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30,000 BCE
Homo sapiens sapiens replaces the Neanderthal man
An enormous creative and cooperative effort led to the development of improved, lightweight tools, the control of fire, etc. -
20,000 BCE
Cro-Magnon
The Cro-Magnon people were identical to us. -
7000 BCE
Indo-Europeans
These are the people that they thought the Proto-Indo-European came from. -
Period: 3500 BCE to 2500 BCE
End of Indo-Europeans
This is the supposed time in which the common existence of this people is thought to have ended. -
400 BCE
Peak of Celtic language
Celtic was spoken from Belgrade to Paris to Dundee. -
Period: 51 BCE to 410
Rule of the Roman Empire over the Celts
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Period: 401 to 600
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
The Angles (from Angeln in Germany) crossed the North Sea to Britain, where they displaced the native Celts.- The Anglo-Saxon were illiterate people.
- They possessed a runic alphabet.
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410
Roman legions withdrew from Britain
The Romans left the Celts to their fate. Under the slow pagan onslaught, many Celts were absorbed or slaughtered. -
450
Saxons and Jutes exodus
Following the withdrawal of Roman troops from Britain, the Saxons and Jutes began a long exodus to Britain. The tribes ended up setting in different parts of Britain. Once there, the tribes variously merged and subdivided until they had established seven small kingdoms and dominated most of the island. Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall remained Celtic strongholds. -
597
St. Augustine brought Christianity
He brought literacy and Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons. -
731
The Venerable Bede wrote "The Ecclesiastical History of the English People"
This was the first comprehensive account of the Dark Ages. -
793
First known Viking raid
Vikings sacked the famous monastery of Lindisfarne. -
794
Fall of the monastery of Jarrow
This monastery is also raided by the Vikings, it was the monastery where the Venerable Bede had labored. -
813
Latin stopped being Latin
Charlemagne ordered that sermons throughout his realm be delivered in the "lingua romana rustica" and not the customary "lingua latina." -
850
Vikings ships sailed up the Thames
This set off a series of battles for control of territory that went on for years between the Vikings and the British. -
865
Viking Great Army
Vikings start raids all across Europe and other parts of the world without a known reason. They started years before with little and disperse raids. -
865
Viking settlement in France
The Normans settle in northern France. -
878
English victory over the Vikings
This was an unexpected victory. The treaty established the Danelaw. The Danelaw was a line running roughly between London and Chester, dividing the control of Britain between the English in the south and the Danes in the north. -
1066
Norman conquest
This is another event that affected the English language. -
Period: 1066 to 1399
A consequence of the Norman conquest
No king of England spoke English during this period. -
Period: 1131 to 1154
Work on "Peterborough Chronicle" was stopped
This chronicle is a yearly account of Anglo-Saxon life kept by monks. The period in which they stopped working on in it is due to the turmoil in the country. It happened just when English was beginning to undergo some of its most dramatic changes. When the chronicle is resumed in 1145, English is immeasurable simpler. -
1401
Proliferation of English dialects
During the period of Norman rule, the proliferation of English dialects led to a linguistic division. People in one part of England often could not understand people in another part. -
1492
William Caxton published "Eneydos"
In the preface to "Eneydos," he noted the sort of misunderstandings that were common in his day when it came to the linguistic division of the different parts of England. -
1516
Sir Thomas More publishes "Utopia"
"Utopia" was written and published in Latin. This fact is useful to see that even if English was flowering, it was still considered in many respects a second-rate language. -
"His" starts being "its"
It is around this time, that "his" stops being the usual form and "its" (the one we use) starts being the usual form. -
Shakespeare dies
Harvey wrote the treatise in this year. -
Bacon publishes "Novum Organum"
"Novum Organum" was published in Latin. This fact is useful to see that even if English was flowering, it was still considered in many respects a second-rate language. -
John Hemming and Henry Condell start to assemble the "First Folio"
They start to assemble an anthology of Shakespeare's work that is useful today to see the changes that English underwent. -
William Harvey publishes his treatise on blood circulation
"Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus" was written and published in Latin. This fact is useful to see that even if English was flowering, it was still considered in many respects a second-rate language. -
Newton publishes "Principia"
"Principia" was published in Latin. This fact is useful to see that even if English was flowering, it was still considered in many respects a second-rate language. -
Thomas Gray published "Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard"
This poem is evidence of the time in which the invariable patterns of the verbs started to shift to the one we use today (write, wrote, written). -
Sanskrit
Sir William Jones starts teaching himself Sanskrit. He noticed many striking similarities between Sanskrit and European languages. -
Period: to
Proto-Indo-European track down
Feverish attempt to track down the (hypothetical) parent language, later called Indo-European.
Grimm, Bopp, Rawlinson, von Schlegel, and more became involved in this task. -
Archeologist found rests of the Neanderthal man
This Neanderthal man possessed a larger brain than modern man, he wore clothes, shaped clothes, engaged in communal activities. -
Discovery of the first English sentence (Earliest example of Anglo-Saxon writing in Britain)
The gold medallion was from around A.D. 450 and 480. It had a runic inscription that is thought to say "This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsman." -
Cognates
Merrit Ruhlen noted that "the significant number of such global cognates leads some linguists to conclude that all the world's languages ultimately belong to a single language family." -
Discovery of a hoard of curse
It is considered a glimpse into the daily life and cosmopolitan nature of Roman Britain. "It was the practice of aggravated citizens at that time to scratch a curse on a lead table and toss it with a muttered plea for vengeance into the spring."