Human history is the narrative of humankind's past. Modern humans evolved in Africa  years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers. They migrated out of Africa during the Last Glacial Period (Ice Age) and had populated most of the Earth by the time the Ice Age ended 12,000 years ago.

The Agricultural Revolution began soon afterwards in fertile river valleys of the Near East: humans began the systematic husbandry of plants and animals, and many humans transitioned from a nomadic life to a sedentary existence as farmers in permanent settlements. The growing complexity of human societies necessitated systems of accounting and writing.

During the late Bronze Age, Hinduism developed in the Indian subcontinent, while the Axial Age witnessed the growth and institutionalization of religions such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Jainism, Judaism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism. As civilizations flourished, ancient history saw the rise and fall of empires. Subsequent post-classical history (the "Middle Ages", from about 500 to 1500 CE) witnessed the rise of Christianity and Islam.

The early modern period, from about 1500 to 1800 CE, saw the Age of Discovery and the Age of Enlightenment. By the 18th century, the accumulation of knowledge and technology had reached a critical mass that brought about the Industrial Revolution and began the late modern period, which started around 1800 CE and continues.

The foregoing historical periodization (classical, post-classical, early modern, and late modern periods)  applies best to the history of Europe. Elsewhere, including China and India, historical timelines unfolded differently up to the 18th century. By then, however, due to extensive international trade and colonization, the histories of most civilizations had become substantially intertwined. Over the last quarter-millennium, the rates of growth of human populations, agriculture, industry, commerce, scientific knowledge, technology, communications, weapons destructiveness, and environmental degradation have greatly accelerated.

Prehistory ()

Human evolution

Humans evolved in Africa from other primates. Genetic measurements indicate that the ape lineage which would lead to Homo sapiens diverged from the lineage that would lead to chimpanzees and bonobos, the closest living relatives of modern humans, somewhere between 13 million and 5 million years ago. The term hominin denotes human ancestors that lived after the split with chimpanzees and bonobos, including many species and at least two distinct genera: Australopithecus and Homo. Other fossil specimens such as Paranthropus, Kenyanthropus, and Orrorin may represent additional genera, but paleontologists debate their taxonomic status. The early hominins such as Australopithecus had the same brain size as apes but were distinguished from apes by walking on two legs, an adaptation perhaps associated with a shift from forest to savanna habitats. Hominins began to use rudimentary stone tools  million years ago, marking the advent of the Paleolithic era.

The genus Homo evolved from Australopithecus. The earliest record of Homo is the 2.8 million-year-old specimen LD 350-1 from Ethiopia, and the earliest named species is Homo habilis which evolved by 2.3 million years ago. The most important difference between Homo habilis and Australopithecus was an increase in brain size. H. erectus (the African variant is sometimes called H. ergaster) evolved by 2 million years ago and was the first hominin species to leave Africa and disperse across Eurasia. Perhaps as early as 1.5 million years ago, but certainly by 250,000 years ago, hominins began to use fire for heat and cooking.

Beginning about 500,000 years ago, Homo diversified into many new species of archaic humans such as the Neanderthals in Europe, the Denisovans in Siberia, and the diminutive H. floresiensis in Indonesia. Human evolution was not a simple linear or branched progression but involved interbreeding between related species. Genomic research has shown that hybridization between substantially diverged lineages was common in human evolution. DNA evidence suggests that several genes of Neanderthal origin are present among all non-African populations, and Neanderthals and other hominins, such as Denisovans, may have contributed up to 6% of their genome to present-day humans.

Early humans

Homo sapiens emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago from a species commonly designated as either H. heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis. Humans continued to develop over the succeeding millennia, and by 100,000 years ago, were already using jewellery and ocher to adorn the body. By 50,000 years ago, they exhibited many characteristic behaviors such as burial of the dead, use of projectile weapons, and seafaring. One of the most important changes (the date of which is unknown) was the development of syntactic language, which dramatically improved humans' ability to communicate. Signs of early artistic expression can be found in the form of cave paintings and sculptures made from ivory, stone, and bone, implying a form of spirituality generally interpreted as animism or shamanism. Paleolithic humans lived as hunter-gatherers and were generally nomadic. They inhabited grasslands or sparsely wooded areas and avoided dense forest cover.

The migration of anatomically modern humans out of Africa took place in multiple waves beginning 194,000–177,000 years ago. The dominant view among scholars (Southern Dispersal) is that the early waves of migration died out and all modern non-Africans are descended from a single group that left Africa 70,000–50,000 years ago. H. sapiens proceeded to colonize all the continents and larger islands, arriving in Australia 65,000 years ago, Europe 45,000 years ago, and the Americas 21,000 years ago. These migrations occurred during the most recent Ice Age, when temperate regions of today were extremely inhospitable. Nevertheless, by the end of the Ice Age some 12,000 years ago, humans had colonized nearly all ice-free parts of the globe. Human expansion coincided with both the Quaternary extinction event and the extinction of the Neanderthals. These extinctions were probably caused by climate change, human activity, or a combination of the two.

Rise of agriculture

Beginning around 10,000 BCE, the Neolithic Revolution marked the development of agriculture, which fundamentally changed the human lifestyle. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa, in at least 11 separate centers of origin. Cereal crop cultivation and animal domestication had occurred in Mesopotamia by at least 8500 BCE in the form of wheat, barley, sheep, and goats. The Yangtze River Valley in China domesticated rice around 8000 BCE; the Yellow River Valley may have cultivated millet by 7000 BCE. Pigs were the most important domesticated animal in early China. People in Africa's Sahara cultivated sorghum and several other crops between 8000 and 5000 BCE, while other agricultural centers arose in the Ethiopian Highlands and the West African rainforests. In the Indus River Valley, crops were cultivated by 7000 BCE and cattle were domesticated by 6500 BCE. In the Americas, squash was cultivated by at least 8500 BCE in South America, and domesticated arrowroot appeared in Central America by 7800 BCE. Potatoes were first cultivated in the Andes of South America, where the llama was also domesticated. It is likely that women played a central role in plant domestication throughout these developments.

There is no scholarly consensus on why the Neolithic Revolution occurred. For example, in some theories agriculture was the result of an increase in population which led people to seek out new food sources, while in others agriculture was the cause of population growth as the food supply improved. Other proposed factors include climate change, resource scarcity, and ideology. The effects of the transition to agriculture are better understood: it created food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in food production, permitting far denser populations and the creation of the first cities and states.

Cities were centers of trade, manufacturing, and political power. Cities established a symbiosis with their surrounding countrysides, absorbing agricultural products and providing, in return, manufactured goods and varying degrees of political control. Early proto-cities appeared at Jericho and Çatalhöyük around 6000 BCE. Pastoral societies based on nomadic animal herding also developed, mostly in dry areas unsuited for plant cultivation such as the Eurasian Steppe or the African Sahel. Conflict between nomadic herders and sedentary agriculturalists occurred frequently and became a recurring theme in world history.

Metalworking was first used in the creation of copper tools and ornaments around 6400 BCE. Gold and silver soon followed, primarily for use in ornaments. The need for metal ores stimulated trade, as many areas of early human settlement lacked the necessary ores. The first signs of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, date to around 4500 BCE, but the alloy did not become widely used until the third millennium BCE.

Neolithic societies usually worshiped ancestors, sacred places, or anthropomorphic deities. The vast complex of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, dated 9500–8000 BCE, is a spectacular example of a Neolithic religious or civic site. It may have been built by hunter-gatherers rather than a sedentary population. Elaborate mortuary practices developed in the Levant during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, in which certain high-status individuals were buried under the floors of houses and the graves were later re-opened for the skulls to be removed. Some of the skulls were then covered in plaster, painted, and displayed in public.

Ancient history ()

Cradles of civilization

The Bronze Age saw the development of cities and civilizations.  Early civilizations arose close to rivers, first in Mesopotamia (3000 BCE) with the Tigris and Euphrates, followed by the Egyptian civilization along the Nile River (3000 BCE), the Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan and northwestern India (2500 BCE), and the Chinese civilization along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers (2200 BCE).

These societies developed a number of unifying characteristics, including a central government, a complex economy and social structure, systems for keeping records, and distinct cultures and religions. These cultures variously invented the wheel, mathematics, bronze-working, sailing boats, the potter's wheel, woven cloth, construction of monumental buildings, and writing. Polytheistic religions developed, centered on temples where priests and priestesses performed sacrificial rites.

Writing facilitated the administration of cities, the expression of ideas, and the preservation of information. Writing may have independently developed in at least four ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia (3300 BCE), Egypt (around 3250 BCE), China (1200 BCE), and lowland Mesoamerica (by 650 BCE). Among the earliest surviving written religious scriptures are the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, the oldest of which date to between 2400 and 2300 BCE.

Sumer, located in Mesopotamia, is the first known complex civilization, having developed the first city-states in the 4th millennium BCE. It was these cities that produced the earliest known form of writing, cuneiform script. Cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs, whose pictorial representations eventually became simplified and more abstract. Cuneiform texts were written by using a blunt reed as a stylus to draw symbols upon clay tablets.

Transport was facilitated by waterways—by rivers and seas. The Mediterranean Sea, at the juncture of three continents, fostered the projection of military power and the exchange of goods, ideas, and inventions. This era also saw new land technologies, such as horse-based cavalry and chariots, that allowed armies to move faster. Trade became increasingly important as urban societies exchanged manufactured goods for raw materials from distant lands, creating vast commercial networks. Bronze production, for example, required the import of tin to Southwest Asia from as far away as England, and Indus Valley seals and gems have been found in Mesopotamia.

