Spanish Mystics and French School of Spirituality.

In Italy and Malta, there was the Roman Inquisition.

Eastern Europe. Ivan IV, the Grand Prince of Moscow, has dreams of grandeur, declaring himself Caesar, or Tsar. Ivan the Terrible went on a campaign to unify the various khanates and Rus' principalities in the region. He nearly doubled the area of this new large Tsardom of Russia, a multiethnic state spanning two continents.

The Atlantic Ocean. The early modern period saw this expanse of water become much more crowded. In Western Europe, the Age of Discovery teamed with European seafarers traveling to find gold, silver, and spices. As their previous routes, via the Silk Road, were now controlled by the Ottomans, Europe's position on the globe enabled it to take to maritime expansion more easily than most other regions. The dominant economic ideology at this time was mercantilism. This school of thought dictated for an economy to maximize its exports and minimize imports. It wasn't a free market economy and led to massive government intervention, often with militaristic and imperialist motives, in order to achieve their goals. This economic model was part of the Commercial Revolution, which saw the European economy expand. European states began to compete with one another, not militarily, but economically. On top of simple commerce, there would be a stark increase in other financial endeavors like insurance, banking, and investments.

In the search for precious metals and spices, the Portuguese would have a maritime breakthrough. The carrack and caravel were state-of-the-art ship designs which made traveling on the ravaging waters of the Atlantic possible. Theory states that the Portuguese and Spanish of the Iberian Peninsula were the first to begin this new age of discovery because they were in desperate need of gold and bullion due to their recent war with the Islamic settlements in Spain during the Reconquista.

More traffic on the highways of the ocean led to more bandits. From the mid-1600s to the mid-1700s, the Golden Age of Piracy would reign. This period began with Anglo-French Buccaneers based in the Caribbean attacking nearby Spanish colonies. Later on, the Pirate Round, a route across the Atlantic and around the tip of Africa, was a popular method of attacking both Muslim and British East India targets in the Indian Ocean. Later still, after the War of Spanish Succession, many privateers and sailors, now unemployed, would take up piracy. They couldn't let those maritime skills go to waste, now could they?

Back in Europe, after the disastrous Thirty Years' War, which killed up to 8 million people, the Church was less of a unifying force, and residents would associate more with their state. This allowed monarchs to claw for more claims to absolute power. There would be a decrease in feudalism from the previous period, as all power was now centralized in the monarch, who claimed legitimacy from a higher power. The nobles would have less control, and taxes would sharply increase as well. One of these absolute monarchs was Louis XIV, or the Sun King. He shepherded France through three major wars, one of which was the War of Spanish Succession, where European powers banded together to stop a unification of the French and Spanish Crown under one Bourbon king, as it would upset the balance of power on the continent. The king's ambitions died as France and Spain lost the war to the English and United Provinces of the Netherlands. This Treaty of Utrecht from the early 1700s marks the end of Spanish naval dominance, with the British the new hegemonic maritime power.

In England, the English Civil War saw the Royalists, who supported the king, battle the Parliamentarians, who supported Parliament. The Parliamentarians were victorious, and Charles I was executed. His son, Charles II, was exiled. The British Isles were then united under Oliver Cromwell. In the 1660s, the English Restoration saw the return of Charles II to the throne. In 1688, in what would be known as the Glorious Revolution, King James was deposed by his daughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange, leader of the Dutch Republic. Soon after, it was resolved that England would be a constitutional monarchy.

Africa. The Songhai, last of the great West African empires, fell to Moroccan forces from the North. In the East, the Ethiopian Empire was alive, run by the House of Solomon, who claimed descent from the old Axumite Empire and King Solomon. Going through various phases of invasions, centralization, and decentralization, the Ethiopian Empire, today Ethiopia and Eritrea, would remain intact until 1974, one of only two African countries to escape colonization. Further South, parts of the Swahili Coast came under Portuguese subjugation but would eventually be taken over by the Omani, a sultanate and maritime empire.

