text in red is from:
LIFE Magizine
2000 Years of Christianity
December 1999
text in black is from:
National Geographic Magazine
August 1999, VOL. 196, NO. 2
text in blue is from:
The History of Science from the Ancient Greeks
to the Scientific Revolution
Ray Spangenburg and Diane K. Moser 1993
text in green is from:
At The Museum
The member's magizine of the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art
February 2000
earliest, most primitive answers explained phenomenon
in the terms of spirits-
sometime actions would work, and if not they
just thought they did it wrong
old stone age (possibly as long as 2.4 million years ago) make weapons for hunting
neolithic times (6,000-10,000 years ago) understood plants enough to grow food (agriculture born)
large scale agriculture 4th milleniium bc sumerians
in the tigris-euphrates river valley used animals to plow & cart
they also built ships
5,000 yrs ago sumerians were combining cooper and tin to make bronze (metallurgy born)
egyptians on nile were making same advancements
urban civilations around the perimeter of mediterrean, trade complex enough for records to be kept
sumerians and egyptians developed number systems ans systems of keeping records that was trusted to priest-administrators
sumerians developed cuneiform (writing on clay
tablets)
egyptians used hieroglyphs on papyrus, they developed
mathematical tables
4000 years ago babylonians ascended to power in
mesopotania
developed calender system much of which is still
used today
used astrology
most of this is "technology" development of tools
for betterment of life
not knowledge for sake of knowledge
up until end of bronze age (5,500 - 3,000 years
ago) no people had gone beyond developing practical intellectual tools
all still believed it was magic
3,300 years ago alphabets developed in phoenica-
one based on babylonian cunieform and one one
egyptian hieroglyphics
after 4,000 years ago in armenian moutains developed
method for smelting iron from ore
after 1,000 years of smelting iron, some of these
tribes to the north gained military strength
among them, the people who became the dorian
greeks began conquering civilations of the high bronze
these tribes settled in the macedonian peninsula
(greece) and eastern mediterranean
developed elaborate mythology
no central ruling power and god's were falliable
and were exposed to many different cultures
threy developed a search for order and patterns
in nature
wanted natural, not supernatural answers to questions
2 billion christians, world's largest religion
Peter was Jesus' favored disciple and leader of the first Christian community
Jesus' story held an irrestiable appeal for the poor, downtrodden and hopeful
central to the religion is that a Christian's
reward would not come in the temporal world,
therefore martyrdom- a Christ-like fate-was heroically
Christian
Eastern orthodoxies went east to Constantinople while the Roman Church stayed put- becoming Roman Catholicism
the Crusades were concerned with political might
as much as with religion.
The Inquisitions amounted to widespread Church-sponsored
terrorism and murder
the schism between Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy
was formalized in 1054.
the Reformation led to serveral Protestant religions
which had quarrels with
papal authority with what they saw as Rome's
tendeency to let Man, in the form of
church hierarchy, rule over the Word, as contained
in the Bible.
Pentecostalism centers on the worship service
and embraces mystical concepts, miracles,
signs and the religious experience of being filled
with the Holy Spirit.
Saint Paul said Jesus' core message was that three things last forever: faith, hope and love
there are more than 20,000 denominations within Christianity
Hell is theologically defined as the absence of the sacred, an absolute loss of holiness
...life of Jesus of Nazareth, and the powerful
message He left behind. Not the Word
so much- the letter of any law- but the idea
behind the Word...He encourages aspiration.
he encourages Man to do better, to be charitable,
to forgive. he talks of faith, hope and love.
