50 Defining Events in World History
Posted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 11:24 am
Can any of you guys throw in any suggestions for a list I'm trying to compile of the above. I'm of course a westerner and thus can't help but see a list skewed toward a western perspective and maybe here is where some outside help would be most usefull.
I'm going to pitch in with a few ideas, and perhaps reasons why they warrent inclusion and any mistakes you see in my reasoning or any candidates you'd like to pitch in would be greatly appreciated.
1) I'll start with the development of cave painting [circa 30,000 BC]. Ok - it's strictly 'pre-historic' but I think warrents inclusion because it is our first depiction of ideas graphically and intended to convey information from individual to individual by a medium other than speech. It is representative and perhaps the very first evidence of the 'cognitive revolution' said to have occured some time prior to this.
2) The Crucifiction of Christ [29AD]. Little can be known of the facts of Jesus' life, but that he was put to death by Roman Consular order around the time stated above there can be little doubt. This event, irrespective of your beliefs, would be hard to deny as one of the most significant in world history. If Jesus had not been crucified or otherwise executed, it is hard to see that the world shaping movement of Christianity could ever have gained the momentum which it subsequently did - and the course of world history would have been irrevocably different thereby.
3) Charles Martel and the Battle of Tours [AD 732] Regarded as the 'turning point' at which the ever north and eastward movement of Islam was finally halted, the Battle of Tours in which Martel defeated and ended the influence of Abdul Rahman al Ghafiqi is seen by many historians as the decisive event that 'preserved chistianity in Europe'.
4) The American Revolutionary War [AD 1775 - 1783] The war which in many senses ushered in the modern world. Increasing dissatisfaction with being ruled by a distant power that legislated in it's own favor and used it's colonies as no more than a source of revanue for self-enrichment, this was the war in which the Americans truly became a people and stood up to their British overlords and said 'enough is enough!'. Frenchmen who had seen the power of 'the people' when united returned to France from this conflict with the ideals of liberty and freedom deeply burned into their minds. Thus was the modern world born.
5) The Renaissance [Europe 15th Century]. Forming a bridge between the Middle ages and modern times, this flowering of intellectual and humanist thought, freed for the first time from the stifling effects of religious dogma and patronage, owes much of it's stimulus to the 'rediscovery' of classical works brought about by increasing trade links with cultures in the east by an emergant merchant class. The resultant increase in knowledge, particularly by the studies of 'natural philosophers' in what we now call the sciences, paved the way for 'The Enlightenment' of the 17th Century.
6) The Industrial revolution [Great Britain 18th Century]. The transition from traditional cottage industries where goods were produced largely by hand, to a mechanised process whith division of labour and powered machine tools, began in the UK and rapidly spread to Western europe and North America and transformed the world beyond recognition. The increased standard of living resulting from cheap mass produced goods was a while in coming but is still with us to this day in the form of the mass consumerism in which we daily indulge.
7) The Theory of Evolution [Europe 19th Century]. Culminating in the Publication of "The Origin of Species by Natural Selection" in 1859, the laying down of a scientifically testable theory that accounted for the diversity of types encountered in the natural world placed the final nail in the coffin of church authority in the dogma of Creation. Building on a process that had begun with Coppernicus displacing the earth from the center of the Universe, following the publication of Darwins book it became increasingly difficult to ignore the significant divergence between the stories of revealed scripture and the evidence of hard scientific study. These developments literally changed the way we thought and the way we saw our place in relation to our own world and our place in the Universe.
I'm going to pitch in with a few ideas, and perhaps reasons why they warrent inclusion and any mistakes you see in my reasoning or any candidates you'd like to pitch in would be greatly appreciated.
1) I'll start with the development of cave painting [circa 30,000 BC]. Ok - it's strictly 'pre-historic' but I think warrents inclusion because it is our first depiction of ideas graphically and intended to convey information from individual to individual by a medium other than speech. It is representative and perhaps the very first evidence of the 'cognitive revolution' said to have occured some time prior to this.
2) The Crucifiction of Christ [29AD]. Little can be known of the facts of Jesus' life, but that he was put to death by Roman Consular order around the time stated above there can be little doubt. This event, irrespective of your beliefs, would be hard to deny as one of the most significant in world history. If Jesus had not been crucified or otherwise executed, it is hard to see that the world shaping movement of Christianity could ever have gained the momentum which it subsequently did - and the course of world history would have been irrevocably different thereby.
3) Charles Martel and the Battle of Tours [AD 732] Regarded as the 'turning point' at which the ever north and eastward movement of Islam was finally halted, the Battle of Tours in which Martel defeated and ended the influence of Abdul Rahman al Ghafiqi is seen by many historians as the decisive event that 'preserved chistianity in Europe'.
4) The American Revolutionary War [AD 1775 - 1783] The war which in many senses ushered in the modern world. Increasing dissatisfaction with being ruled by a distant power that legislated in it's own favor and used it's colonies as no more than a source of revanue for self-enrichment, this was the war in which the Americans truly became a people and stood up to their British overlords and said 'enough is enough!'. Frenchmen who had seen the power of 'the people' when united returned to France from this conflict with the ideals of liberty and freedom deeply burned into their minds. Thus was the modern world born.
5) The Renaissance [Europe 15th Century]. Forming a bridge between the Middle ages and modern times, this flowering of intellectual and humanist thought, freed for the first time from the stifling effects of religious dogma and patronage, owes much of it's stimulus to the 'rediscovery' of classical works brought about by increasing trade links with cultures in the east by an emergant merchant class. The resultant increase in knowledge, particularly by the studies of 'natural philosophers' in what we now call the sciences, paved the way for 'The Enlightenment' of the 17th Century.
6) The Industrial revolution [Great Britain 18th Century]. The transition from traditional cottage industries where goods were produced largely by hand, to a mechanised process whith division of labour and powered machine tools, began in the UK and rapidly spread to Western europe and North America and transformed the world beyond recognition. The increased standard of living resulting from cheap mass produced goods was a while in coming but is still with us to this day in the form of the mass consumerism in which we daily indulge.
7) The Theory of Evolution [Europe 19th Century]. Culminating in the Publication of "The Origin of Species by Natural Selection" in 1859, the laying down of a scientifically testable theory that accounted for the diversity of types encountered in the natural world placed the final nail in the coffin of church authority in the dogma of Creation. Building on a process that had begun with Coppernicus displacing the earth from the center of the Universe, following the publication of Darwins book it became increasingly difficult to ignore the significant divergence between the stories of revealed scripture and the evidence of hard scientific study. These developments literally changed the way we thought and the way we saw our place in relation to our own world and our place in the Universe.