Across the Atlantic, Christopher Columbus enters a fantastical paradise. To Europe, it would be a new land to pursue their economic interests. The first land claimed was that of Latin America, so named because it was Spain and Portugal's to plunder. The Treaty of Tordesillas divided this land, then named Ibero-America, between the two Iberian powers. Portugal named its territory Brazil after the brazilwood, which produced dyes. Using gunpowder, Spain had a simple time subverting the natives within its territories. Those too powerful, like the Aztecs, they would use subterfuge in their quest for precious metals. They would establish viceroyalties like New Spain and force native peoples to work to extract resources. Their territory spanned all Central and South America. The Portuguese already had lucrative settlements overseas around Africa and Southeast Asia with links to both China and India, so their territory in Brazil wasn't as important. There was a dearth of precious metals there as well, so Portugal instead began producing sugar cane. Because of the intense labor of working these plantations, Portugal brought over slave labor from West Africa, kickstarting the Atlantic slave trade.

After seeing how lucrative the New World could be, morality notwithstanding, the other Western European powers with access to the ocean – England, France, and the Netherlands – sought territory in the Americas as well. Some Caribbean islands were taken from the Spanish, but more importantly, North America itself was ripe for conquest. The British began colonization in Virginia in 1607 and continued until 1733 with Georgia. The Dutch settled further North in New Netherland, what would become New York. France colonized even further North in Eastern Canada, founding Quebec City in 1608 and eventually creating New France. In the mid-1700s, the Seven Years' War, regarded as the first truly global war, would have consequential effects for the colonies, resulting in France ceding New France to Great Britain, along with Louisiana and all territory west of the Mississippi to the Spanish. The war took a financial toll on Britain. Despite all its territorial acquisitions, taxes were increased on the 13 colonies in Lower British North America, leading to rebellion in 1775. They would declare independence from Britain in 1776, and after a tired British army failed in quelling the insurrection, the Crown finally accepted and recognized America's independence with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. To the North, the colonies of Canada remained loyal to the Crown.

Most of the foremost figures from the 13 colonies were heavily influenced by Enlightenment ideals. Beginning in the mid-1600s, the Age of Rationalism emerged, which differed from Renaissance philosophy. This period saw Isaac Newton write his Principia and French philosopher René Descartes, famous for his quote, "I think, therefore I am." Thinkers around this time tended to be Deists but secular, preferring the Church to stay divided from governmental affairs. While the Scientific Revolution was one of the sciences, the Enlightenment was an intellectual revolution of philosophy, where reason was king, not a fallible monarch or mystic being in the heavens. This wasn't confined to science but affected religion, economics, politics, literature, and art.

The American Revolution wasn't the only battle spurred by Enlightenment ideals: liberty, equality, and fraternity. Rampant inequality ran through France; soon so did blood. With the abolishment of the Ancien Régime, revolutionaries took control of France, and King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette met their demise in 1793. Terror then reigned. This French Revolution lasted 10 long years, and out of its spent ashes rose the man who would bring a continent to its knees: the man who would be Emperor.

Welcome to the longest century ever. Throughout much of history, most advancement or innovation came in the form of ideas or religious ideology. The steam engine changed all that, sparking a revolution that is still felt to this day. Using pressure created from steam, this invention was able to pump out water from coal mines, enabling them to go much deeper. This Industrial Revolution began in Europe in the late 1700s but would go well into the 1800s, spurring another era of advancement, this time called the Technological Revolution, which seeped into the 20th century. Lewis Paul was the first credited with developing roller spinning, which was the basis for spinning cotton in cotton mills. While the steam engine had existed prior, it was James Watt and Matthew Boulton who made the improvements to it that truly caused widespread change. Later on, during the Technological Revolution, the electrical, petroleum, and steel industries took off. There were massive advancements in transportation with the first airplanes and automobiles. This is when Thomas Edison would develop a number of devices and is said to have created the first industrial research laboratory. Nikola Tesla also made a number of contributions to the fields of electricity and magnetism around this time. The Industrial Revolution wasn't just a revolution of industry but of society as a whole and is thought of as being only second in importance to the Neolithic Revolution, which saw hunter-gatherer societies begin to practice agriculture, cure, and become sedentary. With more machines being used, more factories were built to house them, and society shifted from manual labor to using these machines for manufacturing. The steam engine, fueled by coal, was used to power most of these machines, like in the textile industry, which was one of the first to implement this technology. Over time, machines were used to create more of themselves, leading to exponential economic growth.