| BC | |
| 4000 | earliest known people in China, the Yang-shao domesticate dogs,
pigs
and perhaps cattle & horses |
| 3200 | first writing: Sumerians in cunieform clay tablets |
| 2000 | Babylonians developed calendar system, observed sun, moon, planets |
| 1500 | sacred scriptures of Hindu composed |
| 1300 | Phoenicians developed alphabets |
| 1216 | earliest known weather records in China |
| 1200-900 | Olmec of Mesoamerica erect colossal carved stone heads |
| 1100 | Dorians takeover Mycenaens, occupying what is now Greece |
| 763 | Babylonians make first recorded observation of eclipse of sun |
| 753 | Rome is founded |
| 750-701 | Homer & Hesiod, first poets of Greek culture |
| 720 | first Chinse record of solar eclipse |
| 660 | Jimmu Tenno establishes Japanese imperial line |
| 624-546 | Thales of Miletus (now Turkey) proposes water is basis of all things |
| 610-545 | Anaximander of Miletus, first known attempt to write history of universe |
| 570-500 | Anaximenes of Miletus,proposes air is basis of all things |
| 560-480 | Pythagoras develops arithmetic and geometry
Chinese develop math, Indians develop geometry |
| 550-539 | Persian Emperor Cyrus II conquers Media, Lydia and Babylonia |
| 540-475 | Heraclitus of Ephesus (Turkey) teaches change
is the essence of all being
proposes fire as primary substance |
| 538 | Persians conquer Babylon |
| 528 | Siddhartha Gautama founds Buddhism |
| 500 | Hindu thinkers recognize atomism as the basis
of matter,
steel is made in India |
| 490 | Leucippus, introduces the idea of atoms into Western thought |
| 483 | Buddha (Gautama Siddhartha) dies |
| 479-80 | Greeks stop Western expansion of Persia |
| 461 | age of Pericles begins in Greece, period of
peace and good economic times
allows culture and philosophy to develop |
| 438 | Greeks consecrate the Pantheon in Athens |
| 427-347 | Plato, Greek philosopher |
| 384-322 | Aristotle, Greek philosopher |
| 356-323 | Alexander the Great, begins conquests that
expands culture as far east as India
and south as Egypt |
| 325-270 | Euclid, Greek mathematical philosopher |
| 300 | museum at Alexandria built |
| 264 | first Punic War between Rome and Carthage begins |
| 48 | library at Alexandria burns |
| 44 | Julius Ceaser assignated |
| 31 | Egypt ruled by Cleopatra falls to Rome |
| AD | |
| 4 | Jesus of Nazareth is born |
| 23-79 | Pliny the elder, Roman scholar |
| 100-170 | Ptolemy, Greek astronomer |
| 70 | Romans destroy Isrealite temple in Jerusalem |
| 541-544 | Bubonic plague hits Europe kills 10,000 a day in Constantinople at its worst |
| 250 | Maya city-states arise in the Yucatan Peninsula |
| 400-700 | Kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia becomes the dominant trading center in northeastern Africa |
| 476 | Germanic chief Odoacer ousts Romulus Augutulus, last Roman emperor |
| 610 | Muhammad receives revelations later recorded in the Koran, the sacred book of Islam |
| 616 | Visigoths invade Spain and take it from Roman Empire |
| 622 | Hegira, Mohammed flees for Mecca, Islamic time keeping begins with this year |
| 700-1700 | Mound-building Mississippian culture dominates eastern North America |
| 711 | Arab armies invade Spain |
| 732 | Charles Martel halts Islamic expansion |
| 800 | Charlemagne crowned King of Franks
Charlemagne is crowned Holy Roman Emperor |
| 1006 | Chinese astronomers record a nova |
| 1054 | Chinese astronomers record second nova, also seen in Japan & Arab countries |
| 1066 | battle of Hastings establishes England domination by Normandy (Northern France) |
| 1096-99 | Europeans try to recover Arab-conquered lands in the First Crusade |
| 1150 | Chinese develop first rockets |
| 1168 | Oxford University founded |
| 1206 | Genghis Khan begins to create history's largest land empire,
from Mongolia into eastern Europe |
| 1215 | Magna Carta
Magna Carta, limits the rights of kings |
