File:A long-term timeline of technology, OWID.png

The big visualization offers a long-term perspective on the history of technology.

The timeline begins at the center of the spiral. The first use of stone tools, 3.4 million years ago, marks the beginning of this history of technology.2 Each turn of the spiral then represents 200,000 years of history. It took 2.4 million years – 12 turns of the spiral – for our ancestors to control fire and use it for cooking.3

To be able to visualize the inventions in the more recent past – the last 12,000 years – I had to unroll the spiral. I needed more space to be able to show when agriculture, writing, and the wheel were invented. During this period, technological change was faster, but it was still relatively slow: several thousand years passed between each of these three inventions.

From 1800 onwards, I stretched out the timeline even further to show the many major inventions that rapidly followed one after the other.

The long-term perspective that this chart provides makes it clear just how unusually fast technological change is in our time."

"You can use this visualization to see how technology developed in particular domains. Follow, for example, the history of communication: from writing, to paper, to the printing press, to the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, all the way to the Internet and smartphones.

Or follow the rapid development of human flight. In 1903, the Wright brothers took the first flight in human history (they were in the air for less than a minute), and just 66 years later, we landed on the moon. Many people saw both within their lifetimes: the first plane and the moon landing.

This large visualization also highlights the wide range of technology’s impact on our lives. It includes extraordinarily beneficial innovations, such as the vaccine that allowed humanity to eradicate smallpox, and it includes terrible innovations, like the nuclear bombs that endanger the lives of all of us."

"Some references for the dates for ancient technologies can be found in the footnotes in the main text. The references for beds, bows, and arrows, and the earliest known musical instruments are the following:"

• Beds are at least 200,000 years old according to Wadley, Lyn; Esteban, Irene; Peña, Paloma de la; Wojcieszak, Marine; Stratford, Dominic; Lennox, Sandra; d’Errico, Francesco; Rosso, Daniela Eugenia; Orange, François; Backwell, Lucinda; Sievers, Christine (2020) – Fire and grass-bedding construction 200 thousand years ago at Border Cave, South Africa”. Published in Science.

• Bow and arrow are at least 62,000 years old – according to Backwell, Lucinda; Bradfield, Justin; Carlson, Kristian J.; Jashashvili, Tea; Wadley, Lyn & d’Errico, Francesco (April 2018) – The antiquity of bow-and-arrow technology: evidence from Middle Stone Age layers at Sibudu Cave. Published in Antiquity.

• The earliest known musical instrument is a flute found on Germany’s Swabian Alb and dates back to around 43,000 years according to Thomas Higham; Laura Basell; Roger Jacobic; Rachel Wood; Christopher Bronk Ramsey; Nicholas J. Conard (2012) – Τesting models for the beginnings of the Aurignacian and the advent of figurative art and music: The radiocarbon chronology of Geißenklösterle. Published in Journal of Human Evolution."