They would need it after Napoleon. Rising to prominence during the French Revolution, the ambitious Napoleon Bonaparte, now Emperor of the French Empire after the short-lived First Republic, led France to a series of victories against a coalition of European powers during the early 1800s, replacing the Spanish monarch with his own brother. England, though, was to be the French's closest rival. The Battle of Trafalgar saw the British and coalition forces victorious in a major naval engagement. After over a decade of conflict, Napoleon was ultimately defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and exiled permanently. While the Bourbons were restored in Spain at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, at the Congress of Vienna, nations attempted to restore the balance of power within Europe, with an emphasis on maintaining peace and order, but also the status quo, so as not to undermine their own monarchies.

Europe was still full of monarchies during this period, each with different amounts of ruling power. In 1721, Russia was declared an empire by Peter the Great. He defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War, taking back lost land and acquiring new territory, becoming one of Europe's main players. Peter would found the city of St. Petersburg, which became a window to Europe. His reforms later modernized Russia along the lines of the Western powers. Later on, Catherine II, or Catherine the Great, extended Russia's territory over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, dissolving the state. They would push eastward, claiming Asian territories up until the Pacific, known as Siberia, and even beyond into North America, in present-day Alaska. Though Russia was invaded by Napoleon in 1812, they would repel the invasion and come out the victor. Serfdom was abolished in the mid-1800s, resulting in some 30 million peasants freed from the old system. Industrialization came to the Russian Empire in the 1870s, and with it, a market economy, leading to income inequality.

Many of the world's other great empires were damaged, some beyond repair. The Ottomans, once a significant power in West Asia, lost much of their territory in a series of revolutions. To the East, the Mughals succumbed to the Hindu Maratha forces, which in turn fell to the British. Europeans still controlled many Oceanic islands as well. The British had colonies on Australia at the end of the last period and added New Zealand and Fiji later. The French had French Polynesia and New Caledonia, while the Germans colonized Samoa and New Guinea. The United States would expand westwards and take Hawaii in the mid-1800s. Japan would be visited by the Black Ships of Commodore Matthew Perry. Perry is credited for opening up the severely isolationist Japanese to Western ideas and technology. Around 10 years later, the Tokugawa Shogunate would be dissolved, with Daimyo ceding their land to Emperor Meiji in what is known as the Meiji Restoration, with Japan becoming a proper empire. After such isolation, the access to new ideas helped Japan modernize rapidly compared to its Chinese and Russian neighbors.

Periods of decolonization would begin in Spain's colonies in the Americas. From 1808 until 1829, the Spanish American Wars of Independence saw all of Spain's territories in the Americas become autonomous. Only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained in Spain's grasp. The Portuguese never divided up their territories like the Spanish did, which is why Brazil is now such a large state. This made rebellion much easier, and Brazil would declare its independence in 1822, forming the Empire of Brazil.

After Napoleon's defeat, Britain was undoubtedly the world's most powerful empire. From 1837 until 1901, the Victorian Era, so named because of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, saw Britain prosper. Education increased with the help of industrialization, and profits from exploitation abroad put them at the forefront. After Napoleon, the British had no true rival in the entire world. Their foreign policy was called "Splendid Isolationism," so called because they needed no permanent alliances to benefit themselves. This period of Pax Britannica saw the British rule the oceans, acting as arbiters worldwide. Having abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery within its domains in 1833, the British would police the ongoing Barbary slave trade still happening in North Africa. They would even control the economies of countries that remained independent, like Qing China. Much of their ability to administer such far-reaching areas was due to the steamship, which used the prefix SS for quick transport, and the telegraph for long-distance communication.