| 1225-1274 | Thomas Aquinas, Italian theologian who synthesized catholic douctrine and aristotelian philosophy |
| 1271 | Crusades comes to end, Christian armies attempting to recapture the Holy Land (Isreal) from Islam |
| 1271-1295 | Marco Polo of Venice travels to the Far East |
| 1285-1349 | William of Ockham, Ockham's Razor |
| 1300-1400 | Traders of Great Zimbabwe rule southern Africa |
| 1325 | Aztecs establish powerful empire in central Mexico |
| 1346-47 | Italian ships carrying rats with Bubonic Plague
to Europe
1/3 of continent dies by 1351, over next 80 years kills 3/4 of european population |
| 1368 | establishment of Ming Dynasty with overthrow of mongols |
| 1400 | Chinese pinpoint length of year at 365.2 days |
| 1407 | Chinese complete 11,095 volume encyclopedia; three copies are made |
| 1428 | Joan of Arc leads french armies against English |
| 1449-92 | Renaissance reaches it height in Florence under the Medici family |
| 1453 | end of Byzantine Empire and the Hundred Year's War |
| 1455 | Gutenberg Bible, the first book published in cast metal movable type, launces a cultural revolution |
| 1454 | Gutenberg Bible published |
| 1470 | mainspring for clock invented |
| 1473-1543 | Nicholas Copernicus, Polish astronomer |
| 1492 | Columbus lands in the Americas
Columbus sails to Western Hemisphere, linking Old and New Worlds |
| 1497 | Vasco da Gama (Portuguese) rounds the Cape of Good Hope |
| 1502 | Amerigo Vespucci explores coast of South America |
| 1504 | small mainspring invented, first hand held clocks |
| 1509-64 | Calvinism, more radical form of Protestantism |
| 1517 | Martin Luther, 95 Theses, begining of Reformation
Martin Luther sparks Protestant Reformation |
| 1523 | Magellan circles the globe |
| 1530 | potato, maize & tobacco introduce to Europe from "New World" (Americas) |
| 1531 | Pizarro lands in Peru (exterminates the Incas)
and
Spainiards claim most of Americas up to US |
| 1532 | Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro conquers Inca Empire in South America |
| 1533 | King Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn and movement towards Anglicanism |
| 1539 | Hernando DeSoto explorese southest portion
of US.
First Europeans to see the Mississippi River |
| 1540s | Interior of American continents explored-
Hernando Cortes in New Mexico and Baja California |
| 1543 | Copernicus's Derovolutionibus is published just before his death |
| 1546 | The Wars of Religion begin when Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V
takes up arms against the Lutheran principalities |
| 1552 | Nostradamus-gibberish verses predicting future,
no dates leave it highly open to interpretation |
| 1557 | Suleyman the Magnificient completes mosque in Istanbul, Ottoman capital |
| 1558 | Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England |
| 1559-61 | Tobacco seeds exported for the first time from America to France |
| 1572 | St Bartholomew's Day (8-23) Catholics violate
peace treaty by attacking and killing 50,000
unarmed Huguenots |
| 1578 | Sir Francis Drake, English navigator, sailed along the Pacific coast of the Americas |
| 1582 | Gregorian calendar adopted |
| 1585 | Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) attempts settlement on Roanoke island, now in North Carolina |
| 1589 | Galileo starts a series of tests to measure falling bodies |
| 1596-1650 | Rene Descartes, French philosopher and champion of rational thinking who founded analytical geometry and made extensive contributions to the philosophy of science |
| 1604 | The Golden Temple, chief shrine of the Sikh faith, is built in Amritsar, Punjab |
| 1607 | John Smith settles Jamestown settlement in Virginia, first permanant English settlement in Americas |
| 1609 | Kepler works out planetary orbits; Galileo studies Milky Way and Moon with telescope of his own devising |
