Get the data
The full record is free to download and reuse. It's plain CSV, so it opens in Excel, Google Sheets, R, Python or any database.
Downloads
| File | What's in it | Size |
|---|---|---|
| world_inventions_and_achievements_with_sources.csv | Every entry, one row each, with its government type and sources | 40.1 MB |
| world_inventions_and_achievements_with_sources.csv.gz | The same file, compressed (open with any unzip tool) | 12.7 MB |
| world_inventions_sources_list.csv | Every source, one row each: the suggested citations and the links found by the automated search | 21.0 MB |
| edition_changes.csv | Every possible error flagged while preparing this edition, with what was done about it and why | 1.5 MB |
| government_longevity_current.csv | How long 42 countries' states and current governments have lasted, with sources | 24 KB |
| government_longevity_historical.csv | How long 51 regimes from history lasted and how each ended, with sources | 20 KB |
| chart-data.json | The yearly counts behind the charts on this site | 0.5 MB |
| phase2.csv | The automated pass's first run, raw: Wikidata matches, every link it tried and its checks | 49.8 MB |
| phase2_full.csv | Its second run, raw: the same columns with every link it tried in October 2026 (also as Parquet in the same folder) | 117 MB |
This is edition 2.2, October 2026: 38,331 entries. The files are stored in Google Cloud Storage at gs://the-human-ascent-data, in editions/2.2/ and also at the top level of the bucket, and served from this site. Text is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark so Excel reads accented names correctly.
Edition 2.2 (20 October 2026) adds the links found by the research pass's second run, 3,292 more in all, and the population and food data behind the Trends page. Edition 2.1 (19 October) merged 557 more duplicate entries, found by comparing descriptions; see the method page. Earlier versions are kept in the bucket under archive/: edition-2.1/, edition-2.0/ (16 October) and edition-1/.
Columns in the main file
- id
- Entry number. Numbers are kept from the first edition; entries merged as duplicates leave gaps.
- year
- Year used for sorting and charts. Negative numbers are BCE; deep-time entries use the year implied by "years ago".
- date
- The date as written, such as "c. 3300 BCE" or "20 July 1969".
- era
- Broad period, from Prehistory to the present.
- country
- Present-day country where the work was done, or International.
- all_countries
- Every country that shares credit, separated by semicolons.
- region, subregion
- UN-style world region of the country.
- historical_entity
- The state, empire or culture at the time, such as Song China or the Soviet Union.
- government_type
- Government in power where and when the work was done: Democracy, Oligarchy or limited government, Monarchy or empire, Authoritarian regime, Communist state, Colony or dependent territory, Tribal or pre-state society, or International.
- type
- Invention, Discovery, Achievement, World first, Improvement, Cultural milestone or Social innovation.
- category
- Field, such as Medicine & Health or Transport.
- name, description
- What happened, in a line and in a short paragraph.
- key_people_or_organizations
- Who did it.
- builds_on_and_led_to
- Earlier work it depended on and later work it made possible.
- notes
- Disputes over priority, dating or credit.
- confidence
- High, Medium or Low: how settled the facts are among historians.
- source_count
- Number of suggested citations.
- source_status
- 2+ suggested sources, 1 suggested source, or no suggested source. Suggested sources were written by an AI model and most are not yet verified.
- primary_source
- The first suggested primary source, when there is one.
- sources
- All suggested citations, each labelled primary, secondary or tertiary, separated by ||. DOIs, ISBNs and patent numbers follow in brackets.
- source_note
- Where the sources disagree with the entry's date, place or people, what they say instead.
- found_links, found_link_count
- Links to papers and pages the automated search found whose text mentions the entry's key terms, separated by ||. Matched by software, not yet read by a person.
- evidence
- The strongest support the entry has so far: suggested citation checked, link found automatically, suggested sources only, or none.
- edition_note
- What changed in this edition: duplicates merged in, a new name, or a corrected government type.
Using it
The data is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: use it for anything, including commercial work, as long as you credit the source.
Cite it as: The Human Ascent (2026). World inventions and achievements database, edition 2.2, October 2026. https://thehumanascent.com/data
Before drawing conclusions, read what the counts can and can't show.