The growth of cities was often followed by the establishment of states and empires. In Mesopotamia, there prevailed a pattern of independent warring city-states and of a loose hegemony shifting from one city to another. In Egypt, by contrast, the initial division into Upper and Lower Egypt was followed by unification of all the valley around 3100 BCE. Around 2600 BCE, the Indus Valley civilization built major cities at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and developed a writing system of over 400 symbols, which remains undeciphered. China entered the Bronze Age by 2900 BCE. The Shang dynasty (1766–1045 BCE) was the first to use writing, inscribing the results of divination ceremonies on oracle bones – ox shoulder blades and turtle shells. In the 25th–21st centuries BCE, the empires of Akkad and the Neo-Sumerians arose in Mesopotamia. In Crete, the Minoan civilization emerged by 2000 BCE and is regarded as the first civilization in Europe.

Over the following millennia, civilizations developed across the world. By 1600 BCE, Mycenaean Greece began to develop. It flourished until the Late Bronze Age collapse that affected many Mediterranean civilizations between 1300 and 1000 BCE. In India, this era was the Vedic period (1750–600 BCE), which laid the foundations of Hinduism and other cultural aspects of early Indian society, and ended in the 6th century BCE. The Vedas contain the earliest references to India's caste system, which divided society into four hereditary classes: priests, warriors, farmers and traders, and laborers. From around 550 BCE, many independent kingdoms and republics known as the Mahajanapadas were established across the subcontinent.

Speakers of the Bantu languages began expanding across Central and Southern Africa as early as 3000 BCE. Their expansion and encounters with other groups resulted in the spread of mixed farming and ironworking throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and produced societies such as the Nok culture in modern Nigeria by 500 BCE. The Lapita culture emerged in the Bismarck Archipelago near New Guinea around 1500 BCE and colonized many uninhabited islands of Remote Oceania, reaching as far as Samoa by 700 BCE.

In the Americas, the Norte Chico culture emerged in coastal Peru around 3100 BCE. The Norte Chico built public monumental architecture at the city of Caral, dated 2627–1977 BCE. The later Chavín polity is sometimes described as the first Andean state. It centered on the religious site at Chavín de Huantar, a place of pilgrimage and consumption of psychoactive substances. Other important Andean cultures include the Moche, whose ceramics depict many aspects of daily life, and the Nazca, who created animal-shaped designs in the desert called Nazca lines. The Olmecs of Mesoamerica developed by about 1200 BCE and are known for the colossal stone heads that they carved from basalt. They also devised the Mesoamerican calendar that was used by later cultures such as the Maya and Teotihuacan. Societies in North America were primarily egalitarian hunter-gatherers, supplementing their diet with the plants of the Eastern Agricultural Complex. They came together, seemingly voluntarily, to build earthworks such as Watson Brake (4000 BCE) and Poverty Point (3600 BCE), both in Louisiana.

Axial Age

From 800 to 200 BCE, the "Axial Age" saw the development of a set of transformative philosophical and religious ideas, mostly independently, in many different places. Chinese Confucianism, Indian Buddhism and Jainism, and Jewish monotheism all developed during this period. Persian Zoroastrianism began earlier, perhaps around 1000 BCE, but was institutionalized by the Achaemenid Empire during the Axial Age. New philosophies took hold in Greece during the 5th century BCE, epitomized by thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle.

Axial Age ideas were tremendously important for subsequent intellectual and religious history. Confucianism was one of the three schools of thought that came to dominate Chinese thinking, along with Taoism and Legalism. The Confucian tradition, which would become particularly influential, looked for political morality not to the force of law but to the power and example of tradition. Confucianism would later spread to Korea and Japan. Buddhism reached China during the Han dynasty and spread widely, with 30,000 Buddhist temples in northern China alone by the 7th century CE. Buddhism became the main religion in much of South, Southeast, and East Asia. The Greek philosophical tradition diffused throughout the Mediterranean world and as far as India, starting in the 4th century BCE after the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon. The Christian and Muslim religions are both based on the Jewish idea of monotheism.

Regional empires

The millennium from 500 BCE to 500 CE saw a series of empires of unprecedented size develop. Well-trained professional armies, unifying ideologies, and advanced bureaucracies created the possibility for emperors to rule over large domains whose populations could attain numbers upwards of tens of millions of subjects. International trade also expanded, most notably the massive trade routes in the Mediterranean Sea, the maritime trade web in the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road.

There were a number of regional empires during this period. The kingdom of the Medes helped to destroy the Assyrian Empire in tandem with the nomadic Scythians and the Babylonians. Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was sacked by the Medes in 612 BCE. The Median Empire gave way to successive Iranian states, including the Achaemenid (550–330 BCE), Parthian (247 BCE–224 CE), and Sasanian Empires (224–651 CE).

Several empires began in modern-day Greece. The Delian League, founded in 477 BCE, and the Athenian Empire (454–404 BCE) were two such examples. Later, Alexander the Great of Macedon (356–323 BCE) founded an empire extending from present-day Greece to India. The empire divided shortly after his death, but resulted in the spread of Greek culture throughout conquered regions, a process referred to as Hellenization. The Hellenistic period lasted from 323 to 31 BCE.

In South Asia, Chandragupta Maurya founded the Maurya Empire (320–185 BCE), which flourished under Ashoka the Great. From the 4th to 6th centuries CE, the Gupta Empire oversaw the period referred to as ancient India's golden age. The ensuing stability contributed to heralding in an efflorescence of Hindu and Buddhist culture in the 4th and 5th centuries, as well as major advances in science and mathematics. In South India, three prominent Dravidian kingdoms emerged: the Cheras, Cholas, and Pandyas.

In Europe, the Roman Republic was founded in the 6th century BCE. In the 3rd century BCE, the Republic began expanding its territory through conquest and alliances. The Republic became an empire and by the time of Augustus (63 BCE–14 CE), it had established dominion over most of the Mediterranean Sea. The empire would continue to grow, controlling much of the land from England to Mesopotamia, reaching its greatest extent under Trajan (died 117 CE). In the 4th century CE, the empire split into western and eastern regions, with (usually) separate emperors. The Western Roman Empire would fall, in 476 CE, to German influence under Odoacer. The Eastern Roman Empire, now known as the Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, would continue for another thousand years until the city was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe, and Constantinople is generally considered to be the center of "Eastern Orthodox civilization".

In China, the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), the first imperial dynasty of China, was followed by the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE). The Han dynasty was comparable in power and influence to the Roman Empire that lay at the other end of the Silk Road. As economic prosperity fueled their military expansion, the Han conquered parts of Mongolia, Central Asia, Manchuria, Korea, and northern Vietnam. As with other empires during the classical period, Han China advanced significantly in the areas of government, education, science, and technology. The Han invented cast iron, and created finely wrought bronze figurines.

In Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum, centered in present-day Ethiopia, established itself by the 1st century CE as a major trading empire, dominating its neighbours in South Arabia and Kush and controlling the Red Sea trade. It minted its own currency and carved enormous monolithic stelae to mark its emperors' graves.

Successful regional empires were also established in the Americas, arising from cultures established as early as 2500 BCE. In Mesoamerica, vast pre-Columbian societies were built, the most notable being the Zapotec civilization (700 BCE–1521 CE), and the Maya civilization, which reached its highest state of development during the Mesoamerican classic period (c. 250–900 CE), but continued throughout the post-classic period. The great Maya city-states slowly rose in number and prominence, and Maya culture spread throughout the Yucatán and surrounding areas. The Maya developed a writing system and were the first to use the concept of zero in their mathematics. West of the Maya area, in central Mexico, the city of Teotihuacan grew based on its control of the obsidian trade. Its power peaked around 450 CE, when its 125,000–150,000 inhabitants made it one of the world's largest cities.

Technology developed sporadically in the ancient world. There were periods of rapid technological progress, such as the Greco-Roman era in the Mediterranean region. There were also periods of technological decay, as during the Roman Empire's decline and fall and the ensuing early medieval period. Two of the most important innovations were paper (China, 1st and 2nd centuries CE) and the stirrup (India, 2nd century BCE and Central Asia, 1st century CE), both of which diffused widely throughout the world. The Chinese also learned to make silk and built massive engineering projects such as the Great Wall of China and the Grand Canal. The Romans were also accomplished builders, inventing concrete and perfecting the use of arches in construction.

Most ancient societies had slaves. Slavery was particularly prevalent in Athens and Rome, where slaves made up a large proportion of the population and were foundational to the economy. Most societies were also patriarchal, with men controlling more political and economic power than women.

Declines, falls, and resurgence
The ancient empires faced common problems associated with maintaining huge armies and supporting a central bureaucracy. In Rome and Han China, the state began to decline, and barbarian pressure on the frontiers hastened internal dissolution. The Han dynasty fell into civil war in 220 CE, beginning the Three Kingdoms period, while its Roman counterpart became increasingly decentralized and divided about the same time in what is known as the Crisis of the Third Century. From the Eurasian Steppe, horse-based nomads dominated a large part of the continent. The development of the stirrup and the use of horse archers made the nomads a constant threat to sedentary civilizations.

The gradual breakup of the Roman Empire coincided with the spread of Christianity outward from West Asia. The Western Roman Empire fell under the domination of Germanic tribes in the 5th century, and these polities gradually developed into a number of warring states, all associated in one way or another with the Catholic Church. The remaining part of the Roman Empire, in the eastern Mediterranean, continued as what came to be called the Byzantine Empire. Centuries later, a limited unity would be restored to Western Europe through the establishment in 962 of a revived "Roman Empire", later called the Holy Roman Empire, comprising a number of states in what is now Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechia, Belgium, Italy, and parts of France.

In China, dynasties would rise and fall, but, by sharp contrast to the Mediterranean-European world, dynastic unity would be restored. After the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty and the demise of the Three Kingdoms, nomadic tribes from the north began to invade, causing many Chinese people to flee southward. The Sui dynasty successfully reunified China in 589, and laid the foundations for a golden age under the Tang dynasty (618–907).

