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 estabablished 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
- 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
- Late 1800s
- 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)
- 1800s
- Age of Science
- AD 1800s
- 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
- 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.)
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Professor Joyce M. Miller 
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