| 1610 | French colony established in Quebec |
| 1611 | Publication of the King James translation of the Bible |
| 1616 | English playwright William Shakesphere dies the same day (4-23) as Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes |
| 1618 | The Thirty Years War, a conflict between Protestants and Catholics, begins in Germany and spreads to neighboring countries |
| 1620 | Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock in what is now Massachusetts |
| 1633 | Galileo is condemned by the church |
| 1636 | Harvard College is founded in Massachusetts |
| 1642 | English Civil War begins |
| 1643 | Louis XIV becomes king of France |
| 1648 | Thirty Year's War ends |
| 1649 | Charles I of England is beheaded |
| 1660 | Restoration of the kingdom in England |
| 1668 | Newton invents a reflecting telescope |
| 1669 | Newton and Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz (1646-1716) independently develop calculus |
| 1669 | Danish geologist Nicolaus Steno (1638-86) maintains that fossils are remains of ancient creatures |
| 1672 | Giovanni Cassini determines the distance of Mars from Earth (inkling to vastness of space) |
| 1675 | Danish astronomer Olaus Roemer (1644-1710) calculates the speed of light |
| 1676-7 | Dutch microscopist Antony van Leeuwenhoek makes best microsope of the time;sees microorganisms in water and calls them animalcules, discovers spermatoza in semen |
| 1678 | Edmund Halley (1656-1742) makes astronomical observations in the south Atlantic, publishes star catalog which includes 300 stars never seen before cause he observed from southern hemisphere |
| 1682 | English botantist Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712) shows that plants reproduce sexually and that individual grains of pollen are like the sperm cells of the anumal world |
| 1685 | Louis XIV revokes the Edict of Nantes, retracting the religous freedom that had been allowed to French Protestants (Huguenots) |
| 1687 | Newton's laws of motion published in his book Principia mathematica |
| 1689 | `Peter the Great becomes czar of Russia |
| 1689 | William and Mary of Orange are declared joint sovereigns of England by Parliament |
| 1740-1810 | Height of the slave trade; 60,000 Africans a year are enslaved and shipped to the Americas |
| 1776 | American colonists proclaim independnce from Great Britain |
| 1789 | French Revolution overthrows King Louis XVI |
| 1810-1830 | Zulus absorb surrounding tribes into military kingdom in southern Africa |
| 1821 | Simon Bolivar wins independance from Spain for Venezuela |
| 1914 | Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is slain; World War I begins |
| 1929 | U.S. stock market crash is follwed by worldwide economis depression |
| 1939 | German chancellor Adolf Hitler invades Poland, launching World War II |
| 1945 | U.S. drops atom bombs on Japan, ending World War II. United Nations founded |
| 1957 | Ghana becomes first sub Saharan African colony to win independence from European power |
| 1991 | Soviet Union crumbles |
| 27 | Augustus becomes first Roman emperor |
| 7-A.D. 7 | possible birth of Jesus of Nazareth |
| 14 | Tiberius succeeds Augustus as Roman emperor |
| 26 | Pontius Pilate is made govenor of Judea |
| 27-28 | John the Baptist preaches in the Holy Land, Jesus is baptized |
| 29-33 | Jesus preaches, develops a following, is crucified under Pilate |
| 35 | Stephen, a follower of Jesus, is stoned to death for blasphemy, becoming the first Christian martyr |
| 45 | Paul begins to preach about Jesus |
| 60 | the term "Christian" is in common use |
| 60-80 | Mark's Gospel, the nascent Church's first
life of Jesus, is written;
the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, using Mark as source material follow |
| 64 | the Great Fire destroys much of Rome; the
emperor Nero blames Christians, and persecution ensues.
