The document provides an overview of how human inventions and technological developments have shaped the Earth throughout history, divided into several eras. It describes key inventions from the Copper Age to the Iron Age, including pottery, writing systems, and wheeled vehicles. During the 19th century, railways revolutionized transportation, while steamships and the internal combustion engine were also developed. The 20th century saw advances in air travel, space exploration, computers, and the rise of nanotechnology. Looking to the future, it is uncertain how technology will continue to change life in the coming decades and centuries.

1. ANTHROPOCENE
How humans have affected earth throughout the years
Sofia Papakosta
Vivenia Reppa
G5 2nd Experimental Junior
High School of Athens
Teacher: Dimitra Dertili

2. ANTHROPOCENE
• The anthropocene describes how humankind has
shaped the earth and has changed the environment in
order to satisfy its needs
https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/Anthropocene

3. THE AGRARIAN ERA
4000BC-1ST MILLENIUM BC

4. 4000 BC: COPPER AGE
• The Copper Age is the beginning of the Bronze Age.
• During this age, several inventions were made mainly in eastern
Europe, Asia and Mesopotamia. Some of them are:
 Pottery Technology
 Rope
 Daggers, arrowheads and swords
 Cultivation of plants and seeds
 Some of the first writing systems
http://wiki.sjs.org/wiki/index.php/List_and_ex
plain_any_inventions_from_the_Early_Bronz
e_Age_to_the_Iron_Age

5. 3000-1500BC: BRONZE AGE
• In this period some great inventions were made and people
started adapting to new lifestyles. For example:
 Sumerians started living together, creating the very first cities and
civilization
 Middle Eastern and European civilians began to cultivate and farm
more than they did before
 People in southern Asia and northern Europe started to use
wheeled items
 Tin was discovered and metals were used for tools and weapons
https://www.thoughtco.com/wheeled-vehicles-history-practical-human-use-171870
http://www.timemaps.com/history/europe-3500bc/#timemap-3500bc/
http://www.timemaps.com/history/middle-east-3500bc/

6. 1500 BC: BRONZE AGE
• One of the greatest inventions of humankind, the alphabet, was made in
1500 BC in Asia
• Other inventions that were made back then:
 Pottery wheel
 Writing, China
 Use of iron, Hittites
 Wheels with spokes as to fight the enemies from their chariot, Asia
 Squash, corn, beans, potatoes and sweet potatoes, south and central America
http://quatr.us/timelines/2000bc.htm
http://www.timemaps.com/history/europe-1500bc/

7. 1ST MILLENNIUM BC: IRON AGE
• During this period, many empires rose, people began to use coins more
often and, of course, a lot of inventions were made:
 Catapult, lenses and the Pythagorean Theory, Ancient Greece
 Also, the greek alphabet was invented, the first alphabet with vowels
 Lighthouse, Egypt
 Glass, Lebanon
 Fake teeth, Etruria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_millennium_BC

8. THE MODERN ERA
1ST MILLENIUM AD- MID TO LATE 21ST CENTURY

9. 1ST MILLENNIUM AD
• This period was characterized for the religious and christian character,
the Middle Ages and the Great Migration in the Mediterranean and in
Europe as well. Christianity was considered to be more accurate than
science and this was a cause for many wars.
• In the east, the Byzantine Empire rose and Islamism spread its
influence, having its Golden Age, while in the west the Vikings expanded
their conquest and upgraded their ships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_millennium

10. THE RAILWAY REVOLUTION: 19TH
CENTURY
• The first train that ran directly from York to London
was in 1840
• 10 years after, there were 12 more trains a day
travelling between these two cities, a great
achievement for that time.
• Despite some arguments that took place in 1830,
industries soon realized that railways were very
profitable and for almost 10 years they boosted the
creation and the use of railways. As a result, there
were 10,000 acts creating railways later this period
http://www.historyextra.com/article/feature/8-facts-about-history-railways
https://www.thoughtco.com/railways-in-the-industrial-revolution-1221650

11. STEAMSHIPS: EARLY 19TH CENTURY
• The first ship powered by steam was the
Pyroscaphe, built by Marquis de Jouffroy d'Abbans in
1783.
• The first successful steamship though was the
Charlotte Dundas in 1802.
• By 1818 steam powered ships and the quadruple-
expansion engine were developed.
• In 1854 John Elder invented the compound steam
engine and a few years later Brunel's Great Eastern,
the largest ship at that time, was launched.
http://www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/IR/033.html

12. HISTORY OF THE INTERNAL
COMBUSTION ENGINE: LATE 19TH
CENTURY
• 1509: Leonardo da Vinci described a compression-less
engine. 1673: Christiaan Huygens described a
compression-less engine.
• 1780's: Alessandro Volta built a toy electric pistol in
which an electric spark exploded a mixture of air and
hydrogen, firing a cork from the end of the gun.
• 17th century: English inventor Sir Samuel Morland used
gunpowder to drive water pumps.
• 1794: Robert Street built a compression-less engine
whose principle of operation would dominate for nearly a
century.
• 1806: Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz built an
internal combustion engine powered by a mixture of
hydrogen and oxygen.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Internal_combustion_engine
http://www.crankshift.com/history-internal-combustion-engine
• 1882: James Atkinson invented the Atkinson cycle
engine. Atkinson’s engine had one power phase per
revolution together with different intake and expansion
volumes making it more efficient than the Otto cycle.
• 1891: Herbert Akroyd Stuart builds his oil engine
leasing rights to Hornsby of England to build engines.
• 1900: Rudolf Diesel demonstrated the diesel engine in
the
1900 Exposition Universelle using peanut oil
(biodiesel).

