The Great Story Timeline, Part 3

The Great Story Timeline, Part 3

12,000 years ago to the present: HOLOCENE
(The entire remaining segments of beads can be highly individualized to highlight one's particular interests in the human story, including religious orientation and artistic, scientific, intellectual, political, and other cultural interests, as well as ecological impacts of humans, including extinctions that accompany human entry into frontier landscapes.)

11,000-9,000 years ago the practice of AGRICULTURE (farming) emerges independently three times in the New World and twice in the Old World — and dogs are tamed in both hemispheres. Humans begin domesticating plants and animals the world over. Within five thousand years we domesticate in the Eastern Hemisphere goats, sheep, wheat, barley, rice, pigs, chickens, cattle, millet, horses, camels, donkeys, elephants. Meanwhile in the Western Hemisphere we domesticate corn, squash, peppers, beans, amaranth, quinoa, peanuts.
7,000 years ago, humans arrive in Cuba and cause CUBAN EXTINCTION of the massive (including the loss of all six species of tree and ground sloth).
5,500 years ago the WHEEL AND CUNEIFORM WRITING are invented by the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia. Writing allows for, even encourages, a level of abstraction of thought not possible in oral cultures.
3,500-4,000 years ago megalithic structures are built in Europe. The earliest ALPHABET arises in the region of Palestine. Aryan-Vedic peoples with Sanskrit language enter India.
3,200-2,400 years ago is the AXIAL AGE; philosophy and CLASSICAL RELIGIONS emerge. This is the time of Homer, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Pythagoras, etc. Reality — that same reality that humans and all other animals had been experiencing seemingly forever — was understood using a variety of analogies, images, metaphors, and symbols — some religious, some philosophical, some mathematical.
2,340 years ago Aristotle recognized river deposits and realized that FOSSIL SEASHELLS from rocks were similar to those found on the beach, indicating the fossils were once living creatures. He deduced that the positions of land and sea had changed over long periods of time.
JUDAISM brings a developmental sense that in the events of history there is an irreversible and non-repeatable revelation of meaning. Reality is understood monotheistically using metaphors of Lord and King, and redeemer of the Jewish people. Also known as the Hebrews, the oral sacred stories of the Jewish people were written down and edited, and experienced as scripture, some 2,200-3,200 years ago.
2,000 years ago is the time of JESUS. CHRISTIANITY begins. The gospels are written. Reality is understood and experienced as a Forgiving Father (Abba, Dad), redeemer of humanity, and Jesus knows himself (and is recognized by others) to be one with, and a unique revelation of, the Source and wholeness of Reality (the Son of the Father).
The APOSTLE PAUL is the first theologian and popularizer/evangelist of the new story of Christianity. His letters, together with the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were eventually canonized as scripture (i.e., recognized as divinely inspired and authoritative) at the end of the second century C.E.
80 C.E., written documents of this time show an awareness that humans have recently killed off the last of the LIONS native to Europe.
300 C.E., the Classical MAYAN civilization
400 C.E., Polynesian seafarers arrive on Hawaii. Overkill of large flightless birds, along with destruction caused by domestic pigs that go feral and the rats that had stowed away on the boats begin the EXTINCTION OF HAWAIIAN native birds and plants, exacerbated much later when European and Asian colonists arrive.
622-700+ C.E., MOHAMMAD / ISLAM / KORAN / MUSLIM EMPIRE
800 C.E., humans arrive on the island of Madagascar and cause the MADAGASCAR EXTINCTION of the massive, killing off gorilla-size lemurs, half-ton "elephant birds" that stand 10 feet tall, tortoises with shells 4 feet across, and mongooses the size of bobcats.
925 C.E., ARABIC NUMERALS are invented.
1115, the MAGNETIC COMPASS is invented by the Chinese.
900-1250, ISLAMIC SCIENCE; Toltec, Incan, and Mongolian empires; the Crusades.
1400, humans arrive in New Zealand and cause the NEW ZEALAND EXTINCTION of all dozen species of flightless moa birds.
1347-1620, the BLACK DEATH ravages China, Africa, and Europe, bringing about major social, political, and religious reforms — including the SPLIT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION in western consciousness: religion focusing largely on redemption out of this world, science attempting to understand and improve conditions for the humans in this world.
1450, NICHOLAS OF CUSA discerns that the Donation of Constantine is a forgery, pointing out differences between current and older forms of the same language. This marks an early stage of humanity moving into a time-developmental, evolutionary consciousness. Until this time people generally believed that language stayed the same over time.
1450, Gutenberg invents a PRINTING PRESS of movable type.
1500, Europeans bring diseases to the Americas that DECIMATE AMERICAN INDIANS, even before genocidal colonial and U.S. practices.
1543, The COPERNICAN REVOLUTION and the beginning of the mechanistic paradigm — that is, using human-made machines (clocks) as a primary metaphor for understanding the nature of Reality. Earth is no longer at the center of the Universe in western consciousness.
late 1500s, beginning of POSTAL SERVICES.
1609, KEPLER discovers that planets have elliptical orbits, thus overturning assumptions that celestial bodies move in perfect circles.
1609, GALILEO gazes at the moon through a telescope and observes imperfections there too: mountains on the moon. The telescope also allows Galileo to determine that Jupiter has moons revolving around it, too.
1620, Francis BACON envisions science as a means for humans to unlock and eventually control the secrets of nature.
