Human History

The history of the world begins human history with the first appearance of Homo sapiens and continues into the present.[citation needed] Human history, as opposed to prehistory, has in the past been said to begin with the invention, independently at several sites on Earth, of writing, which created the infrastructure for lasting, accurately transmitted memories and thus for the diffusion and growth of knowledge.[1]
Human history is marked both by a gradual accretion of discoveries and inventions, as well as by quantum leaps — paradigm shifts, and revolutions — that comprise epochs in the material and spiritual evolution of humankind. Somewhere between 8500 and 7000 BC, humans in the Fertile Crescent began the systematic husbandry of plants and animals: agriculture.[2] This spread to neighboring regions, and also developed independently elsewhere, until most Homo sapiens lived sedentary lives in permanent settlements as farmers. Not all societies abandoned nomadism, especially those in isolated areas of the globe poor in domesticable plant species, such as Australia.[3] However, among those civilizations that did adopt agriculture, the relative security and increased productivity provided by farming allowed the population to expand. Agriculture had a major impact; humans began to affect the environment as never before. Surplus food allowed an upper class to arise, followed by increasing division of labor.[citation needed] Writing is a product of the Bronze Age, as the increasingly sedentary early civilizations in the wake of the Agricultural Revolution evolved complex societes with bureaucratic administrations, centralized government of city states and ultimately early empires.
The development of Earth’s first civilization at Sumer in the Middle East was between 4000 and 3000 BC.[4] Additional civilizations quickly arose in ancient Egypt, at the Indus River valley and in China. Recorded history of the Old World is commonly divided into
Ancient history, including the Ancient Near East, Mediterranean Classical Antiquity as well as Ancient China and Ancient India, from the earliest records until about the 6th century;
the Middle Ages, from the 6th to 15th centuries;
the Early Modern period, originating with the European Renaissance, the 16th to 18th centuries;
the Modern period, since the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, from about 1800 to the present.
In Europe, the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 CE) is commonly taken as signaling the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. A thousand years later, in the mid-15th century, Johannes Gutenberg's invention of modern printing, employing movable type, revolutionized communication, helping end the Middle Ages and usher in modern times, the European Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. By the 18th century, the accumulation of knowledge and technology, especially in Europe, had reached a critical mass that sparked into existence the Industrial Revolution. Over the quarter-millennium since, the growth of knowledge, technology, commerce, and — concomitantly with these — the potential destructiveness of war has accelerated geometrically, creating the opportunities and perils that now confront the human communities that together inhabit the planet.