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Empire Earth Epochs

There are 12 different ephocs these are starting from Pre-historic all the way to Nano

Here Is Some Info On The 12 Epochs :

Prehistoric Age: 500 000 - 50 000 B.C.

Learning the secret of fire was a tremendous leap forward for early humans. Fire provided light and heat, cooked food and kept predators at bay. In later epochs, it was used to clear land for agriculture, make pottery and forge metal. Though dependable techniques for making fire were not available until around 7,000 BC, the unearthed remains of simple hearths provide unquestionable evidence that controlled fire was in use at least 500,000 years ago.

Primitive town centers were little more than the fire pits where members of a nomadic tribe would gather socially, perhaps to celebrate a successful hunt. Food meant survival, so when hunters returned with a kill, it was cause for rejoicing.

Given the immense importance of obtaining food, tribes must have come into conflict with one another for control over fertile hunting grounds and foraging areas, especially in times of overall scarcity. These early struggles for survival were the likely precursors of the large-scale battles and wars that have dogged our species throughout recorded history.

Stone Age : 50 000 - 5 000 B.C.

Many advances in stone working and toolmaking took place during the Stone Age, resulting in a plethora of specialized tools. One particularly important innovation was "hafting" - the attachment of a handle to an existing tool, such as a stone blade. The first hafted implements were spears. Tipped with fine stone points, or "microliths," the resulting weapons were sharp, durable and deadly. Spears were used primarily for fishing and bringing down large game, but spearmen surely employed them against human enemies as well.

Religious practices also evolved during this epoch, becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated. People's awareness of their own mortality — humans in the Stone Age lived, on average, less than 30 years — brought about the practices of ancestor worship and ritual burial. Early forms of shamanism also developed. Holy men called shamans were believed to have the power to commune with spirits. Rock and cave paintings from this period suggest that they may have practiced rituals akin to magic to heal the sick, for example, or ensure a successful hunt, or bring about favorable weather.

The presence of such individuals indicates that human societies were diversifying, with different people filling different roles. As societies grew in complexity, the need for organized leadership increased. By the close of the Stone Age, hierarchical social structures were leading to centralized authority and the origination of government. Evidence of this trend has been inferred from ancient settlement patterns found in Greece and Southern France, and on the Iberian peninsula.

Copper Age : 5 000 - 2 000 B.C. -

Copper was one of the first metals widely used by humans, due to its malleability and durability. Like gold and silver, it could be melted and cast into many shapes. But copper proved to be a stronger material and quickly became the preferred medium for making tools, including weapons. Copper-headed maces were first cast in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. Some weapons, however, did not immediately make the transition from stone to metal. Bowmen continued to use stone arrowheads throughout the Copper and into the Bronze Age, due to their cheaper production costs.

At the start of the Copper Age, the Egyptians were already constructing warships out of bundles of reeds. Such vessels were essentially rafts, suited for duty only on the relatively calm waters of the Nile. By 2000 BC, both Egypt and Crete were building wooden ships capable of navigating the choppy, wind-swept waters of the Mediterranean. For propulsion, these warships used a combination of a square sail (for speed) and oars (for maneuverability).

Another defining phenomenon of this period was the explosion of agriculture. The ability to farm enabled people to settle in one area, which was a necessary condition for the emergence of civilization. The first civilization arose in Sumer in the Euphrates River valley. In addition to growing crops like barley, wheat and grapes, the Sumerians domesticated animals for meat and other materials as well as to provide power for plows and carts. For their carts, they fashioned the first wheels by fastening rounded wooden boards together. Lists of farm commodities, and related records like horse lineages, were recorded on clay tablets using cuneiform, the first system of writing. By the end of the Copper Age, agriculture had spread from the Middle East through all of Europe.

Bronze Age : 2 000 B.C. - 0 A.D. -

The production of bronze ensued when separate ores containing copper and tin were smelted together. This innovation may have been accidental, but the value of the stronger metal was not lost on ancient weapon and armor manufacturers. In time, the best proportion of tin to copper was found (about 1 part in 10). This discovery was an early triumph in metallurgy.

