Introduction

History

History is, arguably, the study of everything that happened before the moment you read this, and so it is everything that happened since the universe began. But the discipline of history doesn't study that.

The history of the early universe (and all study of the universe outside the solar system) is called cosmology. The study of the formation of stars comes under astrophysics. The formation of the Earth , the next part of the history of the universe, is part of geology. The history of living things is contained in the study of evolution and biology. Early man is covered by several disciplines, including paleoanthropology. This relatively recent period is usually called pre-history .

History , in the traditional definition, means 'recorded history', and so starts with the invention of writing, a mere 5 kya. This history of the universe covers 13.7 billion years, but stops at the beginning of that traditional notion of history – ie. it stops when humanity descended into civilisation.

This account might be regarded as the story of all prehistory.

The world and the universe

When I started this project, I planned a history of the world. I am not a scientist, but discovered quickly that studying this ‘history of the world' required quite a lot of scientific understanding. So the following account, you should know from the outset, is also an introduction to the basic principles of science.

The word history is related to the word 'story', and means knowing, or learned.

The word world , however, has traditionally meant human existence, and so books on 'world history' usually are about human evolution, with an emphasis on the last few thousand years. Histories of the world on the web, for example, cover the last 5000 years (starting with the ancient Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilisations).

My account, therefore, has to be a history of the universe . The word universe , similar to 'university', derives from the notion of unity – meaning 'oneness' or 'totality'. 'Universe' is ‘everything there is' -   the whole of the heavens and earth.

History in order

I started out looking for timelines, or mileposts – like the periods in art history, most of which are consecutive. Consecutive items for the first billion or so years of the early universe, for example, includes (in order) the Big Bang, subatomic particles, inflation, nuclei, recombination (atoms), the cosmic dark ages, the first molecules, stars and galaxies (and with them, more atoms), planets and the solar system.

But no account has been written, that I have found, that puts this in order. All accounts are partial, and, to make it worse, where dates and salient facts are given, they vary by so much that it's hard to believe they are talking about the same thing. This is partly because, as mentioned above, the areas of knowledge are divided between specialists of different, almost totally scientific, disciplines.

I have also written this both as an explanation of existing literature on the topic, and as a guide to further reading. If you want to remember information presented here, you must read other material on the topic. Where there is more than one term used to describe an event, for example, I try to provide the other, different words. This is an attempt to reduce confusion, but it may, for the beginner, end up being just as confusing as any other account.

---

Summary

A three minute summary of 13.7 billion years

Part 1. The universe and the Big Bang

The Big Bang was pure energy. The first matter, atoms of Hydrogen and Helium, formed within the first three minutes. All matter that exists today was formed from these two atoms. Even George Bush.

200 million years after the Big Bang, the first star formed when gravity caused molecules of hydrogen to condense into a hot dense ball. Stars shine by fusing hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. The Big Bang transformed energy into matter, but stars transform matter into energy. The early stars were massive, and created more kinds of atoms – carbon, oxygen, aluminium and iron.

Some of these first stars, after as little as three million years, collapsed and exploded in a supernova, creating the final batch of the heaviest atoms, including silver, gold and uranium.

Nothing much happened for the next nine billion years. The universe kept on expanding. Stars continued to form from clouds of ‘gas and dust'.

Part 2. Earth and Life (under construction)

Around 4.6 bya a spinning disk of gas and dust formed into the Sun and the planets of our solar system. The dust particles started out as microscopic molecules, then stuck together to form rocks, then clumped into asteroids. Gravity from the growing Sun at the centre resulted in rocky debris forming close to the Sun, and gaseous clumps further out. Accretion and collisions continue, resulting in the formation of planets.

Life started on Earth four bya. This is when the meteor shows lessened, as the planets swept them up by their gravity. The formation of life is the biggest puzzle of the universe. Life remained as single celled creatures for most of the first three billion years. Multicellular complex animals– jellyfish and worms – developed around 600 mya. During the Cambrian period (542 – 505m) there was the Cambrian explosion: the development of a large variety of sea animals, including hard shelled creatures.

470 mya plants evolved from seaweed and took to the land. 400 mya animals, evolved from seaworms. took to the land.

200 mya dinosaurs roamed the earth, and 65 mya they were wiped out by a meteor impact.  

If the universe's total existence was three minutes long, then dinosaurs were still alive one second ago.

Part 3. Evolution of humans (under construction)

Monkeys appeared 40 mya, chimpanzees seven mya. It's only loosely true that we evolved from apes. It's more accurate to say that we, and the apes we see today, evolved from a common ancestor around 6mya. Certainly our common ancestor was more apelike than humanlike.

What distinguishes us from apes? It's not walking on two legs, or brain size. It is the making of tools. The first bipedal ape man, Australopithecus , meaning southern ape, appeared 4mya. Then, around 2mya, a slightly different type of bipedal ‘ape man' learned how to split rocks to make a cutting edge. This was Homo habilis, meaning ‘handy man' – a toolmaker. They were the first humans.

Homo erectus , meaning ‘erect man', who learned how to control fire, appeared 1.7 mya. Neanderthal man, based mainly in Europe, appeared 500 000 years ago. Plants were domesticated 12 000 years ago, closely followed by animals. And with domestication came towns, and towns are one of the key criteria of civilisation (from the latin civitas ; a city).