Post-classical history ()

The term "post-classical era", though derived from the name of the era of "classical antiquity", takes in a broader geographic sweep. The era is commonly dated from the 5th-century fall of the Western Roman Empire.

From the 10th to 13th centuries, the Medieval Warm Period in the northern hemisphere aided agriculture and led to population growth in parts of Europe and Asia. It was followed by the Little Ice Age, which, along with the plagues of the 14th century, put downward pressure on the population of Eurasia. Some of the major inventions of the period were gunpowder, printing, and the compass, all of which originated in China.

The post-classical period encompasses the early Muslim conquests, the subsequent Islamic Golden Age, and the commencement and expansion of the Arab slave trade, followed by the Mongol invasions and the founding of the Ottoman Empire. South Asia saw a series of middle kingdoms of India, followed by the establishment of Islamic empires in India.

In West Africa, the Mali and Songhai Empires rose. On the southeast coast of Africa, Arabic ports were established where gold, spices, and other commodities were traded. This allowed Africa to join the Southeast Asia trading system, bringing it contact with Asia; this, along with Islamic culture, resulted in the Swahili culture.

China experienced the successive Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties. Middle Eastern trade routes along the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road through the Gobi Desert, provided limited economic and cultural contact between Asian and European civilizations.

During the same period, civilizations in the Americas, such as the Mississippians, Aztecs, Maya, and Inca reached their zenith.

Greater Middle East

Prior to the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the Middle East was dominated by the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires that frequently fought each other for control of several disputed regions. This was also a cultural battle, with Byzantine Christian culture competing against Persian Zoroastrian traditions. The birth of Islam created a new contender that quickly surpassed both of these empires. The new religion greatly affected the history of the Old World, especially the Middle East.

From their center in the Arabian Peninsula, Muslims began their expansion during the 7th century. By 750 CE, they came to conquer most of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe, ushering in an era of learning, science, and invention known as the Islamic Golden Age. The knowledge and skills of anicent Greece and Persia were preserved in the post-classical era by Muslims, who also added new and important innovations from outside, such as the manufacture of paper from China and decimal positional numbering from India. Islamic civilization expanded both by conquest and on the basis of its merchant economy. Merchants brought goods and their Islamic faith to China, India, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

The crusading movement was a religiously motivated European effort to roll back Muslim territory and regain control of the Holy Land. It was ultimately unsuccessful and served more to weaken the Byzantine Empire, especially with the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Arab domination of the region ended in the mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuk Turks, migrating south from the Turkic homelands. In the early 13th century, a new wave of invaders, the Mongols, swept through the region but were eventually eclipsed by the Turks and the founding of the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey around 1280.

North Africa saw the rise of polities established by the Berbers, such as Marinid Morocco, Zayyanid Algeria, and Hafsid Tunisia.  The coastal region was known to Europeans as the Barbary Coast. Pirates based in North African ports conducted operations that included capturing merchant ships and raiding coastal settlements. Many European captives were sold in North African markets as part of the Barbary slave trade.

The Caucasus was fought over in a series of wars between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires. However, the two opposing powers became exhausted due to continuous conflict. Hence, the Rashidun Caliphate was able to freely expand into the region during the early Muslim conquests. The Seljuk Turks later subjugated Armenia and Georgia in the 11th century. The Mongols subsequently invaded the Caucasus in the 13th century.

Central Asia faced incursions from both the Arabs and the Chinese. China expanded into Central Asia during the Sui dynasty (581–618). They were confronted by Turkic nomads, who were becoming the most dominant ethnic group in Central Asia. Originally the relationship was largely cooperative but in 630, the Tang dynasty began an offensive against the Turks by capturing areas of the Ordos Desert. In the 8th century, Islam began to penetrate the region and soon became the sole faith of most of the population, though Buddhism remained strong in the east. The desert nomads of Arabia could militarily match the nomads of the steppe, and the Umayyad Caliphate gained control over parts of Central Asia. The Hephthalites were the most powerful of the nomad groups in the 5th and 6th centuries, and controlled much of the region. From the 9th to 13th centuries, the region was divided among several powerful states, including the Samanid, Seljuk, and Khwarazmian Empires. In 1370, Timur, a Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the region and founded the Timurid Empire. Timur's large empire collapsed soon after his death, but his descendants retained control of a core area in Central Asia and Iran. They oversaw the Timurid Renaissance of art and architecture.

Europe

Since at least the 4th century, Christianity, primarily Catholicism, and later Protestantism, has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization. Europe during the Early Middle Ages was characterized by depopulation, deurbanization, and barbarian invasions, all of which had begun in late antiquity. The barbarian invaders formed their own new kingdoms in the remains of the Western Roman Empire. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, most of the new kingdoms incorporated existing Roman institutions. Christianity expanded in Western Europe, and monasteries were founded. In the 7th and 8th centuries, the Franks under the Carolingian dynasty established an empire covering much of Western Europe; it lasted until the 9th century, when it succumbed to pressure from new invaders—the Vikings, Magyars, and Arabs.

During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organization of peasants into villages that owed rents and labor service to nobles, and feudalism, a political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rents from lands and manors, were two of the ways of organizing medieval society that developed during the Middle Ages. Kingdoms became more centralized after the decentralizing effects of the breakup of the Carolingian Empire. In 1054, the Great Schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches led to the prominent cultural differences between Western and Eastern Europe. The Crusades were a series of religious wars waged by Christians to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Muslims and succeeded for long enough to establish some Crusader states in the Levant. Italian merchants imported slaves to work in households or in sugar processing. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism and the founding of universities, while the building of Gothic cathedrals and churches was one of the outstanding artistic achievements of the age.

The Mongols reached Europe in 1236 and conquered Kievan Rus', along with briefly invading Poland and Hungary. Lithuania cooperated with the Mongols but remained independent and in the late 14th century formed a personal union with Poland.

The Late Middle Ages were marked by difficulties and calamities. Famine, plague, and war devastated the population of Western Europe. The Black Death alone killed approximately 75 to 200 million people between 1347 and 1350. It was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. Starting in Asia, the disease reached the Mediterranean and Western Europe during the late 1340s, and killed tens of millions of Europeans in six years; between a quarter and a third of the population perished.

The Middle Ages witnessed the first sustained urbanization of Northern and Western Europe and lasted until the beginning of the early modern period in the 16th century, marked by the rise of nation states, the division of Western Christianity in the Reformation, the birth of humanism in the Renaissance, and the beginnings of European colonial expansion.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Medieval sub-Saharan Africa was home to many different civilizations. In the Horn of Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum declined in the 7th century. The Zagwe dynasty that later emerged was famed for its rock cut architecture at Lalibela. The Zagwe would then fall to the Solomonic dynasty who claimed descent from the Aksumite emperors and would rule the country well into the 20th century.

In the West African Sahel region, many Islamic empires rose, such as the Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and Kanem–Bornu Empires. They controlled the trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and slaves. West Africa became the world's largest gold exporter by the 14th century.

South of the Sahel, civilizations rose in the coastal forests. These include the Yoruba city of Ifẹ, noted for its art, and the Oyo Empire, the Edo Kingdom of Benin centered in Benin City, the Igbo Kingdom of Nri that produced advanced bronze art at Igbo-Ukwu, and the Akan who are noted for their intricate architecture.

Central Africa saw the formation of several states, including the Kingdom of Kongo. In what is now modern Southern Africa, native Africans created various kingdoms such as the Kingdom of Mutapa (Monomotapa). They flourished through trade with the Swahili on the East African coast. They built large defensive stone structures without mortar such as Great Zimbabwe, capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, and Khami, capital of the Kingdom of Butua. The Swahili people themselves were the inhabitants of the East African coast from Kenya to Mozambique who traded extensively with Arabs, who introduced them to Islam. They built many port cities such as Mombasa, Mogadishu, and Kilwa, which were known to Islamic geographers.

Seafarers from Southeast Asia colonized Madagascar sometime between the 4th and 9th centuries, creating what geographer Jared Diamond called "the single most astonishing fact of human geography". To reach Madagascar, the settlers crossed 6,000 miles of ocean in sailing canoes, probably without maps or compasses. A wave of Bantu-speaking migrants from southeastern Africa also arrived in Madagascar around 1000 CE.

South Asia

After the fall (550 CE) of the Gupta Empire, North India was divided into a complex and fluid network of smaller kingly states. Early Muslim incursions began in the northwest in 711 CE, when the Arab Umayyad Caliphate conquered much of present-day Pakistan. The Arab military advance was largely halted at that point, but Islam still spread in India, largely due to the influence of Arab merchants along the western coast. The 9th century saw a Tripartite Struggle for control of North India, among the Pratihara, Pala, and Rashtrakuta Empires.

Post-classical dynasties in South India included those of the Chalukyas, Hoysalas, and Cholas. Literature, architecture, sculpture, and painting flourished under the patronage of these kings. Some of the other important states that emerged in South India during this time included the Bahmani Sultanate and Vijayanagara Empire.

Northeast Asia

After a period of relative disunity, China was reunified by the Sui dynasty in 589 and under the succeeding Tang dynasty (618–907) China entered a golden age. The Sui and Tang instituted the long-lasting imperial examination system, under which administrative positions were open only to those who passed an arduous test on Confucian thought and the Chinese classics. China competed with Tibet (618–842) for control of areas in Inner and Central Asia. However, the Tang dynasty eventually splintered. After half a century of turmoil, the Song dynasty reunified much of China. Pressure from nomadic empires to the north became increasingly urgent. By 1127, northern China had been lost to the Jurchens in the Jin–Song Wars, and the Mongols conquered all of China in 1279. After about a century of Mongol Yuan dynasty rule, the ethnic Chinese reasserted control with the founding of the Ming dynasty in 1368.

