Timeline
Every guide, in its time.
Read across eras and regions, then open a guide to see the sources behind its dates. A shared date is a question to investigate, not evidence of contact.
10 of 57 guides in Mediterranean & Europe
1000 BCE – 1 CE 4
- 1000 BCE onward
When did Russian begin?
From Proto-Slavic to Russian: a continuum, not a birthday.
Eastern Europe · Mediterranean & Europe · Writing & languages
Follow the Slavic branch from its Balto-Slavic ancestor through Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic to modern Russian, and see why the record refuses single-date origins.
- 500 BCE onward
How closely related are English and German?
English and German: two daughters of West Germanic.
Northwestern Europe · Mediterranean & Europe · Writing & languages
English and German descend from a shared western branch of Germanic. Follow the family tree in the research record, and see why its stages are conventions rather than birthdays.
- 323–31 BCE
Can fragments reveal a machine?
Antikythera: how much can a fragment reveal?
Eastern Mediterranean · Mediterranean & Europe · Technology & instruments
Follow the evidence behind an ancient astronomical mechanism and distinguish surviving material from a proposed reconstruction.
- 287–212 BCE
Which Archimedes are you reading?
Archimedes: what survives of his works.
Syracuse, Sicily · Mediterranean & Europe · Mathematics & measurement
The treatises of Archimedes reach us through manuscripts made a thousand years after his death. Learn to keep an author's lifetime, a text's composition, and a copy's date apart.
1–500 CE 1
- 1–699 CE
Who wrote the first alchemy?
Zosimos, Stephanos, and Pseudo-Democritus: alchemy with names attached.
Egypt and Byzantium · Mediterranean & Europe · Technology & instruments
Three Greek alchemical texts carry three kinds of author problem: a known writer, a disputed one, and a borrowed name. Learn how each changes what a shared recipe can prove.
1000–1500 CE 3
- 1300–1599 CE
What can a copied table prove?
Bianchini's tables in Copernicus's own hand.
Cracow, Padua, and Uppsala · Mediterranean & Europe · How knowledge travelled
A copy of planetary-latitude tables circulated by Giovanni Bianchini survives in Copernicus's handwriting. Follow what that artifact establishes, what it only suggests, and what the almanacs argue against.
- 1400–1499 CE
Who translated Euclid, and how would we know?
Euclid in Latin: a fifteenth-century witness.
Paris and Toledo · Mediterranean & Europe · How knowledge travelled
A Paris manuscript carries a Latin Euclid made from Arabic. Learn why the record dates the copy, declines to name the translator, and keeps Euclid's own date far away from both.
- 1460–1540 CE
What does it mean for knowledge to arrive in pieces?
Three routes into Renaissance Italy.
Venice, Padua, and Mantua · Mediterranean & Europe · How knowledge travelled
A cardinal's library, a travelling scholar, and a Mantuan notebook each brought part of late Islamicate astronomy to Italy. See why the research case calls them partial carriers and names two gaps still open.
1500 CE onward 1
- 1611–1740 CE
What was there before the city?
St Petersburg, 1703: a city with a documented start.
Neva delta, Russia · Mediterranean & Europe · Kingdoms & monuments
Claims of a buried older city under St Petersburg circulate widely. Read three institutional records: the urban project of 1703, the Swedish fortress that preceded it, and a fortress built in phases.
Not tied to one period 1
- Ancient texts in Byzantine manuscripts
How old is the copy you are reading?
Ancient medicine in Byzantine hands: the Hippocratic corpus and the Vienna Dioscorides.
Greek world and Byzantium · Mediterranean & Europe · Medicine & natural knowledge
Two studies of Greek medical texts show the gap between when a work was composed and when its surviving manuscript was made. Learn to date the witness and the work separately.
Keep the habit
Dates are ranges. Read them that way.
Each guide names its period, its place, and the records that support them.
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