13. AIRLINE INDUSTRY: EARLY 20TH
CENTURY
• On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers executed the first flight in history.
• In 1938, the Civil Aeronautics Act established the Civil Aeronautics Board. This
board had numerous functions, two of which were determining airlines' routes of
travel and regulating prices for passenger fares.
• In the history of air travel, civil air jets were developed in the 1950’s. The first was
the Boeing 707 passenger jet.
• In 1978 airlines were able to set their own routes and prices
• A 1981 air traffic controllers strike brought a temporary setback to the growth,
which continued throughout the 1980s.
• In 2001 another economic downturn occured, as business travel decreased
substantially while labor and fuel costs increased. 9/11 greatly magnified the
airlines' issues, leading to a sharp decline in customers and significantly higher
operating costs.

14. SPACE EXPLORATION: MID 20TH
CENTURY 1/2
• In the 1930s and 1940s the Nazis found very useful the long-distance rockets as weapons.
• In the late 1950s the Russians first launched an artificial satellite, Sputnik I. It was launched on 4 October
1957.
• On 3 November 1957 the Russians sent a dog, Laika, into space in a satellite. She was the first living
creature in space.
• During the 1960s unmanned spacecraft photographed and probed the moon before astronauts ever
landed.
• By the end of 1970, the Voyager spacecraft had sent back detailed images of Jupiter and Saturn, their
rings, and their moons.
• In the 1980s satellite communications expanded to carry television programs, and people were able to
pick up the satellite signals on their home dish antennas.
• Spacecraft called Near Shoemaker was launched in 1996. It became the first craft to land on an asteroid
(Eros) in 2001.
http://www.aerospace.org/education/stem-outreach/space-
primer/a-brief-history-of-space-exploration/
http://www.localhistories.org/space.html

15. 2/2
• In 2004 the European Space Agency launched a spacecraft
called Rosetta, which was set to reach a comet in 2014.
• The New Horizons probe was launched by NASA in 2006 and
it was scheduled to reach Pluto and Charon in 2015. Also in
2006 Venus Express managed to reach Venus.
• In 2011 Messenger became the first probe to orbit Mercury.
Also, in 2011 a spacecraft called Dawn became the first to
orbit an asteroid.
• The first woman in space was Liu Yang, in 2012
http://www.aerospace.org/education/stem-outreach/space-primer/a-brief-
history-of-space-exploration/
http://www.localhistories.org/space.html

16. THE DIGITAL ERA
FROM LATE 20TH CENTURY TO MID 21ST CENTURY

17. THE RISE OF PRACTICAL SCIENCES
• Biology- Nanotechnology: 1956: in MIT the term ‘’molecular engineering” was introduced
• 1974: Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi coined the term nanotechnology to
describe precision machining of materials within atomic-scale dimensional tolerances.
• 1990s: Nanotechnological companies are set up.
• 1999–early 2000’s: Consumer products due to nanotechnology began appearing in the
marketplace. (digital cameras etc)
• 2004: the first college-level education program in nanotechnology was established in the USA
( College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.)

18. COMPUTER SCIENCE
• 1944: The very first computer was introduced at the university of Harvard in
the USA.
• 1947: Instead of punch cards people were now able to use type information
effectively thanks to the invention of the keyboard.
• 1950: The first digital computer is invented in Japan. This will allow more
data to be released and read easily.
• 1963: The mouse was introduced.
• 1975:Altair invents the first portable computer.
• August 6,1991: The World Wide Web was introduced and everyone
could have access to information with just a simple click.

19. COSMOLOGY-BIG BANG
The most widespread and acceptable theory of the creation of the
universe among the scientific circles was developed by Stephen
Hawking.
According to this theory the Universe was created from an excessively
dense and warm state about 13.8 billion years ago.
Hawking put so much effort into trying to understand black holes and the
possibility of an existing parallel universe.

20. SOURCES
• http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/664230/stephen-hawking-black-
hole-nobel-prize-hawking-radiation
• https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9C%CE%B5%CE%B3%CE%AC%C
E%BB%CE%B7_%CE%88%CE%BA%CF%81%CE%B7%CE%BE%CE
%B7
• https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/10-important-events-in-computer-
history
• https://www.nano.gov/timeline

21. FUTURE ERA

22. WHAT ABOUT TOMMOROW?
• No one really knows how lives are going to be shaped in the future, but
there are high chances of us living in a society not so different from the
ones depicted in recent fantasy movies and Sci-Fi novels.
• Automatic cars, implanted computer chips into ours eyes or our brains,
helmet structures that transport signals and help with the education of
people, hardwired internet connection in every aspect of our routines
are only some of our predictions of how our lives will be tomorrow.

23. HOWEVER
• There is a truth universally acknowledged that if we do not stop waste
and take advantage of earth natural resources, do not tackle problems
such as pollution, the greenhouse effect and the extinction of
endangered species and do not sensitize ourselves about the
devastating poor living conditions of the developing countries the future
will not be bright at all.
• Its high time we take action and do something to protect the generations
to come and the earth from our own terrible effects on our planet and
our lives.