The Bronze Age marks the appearance of both the sword — the first weapon not to have a secondary use as a tool — and the phalanx. The phalanx was a block formation of armored infantrymen who each carried a long, bronze-tipped spear called a sarissa. Both Phillip II of Macedon and his son and successor, Alexander the Great, used the phalanx to devastating effect in their campaigns.

In an effort to protect their cities, Bronze Age civilizations improved their fortification methods. New masonry techniques and fortress designs that allowed overlapping fields of fire made seizing a fortified city harder than ever. To counter such defensive measures, the Assyrians pioneered the use of covered rams, and the Greeks made use of ballistae and siege towers. During an attack on Rhodes, the Macedonians made a siege tower so large that more than 3,000 men were required to move it up to the city walls.

Medicine made considerable progress in the Bronze Age as well. The Code of Hammurabi, which encapsulated the legal system of ancient Babylon, included laws that dealt with the practice of medicine. Egyptian papyri describing folk remedies and surgical techniques, with associated magical rites, also date from this period. Later, in Greece, the role of the supernatural in medicine was downplayed until, by the time of Hippocrates in the 5th Century BC, disease was being regarded as a bodily affliction with natural causes. Around 300 BC, the Greeks established a medical school in Alexandria, which continued to be a center of learning throughout the Roman era.

Formal education of the young can trace its roots back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, but it was the Greeks who standardized and expanded its role. Whereas earlier schools were devoted to training scribes or teaching religion, schools in Greece taught physical education, literacy, good conduct and other subjects as well. Higher education also developed in Greece, open to all who had both spare time and money. The most famous example of the day was the Academy, founded by Plato circa 387 BC.

Dark Age : 0 A.D. - 900 A.D.

The Roman Empire reached its peak of influence not long after iron replaced bronze as the metal of choice for weapons and tools … and thereafter collapsed to bring about what is known as the Dark Age. There are numerous reasons for the decline and fall of Rome, among them military defeats at the hands of the so-called barbarian tribes. In 378 AD, Gothic horsemen trounced the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople, which signaled the beginning of the dominance of cavalry on the battlefield. Rome itself was finally sacked in 410 AD by the Visigoths.

After Rome's collapse, pockets of civilization continued to exist, most notably in the Byzantine, or "Eastern Roman," Empire. The capital at Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, was established in 330 AD by Roman Emperor Constantine, who is also credited with legitimizing Christianity in Rome. The Eastern Roman Empire continued on for some 1,000 years after the fall of its Western counterpart, becoming a power in its own right. Byzantine warships were formidable vessels that made use of the latest rigging and armament technologies, such as the lateen sail and ballistae capable of hurling missiles hundreds of yards. On land, the core of the Byzantine army after the 8th Century was the cataphract, a heavily armed and armored cavalryman.

Leaders in Constantinople hoped, eventually, to regain full control of the West and unite the divided empire. But widening religious differences led the Roman church to resist reunification. In 800 AD, after Charlemagne, the Frankish King, had consolidated his power in Western Europe, Pope Leo III crowned him the new Roman Emperor, largely for protection. The Eastern and Western churches remain separate to this day.

Middle Age : 900 A.D. - 1 300 A.D.

The Middle Ages saw the steady reemergence of centralized authority and technological progress. The rising feudal system reestablished a semblance of governmental authority in Europe, albeit at a localized level. A local lord ruled over his own property, often from a central castle outside of which was a village protected by walls. Serfs — at first little more than slaves — farmed the surrounding land. Mounted knights commonly made up the lord's armed retinue, riding out to defend the town when necessary.

For a time, castles were the ultimate defensive structures on Earth. But siege weaponry slowly advanced in response to them. The ultimate siege engine prior to gunpowder was the trebuchet. Trebuchets used a counterweight to generate a force that could hurl a 300-pound projectile over 300 hundred yards. Some of these machines were enormous, with counterweights in excess of 10 tons. Once properly aimed they could make short work of any wall.