Napoleon's defeat was the start of instability in France during the 1800s. The Bourbons, relatives of the dead French monarchs, were restored in France, marking a shift toward conservatism, placing the Catholic Church into French politics. In 1830, the July Revolution ended the Bourbon Dynasty for good, replacing it with the July Monarchy, a liberal constitutional monarchy. The Industrial Revolution mixed with Enlightenment ideals from the last century led to numerous reform movements across Europe. Liberalism and ideas challenging the monarch became more widespread. Originating in France, the Revolutions of 1848 were a series of rebellions and political upheaval which spread across Europe. Most were eventually quelled, but in France, the monarchy was deposed, giving way to the Second Republic. This only lasted until 1852, when Napoleon's nephew, Napoleon III, president of this Republic, ended it, establishing the Second French Empire. France would be on the march once again but was defeated during the Franco-Prussian War, putting an end to the Second Empire and the Bonapartist imperial dreams. Alsace-Lorraine was ceded to Prussia in the loss. This is when the German states, headed by Prussia, unified into a single nation-state. This German Empire would later be known as the Second Reich, after the Holy Roman Empire, the First Reich, which was dissolved in the early 1800s. With the empire dead once again, France would revert to a Republican government, becoming the Third Republic. This would last for 70 years and would be the longest government since the Ancien Régime.

Italy went through political change of its own, known as the Risorgimento. The Italian city-states were gradually unified into a single state, the process starting after the Napoleonic Wars. The vast majority were consolidated by the 1870s. With the advent of new medicine and technologies, Africa's precious interior became accessible to the Europeans, and they wasted no time in taking advantage. The so-called Scramble for Africa began with the Berlin Conference in the 1880s. African territories were divided up amongst the Europeans so as to avoid conflict with one another. It was stipulated that control over territories gave the colonial power access to the resources within, as well, without fear of another power's interference. This also meant that protection of natives was mandated, along with their welfare. This, unfortunately, is not at all how it played out. Conditions deteriorated severely for Africans during the colonial period. By the 1910s, the British would control areas from the North to South, while the French controlled areas from the West to East. Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal also possessed colonies across the continent. Belgian King Leopold II had the Congo, a region in which he was responsible for sickening atrocities. By 1914, only Liberia, settled by freed American slaves, and Ethiopia remained independent.

Over in Japan, Western intervention continued to help Japan to modernize during the Meiji Era. The Hobo War Office was replaced with the War Department and Naval Department, while the samurai class drifted more into obscurity. Able-bodied Japanese were forced to join the First and Second Reserves for three and two years respectively. It was met with resistance from the daimyo and peasants. The Emperor was driven to modernize the military in the French model. France would help to train Japanese soldiers, and by the late 1800s, Japan was one of the world's great powers, taking from the imperialists they trained under. The Japanese and their modernized military were victorious in the First Sino-Japanese War against the Qing, annexing Korea, Taiwan, and the Shandong Province. Once Emperor Meiji died, Emperor Taisho took the throne, granting democratic rights to all Japanese males.

In the 1800s, America was still not a major player on the world stage. The infant country still had growing problems within the antebellum period. Beginning in the early 1800s, the American South saw the country divided over the expansion of slavery. This division became official when the Southern states seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America, leading to the Civil War led by Jefferson Davis. This Confederacy opposed Abraham Lincoln's Union of Northern states, seeking to unite America again. Lincoln and his generals also desired to do away with Confederate nationalism and all forms of slavery. In the South, the Confederacy's area was too large to defend with the forces they could muster, so

They were often outmaneuvered, like at The Siege of Vicksburg. Only General Robert E. Lee could fend off the Union soldiers, but eventually Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman kept pressure on the South until the enemy soldiers were starved, leading to a Southern surrender.

With the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves were freed from their physical shackles, although societal ones continued to be a burden. The Reconstruction Era began after the end of the war in 1865, which dealt with the ramifications of the war and lasted until around 1877.

