The Last Codex
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The Last Codex

If everything were lost, this is where we would start again.

The inventions of humankind: what they are, how they work and how to build them again.

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Where to begin again

Inventions are grouped in five stages. Each one depends on inventions from the stages before it.

  1. ISurvival3 inventionsControl of Fire · Stone Tools · Rope & Cordage
  2. IISettlement13 inventionsWheel & Axle · Plough · Bread
  3. IIICrafts & cities17 inventionsPrinting Press · Iron Smelting · Windmill
  4. IVScience & industry14 inventionsSteam Engine · Electric Generator · Vaccination
  5. VElectric age8 inventionsPenicillin · Aeroplane · Internal Combustion Engine

Domains of knowledge

Inventions with a finished text and illustrations.

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Fire & Survival

Control of Fire

Light, heat and cooked food

1 million years agoI
Writing & Communication

Printing Press

Movable type, copied by the thousand

c. 1440III
Energy & Prime Movers

Steam Engine

Heat turned into motion

1712IV
Tools & Making

Stone Tools

The first cutting edge

3.3 million years agoI
Land Transport

Wheel & Axle

Rolling instead of dragging

c. 3,500 BCEII
Materials & Chemistry

Iron Smelting

Wider adoption around 1200 BCE; ore, charcoal and a bloomery

c. 1,200 BCEIII
Medicine & Hygiene

Penicillin

An antibiotic made by a mould

1928V

Walk through time

Every invention in the codex, in date order.

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  1. Prehistory16
  2. Antiquity10
  3. Middle Ages7
  4. Renaissance2
  5. Industrial age12
  6. Electric age7
  7. Modern age1

Type a name, a date, a material, a domain…