1637, Rene DESCARTES furthers the segregation of science and religion by declaring matter as distinct from mind. He also invents analytical geometry, once again demonstrating the usefulness of mathematics for scientific inquiry.
1650, Bishop James USSHER, using the genealogies of the Hebrew scriptures/Old Testament, calculates that the Earth was created on October 22, 4004 B.C. This date was reproduced in many editions of the Bible and was incorporated into the dogma of the Christian church. For nearly a century thereafter, it was considered heresy to assume that Earth and its puzzling geologic features were more than 6,000 years old.
1650, John RAY concludes that boulders in valleys indicate that Earth has gone through major changes over time.
1670, Robert HOOKE also concludes that vast changes have occurred on Earth, by pointing to tropical marine fossils now found in temperate inland areas.
1675, Leibniz and Newton independently invent CALCULUS, which becomes a crucial mathematical tool in all of the sciences.
1687, Isaac NEWTON firmly establishes the modern, MECHANISTIC view of the Universe. From this perspective, creativity resides outside the universe, in a God who is removed from his creation. The stage is set for deism (in which God creates a clockwork Universe and then lets it run by itself) and atheism (in which a Supreme Being external to the universe is denied).
1725, VICO explains cultural differences around the world by postulating the development of cultures over time.
1725, Newton calculates EARTH'S AGE at 50,000 years old (in contrast to James Ussher's calculation).
1720-1750, VOLTAIRE writes a new way of viewing history (a new story based on the mechanistic model of the universe) that discredits the older, mythic worldview, by placing the achievements of Copernicus and Newton as the foundation.
1749, George Compte BUFFON tries to deduce the EARTH'S AGE experimentally by heating a metallic globe and measuring the rate at which it cools. He concludes that the planet is 74,832 years old and uses this time scale to construct what amounts to an evolutionary history of the Earth and solar system.
1750-1762, LINNAEUS invents the modern system of taxonomic classification of life, concluding that some species of plants came into existence after others (i.e., not at the beginning of time).
1755-1781, Immanuel KANT proposes the first systematic theory to explain the formation and evolution of the heavens and the solar system. His Critique of Pure Reason sets the groundwork for a turning away from the mechanistic view of the universe toward what we might call today an organic, wholistic, or "creatheist" worldview (where divine creativity is recognized as happening over time at multiple levels — i.e., Reality is understood less like a clock and more like nested creativity).
1795, James HUTTON offers a developmental thesis for landforms, thus giving birth to the science of geology.
1795, CONDORCET proposes a ten-stage developmental theory of the human mind and consciousness.
1796-1827, Georges CUVIER establishes that EXTINCTION IS A FACT, and advances the use of detailed anatomical observation for classifying animals by resemblance of form.
1809, Jean-Baptiste LAMARCK traces the time-developmental sequence from lower to higher forms of life.
1815, Percy Bysshe SHELLEY, who was expelled from Oxford in 1811 for publishing Necessity of Atheism, writes in his poem, Hymn to Apollo, "I am the eye with which the Universe beholds itself and knows itself divine."
1830, Charles LYELL builds upon the geological work of Hutton, producing a book that will greatly influence Charles Darwin.
1835, Karl MARX proposes that societies go through developmental stages.
1837, Charles Wheatstone and Samuel Morse independently invent the TELEGRAPH; for the first time communication technology diverges from transportation technology.
1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both independently propose EVOLUTION BY NATURAL SELECTION.
1859 Charles DARWIN publishes On the Origin of Species, thereby offering the theory of natural selection as the mechanism, while forthrightly establishing THE FACT OF EVOLUTION.
Mid 1800s, Louis AGASSIZ establishes glacial ages as a fact.
1860, William Thomson (Lord KELVIN) performs a seemingly flawless calculation which indicates that the Earth has not existed for eternity but has cooled from a molten state for over 100 million years.
1866, Ernst HAECKEL furthers Darwin's work, coining the term "oecology" to mean "the relation of the animal both to its organic as well as to its inorganic environment."
1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray independently develop the TELEPHONE.
1898, Pierre and Marie Curie discover RADIUM, which leads to a new tool (measuring radioactive decay) for absolute dating of certain rocks. In 1903 they discover that radioactive decay produces heat as a by-product. This invalidates Lord Kelvin's calculations, since it introduces a new heat source that Kelvin had not accounted for. Geologists no longer have to assume that the Earth steadily cooled from a molten state.
1905-1917, Albert EINSTEIN profoundly alters our understanding of space, time, motion, matter, and energy.
1907, Henri BERGSON sets forth the idea of "creative evolution," and counters the idea of "survival of the fittest" by describing how the life force, or élan vital, produced greater and ever-more conscious levels of life and culture over time.
1909, William JAMES popularizes the philosophy of pragmatism, in his book, Pluralistic Universe. If truth cannot be fully known, then one should adopt an outlook that is helpful, fruitful, empowering. His previous book, Varieties of Religious Experience, is still widely read.
1914, the last PASSENGER PIGEON DIES in captivity, showing us the sobering fact that humans can unwittingly cause the extinction of even the most populous animals.
1926, J.C. SMUTS develops a holistic approach to understanding evolution.