Beginning around the same time, parts of America were in the process of reaping the rewards from industrialization. Wealth inequality increased sharply, and the upper classes owning these means of production flaunted their wealth, giving this period the name of a Gilded Age.

During the technological Revolution, towns and cities in the Northeast would be built around factories owned by these robber barons. Factories would make their owners fabulously wealthy, often at the expense of their workers. J.D. Rockefeller was widely criticized for using aggressive or immoral tactics with his company, Standard Oil, which absorbed most of the competition. With advances in transportation and communication, businesses profited the most, and corporations became normalized because of the growing power of big business.

Government passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, the source of all antimonopoly laws in America. The courts declared that Standard Oil's monopoly be broken up in 1911. It survived as 34 separate entities, all with a different board of directors.

Because of the suboptimal working conditions and worker exploitation that came hand-in-hand with industrialization, certain ideologies manifested themselves. Case in point: The Communist Manifesto, published in England just before the Revolutions of 1848. The manifesto, written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, described history as a class struggle.

Marx also outlined the five phases in Europe's development. Going into the beginnings of the next period, we would also see the sciences advance with the emergence of quantum physics. Darwinism, based on adaptation and natural selection, also became more accepted. Unfortunately, some used this theory as a means to divide and place different people in hierarchies dependent on race, health, or intelligence. This attitude of survival of the fittest was known as Social Darwinism.

As we enter the 20th century, these ideologies would fully come into light. The century begins with many of the same themes as the last. This is why many historians consider the early 1900s as part of a period beginning around 1789, making it the long 19th century.

In 1901, Britain's colonies on the island of Australia, which had formed into six different self-governing colonies (New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia), joined together to form the Commonwealth of Australia.

To their North, the Qing Dynasty wasn't as stable. Failed education reforms and civil unrest, like the Boxer Rebellion and fallout from the Opium Wars and unequal treaties, placed the Qing in a precarious position. They needed to modernize and liberalize their archaic system of government, but numerous conservative Qing in the court were opposed. This led reformists to take action. The Qing, China's final dynasty, would fall in 1911 in the Xinhai Revolution. This marked the end of the old imperial system, which dated back to the Qin in the 200s B.C.

In 1912, the Republic of China was established under Sun Yat-sen, the first provisional president. This wouldn't last, though, as Yuan Shikai, who had control of China's most powerful military force, the Beiyang Army, had been promised the position. To prevent conflict, Sun Yat-sen stepped down, and Yuan Shikai was sworn in as the second provisional president.

The Japanese were new to the world stage, and while they tested their imperial mettle and won against their closest neighbors in China, they would be challenged by a foe to the North: the Russian Empire. Now spanning from Europe to the Pacific, it was eager for access to warm water, seeking regions in Korea and Manchuria. They would go to war with the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War. Fortune was with the new empire of Japan, as they handed Russian forces defeat after defeat, a surprising result for all observers across the globe.

While the war cemented Japan as a mainstay as a new world power, it caused embarrassment and dissatisfaction in Russia's Tsarist regime. A year later, the Russian Revolution of 1905 would take place. This wave of civil unrest included terrorism, peasant rebellion, worker strikes, and even military mutinies. In response, the State Duma of the Russian Empire was established, making Russia a constitutional monarchy.

After centuries of constitutional monarchy of their own, England entered its Edwardian Age under King Edward VII after the death of Queen Victoria. This would begin in 1901. The Second Boer War broke out soon after in South Africa, splitting Parliament into pro-war and anti-war factions. The pro-war conservatives became unpopular, resulting in a landslide victory for the Liberals in 1906. Although they still couldn't get their pro-work class agenda passed, known as The People's Budget, as the House of Lords was still largely conservative.

It was during this time that the United Kingdom entered a loose alliance with France and Russia, known as the Triple Entente. Based on previous alliances, the main idea was to flank Germany and provide a counter to the Triple Alliance, a more tightly knit alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The rise of nationalism throughout this long 19th century and of Europe's recent period of industrialization left them unafraid of conflict.