In Japan, the imperial lineage was established during the 3rd century CE, and a centralized state developed during the Yamato period (c. 300–710). Buddhism was introduced, and there was an emphasis on the adoption of elements of Chinese culture and Confucianism. The Nara period (710–794) was characterized by the appearance of a nascent literary culture, as well as the development of Buddhist-inspired artwork and architecture. The Heian period (794–1185) saw the peak of imperial power, followed by the rise of militarized clans, and the beginning of Japanese feudalism. The feudal period of Japanese history, dominated by powerful regional lords (daimyos) and the military rule of warlords (shoguns) such as the Ashikaga and Tokugawa shogunates, stretched from 1185 to 1868. The emperor remained, but mostly as a figurehead, and the power of merchants grew.

Postclassical Korea saw the end of the Three Kingdoms era, the three kingdoms being Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. Silla conquered Baekje in 660, and Goguryeo in 668, marking the beginning of the Northern and Southern States period, with Unified Silla in the south and Balhae, a successor state to Goguryeo, in the north. In 892 CE, this arrangement reverted to the Later Three Kingdoms, with Goguryeo (then called Taebong and eventually named Goryeo) emerging as dominant, unifying the entire peninsula by 936. The founding Goryeo dynasty ruled until 1392, succeeded by the Joseon dynasty, which ruled for approximately 500 years.

In Mongolia, Genghis Khan united the various tribes under one banner. The Mongol Empire expanded to comprise all of China and Central Asia, as well as large parts of Russia and the Middle East. After Möngke Khan died in 1259, the Mongol Empire was divided into four successor states.

Southeast Asia

The Southeast Asian polity of Funan, which originated in the 2nd century CE, went into decline in the 6th century as Chinese trade routes shifted away from its ports. It was replaced by the Khmer Empire in 802 CE. The Khmers' capital city, Angkor, was the most extensive city in the world prior to the industrial age and contained Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious monument. The Sukhothai (mid-13th century CE) and Ayutthaya Kingdoms (1351 CE) were major powers of the Thais, who were influenced by the Khmers.

Starting in the 9th century, the Pagan Kingdom rose to prominence in modern Myanmar. Its collapse brought about political fragmention that ended with the rise of the Toungoo Empire in the 16th century. Other notable kingdoms of the period include Srivijaya and Lavo (both coming into prominence in the 7th century), Champa and Hariphunchai (both about 750), Đại Việt (968), Lan Na (13th century), Majapahit (1293), Lan Xang (1353), and Ava (1365).

This period saw the spread of Islam to present-day Indonesia (beginning in the 13th century) and the emergence of the Malay states, including Brunei and Malacca. In the Philippines, several polities were formed such as Tondo, Cebu, and Butuan.

Oceania

The Polynesians, descendants of the Lapita peoples, colonized vast reaches of Remote Oceania beginning around 1000 CE.  They traveled the open ocean in double-hulled canoes up to  long, each canoe carrying as many as 50 people and their livestock.  Their voyages resulted in the colonization of hundreds of islands including the Marquesas, Hawaii, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and New Zealand.

The Tui Tonga Empire was founded in the 10th century CE and expanded between 1250 and 1500. Tongan culture, language, and hegemony spread widely throughout eastern Melanesia, Micronesia, and central Polynesia during this period, influencing east 'Uvea, Rotuma, Futuna, Samoa, and Niue, as well as specific islands and parts of Micronesia (Kiribati, Pohnpei, and miscellaneous outliers), Vanuatu, and New Caledonia (specifically, the Loyalty Islands, with the main island being predominantly populated by the Melanesian Kanaks and their cultures). In Northern Australia, there is evidence that Aboriginal Australians regularly traded with Makassan trepangers from Indonesia before the arrival of Europeans.

The question of pre-Columbian contact between Polynesians and Indigenous Americans has long been controversial. In 2020, a genome-wide DNA analysis of Polynesians and Indigenous South Americans shed new light on the debate by reporting evidence of intermingling between Polynesians and pre-Columbian Zenú around 1200 CE. Whether this happened due to Indigenous Americans reaching eastern Polynesia or because the northern coast of South America was visited by Polynesians is not clear.

On Rapa Nui, the islanders carved hundreds of moai, huge stone monuments that could weigh up to 80 tons. The moai are thought to represent high-ranking ancestors. All were pulled down during the chaotic period following European contact. Rapa Nui is also the only Polynesian island to have a writing system, the rongorongo script, although the script remains undeciphered and it may be proto-writing rather than true writing.

Americas

In North America, this period saw the rise of the Mississippian culture in the modern-day United States  CE, marked by the extensive 11th-century urban complex at Cahokia. The Ancestral Puebloans and their predecessors (9th – 13th centuries) built extensive permanent settlements, including stone structures that would remain the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century.

In Mesoamerica, the Teotihuacan civilization fell and the classic Maya collapse occurred. The Aztec Empire came to dominate much of Mesoamerica in the 14th and 15th centuries.

In South America, the 15th century saw the rise of the Inca. The Inca Empire or Tawantinsuyu, with its capital at Cusco, spanned the entire Andes, making it the most extensive pre-Columbian civilization. The Inca were prosperous and advanced, known for an excellent road system and elegant stonework.

Early modern period ()

The early modern period was the period between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution—roughly 1500 to 1800. The period was characterized by proto-globalization and the rise of centralized bureaucratic states. European powers came to dominate much of the world by founding maritime empires: first the Portuguese and Spanish Empires, then the French, English, and Dutch Empires. Historians still debate the causes of Europe's rise, which is known as the Great Divergence.

Capitalist economies began their rise, initially in the northern Italian republics and some Asian port cities. The early modern period saw the rise and dominance of mercantilist economic theory, and the decline and eventual disappearance, in much of the European sphere, of feudalism, serfdom, and the power of the Catholic Church. Shortly before the turn of the 16th century, the Portuguese started establishing factories ranging from Africa to Asia and Brazil, for trade in local commodities such as slaves, gold, spices, and sugar. In the 17th century, private chartered companies were established, such as the English East India Company (founded 1600) – often described as the first multinational corporation – and the Dutch East India Company (founded  1602).

The Age of Discovery was the first period in which Eurasia and Africa engaged in substantial cultural, material, and biologic exchange with the New World. It began in the late 15th century, when the two kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula – Portugal and Castile – sent the first exploratory voyages around the Cape of Good Hope and to the Americas, the latter reached in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. Global integration continued as European colonization of the Americas initiated the Columbian exchange: the exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and culture between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. It was one of history's most important global events, involving ecology and agriculture. New crops brought from the Americas by 16th-century European seafarers substantially contributed to world population growth.

Greater Middle East

After conquering Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire quickly came to dominate the Middle East. Persia came under the rule of the Safavids in 1501, succeeded by the Afshars in 1736, the Zands in 1751, and the Qajars in 1794. The Safavids established Shia Islam as Persia's official religion, thus giving Persia a separate identity from its Sunni neighbors. Along with the Mughals in India, the Ottomans and Safavids are known as the gunpowder empires because of their early adoption of firearms. In North Africa, the Berbers remained in control of independent states until the 16th century. At the end of the 18th century, the Russian Empire began its conquest of the Caucasus. The Uzbeks replaced the Timurids as the preeminent power in Central Asia.

Europe

Europe's Renaissance – the "rebirth" of classical culture, beginning in Italy in the 14th century and extending into the 16th – comprised the rediscovery of the classical world's cultural, scientific, and technological achievements, and the economic and social rise of Europe. The Renaissance engendered a culture of inquisitiveness which ultimately led to humanism and the Scientific Revolution. This period is also celebrated for its artistic and literary attainments. Petrarch's poetry, Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, and the paintings and sculptures of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo are some of the great works of the era. Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type printing in 1453, which helped spread the ideas of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Reformation. The Reformation was an anti-clerical theological and social movement which resulted in the creation of Protestant Christianity. In the aftermath of the Reformation, Protestantism became the majority faith throughout Northwestern Europe and in England and English-speaking America.

In Russia, Ivan the Terrible was crowned in 1547 as the first tsar of Russia, and by annexing the Turkic khanates in the east, transformed Russia into a regional power. The countries of Western Europe, while expanding prodigiously through technological advance and colonial conquest, competed with each other economically and militarily in a state of almost constant war. Often the wars had a religious dimension, either Catholic versus Protestant (primarily in Western Europe) or Christian versus Muslim (primarily in Eastern Europe), though religious tolerance was encouraged in countries like the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which legally guaranteed it with the Warsaw Confederation (1573). Wars of particular note included the Thirty Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years' War, and the French Revolutionary Wars. Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in France in 1799, an event foreshadowing the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.

Sub-Saharan Africa

In Africa, this period saw a decline in many civilizations and an advancement in others. Between 1515 and 1800, Africa lost eight million people to the Atlantic slave trade, and two million to the Arab slave trade. The Atlantic trade was the transport of enslaved Africans to the Americas, while the Arab trade consisted of the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades. The Swahili Coast was influenced by trade with the Portuguese and later the Omanis. In West Africa, the Songhai Empire fell after an invasion by the Moroccans. Bonoman gave birth to numerous Akan states such as Akwamu, Akyem, Fante, and Adansi, among others. The Kingdom of Zimbabwe gave way to smaller kingdoms such as Mutapa, Butua, and Rozvi.

The Ethiopian Empire suffered from the 1531 invasion by the neighboring Muslim Adal Sultanate, and in 1769 entered the Zemene Mesafint (Age of Princes) during which the Emperor became a figurehead and the country was ruled by warlords, though the royal line later would recover under Emperor Tewodros II.

In the Horn of Africa, the Ajuran Sultanate declined in the 18th century, and was succeeded by the Geledi Sultanate. Other civilizations in Africa advanced during this period. The Oyo Empire experienced its golden age, as did the Kingdom of Benin. The Ashanti Empire rose to power in modern-day Ghana in the late 17th century. The Kingdom of Kongo also thrived during this period.

