Timeline

It is very fortunate that modern history education focuses more on the how and why of things of the past, rather than stuffing people's memories with years and dates of seemingly important events. Still, it helps to know when something happened, so that one can interrelate various events and periods.
Here is a timeline of my own making, that divides the history of human civilization into broad periods, allowing for subdivisions. It focuses mainly on European history, but does not neglect the global view. Of the "tree" thus created, only two levels are shown below. Use it as you like.

• Ancient Era: 3500 BCE - 500 CE
  In the Ancient Era the Middle East was the center of the world, giving rise to the first civilizations. Here writing was invented around 3500 BCE, marking the transition from prehistroy to history. From the Middle East, civilization slowly spread outward.
  • Middle East Period: 3500 BCE - 3000 BCE
    The first civilization sprang up in Mesopotamia, in and around the river valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris. Here things like the plough, writing and copper tools were invented. Trade fused individual villages together into economic networks and gave rise to the the first towns and cities. Quickly after, political unification followed in the form of small city-states and separation of people in upper and lower classes. At this time most of the rest of the world was sparsely populated, with people living in small communities.
  • Early Bronze Age: 3000 BCE - 2200 BCE
    After its invention, the use of bronze spread slowly over the world. During this time the three classical centers of ancient civilization established themselves: Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus valley. All were states that depended on agriculture reinforced by irrigation with or inundation by river water. They traded with each other, but on a limited scale.
  • Middle Bronze Age: 2200 BCE - 1600 BCE
    By this time, some states had become powerful enough to conquer their neighbors. These early kingdoms were based on military power, but lacked strong economies, bureaucratic structures and social cohesion. They were fragile and their borders shifted frequently. Because of its location in the center, surrounded by neighbors who wanted a share of the spoils, most war was located in Mesopotamia. Egypt and the Indus valley were more peaceful.
  • Late Bronze Age: 1600 BCE - 1100 BCE
    The invention of the war chariot revolutionized warfare and upset the balance of power in the entire civilized world, toppling one state after another, until the dust had settled and new states had been built on the remnants of the old ones. Despite its disruptive capabilities, the wheel brought civilization to new areas, like the Mycanaean civilization in Greece, the development of the Vedic culture in India and the Shang confederacy in China. In this period, in the New World Americans started their own journey with the rise of the Olmec civilization in Meso-America, using stone rather than bronze.
  • Iron Age: 1100 BCE - 550 BCE
    At the beginning of this period many of the civilizations in and near the southwest of Europe suffered several crises, but recovered later. The main cause was again a military invention: iron working. This replaced bronze as the main material for tools and weapons, disrupting old trade networks and allowed for larger armies. Asia was later and less affected by this development.
  • Classical Period: 550 BCE - 500 CE
    In the classical period four cultural blocks were established that became the cornerstones of and east-west band of civilization in the Old World. Most were contained in true empires, all large, multi-ethnical and more resilient than their forerunners. In southern Europe, Greek civlization led the way and was then superseded by the Roman empire; in the Middle East the Persian empire ruled supreme; in India many empires like the Maurya, Kushana and Gupta rose and fell and in China the Han dynasty unified the country. Many regions went through a "golden age", with relative peace, economic prosperity and high cultural and scientific achievements. Several states used new monotheistic religions, rather than old polytheistic ones, to create cultural and social cohesion.
• Middle Ages: 500 CE - 1480 CE
  In Europe, the Middle Ages are often portrayed as period of standstill, but in fact Europe was slowly but steadily advancing. During this period, the balance of power on the continent started to shift from the Mediterranean to the north. It is also the time when the Catholic church became very powerful.
  • Early Middle Age: 500 CE - 1000 CE
    This is often seen as period of decline, especially in Europe, which was plunged into the "Dark Age" after the fall of the western Roman Empire. But new forces were busy rearranging political and cultural borders: viking raiders and traders in northern Europe; the great surge of Islam, tearing through the old empires. These forces shifted the balance of power in Europe northward, setting it on a path towards growth and aggression. Other parts of the world were more stable. China flourished under the Tang dynasty and America had its own classical period, including the civilizations of Teotihuacan and the Maya.
  • High Middle Age: 1000 CE - 1300 CE
    After the Dark Age, European population started to grow again and trade also multiplied. This is the period of knights, castles and crusades. In China, under the Song dynasty, advances in wet rice cultivation allowed for rapid population growth. But China was soon conquered and reunified under the the Yuan dynasty by Kubilai khan, grandson of Dzenghis Khan, who had created the largest empire in the world two generations earlier, reconnecting east and west.
  • Late Middle Age: 1300 CE - 1480 CE
    In the 14th century BCE epidemics like the Black Death cut a deep dent in the population of Europe, but eventually only accelerated an important development that had already started earlier: the rise of the middle class. Also the knights started to give way to gunpowder and professional armies.