The longbow — the preeminent weapon of this time — was used extensively in siege warfare on both sides of the castle wall, especially in Britain. Longbowmen were selected at and trained from childhood, and the investment was worthwhile. Men skilled in its use could fell even heavily armored knights from a distance of up to 300 yards.

Castles were not the only large buildings being constructed at this time. Advances in architecture, such as the invention of the flying buttress, made it possible to build huge cathedrals with vaulted ceilings and magnificent stained-glass windows. Many were so well constructed that they still stand today. The development of the fireplace and chimney, however, had a greater impact on society as a whole. Large, semi-public rooms with open ceilings gave way to individually heated rooms on multiple floors, which allowed people more privacy.

Renaissance Age :1 300 A.D. - 1 500 A.D.

The gradual recovery of ancient knowledge culminated in the Renaissance - a word that literally means "rebirth." The Renaissance originated in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe in an explosion of new ideas and technological innovations. The invention of moveable type and the printing press made the mass production of books possible. Literacy rates slowly increased and regular postal services appeared in parts of Europe, though mostly to handle commercial and governmental correspondence.

In response to the Black Death of the mid-1300's — which killed a quarter or more of the European population — cities attempted to improve sanitation by instituting measures to dispose of garbage and sewage. Another public health improvement that followed the plague was the establishment of quarantines as a means of slowing the spread of disease.

Gunpowder, though invented earlier, saw its use spread rapidly during this period. Early artillery pieces and firearms, such as the culverin and matchlock arquebus, began to appear on the battlefield. Castles were easily breached by the new artillery, and eventually became obsolete. But early gunpowder weapons were unreliable, slow to load, and dangerous to operate. Thus, their superiority over more traditional forms of weaponry, such as the longbow, was not to be fully demonstrated until the 16th Century.

Gunpowder also found a use at sea. The galleon was one of the first ships to have broadside guns as opposed to forward and rear-facing guns mounted on the deck. This allowed galleons to carry more weapons. Galleons also employed full rigging, which made them faster and more maneuverable than ships of earlier design.

Imperial Age : 1 500 A.D. - 1 700 A.D.

The appearance of ships capable of circumnavigating the globe heralded the beginning of the Imperial Age. Muzzle-loading cannons cast in bronze — and later iron — were introduced as seafaring nations battled for access to new resource-rich lands. Massive warships such as the Henry Grâce à Dieu, commissioned by and named after Henry VIII, carried a total of more than 150 large iron cannons and smaller guns.

Small arms continued to advance as well. The flintlock musket was quicker to load and cheaper to produce than the earlier matchlock. As firearms got more accurate and reliable, the era of the archer slowly came to an end. But it wasn't until the introduction of the bayonet — especially the under-the-barrel design adopted by the French army in 1688 — that hand-to-hand weapons like the sword and pike began to disappear. With that development, the fundamental shift from medieval to modern warfare was at hand.

Major changes were also underway in science. The crowning achievement of the Scientific Revolution was the emergence of the scientific method, with its emphasis on empirical data and reproducible experiments. Galileo, an early proponent of the method's principles, used the newly invented telescope to provide the first evidence that the earth was not the center of the universe. Another important achievement of this period was the invention of calculus, attributed to both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz. Using calculus, Newton was able to describe his basic laws of motion.

The Catholic Church, meanwhile, was coming to grips with the Reformation. In addition to setting up a Roman Inquisition, which put Galileo himself under house arrest, the Church sent missionaries all over the world to convert populations in new lands as well as to reclaim those who had become Protestant.

Industrial Age : 1 700 A.D. - 1 900 A.D.

