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 | 39.0 MB |
| world_inventions_and_achievements_with_sources.csv.gz | The same file, compressed (open with any unzip tool) | 12.6 MB |
| world_inventions_sources_list.csv | Every citation, one row each, with its level and fact-check result | 17.9 MB |
| chart-data.json | The yearly counts behind the charts on this site | 0.5 MB |
Files are stored in Google Cloud Storage at gs://the-human-ascent-data. Text is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark so Excel reads accented names correctly.
Columns in the main file
- id
- Row number, stable within this edition.
- 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
- H, M or L: how settled the facts are among historians.
- source_count
- Number of sources listed for the entry.
- source_status
- Sourced (2+), thin (1 source) or no confident source.
- primary_source
- The first primary source, when there is one.
- sources
- All sources, 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.
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, October 2026 edition. https://thehumanascent.com/data
Before drawing conclusions, read what the counts can and can't show.