Paul (and perhaps) Peter are martyred in Rome |
| 100 | The Gospel according to John is written; "Babylon" represents corrupted Rome |
| 177 | Persecution of Christians in Rome renewed
by Emperor Marcus Aurelius;
a "martyr cult" develops within within Christianity |
| 250 | Emperor Decius increases Christian persecution |
| 303 | Emperor Diocletian responds to Christianity's
growing popularitywith more persecution,
a final attempt to stem the tide and return to emperor worship |
| 312 | Emperor Constantine, entering battle, sees a luminous cross and subsequently converts to Christianity |
| 313 | Constantine makes Christianity legal throughout the empire |
| 324 | Constantine relocates to the city of Byzantium, later renaming it Constantinople, seat of the new Roman Empire |
| 325 | at Constantine's Council of Nicaea, God's
relationship to Jesus is defined;
Christianity begins to sweep the empire |
| 380 | Emperor Theodosius outlaws paganism and makes heresy liable to punishment |
| 393 | the Church sanctions the New Testament's 27
books, including the 4 Gospels;
Christianity's addendum to the Bible is complete |
| 395 | the Roman empire divides into East and West |
| 396-430` | Augustine, a North African bishop, becomes the most influential Christian theologian since Paul |
| 431 | at the Council of Ephesus, the cult of the Virgin gains support as Mary is ?declared?named? Mother of God |
| 476 | the last West Roman emperor falls from power;
German chieftains carve up that region;
the East Roman Empire will survive as the Byzantine Empire until 1453. during the Middle Ages, the gulf widens between Roman Church, headed by the pope, and Eastern Christianity, based in Constantinople and overseen by the Patriarch of Constantinople |
| 610 | Muhammad starts a new religion, Islam, in Arabia |
| 630 | Mecca falls to Muhammad's army |
| 632 | Muhammad dies, but the word of the Koran, maintaining "There is no God but allah and Mohammad is his messenger" spreads |
| 638 | Jerusalem is overtaken by Islamic forces; at century's end, Islam has spread across all of North Africa & Egypt |
| 800 | Showing political might, Pope Leo III crowns Frankish King Charlemagne "Emperor" of the Romans, a symbolic point in the split between the Eastern Churches |
| 1054 | A formal schism between the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Roman Church over papal authority culminates centuries of drift |
| 1075 | Gregory VII stresses Church's autonomy, says the pope will appoint clergy free of influence of kings and nobles |
| 1096 | The Crusades begin with Pope Urban II's attempt to secure parts of the Holy Land held by Islam |
| 1225 | Thomas Aquinas is born. As a dominican friar teachung in Paris, he will bring Christian docturine into harmony with Aristotelian philosophy, reconciling faith and reason |
| 1232 | The first Inquistion is brought by Gregory IX, whose papal inquistors hold secret trials and tortures; burning at the stake is the capital punishment |
| 1291 | Muslims seize Acre, the last Christian stronghold in Palestine |
| 1309 | French Pope Clement V moves the papacy to Avignon from Rome |
| 1377 | Papacy returns to Rome |
| 1378 | Rift among Roman cardinals results in the election of rival pope; for 8 years 3 popes rule |
| 1417 | The Council of Constance elects Martin V as the single legitimate |
| 1438-45 | The council of Florence represents one of many short-lived attempts at reunion- "ecumenism"- between Roman and Eastern churches |
| 1453 | Turks capture Constantinople; Bzyantine Empire falls |
| 1483 | During Spain's Torquemada Inquistion, 2,000 heretics are executed |
| 1517 | Martin Luther, stressing biblical over papal authority, spurs the reformation, which divides Western Christianity into the Roman Catholic Church and Protestantism |
| 1533-34 | King Henry VIII denies the pope's authority over England so he can marry Ann Boleyn; the following year, he has Parliament declare him the head of the new, independent Church of England. Thus, Anglicanism is born |
| 1534 | Ignatius Loyola founds the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, a zealous order within Catholicism that spreads the religion throughout the known world |
| 1545-63 | The Council of Trent, a Roman Catholic attempt at reform, becomes the Counter-Reformation as it issues decrees in opposition to Protestantism |
| 1600 | Followers of the philosophy of French Protestant thinker John Calvin split from the English Piritans to form the Congregationalists |