The Balkans were often fought over by many different empires. In 1912-1913, the Balkan League, comprising Greece, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Serbia, took back much of the Balkan area from the Ottomans. During this time, Austria-Hungary was competing with Russia and Serbia for Balkan territory as well.

The catalyst of conflict was when Serbian Gavrilo Princip fired the two shots that would spark untold mayhem. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated, and the stage was set for a war Europe had not yet seen. The July Crisis, occurring right after the assassination, saw a series of escalating decisions made by European powers, which officially began the Great War.

The Triple Entente became the Allied Powers and, after 1917, included Japan and the United States. The Triple Alliance, modified slightly, consisted of the German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, becoming the Central Powers. Most fighting occurred on the Western Front with trench warfare. The no man's land, a vast area, separated enemy trenches, leading to sacrificial charges and waste of life, resulting in many stalemates. On the Eastern Front, trench warfare wasn't as common. For the first time, war was fought from the air as well.

It's estimated over 9 million lost their lives on the battlefield and many more indirectly through food shortages and genocide, most notably of Armenians. Worse still, more people would die shortly after the war as an influenza outbreak was easily spread in overcrowded barracks and hospitals. It soon spread around the globe as soldiers returned to their countries, causing a worldwide pandemic.

The end of the war saw the Allied Powers victorious and the end of the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires. The Ottoman territory was carved up and partitioned by the winning side, creating several new nations in West Asia. The newly created League of Nations, a predecessor to the United Nations, granted Syria and Lebanon to the French and Palestine and Mesopotamia to the British. The Arabian Peninsula eventually became Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

A fourth empire also fell during the war. In 1917, a series of revolutions in Russia resulted in the abdication of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and the establishment of a provisional government. Late in 1917, the October Revolution saw the Red Guard, an army of peasants and workers, take control of Petrograd (present-day St. Petersburg) under the Bolsheviks. This socialist uprising would change Russia forever.

Civil War soon broke out between the Bolshevik Red Army and the anti-Soviet White Army, or the Whites. Nationalist groups like the Ukrainian Green Army and anarchist groups also engaged in the war. After around 5 years of war, the Bolsheviks squashed all opposition and controlled Russia all the way to the Pacific coast. In 1922, the USSR, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was established, the successor state to the Russian Empire. While Vladimir Lenin would perish from natural causes, he was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, a man who would become one of the most controversial of the 20th century.

In China, Yuan Shikai's government attempted to reinstate a new empire once again, but after his death, it devolved into a warlord era, in which China was ruled over by different warlords in a period of decentralization. Former leader Sun Yat-sen would collaborate with some Southern warlords in order to take back power and reunify China. Soon after, Chiang Kai-shek, who replaced Sun Yat-sen as leader of the KMT, went on a Northern Expedition to take back the country from the Beiyang government and the various warlords. He then turned on the CCP, establishing his anti-communist regime at Nanjing in 1927. This would mark the beginning of China's Nanjing Period, which was one of power and consolidation for the KMT. There was social progress, and the economy was generally positive.

Civil War would start as the Nationalist KMT fought the Communist CCP, who most likely would have met their demise if not for a massive distraction in 1937. The interwar period saw much of the globe's superpowers steeped in other struggles as Europe attempted to recover from the carnage. This wasn't the case for North America, which started out the period on top of the world, known as The Roaring Twenties, or Jazz Age. This was a period of economic prosperity and social, cultural, and artistic wealth. Flapper girls became prominent, and Art Deco ruled the art scene. Normalcy returned to politics with the election of Warren G. Harding, signifying a comfortable stability associated with the time before World War I. This, mixed with the normalization of new technologies like the radio, automobile, and movies, gave the period a sense of modernity.

