Solar History Timeline

Our understanding of the sun and its many details is part of a much longer history of events that had to unfold. These pages will take you on a journey from the birth of the cosmos, to the most recent discoveries about our nearest star.

• The Origin of the Cosmos, Sun, and Humans (13.7 billion years ago to 10,000 years ago)
• The Rise of Modern Humans and Curiosity ( 8,000 BC to 1440 AD)
• New Technologies and Newer Ideas ( 1609 to 1938)
• The Modern Era of Solar Physics ( 1939 to 2006)

The Rise of Modern Humans and Curiosity

8,000 BC - Oldest city, Jericho, has 2000 inhabitants
7,000 BC - Fired pottery invented
5,600 BC - The Black Sea Flood
4,236 BC - Egyptian Calendar begins.
3,700 BC - Megalithic stone graves appear in Denmark.
3,500 BC - First Sumerian writing appears.
3,400 BC - Invention of the wheel.
3,100 BC - First work on Stonehenge begins
2,700 BC - First pyramids built in Egypt.
2,500 BC - Development of Chinese characters
2,357 BC - Chinese record mention the Pleiades star cluster.
2,134 BC - Chinese astrologers failed to predict a solar eclipse
2,000 BC - Chinese report aurora sightings
1,600 BC - Sun disk and star map created in Germany
1,375 BC - First solar eclipse recorded in Babylon.
1,111 BC - First naked-eye solar flares sighted by Chinese
800 BC - First sunspots sighted by Chinese
763 BC - Solar eclipse mentioned in Old Testament
467 BC - Anaxagoras possibly sees a sunspot.
37 AD - Julius Caesar sends troops to chace an 'aurora'
500 AD - First report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
513 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
786 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
807 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
887 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
925 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
968 AD - First report of corona seen during total solar eclipse
1118 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1128 AD - First sketch of sunspot sighted in England
1138 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1185 AD - First sighting of solar prominence by Russians
1290 AD - Wolf Sunspot minimum and vanishing of aurora
1381 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1436 AD - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1440 AD - Sporer Sunspot Minimum

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Image Credits: Proto solar nebula: Spitzer Space Telescope (http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/041209telecon/ssc2004-22a.shtml) Stonehenge and Stars: Knowth.com (http://www.knowth.com/wallpaper.htm) Solar Flare diagram : Space Sciences Lab, UC Berkeley.