An important consequence of the Scientific Revolution was the effect it had on people's attitudes towards science and technology. There was a growing confidence that science could accomplish anything. This belief, more than actual scientific inquiry, helped to bring about the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Age was principally powered by steam. The steam engine found use in many places, from factories to trains to ships. For a short time, hybrid sail-steam vessels cruised the seas. In factories, the concept of standardized products with interchangeable parts allowed manufacturing to become cheaper and more efficient. Firearms were among the first products to benefit from such mass production methods. Various design modifications further improved the quality of guns: breach-loading, rifled barrels, and percussion-fired bullets all became standard during this period.

Several scientific breakthroughs made major impacts on civilization. In medicine, the germ theory of disease was highly influential. Pasteurization and antiseptics, which kill microorganisms, contributed to the near doubling of life expectancies over the next 150 years. Darwin's Theory of Evolution, coupled with Gregor Mendel's work on heredity and genetics, made possible a deeper understanding of life on earth.

Electricity, previously a scientific curiosity, found its first practical applications in the Industrial Age. Once the first electric batteries and generators were invented, electric power became available to perform all sorts of feats. The electric motor was developed to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy. The telegraph, followed closely by the telephone, revolutionized communications. And the incandescent light bulb lit up the night.

Atomic Age : 1 900 A.D. - 2025 A.D.

The First World War was the first truly global conflict, and warfare itself underwent many fundamental changes. Steel warships weighing thousands of tons exchanged fire while still miles apart. Below the waters, submarines were taking their toll on surface ships and thus proving their military value. On land, artillery and machine guns served to maintain the intractability of trench warfare, while newer inventions such as tanks and airplanes worked towards ending it.

After the Armistice, innovation continued in the civilian sector. Radio joined print as an important means of disseminating information. Penicillin and other antibiotics were discovered to treat a variety of infections. And women's suffrage planted the seeds of many civil liberties to come. It wasn't long, however, before the clouds of war were gathering again.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, many of the breakthrough weapons of the previous war had become indispensable. Rapid advances in the design and manufacture of combustion engines resulted in vastly superior tanks and aircraft. Additionally, the creation of entirely new propulsion systems eventually led to the first jets and long range rockets. Bazookas and anti-aircraft guns were developed as counter-weapons to tanks and aircraft, and anti-submarine warfare reached a new level with the deployment of sophisticated destroyers.

Humanity's overall appetite for science and technology — not to mention natural resources — intensified during and just after the war years. Mining techniques and machinery were improved. Television redefined life at home. Researchers developed vaccines for polio and other diseases and national vaccination policies were adopted. Even the structure of DNA, which contains the genetic code for life on earth, was discovered during this productive period. But the defining event of the Atomic Age was the splitting of the atom and subsequent development of both atomic weapons and controlled-fission reactors. It was to have lingering consequences.

In the latter half of the Century, the Cold War dominated the international policies of many countries and nuclear weapons played a crucial role in deterrence. These "weapons of mass destruction" were so devastating that a single warhead could wipe out a city, and implicit threats worked to maintain an uneasy peace. To transport the warheads to their targets, nuclear nations developed heavy long-range bombers, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), and strategic submarines. Also important was the invention of the microcomputer, which opened the door to these and other high-tech weapons systems such as the M1 tank, the F-15 fighter, and the Apache helicopter. Surface-to-air missiles also came into wide spread use to help minimize threats from above.

But computers as well as advances in communications were not limited to military uses. They had everyday applications in business and industry, and also in private life. And, like the atom, they would soon define an Epoch of human development.

Digital Age : 2025 A.D. - 2200 A.D.

The proliferation of microchips and the advent of the Internet ushered in the Information Age. Global communications brought parts of the world closer together, but tensions elsewhere were not easily assuaged. In the New World Order that followed the Cold War, warfare reverted to localized conflicts involving regional powers — with the occasional intervention of first-world nations. To fight these limited wars, military hardware needed to be highly mobile, versatile, and reliable. And, of course, it had to pack a punch.

High-energy laser and particle beam weapons had been prototyped by the start of the Information Age. But their large size and immense consumption of energy made them impractical for field use. High-density power cells, developed in the early 2020's, were used in the first practical energy weapon designs, but they were large, cumbersome, and prone to running dry during heavy combat. The real breakthrough came with advanced fusion technology.

