TIME LINE OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS
- 6000 BCE
- "Civilization"
begins--cities emerge along Asia,Tigris, and Euphrates rivers; Africa:
Nile River
- 3500 BCE
- Sumerians (Iraq)
developed a system of writing. Gilgamesh Epic written during this
period: a collection of stories and myths detailing how King Gilgamesh
battled monsters and how the gods intervened in his life. Each
subsequent generation added legends of great heroes and natural
disasters. First people known to use a wheel in this time frame.
- 2600 BCE
- The Great Pyramid of
Khufu
- 2000-1400 BCE
- Minoan civilization (on
Crete, a great trading center, Knossos. Unlike Sumerians and Egyptians,
spent their money on personal comforts, not monuments to gods)
- 1250 BCE
- Trojan War. Achaeans
complete invasion of Greece and Crete; attacked Troy. Beginning of Iron
Age
- 1100 BCE
- Dorians invade, conquer
Achaians (Dorians had iron weapons). Dark Ages evolved because, unlike
Achaians, Dorians not interested in culture, education; artistic skills
and writing largely forgotten (some Greeks, though, fled to Asia Minor,
maintaining knowledge). Example: Homer (theAcheans were an
Indo-European people)
- 1105-925 BCE
- Kings David and Solomon;
Hebrew literature signaled the revolutionary idea of one god, resulting
in the alienation of the Hebrews from other nations in ancient world.
Hebrews removed from Palestine c. A.D. 131
- 850-750 BCE
- Homer. End of Dark Ages
- 600 BCE
- Thales: first Greek
philosopher. Notable achievement: claimed the universe is governed by
natural laws, not gods
- 550 BCE
- Confucius; code of
conduct to maintain order in society, not for religious purposes
(loyalty, hard work, courtesy, kindness)
- 500-1 BCE
- Persian Wars; Athenian
democracy, city/states. Aeschylus born circa 525, Sophocles 496,
Euripides 485, Aristophanes 450
- 430 BCE
- Peloponnesian War
(Sparta vs. Athens); nearly 30 years of war
- 334-323 BCE
- Alexander the Great (son
of Philip of Macedonia) conquered Persian Empire; died 323; empire
divided into three regions, all of which Rome eventually conquered
(Alexander educated by Aristotle). Thereafter, civilization came to be
called Hellenistic, a blend of eastern and western influences; unlike
earlier Golden Age of Athens, Hellenistic philosophers more interested
in the individual, not society
- 469-399 BCE
- Socrates
- 429-347 BCE
- Plato
- 384-322 BCE
- Aristotle
- AD1-AD 500
- Birth of Christ; fall of
Rome
- AD 324
- Constantine reunited the
western and eastern territories; built Byzantium, a Greek city, as a
new capital. The new Roman capital came to be called Constantinople,
indicative of Rome's declining political and pagan influence and the
growing influence of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. When
Constantine died in 337, the empire again divided; the eastern half
flourished; Rome collapsed
- AD 530
- St. Benedictine
Monastery established Monte Cassino
- AD 800
- Charlemagne reunited
Western Roman Empire, defeated non-Christian Saxons; estabished
monasteries in which monks copied ancient Greek and Roman texts along
with the Bible. Promoted education as well as Christianity
- AD 1100-1300
- Marco Polo, Venetian trader and
traveler (1254-1324)
- Feudalism emerged in
western Europe
- AD 1265
- Dante Alighieri born;
wrote what was later to be known as The Divine Comedy
- AD 1300
- Giotto--frescoes at Padua
- AD 1350
- Renaissance: spirit of
curiosity. Return to classical principles of Greek and Roman art
(Greeks stressed harmony and balance in nature; Romans emphasized
realism). Middle Ages emphasized faith. During the Renaissance, new
translations of Aristotle's works reached scholars in Western Europe.
New debates in universities--faith vs. reason. Return to the study of
the humanities as taught in ancient Greece and Rome; return to the
belief in individual abilities. New techniques in art
- AD 1400
- Chaucer died
- AD 1440s
- Printing press, movable
type: explosion of knowledge
- AD 1453
- Constantinople falls to
Ottoman Turks (Byzantine Empire)
- AD 1500
- Scientific Revolution
begins
- AD 1517
- Protestant Reformation;
individual need not have a priest to interpret Bible (Martin Luther)
- AD 1543
- Copernicus
- AD 1600s
- Shakespeare, Rabelais,
Cervantes
- AD 1700-1799
- Age of
Reason--Enlightenment. The ability to reason defined as the state by
which one can discover natural laws that govern human behavior. Reason
frees people from ignorance and superstition; thus they become
enlightened, and enlightened people can perfect themselves as well as
their community at large. Influences of classical Greek art: ideal and
graceful form; simplicity and elegance. Influence of music: Haydn and
Mozart late 1700s. Rise of Romanticism in Literature. Poets like Keats,
Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley urged a return to a simple life; thought
people should be ruled by their hearts; believed emotion, imagination,
and intuition were more important than intellect and reason.
- Glorification of the
individual resulted in the notion that people should be free from
confining rules so that they could develop individually. Feelings of
nationalism and glorification of nature's beauty were high; citizens
were urged to look to the medieval past for examples of adventure and
romance. Victor Hugo, for example, set his novel The
Hunchback at Notre Dame in the Middle Ages. Beethoven
considered a romantic in that he emphasized emotion rather than form.
In architecture, return to Middle Ages Gothic style
- AD 1800s
- Age of Science
- Opium trade intensified
- Frankenstein
reflects two major influences: the belief that imagination and emotion
were just as important as reason; science, too, important: Charles
Darwin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels. Rebellion against romanticism
(came to be known as realism): Balzac, Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Dickens,
Hardy
- Late 1800s
- Impressionism: neither
romantic or realistic treatment, but rather an artistic impression of
subject matter (Degas, Renoir, Monet); post-impressionists (Gauguin,
van Gogh), added solidity to show form; Cezanne attempted to depict
mood or express emotion, such as isolation, in art
- Debussy returned to
subtle effects of mood. Also, in the late 1800s, a group of artists
turned from both romanticism and realism; they painted fleeting
impressions rather than static forms; thus they were called
impressionists (e.g., Degas, Monet).
- Rebellion against
romanticism: Balzac, Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Dickens, Hardy (who portrayed
nature as an impersonal force against which people had to struggle, a
force not as beautiful as Romantics believed)
- AD 1920s
- Freud, Joyce, Wolff
(stream of consciousness); abstract paintings
- 20th Century
- Emphasis on form, not
content; psychological reality rather than physical reality. Vallery,
Eliot, Brecht express a sense of helplessness and pessimism, unlike the
sense of progress and reason of the Enlightenment
- Age of mass media,
information, sports, nuclear power, space travel, illegal drug cartels,
pharmaceuticals, oceanography, globilization, the "web," and computers
- (Note: The
above information represents a synthesis of information compiled from university lectures as well as from a variety of printed
sources. Given space limitations, this compilation must necessarily omit
significant events and authors.)
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