Technology has evolved drastically over the years. From being an activity that was carried out by people to being done primarily through machines, technological advancements have changed the world in many ways.
The first tools were stone tools mainly used for hunting and gathering food. It is thought that humans started making stone tools around 2.6 million years ago. After this, metal tools began being produced. Bronze was the first alloy used by humans, followed by iron during the same time to help us construct buildings.
Technology has evolved due to both conscious invention and unforeseen uses of existing products. For example, early inventors had not planned for the telephone to be used for voice calls or sending messages. However, society continued to use telephones in this way over time.
Today, computers are likely the product that has had the most influence on how people live their lives. Both adults and children spend a lot of their free time using computers. Computers have also created new job positions and career opportunities.
The history of technology is a timeline that shows the events in the development of technology, including through technological innovations and inventions, engineering developments, scientific discoveries, and social changes, which have been influential to how technologies evolved over time. The dates below are only an approximation.
The first significant use of tools was probably using stone and bone tools by hominins. All of these tools were used for hunting or scavenging. The earliest archaeological evidence of the use of metal are beads dated to between 4500 BCE and 4000 BCE, which were made from meteoric iron. It has been hypothesized that they were made in a limited number by some unknown Stone Age metalworking process that involved heating and then hammering the metal into disks or certain shapes before cold forging caused the meteoric iron to shatter. (Silver is also mentioned as being used in a similar way.)
The use of copper for tools begins around 6000 BCE in Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt. In Europe, copper was not widely used until the Roman period but had already replaced stone and wooden tools by that time.
Glass is a liquid material made from sand that has been mixed with certain chemicals. The first glass objects were beads and small vessels made from mixtures of metals, minerals, shells, or plants during the 4th millennium BC called “colloidal suspensions.” In 2003, archaeologists found the first evidence of glass-making from the transitional Chalcolithic period (Copper Age).
The history of technology is a major field of study and covers many topics. The ancient Greeks and Romans had good reason to record the technological achievements of their day; they left extensive records documenting their advances in architecture, engineering, warfare, mechanical devices, and other inventions.
The field of technology predates the term “technology,” which came into use in the 18th century. There is also a discipline called Technological history, which is about how people make decisions, invent new technologies and develop new ideas.
This timeline shows some key events in the development of human technology. It covers events from the discovery of stone tools to the development of computer technology and is broken into sections for ease of reading. Some events may overlap or span past categories.