| 1613 | Galileo, in a letter, tries to show that Copernican theory can exist alongside Church docturine regarding the biblical view of the world. In 1616 he is summoned to Rome but is cleared of heresy. In 1632, however, he publishes his scientific masterpiece, showing how Copernican system is superior to Ptolemaic. (The short of it: Galileo's evidence shows the earth revolves around the sun, rasther than being the fixed center of the universe, as Scripture had it) He is again called to Rome, and in 1633 the inquistion finds him guilty of disobeying Church orders and forces him to publicly recant. Galileo, a Catholic, does so but is nonetheless sentenced to life imprisonment |
| 1620 | Pilgrims land at Plymouth, Mass., in the New World; their ranks include many Protestant Separatists, who had hoped to adopt reforms to purify the Church of England. Having decided their efforts were futile from within, they form their own congregation and enter self-exile to pursue religion freely |
| 1729 | John Wesley, an English clergyman influenced by the Pietists- who consider an intimate relationship with God more important than a particular form of worship-begins a reform movement within the Church of England; subsequently the movement leads to Methodism |
| 1791 | First Admendment to the United States Constitution is ratified; it forbids Congress to provide for an established religion. The idea of keeping Church and State seperate is made law. The ironic result; A secular state becomes, over time, a virtual incubator for many forms of Christianity and other faiths |
| 1859 | Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species, which conflicts with the biblical version of creation |
| 1869-70 | Pius assembles Vatican Council I, which issues, among other doctrines, the declaration of papal infallibility- the pope is never in error when he speaks as head of the Church on matters of faith or morals |
| 1901 | Charles Fox Parham revives the Pentecostal movement at his Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kans. By the end of the century, according to some estimates, one in four Christians will be Pentecostal |
| 1925 | The Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tenn. High scool teacher John Thomas Scopes is charged with teaching evolution in a public school, thus violating Tennessee law. William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow spar over Creationism vs Darwinism; Scopes is found guilty and fined $100. Even in secular society, Christianity has power |
| 1939-45 | In World War II Holocaust, six million Jews are put to death |
| 1962-65 | Pope John XXIII and his successor, Paul VI, oversee Vatican Council II, which seeks to bring the Roman Catholic Church into harmony with modernity and to promote ecumenism |
| 1963 | The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, who cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 to expand the nonviolent struggle against racism and discrimination, gives his "I Have a Dream" speech to more than 200,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. The scene is much a revival meeting as political protest |
| 1978 | In the year of 3 popes, the Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla becomes John Paul II, the first non-Italian leader of the Roman Church in 455 years |
| 1979 | Pope John II declares that the Church may have erred in its handling of Galileo more than three centuries previous. In 1992 the pope will go further, confirming that the Church made a mistake |
| 1980-99 | The rise of Christian fundamentalism in the United States is fueled by television and the internet |
| 1999 | John Paul II again asks Catholics to prepare for the Holy Year, Jubilee 2000, by atoning for past transgressions, including anti-Jewish bias and persecution; the Jubilee in Rome will cdommence on Christmas Eve and extend to the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 2001 |
| 2000 | Christianity is the world's largest religion, with more than two billion congregants belonging to more than 20,000 sects and denominations |
| 779 | First Tibetan Buddhist monastery founded at Samye |
| 838 | Period of Buddhist persecution begins after assassination of Buddhist king Ralpachen |
| 1044 | Indian monk-scholar Atisa arrives in Tibet and begins revival of Buddhism |
| 1158 | Monk Phagmotrupa founds the densatil monastery |
| 1295 | Marco Polo returns to Venice |
| 1386-1434 | Sonam Gyaltsen reigns as |Densatil abbot. Image of Rahu made |
| 1452 | Leaonardo da Vinci is born |
| 1526 | Mughal dynasty of India founded |
| 1642 | Fifth Dalai Lama becomes the political and spiritual leader of tibet |