Domain

Location

Media

Civilization

Era

Entire skyCosmological

Cosmic Microwave Background

The oldest light ever seen—WMAP’s full-sky “baby photo” of the Universe that anchors modern cosmology.

~13.8 Billion BCE

13,650,000,000 yr jump

GermanyPaleontological

Archaeopteryx

Feathered fossil with teeth and claws—a stone-pressed link between dinosaurs and birds.

~150 Million BCE

146,700,000 yr jump

KenyaArchaeological

Lomekwi 3 Stone Tools

Chunky hammerstones that pre-date *Homo*: earliest evidence of imagination meeting matter.

~3.3 Million BCE

3,292,700 yr jump

PatagoniaArchaeological

Cueva de las Manos

Hundreds of negative handprints—millennia-long record of presence, ritual and kinship.

7,300 BCE

6,700 yr jump

IraqCartographical

Imago Mundi

The earliest world map: Babylon at the centre, cosmic seas and mythic lands beyond.

600 BCE

ChinaPhilosophical

Yin–Yang

A swirl of opposites—Daoist model where light and dark generate the rhythm of the cosmos.

250 BCE

Sistine ChapelArtistical

The Creation of Adam

Michelangelo’s charged gap between God and man—an icon of Renaissance anatomy and divine creativity.

1,512 CE

Dutch RepublicPhilosophical

“Cogito, ergo sum”

Descartes’ proof of existence—thinking as the unshakeable foundation of rational inquiry.

1,637 CE

EnglandBiological

Darwin’s Tree of Life

Darwin’s first tree-of-life doodle: a two-word spark that grew into evolutionary theory.

1,837 CE