Timeline

Five thousand years of humanistic writing, in chronological order. Each period links to an overview of its authors.

Oral Traditions

Bushmen Maori Eskimo Bantu Ifaluk North American Indian Bedouin Yukaghir Dekanawidah

Before 1000 BCE

Sumerian Scribes Sumerian Songs Ptahhotep Hammurabi Sin-leqe-unnini Egyptian Love Poems Amenemope

1000 to 500 BCE

Chinese Odes Solomon Homer Hebrew Scribes Greek Analects Carvaka Vardhamana Lao Tzu The Buddha Confucius Aeschylus

500 to 400 BCE

Euripides Gorgias Mo Tzu Socrates Democritus Thucydides Hippocrates Tamil Love Poems

400 to 200 BCE

Chuang Tzu Mencius Bhagavad Gita Epicurus Asoka Euclid Xunzi Han Fei Tzu Koheleth Polybius

200 BCE to 200 CE

Ben Sirach Sima Qian Tiruvalluvar Lucretius Vitruvius Jesus of Nazareth Wang Ch'ung Epictetus

200 to 800 CE

Lu Chi Augustine Justinian Muhammad Hitomaro Li Po Du Fu Po Chu i

800 to 1100

Ki no Tsurayuki al-biruni al-Ma'arri Samuel ha-Nagid Bilhana Omar Khayyam Anna Comnena

1100 to 1300

Chu Hsi Kamo no Chomei Sa'di Ibn Khallikan Magna Carta Kenko Swiss Federation

1300 to 1450

Petrarch Boccaccio Hafiz Ibn Khaldun Bruni Manetti Valla

1450 to 1500

Erasmus Machiavelli Wang Yang-ming Copernicus More Vives Rabelais

1500 to 1550

Elizabethan Poets Montaigne Chong Ch'ol Cervantes Bacon Shakespeare Galileo

1565 to 1700

Harvey Grotius Descartes Gracian Locke Newton Sor Juana Voltaire

1700 to 1800

Smith Paine Jefferson Condorcet Bentham Goethe Wollstonecraft Comte

1800 to 1900

Darwin Tolstoy Hardy Sun Yat-sen Gandhi Rodó Zitkala-Ša

1900 to 2000

King United Nations European Council European Union