• European Age: 1480 CE - 1945 CE
  During this age, Europe dominated a steadily growing part of the world, first through trading posts and later establishing large colonial empires.
  • Age of Discovery: 1480 CE - 1620 CE
    In this period the world's great empires (Russia, the Ottoman empire, Mughal India, Ming China) arose, expanded and solidified their power. Increased trade and communications and gunpowder allowed them to grow bigger and stronger than their predecessors. In Europe there were important revolutions in art (the Renaissance) and religion (the Reformation). More fundamentally, this was the time when European pioneers and traders started to explore the world by ship, building trade routes and naval outposts. Through these, ideas, crops and diseases spread all over the world. This brought improved health and population growth to the Old World but had disastrous consequences for the New World, decimating and subjecting its people to Europeans.
  • Age of Reason: 1620 CE - 1750 CE
    During this time philosophy steered away from scholasticism. Science became more empirical and many important technological advances were made. On the geopolitical front, there was relative quiet. The Manchu's took power in China, Japan entered an age of isolation and most other empires managed to survive internal and external troubles. European expansion in America and Russian in Central Asia proceeded slowly because of limits to manpower and other resources.
  • First Industrial Revolution: 1750 CE - 1830 CE
    The invention of the steam machine and other industrial innovations started the Industrial Revolution. Economy, politics, warfare and science steadily got more intertwined, stimulating each other. It boosted European industry, especially in textile production, giving it economical dominance for the first time in history. The Europeans used their existing naval network to push that advantage globally and to start to expand their colonial empires in earnest, especially in India. In Europe itself, it gave Britain the lead and demoted France, though not after that country had briefly dominated the entire continent under Napoleon. Only after prolonged turmoil was a new balance of power established.
  • Geopolitical Race: 1830 CE - 1880 CE
    After Napoleon, European states mostly stopped the usual infighting among themselves and directed their energies outward instead, to America, Australia and Siberia. The invention of the railroad allowed both economic specialization and expansion of European networks inland. This forced many states that had previously been relatively untouched by Europeans to frantically compete with them, in order not to be broken by their economic, military and political power. The Ottoman empire started losing ground in the Balkans, Britain effectively colonized India, Japan was forced to break its isolation and start the Meji restoration and many states in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia suffered similar fates. In Europe itself, ideologies rose up, especially liberalism, rocking the fabric of monarchies but not yet toppling them.
  • Second Industrial Revolution: 1880 CE - 1914 CE
    During the Second Industrial Revolution important advances were made in electromagnetism and medicine, improving transport, communication and health care. The technological advances both created a demand for new resources and the means to obtain them. A true world economy arose, where not only luxury, but also bulk goods were shipped all over the globe. This catapulted European power forward, allowing Europeans to create vast colonial empires in just 2 decades. The conquest of these colonies was often performed by and handful of pioneers and paid for itself, in resources, influence and power. Europeans attributed themselves with a feeling of racial superiority, supposedly bringing civilization to underdeveloped regions. In power, the USA gained a position of roughly equal footing with Europe.
  • World Wars: 1914 CE - 1945 CE
    In these 3 decades two huge wars raged worldwide, but especially in Europe and East Asia. The trigger was an assassination in Serbia, but the real cause was a power imbalance and opportunism of new aggressive states. Aspiring empies like Germany, Italy and Japan sought to gain equal footing with existing ones like Britain and France, but both sides lost. Both the power and prestige of European powers was decisively broken. The winners were the USA and USSR, which became a pair of dominant superpowers.
• Modern Age: 1945 CE - 2015 CE
  In the Modern Age the power of Europe wanes and other areas of the world rise up again. The pace of scientific and technological development is ever increasing, give rise to many turbulent changes in society.
  • Cold War: 1945 CE - 1991 CE
    After the war most European powers tried to cling to their colonies, but were forced to grant the independence soon. The new superpowers were the USA and USSR, who shed their policies of isolation and deployed their influence all over the world. They did not conquer territory, but instead exerted very powerful indirect influence. They were both geographically and ideologically opposed and fought with each other, not in open but "cold" war, through proxies like economic competition, meddling in affairs of small states and event science and sports. This made them vulnerable to local ups and downs and kept the balance of power in the world unstable. In most fields there was great progress, with many breakthroughs in science and massive growth of population and economy. The environmental impact of humanity became significant for the first time in history.
  • Modern age: 1991 CE - 2020 CE
    In the modern age all trends from the Cold War are continued, supplemented by new developments. The loosening of the capital market, the container revolution, the internet and others all have made the world more interconnected. The balance of power of the world is in constant flux, especially with Russia and China reasserting themselves. The Industrial Revolution continues to spread and raw resources are becoming ever more important, as more and more states develop solid industrial power.