South Asia

In the Indian subcontinent, the Mughal Empire began under Babur in 1526 and lasted for two centuries. Starting in the northwest, the Mughal Empire would come to rule the entire subcontinent by the late 17th century, except for the southernmost Indian provinces, which would remain independent.

Against the Muslim Mughal Empire, the Hindu Maratha Empire was founded by Shivaji on the western coast in 1674. The Marathas gradually gained territory from the Mughals over several decades, particularly in the Mughal–Maratha Wars (1680–1707). The Maratha Empire would fall under the control of the British East India Company in 1818, with all former Maratha and Mughal authority devolving to the British Raj in 1858.

During the same period, Sikhism developed from the spiritual teachings of ten gurus. In 1799, Ranjit Singh established the Sikh Empire in the Punjab. The British East India Company annexed the Sikh Empire after the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849.

Northeast Asia

In 1644, the Ming gave way to the Qing, the last Chinese imperial dynasty, which would rule until 1912. Japan experienced its Azuchi–Momoyama period (1568–1600), followed by the Edo period (1600–1868). The Korean Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) ruled throughout this period, repelling invasions from Japan and China in the 16th and 17th centuries. Expanded maritime trade with Europe significantly affected China and Japan during this period, particularly through the Portuguese in Macau and the Dutch in Nagasaki. However, China and Japan would later pursue isolationist policies designed to eliminate foreign influences.

Southeast Asia

In 1511, the Portuguese overthrew the Malacca Sultanate in present-day Malaysia and Indonesian Sumatra. The Portuguese held this important trading territory (and the valuable associated navigational strait) until overthrown by the Dutch in 1641. The Johor Sultanate, centered on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, became the dominant trading power in the region.

European colonization expanded with the Dutch in Indonesia, the Portuguese in Timor, and the Spanish in the Philippines. Into the 19th century, European expansion would affect the whole of Southeast Asia, with the British in Myanmar and Malaysia, and the French in Indochina. Only Thailand would successfully resist colonization.

Oceania

The Pacific islands of Oceania would also be affected by European contact, starting with the circumnavigational voyage of Ferdinand Magellan (1519–1522), who landed in the Marianas and other islands. Abel Tasman (1642–1644) sailed to present-day Australia, New Zealand, and nearby islands. James Cook (1768–1779) made the first recorded European contact with Hawaii. In 1788, Britain founded its first colony in Australia.

Americas

In the Americas, several European powers colonized the newly discovered continents, largely displacing the native populations and conquering the advanced civilizations of the Aztecs and Inca. Diseases introduced by Europeans devastated American societies, killing 60–90 million people by 1600 and reducing the population by 90–95%. Spain, Portugal, Britain, and France all made extensive territorial claims, and undertook large-scale settlement, including the importation of large numbers of African slaves. Portugal claimed Brazil. Spain claimed the rest of South America, Mesoamerica, and southern North America. The Spanish mined and exported prodigious amounts of silver from the Americas. This American silver boom, along with an increase in Japanese silver mining, caused a surge in inflation known as the price revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Britain colonized the east coast of North America, and France colonized the central region of North America. Russia made incursions onto the northwest coast of North America, with a first colony in present-day Alaska in 1784, and the outpost of Fort Ross in present-day California in 1812. France lost its North American territory to England and Spain after the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Thirteen of the British colonies declared independence as the United States of America in 1776, ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, ending the American Revolutionary War. Napoleon won France's claims back from Spain in 1800, but sold them to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

Late modern period ()

The 19th century saw the global spread of the Industrial Revolution, the greatest transformation of the world economy since the Neolithic Revolution. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain around 1770 and used new modes of production—the factory, mass production, and mechanization—to manufacture a wide array of goods faster and using less labor than previously required. Industrialization raised the global standard of living but caused upheaval as factory owners and workers clashed over wages and working conditions.

European empires lost territory in Latin America, which won independence by the 1820s through military campaigns such as those led by Simón Bolívar, but expanded elsewhere as their industrial economies gave them an advantage over the rest of the world. Britain gained control of the Indian subcontinent, Burma, and the Malay Peninsula; the French took Indochina; and the Dutch cemented their control over the Dutch East Indies. The British also colonized Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa with large numbers of British colonists emigrating to these colonies. Russia colonized large pre-agricultural areas of Siberia. In the late 19th century, the European powers divided the remaining areas of Africa. Only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent. Within Europe, economic and military challenges created a system of nation states, and ethno-cultural groupings began to identify themselves as distinctive nations with aspirations for cultural and political autonomy. This nationalism would become important to peoples across the world in the 20th century.

In response to the encroachment of European powers, several countries undertook programs of industrialization and political reform along Western lines. The Meiji Restoration in Japan was successful and led to the establishment of a colonial empire, while the tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire did little to slow Ottoman decline. China achieved some success with its Self-Strengthening Movement, but was devastated by the Taiping Rebellion, history's bloodiest civil war, which killed 20–30 million people between 1850 and 1864.

The United States developed to become the world's largest economy by the end of the century, and acquired an empire of its own. During the Second Industrial Revolution, a new set of technological advances including electrical power, the internal-combustion engine, and assembly-line manufacturing increased productivity once again. Meanwhile, industrial pollution and environmental damage, present since the discovery of fire and the beginning of civilization, accelerated drastically.

The 20th century opened with Europe at an apex of wealth and power, and with much of the world under its direct colonial control or its indirect domination. Much of the rest of the world was influenced by heavily Europeanized nations: the United States and Japan. As the century unfolded, however, the global system dominated by rival powers was subjected to severe strains, and ultimately yielded to a more fluid structure of independent nation states.

This transformation was catalyzed by wars of unparalleled scope and devastation. World War I led to the collapse of four empires – the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian Empires – and weakened the United Kingdom and France. The Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides saw the systematic destruction, mass murder, and expulsion during World War I of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).

In the war's aftermath, powerful ideologies rose to prominence. The Russian Revolution of 1917 created the first communist state, while the 1920s and 1930s saw militaristic fascist dictatorships gain control in Italy, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere. From 1918 to 1920, the Spanish flu caused the deaths of at least 25 million people.

Ongoing national rivalries, exacerbated by the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, helped precipitate World War II. In that war, the vast majority of the world's countries, including all the great powers, fought as part of two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The leading Axis powers were Germany, Japan, and Italy; while the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China were the "Big Four" Allied powers.

The militaristic dictatorships of Europe and Japan pursued an ultimately doomed course of imperialist expansionism, in the course of which Germany, under Adolf Hitler, orchestrated the genocide of six million Jews in the Holocaust and murdered about as many non-Jews as Jews, while Japan murdered millions of Chinese. When World War II ended in 1945, the United Nations was founded in the hope of preventing future wars, as the League of Nations had been formed following World War I. The war opened the way for the advance of communism into Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Cuba.

Contemporary history

World War II had left two countries, the United States and the Soviet Union, with principal power to influence international affairs. Each was suspicious of the other and feared a global spread of the other's, respectively capitalist and communist, political-economic model. This led to the Cold War, a 45-year stand-off and arms race between the United States and its allies, on one hand, and the Soviet Union and its allies on the other.

With the development of nuclear weapons during World War II and their subsequent proliferation, all of humanity was put at risk of nuclear war between the two superpowers, as demonstrated by many incidents, most prominently the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Such war being viewed as impractical, the superpowers instead waged proxy wars in non-nuclear-armed Third World countries. Between 1969 and 1972, as part of the Cold War Space Race, twelve American astronauts landed on the Moon and safely returned to Earth.

In China, Mao Zedong implemented industrialization and collectivization reforms as part of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), leading to the starvation deaths (1959–1961) of 30–40 million people. After Mao's death, China entered a period of economic liberalization and rapid growth, with the economy expanding by 6.6% per year from 1978 to 2003.

The Cold War ended peacefully in 1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed, partly due to its inability to compete economically with the United States and Western Europe. The United States likewise began to show signs of slippage in its geopolitical influence, and its economic inequality increased.

In the early postwar decades, the colonies in Asia and Africa of the Belgian, British, Dutch, French, and other European empires won their formal independence. Most Western European and Central European countries gradually formed a political and economic community, the European Union, which expanded eastward to include former Soviet satellite states.

Cold War preparations to deter or to fight a third world war accelerated advances in technologies that, though conceptualized before World War II, had been implemented for that war's exigencies, such as jet aircraft, rocketry, and computers. In the decades after World War II, these advances led to jet travel; artificial satellites with innumerable applications, including GPS;
 and the Internet, which in the 1990s began to gain traction as a form of communication. These inventions have revolutionized the movement of people, ideas, and information.

However, not all scientific and technological advances in the second half of the 20th century required an initial military impetus. That period also saw ground-breaking developments such as the discovery of the structure of DNA and DNA sequencing, the worldwide eradication of smallpox, the Green Revolution in agriculture, the introduction of the portable cellular phone, the discovery of plate tectonics, crewed and uncrewed exploration of space, solar-power and wind-power technologies, and foundational discoveries in physics phenomena ranging from the smallest entities (particle physics) to the greatest entity (physical cosmology).

The 21st century saw the expansion of communications, with smartphones becoming ubiquitous, and with the advent of social media. These developments caused fundamental changes in business, politics, popular culture, and personal lives.

The period was marked by growing economic globalization and integration, with consequent increased risk to interlinked economies, as exemplified by the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Beginning in the 2010s, many nations experienced democratic backsliding.

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic substantially disrupted global trading and caused recessions in the global economy. As of 2023, more than six million people had died from COVID-19.

Concerns grew as existential threats from environmental degradation and global warming became increasingly evident, while mitigation efforts, including a shift to sustainable energy, made gradual progress.