Europe would spend these years rebuilding and coming to terms with the immense human cost associated with the war. In Turkey, the Turkish National Movement was established in response to the Allies' occupation of Istanbul. The Turkish War of Independence would last from 1919 to 1923 and saw the Turks succeed in forming their own Republic of Turkey, a successor state to the Ottoman Empire, which was internationally recognized at the same year. The capital was moved from Istanbul to Ankara.

Up North, with the German Empire now dissolved, the Weimar Republic ruled, but with an array of economic problems. Germany experienced intense hyperinflation in 1923, followed by the Beer Hall Putsch, a failed coup d'état led by a certain Nazi leader. With Germany unable to pay off their war debt, the Americans invested heavily into Europe to keep the economy from failing. This eventually led to prosperity for much of Europe as well, and the back end of the decade would be called the Golden Twenties.

This would all dramatically change in 1929. Seemingly as a counterweight to the economic success of the Twenties, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 plunged the world into a Great Depression. It remained the largest and most important economic depression of the 20th century. Everything would plummet during this time: international trade and salaries dropped by over two-thirds, construction stopped in many countries, and those that relied on farming suffered as well, as crop prices also dropped two-thirds.

The Depression was the catalyst for high amounts of political polarization. Some countries introduced new welfare programs and expanded the social safety net, while others turned towards nationalist or imperialist ideologies. While the League of Nations was meant to keep a balance of power and ensure stability, they were less effective as the United States wasn't a member. This caused other, more authoritarian powers to undermine the League, making it irrelevant.

The show of weakness might have pushed Italy and its fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, to ally with the like-minded Germans. Their leader, the man who led the failed Beer Hall Putsch back in 1923, also noticed the weakness of the League and other European powers. This emboldened him to breach the Treaty of Versailles from World War I and remilitarize Germany.

After Japan captured Manchuria in 1931, they established a puppet state called Manchukuo with Qing Emperor Puyi as ruler. The last emperor of China, losing Manchuria was a huge blow to Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. This helped the Communist Party to spread their influence through mass organization and land and tax reforms favoring the peasant class. Apart from the Civil War, China also had to deal with the threat of Japan. The empire would invade again in 1937, beginning the Second Sino-Japanese War, causing an uneasy truce between the KMT and CCP. The Nanking Massacre, which saw Japan commit mass murder and other atrocities to the Chinese people, was condemned worldwide.

Tensions also rose between Japan and the United States when the empire bombed a U.S. gunboat and Standard Oil tankers located in China. This was known as the Panay Incident. After the Japanese occupied French Indochina, embargoes were placed on Japan, starving for war materials. The Japanese had to search for allies; they would find them and share in the imperialist dream.

Driven by the "drive to the East," an emboldened Germany would kickstart the most devastating war the world had ever seen with its drive East into Poland. The UK and France both declared war on Germany soon after, but the Russians held back initially because of a secret non-aggression agreement with Germany called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Eastern Europe was to be divided between both powers. Once the UK entered the war, the British Commonwealth territories of the British Empire all joined as well.

Following a lull in fighting, the Germans would turn their attention westwards to France. In seemingly no time at all, the Third French Republic, who were also attacked by Italy, surrendered. The Germans would then attempt to conquer Britain, but this proved a failure. In 1941, the Germans would make an even more fatal mistake and attack the Soviets. The harsh weather and sheer number of Soviet soldiers made that conquest impossible as well, and after the Soviets then joined the Allies, the Germans would have to fight a war on two fronts.

December 7th, 1941. The Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor, an American naval base in Hawaii. This brought the United States into the war on the side of the Allies. China would also join, mainly fighting the Japanese with guerrilla-like tactics. By 1942, the Western Theater had the British Commonwealth, the United States, and Soviet Union fighting Germany and Italy, and in the Pacific Theater, the Commonwealth, China, and United States were fighting the Japanese. The UK, Soviet Union, China, and US were known as the Big Four, nations that played the greatest roles in the war, although propaganda afterwards would tend to downplay or overstate certain countries' roles.

In 1943, Italy surrendered, and Germany would surrender in 1945. After the controversial usage of atomic weapons by the Americans, the Japanese would surrender a few months later, marking the end of the Second World War.