1927, Werner HEISENBERG establishes the limits of what can be observed and measured in the subatomic realm, by proposing his Uncertainty Principle.
1929, Edwin HUBBLE observes a "redshift" (shift toward the red lightwaves) in the spectral features of light coming from distant galaxies, thus concluding that the UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING. Humanity now realizes that the Milky Way Galaxy is not the entire universe.
1929, Alfred North WHITEHEAD publishes Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology
1930s, Julian HUXLEY, an evolutionary biologist, writes, "through the human, EVOLUTION BECOMES CONSCIOUS of itself," an idea that Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry will develop further in the decades to come.
1931, Mathematician Kurt GOEDEL presents what has been hailed as "the most important logical discovery of the 20th century." He shows that any system of thought, no matter how well supported by logic or empirical evidence, would never be complete in itself. There will always be some unproven axiom, some statement of faith, which provides the foundation for the whole system.
1943, Leslie WHYTE publishes "Energy and the Evolution of Culture," sparking a mid twentieth century renaissance of interest in cultural evolution.
1948, George GAMOW gives a mathematical description of the beginning of the Universe, which would come to be known as the Big Bang.
1949, A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo LEOPOLD, is published, containing A Land Ethic, which furthers the conservation movement.
1950, Hans BETHE describes how stars evolve.
1953, the double helix structure of DNA is discovered, furthering our understanding of the processes that underlie genetic heritage.
1957, STELLAR NUCLEOSYNTHESIS is proposed as the way that the chemical elements in the Periodic Table of Elements are sequentially created in the fiery depths of massive stars.
1958, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce independently develop the first MICROCHIP.
1959, TEILHARD DE CHARDIN is published, posthumously, thus presenting to the world a view of evolution that is spiritual, uplifting, and congruent with his Christian faith. (Thomas Berry refers to Teilhard as, "the most significant theologian since St. Paul.")
1962, Karl POPPER publishes Conjectures and Refutations, highlighting the role that disproving theories plays in the evolution of science, and Thomas KUHN publishes Structure of Scientific Revolutions, stressing the role of unconscious paradigms and anomalies in the development of scientific understanding.
1962, Rachel CARSON exposes the effects of pesticides in her Silent Spring. This marks the beginning of the environmental movement.
1965, Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias detect the BACKGROUND RADIATION generated during the Big Bang, thus confirming the cosmological view of a developmental universe.
1960s, PLATE TECTONICS is established as a fact by the detection of rock features and paleomagnetic banding on the seafloor.
1969, through the eyes of astronauts and captured on their cameras, EARTH SEES ITSELF WHOLE.
Throughout the 1970s and 80s Lynn MARGULIS develops her theory of the symbiotic origins of the eukaryotic cell. The theory is widely confirmed in the 1990s.
1974, WEINBERG and SALAAM give evidence for, and tell the story of, how the basic laws of the Universe evolved.
1977, Ilya PRIGOGINE awarded the Nobel Prize. A pioneer of Chaos Theory and Complexity Theory — Prigogine shows mathematically how matter, life, evolution, and human culture self-organizes.
1978, Edward O. WILSON writes, "the evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have."
1979, James LOVELOCK proposes that Earth, "Gaia," is a self-organizing system — far more like a living organism than like a machine or a rock with life on it.
Late 1970s, a growing recognition that humans are inadvertently causing the SIXTH MAJOR MASS EXTINCTION.
1980, a team of scientists led by Luis and Walter ALVAREZ provide convincing evidence that a meteor impact killed off the dinosaurs. The notion that change is gradual and that the universe is past its dangerous stages is called into question. Conversely, we begin to suspect that Earth (Gaia) may not have caused its own mass extinctions.
1988, Thomas BERRY publishes The Dream of the Earth, in which he proposes that humans take on the cosmological role of "Celebrants of the Universe Story."
1992, Brian SWIMME and Thomas BERRY publish The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era — A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos In this landmark book, Swimme and Berry show how human story and the cosmic story are inseparable. One cannot be understood without understanding the other. Knowledge of the universe is self-knowledge.
1992, World Wide Web (the INTERNET) created.
1992, Thomas Gold proposes that a DEEP HOT BIOSPHERE thrives beneath the surface of Earth, and that it contains more biomass than the surface biosphere and is the place where life originated. Around this time, Carl Woese distinguishes the heat-loving domain of life ARCHAEA from other bacteria.
Early 1990s, wide public recognition and acceptance of the fact that human activity is causing GLOBAL WARMING.
1995, The HUBBLE DEEP FIELD PHOTO stuns us with its beauty and the vast number of galaxies calculated to exist.
1997, the EPIC OF EVOLUTION SOCIETY forms during the Chicago AAAS conference, "The Epic of Evolution."
2000, Robert Wright publishes NONZERO: The Logic of Human Destiny, and Joel de Rosnay publishes THE SYMBIOTIC MAN: A New Understanding of the Organization of Life and a Vision of the Future — two of the most realistically hopeful and inspiring books currently in print. Highly recommended!
2002, Connie BARLOW and Michael DOWD launch their "Marriage of Science and Religion for Personal and Planetary Wellbeing" ITINERANT MINISTRY, teaching and preaching the Great Story and its meaning in colleges, universities, churches, and synagogues across North America.