References

Explanatory notes

Citations

Bibliography

  updated eds., 2003, 2007.

World history
Articles which contain graphical timelines

Human history


The white-faced whistling duck (Dendrocygna viduata) is a whistling duck that breeds in sub-Saharan Africa and much of South America.

This species is gregarious, and at favoured sites, the flocks of a thousand or more birds arriving at dawn are an impressive sight. As the name implies, these are noisy birds with a clear three-note whistling call.

Description

The white-faced whistling duck has a long grey bill, a long head, and longish legs. It has a black neck and head, and a distinctive white face that gives it its name, though the amount of white color visible has regional variations among the species. For example, the white-faced whistling ducks with more black coloration are commonly found in western Africa where rainfall supersedes the dry season. The back and wings are dark brown to black, and the underparts are black with a fine white barring on the flanks. The neck is chestnut. Males and females have similar plumage. Juveniles are similar in color to adults but have a much less contrasted head pattern.

Range and habitat
The white-faced whistling duck has a peculiar disjunctive distribution, occurring in Africa and South America. It has been suggested that they may have been transported to new locations worldwide by humans. The habitat is still freshwater lakes or reservoirs, with plentiful vegetation, where this duck feeds on seeds and other plant food.

Because of its large range, there are many common names for the white-faced whistling duck, including "irere" and "guiriri".

Ecology
This is an abundant species. It is largely resident, apart from local movements which can be 100 km or more.

Breeding
It nests on a stick platform near the ground and lays 8-12 eggs. Trees are occasionally used for nesting.

Conservation
The white-faced whistling duck is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.

Gallery

References

 Wildfowl by Madge and Burn,

External links

 White-faced Whistling Duck videos, photos & sounds on the Internet Bird Collection
 Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds.
 1965. Handbook of waterfowl behaviour: Tribe Dendrocygnini (Whistling Ducks) by Paul Johnsgard
 (2010) Ducks, Geese, and Swans of the World: Tribe Dendrocygnini (Whistling or Tree Ducks)  by Paul Johnsgard

 Treca, B., 1981: Diet of the white-faced Tree Duck (Dendrocygna viduata) in the Senegal delta. Oiseau et la Revue Francaise d' Ornithologie 51(3): 219-238

 Menegueti, J. O., Burger, M. I., Frozi, M., Tavares, A. E., Dotto, J. C., Fontana, C. S., Ramos, R. A. & Setubal, S. S. (1988) Nota prévia sobre os comportamentos reprodutivos de Dendrocygna viduata e Dendrocygna autumnalis no norte e noroeste do Estado de São Paulo. Resumos: XV Congresso Brasileiro de Zoologia. 31/1 a 5/2/1998. p. 468. Curitiba: Universidade Federal do Paraná.

 http://moscowzoo.ru/docs/C105_402_Klenova_et_al_2002_Berlin.pdf
 http://www.moscowzoo.ru/docs/C105_131_Volodin_et_al_2003_IZN.pdf
 http://www.the-eis.com/data/literature/Oatley_1986_SA_J_Wildl_Res_16_waterfowl.pdf
 http://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/pleins_textes_6/colloques2/010008478.pdf
 http://www.tau.ac.il/lifesci/zoology/members/yom-tov/articles/Factors.pdf
 http://www.bsc-eoc.org/download/lpwwrf%20wfwd%20nutrients.pdf

 http://digital.bl.fcen.uba.ar/Download/008_ElHornero/008_ElHornero_v010_n03_articulo209.pdf

white-faced whistling duck
Birds of South America
Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa
Birds of the Caribbean
Birds of the Dominican Republic
white-faced whistling duck
white-faced whistling duck

White-faced whistling duck


Donald P. Ryan (né en 1957) est un archéologue, égyptologue, écrivain américain. Ses domaines de recherche comprennent l'archéologie égyptienne, l'archéologie polynésienne, l'histoire de l'archéologie, l'histoire de l'exploration, les langues et écritures anciennes et l'archéologie expérimentale.

Biographie
Il est surtout connu pour ses recherches en Égypte, notamment ses fouilles dans la Vallée des Rois où il a enquêté sur les tombes non décorées longtemps négligées du cimetière royal. Son travail a abouti à la redécouverte de la tombe perdue et controversée KV60, la réouverture de KV21 longtemps enterré avec ses deux occupants féminins et probablement royaux, et des tombes KV27, KV28, KV44, KV45 et KV48. En 2017, il a redécouvert trois petites tombes (KV50, KV51 et KV52) dans la vallée des Rois qui contenaient lors de sa découverte en 1906, des momies d'animaux, dont un chien et des singes.

Entre 1995 et 2002, Ryan a travaillé en étroite collaboration avec l'explorateur, archéologue et écrivain norvégien Thor Heyerdahl. Parmi leurs nombreux projets, ils ont dirigé des fouilles sur le site des pyramides de Guimar à Tenerife dans les îles Canaries. Ryan a été chargé de poursuivre certains des aspects de recherche de l'héritage de Heyerdahl.

D'autres recherches de Ryan comprennent des études sur les cordages égyptiens anciens et d'autres technologies, des études des cônes funéraires égyptiens, des études biographiques des premiers archéologues, dont Giovanni Belzoni, des études sur l'influence de l'antiquité sur la culture et les arts, et la documentation des pétroglyphes sur l'île d'Hawaï.

Références

Liens externes

 Page Web de Donald P. Ryan
 Page d'archéologie égyptienne de Ryan
 Page d'archéologie polynésienne de Ryan, y compris le travail avec Thor Heyerdahl

Égyptologue américain
Naissance en 1957
Membre de la Royal Geographical Society
Archéologue américain
Index égyptologique

Donald P. Ryan


Indenfor ernæring er en enkeltumættet fedtsyre en type fedtsyre med en enkelt dobbeltbinding i fedtsyrekæden, hvor alle carbonerne i kæden er enkeltbindinger, i modsætning til flerumættede fedtsyrer som har mere end en dobbeltbinding.

Naturlige kilder med enkeltumættet fedt
 Avocado
 Rapsolie
 Korn
 Linolie
 Jordnøddeolie
 Havremel
 Olivenolie
 Popcorn
 Sesamolie
 Solsikkeolie
 Fuldkornshvede

Molekylær beskrivelse af oljesyre

Fedtsyrer

Enkeltumættet fedtsyre


Camissonia, Rod jednogodišnjeg raslinja i trajnica iz porodice vrbolikovki (Onagraceae). Pripada mu blizu 20 vrsta rasprostranjenih po zapadu Sjeverne Amerike, i zapadne i južne Južne Amerike.

Vrste

 Camissonia bairdii S.L.Welsh
 Camissonia benitensis P.H.Raven
 Camissonia bolanderi N.D.Atwood & S.L.Welsh
 Camissonia breviflora (Torr. & A.Gray) P.H.Raven
 Camissonia campestris (Greene) P.H.Raven
 Camissonia contorta (Douglas ex Lehm.) Kearney
 Camissonia dentata (Cav.) Reiche
 Camissonia dominguez-escalantorum N.D.Atwood, L.C.Higgins & S.L.Welsh
 Camissonia integrifolia P.H.Raven
 Camissonia kernensis (Munz) P.H.Raven
 Camissonia lacustris P.H.Raven
 Camissonia ovata (Nutt.) P.H.Raven
 Camissonia parvula (Nutt.) P.H.Raven
 Camissonia pubens (S.Watson) P.H.Raven
 Camissonia pusilla P.H.Raven
 Camissonia sierrae P.H.Raven
 Camissonia strigulosa (Fisch. & C.A.Mey.) P.H.Raven
 Camissonia subacaulis (Pursh) P.H.Raven
 Camissonia tanacetifolia (Torr. & A.Gray) P.H.Raven

Izvori

Vrbolikovke

Camissonia


Sarah Louise Waters est une mathématicienne appliquée britannique dont les intérêts de recherche incluent la mécanique des fluides biologiques, l'ingénierie tissulaire et leurs applications en médecine.

Formation et carrière
Waters a terminé son doctorat à l'université de Leeds en 1996. Sa thèse, Coronary artery hemodynamics: pulsatile flow in a tube of time-dependent curvature, a été supervisée par Tim Pedley. Elle a été nommée professeure à Oxford en 2014.

Elle est professeure de mathématiques appliquées à l'Institut de mathématiques de l'université d'Oxford, membre du St Anne's College d'Oxford et chercheuse principale du Leverhulme Trust de la Royal Society.

Prix et distinctions
En 2012, elle a reçu un prix Whitehead « pour ses contributions aux domaines de la mécanique des fluides physiologiques et de la biomécanique des tissus artificiellement modifiés ».

En 2019, Waters a été élue membre de la Société américaine de physique.

Références

Liens externes

 Page personnelle

Étudiant de l'université de Leeds
Mathématicienne du XXIe siècle
Mathématicien britannique
Lauréat du prix Whitehead

Sarah L. Waters


Ljubomir Čečuk (Omiš, 24. ožujka 1920. – Zagreb, 9. kolovoza 2002.), hrvatski liječnik urolog i akademik HAZU, pionir transplantacijske medicine u Hrvatskoj.

Životopis
Rodio se u Omišu. U Splitu završio Klasičnu gimnaziju, u Zagrebu Medicinski fakultet. Specijalizirao urologiju i kirurgiju. Usavršavao se u Zapadnoj Europi i SAD. Od 1954. šef Urološkog odjela Kirurške klinike Medicinskog fakulteta u Zagrebu.

Godine 1970. osamostalio je Urološki odjel na Rebru u Kliniku za urologiju. Predstojnik te klinike do 1986. godine. Pri klinici osnovao Centar za hemodijalizu i Centar za tipizaciju tkiva. Tijekom 1970. je osnovan nastavni odjel urologije, čiji je predstojnik Ljubomir Čečuk.

