Control of Fire（Paleolithic rock-art silhouettes）

1 million years agoTaming Fire

1 million years ago

Control of Fire

Evidence from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa shows that the genus Homo was using fire at least about 1 million years ago.

Enter the hearth

Art style · Paleolithic rock-art silhouettes

World population

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Data from 12,000 years ago

Primary energy power

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Data from 12,000 years ago

London → New York message

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Data from 1620

Civilization metrics

Each sparkline shows the documented history of a metric on a logarithmic time axis. The dot marks the selected moment.

Kardashev index

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No reliable data yet

World population

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No reliable data yet · data begins 12,000 years ago

Total human primary energy power

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No reliable data yet · data begins 12,000 years ago

Compute per dollar

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No reliable data yet · data begins 1945

Fastest delivery time for a message from London to New York

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No reliable data yet · data begins 1620

Fastest speed reached by humans

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No reliable data yet · data begins 302,000 years ago

Near this moment

The eight closest milestones. Select a title to jump there.

7 million years agoLife
Sahelanthropus tchadensis lived about 7 million years ago, near the start of the human lineage. Source
3.3 million years agoHumanity
Knapped stone tools about 3.3 million years old were unearthed at Lomekwi, Kenya. Source
3.2 million years agoLife
The Australopithecus afarensis fossil known as "Lucy" shows that early hominins already walked upright. Source
2.9 million years agoHumanity
The earliest systematic stone-tool tradition, beginning about 2.9 million years ago. Source
2 million years agoHumanity
Homo erectus had body proportions close to modern humans and is generally regarded as the first hominin to leave Africa. Source
1.76 million years agoHumanity
Symmetrical bifacial hand axes appeared about 1.76 million years ago, as toolmaking turned to deliberate design. Source
1 million years agoEnergy
Evidence from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa shows that the genus Homo was using fire at least about 1 million years ago. Source
315,000 years agoHumanity
Early Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, date to about 315,000 years ago. Source

Capabilities

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Scenes across eras

Choose an era to explore its scenes.

Taming Fire

1 scenes · Select a scene to visit that moment

Fire lets people cook, keep warm, ward off animals and light the night: the first energy source humans mastered outside their own bodies.

1 million years agoControl of Fire

Playable workshops

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15 moments in history to explore by hand.

Diamonds on the timeline mark playable scenes. Select a date to travel there, or enter a workshop directly.

Every timeline entry cites its source. Metrics interpolate logarithmically between sourced data points. Forecasts include institutional and community views, and attributed site scenarios; years are not guaranteed realization dates. Illustrations are AI-generated in each era's style.

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