Earth

The Earth was the planet that gave rise to the human species, along with many other forms of life. It was one of many planets in the Solar System. The Earth was known as The World by the humans who lived on it.

Historically, the Earth was controlled by many different political entities, with no one political body ever controlling all of the surface. In 0 AU, however, the Averte Statum assumed control of the entirety of the Earth's surface, an event known as the Great Unification.

Geography
The Earth was a dense rocky planet with an abundance of oxygen, silicon and iron. It was covered by large amounts of water and had an atmosphere of molecular nitrogen, molecular oxygen and argon gases.

The Earth featured plate tectonics and had 12 major plates and 7 continents; Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, North America, South America and Antarctica. A subcontinent, India, also existed adjacent to Asia (although it was tectonically connected to Oceania). Europe and Asia were often considered a single continent: Eurasia.

The continent of Antarctica occupied the Earth's south pole and was therefore almost entirely covered in ice (although the amount of ice changed frequently with global temperature). The Earth's north pole was occupied by the Arctic Ocean, which was also almost entirely covered by a layer of sea ice up to 1 km (0.6 miles) thick.

In addition to the Arctic Ocean, the Earth's hydrosphere was divided into six more individual oceans: the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, the North Pacific, the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Southern (Antarctic) Ocean.

The hottest places on the Earth included regions of the African Sahara Desert and the North American Mojave and Great Basin Deserts. The coldest places were the Arctic Ice Cap and Antarctica.

Natural History
The Earth formed from a planetary accretion disk approximately 4.6 billion years before the First Century, with the first life appearing on the earth 600 million years later.

In approximately 5 million BU, the first humanoids evolved on Earth, with modern homo sapiens appearing in approximately 70,000 BU on the continent of Africa. The earliest written documents were created in approximately 6000 BU. This date is often cited as the beginning of history.

Ancient
Egypt, Classicals, Chinese

Medieval
Middle Chinese, Indian, Big religions get going

Early modern
1400-1850 Renaissance to industrial revolution

Modern
1850-2300 Industrial revolution to century war

During the centuries prior to the Century War, the human population developed technology and increased in size to over 10 billion.

The release of carbon dioxide from various industrial processes caused the Earth to become warmer, resulting in the melting of large amounts of polar ice in the Arctic Ocean and on and around Antarctica.

The effects of global warming slowed as CO2 intensive industrial processes were phased out in favour of alternative methods. The effects of global warming reached their maximum in around 250 BU, which coincided mass desertification and forest fires. In 150, the global population peaked at 10 billion.

Century war
During the Century War, the excessive use of nuclear weapons caused damage to the Earth's ozone layer and resulted in the injection of huge quantities of soot and ash into the atmosphere. These effects caused a nuclear winter which, combined with reduced CO2 production from industry during the War, ultimately reversed the effects of global warming.

Imperial period
After the war, the world population was approximately 7 billion, with over 1.5 billion killed in the wars and related complications such as famine and disease, and a further 1.5 billion in population lost due to decreased birth rates.

The First Century after the Great Unification was known as the Dark Ages, so named due to the deliberate suppression of cultural mingling and the destruction of the infrastructure of the internet. During this time, the World Empire diverted huge quantities of resources into scientific research and space exploration, most of it unknown to the public. Habitable bases were established on the Moon, Venus, Mars, the two moons of Mars and the asteroids Eros and Cruithne.

By the end of the Dark Ages, much of the world population lived in arcologies, usually of small size, which were semi independent from one another. Gigantic cities such as the Pearl still existed, but decreased in size during the Second Century.

The Settlement and Sleeper Age
The Second Century AU saw the age of the Settlement, which involved the colonisation of much of the outer solar system, and the beginnings of the Sleeper Age, which saw the first interstellar spacecraft constructed and launched. The first cylindrical habitats were constructed in 150 AU.

The human population, especially the offworld human population, increased enormously during the Second Century, with 12 billion living on Earth and a further 2 billion offworld by 170 AU. This resulted in the increased use of habitats as methods to house people, and the increase in price of land and property on Earth, encouraging younger, poorer people to venture into space.

The Second Century AU saw the development superluminal quantum communication in the 160s AU culminated with the first superluminal space-warp technology being developed in the 190s.

Superluminal Age
The Third Century AU saw the beginnings of the Superluminal Age, which allowed for a far greater expansion of humanity to other star systems due to warping technology.

The year 255 AU saw the first contact with extraterrestrial life.

Religion
The Earth's human population practised over 1000 different religions, the largest being Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Binsan (a religion which grew very quickly during and after the Century War). Chinese Folk Religion, African Folk Religion and "Ethnic Religion" also saw huge numbers of adherents, sometimes rivalling the top five, but these were not usually considered unified religions, but rather collections of many (sometimes hundreds) of distinct religions. In addition to this, a large portion of the Earth's population was irreligious.

Adherents to Abrahamic religions (including Christianity, Islam and Judaism) believed that the Earth was created less than 10,000 years BU by their deity.

Binsanites beliefs as to the Earth's age concurred largely with scientific ones, but differed in that the Binsanites believed that six intelligent civilisations had existed on the Earth before humans, the Earliest being 450 million years BU during the Ordovician period.

Adherents of the Church of Scientology believed that humans were brought to the Earth in spacecraft 75 million years BU.