Fusion reactions, long harnessed in hydrogen bombs, were being controlled to generate power at the end of the 20th Century. But early reactors used more energy than they actually produced. It wasn't until 2033 that all the problems were overcome and the first commercial reactor went online. Research programs funded by military budgets drove the miniaturization that followed. By 2050, fusion batteries had replaced conventional power cells in most military hardware.

Body armor had to be updated to deflect energy beams while still providing decent protection against bullets and shrapnel. Early designs were of marginal benefit. But in the 2030's, sophisticated materials were invented that absorbed incoming beams, capturing and distributing the energy throughout the armor. An undercoating of carbon-fiber mesh was added to stop projectiles and the new armor rapidly displaced the old.

The single most important development in military hardware during the Information Age was the advent of mechanized units in the latter half of the 21st Century. These advanced military robots, at first remotely operated, were eventually given a rudimentary intelligence which allowed them to carry out simple operations unassisted. By 2075, neural networks implemented on optical chip architectures — capable of one quadrillion calculations per second — had far exceeded the capacity of the human brain. When combined with ingenious "bottom-up" algorithms and "top-down" commonsense, the mechanical giants gained the ability to learn. As a result, mechanized military units were literally trained for combat much like human soldiers. Powered by fusion batteries and outfitted with the latest weaponry, these marvels of modern warfare found a variety of specialized uses on the battlefields of the late 21st and 22nd Centuries.

In pure science, two breakthroughs had tremendous consequences. The first was the completion of the human genome project at the beginning of the 21st Century. The genetic revolution in medicine that followed increased the average life expectancy of people to 150 by the turn of the 22nd Century. The second breakthrough was finding the "Theory of Everything," considered to be the "holy grail" of physics. Discovered in bits and pieces, the Theory of Everything finally came together towards the end of the 21st Century. In time, it opened a whole new world.

Nano Age : 2200 A.D. - End

The ongoing technological process of miniaturization attained its ultimate objective in the Nano Age. Nanotechnology had its first successes in the early 21st Century in medical applications. But subsequent improvements in imaging and manipulation techniques allowed for the creation of "nanomachines," with sizes measured in billionths of a meter. Working in concert, these amazing machines could theoretically build anything, atom-by-atom, including copies of themselves.

Programming the trillions of nanomachines needed to make a sizable object in a reasonable amount of time was a major hurdle to overcome. The solution involved developing a simple coding system — not unlike DNA — that provided the instructions on how to make any type of compound. Larger structures were then assembled from the compounds. Quantum computers — the smallest and most powerful computers yet devised — handled the astronomical amount of data involved.

Nanomachines were soon being used to build a wide variety of things. Biological structures were merged with mechanical structures, creating cyborgs and other hybrids. The designs for mechanized military units — already highly successful — received a host of internal refinements that made them even more effective. And researchers developed artificial viruses that could be used for everything from medical treatments to mind control. The only restriction was that objects first had to be described on an atomic level, which was usually a time-consuming process.

The other major development of the period was learning to synthesize "negative matter," an exotic substance with extraordinary physical properties. First hypothesized in the 20th Century, the formulation of the Theory of Everything in the 21st Century brought negative matter into clear focus. Applying the theory allowed humans to do something previously considered impossible: travel through time. Nanotechnology provided the means to magnify a phenomenon known as the Casimir effect to open a wormhole — a tunnel through the fabric of space-time. Once enough negative matter was synthesized to enlarge and stabilize the wormhole, objects were able to pass through. As soon as other technological barriers were overcome (for example, protecting the fragile human body from the extreme forces involved and controlling where the "far end" of the wormhole appeared) time travel became a reality.

In the Nano Age, humankind gradually gained mastery over matter and energy, time and space. Yet despite these achievements and the virtually limitless possibilities they presented, life on Earth continued much the way it had over the previous 500,000 years. Though a mere speck in the cosmos, Earth remained the cradle of human civilization.