After the war, Europe was devastated, and power shifted from Western Europe to the Soviets and Americans. The two new superpowers formed alliances around these new spheres of influence, with NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in the West as a response to the Eastern Bloc's Warsaw Pact.

In China, the civil war between the KMT and CCP flared up again after the Japanese defeat, with the KMT evacuating to Taiwan and the Communist Party under Chairman Mao Zedong establishing the People's Republic of China in 1949 with help from their Soviet neighbors to the North.

With the Americans becoming the number one power in the West, it brought with it what historians call Pax Americana, a period of peace and stability for Western nations. The technological and economic gains in this half of the 20th century developed more than the entirety of human history combined, surpassing even the great advances brought on by the Industrial Revolution. This exponential growth led to increased lifespans for most nations' residents, along with the development of numerous technologies undreamed of in the early part of the century.

Behind this progression, though, was the looming threat of nuclear war. The United States and Soviet Union were embroiled in what was dubbed the Cold War, as neither nation fought the other directly. Germany was split by the Berlin Wall, a grim division of the Western and Soviet realms. Nations around the world were coerced to join either sphere of influence, leading to intervention by the United States or the Soviet Union. This resulted in widespread espionage, propaganda, and proxy wars.

Proxy conflicts like the Korean, Afghan, and Vietnam Wars occurred because neither the Americans nor Soviets could attack each other directly due to their increasing nuclear arsenal. The national security policy of mutually assured destruction was the basis for these proxy conflicts, as a direct attack would cause nuclear war, surely destroying both sides. So the stalemate carried on.

In China, Chairman Mao adopted Marxist-Leninist ideals. Older Chinese ideologies like Legalism were denounced. In 1960, the Sino-Soviet split saw China and the USSR go their own way, each interpreting and implementing Marxist-Leninist ideology differently. Beginning in 1966, the Cultural Revolution would do away with much of China's past, purging many parts of its long history. In 1972, China would begin to have closer relations to the United States, and soon after, Deng Xiaoping would implement economic reforms which opened up China to the West.

During this period, numerous countries in Latin America would elect left-wing leaders, threatening the smaller but more powerful upper classes. During Operation Condor, the United States assassinated many of these leaders, placing more right-wing, anti-communist military dictators in power.

The wonders of space wouldn't even escape this earthly competition. During this new age, the United States and Soviets engaged in the Space Race to garner a reputation as the true superpower. Starting in 1957, the Space Age began with Sputnik, the Earth's first artificial satellite, being launched by the Soviets. The Vostok program also sent the first human into space, Yuri Gagarin. The United States would ultimately impress the entire world, though, with the Apollo program, which put the first man on the moon. The event was reportedly watched by half a billion people.

Africans would also take back their land in mass independence movements, but many of these countries would still struggle after generations of colonialism. In the late 1980s, the Cold War began to subside under American President Ronald Reagan. The United States entered diplomatic relations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who introduced the Perestroika and Glasnost reforms. The Soviet Union then collapsed in 1991, leaving the United States as the sole world superpower.

"So that's the new Super Nintendo Entertainment System. What about it? They say it has 16-bit technology. Whatever that means."

The 1990s was an era of stability. While the Information Age began in the mid-20th century, the '90s would see the average Westerner benefit from massive technological advancements, granting them access to computers and the internet. Developed nations would begin a process of de-industrialization, moving towards information technology while outsourcing industrial jobs to current developing nations.

On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. The 21st century began with the War on Terror and brought with it a feeling of a new age, the feeling of never being able to go back. As the old saying goes, "History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes." It's easy to forget we are still the same tribal beings who roam this Earth eons too, and while we all have our own experiences, we are all connected enough that they become strikingly similar.

The future can hold untold triumphs or disasters beyond repair. So, are we destined for a thrilling, senses-shattering cyberpunk-like dystopia? An arid, post-apocalyptic desert cape ruled by different city-states? Or are we destined for an earthly utopia where we can work together to set our sights on the stars?