Izvanredni profesor od 1967., a redoviti profesor Medicinskoga fakulteta u Zagrebu od 1973. godine. Predavao je opću kirurgiju, kliničku kirurgiju, područje urologije i kirurške propedeutike. 1970-ih je uveo urologiju kao poseban predmet u Curriculum Medicinskog fakulteta. Pročelnik Katedre za urologiju od 1981. do 1986. godine.
Ravnatelj KBC i dekan Medicinskog fakulteta u Zagrebu 1982. – 1985. godine.

Čečukovom zaslugom i radom u Hrvatskoj se razvila suvremena kirurgija bubrega i mokraćnih putova te urološka onkologija. Uveo je nove operativne metode rekonstruktivnih zahvata na odvodnim mokraćnim putovima te originalna rješenja u operacijama bubrežnih kamenaca.

U nakladničkom nizu HAZU Spomenica preminulim akademicima u sv. 117 iz 2004. godine prikazan je dr. Ljubomir Čečuk. Izdanje je uredio Dragan Dekaris.

Dobitnik mnoštva nagrada i odlikovanja. Od 1981. izvanredni, a od 1990. za redoviti član Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti.

Izvori

Vanjske poveznice
DiZbi.HAZU Ljubomir Čečuk
WorldCat Ljubomir Čečuk
Almissa.com Ljubomir Čečuk
National Center for Biotechnology Information PubMed: Cecuk L

Hrvatski kirurzi
Akademici HAZU
Životopisi, Omiš
Životopisi, Zagreb
Hrvatski urolozi

Ljubomir Čečuk


William Scott Ritter Jr. (born July 15, 1961) is an American author, international relations analyst, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector, and a convicted sex offender.

Ritter served as a junior military analyst during Operation Desert Storm. He then served as a member of the UNSCOM overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, from which he resigned in protest. He later became a critic of the Iraq War and United States foreign policy in the Middle East. He is a regular contributor to Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik.

Ritter was the subject of police sting operations for sex crimes in 2001 and 2009, and was convicted of sex crimes involving a minor in 2011.

Early and personal life
Ritter was born into a military family in 1961 in Gainesville, Florida. He graduated from Kaiserslautern American High School in Kaiserslautern, Germany in 1979, and later from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with a Bachelor of Arts in the history of the Soviet Union and departmental honors.

Military background
In 1980, Ritter served in the U.S. Army as a private. Then, in May 1984, he was commissioned as an intelligence officer in the United States Marine Corps. He served in this capacity for about 12 years. He served as the lead analyst for the Marine Corps Rapid Deployment Force concerning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran–Iraq War.

Ritter's academic work focused on the Basmachi resistance movement in Soviet Central Asia during the 1920s and 1930s, and on the Basmachi commanders Fazail Maksum and Ibrahim Bek.

During Desert Storm (1991), as a Marine captain, he served as a ballistic missile intelligence analyst under General Norman Schwarzkopf. Ritter filed multiple internal reports challenging Schwarzkopf's claim that the US had destroyed  "as many as 16" of Iraq's estimated 20 mobile Scud missile launchers, arguing that they could not be confirmed. In 1992 Ritter was quoted in a New York Times op-ed saying "No mobile Scud launchers were destroyed during the war." Ritter later worked as a security and military consultant for the Fox News network. Ritter also had "a long relationship [...] of an official nature" with the UK's foreign intelligence spy agency MI6 according to an interview he gave to Democracy Now! in 2003.

Weapons inspector
Ritter worked as a weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission  from 1991 to 1998, which was charged with finding and destroying all weapons of mass destruction and WMD-related manufacturing capabilities in Iraq. He was chief inspector in fourteen of the more than thirty inspection missions in which he participated.

Ritter was amongst a group of UNSCOM weapons inspectors that regularly took Lockheed U-2 imagery to Israel for analysis, as UNSCOM was not getting sufficient analysis assistance from the United States and the United Kingdom.  This was not authorized by UNSCOM, the American U-2 having been loaned to UNSCOM and caused Ritter to be subjected to criticism and investigation by U.S. authorities. Iraq protested about the supply of such information to Israel.

Operation Mass Appeal
Beginning in December 1997, Ritter, with the approval of UNSCOM head Richard Butler and other top UNSCOM leaders, began to supply the UK's foreign intelligence service MI6 with documents and briefings on UNSCOM's findings to be used for MI6's propaganda effort dubbed "Operation Mass Appeal": "I was approached by the British intelligence service, which I had, again, a long relationship with, of an official nature, to see if there was any information in the archives of UNSCOM that could be handed to the British, so that they could in turn work it over, determine its veracity, and then seek to plant it in media outlets around the world, in an effort to try to shape the public opinion of those countries, and then indirectly, through, for instance, a report showing up in the Polish press, shape public opinion in Great Britain and the United States.

"I went to Richard Butler with the request from the British. He said that he supported this, and we initiated a cooperation that was very short-lived. The first reports were passed to the British sometime in February of 1998. There was a detailed planning meeting in June of 1998, and I resigned in August of 1998. [...] This is an operation—Operation Mass Appeal, that had been going on prior to UNSCOM being asked to be the source of particular data, and it's an operation that continued after my resignation."

Last weapons inspections in 1998
In January 1998, Ritter's inspection team in Iraq was blocked from some weapons sites by Iraqi officials who stated that information obtained from these sites would be used for future planning of attacks. UN Inspectors then left Iraq, shortly before Operation Desert Fox attacks began in December 1998, using information which had been gathered for the purpose of disarmament to identify targets which would reduce Iraq's ability to wage both conventional and possibly unconventional warfare. UN Weapons Inspectors were thereafter denied access to Iraq. Ritter spoke on the Public Broadcasting Service show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:
I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measured in months, reconstitute chemical and biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their developing of nuclear weapons program.

When the United States and the UN Security Council failed to take action against Iraq for their ongoing failure to cooperate fully with inspectors (a breach of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1154), Ritter resigned from the United Nations Special Commission on August 26, 1998.

In his letter of resignation, Ritter said the Security Council's reaction to Iraq's decision earlier that month to suspend co-operation with the inspection team made a mockery of the disarmament work. Ritter later said, in an interview, that he resigned from his role as a United Nations weapons inspector over inconsistencies between United Nations Security Council Resolution 1154 and how it was implemented.
The investigations had come to a standstill, were making no effective progress, and in order to make effective progress, we really needed the Security Council to step in a meaningful fashion and seek to enforce its resolutions that we're not complying with.

On September 3, 1998, several days after his resignation, Ritter testified before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services and the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and said that he resigned his position "out of frustration that the United Nations Security Council, and the United States as its most significant supporter, was failing to enforce the post-Gulf War resolutions designed to disarm Iraq." Ritter said that Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright had supposedly "blocked more inspections in 1997 than Saddam Hussein did," a charge which Albright disputed.

During the testimony on September 3, 1998, Ritter was asked by then-Senator Joe Biden about his position on inspections, which Biden criticized as "confrontation-based policy." According to Barton Gellman, Biden questioned if the inspector was trying to "appropriate the power 'to decide when to pull the trigger' of military force against Iraq," with Biden stating that the Secretary of State would also have to consider the opinion of allies, the United Nations Security Council and public opinion, before any potential intervention in Iraq. Later on, Biden stated that the decision was "above [Ritter's] pay grade." According to Gellman, Senate Democrats joined Biden and "amplified on the Clinton administration's counterattack [against] Scott Ritter" with exceptions such as John Kerry, while Senate Republicans "were unanimous in describing Ritter's disclosures as highly damaging to the credibility of the Clinton administration on one of its core foreign policies."

Ritter's testimony was disputed by Richard Butler, chief UN arms inspector for Iraq, who claimed Ritter made factual errors and harmed UNSCOM's mission. The previous chief inspector for Iraq, Rolf Ekéus, said that Ritter was "not in a position to know all of the considerations that go into decision making on the commission," and defended Albright's support for UNSCOM. Albright also publicly disputed Ritter's claims in a speech, saying "In fact, the United States has been by far the strongest international backer of UNSCOM. We have provided indispensable technical and logistical support. We've pushed and pushed and pushed some more to help UNSCOM break through the smoke screen of lies and deceptions put out by the Iraqi regime."

Reception as weapons inspector
Richard Butler, Ritter's former UNSCOM boss, said that Ritter "wasn't prescient" in his predictions about WMDs, saying, "When he was the 'Alpha Dog' inspector, then by God, there were more weapons there, and we had to go find them—a contention for which he had inadequate evidence. When he became a peacenik, then it was all complete B.S., start to finish, and there were no weapons of mass destruction. And that also was a contention for which he had inadequate evidence."

Writing in The New York Times, Matt Bai said that Butler's caveat notwithstanding, Ritter was in fact vindicated about Iraq's lack of WMDs and that the aftermath of the war could be calamitous. Bai described Ritter as the "most determined dissenter and the one with the most on-the-ground intelligence" of the situation in Iraq prior to the war.

However, Bai went on to compare Ritter's insistence during his 2011 trial for sex offenses that his conduct was of no consequence to the wider community—and his unwillingness to consider a plea agreement—to the stridency with which Ritter advocated for his views on Iraq: "If there is a connection between Ritter the activist and Ritter the accused, though, it probably lies in the uncompromising, even heedless way in which he insists on his version of reality, and how he sees himself always as the victim of a system that is self-evidently corrupt. ... the very attribute that made Scott Ritter appear somehow clairvoyant on Iraq—his refusal to accede to everyone else's sense of reality—is the same one that has led him, now, to ruin."

U.S. policy toward Iraq

Following his resignation from UNSCOM, Ritter continued to be an outspoken commentator on U.S. policy toward Iraq, particularly with respect to the WMD issue. He became a popular anti-war figure and talk show commentator.