NOTE: To personalize your own Great Story Beads, select those events from the timeline that draw you or are meaningful to you, or add your own. Recognize that, by author choice, the human phase of this list focuses on the scientific and intellectual achievements of "western" civilization. Add beads for significant events in whatever religious or philosophical traditions nourish you. Enrich the final segment of the string with beads for the major transformational moments (joyful or traumatic) in your cultural, family, and personal life. Connie suggests that if you want to be able to wear your beads as a necklace, in a double loop, you may want to limit the total number to 160 or so (and use relatively small beads), separating each event bead by just 2 or 3 tiny spacer beads.

Now it is time for others to take this project on as their own. Let the creativity unfold! Please let us know (Michael@TheGreatStory.org) how you take this idea out into the world, values that you see associated with particular events, and what improvements happen along the way.

Together in the Great Work,
Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd
May 1, 2002
Timeline 1 — Big Bang to 65,000,000 Years Ago

Timeline 2 — 65,000,000 to 13,000 Years Ago

Compressed Version of Entire Timeline (in PDF)
Short Alternative: Timeline just for NORTH AMERICA Story (beginning 65 million years ago).
Short Alternative: Timeline for THE RIVER OF LIFE: 40 points (beads) at which human ancestry joins with other "streams" (lineages) in the River of Life ancestry back to the origin of life.

WWW www.TheGreatStory.org