Ritter and Operation Desert Fox
In a 2005 interview, Ritter criticized the Clinton administration's use of a blocked inspection of a Ba'ath party headquarters to justify Operation Desert Fox, a three-day bombing campaign in December 1998 that saw inspectors withdrawn from Iraq where they would not return until late 2002. However, in his 1999 book Endgame, Ritter explained that he was the one who had originally pushed for the fateful inspection of the Ba'ath party headquarters over the doubts of his boss Richard Butler and also planned to use 37 inspectors. It was temporarily canceled because Iraq broke off cooperation in August 1998.

Commentary in the post-inspection period

In Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem — Once and For All, Ritter restated that Iraq had obstructed the work of inspectors and attempted to hide and preserve essential elements for restarting WMD programs at a later date. However, he also expressed frustration at alleged attempts by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to infiltrate UNSCOM and use the inspectors as a means of gathering intelligence with which to pursue regime change in Iraq – a violation of the terms under which UNSCOM operated, and the very rationale the Iraqi government had given in restricting the inspector's activities in 1998.

In the book's conclusion, Ritter criticized the U.S. policy of containment in the absence of inspections as inadequate to prevent Iraq's re-acquisition of WMD's in the long term. He also rejected the notion of removing Saddam Hussein's regime by force. Instead, he advocated a policy of diplomatic engagement, leading to gradual normalization of international relations with Iraq in return for inspection-verified abandonment of their WMD programs and other objectionable policies.

Ritter again promoted a conciliatory approach toward Iraq in the 2000 documentary In Shifting Sands: The Truth About UNSCOM and the Disarming of Iraq, which he wrote and directed. The film tells the history of the UNSCOM investigations through interviews and video footage of inspection missions. In the film, Ritter argues that Iraq is a "defanged tiger" and that the inspections were successful in eliminating significant Iraqi WMD capabilities. (For more see below under "Documentary".)

In 2002, Ritter traveled to Iraq to address the Iraqi Parliament as a private citizen. He told the parliament the U.S. was about to make an "historical mistake" and urged it to allow inspections to resume.

Iraq War predictions
Just after the coalition invasion of Iraq had been launched, but prior to troops arriving in Baghdad, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Parliament of the United Kingdom that the United States and the United Kingdom believed they had "sufficient forces" in Iraq. At that very time Ritter offered an opposing view on Portuguese radio station TSF: "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win ... We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable ... Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam, but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost," Ritter added.

Commentary on Iraq's lack of WMDs
Despite identifying himself as a Republican, and having voted for George W. Bush in 2000, by 2002, Ritter had become an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's claims that Iraq possessed significant WMD stocks or manufacturing capabilities, the primary rationale given for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Prior to the war, Ritter stated that the U.S.and British governments were using the presence of WMD's in Iraq as a political excuse for war. His views at that time are summarized in War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know a 2002 publication which consists largely of an interview between Ritter and anti-war activist William Rivers Pitt.

Later statements on Iraq
In February 2005, writing on Al Jazeera's website, Ritter wrote that the "Iraqi resistance" is a "genuine grassroots national liberation movement," and "History will eventually depict as legitimate the efforts of the Iraqi resistance to destabilize and defeat the American occupation forces and their imposed Iraqi collaborationist government."

In 2012, Ritter said the U.S. was "bankrupt, morally and fiscally, because of this war. The United States is the laughingstock of the world".

U.S. policy toward Iran
On February 6, 2006, in the James A. Little Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Ritter stated about a U.S. war with Iran: "We just don't know when, but it's going to happen," and said that after the U.N. Security Council will have found no evidence of WMD, then Under Secretary of State John Bolton "will deliver a speech that has already been written. It says America cannot allow Iran to threaten the United States and we must unilaterally defend ourselves." and continued "How do I know this? I've talked to Bolton's speechwriter".

Ritter's book Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change was published in 2006. Nathan Guttman in his review for The Forward said Ritter accused the "pro-Israel lobby of dual loyalty and 'outright espionage'". Ritter said that Israel was pushing the Bush administration into war with Iran. He accused the pro-Israel lobby of invoking the Holocaust and of making false claims of antisemitism. Ritter told The Forward "at the end of the day, I would like to believe that most of American Jews will side with America."

Of Ritter's writing about the  government in Iran, Con Coughlin in The Daily Telegraph wrote that Ritter suggested "that the Bush administration is in danger of making the same mistake over Iran that it did during the build-up to the Iraq war, namely getting the facts to fit the administration's policy of effecting regime change in Tehran". Ritter, Coughlin wrote, concedes the "measures the Iranians have taken in pursuit of nuclear glory" which include the "concealing the existence of key nuclear facilities".

In Shifting Sands
Ritter's documentary In Shifting Sands was released in 2001. It argued that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction because of the UN weapons inspection programme. According to The Washington Times, Ritter's documentary was partially financed by Iraqi American businessman Shakir al Khafaji. Al-Khafaji pled guilty to multiple felony charges in 2004 for his involvement with the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal.

Ritter denied any quid pro quo with Al-Khafaji, according to Laurie Mylroie, writing for the Financial Times. When Ritter was asked "how he would characterize anyone suggesting that Mr. Khafaji was offering allocations in [his] name", Mr. Ritter replied: "I'd say that person's a fucking liar ... and tell him to come over here so I can kick his ass."

Arrests and conviction for sex offenses
Ritter was the subject of two law enforcement sting operations in 2001. He was charged in June 2001 with trying to set up a meeting with an undercover police officer posing as a 16-year-old girl. He was charged with a misdemeanor crime of "attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child". The charge was dismissed and the record was sealed after he completed six months of pre-trial probation. After this information was made public in early 2003, Ritter said that the timing of the leak was politically motivated in order to silence his opposition to the Bush administration's push toward war with Iraq.

Ritter was arrested again in November 2009 over communications with a police decoy he met on an Internet chat site. Police said that he exposed himself, via a web camera, after the officer repeatedly identified himself as a 15-year-old girl. Ritter said in his own testimony during the trial that he believed the other party was an adult acting out her fantasy. The chat room had an "age 18 and above" policy, which Ritter stated to the undercover officer.

The next month, Ritter waived his right to a preliminary hearing and was released on $25,000 unsecured bail. Charges included "unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communications facility, corruption of minors, indecent exposure, possessing instruments of crime, criminal attempt and criminal solicitation". Ritter rejected a plea bargain and was found guilty of all but the criminal attempt count in a courtroom in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, on April 14, 2011.

In October 2011, he received a sentence of one and a half to five and a half years in prison. He was sent to Laurel Highlands state prison in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, in March 2012 and paroled in September 2014.

Syria
In a 2018 interview with Dennis Bernstein for Consortium News, Ritter spoke about the war in Syria. He said there was no hard evidence that a chemical attack took place at Ghouta.

Russian invasion of Ukraine
In April 2022, he posted a tweet claiming that the National Police of Ukraine was responsible for the Bucha massacre and calling U.S. President Joe Biden a "war criminal" for "seeking to shift blame for the Bucha murders" to Russia. The police only entered the city on April 2, a day after the dead civilians were discovered. Investigators such as Human Rights Watch link the killings to the Russian military. Ritter was suspended from Twitter for violating its rule on "harassment and abuse" after this, but his account was reinstated the next day.

Ritter is a frequent contributor to Sputnik and RT. Polygraph.info wrote that he compared Ukraine to "a rabid dog" that needed to be shot. He compared the treatment of Russians under Ukraine law to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews. In October 2022, he posted a provocative tweet about Bucha to test the reaction of Twitter. The tweet stated "Bucha was a war crime, Ukraine did it". The website DisinfoChronicle wrote that Ritter was being used by Russia to "promote narratives needed by the Kremlin".

In July 2022, the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation included Ritter on a list of what it called Russian propagandists.

In April 2022 and April 2023 Ritter said that Russia was winning the war. Polygraph.info wrote that Ritter's claims about Russia winning the war and about the Bucha massacre were false.

In 2023, Ritter toured Kazan, Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg to launch his book, Disarmament in the time of the Perestroika, which examines nuclear weapons agreements between Russia and the U.S. According to Euronews, he predicted that Ukraine would lose the war.

In September 2023 Polish government issued an #Infoalert, warning about Ritter as an tool of propagating lies by Russian propaganda machine.

Selected bibliography
 Scorpion King: America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump (Paperback), Clarity Press, 2020; 2nd revised edition,
Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West's Road to War (Paperback), Clarity Press, 2017,
Dangerous Ground: America's Failed Arms Control Policy, from FDR to Obama (Hardcover), 2009
Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement, Nation Books, 2007,
Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change (Hardcover), Nation Books, 2006,
Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (Hardcover), Foreword by Seymour Hersh, Nation Books, 2006,
Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America Context Books, 2003,
War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know (with William Rivers Pitt). Context Books, 2002,
Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem — Once and For All (Hardcover) Simon & Schuster, 1999, ; (paperback) Diane Pub Co, 2004,

See also

Operation Rockingham

References

Further reading
Scott Ritter's Other War, The New York Times magazine, February 22, 2012

External links

The Case for Iraq's Qualitative Disarmament Arms Control Today magazine, June 2000
Scott Ritter in His Own Words Time magazine interview, September 2002
Understanding the Roots of Terrorism Caltech University, November 2002
Scott Ritter Warns Against "Politically Motivated Hype" on Iran Nuke Program — video report by Democracy Now!

Scott Ritter on the Muck Rack journalist listing site

1961 births
Living people
American anti–Iraq War activists
Iran–United States relations
American foreign policy writers
American male non-fiction writers
United States Marine Corps personnel of the Gulf War
Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
United States Marine Corps officers
Franklin & Marshall College alumni
American officials of the United Nations
20th-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American male writers
21st-century American male writers
RT (TV network) people
American prisoners and detainees
American people convicted of child sexual abuse

Scott Ritter